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Chapter One

Chapter One

Darna reached for her tunic. Tevan tried halfheartedly to pull her back into the bed, but she shook him off and crossed to the far side of her room.

“You’re brilliant,” he said. It was one of his usual empty lines of praise, something he said so often that it had lost all its meaning.

For at least a year or two, she’d intended to ask him to stop visiting her, but she had no other prospects, nor any real reason for her discontent, so she’d never gotten around to it. Now he was about to leave for the bleak western province of Slaradun. There was no need to ask him to go anymore. She would have her bed back to herself in a few days’ time. When he came back, well, that was something she could manage next Midsummer.

“If you hadn’t trained for a priestess all those years, I think you’d have surpassed me by now at the guild,” Tevan said. He didn’t really mean it; she knew that he thought more of himself than he did of her.

The guild master did praise her work, which was all well and good, but Tevan was Anamat-born and related to half the members of the higher guilds. If he’d been younger than she was, which he wasn’t, and dull-witted, which he also wasn’t, the guild master still would have favored him.

“Of course, I’m glad you did have your time in the temple,” Tevan said, finally sitting up and facing her. “Now you’re my own personal priestess.”

It was things like that which irritated her, that possessiveness undermining every bit of flattery, as if the only reason any of her qualities mattered was the questionable fact that he had them in his hands. She counted the days until he would leave, three more nights. Now he was looking out the window again, ignoring her.

“Looks like you have a visitor. Another lover?” he asked.

“I don’t have another lover and you know it,” Darna said. How did he still manage to be so jealous? She had a crooked gait and red hair, and she scowled half the time. Not the kind of woman to attract many lovers, especially when the most beautiful priestesses in the known world were at the temple just downhill. Although she’d been inside those walls herself, she’d never been a beauty.

“Whoever it is, she’s probably just looking for the healer.” One of Darna’s neighbors was the second-best herbalist in the city outside of the temples.

“He,” Tevan corrected. “Handsome fellow. Guardsman. I think I’ve seen him around the palace.”

Darna tensed. Thorat knew where she lived, but he’d never come to visit her. They usually met at Myril’s rooms whenever he was in the city, or over jars of ale at Ink Pounders. Yes, that was his step on the stair, confident yet light.

“I’ll just tell him where to find the herbalist,” Darna said as casually as she could manage.

She went out onto the landing. There he was, climbing her own stairs. Sometimes, she had dreamed that he would come, had fantasized that he would take her in his arms and forget Iola for a little while. She knew that would never happen. Even if Thorat lost his ardor for Iola, which would probably never happen, he was far too handsome for her, as Tevan would no doubt point out.

She did count Thorat as a friend, and he looked worried.

“Did you hear me coming?” Thorat asked.

“My friend saw you on the street.” She pulled the curtain aside to let him in.

Thorat hung back. “I need to talk to you alone.”

“I’ll just tell him to go,” Darna said.

“I’ll keep watch,” Thorat said.

It was an odd thing to say, but before she asked him what was wrong, she had to shoo her indifferent lover away. Tevan had already pulled his tunic on over his head and was picking up his sandals.

“It’s an old friend from my scrappling days,” Darna said. “He seems to have some news he wants to tell me alone.”

“Surely, it’s not so personal as that,” Tevan said. “We can all share a cup of tea, maybe invite in some foreign sailors, too.”

“It’s not like that.” Darna ushered Tevan to the door and brushed his tunic down flat. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tevan shook his head. “Not tomorrow. I have meetings with the prince of Slaradun and his suppliers all day, and they’ll probably go into the night. But the next day?” He smirked and reached out to pull her in close. His warm breath wafted across her face. He did like her, gracious about it or not.

“The next day is Midsummer Eve,” Darna said softly.

“And I’ll be here. All day and night if I can.” He hugged her closer, wedging his thigh between hers, and kissed her. “Remember that,” he said.

“I’ll have to go to the temple for the vigil.”

“All afternoon, in that case.” Finally, Tevan let her go. On his way out, he gave Thorat a smug look, as if to remind Thorat that he’d claimed Darna first.

Thorat ignored him. Once inside, he went directly to the window, looking up and down the street before he said anything. Darna went to his side and watched Tevan emerge below, then walk down the street and around the corner. Some revelers were piling up wood for a bonfire at the square. One of them had a drum that he tapped tentatively, as if trying to remember the chants. Thorat looked sharply around the room, then drew the curtains shut.

“Was that your lover?” Thorat asked.

