The Black Raven. Katharine Kerr

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      ‘And just what might be so cursed important, Rae, that you would risk so much to have it? I’ll have the truth, and I’ll have it now.’

      ‘Let me go!’ She tried to pull her hand free, but he held on. ‘Oh very well! Truly, it were time. Let me go, and I’ll tell you.’

      When he released her she walked a few steps away, then took off the damp cloak. Except for the dancing gleam of his lantern, the great room lay dark around them, silent in the dead of night.

      ‘Come into our chamber,’ Verrarc said. ‘I’d not have the servants waking to hear this.’

      Raena threw the cloak onto the floor and stomped off into the bedchamber, where a small fire burned in the hearth. She flopped down on the edge of the bed like a sulky child and began to pull off her wet boots. He set the lantern down on the mantle and took a chair opposite her. Once the boots were off she calmed. She set them carefully to dry near the hearthstone, then perched on the bed again.

      ‘Truly, I did promise that you should know,’ Raena said. ‘I were but angry that you did snap at me.’

      ‘I be frightened, Rae. That’s the sad truth of it.’

      She stopped on the edge of speaking and considered him.

      ‘Not of you,’ Verrarc went on, ‘nor truly of what witchery you might work, but of the town and for the town. I’d not have any more of my fellow citizens murdered by your treacherous little spirits.’

      ‘Well, that be fair, and my heart does ache for poor Niffa.’ Raena sounded surprisingly genuine. ‘But there were a need on me, a desperate need, Verro, to learn a thing Havoc could tell me.’

      ‘It must have been desperate, all right, to risk so much for it.’

      ‘It is, truly it is.’ Raena looked at the fire and frowned, thinking. ‘It be such a hard tale to start, my love. Here – what would you say if I did tell you that there be a new goddess in the world?’

      For a long moment Verrarc could only stare at her.

      ‘A what?’ he said at last. ‘A goddess? This be the last thing I thought you’d –’

      ‘No doubt.’ All at once Raena smiled in gathered confidence. ‘It came as a strike of lightning to me as well, such a strange and marvellous thing it were. But she did reveal herself to me, and she did mark me out to be her priestess, to serve her all my born days and to live with her ever after in her glorious country beyond death.’ She paused, and never had he seen her smile this way, as if she looked through the dark snowy night around them to the warm light of a spring day. ‘Her name, it be Alshandra.’

      Verrarc felt like a sudden half-wit, stripped of words.

      ‘What?’ he managed to say. ‘What do you mean? A new goddess? How can there be such a thing? The gods did make the world, and they’ve been in it always.’

      ‘Mayhap I speak wrongly, then.’ Raena considered the fire and frowned again. ‘She were hidden before, you see. Always has she been in the world, off in her own true country, but she never did show herself to the world.’

      ‘Ah.’ He felt his mind turn to an ugly thought: had Raena gone utterly mad? ‘But she did show herself to you. Somehow.’

      ‘It be a simple tale. When I was still the wife of my pig of a husband I did spend long hours weeping. You do remember that, I’m sure. And I would leave Penli and go walk among the trees, and I would sit upon the ground and weep some more. One afternoon she did come to me and ask me why I wept.’ Raena’s voice dropped, heavy with awe. ‘She were huge and tall, floating down from the sky to stand before me, and she were so beautiful, too, and so kind, I did fall to my knees before her. That pleased her. She did tell me how to call to her, and when I would call, she would come to me.’

      ‘Wait! Why did you not tell me about her, back then?’

      ‘I did think you’d mock and say that she were but my fancy, and truly, I see naught but doubt upon your face now.’

      ‘How could I not doubt, since you did never so much as mention her before?’

      Raena shrugged his objection away.

      ‘She did call me her chosen one,’ Raena continued. ‘She did tell me that she had watched me always, long before I were born, even. Oh, she did tell me so many marvellous things, and she did take me to her beautiful country, where there were green meadows and a river like silver, and strange cities to walk within! Gone now, all of it but the meadows, because her enemies, and she does have many, all of them evil in their very hearts, but they did destroy it to spite her. But she has another country, she told me, where there be no Time and no Death, and those that worship her shall travel there with her, to live forever in joy.’

      Her eyes seemed to glow from within, all silver. She spoke so warmly, so sincerely, that Verrarc found himself wondering if she could possibly be speaking the truth.

      ‘It would be a grand thing,’ he said, ‘never to die.’

      ‘And with her there shall be no death, Verro. I have seen her country, and I have seen her miracles. I do more than know these things, I ken them, I tell you. They be the deepest truth that ever a woman could see.’

      ‘Here, think you that she’d show them to me?’

      ‘Ah, that’s the bitter thing. She has withdrawn to her own true country, and she shows herself not to men or –’ She hesitated, stumbling on some word, ‘or to women either.’

      The doubt rose up strong. Daft! he told himself. What if she’s gone daft?

      ‘My love, ponder this.’ Raena leaned forward, suddenly urgent. ‘In the past, when we did study witchlore together, could I call down the silver light and invoke mighty spirits?’

      ‘Truly, you couldn’t. And I do wonder, Rae, just where you might have learned it.’

      ‘No doubt! It was Alshandra. She did teach me, she did lay her hands upon me, and she did give me freely of her power, that I might work magicks in the world. And those that will see them, well, then, they will believe what I say, that Alshandra is a goddess who blesses her worshippers. Where else might I have learned these things, Verro? Do you know a teacher somewhere in the Rhiddaer where I might have studied?’

      ‘I don’t.’

      ‘And would I lie to you, the man I love second only to her?’

      Verrarc was tempted to say that after all, she’d lied to him often enough before. But this time she was looking him straight in the face, her eyes focused on his, as if she were wishing she could show him her goddess by forcing the image into his mind. What if, just what if this were true, that her goddess would give him magical power beyond any he’d hoped to have? And if there would be no death –

      ‘If only I could take you to her,’ Raena said, and her voice stumbled in sheer urgency, ‘if only you could see her!’

      ‘Truly, I do wish I could. Why has she –’

      ‘I know not.’ Raena’s voice shook, and she looked away.

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