Vassal by Sterling D'Este (ebook reader computer TXT) 📕

the village. Many were cruel and fearful of her since the raiders’ attack years ago. However, she had been raised by the warrior priests and priestesses of the temple and would protect them with her life, either from human enemies or future calamities.

The road leading into the village was bare. No warriors of the temple or of roving bands dotted its grey dirt surface. She didn’t hear the sounds she associated with an attack— shouts and the stamping of booted feet. Perhaps the bells rang for some news from the temple? It seemed odd, though. Seer Cerys had passed the year before, and there were no others to take up her mantle.

Delyth folded her wings neatly along her back and straightened her shoulders with the air of someone soon facing an enemy, for all that she was only walking into the town where she lived. It was a point of pride that she would not let the stares and whispers of the others that lived there affect the way she carried herself. She was near six-feet tall and well-formed. She would not stoop for them.

She noticed the grimaces of the few who saw her step onto the main thoroughfare, though most of the villagers attention was blessedly turned away, to the commotion of followers flocking to the temple. Delyth took her place among them and swept towards the great stone building, ignoring the dingier shops and residences along her way.

The temple itself was brimming with voices and the slap of boots against stone. Armored warrior-priests stood alongside healers and acolytes. High priests raised their voices above the din in argument, but their leader, High Priestess Anwen, the Voice of Enyo, stood silent on a raised dais in the center of the main worship hall. Her hands gripped the long, brutal blade that had hung from the mounts behind her for as long as Delyth could remember. Anwen searched the faces of those gathered, and while Delyth watched, their eyes met, honeyed gold on blue. When she turned away again, the halfbreed shuddered.

It was difficult to tell what could have occurred to stir up the temple’s inhabitants so, but as Delyth began to pay more attention to the voices around her, she picked up a few common phrases: Calamity, the call of Enyo, Cerys’s visions coming true at last.

Unease rippled through Delyth’s belly, and she pulled her wings tighter against her body. She had little idea of how the priests could know that the events Seer Cerys had spoken of were unfolding without the seer herself to tell them, but she supposed it wasn’t her place to know. At heart, she was simply a warrior, destined to serve the Goddess with her strength rather than her mind. Still, she thought it must have something to do with the great, black blade clasped in Anwen’s hands, dark even against the warm brown of the High Priestess’s skin.

Delyth shouldered her way closer to the dais, many of the priests and acolytes alike moving out of her way to avoid brushing her skin. As a whole, they were less wary of lepers, but she gave no indication that she had noticed.

She’d gotten about to the middle of the room when High Priestess Anwen raised an arm. The slight woman had to prop the sword against the stone in front of herself to do so, as though it was too heavy to comfortably hold in one hand. It took a bit of time for the farthest away to see, but soon everyone had turned towards the back of the room in a wave of silence and uneasy faces. Delyth shifted and rested her hand on the space where her folded-steel dagger should have hung, belatedly remembering that she had not brought it with her when she’d left that morning. It was a senseless habit, anyway. This was not the sort of danger that could be addressed with blades.

With the followers eyes upon her, the High Priestess dropped her hand and looked out across them, her expression serene.

“Last night,” she began, her voice carrying clearly through the room, “Calamity, the sword of the Goddess Enyo, fell from its place upon the wall, burying itself blade-first into the mortar between stones. All who touch it can feel the blade’s hunger.” She paused, as though giving her audience a chance to wonder at just what this could portend. Delyth’s own sense of dread grew, worming through her chest like the roots of some creeping vine.

“Our Goddess lives,” Anwen said, and the room again erupted in chaos.

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Delyth slept fitfully that night, so she did not wake before dawn to slip away for a few moments to herself. Instead, she still lay on her belly beneath leaden wings when a brisk knock woke her. She pushed herself up groggily and answered the door in the simple breast band and trousers she had slept in.

A wide-eyed acolyte stood in the doorway, small and narrow-shouldered. She had red hair that she’d pulled back from her freckled face, and she was looking up at Delyth with her mouth slightly parted. The halfbreed crossed her arms over her bare stomach.

“Yes?” she said gruffly, uncharacteristically bad-tempered from lack of sleep.

The girl seemed to shake herself. “I’m to take you to the High Priestess.”

Delyth blinked in surprise, her sleep-addled mind struggling to keep up. “What— I… One moment.”

She slipped back into her room to tie on a clean, sleeveless jerkin and pull on simple boots. It took her two tries to get her belt fastened correctly, her fumbling fingers belying her anxiety. Delyth had only ever spoken to the High Priestess in passing, just one of the few hundred followers she presided over. It was too strange, too soon after the wakening of Enyo’s sword.

Now dressed, Delyth hurried to exit the room, overturning a small bedside table in her haste. She didn’t pause to pick it up, instead opening the door on the now