terrified girl. The High Priestess smiled again. Her teeth sparkled like nacre against blood. Sweat stung Blade's eyes.
She brought the sword down with tremendous force and drove it into the girl's heart. Blade would not have attributed the strength to that slim body. The point drove on through the flesh and beating heart and grated against the stone capping of the stump. The naked victim, impaled on the golden blade, writhed and heaved in death agonies. Blood covered the heavy breasts and crept across the stone. The body stopped jerking and was still.
For a moment the High Priestess remained standing astride her victim. Her head was bowed now, her arms hung at her sides, and her manner was listless and depleted. She swayed and for a moment Blade thought she would fall, then she straightened and looked about her. Her eyes swept the silent circle of Drus and, for a long moment, lingered on the thicket where Blade and Taleen were concealed. He could not discern their color, and it was impossible that she knew of their presence, yet Blade felt the intensity of those eyes and something rippled cold along his spine.
Then it was over. She replaced her cowl, could once more have been a spry old woman, and leaped down from the stump. Without a word or gesture she stalked away from the crowd of Drus and disappeared into the trees on the far side of the glade.
The rest was mere butcher's work. Blade felt his sickness grow as he watched and listened to Taleen's whispered taunts.
'So I lie? So I am a credulous fool? I listen to foolish tales and repeat them, do I? It is a lie, then, that the Drus eat human flesh?'
She nudged him with her elbow. 'Why, then, are they gutting that poor slave girl like a capon?'
They were stuffing the body now with small leaves of some kind. Blade felt that he had seen enough. He might even have conceded that he had seen too much. He did not care to linger and watch them spit the body and place it over the coals. It was past time to go.
Taleen whispered the same thought bred by a different concern. She was again fearful for her own tawny hide.
'In the name of Frigga, Blade, let us go! We have been lucky but it will not last forever. By some miracle we are still alive, no one has seen us, and no tales will be carried. If we go now it is just possible that— '
She was interrupted by a loud cry from the glade. Then another cry. Then a series of muted screams followed by a great hubbub.
A Dru was standing at the edge of the clearing. She was carrying the body of the Dru Blade had killed. She stood there, chanting and moaning, and her own white robe was as scarlet as that on the dead priestess she carried. The Drus rushed to gather about her, all gabbling and moaning and screaming as it suited them. Blade glanced across the glade to the spot where the High Priestess had disappeared. She did not reappear and he guessed that she had left the vicinity on some errand of her own. Perhaps, he thought viciously, she does not like the taste of human flesh.
Taleen was doing her share of soft moaning beside him. 'Frigga save us now! They have found the slain one. We will be cursed forever, even if they do not kill us. I told you, Blade. I warned you. I— '
Blade put his big hand over his mouth. 'Shut up, princess. Not another sound until I tell you. Now crawl backwards, very slowly and very carefully, and then follow me. I think it is time to run again. But softly— very, very softly.'
Chapter Three
Taleen found her path just as the moon was setting. It was narrow and made rough underfoot by stones and flints and, judging by the depth below embanking hedges, had been trodden for centuries. Blade's feet suffered, while the Princess went easily enough in her buskins.
As they went Taleen poured out all her knowledge of the Drus, as though the horror she had just seen had triggered her tongue. Blade, by nature a skeptic, was too much shaken by the recent scene not to be attentive. He listened and learned. Later would be time enough to sort fact from fiction. One thing he already knew. The Drus could not be ignored. They were a fact of life in Alb. They did evil and they did good. The Mysteries— all knowledge and education, all medicine, all the higher arts and crafts and, most especially, all magic, were in Dru keeping. And woe to he who tried to usurp their prerogatives.
The princess, Blade learned, had been returning home after four years in a Dru school on the Narrow Sea when she had been attacked and captured by the minions of Queen Beata. The Queen was sister to King Voth of the North, and there was a great hatred between the two.
'She thought to hold me captive as long as it pleased her,' Taleen said now, 'and to bring a great ransom and many concessions from my father. He has great love for me, my father, and I am an only child. That bitch of a Beata would have succeeded, too, had I not had the foresight and the courage to bide my time and watch for my opportunity. I played very meek and frightened, Blade, and then I wept and told Beata that confinement was killing me. On my knees— and I will make her pay for that, by Frigga— on my knees I begged that I be allowed long walks in the woods and fields. I said I would die for lack of sun and air. Was that not clever of me, Blade? I pointed out that she, the queen, could have no profit of a dead princess. That was sly, eh, Blade?'
'Most clever,' said Blade gravely. 'Very sly, princess. So you watched your chance and seized a sword and slew one of your guards. Yes. Clever indeed. There is just one thing that puzzles me a bit.'
The path had widened now, the going was easier, and she was swinging along briskly by his side. She cast him a sidelong look. 'What puzzles you, Blade?'
Blade kept his face expressionless. 'It was a brave thing, a great thing, for a girl like you to kill a warrior. I admit that. But how was it that you were alone with this guard? Was there only one guard? From the little you have told me of this Queen Beata she is no fool, so there must have been other guards. Where were they?'
He saw her scowl and kept his glance averted. He wanted to laugh and dared not. For the past few hours they had been getting on well and he did not want to spoil it.
Taleen was still frowning. 'You ask too— many questions, Blade. And the wrong questions. What business of yours is it that I— '
'None,' he said hastily. 'None at all, princess. Forget that I spoke.'
For a minute or so they trudged on in silence. Then Taleen sighed heavily and said: 'You are right, of course.
