Froi and the others were quiet for the rest of the way and he could see that Arjuro was curious about this strange visit to the dying man. No matter how much Arjuro had tried for the last two nights he had not uncovered the reason for Ariston’s warning against the godshouse Priests. Froi wondered what had taken place forty-five years ago on an isolated mountain peak to warrant such an accusation.
As Ariston had promised, it was half a day’s ride and Quintana slept against Froi’s back most of the way.
‘Why is she always tired?’ he asked Lirah.
‘Because she’s making a baby,’ Lirah said quietly to prevent Ariston from hearing. ‘In the first few months when I was carrying mine I was weary to the bone.’
Froi noticed that she said ‘carrying mine’, not ‘carrying you’. Lirah and Gargarin still had not acknowledged him as theirs and he realised that he wanted more from them than they were willing to give. But they seemed broken people who were not good with words, so he kept his silence.
When they reached a small hut close to the peak of the mountain, Ariston helped Quintana dismount and once again he grabbed her face, this time more gently, to study her. Lirah exchanged a look with Gargarin and he shook his head to silence any question from her lips. Although it seemed unlikely that Ariston had ever travelled to the Citavita and seen Quintana before, the Turlan was strangely suspicious of her.
A woman stepped out of the cottage, having heard the horses. Perhaps sixty in age, her face was long and thin. She seemed guarded, until she saw Ariston and greeted him with a nod. But then she noticed Arjuro and her expression changed to hostility.
‘Why bring a godshouse Priest to my father’s house, Ariston?’
‘Because I believe these people have a story to tell,’ he replied.
Arjuro stared at the woman as if he was seeing an apparition.
‘What is it you see in me?’ she asked angrily.
Arjuro looked beyond her into the open doorway of the cottage.
‘I truly feel I can vouch that they mean no harm, Hesta,’ Ariston said. ‘I’m curious myself.’
The woman, Hesta, walked away and entered the house. Froi and the others looked at Ariston for guidance. He nodded and they followed her inside to where a weathered man lay on a cot. Skin and bones, he seemed, with gnarled hands that Quintana reached out to trace with an inquisitive finger.
‘He’s the oldest man I’ve ever seen,’ she said indignantly.
The woman stared at her in amazement.
‘Who are you?’ Hesta of Turla asked her abruptly.
‘R … Regina,’ Quintana said, but she was an awful liar because she looked at Gargarin for approval. Froi made a point of rehearsing her with a different name. Not Quintana. Not Reginita. Not anything that would have strangers connecting her to the palace.
‘I’ve dreamt of the dying man of Turla,’ Quintana said. ‘Do you call on my dreams, old man?’ she asked loudly. Gargarin winced. This was certainly one of the moments where they needed the decorum of the other Quintana.
The old man stared at her through milky eyes tinged with blue. He beckoned her with one of his gnarled hands and she leaned forward for him to speak against her ear.
‘Your whiskers are tickling,’ she said.
The man chuckled and Hesta softened.
‘My father has been dying for almost nineteen years, yet he refuses to be taken.’
‘But he seems in so much pain,’ Arjuro said, lifting the man into a sitting position so he could breathe easier.
‘Why would he share his dreams with our girl?’ Gargarin asked.
‘You need to tell me who she is before I answer that question,’ the woman said firmly, but Froi could see fierce emotion in her eyes as she stared between her father and Quintana.
‘Is he gods’ touched?’ Arjuro asked.
Hesta shuddered. ‘I’ve not heard those words for many years now. He refused to say them out loud after the godshouse Priests came.’
They waited and she sighed. ‘Yes, he is, and I am too, but not enough to make us special.’ She looked down at her father tenderly. ‘He was good with his herd. The perfect shepherd.’
After too long a bout of silence, Hesta shivered. ‘You’re frightening me.’
Gargarin bowed his apology. ‘My name is Gargarin, and this is my brother Arjuro, Lirah and … our young ones,’ Gargarin said. ‘We have no idea why we are here except our girl has dreamt of your father all her life.’
‘He wants to die,’ Quintana announced. ‘But he’s waiting for the spirit of another. That’s what he tells me in the dream. He’s looking for his lost lamb.’
Hesta studied Quintana warily. ‘Why you?’ she asked.
Quintana looked at Gargarin, who sighed, not knowing how much to divulge.
‘Let’s just say she isn’t who she seems.’
‘Can she not speak for herself? She seems simple.’
‘I’m like you and your father,’ Quintana said. ‘A bit of a gift but not enough to make me special.’
There was silence from the others, made uncomfortable by Quintana’s frank words.
The woman noticed her father’s hand hovering above his blankets and gripped it.
‘What can you tell them, Hesta, that may make sense?’ Ariston asked.
She shook her head, confused. ‘What is there to tell?’
Froi walked away with frustration. They were talking in circles and wasting time. Hesta seemed nervous at his movement.
‘You’ve come from the Citavita, haven’t you?’ she asked bitterly. ‘What could we possibly have left for you after all these years?’
‘Hesta?’ Arjuro said, as though asking her permission to use her name. She nodded. ‘Can you tell us the story of the Priests coming to take away the children?’
She shook her head. ‘Not the children. One child. A gifted child, beyond anything conceivable. If it was to rain in four days’ time, she would say the words, “In four days time it will rain.” If a man she did not know in a village half a day’s ride away was to die soon, she would say it long before the man would die. People came from all over the mountain to hear their future spoken by this child.
‘When she was thirteen, the godshouse Priests came to see us and asked her questions all the day long when she only wished to play with her lambs. Oh, the songs she’d sing to bring them home,’ Hesta said, closing her eyes. ‘I can still hear them in my sleep.’
‘What happened to her?’ Lirah asked, shivering.
Hesta’s eyes were faraway and the dying man held one of her hands.
‘They stole her. In the dead of the night, the Priests stole her. We never saw her again.’
Arjuro held a palm to his brow as though he could not quite believe what he was hearing.
‘In years to come they may have covered her face when she walked amongst the people, but I knew who she was.’
Arjuro let out a ragged breath.
‘Arjuro?’ Gargarin asked.
‘The Oracle Queen was a Turlan mountain girl?’ Arjuro said, looking at Hesta for confirmation. ‘Stolen from her people?’
There was a hushed silence amongst the others.
Arjuro reached out and touched the woman’s face.
‘You have some of her features,’ he said with a gentle smile. ‘I lived with her in the godshouse of the Citavita. I was a young lad, and she was a fair bit older, but we shared a … strange humour. They said I was her favourite.’
He pointed to a chair beside the dying man’s bed and she nodded. Arjuro sat.
‘I never really quite believed that the Oracles were demigods who found their way to the Citavita godshouse,’ Arjuro said.
‘But most people do,’ Gargarin said. ‘They need to believe it.’
‘The last thing they’ll want to hear is that she came from the backwaters of Turla,’ Ariston said, his face pale at what had just been revealed.
‘Who were you to her?’ Hesta asked Arjuro.
‘A Priestling. Those of us who were gods’ touched lived at the godshouse from when we were sixteen to twenty-five. After that we could go as we please, live the way we wanted, but during those years we lived and breathed for the godshouse. We were the voice of the Oracle, really. She rarely ventured outside the godshouse walls, and when I think of it now, perhaps she was as much a prisoner to the Citavita as …’