“For now,” Darna said, as if Tevan hadn’t been pursuing her since before she left the temple, for entirely too long. For all that, he’d never met her oldest friends in the city. He’d never wanted to. “Do you want a cup of tea? I have some warm already,” Darna offered. It was the dregs of the pot, but it

was

still warm.

“I think you’d better sit,” Thorat said.

Darna hesitated. She had two stools beside her writing table, but she sat down on the bed instead. Thorat took the closer stool and sat down facing her. He took a deep, shaky breath. He seemed nervous, but Thorat was never nervous. He always seemed unerringly sure of himself, but now he glanced worriedly at the gap between the drawn curtains.

“This place isn’t safe for you,” he said. “I think you should go stay in the temple.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I’ve lived here for years.” Darna looked over her shoulder and drew the curtains across that last gap. “Is it something to do with Tiadun?”

Thorat nodded. “Was the prince of Tiadun your father?”

“I don’t know.” He might have been. After all, her mother had been a priestess and might have lain with any number of men, including the prince of their province, but no man was supposed to claim a priestess’s child as his own, though they did when it suited them. The prince

had

tried to claim her. He’d sponsored her priestess training, possibly because she’d stood as proof that he could sire a child, although a girl child wouldn’t normally inherit the throne. He’d needed that, not that it had done him any good in the end.

“He’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter.”

Thorat shook his head. “That’s the trouble. It does matter. Calar, his brother, your uncle, he found out about you. He wants you dead. He’s offered a land grant, a rather large land grant, and a share of the Cerean trade in dragon stones to the man who kills you.”

“Kills me? Me?” Darna’s voice squeaked. “Why?”

“I don’t know all of it,” Thorat said, running his hand through his hair. His hand looked strong, competent. He had a good longsword which he knew how to use. Maybe he would protect her, not that she’d ever needed protection before.

“You don’t know all of what?” Darna asked. If she was going to be murdered, she’d like to know why.

“He had your father murdered.”

“I don’t

know

that he was my father.” The idea that Calar had killed his brother, the prince, was not at all surprising.

“The prince looks like you. Looked like you. He had the same expressions. I believe he was your father, even though you’re not like any other princess I’ve seen.”

“I wasn’t raised to be a princess.”

“You weren’t raised at all. You’re half-wild.”

“Exactly,” Darna said, “but now I’m also a full initiate of the Guild of Planners.”

“Congratulations. I didn’t know that.”

“They blessed my masterwork this past winter, just before Tiada was killed.” Tiada was the dragon and guardian deity of her home province. Dragons were supposed to live forever, as long as the land, so now her homeland was dead. The death of the dragon meant far more to her than the death of a man ever could, even if that man had sired her, and that was far from certain. Thorat had been there at Tiada’s death. That much she knew, though the details of why he’d been there were not entirely clear.

“You know about that?” Thorat asked.

“Iola thought I should know. She said that Tiada had joined the deepest stream, and that that was different from death, though it looks the same to us on the surface. She knew that I was Tiada’s child.” Darna had sensed the absence of the dragon before Iola had told her about it.

“And not the prince’s,” Thorat mused.

“I have no interest in being connected to the prince of Tiadun,” Darna said. “He had nothing that I wanted. Everyone knows that. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference. Why would Calar want me dead?” She did know her alleged uncle’s name. She kept track of what was happening in Tiadun, just in case. “I’m no threat to him.”

“But he thinks you are, and he’s right,” Thorat said. “You could walk into the province, marry any chieftain or prince’s kin, and challenge him for the throne, even if he hadn’t killed his brother, or had him killed. The priestesses and the villagers could put you on the throne as mistress of your own keep. You could cause trouble for Calar whether or not you try to take the throne yourself. Half his claim rests on the idea that his brother was barren, which he wasn’t, not if you’re the old prince’s daughter. The armsmen at the keep are resigned to Calar’s command, but people don’t like him, not in the keep town and not in the villages, either. He brought the Cereans in and had them led to the gate.”

If she were to avenge Tiada’s death, then she would have to challenge Calar, not to mention the Cereans. The thought had some appeal, but she had no way to do it. Calar had a small army of guardsmen and a battalion of Cereans at his back. She had only herself, her limping self with her measuring tools and scrolls. It wasn’t a fight she could win as a simple guildswoman, or as a presumptive princess, not alone.

Thorat frowned at the floor. “The old prince, for all his vole-slaughtering worship of Farseer…”

“What about him?” Darna prompted.

“He wasn’t dragon-blind.”

