Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (41 page)

The curtain over the cave’s door shuddered suddenly, and Grimya came in. Only one small lamp was alight in its wall niche, and in the dim glow, the wolf’s eyes shone like embers.

“I think they are all as-leep now,” she said softly. “The night ritual is over, and there has been no movement below for some time.” She paused. “Are you rrready?”

“Yes.” Indigo climbed to her feet and gathered up the packs that lay close by her side. It felt strange to be wearing her old clothes again instead of the robes that she’d grown accustomed to during her stay here; they felt strange and unfamiliar. She looked around at the cave, at the piled gifts, and felt a painful blend of sadness and bitterness well within her.

Still
, she thought,
there is so much fear. The demon might have died within me, but for them, it is still alive. I think it always will be ... and I’m so sorry that there was no more I could do
.

She’d take nothing from among the offerings; not even one small souvenir. In fact, she had something to leave behind, a gift for the Ancestral Lady. What the dark goddess would make of it, she didn’t know, but perhaps it would serve her in her turn. And it was of no use to Indigo now. It had played its part in her life, but its time was done.

She wondered what the women would think when they found her gone. Would they guess at the truth, or would they believe that the oracle and her companion had been spirited away, called perhaps to the greater service of the Ancestral Lady? In a way, she hoped so, for it might ensure that they would forget her all the sooner.

She blew out the lamp. The cave sank into darkness, and Indigo and Grimya stepped out onto the ledge. The night was clear and fine; stars glittered in the velvet sky, and the half-moon was just beginning to rise above the trees’ dark silhouettes. The lake below was still, like a great pewter shield cast down and abandoned in the forest by some careless warrior. The citadel and the arena were silent. Somewhere a bird chattered with a sound like mad human laughter.

Indigo put one hand to her throat and grasped the thong that held the lodestone in its bag around her neck. The old leather was brittle with age; it snapped easily, and she held the bag in her hand. She didn’t want to look at the stone, not even for one last time. She didn’t want to see what it would tell her, for her mind was made up and nothing would sway her now.

She threw stone and bag and thong together out and away in the direction of the lake. They spun, turning, turning, just visible in the moonlight and starlight—and then a tiny glitter broke the lake’s smoothness momentarily as they struck the water far below.

This is my own small offering to you, madam
, she thought.
Accept it as a token of my gratitude, for you showed me that the thing I feared above all else had no foundation. Fenran
is
alive, and I believe I can find him. Nothing else matters to me now, and I thank you for setting me on this path
.

There was no answering stirring in her mind, as she had known there could not be. The link was broken. Yet, Indigo thought, something of the Ancestral Lady would always live within her from now on, a legacy of the avatar within her own being, the avatar that had awakened here and that had known, briefly, what it was to be a goddess.

She looked down at Grimya and felt the warm, loving surge of the wolf’s mind as she gazed back. Grimya understood what lay behind this last gesture, and wherever Indigo led, she would follow. Indigo couldn’t find the words, or even the thoughts, to express what she felt, but she bent briefly to stroke the top of Grimya’s head.

Then she shouldered her packs, and as quietly as two cloud shadows passing across the face of the moon, they moved together toward the stairs and toward the forest that waited for them beyond the sleeping citadel.

Scanned and proofed against paperback. TK June 2013 (v1.0) (html)

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