Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

After a moment the three men exchanged a smile. In the distance the children’s shouts and laughter gradually subsided. The three of them had been seen. It was unlikely that the appearance of strangers was a common event here, especially so soon after the melting of the snow.

The young priest had left the playing field and was making his way over, as was an older man with a full black leather apron over his robes of beige, coming from where the sheep and goats and cows were kept in pens on the other side of the central avenue. Some distance in front of them lay the arched entrance to the temple and beside it on the right and a little behind, the smaller dome of the observatory—for in all her Sanctuaries the priests of Eanna tracked and observed the stars she had named.

The complex was enormous, even more so than it had seemed from above on the hill slopes. There were a great many priests and servants moving about the grounds, entering and leaving the temple itself, working among the animals, or in the vegetable gardens Devin could see beyond the observatory. From that direction as well came the unmistakable clanging of a blacksmith’s forge. Smoke rose up there, to be caught and carried by the mild breeze. Overhead he saw the hawk again, or a different one, circling lazily against the blue.

Alessan dismounted and Devin and Erlein did the same just as the two priests came up to them, at almost exactly the same moment. The younger one, sandy-haired and small like Devin, laughed and gestured at himself and his colleague.

‘Not much of a greeting party, I’m afraid. We weren’t expecting visitors this early in the year, I must admit. No one even noticed you riding down. Be welcome though, be most welcome to Eanna’s Sanctuary, whatever the reason you have come to us. May the goddess know you and name you hers.’ He had a cheerful manner and an easy smile.

Alessan returned the smile. ‘May she know and surely name all who dwell within these walls. To be honest, we wouldn’t have been certain how to deal with a more official greeting. We haven’t actually worked out our entrance routines yet. And as for early in the year—well, everyone knows new-formed companies have to get moving sooner than the established ones or they are likely to starve.’

‘You are musical performers?’ the older priest asked heavily, wiping his hands on the heavy apron he wore. He was balding and brown and grizzled, and there was a gap where two of his front teeth ought to have been.

‘We are,’ said Alessan with some attempt at a grand manner. ‘My name is Adreano d’Astibar. I play the Tregean pipes, and with me is Erlein di Senzio, the finest harp player in all of the peninsula. And I must tell you truly, you haven’t heard singing until you’ve listened to our young companion Devin d’Asoli.’

The younger priest laughed again. ‘Oh, well done! I should bring you along to the outer school to give a lesson to my charges in rhetoric.’

‘I’d do better to teach the pipes,’ Alessan smiled. ‘If music is part of your programme here.’

The priest’s mouth twitched. ‘Formal music,’ he said. ‘This is Eanna, not Morian, after all.’

‘Of course,’ said Alessan hastily. ‘Very formal music for the young ones boarding here. But for the servants of the goddess themselves . . . ?’ He arched one of his dark eyebrows.

‘I will admit,’ said the sandy-haired young priest, smiling again, ‘to a preference for Rauder’s early music myself.’

‘And no one plays it better than we,’ Alessan said smoothly. ‘I can see we have come to the right place. Should we make our obeisance to the High Priest?’

‘You should,’ said the older man, not smiling. He began untying the apron-strings at his back. ‘I’ll take you to him. Savandi, your charges are about to commit assault upon each other or worse. Have you no control at all over them?’

Savandi spun to look, swore feelingly in a quite unpriestly fashion, and began running towards the games field shouting imprecations. From this distance it did indeed seem to Devin that the maracco sticks were being used by Savandi’s young charges in a fashion distinctly at variance with the accepted rules of the game.

Devin saw Erlein grinning as he watched the boys. The wizard’s lean face changed when he smiled. When the smile was a true one, not the ironic, slipping-sideways expression he so often used to indicate a sour, superior disdain.

The older priest, grim-faced, pulled his leather apron over his head, folded it neatly, and draped it over one of the bars of the adjacent sheepfold. He barked a name Devin could not make out and another young man—a servant this time—hastily emerged from the stables on their left.

‘Take their horses,’ the priest ordered bluntly. ‘See that their goods are brought to the guest house.’

‘I’ll keep my pipes,’ Alessan said quickly.

‘And I my harp,’ Erlein added. ‘No lack of trust, you understand, but a musician and his instrument . . .?’

This priest was somewhat lacking in Savandi’s comfortable manner. ‘As you will,’ was all he said. ‘Come. My name is Torre, I am the porter of this Holy Sanctuary. You must be brought to the High Priest.’ He turned and set off without waiting for them, on a path going around to the left of the temple.

Devin and Erlein looked at each other and exchanged a shrug. They followed Torre and Alessan, passing a number of other priests and lay servants, most of whom smiled at them, somewhat making up for their dour, self-appointed guide.

They caught up to the other two as they rounded the southern side of the temple. Torre had stopped, Alessan beside him. The balding porter looked around, quite casually, then said, almost as casually: ‘Trust no one. Speak truth to none but Danoleon or myself. These are his words. You have been expected. We thought it would be another night,