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She felt perspiration drip down her naked back, almost but not quite enough of an itch to make her wish to scratch. She willed her mind away from the sensations of her flesh. Sitting with crossed legs, eyes closed, and her hands resting palms up on her knees, nothing was supposed to distract her; yet that drip of perspiration felt almost as if she were being touched. Her annoyance at being distracted by it began a cycle she knew well. Soon she would be as far removed from a floating consciousness as she would be during combat or enjoying a lover. She found a spark of irony in that thought, since in both those cases, she was probably closer. Other parts of her mind seemed to predominate when fighting or loving, and the ever-questioning, ever-critical part that made her difficult for most people to be with, detached.
Like all members of her order, Sandreena was always welcome at any temple of Dala, the Patron Goddess of the Order of the Shield of the Weak. Being a member of an errant order, she wandered where the Goddess directed her, often providing the only authority or protection for small villages, tiny caravans, or isolated abbeys. She adjudicated disputes and dispensed equity by reason, but she was well equipped to do so by force of arms if necessary.
The drop of perspiration had now reached the top of her tailbone, and as it pooled there for a moment, she focused her mind and dived into it, seeking to float within it. She took slow, deep breaths, enjoying the sybaritic pleasure she took from the hot steam, the silence, and the total absence of threat. She found her quiet place within that drop of moisture on her spine. A light breeze made the brass wind chimes outside ring softly, heightening the calming experience. Then Sandreena caught a hint of something unwelcome, a musky male odour so slight it was almost unnoticeable.
She knew the ritual was over. This was not the first time her presence in the sanctuary had brought unwelcome results. There were only two other women partaking in the ritual, neither young nor attractive by any common measure. Such considerations should have been of little consequence in the service of the Goddess, but human beings were imperfect by nature and those considerations often became relevant. Sandreena shifted her weight, tensing and relaxing each muscle in turn as she ended her meditation. Now she was very aware of her nakedness, the perspiration running down her back and between her breasts, and her matted hair. One young acolyte waited near the door to the bathing room, holding out a coarsely woven towel for her use.
She stood in one fluid motion, like the dancer she had been in another life. She knew that one of the young brothers watched her depart, examining her every movement as she quietly left the room. She also knew what he saw, a young woman of exceptional beauty, with sun-coloured, shoulder-length hair, and a pair of heroic battle scars, but no other obvious flaw. She knew that she possessed many flaws, but carried them within; her own beauty was a curse.
With long legs, strong buttocks, trim hips and waist, and some breadth in the shoulders, she was at the height of her physical power. But nothing could change her face, her straight, perfect nose, the set of her slightly slanted pale blue eyes, and her full mouth and delicate chin. She was even more stunning when she smiled, though that happened rarely. Even in her armour, men still turned to watch her pass.
She resisted the temptation to turn and see which of the young brothers had been aroused by her presence; that was his burden to bear and if he was wise in the teachings of the Goddess, he would know it was his weakness to overcome, a lesson put before him to instruct and make him stronger.
She hated the idea of being someone else’s lesson.
Sandreena took the towel and entered the bathing room, sitting on a bench before a bucket of cold water. She picked up the bucket and tipped its contents over her head, embracing the sudden shock of cold and the clarity of thought it brought. As she dried herself off she revelled in the quiet privacy of the bathing room. She had experienced very little solitude during her lifetime. Above anything else, her calling had brought her time alone on the road, when all she could hear was the wind in the branches, birdcalls, and animal sounds; she prized those moments.
After her travels, she had come here, to the Temple in Krondor. It was the only real home she had known. Sandreena had been raised in the streets by a mother addicted to every known drug, but she favoured Dream, the white powder that when smoked induced intoxicating images and experiences, more vivid than life itself. Her mother had protected her, as much as her weaknesses permitted, until she had become a woman. The body that Sandreena considered a curse, that stole the breath of foolish men, developed early in her eleventh year. By her thirteenth Banapis celebration she had become a beauty. Her mother had taught her some tricks, staying dirty, cutting her hair short, binding her breasts to look boyish, that had kept her safe until the age of fourteen, until one of the bashers had seen through the disguise.
