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now-empty cart was returned and the villagers departed with the priestesses’ blessings and a bag of herbal medicines. As they came back to the citadel, the two women passed Grimya where she sat on a flat rock on the sandy arena between the bluff and the lake; they smiled at her, made a sign of greeting and walked on. And listening to their conversation as they moved away, Grimya heard the name of the Ancestral Lady for the first time.
    The words haunted her. Who or what the Ancestral Lady was, she didn’t know, but she suspected that there was a connection with whatever power or deity these women worshiped. She heard the name several more times during the morning, and her inability to understand its significance frustrated her. There was a link between the Ancestral Lady and Indigo, she was sure of it. But what was it?
    It wasn’t long before she learned more. As her comprehension of the Dark Islers’ speech grew, she discovered that the priestesses’ cult was concerned above all else with death. Death was a powerful and constant presence in this feverish and disease-ridden climate, and the borders between the dead and the living worlds were narrow and often uncertain. The greatest gateway to the realm of the dead, so people believed, was the lake itself—and beneath the lake’s waters lay the Ancestral Lady’s domain.
    If the Ancestral Lady was a goddess, Grimya decided soberly, she was a far cry indeed from the great Earth Mother worshiped in other parts of the world. The Ancestral Lady was undisputed Mistress of the Dead, meting out reward or punishment to the souls of the departed who entered her underworld realm and became, willing or not, her subjects. And it seemed that her subjects, even in death, were unwilling to relinquish entirely their hold on the world they’d left behind.
    When she witnessed the evening ceremony for the first time, Grimya didn’t immediately understand its significance. As the sun began to set, a group of women left the citadel and walked around the lake’s edge. They carried blazing torches, and long staves with which they beat the ground ferociously, and as they walked, they uttered wild shrieks and bloodcurdling howls that mingled with the thud of the drums from the citadel’s lower levels. The wolf, sitting on what had become her favorite rock near the water’s edge, where the air was a little cooler, watched in fascination, until her sharp ears caught the sound of a soft footfall behind her. She turned her head and saw Shalune approaching.
    “Our rituals puzzle you, eh, Grimya?” Shalune grinned at her, then turned to watch the procession, which now had reached the far side of the lake. She clearly didn’t expect a response from the wolf, but was merely talking as she would to any animal, and though Grimya longed to answer, she didn’t dare reveal that she could speak, or even understand.
    “We must circle the lake every night,” Shalune went on. “Otherwise, the dead ones might come up from the Ancestral Lady’s realm below the lake to trouble us.”
    Grimya’s ears pricked forward and she stared at the woman, astonished. What manner of deity would send dead slaves to plague her own followers? She whined, and Shalune laughed.
    “There’s nothing to be afraid of. The shouting, and the sticks and drums, will frighten the zombies and spirits away. They won’t come tormenting us now. Besides,” she added with a trace of pride, “when the Ancestral Lady spoke to us last night, she promised us no plagues this season, as a reward for following the signs she sent us and finding her new oracle. She is pleased with us.”
    She brushed Grimya’s fur lightly, almost as though it were a touchstone, and walked away, leaving the wolf gazing after her in consternation as she realized that her suspicion of the previous night had been confirmed. The arrival of Shalune and her cohorts at the traders’ kemb had been no coincidence. Some power, some prophecy, had led them to