The Priestess and the Thief Read online

  “You really do have a way with beasts,” Tully said, shaking her head. “Is that why you want to see the Tenebrian Crown Prince?”

  “Something like that,” Elli said evasively. “But zorels aren’t that hard to deal with, you know. They’re actually quite intelligent. Some of them have the understanding of a five year or six-year-old child—I’ve even heard of some trainers teaching their zorels to read or count.”

  Tully snorted.

  “Readin’ and countin’ is all well and good but I’d just as soon Looney kept her mind on pullin’ the cart.”

  “She will,” Elli assured her. “She’s a good girl—she likes to work hard, you know—as long as she’s not in pain or frightened of something. You just have to let her know everything is all right and then she’ll do her very best for you every time.”

  Tully just gave her a sidelong glance and Elli realized she’d said too much. People always started looking at her like that when she told them how their zorels were thinking or feeling. They thought she was odd for knowing—or thought she was only pretending to know or, worse of all, thought that she was crazy. But understanding zorels came so naturally to Elli it was hard to remember she ought not to speak about it to other people.

  “What’s that interesting smell?” she asked, to change the subject.

  “Spice District up ahead,” Tully said shortly.

  Elli saw that the flapping fabrics had given way to stalls with wide baskets of many-colored spices. The air was thick with their scents—sharp and sweet and bitter and tangy and aromatic and peppery all at once. Looney sneezed and snorted but kept pulling steadily as the road climbed upward.

  After the Spice District, they passed by the Leatherworks District and then the Metalworks, where every shop seemed to have pots and pans hanging outside, banging and clanging noisily against each other. Elli watched anxiously as Looney laid her tall, tufted ears back at the noise, but the doe kept pulling steadily, so there was no need to get out and reassure her again.

  The people in the streets seemed to be mostly humanoids from Elli’s home world of Torl Prime. Though every once in a while, she would catch sight of a Tenebrian, their tall, thin bodies swathed in lace and velvet, just as Tully had described them. Some were carried in jeweled chairs, borne on the broad shoulders of burly servants but most of them were mounted on zorels of extremely fine breeding. Their fore and hind quarters matched seamlessly and their feathery manes and the long tufts of their tails were done up in elaborate ribbons and bows as fancy as their owners’ clothing.

  The Tenebrians carried themselves with an air of aloof grace. In addition to their great height and slenderness, they also had pale blue skin—which in their women was milky white, giving them an almost albino appearance. Their complexions and manners set them aside from the ruddy-skinned humanoids from Torl Prime. It was clear they were aristocrats, out for a ride among the peasantry with whom they had no wish to mingle.

  Elli watched them with anxiety, wondering how in the world she was going to get any of them to notice her—let alone get one to let her into the palace so she could beg for a bit of their Healing Lattice. Well, she supposed the Goddess would have to make a way if she really wanted her to fulfill this quest she had set herself.

  At last they came to the Greengrocers District where Tully was to sell her thunder melons. As they rounded the corner and climbed yet another hill, there was an opening in the shops and the tall, golden walls of the palace came into view at last.

  “Ohhh…” Elli breathed, looking up at its tall spires and gleaming battlements. “It glitters just like gold!” she exclaimed.

  “That’s only ‘cause it’s built of sparkle stone,” Tully said sourly. “Damn Tenebrians brought it with them from their home world. Goddess only knows how much it cost to transport all that lot but they done it all right.”

  She spat over the side of the wagon, as though to express her opinion of the Tenebrians and their grand palace.

  “It’s beautiful,” Elli said honestly. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Well, good luck gettin’ into it,” Tully told her. “It ain’t like they let just anybody who wants to waltz in there. Still…” She eyed Elli stained white robe. “Maybe they’ll make an exception for you—you bein’ a priestess and all.”

  “Hopefully,” Elli said. “Well, thank you for the r—”

  The words died on her lips. Directly across the street from them, in front of a store selling some kind of ripe, red fruit, was a Tenebrian rider dressed in a rich blue velvet cloak with silver lace at his slender neck.

