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For a moment he covered her hand with his, the lines of concern smoothing out of his face. “Thank you, Alanna.”
Alois was five days’ ride to the north through hill country. Coram and Alanna donned leather and mail for the trip instead of burnooses; Alanna made sure her uncovered lioness shield was prominently displayed. Dressed as Bazhir, they might have encountered trouble. Dressed as Tortallan soldiers, they did not glimpse another soul.
During the ride Faithful stuck close to Alanna, never straying. The knight knew her pet was worried. “What’s going to happen that you aren’t telling me?” she finally demanded when they passed the marker indicating the village was near.
I don’t know, Faithful admitted. I just have a bad feeling. He settled down in his cup, the tip of his tail switching anxiously.
It was a beautiful day for January. The breezes were warm, and the snow had melted from the ground. Alanna expected children to be playing outside the huts that grew thicker as they approached the village, but no one was in sight. If people watched from inside their homes, there was no sign. A noise disturbed her, and she jerked around in her saddle. Coram was taking the canvas wrapping from his round leather shield, his dark face grim.
“I don’t like what I’m feelin’ here,” he admitted. “Do ye?”
Alanna grimaced and undid the fastenings that held her shield over Moonlight’s haunches. Settling the lioness rampant on her left arm, she drew the crystal sword with her right. It doesn’t even hum at me anymore. Then she heard people shouting in anger and fear. It was impossible to make out the words, but the voices came from the village’s center, behind the first wall of huts.
They trotted forward, scanning watchfully now as they made for the source of the cries. No one ran out to greet them; the huts of the village proper were as deserted as those outside.
There was a mob in the wide space that was the heart of the village: a tall, angular man in tattered gray robes stood on a platform that raised him head and shoulders above those around him. Alanna’s senses prickled with uncomfortable recognition before she and Coram stopped beneath the eaves of a large cottage. They examined the area for armed men (other than the villagers, who waved sticks and farming tools), waiting to see what the fuss was about.
“Yahzed will have your souls,” howled the man on the platform. His wide eyes gleamed with fanatic joy. Behind him a tall post thrust against the sky; the sight of it made Alanna sweat. Where had she seen this picture before? “Yahzed is angry; he is ferocious! Obey his command! Cleanse yourself of the ancient evil or Yahzed comes with plague and famine to cleanse you! Obey the servant of Yahzed! Only then will you escape the wrath of the God of Stones!”
A knot of men, struggling with something, encircled the tall post. Alanna remembered: twice she had seen this place, and the madman exhorting the people. Only in her second vision, the one given to her when Ishak had destroyed himself, she had seen a woman burning at the post.
A knot of villagers struggled with something as Coram whispered, “This Yahzed is one of the Scanra gods, I think. A nasty fellow. Dead set against witchcraft, or any magic—”
Alanna frowned. Why had the Goddess sent her this particular vision? What meaning could it have?
Her nostrils caught the scent of burning wood, and someone screamed in agony.
“Now you do Yahzed’s work!” the priest screamed. “Burn the sorceress! Cleanse this village of her taint!” The people roared their satisfaction; the woman they were burning screamed again.
Alanna reacted. A year ago she would have hesitated; a year ago she had not been a Bazhir shaman. Bolts of purple fire flamed from her open palm, knocking those they touched to the ground. “No!” she screamed. When they turned to charge, she pointed the crystal sword, opening a chasm at their feet.
“Fiend!” the priest cried, holding up a large black star-shaped pendant. A jewel at its middle twinkled in the sun and caught Alanna’s eye, but that trick had been played on her once before: Duke Roger had been far cleverer at it than this man. She reached out, putting her lioness shield between her and the priest as she whispered spellwords. The priest shrieked as first his jewel, then the pendant, shuddered and cracked into a thousand pieces in his grip.
Grim-faced, Alanna rode forward, Coram at her back. Faithful stood erect on the saddle before her, back arched, fur erect, hissing with fury. A villager ran yelling at Alanna, swinging a hoe. Coram swung between them on his bay, knocking the man aside with the flat of his broadsword. Several rocks flew by; one struck Alanna on the head. For a moment she reeled sickly. Sheer fury rose up in her, spilling from the crystal sword in a bolt of magic and hurling three of the rock throwers in the air. The villagers broke and ran.
Alanna freed both hands and reached for the clear azure sky. “Goddess!” she cried to her patron. “Give me rain!”