The Mockers of Krondor were a criminal organization under the control of the Upright Man, but not so tightly controlled for the wellbeing of one street girl to be of any consequence. The basher took her while her mother was in the throes of delirium induced by a gifted vial of Bliss. After that he had come for her on a regular basis. He always brought Bliss, or Dream, or one of the other narcotics sold by the Brotherhood of Thieves.
Sandreena finished drying herself and went in to the dressing room. The monks detailed to care for visiting Sisters and Brothers of the Shield were tending her travel-worn armour. She quickly donned her preferred raiment: baggy trousers, a loose-fitting tunic, both made of unbleached linen cloth, heavy boots, and her sword belt. As she dressed, she remembered that her first man actually hadn’t been such a bad fellow. He had eventually professed his love for her, and she recalled him being almost gentle when taking her, in a clumsy, fumbling way. It was the men who she experienced after him who had taught her what it was to be truly cruel.
She was fifteen years old when her mother died. Too many narcotics, or one bad drug, or perhaps it was a man who took out his anger on her; no one knew the cause, save that she was found floating in the bay near Fisher’s Dock at the south end of the harbour. It was strange that she was found that far from her usual haunts, but not strange enough for the Upright Man or any of his lieutenants to look into the matter; what concern had they over the death of another addicted whore? Besides, she had given the Mockers a daughter who was worth far more than the mother had been.
Sandreena had then been removed from a particular bruiser’s crib, and installed in one of the city’s finer brothels, where she began to earn gold. For a while, she had known how it felt to wear silks and gems, have her hair cleaned every day, and to be given good food regularly. She had become an expert in the use of unguents, oils, scents, and all manner of makeup. She could appear as innocent as a child or as wicked as a Keshian courtesan, depending on the client’s need. She was schooled in deportment and how to speak the languages of Kesh and Queg, but more importantly, she learnt how to speak like a well-born lady.
Because her captors had taught her languages, to read and write, and even simply how to learn, she had forgiven them enough to resist hunting them down and delivering a harsh punishment. The Goddess taught forgiveness. But Sandreena vowed never to forget.
What she could forgive them for was awakening an appetite for things better avoided: too much wine, many of the drugs her mother had craved, fine clothing and jewellery, and most of all, the company of men. Sandreena had left that profession with a profound ambivalence: she only craved the touch of men whom she also despised, and hated herself for that perverse desire. Only the discipline of the Order kept that conflict from destroying her otherwise strong mind.
Sandreena left the dressing room to find a young acolyte waiting for her. ‘Father-Bishop would like a world with you, Sister.’
‘At once,’ she responded. ‘I know the way.’
Dismissed, the boy hurried along on another errand, and Sandreena let out a barely audible sigh. The Father-Bishop had managed to grant her only two full days of rest before finding her something to do. As she started towards his office, she amended that thought: finding her something dangerous that only a lunatic would agree to.
She reached a corner of the temple and looked out of a vaulted window. To her left she could see the Prince’s palace by the royal docks, dominating the city. To the right, close at hand, lay Temple Square, where the Order of Sung and the Temple of Kahooli were housed. Other major temples were also nearby, but those two were especially close. She wondered, not for the first time, how her life would be had Brother Mathias been of a different order.
He had been the first holy man she had encountered, and the first of the two men in her life for whom her feelings were not dark; she had loved Brother Mathias as a daughter loved a father. After three years in the elegant brothel, one of them lost to the very drugs that had claimed her mother, the Mockers had sold her to a very wealthy Keshian trader; he had become so enamoured with Sandreena that he had insisted on buying her and taking her back to his home in the Keshian city of Shamata. Because he was as proficient in illegal trading as he was in honest business, the Mockers considered him a valuable associate and while not in the habit of selling their girls – slavery was not permitted in the Kingdom – they gladly vended her services for an unspecified duration in exchange for a prodigious sum of gold.
It had been Brother Mathias who had saved her life and changed it. She could not recall their first encounter without becoming distressed, and now was not the time to show such feelings, not before seeing the Father-Bishop. She turned her mind from the memory back to the matter at hand.