“He must have been,” Darna said. No one who’d seen Tiada could turn to foreign gods, could they?

“He wasn’t at the end. My apprentice was in the camp and overheard him say that he was seeing dragonlets.”

“Your apprentice?” Darna asked. “And what

were

you doing there? Working for my uncle who wants to kill me now?” It was all just absurd.

“I left before that,” Thorat said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Darna frowned. Thorat was as secretive as a priestess, maybe more so. She felt that he wasn’t just a simple guardsman. Myril and Iola knew more, more that they’d never shared with her. She only knew that there was something else to him, that it had something to do with why he’d been in Tiadun at the death of Tiada, not that he’d been able to save her. He was, after all, only a man.

“Stay with me,” Darna said. “I’ll be safe here if you stay with me.”

“I can’t,” Thorat said. He gave her a pained look. “I would if I could, honestly I would, but I think maybe you could be safe in the temple. Calar has half his guardsmen here in Anamat, and that price he’s put on your head is enough to tempt almost anyone.”

“Does it tempt you?”

“Of course not.”

Darna felt petty for asking. She knew better than to doubt Thorat, even if he was too good for her.

“We have to figure out how to keep you safe,” he said.

Darna nodded. Since she’d left the temple and the dancing teachers had stopped badgering her with exercises, her old limp had reasserted itself. She could walk fast enough with a cane, but she wouldn’t be able to outrun a skin-and-bones scrappling, let alone a fit guardsman with a sword or an archer’s arrow. She wasn’t ready to die, and it wasn’t worth the risk to try to talk her so-called uncle out of his ill-conceived assassination attempt. If he’d had any sense, he wouldn’t have considered her a threat to begin with, but clearly, he didn’t, and if there was one thing she’d learned in her years as a guildswoman, it was that you couldn’t talk sense into someone who’d started off with none. Calar was almost certainly dragon-blind. He couldn’t see what his so-called foreign allies were doing, elbowing him out of place, as their tradesmen were displacing the guilds of Anamat.

In any case, Calar had betrayed the dragon who had saved her from death after that boar had gored her as a child. The dragon had always meant more to her than her human parents had, and now her father was dead and her priestess mother was long gone into the hills. Darna couldn’t remember her mother’s face, and chances were she was dead too.

Calar had had Tiada killed, and now it seemed that he wanted to end Darna’s much-less-significant life, too, all so that he could rule a barren land, a land with no dragon, with that bloodthirsty pack of Cereans behind him, daggers poised to stab him in the back, which was no less than he deserved. She would leave them to it. Tiada would be avenged, after a fashion.

“I could take you to Myril’s instead,” Thorat suggested, dragging her back from her musings. “It’s almost dark. If you pull up your cloak, no one will see your hair.”

“It’s too hot,” Darna said. “No one wears a cloak this time of year. I’d be less conspicuous in an Enomaean head wrap.”

Thorat snorted at that thought.

“Just put on a cloak,” he said. “You can carry whatever you need for the next few days underneath it, and I’ll come fetch whatever else you need later. Everyone’s probably too drunk to take much notice, anyway.”

Darna looked out the window. She heard a crash and someone shouted, then the familiar festival smell of spilled ale wafted up from the cobblestones. “You’re probably right. I suppose I could go to Myril’s, then.” Myril would hear any threat coming from far away – she would know when she had to hide. It would be safer than being alone.

She wrapped up her best drawing and measuring tools in a leather satchel, along with two clean tunics and a little parchment for notes. Thorat paced while she packed, looking out the window every three strides and sometimes checking the landing.

“What do Calar’s henchmen know about me?” Darna asked him.

“They know that you’re in the city, and I don’t think it will take much for them to find you here. They know that you have red hair, that you look like kin to the prince, and that you have a limp. Some of the older men might remember you from when you were a servant at Tiadun Keep, before you left for Anamat.”

“I doubt it,” Darna said. “No one noticed me then, or if they did, it was only to tell me to get back to work, or to get out of their way.”

“It can’t have been that bad,” Thorat said, in the manner of someone who has always been liked by everyone he met. “Tiadun Keep wasn’t my favorite place, but while they’re not the best of men, some of them are all right. They must have felt some sympathy for a child made to work too much.”

“I was good at escaping work when I wanted to,” Darna said. “Even if they had seen me then, which they didn’t, they’d hardly recognize me without my old mud and ashes.”