For a moment all of time froze. Then the ember-stone began to pulse in a slow, majestic rhythm as great thunderheads blotted out the sun. There was a deafening crack of thunder, and the rain flooded down, dousing the fire at the stake.
“Thank you, Great Lady,” Alanna whispered, feeling the first niggling touches of exhaustion from her use of magic.
The priest, armed with a dagger, launched himself at her: Faithful jumped to meet him and landed on the man’s face. The fanatic screamed, trying to dislodge the cat, until Coram ended his cries with a sword thrust.
“Don’t waste yerself on the likes of yon,” he advised Faithful as the cat disentangled himself from the body.
Reaching the stake, Alanna cut free the woman they had tried to burn. The victim slumped to her knees among the still-smoldering logs, oblivious to her hurts and to the rain.
Coram joined them, pulling the injured woman into his saddle, cushioning her gently. “We’ve got to move,” he yelled over the thunder. “They’ll be back, better armed, I don’t doubt.”
“You killed the priest!” A young man, armed with a long axe, was advancing on them. “His god will hold us to blame!”
Alanna dismounted and drew the crystal blade. “Get her out of here!” she ordered Coram, settling her shield on her arm once more. The ex-soldier hesitated, and she yelled, “Do what I say! Before the villagers come!”
Frowning, he obeyed. Alanna faced the armed villager. “Don’t be a fool,” she told him. “I’m a full knight; you won’t stand a chance.”
“You lie!” The man charged, holding his axe in a clearly practiced manner. Alanna caught the downswinging axe on her shield, knocking it aside. In the same motion she sliced up from under the shield with the crystal blade. The man jumped back, skidding in the mud, and Alanna hacked the axe blade from its handle. The crystal blade hummed, filling her with the sick killing joy she thought she had wiped from its makeup. Alanna staggered, her vision clouding.
The young man yelled with delight, swinging the axe haft in a blow that connected solidly with Alanna’s unprotected right side. She dropped to her knees, just getting the shield up in time as he swung on her head. The crystal sword screamed in her mind, demanding the life of the man who was attacking her. Alanna’s hand was sweating, making the hilt slippery in her grasp. Was this how Akhnan Ibn Nazzir felt when he used his life-force trying to kill me? she wondered. She threw the sword aside and hurled herself off the ground, ramming the shield at the villager.
He yelled and dropped back, letting the axe haft fall. Alanna swooped and grabbed it. She put herself between the crystal sword and the villager, watching him intently.
“The sword’s magic,” she panted as he stared at her. “If you take it, it’ll kill you. Why would I throw it away, otherwise?”
“I don’t believe you,” he gasped.
“Then try to get it.”
He darted to the side and forward, thinking she would not be fast enough. Alanna brought the axe haft down on his head, knocking him unconscious to the ground.
For a moment she swayed, gathering the strength to kneel and see if she had killed him. His pulse was stea
dy and strong; he had a lump on his head, but she judged he would survive.
“Maybe now you won’t go attacking strange knights,” she whispered, wiping the sweat from her face. She picked up the crystal sword and resheathed it, feeling no trace of its magic.
“Maybe that was its last try to turn me to breaking and killing,” she told Faithful, who had stayed well out of the battle.
Are you willing to bet on that? the cat wanted to know.
Alanna gathered Moonlight’s reins and mounted. “Not in the least.”
Faithful jumped onto the saddle, and Alanna turned the mare away from the village. She stopped once at the square’s edge to look back; the tall post still stood, lit by flickering lightning. Alanna pointed at it and spoke a single powerful word. The stake blasted from the ground as if shot from a bow, shattering into fragments no larger than toothpicks.
Alanna and Coram halted by the marker they had seen that morning. Hurriedly the knight spread a groundcover on the wet grass; Coram gently placed the sorceress on it. The woman they had saved was in her forties, dark-haired, her eyes a deep brown. Old and new bruises covered her; a trickle of fresh blood accented the corner of her mouth. She was badly burned.
Taking her hand, Alanna reached with her Gift, already knowing what she would find.
“Don’t spend your strength, child.” The woman’s voice was hoarse. “I know I am dying.”
Alanna withdrew, sick at heart. “How did you get such deep injuries?”
“They stoned me yesterday,” was the answer. “My poor children, who will look after them now?”
“Ye’re sorry for them?” Coram asked, astounded.