  But it wasn’t his rich clothing that drew Elli’s eye—it was the gorgeous zorel he was riding. It was a purebred steamer—white everywhere except for the feathery socks at its front claws and back hooves and its mane and tail, which were all midnight black.

  It was a beautiful animal but what got Elli’s blood boiling was the fact that the Tenebrian rider was beating it, as hard as he could with a stiff leather crop.

  “No!” Elli gasped. The sight of an animal being abused had never been something she could tolerate. Before she knew what she was doing, she had launched herself off the moving wagon and was darting across the street.

  Ten

  Now where in the Seven Hells was the little priestess, anyway?

  Roke had searched the whole damn city twice and he had yet to find her. He had gotten several suspicious looks from the humanoids from Torl Prime. The few Kindred they’d had interbreed with them were the blond-haired, blue-eyed Blood Kindred. Though Roke himself was half Blood Kindred, he looked more like his Sire, who had been a Havoc. The result being that he was as dark as a Beast Kindred, though without the golden eyes. That difference was apparently enough to engender distrust.

  The tall, skinny Tenebrians, on the other hand, mostly ignored him, which suited Roke fine. They were a strange people with even stranger customs and he wanted nothing to do with them.

  He was just rounding a bend to enter the fruit and vegetable part of the market district for the third time, when he heard some kind of commotion going on. Looking across the street, he stared in surprise at the scene playing out.

  A tall, pale blue Tenebrian rider was gripping the reins of one of those beasts they liked to ride here—a zorel, Roke thought they were called. They were strange looking animals—a mixture of a horse and a dragon—both Earth animals, though one of them was mythical. (Roke couldn’t remember which was the imaginary one, but he thought it was the horse.)

  At any rate, the zorel was bucking and hot steam was coming from its flaring nostrils. The rider was attempting to get control of it by beating it with a crop and sawing on the reins.

  “Be still, Sir!” he was shouting at the top of his voice, sounding like an offended gentleman who couldn’t believe he was being affronted by an underling who had failed to do what he was told. “I say, be still!”

  Suddenly, there was a blur of motion and Roke saw a girl in a white robe jump from a moving cart and dash across the street. She grasped the tall Tenebrian’s arm on the downswing and ripped the riding crop out of his elegantly gloved hand.

  The rider had been leaning to one side in the saddle. As the zorel chose that moment to buck again, he overbalanced and went flying out of his saddle and into the mud at the side of the road.

  “You beast!” the girl shouted in a high, sweet voice like a little bird and Roke realized that she was talking to the rider, who was looking up at her with a dazed expression. “How dare you beat him?” she raged and threw the riding crop at the rider’s head. Then she turned back to the bucking, rearing, snorting zorel and somehow managed to catch it by the bridle.

  The zorel was huge compared to the girl—the top of her head barely reached its shoulder. Roke started forward, afraid she would be clawed by the silver-shod front talons or trampled by the back hooves. But somehow she managed to dodge the flailing limbs of the great creature and pull down its bridle to catch its eye.

  The moment she
looked into the great, slitted silver eye, the beast stopped rearing and snorting and actually seemed to listen to her. Roke couldn’t hear what she was saying but it was low and soft and mesmerizing and it seemed to work miracles on the huge zorel.

  After it had quieted, the girl calmly reached under its great belly and unfastened the girth which held the bejeweled, intricately worked leather saddle in place. The expensive piece of equipment fell off onto the dirty cobbled road and the girl inspected the broad expanse of the zorel’s back.

  The rider, who seemed to have gotten over the shock of his fall, was getting to his feet.

  “Here, now!” he exclaimed, standing up and reaching for the girl. “You can’t just—”

  “Let her finish what she’s doing,” Roke growled, grabbing the Tenebrian by one skinny shoulder. He might be as tall as Roke was, but he had no muscle on his long, gangly limbs, so Roke was able to hold him back easily.

