Keera’s head snaps about, to give the Priestess a hateful glower. “Some of us, Divine One, have already learned that.”
It is yet another impertinence, and the Priestess thinks to protest. But a firm look from the Groba Father repeats the warning he must not voice aloud: You have said enough — be still. He turns again to the foragers.
“Go, now,” he says, “and take our heartfelt prayers with you.”
The same Elder who guided them into the Den now rises to escort the foragers back out. Veloc puts an arm around Keera and Effi, and gently tries again to ascertain, as they go through the passageway, whether or not Keera truly has the strength for this undertaking. This leaves Heldo-Bah to walk behind them with the Elder; and it is an awkward moment for the forager. He does not speak the language of polite Bane society, nor indeed of any polite society; and yet, for reasons he cannot precisely define, he wishes to express his respect and sympathy for the man. He waits until they pass through the antechamber and emerge into the day. The Elder comes to a halt just outside the cave’s mouth, and Heldo-Bah faces him.
“Thirty years,” he says awkwardly, scratching at his beard. “A long time, to be with one woman.” The Elder’s pain becomes apparent; but he also seems baffled. “Long time to be with anyone, really,” Heldo-Bah continues. But it is no use — he has no talent for saying what he wishes in a proper manner; and so he drops the guise, smiles, and says, “Don’t worry, old fellow—” Then he pulls his shirt sleeve over his hand and, inexplicably, rubs the top of the Elder’s bald pate. “We’re going to find that bloody sorcerer for you — and you’ll have your justice!”
“Stop that — Heldo-Bah!” The Elder takes hold of the forager’s arm, and pushes it away with surprising strength, staring at Heldo-Bah in shock; and yet, possibly because he understands that some small kernel of compassion lies at the heart of the forager’s bizarre behavior, he does not reproach him, other than to say, “At times I do believe you really are mad …”
But Heldo-Bah is already hurrying down the pathway to catch his friends, who have stopped to retrieve their sacks — no easy task, as Ashkatar is atop them, stealing some desperately needed and richly deserved snippets of sleep, while intermittently waking to ensure that the crowd of angry Bane does not gather again. He bolts upright when he hears the Elder call out:
“Yantek Ashkatar!”
Ashkatar gets himself righted, with help from Heldo-Bah and Veloc. “Elder?” he shouts.
“The Groba will see you now!”
Ashkatar has not gone half a dozen steps before he stops and turns back to Keera. “You have accepted the commission?”
Rocking Effi, who has fallen into sad slumber, Keera replies, “We have, Yantek.”
Ashkatar nods. “Some thought that you would refuse it — but I felt certain that you would not. And I want you to know — about your boys.” Ashkatar pulls at his whip. “Don’t fear that they will be forgotten, while you’re gone. My men and I shall watch over them as if they were our own — and I shall keep your parents ever informed of how it goes with them.”
Keera’s eyes fill with tears, but she is determined to control her grief and her worry until the journey she is faced with is done. “Thank you, Yantek,” she says, with deep respect. Then she begins to walk slowly toward her parents’ home, just south of the village center, still rocking Effi from side to side.
“And Veloc—” Ashkatar points his whip. “You and Heldo-Bah take care of her, eh? Especially in the southwestern Wood. Take care of yourselves, too — it’s hellish country, and all our hopes go with you.”
Veloc nods. “Aye,” he says, and then turns to catch his sister.
Heldo-Bah pauses, still grinning. “And how would you know what the country’s like down there?” he asks. Ashkatar flushes with angry embarrassment, at which Heldo-Bah laughs once and says: “But it was a noble sentiment, Ashkatar. I’m deeply touched …”
Before the commander of the Bane army can reply, Heldo-Bah runs off; nevertheless, Ashkatar shouts after him: “Damn you, Heldo-Bah — It’s Yantek Ashka—!” But then, out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of the Elder still waiting, and murmurs to himself, “Ah, the blazes with it …” Straightening his tunic, he watches the foragers disappear into the crowds of weeping, shouting, desperate Bane as he starts up the path.
“The Moon go with you three,” he murmurs softly.
Then he hurries inside the Den of Stone, to propose the scheme he believes will allow the infant and drastically outnumbered army of the Bane — a force as yet no more than two hundred strong — to defend Davon Wood against the mightiest military machine north of Lumun-jan, at least until such time as the foragers return.
“And what happens after that,” Ashkatar murmurs to himself as he catches up to the Elder, “I can’t even begin to guess at …”
1:{xv:}
Sunset at the High Temple brings strange and
wondrous visitors …
On making the Kafran faith the state religion of Broken — and of himself, a deity — Thedric, the patricidal son of the Mad King Oxmontrot, speaking through the first of the Grand Layzins, pledged to create great works in the name his “true father”: the golden god. He quickly completed the High Temple of Kafra (in which Oxmontrot had never shown more than a passing interest), and greatly increased its beauty of design; and through rituals conducted therein, the banishments that Oxmontrot had instituted as a pragmatic method of forging a united people who would be capable of not only creating an impregnable city, but of defending themselves in the field from the conquering hordes that the Mad King had fought during his years of service to Lumun-jan, became the unshakable pillars of the new kingdom’s faith. Soon thereafter, the Sacristy had been built, above the ground between the Temple’s western and the Inner City’s eastern walls; so, too, had been the Stadium, where once had stood a second, smaller headquarters for the northern watch of the Broken army; and finally, adjoining the Sacristy, was erected the House of the Wives of Kafra, the second story of which became the Grand Layzin’s official residence. A spacious veranda off the Layzin’s splendid bedchamber offered an excellent view of the Inner City’s Lake of a Dying Moon, as well as the upper stories of the royal palace, while a new, underground passage beneath the House of the Wives of Kafra connected the Temple, the Layzin, and the priestesses directly to the palace and the royal family. But these additions were merely practical, designed to make the secret lives of Broken’s rulers and the business of Kafran clerics easier; only the veranda and balcony outside the Layzin’s bedchamber had been designed purely as an indulgence, one intended to give Broken’s senior priest a view of the Inner City, that he might watch as the setting sun was reflected off the black waters of the Lake.
For the long succession of Grand Layzins, who had neither claim nor pretense to godhood, life within the House of the Wives proved a welcome respite from the often overwhelming responsibilities of giving voice to (and more often than not, creating) the edicts of the various God-Kings, whose removal from the world made their views upon mundane secular matters of somewhat limited utility. The Layzins’ burdens were eased, early in the new life of Broken, by the elevation of the head of the city’s Merchants’ Council to the position of First Advisor of the realm. The most onerous of the Layzin’s chores could finally be handed off to a worldly man more suited to dealing with them, and none too soon; for the rise of the savage tribes on every side of Broken, during the first generations of the kingdom’s existence, required some very secular responses.