Hamnet laughed, not altogether pleasantly. To the priest and priestess before him, he said, “Good thing you’re up here on the Bizogot steppe and not in Raumsdalia. Emperor Sigvat would try to tax you or make you tell him whatever you know or try to close you down.”
To his surprise, they looked amused. “Some things never change,” the priestess said. “I don’t suppose we expected this to be different from the way it was in the old days.”
“In the old days . . .” Hamnet echoed. What did that mean to these people? “Are those the days before the Glacier moved south this last time?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What were things like then? Do you know what things were like before the Glacier came forward time before last?” Hamnet wasn’t Eyvind Torfinn, but if you weren’t curious about ancient days in a place like this, you probably had no pulse.
“There were empires and kingdoms and wandering tribes. People were people,” the priestess said. “And when the Glacier moved, a lot of them died.”
“So we’re the descendants of the ones who lived,” Hamnet said.
“You would be unlikely to derive from anyone else.” The priestess’ smile didn’t keep Hamnet from blushing.
“Do you remember those days yourself? Were you here for them?” he persisted. “How did this place survive when the Glacier came down on top of it?”
“I was here for some of those days: the worst time, when people saw they couldn’t stop the Glacier and despaired,” she answered. “But, as I said, I have not been here for all the days since, not in the usual sense of the word. Those days went around me, not through me-that is the best way I can put it.”
“But the Glacier didn’t go around the Golden Shrine. The Glacier went over it. Then Sudertorp Lake covered it,” Hamnet said.
“That is so,” the priestess agreed.
“Then how-?” He’d already asked once. Would asking twice do any good?
Marcovefa touched his arm. “Let it go,” she said. “I know more shamanry than your folk do. These folk know more than that much more than I do. They will not be able to explain it. Could you explain taming a horse to a baby making messes in its drawers?”
“I am not a baby,” Hamnet Thyssen said stubbornly.
“Your friend may have said that. I did not,” the priestess assured him. “I-” She broke off. Suddenly, she didn’t look mild or amused. Her eyes flashed. That wasn’t aimed at Hamnet. He would no more have wanted it to be than he would have wanted a longbow aimed at his bare chest from five paces. “Where is the woman who came in with you?” the priestess demanded.
Marcovefa stood beside Hamnet. Liv and Audun were still talking with that other priestess. A sinking feeling filled Hamnet. “Gudrid?” he asked.
“If that is her name.” The priestess sounded impatient-and angry. “Where is she? She has gone where she is not welcome.”
The garden courtyard had several entrances. One, of course, opened onto the outside world. Who could guess where the others led? The priests and priestesses here already knew. If they didn’t want strangers around, who could blame them? Hamnet Thyssen wouldn’t have left the courtyard without getting someone’s leave first. But Gudrid always assumed she was welcome anywhere.
“I’m sure she meant no harm,” Hamnet said, though he wasn’t sure of any such thing. He wondered why he defended his former wife, even knowing she wouldn’t have done the same for him. The only answer he found was that the two of them belonged to the same time. He might have put in a good word for a Ruler who’d wandered away from the crowd.
“You may be sure of that. I am not.” The priestess turned away from him and spoke to her colleagues. All of a sudden, Hamnet stopped being able to understand her. He looked over at Marcovefa. She shrugged-she couldn’t follow what the priestess was saying, either.
An irate squawk came echoing out of one of the dark entranceways. Hamnet sighed quietly-yes, that was Gudrid. “Take your hands off me!” she said. “I didn’t do anything!”
Two priests steered her back out into the courtyard. One had hold of each elbow. She tried to kick one of them, but his leg wasn’t there when her foot swung through. Hamnet couldn’t seen how she missed him, only that she did. He could also see that he wouldn’t have tried antagonizing those men. Their faces warned-warned him, anyway-they had no patience for foolishness.
The priestess gestured. The two priests let go. Gudrid came forward all the same. Plainly, she didn’t want to. As plainly, she had no choice. “I didn’t do anything!” she repeated, louder this time.
“Why did you go off where you had no business going?” the priestess asked in a voice like beaten bronze.
Gudrid looked innocent. She did it very well-certainly well enough to have fooled Hamnet before. That made him distrust it now. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to,” she said, wide-eyed. “I was just looking around.”
“Is that so?” the priestess said.
“By God, it is!” Gudrid’s eyes got wider and more innocent-seeming than ever.
Beside Hamnet, Marcovefa stirred. He thought he knew why. He wouldn’t have used God’s name in this place, not if there was the slightest chance he might be forsworn. With Gudrid, as heartache had taught him, there was always that chance.
Gudrid’s right hand went to one of the pouches on her belt. Her expression changed from innocent to horrified-she didn’t want that hand doing any such thing. It opened the pouch even so. What her hand took from it was a jewel on a chain. The chain was of some silvery metal, but Hamnet didn’t think it was silver. The jewel might have been an opal, but was more brilliant and shed more coruscating rainbows of light than any opal he’d ever imagined. He could see why Gudrid would have admired it. That she’d been rash enough to take it appalled him.
“Did you bring this into the Golden Shrine?” the priestess asked, surely knowing the answer already.
Gudrid made a ghastly attempt to smile as she shook her head. “N-No,” she said; not even she, with all her gall, could keep her voice from wobbling.
“How did it end up in your belt pouch, then?”
“I . . .” Gudrid paused.I just grabbed it because I liked the way it looked wouldn’t do. She did manage to put a better face on it than that: “I wanted a little something to remember the Golden Shrine by.”
“A little something?” The priestess raised an eyebrow. “Do you have any idea what you stole?” She gestured. The jewel in Gudrid’s hand flared bright as the sun. Gudrid squawked. Hamnet wondered if it burned her. Evidently not. She showed no pain. “Do you?” the priestess repeated.
Hamnet noticed the woman didn’t say what it was or how important it was. In a place like this, even such a marvel might be no more than a toy. He wondered whether Gudrid was too flustered to see that.
He suspected she might be. “I-I meant no harm,” she quavered. He would have pitied her. Even knowing what he knew, he would have. He disliked himself because that was true, which didn’t mean he could help it.
The look the priestess gave her made the Glacier seem warm. “Do you recall what you heard when you came in here?” the gold-robed woman asked.
“Nobody told me not to go looking at things.” Even now, Gudrid tried to rally. She said something obviously true, something which also pulled attention away from the sorry truth that she hadn’t just looked.