Thorat frowned. “Surely, some of them remember,” he said, sounding a little less sure of himself. People had always noticed him, with his bright smile and shining eyes. “But you’re right; people at that keep are dirtier than most, what with not having a public bath. The guardsmen have to make do with a bucket in the stableyard there most of the time.”

“I doubt that any of them would know me,” Darna said.

“It would only take one man who wants that land,” Thorat said. “In any case, they know you were at Ara’s Landing, at the temple, and that you left.”

“But they don’t know I’m with the planners’ guild?”

“I don’t know, but it would be easy enough for them to find out if they ask the right questions.”

He was right. Most of her fellow priestesses – former fellow priestesses – understood that she didn’t like to be bothered, and wouldn’t be likely to tell a stranger where she’d gone. Then again, there was Tiagasa, the governor’s mistress. That one would play whatever advantage she could find, and she wasn’t alone in that. If Calar asked Tiagasa, the temple wouldn’t be a safe haven for long. Men weren’t allowed to bring in swords or knives, but there was always choking or poison. Any priestess with a rudimentary knowledge of simples could poison her. Darna had no particular enemies in the temple, but Tiagasa had ways of making other people fall in with her schemes.

Darna pulled her cloak up and set out for Myril’s place with Thorat and his good sword guarding her back and her stick to clear the way, if she needed it. She tried not to use it: they would be looking for a woman with a limp, and her cloak alone was suspicious enough. No one was paying attention to her, though. Everyone on the streets had a jar of ale or stronger drink in their hands. They were too busy shouting out Midsummer greetings or dancing to badly played music to sink a hidden dagger in her back as she scurried across from one hidden alley to the next.

Myril’s place was on the soothsayers’ street, halfway up the hill from the old bridge in the middle of the city. Darna hoped that Myril would dye her hair again, not that dye would disguise her for long at the temple, where everyone knew her. She would be stuck like a bug on a pin, just waiting for them to find her, and in the meantime, she’d go mad with waiting to be killed. She cursed Calar as a fool, but then, her father had been a fool too. He’d been too charitable to his blood relations. Maybe Calar was simply trying to avoid making that mistake.

Soon, they climbed the narrow stair to Myril’s always-welcoming room, with its bundles of herbs drying on the rafters and its jars of potions on clean and carefully tended shelves. An old farmer passed them on the stair, clutching his bag of remedies. Darna’s neighbor was only the second-best herbalist outside of the city’s temples – Myril was the best, outside the temples or in, and among the best cooks, too, when she had space on her stove for a purely culinary broth.

“I heard you coming,” Myril said as they entered. “I sent one of the boys from the bridge to bring supper from the tavern down the canal.”

Darna dropped her satchel of finely made tools on the floor and leaned her back against the door, slamming it firmly shut. Her heart galloped. She took a couple of shallow breaths. Her hands were shaking.

Myril peered at her. “What is it?”

Darna gulped. She couldn’t find her voice, so Thorat explained.

“Darna’s uncle, the one who killed her father, the prince of Tiadun, has put a price out on her head,” he said.

Myril nodded, rather too calmly, Darna thought. “I should have expected that. I was delivering a few scrolls to the palace this afternoon when I heard a rumor that Gallia plans to challenge Calar’s succession. To do that, she’ll need you.” She took Darna gently by the elbow and led her to the window seat.

“She wants to find me too?”

Myril nodded. Darna didn’t have the energy to pretend ignorance of who Gallia was. Gallia had been her father’s mistress since probably before she was born. He’d loved her, so much so that he hadn’t taken another mistress when he knew that she was barren, even though it had led to all of this; the allegations of his impotence, his untimely murder. If he’d had a known son, it all would have been different, but it was too late for that now.

“What if Gallia finds me?” Darna asked. “Can she stop these assassins?”

“I don’t think so,” Myril said. “She came to the palace alone, without a single servant. She wasn’t in the habit of coming to Midsummer Council, not since Parnet became governor, so she has no particular friends in the city, unless they’re from long ago. She may have gone on to the temple.”

“The temple is safer than the palace,” Thorat said.

“Not safe enough,” Darna said. Her heartbeat had slowed but her hands were still shaking. Three guardsmen were walking down the street below Myril’s window, idly chatting as they went but looking around as if searching for someone or something. This street was the first place anyone would go looking for a former priestess. “Maybe I’d better sit further out of sight.”

She started crying. She never cried, curse it all. Thorat and Myril helped her to the dark corner bed where Myril’s patients sometimes slept. Darna shook her head at herself and tried to say something, but it didn’t work; she just burst into tears again and buried her face in Myril’s soft, strong shoulder. Myril smoothed Darna’s hair and stroked her back. Eventually, her sobs subsided.