  “But what is she doing? She got me thrown from my mount!” the Tenebrian exclaimed with a wounded air, glaring at the girl—who Roke had finally realized was the little priestess.

  “Whatever it is, she’s not done yet,” he told the other male. “So be still and let her finish.”

  Privately, he was still marveling at the change in the little priestess. Ellilah, he reminded himself. The Goddess said her name was Ellilah.

  The female he had met at the human Christmas party aboard the Mother Ship had been shy and frightened—until she got a sip of the punch, that was. Then she’d been extremely insistent that he touch and kiss her. And so tempting he’d been forced to leave before he truly took advantage of her. But she had never displayed the kind of fiery wrath or reckless bravery he had just witnessed.

  Clearly there was more to the shy little priestess than met the eye.

  As he and the rider watched, the priestess continued to search the zorel’s broad back until she seemed to find what she was looking for. With a low, “Ah-ha!” she plucked something off of its midsection, just where the close-set scales of the front met the feathery hair of the hind end, and flicked it away.

  “There now,” she said, going back to the zorel’s head. “It’s gone and you’re all right. I know it hurt but I got rid of it and it won’t bite you anymore.”

  The huge beast put its head down and nosed her gratefully and the girl wrapped her arms around the massive head and gave the beast a hug. She didn’t seem at all frightened of its fangs or the dilated nostrils which were still puffing hot steam. She simply stroked the creature affectionately and murmured words of kindness into its great, tufted ears until it was fairly purring with contentment.

  “I say!” The Tenebrian rider who had been angry at first, was now staring at the little priestess in apparent astonishment. “That beast has been the most recalcitrant, intractable, stubborn creature I’ve ever known! It took my trainer months to break him to the saddle and even now he snaps and hisses when I mount him—but she’s got him eating out of her hand in seconds!”

  He went forward to the little priestess, who was still stroking the zorel’s long, soft whiskers and patting its nose. This time Roke let him go, though he kept right behind him, making certain to stay within reaching distance in case the Tenebrian threatened Ellilah again.

  But the rider didn’t seem inclined to violence.

  “How did you do that?” he asked the little priestess. “How did you quiet him so quickly?”

  “By not beating him to start with,” she snapped at him, looking up with flashing green eyes. “Did you even stop to wonder why he was bucking before you started in with your crop?”

  “I…” The Tenebrian looked shocked at being spoken to in such a frank manner by such a little slip of a female, but he finally answered. “I thought he was just being headstrong,” he admitted. “He is a most stubborn and disobedient beast, you know, Miss.”

  “He was in pain,” Ellilah said, frowning. “He had a burrowing gnaw-worm right under his saddle! They’re obvious enough if you look for them—you should have seen it before you put his tack on.”

  “I didn’t put it on myself!” The Tenebrian sounded offended, as though she’d accused him of doing manual labor unbefitting someone of his station.

  “Well who did, then?” Ellilah demanded.

  “My groom, of course,” the Tenebrian said loftily.

  “Then you ought to fire him and do it yourself,” the little priestess lectured. “If you own an animal, you ought to take care of it personally. Otherwise, how can you know if something’s wrong?”

  “I have never heard of any such thing.” The Tenebrian rider scowled like a scolded schoolboy.

  “Well, now you have,” Ellilah said shortly. “This is a good, sweet boy you have here.” She stroked the zorel’s long muzzle again and it snorted gently and rubbed its cheek eagerly against her small hand. “You ought to be ashamed, letting someone else take care of him and just assuming he wanted to be bad instead of looking to see what was bothering him.”

  “I say…” the Tenebrian said, and then seemed to run out of words. He shook his head and finally found his tongue. “Girl, do you know who I am? I am the Duke of the Closewild Lands. No one has dared to chastise me as you do since I left the nursery and my governess behind at the age of ten cycles!”

  “I’m just telling you the truth—if you own an animal, you have to take care of it,” the little priestess said stubbornly.

  “And just who do you think you are to lecture me like this?” the Duke demanded.

  “I’m just—” Ellilah began.

