Free Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar by Louise Cooper - Indigo 06

wasn’t the dead oracle; she was ... someone else. Someone else.
    Soft footfalls impinged on her wandering mind, and a square, hard hand, wet with rain, was placed firmly on her forehead. Shalune grunted as though some private opinion had been vindicated, then looked hard at Grimya, who crouched defensively beside Indigo on the cave floor.
    “Stay here,” she said firmly. Her manner told Grimya that she had no doubt the wolf would understand her. “Indigo needs to rest. Guard her.”
    Against what? Grimya wondered, but she couldn’t ask and Shalune didn’t elaborate. The noise of the storm was muted in the cave, though an occasional flash of lightning lit the interior starkly. Shalune prodded the hearth fire into some semblance of life, checked the clay lamps to ensure they didn’t need refilling, then walked to the curtained doorway. Looking back, she said something else, in which Grimya caught the words “sleep,” “fever” and “in the morning,” then pushed the curtain aside and ducked out into the teeming rain.
    Grimya stared at the curtain for a long time after Shalune had gone; then at last she rose and padded to the cave’s entrance. The storm was cooling the night a little, but the increased humidity brought by the rain made the world oppressive. A dark, earthy smell from the sodden forest far below mingled with the electric scent of ozone. Lightning flickered again, but it was far away now and the following thunder no more than a faint grumble in the distance. Grimya looked up, staring at the steps that led up the bluff’s face to the summit. No smell of incense, no sign of smoke or reflected glow from the brazier fire. The women had gone to their quarters; the night was undisturbed.
    She withdrew her head and crept back across the cave to lie down at Indigo’s side. Indigo seemed to be asleep, which was a blessing. Grimya prayed she wouldn’t wake for a good many hours. She didn’t want to have to face her and try to answer the questions that her friend must inevitably ask, for she didn’t know how she was going to explain what she had seen and heard on the cliff top when Indigo had taken her place on the stone chair.
    She thought the word for what had happened was “trance,” but she couldn’t be sure. All she did know was that something strange and frightening had happened to Indigo up there on the summit tonight, and that Indigo was as yet unaware of it. Something, and Grimya didn’t know what it was or what it might portend, had taken her friend’s place in that chair, and for a few horrifying minutes, Indigo had not been herself, but someone else. Someone who carried the reek of death like an aura.
    Uluye and her cohorts had cast down their old oracle tonight and placed a new one in its stead. Indigo believed that they had made a terrible mistake. After tonight’s events, though, Grimya was beginning to wonder if it was Indigo, and not the priestesses, who was mistaken.

 
     
•CHAPTER•V•
     
    On Shalune’s strict orders, Indigo was made to rest for three nights and the two days between. It seemed the fever had returned, though mildly, and Shalune clearly felt that her patient should not have been subjected to the rigors of the cliff-top ceremony so soon after her arrival. She and Uluye had further sharp words on that subject. To Grimya, who witnessed the scene, their discussion seemed to end in a grudging stalemate, but Shalune had her way and Indigo was left to recuperate undisturbed.
    Grimya and Shalune had meanwhile reached a tacit and cautious understanding, based if not on trust, then at least on mutual respect. Seeing Shalune appear with a bandaged wrist on the morning following the ceremony, Grimya had felt thoroughly ashamed of her own behavior, but Shalune bore no grudge and, indeed, seemed to admire the staunch loyalty that had made Grimya attack when she thought Indigo might be in danger. She brought the wolf a special dish of unspiced meat, which Grimya suspected