“You can dye my hair,” Darna said at last.

Myril shook her head.

“Anything to disguise her, anything at all, will help,” Thorat said.

Myril got that faraway look in her eyes.

“Don’t prophesy,” Darna begged. She hated it when Myril looked into the future. It left Myril shaken even when it wasn’t a crossing time, even when she wasn’t haggard from too much work as she was now.

“Dyeing won’t do,” Myril said in her half-tranced voice. “You have to leave Anamat. This is where they’re looking for you, isn’t it? They won’t think to look in the provinces.” By the time she finished speaking, she sounded ordinary again. The fact that she hadn’t gone into full trance was a small reprieve.

“I can’t go to the provinces,” Darna objected. “I can’t walk that far.”

“You’ll have to,” Myril said.

“You could go into the hills,” Thorat suggested. “The bandits aren’t… They aren’t as bad as I always thought they were. You could be a hermit priestess.”

“I’ll be no kind of priestess at all,” Darna said. “I can’t go to the provinces, and I certainly can’t go to the hills. I’m staying in Anamat!”

“They’ll find you here,” Myril said patiently. “It’s where they’re looking. I could dye your hair, but too many people here would know you anyway. Almost everyone knows you, and you can’t trust all of them.”

Darna looked down the hill to the golden spires of the temple, still glowing in the last light of sunset. She and Myril had been novices there together, then priestesses for a season. The novitiate had been stifling, the priestesshood not much better. True, it had been comfortable, luxurious, but the walls were so confining, the gossip just as bad.

“The temple is the first place they’ll look,” Myril said.

Darna sighed. Myril always spoke the truth, but usually it wasn’t so hard to hear. She’d lived in Anamat half her life, the much better half of it. She’d come as an almost-grown girl, become a woman in the temple, and joined a guild. Here she was, a master of her craft at last, and now she had to leave the city, to pretend… She couldn’t think what she would pretend.

There was a sound outside Myril’s door, and in a flash, Thorat had his dagger out.

“Put that away,” Myril said. “It’s only the boy with our supper. You’d better go now too. Darna and I will be safe here for tonight.”

§

Darna woke late the next morning to the sound of Myril telling someone to come back after Midsummer.

When Myril saw that Darna was awake, she poured two cups of sweet tea from the earthenware jar sitting by the window and handed one to Darna. Myril took care of everyone. It was impossible to feel afraid in her domain.

“Thank you,” Darna said.

“It was no more than you would do for me.”

Darna shrugged. She wasn’t so sure about that. If Thorat or Myril needed her, she would try her best to help them, but she would never have this warm, safe place, and she would never be like Myril. Myril would have been a truly great priestess if the trance hadn’t taken her so hard that she’d almost lost her mind in those depths. It didn’t help that she had no innate interest in lying down with men, not even in the rite, where they had no claim on her. Iola’s presence made matters worse, too, always reminding Myril of what she couldn’t have. She’d come to the fortune-tellers’ row, within sight of the temple but outside its bounds, to be a chronicler and a healer, to measure out her talents in careful, safe parcels, at arm’s length.

Despite the danger, Darna moved to the window to look out. Up the street, a prince’s train was making its procession down to the harbor temple to pay its annual tribute to the ambassadress before her journey to the dragons’ realm. Some prince was there, and he would lie with Iola where Myril could not, go in to the rite and not understand half of it, and leave some of his riches to Iola and the dragons.

“Do you think I’ll die?” Darna asked.

Myril looked into her cup. “No. Not this year, and not the next year, but that doesn’t mean you should stay here and wait for someone to try to change your fate. You need to leave Anamat; I’m sure of that much.”

“Maybe I could go to that farm on the Western road that Thorat’s always talking about,” Darna said. That wouldn’t be too far, only a short walk to the city walls. She could manage that much except on days when the pain was at its worst, and she didn’t have those more than a few times a year.

“To Raina’s place?” Myril raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think so. The children would drive you mad, and besides, it’s too close. You can’t stay in the valley. Besides, I won’t have you bring your danger to Raina’s doorstep, not with all those children there and her other work.”

Darna sighed. “Then what can I do?”

“I don’t know yet,” Myril said. “Did you have any prophetic dreams?”

It was a ridiculous question. Myril was the one who had prophetic dreams, not her. Still, she tried to remember what dreams she’d had, if any. The only thing that came to her was an image of a horse, trudging along like a pack animal. She was on its back.

