A Time of War. Katharine Kerr

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СКАЧАТЬ mats and reasonably comfortable. The room itself seemed ordinary, except for the presence of books, containing only a small table, a chair, a charcoal brazier, an alcove with a narrow bed, a pair of carved storage chests. Jahdo realized that he’d been expecting sorcerers to live somewhere grand and cluttered, with demons standing round in attendance, not in an everyday sort of room like this. There was, however, no explaining away the silver light. When Jill leaned against the wall facing him and Meer, the drape of light parted, as if dodging her.

      ‘Well, good bard,’ she said. ‘My apologies for the rough treatment you’ve received, but your people are not so well-liked round here, thanks to the raiders.’

      ‘So I’ve noticed.’ Meer’s voice was stiff and cold. ‘Wait. What do you mean, raiders?’

      ‘A band of men, led by one of the Horsekin, have been raiding hereabouts, burning farms, killing the men and any pregnant women, enslaving the rest.’

      ‘What?’ Meer tried to speak, sputtered, caught his breath at last. ‘Lies! Disgusting, demon-spawned lies! No man of the Horsekin would ever harm a pregnant female, no matter whether she were kin or utter stranger, horse or Horsekin, human or hound, and he’d kill any man under his command in an instant for doing the same. Never! The gods would send down vengeance on him and strike him dead.’

      ‘Well, in a way they did,’ Rhodry said, rubbing his chin with one hand. ‘But Meer, I’ll swear to you it’s true. I saw one victim myself, a woman not far from giving birth, lying dead in the road from a sword-slash, and her babe butchered inside her.’

      Meer turned toward the sound of the silver dagger’s voice, then hesitated, his mouth working. Jill stood utterly still, watching all of this with her blue eyes as cold and sharp as thorns, as if she could bore through the faces of the men into their very souls.

      ‘Do you believe me?’ Rhodry said. ‘I can bring you other witnesses, Yraen for one.’

      Meer shook his head in a baffled gesture that might have meant either yes or no.

      ‘One thing,’ the Gel da’Thae said at last. ‘Are you sure that the raiders you fought were indeed the same band that committed these heinous sins?’

      ‘We are. The men they’d taken for slaves? After we rescued them, they gave evidence against the raiders, and they all swore that the man of the Gel da’Thae was the leader, ordering the murders.’

      Meer grunted, his hands clasping and twining round his staff, then loosening again, over and over.

      ‘I’ll bring you witnesses,’ Jill said.

      ‘No need.’ Meer’s voice rasped in a whisper. ‘Are we prisoners of war, then, or slaves?’

      ‘Never slaves,’ Rhodry broke in. ‘Never would I lend my hand and sword to the enslaving of anyone, good sir, and I’ll swear that on anything you like.’

      Jahdo goggled, desperate and afraid both to believe him.

      ‘Did Rhodry and the men treat you decently?’ Jill asked.

      ‘Better than prisoners of war can usually expect,’ Meer said. ‘I have no complaint to lay before you.’

      ‘Good.’

      Jill leaned back against the wall, waiting, letting the silence grow.

      ‘Answer me one thing, Meer,’ Rhodry said at length, ‘if you can without dishonouring yourself, anyway. Are there going to be more of these raiding swine coming our way?’

      ‘How would I know?’ Meer snarled. ‘This first lot should never have been here in the first place. To send more would be infamy compounded, outrage and abomination writ large, if they’ve come to break every law of god and Gel da’Thae by killing females in foal! Who am I to say what men like that will do or not do next?’

      Jill nodded, considering his outburst carefully.

      ‘It sounds to me, then,’ Rhodry said, ‘like this was no ordinary raid.’

      Meer glowered with his lips tight-clenched.

      ‘It were the false gods,’ Jahdo burst out. ‘The false goddess must be making them do that.’

      ‘False goddess?’ Jill swung her head round fast. ‘What false goddess?’

      ‘Her name be Alshandra, and she’s only a demon or suchlike, but some people do worship her, just as if she were a true god from the Deathworld.’

      Never before had a mere bard’s servant got such a profound reaction with a tale as Jahdo did with that blurt. Rhodry went dead-white, then swore a long string of foul curses while Jill laughed, a nervous giggle and much too high.

      ‘Alshandra a goddess!’ she said at last. ‘Oh by all the ice in all the hells!’

      Rhodry made a sputtering sort of noise under his breath.

      ‘I agree,’ Jill said, grinning. ‘Well now, this may bode ill, or it may bode worse, but I’ll wager it proves interesting. My thanks, lad. That makes a great deal clear.’

      ‘Answer me somewhat in return,’ Meer said. ‘I take it that you know about this Alshandra creature?’

      ‘I do, and a goddess she’s not and never will be. You’re right a thousand times about that.’

      ‘What is she then? A demon?’

      ‘A meddling bitch,’ Rhodry snarled. ‘That’s what she is.’

      ‘Whist! Let me finish.’ Jill waved a hand in his direction. ‘She’s not a demon, and neither human nor Horsekin, but a very strange sort of being indeed. Let’s see, how can I explain this clearly?’ She thought for a long moment. ‘I’m not sure I can. She doesn’t live in this world, so in that respect she’s like a spirit of the sort people call demons, but she’s vastly more intelligent. She can move about much more freely than a demon, as well, and when she’s here in our world she can make herself a body of sorts. She can work magic, some truly spectacular magic, in fact, from what I’ve heard, enough so I can see how some people think her a god.’

      ‘She sounds even more dangerous than I thought her, then.’

      ‘Unfortunately, that’s very true. What’s even worse is she’s quite mad.’

      ‘Mad? May the gods preserve us!’

      ‘I wouldn’t mind their help, truly.’ Jill smiled in a wry sort of way. ‘Now here, did your brother worship this creature?’

      Meer nodded, his mouth slack, then bent his head as if he were staring at the floor. His hands rubbed up and down his staff for the comfort of it.

      ‘The infamy!’ he snarled. ‘That my own brother’s dishonour and sin would lead me to trust strangers who are no doubt no better than he and perhaps a good bit worse! Are you truly a mazrak?’

      ‘I have no idea.’ Jill turned irritable. ‘If you’d deign to tell me what one is, I might be able to answer.’

      ‘A shapechanger, one who takes animal form.’

      ‘Oh. СКАЧАТЬ