Moments later, only three women remained in the chamber, as even the acolytes had been sent away.
The door opened again and the guardian reappeared, this time escorting an old woman, human, who tottered on two canes to support her massive weight. Sweat darkened the cloth of her loose clothing round her armpits and cleavage and on the bulging islands of her hips. Her expression was one of anxiety and discomfort.
Unbidden, Third Sister rose and pulled a bench away from one wall, positioning it in the woman’s path.
‘Please do sit,’ said the High Priestess, thinking, alas, of the two dozen blind crayfish she’d just eaten, each almost half the size of a lobster, served up drenched in melted butter.
With muttered thanks, the woman lowered herself on to the bench. ‘Please to introduce myself,’ she said in a wheeze. ‘I am the Witch-’
‘I know,’ the High Priestess interrupted, ‘and that title will suffice here, as must my own. Yours has been a trying journey, and so I can only assume you come with word of a crisis.’
A quick nod. ‘The cult of the Redeemer, High Priestess, has become. . corrupted.’
‘And what is the agency of that corruption?’
‘Well, but that is complicated, you see. There was a High Priestess — oh, she was a reluctant owner of that title, and all the duties that came with it. Yet none could deny her natural authority-’
‘“Natural authority”,’ said the High Priestess. ‘I like that phrase. Sorry, do go on.’
‘Outlaws have usurped the pilgrim camp. There is some concentrated form of the drink called kelyk — I do not know if you are familiar with it?’
‘We are, yes.’
Another quick nod. ‘Saemankelyk. The word comes from a dialect common south of God’s Walk Mountains. “Saeman” means “Dying God” and “kelyk” means-’
‘Blood.’
A sigh. ‘Yes.’
Second Sister cleared her throat, and then said, ‘Surely you do not mean to suggest that the meaning is literal?’
The witch licked her lips — an instinctive gesture rather than anything ironic — and said, ‘I have applied some. . arts, er, to examining this Saemankelyk. There are unnatural properties, that much is certain. In any case, the outlaws have made addicts of the pilgrims. Including Salind, the Redeemer’s High Priestess.’
Third Sister spoke. ‘If this foul drink is in any way blessed, then one might well see its poisonous influence as a corruption of the Redeemer’s worshippers. If one kneels before saemenkelyk. . well, one cannot kneel before two masters, can one?’
‘This corruption, High Priestess. It could. . spread.’
Silence round the table.
It was clear now to the High Priestess that the witch had given this meeting considerable thought, until arriving at the one suggestion she considered most likely to trigger alarm.
Emboldened, the witch resumed. ‘High Priestess, Salind — she needs help. We need help. There was a warrior, one among you, but he has disappeared. Now that Seerdomin is dead, I sought to find him. Spinnock Durav.’
The High Priestess rose. ‘Come with me, Witch,’ she said. ‘Just you and me. Come, it’s not far.’
The old woman levered herself upright, confusion in her small eyes.
To a side passage, a narrow corridor of twenty paces, and then down a short flight of stairs, the air still smelling of fresh-chiselled basalt, into a large but low-vaulted octagonal chamber devoid of any furniture, the floor of which was inlaid with onyx tesserae, irregular in shape and size. A journey of but a few moments for most people; yet for the witch it was an ordeal, striking the High Priestess with the poignancy of the old woman’s desperation — that she should so subject herself to such a struggle. The trek from her home through the city to the keep must have been an epic undertaking.
These thoughts battered at the High Priestess’s impatience, and so she weathered the delay saying nothing and without expression on her smooth, round face.
As soon as the witch tottered into the chamber, she gasped.
‘Yes, you are clearly an adept,’ observed the High Priestess. ‘There are nodes of power in this temple. Kurald Galain, the cleansing darkness.’ She could see that the witch was breathing hard and fast, and there was a look of wonder on that sweat-sheathed face, ‘Do not be alarmed at what you feel inside,’ she said, ‘By en shy;tering here, you have drawn Kurald Galain into your body, in your breaths, through the very pores of your skin. The sorcery is now within you.’
‘B-but. . why? Why have you done this to me?’
‘I could sense the labouring of your heart, Witch. Your trek to my temple would have been your last-’
‘Oh, I knew that!’ snapped the witch.
