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Lada lay flat on her belly. She waved.
“I hate heights, you know,” Lada said.
“You don’t look well,” Wistala said. “But I’m glad for a chance to say good-bye.”
“I need to speak to you. Please!”
“I’d prefer if you’d come after dark. I don’t want anyone to know where I am. Speaking of which, how did you find out?”
“Jessup told me. His oldest pointed out the cave from chalk hill. And tonight I must stay with a sick family.”
Wistala sighed. It would be easy to fly up there, but any fishermen along the river and every shepherd on the hills would see her.
She climbed. Amazing how much stronger her forelimbs felt with her wings out. In a moment she stood on the thick pasture grass.
“Let’s try that little hollow over there, out of the wind,” Wistala suggested. Also out of view.
Even without the hat Lada’s priest’s robes made her look older than she was. A summer ribbon bound her hair with the aid of a bean-stake. Her eyes were dark and worried.
“So this is more than just a good-bye, or a last moment of consolation over our father’s death,” Wistala said, once in the hollow.
Lada brushed some snails from a rock and sat down. “It’s Rayg. His body was never found, you know.”
“I saw several carried off,” Wistala said. “He was taken at Quarryness?”
“Yes. Another low priest with experience in these matters says he’s most likely been made a slave. He’s at the perfect age: old enough to work intelligently but still small enough to be overpowered by the least housewoman. Mod Daland believes him to be alive.”
“But in barbarian hands.”
“I went to see Hammar, you know,” she said, her thin lips almost disappearing. “Just yesterday. Just—it took all my nerve.”
“He claims to have influence with them.”
“His hall is full of their banners, drums with claws and feathers on the heads, and that horrible reeking charcoal they use to toast their flesh. You can scarce see through the glass in the windows. But I threw myself down before him, on those stones full of dog hair and spit, and begged him. I told him that he could have anything—anything—if he’d help find my son. His son.”
She hid her eyes under her hand. “He took my offer, took me. Took me and made a sport of my body . . . I can’t describe more. But afterwards when I asked him to get Rayg back, he laughed and said he didn’t need another bas—boy hanging about the place, counting on a position or thinking of the throne. He calls it a throne now. He said he’d make inquires so I could go north and seek him.”
Wistala watched one of the brushed-aside snails go back up the rock. “I’m sorry to hear your troubles. But if you think I need more reason to hate Hammar—” She began to describe the scene before the fountain, but it so upset Lada that she stopped. “How can I help?” Wistala asked.
Lada wiped her eyes. “I’m supposed to be the priestess—oh, well, an inworld acolyte, I should say. This is so selfish, I’ve left the world behind but—he’s my son! I’m supposed to be the one who helps people with their troubles. The world is wheels within wheels, and each turn grinds . . . but the words aren’t helping me.”
Wistala waited.
“I heard you were going north. I ask you to look for Rayg while you’re there. If I learn anything about his location I’ll try to get word—Copex knows how—but I’ll try, and leave word with the circus. Then you can go in and get him and . . . and—”
“Burn anyone who gets in my way?” Wistala supplied.
“Yes,” she said, hard and low and with eyes alight as though she relished the thought. Perhaps Lada had her heart no more in her role as priestess than as a circus performer.
“And if I retrieve him?”
“A temple built in your honor enclosing a statue of bronze and silver, if I have to work the rest of my life toward it.”
Hominids and their strange vanities. How many times can you fill your gorge at a temple? “I’m not going to live in barbarian lands. I’m going beyond men, looking for my kind.”
“I heard some sailors saw one of your kind. But it is a secondhand story, perhaps they got it wrong?”
“Where?”
