Free A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay Page A

feared her laughter, her mocking voice, but she was silent and so was the forest around them. Even the torch was burning without sound, Blaise realized belatedly. The owl lifted its wings suddenly as if to fly, but only settled itself again on her shoulder.
    ‘Go then,’ Rian’s High Priestess said, not without gentleness. ‘We have allowed you the man for whom you came. Take him and go.’
    He should turn now, Blaise knew. He should do exactly as she said. There were things at work here far beyond his understanding. But he had led seven men to this place.
    ‘Luth,’ he said sturdily. ‘What will be done to him?’
    There was a strange, whistling sound; he realized it had come from the bird. The priestess said, ‘His heart will be cut out while he lives. It will be eaten.’ Her voice was flat, without intonation. ‘His body will be boiled in a vat of very great age and his skin peeled from his bones. His flesh will be cut into pieces and used for divination.’
    Blaise felt his gorge rising, his skin crawled with horror and loathing. He took an involuntary step backwards. And heard her laughter. There was genuine amusement, something young, almost girlish in the sound.
    ‘Really,’ the priestess said, ‘I hadn’t thought I was so convincing as all that.’ She shook her head. ‘How savage do you think we are? You have taken a living man, we take a living man from you. He will be consecrated as a servant of Rian and set to serve the goddess on her Island in redress for his transgression and yours. This one is more a cleric than a coran in any case, I think you know as much. It is as I told you, Northerner: you havebeen permitted to do this. It would have been different, I assure you, had we chosen to make it so.’
    Relief washing over him like a stream of water, Blaise fought a sudden, uncharacteristic impulse to kneel before this woman, this incarnated voice of a goddess his countrymen did not worship.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice rough and awkward in his own ears.
    ‘You are welcome,’ she said, almost casually. There was a pause, as if she were weighing something. The owl was motionless on her shoulder, unblinking, gazing at him. ‘Blaise, do not overvalue this power of ours. What has happened tonight.’
    He blinked in astonishment. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You are standing at the very heart of our strength here on this island. We grow weaker and weaker the further we are from here, or from the other isle in the lake inland. Rian has no limits, but her mortal servants do. I do. And the goddess cannot be compelled, ever.’
    She had built up a veil of power and magic and mystery, and now she was lifting it for him to see behind. And she had called him by his name.
    ‘Why?’ he asked, wonderingly. ‘Why do you tell me this?’
    She smiled, almost ruefully. ‘Something in my own family, I suspect. My father was a man prone to take chances with trust. I seem to have inherited that from him. We might need each other, in a time not far from tonight.’
    Struggling to absorb all of this, Blaise asked the only question he could think to ask. ‘Who was he? Your father?’
    She shook her head, amused again. ‘Northerner, you seek to lead men in Arbonne. You will have to grow less bitter and more curious, I think, though it might be a long road for you. You should have known who was HighPriestess on Rian’s Island before you came. I am Beatritz de Barbentain, my father was Guibor, count of Arbonne, my mother is Signe, who rules us now. I am the last of their children yet alive.’
    Blaise was actually beginning to feel as if he might fall down, so buffeted did he feel by all of this.
The skiff
, he thought.
The mainland
. He urgently needed to be away from here.
    ‘Go,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts again. She raised her hand very slightly and the torch instantly went out. In the suddenly enveloping darkness, Blaise heard her say in her earlier voice—the sound of a priestess, speaking