  “She’s the Zorel Entrancer,” Roke said, stepping out from behind the Tenebrian to get into the conversation.

  Up until then, he had been standing back watching, just out of the girl’s immediate line of sight. Also, she’d been giving all her attention to the zorel—who had clearly fallen in love with her—and the indignant Tenebrian Duke. Now she seemed to see and recognize Roke for the first time, for her green eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed.

  “You!” she exclaimed faintly.

  “Yes, my lady.” Roke nodded at her and turned back to the Tenebrian. “This is Lady Ellilah—she is known far and wide as the premiere zorel trainer in the galaxy, which is why they call her ‘The Zorel Entrancer.’ If she tells you that you are treating your beast incorrectly, then you had better change your ways, Sir, because Lady Ellilah is never wrong when it comes to zorels.”

  Of course, he spun the whole story off the top of his head. He had always been good at telling tales—too good, his Sire had always said. But he could see that it was working—the Tenebrian rider, who had been so indignant just a moment ago, was looking at the little priestess with new respect.

  Ellilah, for her part, was still staring at Roke with an open mouth and wide eyes.

  “So does she travel all around, training zorels?” The Tenebrian Duke asked Roke.

  “It’s more accurate to say she trains people who own zorels how to train and handle them,” Roke replied.

  Because as far as he could see, that was exactly what the little priestess had been doing—lecturing the tall Tenebrian on the proper care of his mount.

  “It is a gift given to her by the Kindred Goddess,” he continued, spinning the story out to its logical conclusion. “And you should feel gratified, Sir, to have encountered her. She just saved your own beast from a pernicious bore-worm.”

  “A burrowing gnaw-worm,” Ellilah corrected faintly.

  “A burrowing gnaw-worm,” Roke repeated firmly. “If it had been allowed to continue what it was doing, it might have done great harm to what is obviously an expensive animal.”

  “Yes, by the Gods—damnably expensive!” the Duke exclaimed, his pale blue skin flushing a darker shade as he spoke. “And I’ve been thinking of returning him to the breeder. It’s a waste of money, having an animal so stubborn and mean, for all he looks so fine in a saddle.”

  “You don’t have to do that!” Ellilah exclaimed, still stroking the zorel’s nose. “
I can teach you how to gentle him. He’ll be as sweet and quiet as a lambkin when I’m done with him.”

  “Well…” The Duke looked at her thoughtfully. “I suppose I could procure you an invitation to the palace. There is a Formal Introduction period tonight and I am close personal friends with the Crown Prince,” he added importantly.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Roke said quickly. He had heard of the strange customs of the Tenebrians and he didn’t want the little priestess anywhere near them.

  But Ellilah looked up at him with fire in her green eyes.

  “Yes, it will be necessary for me to get an invitation,” she said clearly. “How else can I get into the Tenebrian Court and help the Duke, here, learn to train his zorel?”

  Roke frowned back at her. What was she playing at? Why in the world would she want to get into the Tenebrian Court? But clearly the little priestess had her reasons. Reluctantly, he held his tongue.

  “I will leave word at the palace door that you are to be admitted tonight,” the Duke said.

  “And me as well,” Roke said quickly. “I am Lady Ellilah’s bodyguard and companion—she cannot go anywhere without me.”

  Ellilah opened her mouth as though to disagree but Roke gave her a quick shake of the head and she subsided, still frowning at him.

  The Tenebrian Duke didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about this arrangement.

  “Of course you must have your Heart’s Companion with you,” he said to Ellilah. “I will leave an invitation for him as well. Lady Ellilah and…?”

  “Roke,” Roke said shortly and saw the little priestess’s eyes widen.

  That’s right, he thought. The Goddess told me her name, but I never told her mine.

  So this was a kind of introduction, in a way, he supposed.

  “Yes, Lady Ellilah and Roke.” The Duke nodded and looked at Ellilah. “And now, if you don’t mind, I must be going.”

  He bent down to pick up the heavy saddle—staggered under its weight for a moment—and tried to put it on the zorel’s back.