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“As you say, Major, I come in search of justice. If the Voice is prepared to see me so quickly, I would prefer to go directly to her.”
“Of course, Milady,” Paratha said, with another pleasant smile. “If you’ll follow me.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Well, Kaeritha thought as she followed Paratha into the temple complex, at least I can be sure where to find one of my enemies.
It took a physical act of will to keep her hands away from the hilts of her weapons while she trailed along behind the major. Paratha seemed to glow in the temple’s hushed, reverent dimness, and tendrils of the sickly radiance which clung to her reached out to embrace others as they passed. There was something nauseating about the slow, lascivious way those dully glowing light serpents caressed and stroked those they touched. Most of them gave no indication that they realized anything had touched them, but as Kaeritha walked past them behind Paratha, she Saw tiny, ugly spots, like a leprosy of evil, upon them. They were so small, those spots—hardly visible, only a tiny bit more intense than any normal, fallible mortal might be expected to bear. Yet there were scores of them on most of the acolytes and handmaidens she and Paratha passed, and they blazed briefly stronger and uglier as the major’s corona reached out to them. Then they faded, sinking inward, until not even Kaeritha could See them.
That was bad enough, but those who did feel something when Paratha’s vile web brushed over them were worse. However hard they tried to conceal it, they felt the caress of the Darkness draped about Paratha, and a flicker of pleasure—almost a twisted ecstasy—danced ever so briefly across their faces.
Kaeritha’s pulse thudded harder and faster as they moved deeper and deeper into the temple. They’d entered through the Chapel of the Crone, which was not the avenue of approach Kaeritha would have chosen in Major Kharlan’s place. Whatever crawling evil had infested Quaysar, this was still a temple of Lillinara. To defile its buildings and, even more, its inhabitants and servitors might be an enormous triumph for the Dark, but the stones themselves must remember in whose honor and reverence they’d been raised. However great the triumph, it could not pass undetected forever, and of all Lillinara’ aspects, it was the Crone, the Avenger, whose fury Kaeritha would least have liked to face.
And yet, there was also a sort of fitness, almost a logic, to Paratha’s chosen course, for the Crone was the Avenger. She was the aspect of the goddess most steeped in blood and vengeance. Her Third Face, most apt to merciless destruction. There were those, including one Kaeritha Seldansdaughter, who felt that the Crone all too often verged upon the Dark Herself, and so perhaps there was a certain resonance between this chapel and the shadowy web which rode Paratha’s shoulders and soul.
“Tell me, Major Kharlan,” she asked casually, “have you been in Lillinara’s service long?”
“Almost twelve years, Milady,” Paratha replied.
“And how long have you commanded the Voice’s guards?”
“Only since she arrived here,” Paratha said, glancing back over her shoulder at Kaeritha with another smile. “I was assigned to the Quaysar Guard eight years ago, and I commanded the previous Voice’s guards for almost a year and a half before her death.”
“I see,” Kaeritha murmured, and the major returned her attention to leading the way through the temple.
They passed through the chapel, and Kaeritha felt the accumulation of Darkness pressing against her shoulders, like a physical presence at her back, as she moved deeper and deeper into the miasma of corruption which had invaded the temple. She was afraid, more afraid than she’d believed she could be even after she’d deduced that Quaysar must be the center of it all. Whatever evil was at work here, it was subtle and terrifyingly powerful, and it must have worked its weavings even longer than she’d believed possible. The outer precincts of the temple, and those members of the temple community furthest from the centers of power, like the gate guards who’d greeted her upon her arrival, were least affected. She wondered if that was deliberate. Had they been left alone, aside from just enough tampering to keep them from noticing what was happening at Quaysar’s core, as a part of the corruption’s mask? Or had whatever power of the Dark was at work here simply left them for later, after it had fully secured its grasp on the i
Not that it mattered much either way at the moment. What mattered were the barriers she sensed going up behind her. The waiting strands of power, snapping up, no longer threads but cables. The fly had entered the web of its own volition, arrogant in its own self-confidence, and now it was too late for escape.
She glanced casually over her shoulder and saw more than a dozen other women, the ones who’d reacted most strongly to the touch of Paratha’s Darkness, following behind. They looked as if they were merely continuing whatever errands had been theirs before Kaeritha’s arrival, but she knew better. She could See the latticework of diseased radiance which bound them together, and the shroud about Paratha was growing stronger, as if it were less and less concerned about even attempting to conceal its presence.
They passed rooms and chambers whose functions Kaeritha could only guess at, and then they entered what was obviously a more residential area of the temple. She had a vague impression of beautiful works of art, religious artifacts, mosaics and magnificent fabrics. Fountains sang sweetly, water splashed and trickled through ornate cha
She noticed all of it … and none of it. It was unimportant, peripheral, brushed aside by the tempest of Darkness gathering all about her, sweeping towards her from all directions. It was a subtler and less barbaric Darkness than she and Bahzell and Vaijon had confronted in the Navahkan temple of Sharna , and yet it was just as strong. Possibly even stronger, and edged with a malice and a sense of endless, cu
And she faced it alone.
Paratha opened a final pair of double doors of polished ebony inlaid with alabaster moons, and bowed deeply to Kaeritha. The major’s smile was as deep and apparently sincere as the one with which she’d first greeted Kaeritha, but the mask had grown increasingly threadbare. Kaeritha Saw the same green-yellow glow at the backs of Paratha’s eyes, and she wondered what the other woman Saw when she looked at her.
“The Voice awaits you, Milady Champion,” Paratha said graciously, and Kaeritha nodded and stepped past her through the ebony doors.
The outsized chamber beyond was obviously intended for formal audiences, yet it was equally obviously part of someone’s personal living quarters. Pieces of art, statues, and furniture—much of it comfortably worn, for all its splendor—formed an inviting focus for the vaguely thronelike chair at the chamber’s center.
A woman in the glowing white robes of a Voice of Lillinara sat in that chair. She was young, and quite beautiful, with long hair almost as black as Kaeritha’s own and huge brown eyes in an oval face. Or Kaeritha thought so, anyway. It was hard to be certain when the poison-green glare radiating from the Voice blinded her so.
“Greetings, Champion of Tomanak,” a silvery soprano, sweeter and more melodious than Kaeritha’s, said. “I have yearned for longer than you may believe to greet a champion of one of Lillinara’s brothers in this temple.”
“Have you, indeed, Milady?” Kaeritha replied, and no one else needed to know how much effort it took to keep her own voice conversational and no more than pleasant. “I’m pleased to hear that, because I’ve found myself equally eager to make your acquaintance.”