Winter Warriors (12 page)

“You look foolish,” Axiana said sternly. “It does not become a priestess to play on a child’s swing.”

Ulmenetha had not heard the queen’s approach. She leaned forward, her feet thumping to the ground, halting the swing. “Why do you say that?” she asked. “Why is it that so many people believe that religion and joy have little in common?”

Ulmenetha eased her large frame upright and walked with the pregnant queen to a wide bench seat beneath the cherry trees. Already they were rich with blossoms of coral and white. “There is no dignity in such behavior,” the young woman told her. Ulmenetha said nothing for a moment. Axiana settled herself down, her slender hands over her swollen belly. You never laugh, child, thought Ulmenetha, and your eyes radiate sorrow.

“Dignity is much overrated,” she said at last. “It is a concept, I think, devised by men to add gravitas to their strutting.” A flicker of a smile touched Axiana’s beautiful face, but it passed as swiftly as a noonday shadow. “Men are ridiculous creatures,” continued the priestess, “arrogant and vain, insensitive and boorish.”

“Is this why you became a priestess? To avoid contact with them?”

Ulmenetha shook her head. “No, dear heart. I had a jewel among men. When I lost him, I knew there would never be another.” She took a deep breath and stared out over the southern mountains. She could just make out three riders heading into the high country.

“I am sorry, Ulmenetha,” said the queen. “My question brought you sadness.”

“Not at all,” the priestess assured her. “It brought me remembered joy. He was a fine man. He spent two years trying to woo me and became convinced that if he could beat me to the top of Five Rise Mountain, I would marry him.” The queen looked mystified. “I used to run through the mountains. I was slimmer then, and I could run forever. No man
could best me on the longer races. Vian tried for two years. He trained so hard. That’s when I grew to love him.”

“And did he beat you?”

“No, but he won me. Good days.” They lapsed into silence for several minutes, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun.

“What is it like to be in love?” asked Axiana.

Ulmenetha felt sadness swell in her, not for the love she had lost but for the lovely young woman at her side. How sad it was that a woman only weeks from giving birth should still wonder about love. “Sometimes it arrives like a flash flood, but at other times it grows slowly until it becomes a great tree. Perhaps it will be that way for you and the king.”

Axiana shook her head. “He thinks nothing of me. I am an ornament of no more worth than any of the other ornaments he owns.”

“He is a great man,” said Ulmenetha, aware of the shallowness of her response.

“No, he is not. He is a great killer and destroyer. Men worship him as if he were a god, but he is not. He is a plague, a cancer.” The words were spoken not with passion but with a quiet resignation that somehow added to their power.

“He has a good side,” said Ulmenetha. “His people love him, and he is often generous. And I have seen him weep. When he was younger and it was thought that Starfire was lame, he was inconsolable.”

“Inconsolable?” queried Axiana. “He did not appear inconsolable when Starfire went to the tannery. I understand they use the hides for furniture, the meat for food, and the hooves and bones for glue. Is that right?”

“You must be mistaken, my pet.”

“I am not mistaken. I heard him on his birthday. All the older horses—including Starfire—were sold. The money received went into the war chest. The man is without a soul.”

“Do not speak this way, dear heart,” whispered Ulmenetha, feeling a sudden chill.

“No one can hear us. There are no secret passages in the garden, no hollow walls for clerics to hide behind with their quill pens. Skanda cares only for war, and he will never be
satisfied. The world could fall to him and he would know only despair, for there would be no more battles to fight. So tell me, Ulmenetha, about love.”

The priestess forced a smile. “There is an old legend. I am rather partial to it. In the beginning the old gods created a herd of perfect animals. They had four legs, four arms, and two heads. And they were blissfully happy. The gods looked upon this perfection of happiness and grew jealous. So one day the chief of the gods cast a mighty spell. And in an instant all the animals were ripped in half and scattered across the world. Now each of the beasts only had one head, two arms, and two legs. And they were destined forever to search the earth for their other halves, seeking that perfect fit.”

“That is a vulgar story,” chided Axiana.

A young female servant approached them and curtsied deeply. “You have a visitor, my lady,” she said. “The lord Kalizkan.”

