Seeking the right mother.
So the witches remained. Yan Tovis had believed the coven obliterated, crushed into extinction-the Letherii well knew that resistance to tyranny was nurtured in schools of faith, espoused by old, bitter priests and priestesses, by elders who would work through the foolish young use them like weapons, flung away when broken, melodramatically mourned when destroyed. Priests and priestesses whose version of faith justified the abuse of their own followers.
The birth of a priesthood, Yan Tovis now understood, forced a hierarchy upon piety, as if the rules of servitude were malleable, where such a scheme-shrouded in mysterious knowledge and learning-conveyed upon the life of a priest or priestess greater value and virtue than those of the ignorant common folk.
In.her years of Letherii education, Yan Tovis had seen how the arrival of shouldermen-of warlocks and witches-was in truth a devolution among the Shake, a devolution from truly knowing the god that was the shore. Artifice and secular ambition, withholding sacred knowledge from those never to be initiated-these were not the shore’s will. No, only what the warlocks and witches wanted.
Taloned hands and feet have proved iconic indeed.
But power came with demonic blood. And so long as every child born with such power and allowed to survive was initiated into the coven, then that power remained exclusive.
The Letherii in their conquest of the Shake had conducted a pogrom against the coven.
And had failed.
With all her being, Yan Tovis wished they had succeeded.
The Shake were gone as a people. Even the. soldiers of her company-each one carefully selected over the years on the basis of Shake remnants in their blood-were in truth more Letherii than Shake. She had done little, after all, to awaken their heritage.
Yet I chose them, did I not? I wanted their loyalty, beyond that of a Letherii soldier for his or her Atri-Preda.
Admit it, Twilight. You are a queen now, and these soldiers-these Shake-know it. And it is what you sought in the depths of your own ambition. And now, it seemed, she would have to face the truth of that ambition, the stirring of her noble blood-seeking its proper pre-eminence, its right.
What has brought my half-brother to the shore? Did he ride as a Shake, or a Letherii Master at Arms for a Dresh-Preda? But she found she could not believe her own question. She knew the answer, quivering like a knife in her soul. The shore is blind…
They rode on in the dark.
We were never as the Nerek, the Tarthenal and the others. We could raise no army against the invaders. Our belief in the shore held no vast power, for it is a belief in the mutable, in transformation. A god with no face but every face. Our temple is the strand where the eternal war between land and sea is waged, a temple that rises only to crumble yet again. Temple of sound, of smell, taste and tears upon every fingertip.
Our coven healed wounds, scoured away diseases, and murdered babies.
The Tarthenal viewed us with horror. The Nerek hunted our folk in the forests. For the Faered, we were child’Snatchers in the night. They would leave us husks of bread on tree stumps, as if we were no better than malignant crows.
Of these people, these Shake, 1 am now Queen.
And a man who would be her husband awaited her. On the Isle.
Errant take me, 1 am too tired for this.
Horse-hoofs splashing through puddles where the old road dipped-they were nearing the shore. Ahead, the land rose again-some long-ago high tide mark, a broad ridge of smoothed stones and cobbles bedded in sandy clay-the kind of clay that became shale beneath the weight of time, pocked by the restless stones. In that shale one could find embedded shells, mollusc fragments, proof of the sea’s many victories.
The trees were sparser here, bent down by the wind that she could not yet feel on her face-a calm that surprised her, given the season. The smell of the shore was heavy in the air, motionless and fetid.
They slowed their mounts. From the as yet unseen sea there was no sound, not even the whisper of gentle waves. As if the world on the other side of the ridge had vanished.
‘Tracks here, sir,’ one of her soldiers said as they drew to a halt close to the slope. ‘Riders, skirting the bank, north and south both.’
‘As if they were hunting someone,’ another observed.
Yan Tovis held up a gauntleted hand.
Horses to the north, riding at the canter, approaching.
Struck by a sudden, almost superstitious fear, Yan Tovis made a gesture, and her soldiers drew their swords. She reached for her own.
The first of the riders appeared.
Letherii.
Relaxing, Yan Tovis released her breath. ‘Hold, soldier!’
The sudden command clearly startled the figure and the three other riders behind it. Hoofs skidding on loose pebbles.