He stopped dead. "No! I can't go in there, Hiddi!" An initiate of the Hands of Anziel could not worship Eriander in Her temple.
Hiddi laughed as if she'd met such scruples before and knew exactly what to do about them. "Darling, you're sweating like a stallion. What's that bulge, Benard, mm?" Her wrap dropped around her ankles, leaving her wearing sandals and a quizzical expression.
There should have been smoke rising from Benard's smock, but his thumping animal lust suddenly lost out to another form of excitement. In the soft lamplight she was as close to feminine perfection as he could recall ever seeing, a typical Vigaelian with cream-pale skin and almost invisible golden fuzz at groin and armpits; her limbs were straight and slender, belly barely curved, hips wide but well shaped, breasts high and firm. Her hair was a foam of golden curls. How much of that was real and how much illusion, a gift granted by her goddess?
"You come along with me, Benard!" She held out a hand to lead him, and the whole world seemed to tilt toward her.
The beer fog had lifted. He hardly heard her. "No!" he muttered. "I cannot. Not in there."
"Is chastity your corban?" She smiled in disbelief.
"No, but I can't... can't go in there."
"Married? Most men can pee across that ditch."
"Not married."
"But you want me very much. Very much! And I want you! Don't you ever hammer on something softer than nasty old rock sometimes?"
"Turn around."
Amused, Hiddi undulated in a slow turn. There was not a mole or freckle on her anywhere. She was very young and quite beautiful enough to have suitors by the score. The Nymphs of Eriander claimed to be a holy mystery and were often spoken of as dangerous. Benard suspected they were merely a prostitutes' guild, with no more ability to turn men into slobbering idiots than all women had. He had never availed himself of their services—not because he feared their supposed god-given powers to enslave, but because he found other women quite alluring enough and frequently available.
"Stand up there," he said, and Hiddi obediently went up two steps. "Don't wiggle. Put that hand on your hip, hold the other one like this. Tip your head." He gazed in rapture at the miraculous breasts, the pink softness around the nipples.
"Benard! Most men do more than look. Much more. You're not going to kiss me again?" She fluttered kohl-darkened lashes at him.
"No," he said hoarsely. "I must not. But listen. I am carving statues of the Bright Ones for the Pantheon. It is my first big hire, a very big one ... I needed a model for holy Anziel Herself, my lady of beauty. She sent me to you. I will use you as the model and carve a statue that looks just like you."
Hiddi frowned, suspecting mockery. "Doing what?" She must meet many strange men in her trade, but perhaps none stranger than this.
"Just standing. I will preserve your beauty in marble forever. Your great-grandchildren will see your likeness and marvel at how beautiful you were."
With a sudden switch to laughter, she ran down the steps and tried to embrace him. "Do that tomorrow! Tonight is for fun!" She struggled to kiss him. "You talk pretty, Benard! Show me what you can do! I want you! I want you to enjoy me."
He pushed her away and held her at arm's length. "Your goddess will not mind you being a model, will She?"
Hiddi pouted. Unable to reach anything else, she began stroking his arms again, and even that sent tremors of excitement through him. "Why should He mind? He gives joy to everyone."
"Then come and see me in daylight. I live... work... in a shed in the yard behind the Pantheon. I will make a few models. In clay. I need to see you in daylight, but mostly I work from memory." He was never going to forget her as she was now.
"But I owe you—"
"Nothing. Thank you, Hiddi. Now I have seen the perfect woman, which is reward enough. Twelve blessings on you."
"You spurn me? You treat me like trash!"
She sounded close to tears. To a careful eye, though, she did not quite look it. His resolution wavered. Then the careful eye came to his rescue.
"No bruises! None anywhere? You're not hurt!" No red fingermarks where Cutrath had gripped her arm; no signs where she had been squeezed or pinched or slapped. "So it's true what they say? You did use a blessing on him! And on me!" He pushed her away so hard that she staggered.
"True what who say?" She came for him again and he struck down her hands in sudden anger.
"Everyone."
According to the wilder legends, a Nymph could enslave a man with a single touch. Pigballs! No wonder he had been reduced to a slobbering idiot! She had used her powers on Cutrath's friends to stop them joining in the fight, so she had saved Benard more than he had saved her. She had never needed saving.
"Goodbye, Hiddi!" He turned and ran away toward the dawn.
two
ORLAD ORLADSON
was Attending the God, which was the fourth test of the second level. He stood blindfolded before the image, clasping a bronze sword in his right hand and an ax in his left. He wore nothing except the rope collar that had encircled his neck since he won probation three years ago. Hostleader Gzurg had pointed out that the candidates could reasonably beg for clothing for this test, up here in icy Nardalborg, but of course they had all spurned any such display of weakness.
They must attend holy Weru until He dismissed them. They were not allowed to move at all, although as a special mercy, they could wriggle their toes to keep blood moving. Any candidate who dropped his sword or ax before his dismissal would be punished, which probably meant a beating sharp enough to ruin his chances of passing the tests still to come.
Nardalborg was an indomitable stronghold, controlling the supply lines of Bloodlord Stralg, over in Florengia. Set on bleak and rocky moors, it dominated the trail from Tryfors to the Ice, which began only five menzils away, and whose sinister glint haunted the eastern sky. Bitter winds ruled this pitiless land, driving gray showers over its treacherous bogs, its bottomless black tarns and white frothing torrents; here roamed catbears and even more savage rock boars. There was a gale blowing now, wailing in the eaves and also thumping a loose shutter: thud! thud! thud! to drive a man mad.
Orlad could smell the bitter peaty scents; he could certainly feel the wind on his bare skin, but he could not see. The mammoths in the paddocks trumpeted sometimes. The waterfall's deep rumble was a constant in Nardalborg, but it was the accursed shutter that Orlad noticed.
Thud! thud! thud!...
Sixteen probationers had come into the shrine for this test—when? Yesterday? It might have been days ago; there was no way of telling except by hunger and thirst and pain. And the thumping of that damnable shutter. Sometimes the sound of rain or sleet on the roof. Strange lights moved in the darkness, and Orlad knew he was close to hallucinating. The god had been known to reject candidates in this test by driving them permanently mad.
Naked and blindfolded, a man was defenseless, utterly vulnerable—this tested trust and courage and humility. There were watchers. No doubt Hostleader Therek Hragson came by sometimes to see how his lads were faring, but testing was done by outside examiners and the hostleader was not supposed to interfere. In practice, though, he probably made sure his favorites were not treated too harshly, because Therek was satrap of Tryfors, brother of Bloodlord Stralg, and nobody was going to argue with him.
But this time the examiner was Hostleader Gzurg Hrothgatson, one of the finest warriors in all the Heroes of Weru. He was old now, but he had been at the bloodlord's side on the first crossing of the Edge, that magnificent epic of will and endurance when men had climbed on ladders built from the frozen bodies of their fallen—and fed on those bodies, too. Only a third of the horde had survived that journey. It made Orlad very humble to think, he might one day follow in such footsteps; he could not imagine what feats his generation could ever perform to equal those of Stralg's Heroes.