Gerin got down and went around to the back of the wagon. He held out a hand. 'Here, lady, I'll help you down so you can ease yourself.'
She recoiled as if he'd proposed helping her down so he could ravish her. 'Are you mad?' she demanded in a voice like winter. 'I may have no contact whatever with any entire man. Were I to do so, I'd be Sibyl no longer.'
The Fox sucked in a long breath. She hadn't figured out how she'd got into the wagon. He could hardly blame her, but it didn't make what he had to say come any easier: 'Lady, I fear that to save your life I had to touch you. The gods know I'm sorry for it, but I saw no other way.' He repeated the oracular verse she had given him, and explained the morning's horrors.
The more he talked, the paler the Sibyl grew. 'Lies,' she whispered. 'It must be lies. You've ruined me, and now you seek to twist my own words against me and make me believe you did it for my own good?' Her head whipped around like a hunted animal's; her eyes lit on the gold and ivory head of Oren the Builder. Gerin had thought she was already white as could be, but discovered he was wrong. 'Youtook this?' she demanded. 'And the lord Biton did not strike you dead?'
A flip answer came to Gerin's mind; he stifled it before it passed his lips. 'Lady, he did not. When I took it, it lay outside the bounds of the holy precinct. As I said, the earthquake knocked everything into confusion. The temple itself no longer stands. What happened to the chamber where you prophesied I could not say, but the quake must have knocked down the warded walls that kept those monsters from coming to the surface.'
Van turned and said, 'For all you know, Fox, it might have been the other way round. Remember the bits of mortar we saw at the base of those walls when Kinifor led us down to the lady? The things might have been trying for years to breach the magic that held 'em in check, and when they finally did it, that could've made the earth shake.'
'You're right; it could have happened so,' Gerin agreed. 'But whichever way it was doesn't matter.' He gave his attention back to the Sibyl. 'Lady-have you a name, by the way?'
She'd been listening to him and Van talk back and forth as if they were madmen whose madnesses by chance coincided. She snapped back to herself when the Fox asked her that question, but needed a moment to find an answer for it. At last she said, 'I was called… Selatre. They took the name from me when I became Biton's mouth, but I recall it was mine.' The bitter curve of her lips was anything but a smile. ' I may as well wear it again, for thanks to you I'll serve the god no more. If all you say is true, better you should have left me to die there.'
'Lady… Selatre… I pray I'm wrong, but I don't think I am, when I tell you the only things left alive in Ikos by sunset tonight will be the ones that came out from under Biton's fane. How deep and wide the caves run, how many monsters there are-I know none of that. But I couldn't leave you in your cottage to perish from their teeth and claws, not when the question I put to you was what made you swoon away,' Gerin said.
Selatre said, 'If you think saving me was a favor, you're wrong. Lost, polluted… how can I hope to make my way in the world again, now that you've taken away my reason for being?'
'You made your way in it before you were Sibyl,' Van said roughly. 'And plenty of people go on living who've taken worse hurts than you. Go into the woods, water the ferns, and come back and we'll feed you bread and sausage and ale. Things always look cheerier with food in your belly, and you must be hungry as a longtooth after sleeping the day around.'
Selatre sniffed at the homely advice, but, perhaps because nothing better occurred to her, nodded after a moment. Gerin started to offer his hand again, but the first motion made her shrink back with such dismay that he stopped before it was well begun. Instead, he ostentatiously stepped away from the wagon and let her clamber down by herself.
'What do we do if she tries to run to Ikos on her own?' he whispered to Van when she walked in among the bushes by the side of the road.
'If the jade's that foolish, let her go,' the outlander answered. 'Me, I don't think she is.'
Gerin got out the food Van had promised the Sibyl. She took longer to come back than he'd expected, and he wondered if she had slipped away. The idea of pursuing her through the uncanny forest was far from appealing. But just when he was beginning to worry he might have to, she returned, her face unreadable. He pointed to the meal he'd fixed from the travel supplies, but did not try to give it to her. If she didn't want to be touched, that was her affair.
She did manage a quiet word of thanks, then fell on bread and sausage and onions and ale as if she'd gone without food for ten or twenty days, not just one. She was still eating when, faintly, from far down the road to the west came a snarling roar that wasn't bear or longtooth or wolf or any beast Gerin had heard before. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck prickled up even so.
Van said, 'That's one of the things from the caves, if you ask me.'
Selatre put down the piece of bread she'd been gnawing. 'A terrible sound,' she said, shuddering. 'I've heard it in my nightmares. Now, perhaps, I begin to believe you.'
The innkeeper had said she seemed to be having evil dreams. That was this morning, Gerin thought, amazed. It seemed an age ago, in a different world. Given all that had changed between then and now, maybe it was.
The Fox said, 'We've seen monsters in our dreams, too-and seen them in the flesh today, in the temple compound.'
'And if we don't want to see more of them in the flesh, I think we'd better get rolling again,' Van said. 'If I had to guess, I'd say they're likely not after us in particular right now, just out exploring, finding out what aboveground is like after being down below so long. But if they come on us, I don't think they'd stop with a cheery good day, if you take my meaning.'
Gerin stood aside to let Selatre scramble into the wagon by herself. Getting her back to Fox Keep was going to be awkward if she thought any accidental bump the equivalent of a violation. Of course, if that was how she felt, she was already convinced he'd violated her, and he couldn't do anything about it. He chewed on the inside of his lower lip. No time to worry about any of that now. Once they were safe away from Ikos would be soon enough.
He said to Van, 'I'll drive for a while now. You can rest your head.'
'It's all right,' the outlander answered. 'Since the ground started shaking, I haven't hardly noticed my poor aching noodle.'
'The same with me,' Gerin said. 'It's not the cure for a long night of drinking I'd choose, though.'
'Nor I, Fox, nor I.' Van started to laugh, but broke off: another one of those snarling roars cut through the stillness of the woods. The outlander yanked on the reins, then reached around behind him into the wagon for the whip. He cracked it just above the horses' backs. Gerin thought that was laying it on thick; the animals seemed alarmed enough to run hard just from the fierce sound of the roar.
Selatre said, 'Have a care, please. You almost touched me when you were groping back here.' She sat huddled in a far corner, as if certain Van had intended to grope her.
'Lady-Selatre-we're not out to do you harm or throw you down in the roadway and have you or anything of the sort.' The outlander sounded as if he were holding on to his patience with both hands. 'For one thing, Gerin and I both prefer willing wenches. For another, or if you think I'm lying about the first, we could have had our way with you four times each before you woke up.'
'I know that,' she answered quietly. 'Any touch, though, pollutes me, not just a lewd one. Lord Gerin, I grant you meant well when you plucked me from my cottage, but I'd sooner you had not done it. To lose that sense of union with the god, to know he will never speak through me again because I am his pure vessel no more… life stretches long and empty ahead of me.'
The Fox exhaled through his nose in impatient anger. 'Lord Biton would have spoken through you no more whether we came to your dwelling or not. If we hadn't, you'd have been monster fodder before another hour went by. And that, if you ask me, is a short and empty life, save perhaps when speaking about a monster's belly, which would have been quite comfortably full.'
He twisted around to see how Selatre took that. He didn't want to flay her with words; after all, she was suddenly cast into a situation she'd never imagined and for which she'd never prepared. If he'd hit too hard, he was ready to backtrack and apologize.
But, to his surprise, she returned the ghost of a smile. 'Next to being devoured, I suppose rescue may be a better choice. Very well; I do not blame you for it-much.'
'Lady, I thank you.' He could have-given his nature, he easily could have-freighted that with enough sarcasm