She reached the modest office wherein worked the single most powerful man of the Order of the Shield of the Weak. Only the Grand Master in Rillanon ranked higher. But although he retained his ceremonial responsibilities, age had robbed the Grand Master of the ability to perform his real duties and the seven Father-Bishops directed most of the Order’s business. There was a persistent rumour that Father-Bishop Creegan was the prelate most likely to succeed when the Grand Master’s health finally failed him.
To the surprise of almost everyone who visited the Father-Bishop, his office had no anteroom, no clerk or monk waited to attend him outside, and the door was always open. Those who resided in the Temple of Krondor knew the reason: the Father-Bishop’s door was open to anyone who needed him, but for the sake of the Goddess’s mercy, their reasons for disturbing his work had better be good.
She stood outside the door, waiting to be bid to enter. She remembered the first time she had come here, fresh from her training at the temple in Kesh. She had returned to Krondor with a mixture of anticipation and fear, for she had not been back to the city during the five years since her sale to the Keshian. But just one minute in the Father-Bishop’s presence had made all of her concerns about returning to the Kingdom’s Western capital vanish.
He noticed her standing and waved her in. ‘I have something that needs investigating, Sandreena.’ He didn’t give her leave to sit in one of the four chairs placed around the room, so she moved closer but continued to stand.
His desk was simple, a plain table with a stack of woven trays in which to file documents for his staff to dispose of. He kept them very busy.
He should be considered a handsome man, Sandreena considered not for the first time, but there was something about his manner that was off-putting, a quality that could be considered arrogance, if he wasn’t always proved right. Still, he had been instrumental in helping the former Krondorian whore find a meaningful life, and for that she would always be grateful. And, she had to concede that he always found for her the most interesting tasks. ‘I am ready, Father-Bishop.’
He glanced up, then smiled, and she felt a strong surge of pleasure at the hint of approval. ‘Yes, you always are,’ he said.
He sat back, waving her over to a chair. She knew that meant a long discussion, or at least a very complex set of instructions. ‘You look well,’ he observed. ‘How have you been since last we spoke?’
She knew he was already aware of what she had been doing in the year and a month since she had last been in his office. She had been sent to investigate a report of some interference with lawful Temple practices in the Free City of Natal – which proved false – and she had then travelled on to the far Duchy of Crydee, where an isolated village was suspected of harbouring a fugitive magician, by the name of Sidi, which had also proved false. But she gave the Father-Bishop a full report anyway; of her encounter with a mad sorcerer who had dabbled too far into what were called the Dark Arts, and how she had saved the villagers from his depredations. His small band of dark spirits had completely sacked the settlement, leaving the survivors without any means to endure the coming winter. She had interceded with the younger son of the Duke of Crydee, who had agreed to send aid to the village – his father and elder brother were away from the castle at Crydee, but the boy had easily turned the castle’s reeve from ignoring the villagers’ pleas to sending immediate help.
In all, it had been an important but prosaic burden, once the mad magician had been disposed of. The Duke’s second son, a boy of no more than fifteen summers old, namesake of his father, Henry, had impressed Sandreena. He was called Hal by most, and had showed both maturity and decisiveness when acting as interlocutor between his father’s surrogate and the itinerant Knight-Adamant of the Temple of Dala. The outlying villages often seemed more a burden than a benefit to the local nobles, producing little in the way of income from the land, but requiring a disproportionate amount of protection from marauding renegades, raiding goblins, dark elves, or whatever other menace inhabited the region.
Sandreena had spent the better part of the past year in Crydee, and had only left when she had seen the village back on a firm footing. On the way back to Krondor she had intervened in half a dozen minor conflicts, always taking the side of the outnumbered, besieged, or beleaguered as her calling dictated, attempting to restore balance and work out a peaceful solution, always mediating where she could. She was often struck by the irony of how violence was usually needed in order to prevent a more violent outcome.
‘What are your orders, Father-Bishop?’
His brow furrowed slightly. ‘No time for pleasantries? Very well then, to your task. What do you know about the Peaks of the Quor?’
