Daughter of Witches: A Lyra Novel (10 page)

The silence was growing uncomfortable. Ranira raised her head and looked at Gadrath. Instead of speaking, she deliberately took another sip of wine. She set the goblet down carefully and looked up again.

“Why should you keep your promises once you have what you want? Even if I thought you would do as you say, I do not like the idea of owing my life to you, nor of giving you so great a hold over me,” she said. “In any case, it does not matter. The foreigners said nothing unusual. Or would you have me make up tales so that you may prove them false? What good would that do me?”

Gadrath laughed. “You are cleverer than I thought, my dear. I will have to resort to other methods.” He smiled and shook his head regretfully. “Unfortunately, none of them will involve you. The Bride of Chaldon must not have a marred body. Still, are you certain there is nothing you can tell me? There are ways to make your fate easier.”

“Nothing,” Ranira repeated. Her tongue felt thick. She blinked, trying to clear away a sudden fuzziness in her vision. Gadrath was standing over her now. How strange; he was supposed to be sitting on the other side of the table.

“Perhaps I was wrong,” Gadrath said, half to himself. “Perhaps there is nothing for you to tell. You have lasted far longer than I expected. I doubt that you could lie to me now. No, they were careful, and I will have to find some other way to accuse them. Now, finish your wine, my dear. You must be in good spirits tomorrow, you know. The pilgrims will expect the Bride of Chaldon to smile.”

The priest lifted the goblet to her lips and forced the remaining contents down her throat. Ranira’s last lucid thought was that she should have guessed he would drug the wine.

F
OR A LONG TIME
, Ranira floated in a world of light and color. Then, gradually, she began to be aware of what was going on around her. First came voices, fading in and out. Gadrath, peremptory and brusque: “See that she is ready in time, or you will be beaten again. If the drug seems to be wearing off, give her this. But be careful. We cannot have her unconscious during the procession.” Mornah, soft and appealing: “Your robes, Chosen One. Your slippers, Chosen One. Allow me to braid your hair, Chosen One…” Lanarsh, sharp-edged and perpetually cross: “She’s still that far away? No don’t give her that; can’t you see she’s drugged enough already? Gadrath overestimated again. Well, we haven’t time to do anything. At least she’ll do as she’s told, and this time it will not matter if there are permanent effects. The god demands an unmarred body, not a sound mind.”

Footsteps echoed in a long, twisted corridor. “This way, Chosen One.” Unfamiliar skirts rustled around her feet, gold and silver embroidered on black. How pretty! Black crystal jewels glinted from lacy waves around her throat. She twisted to see them more clearly. A sudden wash of light made her blink. “Wait here, Chosen One.” Why should she move? People milled in the Temple courtyard. Such fascinating patterns they made!

A face appeared in front of her—Gadrath. She blinked at him; her vision was blurred. “You are fuzzy around the edges,” she told him.

“Listen to me, my dear,” he said. “You are the Chosen One. You want to please the people. You will sit and smile at them while we move through the city. Sit and smile. Do you understand?”

Ranira was confused. She did want to make the people happy, but how could she move and sit at the same time? It would be so much easier to stay here and smile. She didn’t like Gadrath; she couldn’t remember why. She wished he would go away, but he was coming closer.

“Sit and smile, my dear. Do you understand? Or I will hurt you, like this.”

A knifing pain in her arm penetrated the haze surrounding her. She cried out. The pain stopped. She whimpered and rubbed her arm. Gadrath’s face thrust itself close to hers. “Do as I say, my dear. Sit and smile. It is really very easy.”

Still confused, but too frightened to antagonize him further, Ranira nodded.

“Good,” said the priest. “This way, my dear.”

Just then she caught sight of the three foreigners. Mist, Jaren, and… and Arelnath. She was very pleased with herself for remembering their names. They were standing in a group at one side of the courtyard, surrounded by guards. She wanted to wave, but Gadrath was holding her arm. Then she remembered—she was supposed to sit and smile, not wave. But there was nowhere to sit. She frowned. There was something she wanted to remember.

Gadrath stopped, ending Ranira’s speculations. “You will sit here, my dear. Sit and smile. Remember.”