“A horse? I think I was riding a horse in my dreams.”

Myril shuddered. She didn’t like horses; no priestess did. They were foreign animals who shied at dragonlets.

“I can’t see you going to Enomae, but I can’t see anything else, either.” Myril stood up and went to her door, opening it a crack as if she had a visitor. Darna didn’t hear anything until Myril said, “Thank you,” and closed the door again.

Myril leaned against her door and looked at Darna. “The Aralel will be in her chambers until midday. I’m going to see if she can help.”

“Help with what?” Darna asked, half knowing the answer already.

“She might know which provinces are safest for you, and where they would welcome a new priestess without too much question.”

“I don’t want to go back to priestessing at all, much less in one of those kinds of temples.” The thought of hiding on her back with a succession of foreign sailors and pig-headed farmers between her bent legs had no appeal at all.

Myril sighed. “It’s all I can think of, though the winged ones know I wouldn’t choose it for myself, or for you.” She crossed over to a carved cabinet by the window and took out a small bag on a string – one of her protective amulets. She hung it around Darna’s neck. “I’ll be back soon,” she said. “Stay away from the window, and don’t open the door to anyone but me.”

Tears threatened to well up in Darna’s throat, but she stuffed them back. She hugged Myril and let her go. “Don’t be long.”

§

Darna sat alone in the darkest corner of Myril’s room and tried to read a scroll, but it was a dry old text about the herbs of the north, written in an uneven hand. She couldn’t concentrate. Myril had said that she wasn’t fated to die this year, but what if she was wrong? Myril’s predictions were good but not perfect, not perfect enough to justify leaving Anamat on her weak leg. To be sure, this was where any assassin would look for her, but it was also the biggest city in Theranis. Its back passages had hidden her before and could hide her again. It was home, more so than Tiadun had ever been.

She briefly considered the prospect of going back to Tiadun, to see for herself the grave of the dragon they’d killed, to take vengeance however she could. She would get herself killed faster than anything that way, but at least she wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for an arrow in her back. Still, the walk was long. She’d done it when she’d first come to the city, but she couldn’t see walking so far again, not alone.

After some time, there was a knock at the door, but whoever it was went away. A heavier footstep came and went. Darna edged over to the window and peeked out. A prince rode by on his high horse with mounted guardsmen all around him and pages blowing horns and shouting, “Make way! Make way!”

The princes had horses. She might be able to go to some prince’s keep, some rival of her uncle’s, and hide there. It was a good thought, but how could she accomplish it? She could hardly hire herself out as a cook or a seasonal servant. Contracts had to be arranged before Midsummer dawn, when the princes returned to their home realms with their hirelings in tow. Most of those contracts would be settled by now; it was only a day and a half before Midsummer night.

Tevan. He would go looking for her in her room, but not today. Tomorrow she would go back to her own place to say goodbye to him.

At length, Myril returned. Darna flew up to unbar the door and let her in. Thorat was right behind her.

“You were here all along?” Thorat asked before Myril had a chance to speak. “I was waiting at the bottom of the stair. I knocked.”

“I would have let you in if I’d known,” Darna said, wishing she

had

known. The time would have passed more pleasantly with company, if she hadn’t been mulling on the unpleasant subject of princes, their horses, and their hirelings.

“Never mind that; we’re all here now,” Myril said. She set down a pot – temple tea, by the smell of it – and poured for all of them.

“The Aralel says she can’t help.”

Myril sounded put out, but Darna couldn’t help but feel it was a relief.

“She says that the provincial temples are too much under the control of the princes,” Myril went on. “With the network of spies and gossips between one keep and the next, not to mention the usual priestess chatter. The temples are no place for a woman who wants to hide, she says. She’s worried about Gallia’s safety – she’s staying in the elders’ court for now. If Gallia finds you, the others won’t be far behind.” Myril looked at Thorat. “The Aralel agrees that the hills would be the best place for a woman who wanted to hide. I didn’t say who it was for, though. It’s rough living in the hills, good enough for someone like me… I think she was worried that I was the one who had to hide.”

“So much for the wisdom of the highest priestess in the land,” Darna said. “Hills probably aren’t much good for a cripple.”

“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for,” Myril said, “but in this case, I think you’re right. She did say that there was one province which almost never gives rise to any gossip, so much so that even the Aralel’s networks of rumors have dried up.

“Which province is that?” Thorat asked.

“Slaradun.”

“Tevan’s going to Slaradun,” Darna said, and that beginning of an inkling of an idea began to take shape.

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