Axiana clapped her hands together in delight. “Send him out to us,” she said.

Moments later the tall wizard made his entrance. He was wearing robes of sky-blue satin and a matching wide-brimmed hat of stiffened silk. Sweeping off the hat, he made an elaborate bow. “And how is the queen today?” he asked with a wide, enchanting smile.

“I am well, sir. All the better for seeing you.” Ulmenetha rose and offered the wizard her seat. He gave her a dazzling smile and sat beside the queen. Ulmenetha moved back to allow them privacy and returned to her seat in the swinging chair. It was a pleasure to see Axiana in such high spirits. Kalizkan was good for her, and Ulmenetha liked him. The wizard leaned in close to the queen, and the two talked for some time. Then Axiana called out. “Come here, Ulmenetha. You must see this!”

The priestess obeyed and stood before the white-bearded wizard. “What is your favorite flower?” he asked her.

“The high mountain lily,” she told him.

“The white lily with blue stripes?”

“Yes.”

Kalizkan reached down and lifted a handful of dirt. Then his pale eyes narrowed in concentration. A tiny stem appeared in the dark earth, then grew, putting out slender leaves. A bud appeared and opened slowly, exposing long white petals striped with the blue of a summer sky. Reaching out, he offered her the flower. Ulmenetha’s fingers touched it, and it became smoke, dispersing on the breeze.

“Is that not wonderful?” said Axiana.

Ulmenetha nodded. “You have a great talent, sir,” she said.

“I have studied long and hard,” he told them. “But it pleases me to bring pleasure to my friends.”

“Is your orphanage prospering, Kalizkan?” asked the queen.

“It is, dear lady, thanks to the kindness of the king and your good wishes. But there are so many more children living on the streets, close to starvation. One wishes one could help them all.”

As the two talked on, oblivious to Ulmenetha, the priestess found herself once more thinking of the demons in the air. Quietly she made her way back to the swinging chair and settled her back against the cushions. The sun had reached noon and was shining down with painful brightness. She closed her eyes—and a thought came to her.

Demons had no love of bright light. Perhaps now she could soar unobserved.

With a last look at the chatting couple she took a deep breath, reaching for the inner calm that precipitated flight. Then she released her spirit and fled toward the sun like an arrow. High above the city she floated and gazed down. The roof garden was tiny now, the size of her thumbnail, the river flowing through the city no more than a thin web thread of glistening blue and white. No demons were flying now, but she could see them in the shadows, under the eaves of buildings. There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. They were writhing over the city like white maggots on rotting pork.

Three detached themselves from the shadows of the palace and swept up toward her, their talons reaching out. Ulmenetha waited, frozen in terror. They closed on her, and she could
see their opal eyes and their sharp teeth. There was nowhere to run. They were between her and the safety of her flesh.

A shining figure of bright light appeared alongside her, a sword of flame in his hands. Ulmenetha tried to look into his face, but the brilliance of the light forced her to turn away. The demons veered away from him. A voice whispered into her mind. It was strangely familiar. “Go now, swiftly!” he urged her.

Ulmenetha needed no urging. With the demons fallen back, she fled for the sanctuary of her flesh.

She swept over the roof garden and saw the queen sitting beside … sitting beside …

The eyes of her body flared open, and a strangled cry burst from her lips. Axiana and Kalizkan moved swiftly to her side.

“Are you well, Ulmenetha?” asked Axiana, reaching out to stroke her friend’s cheek.

“Yes, yes. I had a bad dream. So stupid. I am sorry.”

“You are trembling,” said Kalizkan. “Perhaps you have a fever.”

“I think I will go inside,” she said, “and lie down.”

She left them there and returned to her own room alongside the queen’s apartments. Her mouth was dry, and she poured a cup of water and drank deeply. Then she sat down and tried to picture what she had seen in the roof garden.

The image had been fleeting, and she found that the more she concentrated on it, the less clear it became.

Silently she returned to the roof garden, pausing in the doorway, unseen. From there she could see the kindly wizard and the queen sitting together. Closing the eyes of her body, she gazed upon them both with the eyes of spirit.

Her heart hammered, and she began to tremble once more.