Sandreena paused for a moment before answering. The Father-Bishop had little time and less patience for overblown attempts to impress him, so she finally said, ‘Little that is germane to what you’re about to tell me, I suspect.’
He smiled. ‘What do you know?’
‘It’s a region of Kesh, south of Roldem, isolated and sparsely populated. Rumour suggests that smugglers put in there from time to time, seeking to circumvent Roldem and Kesh’s revenue ships, but more than that I do not know.’
‘A race of beings live there, called the Quor. Hence the region’s name. They are in turn protected, if that is indeed the correct term, by a band of elves.’ Sandreena raised an eyebrow in surprise. To the best of her knowledge, elves only resided in the lands north of Crydee.
‘We have a little information beyond that, but not much. This is why I have decided to send someone down there.’
‘Me, Father-Bishop?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘There is a village on the eastern side of the peninsula, named Akrakon, the inhabitants are descendants of one of the more annoying tribes of the region, but were long ago subjugated by Kesh. They mind their manners, more or less, but lately they’ve been troubled by marauding pirates.’ The Father-Bishop’s tone changed. ‘We’ve had sporadic word of these pirates for over ten years. We have no idea who they are or why they bother to trouble the coastal villages…’ He shrugged. ‘All we know is that they seem to have a liking for black headgear, hats, scarves, and the like. Where they come from, what they want, who they serve …?’ Again he shrugged. ‘Be cautious, Sandreena; occasionally they number a magic user or two in their crew. Our first report involved a demon, as well.’
She nodded. Now she understood why she had been chosen. She had faced down more than one demon in her short tenure with the Order.
‘As Kesh’s Imperial Court is occupied by far weightier concerns, it has fallen to us to investigate this injustice.’
‘And if I should also happen to discover more about these people in the mountains, the Quor, all the better.’
‘All the better,’ he agreed. ‘But be careful, for there is another complication.’
Dryly, she said, ‘There always is.’
‘Very powerful people are also interested in the Quor and the elves who serve or protect them; people who have influence and reach, even into very high office.’ He sat back and said, ‘The Magicians.’
She didn’t need to ask whom he meant. The Magicians of Stardock were looked upon with deep suspicion by the Temples of the Kingdom and Kesh. Magic was the province of the gods, granted only to their faithful servants to do the work the gods intended. Magicians were seen as expropriators of power intended for only a chosen few, and as such were considered suspect at best, untrustworthy at worst. Many magic users became seduced by the darker arts, several having been marked for death by the Temple’s leaders due to past wrongs.
Sandreena had encountered several magic users over the years, most with unhappy outcomes, and those that weren’t had still been difficult. It was a sad truth that even the most depraved had believed they had some justification for their behaviour. She recalled one particularly ugly incident with a group of necromancers, a trio of maniacs who had been so overcome by madness that the holy knight had no alternative but to see them dead. She still carried a puckered scar on her left thigh as a reminder that some people were incapable of reason. One of the magicians had thrown a dark magic bolt at her before he died, and while the initial injury had been minor, the wound would not close, festering and growing more putrid by the day. It had taken a prodigious amount of work by the Temple healers to keep Sandreena from losing her leg, or worse, and she had been confined to her bed for nearly a month because of it.
‘I’ll be alert to any sign that the Magicians have a hand in this, Father-Bishop.’
‘Before you go, have you paid a courtesy visit to the High Priestess yet?’
Sandreena smiled. No matter how devout the members of the Order might be, there was always politics. ‘Had you not summoned me from my meditation and cleansing, I would have made that call first, Father-Bishop.’
Creegan smiled ruefully. ‘Ah, just when things are going smoothly, I cause a fuss.’
‘That fuss was caused long before today, Father-Bishop.’
He shrugged slightly. ‘The High Priestess is … steadfast in her devotion, and not well pleased that one of their brightest students choose the Adamant Way. We both agree that you would have risen high in the Order as a priestess, but, it is not for us to question the path upon which the Goddess has placed you.’
Sandreena’s smile broadened. ‘Not to question it, perhaps, but apparently it still permits some to demand a degree of clarification.’