Ranira was barely listening. Her eyes were on the huge open carriage drawing up in front of her. It was gold, with three black horses and three white ones harnessed in front. A tall throne of carved gold rose from the seat at the back. It was even larger than the High Priest’s conveyance standing just in front of the courtyard gates. Why, she would be sitting above everyone. She would be able to see everything!

A rattling noise at the rear of the carriage distracted her, and she glanced back to see Mist and her companions being chained to the rear of the carriage.
How nice!
she thought.
They will be close by.
But she couldn’t remember why it would be nice.

Temple guards lifted her into the carriage. A priest arrived, muttering, and spread her heavy skirts over the cushions of the throne. She sat and smiled. Her head was beginning to ache, and the courtyard swam before her eyes, but she smiled; Gadrath was watching. The iron gates ahead swung open, and Templemen began marching out of the courtyard. It seemed to take a very long time.

A small man in black climbed onto the driver’s platform at the front of the carriage. He raised his whip and made a chuckling noise. The carriage moved forward. She smiled. They were through the iron gates and into the streets of Drinn. A blurred sea of faces surrounded the carriage, shouting and cheering. Ranira still could not think, and she was beginning to be annoyed by the way her mind was wandering. She could not remember why she was here, and somehow she was sure it was important.

The procession approached the river. In spite of the Temple guards striving to clear a way for the carriages, the bridge was crowded. Progress slowed to a crawl, then stopped altogether. Ranira heard angry shouts and curses from the Templemen. The horses pranced nervously, and her driver whistled softly through his teeth as his fingers worked the reins.

The carriage inched onto the bridge, its sides so close to the edge that Ranira could easily have stepped from her seat onto the guard wall. She looked curiously down at the river, already swollen with the early winter rains.

Suddenly, one of the horses reared and plunged forward. Its companion shied, and in another instant all six of the horses were bucking and rearing in a tangle of harness. Guards ran forward, pushing past the screaming pilgrims. The throne lurched sickeningly; Ranira grabbed at the side to keep from failing.

The carved metal cut into her hands. Fear and pain cleared away the drug haze for a moment, and all at once she saw a way out of the trap Gadrath had closed around her. She stood up in the carriage, bracing herself with one hand. Seeing her, the crowd quieted briefly, and she shouted as loudly as she could, “Chaldon’s curse on you, Gadrath, and my deathwish as well!” Before the reaching hands could grab her, she turned. Calmly, as if she were alighting from the carriage, she took one step out onto the thick stone rail. And then another.

The water was cold, dark, and dirty. Ranira’s wide skirt trapped enough air to keep her afloat, but she knew it would not last long. The current had already swept her under the bridge. She caught at one of the supporting pillars, trying to keep herself out of sight until the water could soak her gown and drag her safely down, away from Gadrath and the Temple of Chaldon and the god. Her nails scrabbled on the rough stone surface, then found a hold.

She felt the weight begin pulling at her, but her pain-induced clarity of thought was fading; the drug was reasserting its hold. Her fingers relaxed, and she felt them slide on the wet stone. Dreamily, she saw the pillar gliding sideways across her line of vision. Suddenly there were hands on her shoulders, pulling. She struggled weakly, but the effort only made it easier for her to be dragged to the shore. Stones scraped beneath her feet; she felt only a dim regret that she had failed to escape. She stumbled onto the narrow bank below the end of the bridge.

“Come
on,
Renra!” whispered a voice. “We got to get out of here!”

“Shandy!” She ought to be surprised, she thought. No, she was under the bridge, and Shandy always watched the parade from under the bridge. What was she doing under the bridge? She could not remember.

Ranira could hear shouts above her, but they seemed distant and meaningless. She looked at Shandy and smiled. “You didn’t get caught,” she said.

“Renra!” The boy was tugging at her. “The Temple guards will be here in a minute. Hurry up! Do you want them to catch us?”

The urgency in Shandy’s voice penetrated at last. Ranira rose. The wet gown dragged at her legs like an iron weight. She plucked at it ineffectively. “I can’t…”

“This way.” Shandy slipped away. Ranira followed. Her heavy skirts seemed to catch at the stone supports of the bridge, clinging and holding her back. Dark water lapped inches from her feet, and her slippers did not grip the narrow, wet stone ledge. She was panting when she caught up with Shandy, though they were barely three body-lengths from the place where she had reached the bank.