Kalizkan’s face was gray and dead, his hands only partly covered in flesh. Bare bone protruded from the ends of his fingers. And as Ulmenetha looked more closely, she saw a small maggot slither out from a hole in the wizard’s cheek and drop to the shoulder of his blue satin robes.

Backing away, she returned to her room and prayed.

*   *   *

Dagorian stood in the center of the small room. Blood had splashed to the white walls, and the curved dagger that had caused the terrible wounds had been tossed to the floor, where it had smeared a white goatskin rug. The body of the old woman had been removed before Dagorian had arrived, but the murderer was still sitting by the hearth, his head in his hands. Two Drenai soldiers stood guard over him.

“It seems fairly straightforward,” Dagorian told Zani, the slender Ventrian official. “In a rage this man killed his mother. There are no soldiers involved, no threat to the king. I do not see why you called me to the scene.”

“You were the officer of the watch last night,” said Zani, a small man with close-cropped dark hair and a pronounced widow’s peak. “We are to report all cases of multiple killings.”

“There was more than one body?”

“Yes, sir. Not here but elsewhere. Look around you. What do you see?”

Dagorian scanned the room. Shelves lined the walls, some bearing jars of pottery, others bottles of colored glass. On the low table beside the hearth he saw a set of rune stones and several papyrus charts of the heavens. “The woman was a fortune-teller,” he said.

“Indeed she was—and a good one, by all accounts.”

“This is relevant?” asked Dagorian.

“Four such people were killed last night in this quarter of the city alone. Three men and a woman. Two were murdered by customers, a third by his wife, and this woman by her son.”

Dagorian crossed the room and opened the back door, stepping out into the narrow garden beyond. The Ventrian followed him. The sun was bright in the sky, the warmth welcome. “Did the victims know one another?” asked Dagorian.

“The son told me he knew one of the dead.”

“Then it remains coincidence,” concluded Dagorian.

The Ventrian sighed and shook his head. “Twenty-seven in the last month. I do not think coincidence will stretch that far.”

“Twenty-seven fortune-tellers?” Dagorian was astonished.

“Not all were fortune-tellers. Some were mystics, others priests. But their talent was the common factor. They could all walk the path of spirit. Most could read fragments of the future.”

“Not very well, apparently,” Dagorian pointed out.

“I disagree. Come, let me show you.” Dagorian followed the small Ventrian back to the door. Zani pointed to recent scratches upon the wood in the shape of an inverted triangle with a snake at the center. “All the entries to the room bear this sign. It is part of a ward spell, protective sorcery. The old woman knew she was in danger. When we found her, she was clutching an amulet. This, too, was a protective piece.”

“Protection against
sorcery,”
Dagorian said patiently. “But she wasn’t killed by sorcery, was she? She was murdered by her son. He admits to the crime. Does he claim he was demon-possessed? Is that his defense?”

“No,” admitted Zani. “But perhaps it ought to be. I have spoken to the neighbors. He was devoted to his mother. And even he no longer knows why his rage exploded.”

Dagorian approached the distraught young man sitting by the hearth. “What do you recall of the crime?” he asked him.

The man looked up. “I was sitting in my room, and I just got angrier and angrier. The next thing I knew I was here … in this room. And I was stabbing, and stabbing …” He broke down and hid his face in his hands.

“What made you angry?”

It seemed at first that the young man had not heard the question, but the sobbing subsided and he wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “I can’t remember now. I really can’t.”

“Why did your mother make the ward signs on the doors?”

“She was frightened. She wouldn’t see any customers, and she wouldn’t come out of the room. We were running out of money. I think, maybe, that’s why I got angry. We couldn’t afford fuel, and my room was so cold. So terribly cold.” He began to sob once more.

“Take him away,” Dagorian told the soldiers. They lifted the man to his feet and marched him from the house. A small
crowd had gathered outside. Some of them shouted abuse at the prisoner.

“There is something very wrong here,” said Zani.

“Send me the details of the other crimes,” Dagorian told him. “I will look into them.”

“You think you will solve the mystery in a day?” asked Zani. “Or will you not be marching with the army tomorrow?”

“I leave tomorrow,” said Dagorian. “But still I wish to see the reports.”