Father-Bishop Creegan laughed, which he rarely did. ‘I miss your wit, girl.’
She resisted the urge to reflexively sigh at the word. He only called her girl during their private conversations, and it reminded her of a time when their mentor and protégé roles had come very close to becoming something far more personal. The Orders of Dala were not celibate; although the demands of the calling made marriage and family a rare occurrence, liaisons did occasionally take place. However, for a man of the Father-Bishop’s rank and stature to become intimate with an acolyte, or even a Squire-Adamant, would have been inappropriate, and Sandreena’s natural aversion towards men had made it difficult for her to trust his more personal interest in her. So they had never managed to confront the tension between them. Still, both were painfully aware of the attraction. Forcing down disturbing feelings, Sandreena said, ‘If there’s nothing else, Father-Bishop?’
‘No, daughter,’ he said formally, apparently recognizing his previous choice of words. ‘May the Goddess look over you and guide you.’
‘May she guide you as well, Father-Bishop,’ said Sandreena. She quickly departed and made her way down the long corridor that dominated the south side of the huge Temple. Directly to the north lay the huge central Temple yard, holding the worshippers’ court and several shrines around its edge. Unlike other faiths, there were few occasions for the public worship of Dala, but there were many times when suppliants came to offer votive prayers and thanks for the Goddess’s intercession. There was a constant coming and going through the main gates of the Temple, at all hours of the day and night.
As a result, most business within the Temple took place in the offices along this southern corridor. The residences and guest quarters, servants’ quarters, and all the requisite function rooms, kitchen, pantry, laundry, as well as the baths and meditation gardens, lay on either side of the great courtyard. The sleeping quarters of the clergy and those, like herself, of the martial orders, were situated in a basement hall, below the one she now walked through.
At the opposite end of the hallway stood the office of the High Priestess. The fact that the offices of the two Temple leaders lay as far from one another as was physically possible was not lost on many. Unlike the Father-Bishop’s office, the High Priestess’s had an antechamber, in which sat her personal secretary, one of the Temple priestesses. She looked up as Sandreena entered the room. If she recognized Sandreena from previous visits, she didn’t reveal so.
‘Sister,’ she said softly in even tones. ‘How may I assist you?’
Fighting off a sudden urge to turn and walk out, she said, ‘I am Sandreena, Knight-Adamant of the Order of the Shield. I am paying a courtesy call upon the High Priestess.’
The slender, middle-aged woman stood up regally. She wore the plain robes of her order, a brown homespun bleached to a light tan. Around her neck she displayed the Order’s sign, a simple shield hung from a chain, but it was not lost on Sandreena that they were made from gold and were of fine craftsmanship. A gift from the High Priestess no doubt. ‘I will see if the High Priestess has a moment for you.’
Sandreena quietly prayed that a moment was indeed all she had to spare, for she knew that an invitation to sit and ‘chat’ meant a long and tedious inquisition. A moment later Sandreena’s worst fears were justified when she was ushered into the main chamber and found two chairs flanking a table with a fresh pot of tea.
High Priestess Seldon was a robust-looking, stout woman in her fifties. She had rosy cheeks and hair so light a grey it bordered on white, which made her dark sable eyes all the more dramatic and penetrating when she fixed her gaze upon Sandreena, as she had on more than one occasion. ‘Ah, Sister,’ she said beckoning Sandreena to take the empty chair. The High Priestess was also an ample woman, who seemed to grow in girth each time Sandreena met with her. ‘What brings you to Krondor, child?’ she asked.
Sandreena almost winced. If ‘girl’ meant the Father-Bishop had put aside his authority, ‘child’ meant the High Priestess was asserting hers. Despite the fact that Sandreena had served for four years as a Squire-Adamant in the Temple, had been trained in every weapon blessed for use by the Order, and for the last three had been wandering the Kingdom and Northern Kesh as a weapon of the Goddess, the High Priestess was ensuring that she remembered who held the authority in Krondor, and reminded her that she was a traitorous girl for giving up the path of the Priestess and preferring to take up arms to bludgeon the unworthy.