“In here, Renra. You go first,” he whispered. He pointed to a rounded opening just above the water. Reddish-green liquid oozed sluggishly out of it, staining the stone below. Ranira shook her head, but the drug left her no will to resist. “Go on!” Shandy urged, and she obediently dropped to her knees and crawled into the hole.

Darkness wrapped around her like a cloak. Her skirts caught on something. She pulled and felt the fabric tear. The tunnel floor was wet and slippery; her hand landed on something soft and slimy that wriggled. With a cry, she jerked back, and her head slammed against the top of the tunnel. Dizzy and frightened, she stayed motionless, waiting for the sick feeling to go away. Something touched her foot and she whimpered; it was the only remaining effort she was capable of.

“Go on, Renra. It isn’t far,” came a whisper from behind her. Fuzzily, she recognized Shandy’s voice. With a sigh, she started forward again. Maybe he wouldn’t make her do anything else when she got to the end. Perhaps she should have stayed in the carriage. It wasn’t wet or cold or dark, and Gadrath only wanted her to sit and smile. No, she didn’t like Gadrath, and there was a reason why she hadn’t stayed. She couldn’t remember it just now, but she would. Now she had to keep crawling.

Ranira crawled. The tunnel narrowed, the floor rose, and she was forced to creep along almost on her stomach. The embroidered gown was long since in rags. She would have stopped if it had not been for the insistent shoves from behind. Suddenly there was a little light in front of her—a stone in the roof of the tunnel had cracked. A few feet further she came to another, then three stones in a row with pieces broken out of them. Then the tunnel was a shallow trench half-filled with broken rocks. She sat up, blinking in the sunlight.

Beside her, Shandy wriggled out of a dark space between two stones and grinned at her. “I
told
you I didn’t have to worry about Templemen, Renra. I bet they don’t even know the tunnel’s here. But we got to find someplace they won’t look for you, or they’ll catch you again, soon as they start hunting.”

Dizziness overwhelmed Ranira as she tried to stand, and she put out a shaking hand to steady herself. From miles away she heard Shandy’s exclamation. “Renra! What’s the
matter
with you?”

Ranira fought to think clearly. “They gave me some kind of drug,” she said hazily. “I don’t know how long it will last. I think someone said it could be permanent.” Memory swam up out of the shifting cloud that threatened to engulf her: silver light turning yellow, and a voice murmuring. “Mist. Did she get away?”

“What?” Shandy looked confused, then began tugging at her hand determinedly. “Come on, Renra. We got to get out of here. You can tell me about the mist later.”

“No!” She jerked back. “Mist is the foreign woman, the one in the short veil. She can heal; I saw her. Did she get away too? You have to find her, Shandy. She can heal.”

“I told you those foreigners would be trouble. Why do you want to find a bunch of witches? This way. Duck your head; you’re too tall.”

“They can heal! Will you find them?” Ranira asked, clinging desperately to her fading lucidity. “Mist and Jaren and Arelnath. Will you?”

“All right,” Shandy said. “But not now. Come on, Renra!”

Mental tension flowed out of her like a sigh. As she relaxed back into the drugged fog, she tried to murmur her thanks, but she could not even be certain she had spoken. Part of her was still aware of the awkward scrambling over broken pavement and the twisting route that Shandy followed, but most of her mind was in a pleasant stupor.

Shandy was talking to her. He seemed to want a response. “Shandy?” she said tentatively.

“Ah, Renra,” he said disgustedly, “You didn’t even hear. You have to climb over that wall. I’ll help. You understand?”

She looked doubtfully at the high wall of crumbling bricks that stretched from one side of the alley to the other, but she nodded. Shandy pushed at her. “Go on!” Dutifully, Ranira stepped forward.

Climbing the wall was almost as difficult as crawling through the tunnel had been. Though her skirts were now in rags, they still hampered her movement, and her thin slippers slid treacherously on the ancient brick. Twice she slipped back when one of her handholds broke free of the wall. At last she reached the top. She was too tired to climb down, and it looked like an uncomfortably long drop. She was still sitting there when Shandy popped up beside her.

“You crazy? Anybody looks down this way, they’ll see you for sure. Get down, Renra!” The boy followed his own advice immediately, swinging down to the ground with the ease of long practice. She blinked at him for a moment, then slid her feet over the side of the wall.