‘Because it gives the Goddess a bad reputation,’ Coe said. ‘And that endangers the temples. In ages past, before the temples reached accord with the Crown and agreed to allow the Temple of Ishap to settle disputes, there was more than one riot in which an angry mob sacked a temple and killed all the worshippers. Even with a hundred years and more of peace between the temples, there’s still a strong potential for mayhem if word of something like this gets out, and if people think the Temple of Lims-Kragma had a hand in it.
‘Moreover, it’s stealing from Lims-Kragma: the life energies which should be returned to Her hall for judging are denied their proper placement on the next turn of the Wheel of Life. Those souls are tortured, tormented and eventually vanish as if they had never existed. It’s an abomination and heresy of the worst stripe.
‘No good ever comes from these practices, and only those who are truly evil or truly fools undertake such.’ He showed his teeth. ‘I am the particular “no good” that will come to the necromancer who’s working in the vicinity. I’m no magician myself,’ he went on. ‘But I do have some . . . talent in these areas . . . and I have resources from my employers, which will help me deal with him.’
‘But not necessarily mercenaries, stone walls and iron bars?’ Jimmy said sardonically.
I’m really not happy, he thought. I’d almost rather he was one of Jocko’s spies. On the other hand, he’s likely to be much more useful than one of the secret police, and if I’m to undertake hero-of-legend deeds against an evil enchanter, no less, I could do with some help.
He didn’t want to go back to Lorrie and tell her he couldn’t find Rip: after all, he’d promised. On the other hand, he didn’t want to be chained to a red-hot metal plate in a dungeon for the next thousand years, either; or have his death-essence used to power a spell. Risk was one thing, doom another.
Besides, I suspect that ducking out on friend Coe would be unlucky. I do not want the hatred of a goddess dogging my steps. Her favour, on the other hand, and the favour of her priestesses . . .
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘What does this necromancer want with our blond-haired friend?’
‘In just four days the three moons will be dark,’ Jarvis said, his fingers toying idly with a crust of barley-bread. ‘And certain stars will be in conjunction. At that time . . . well, let’s say that the wayfarer they picked up and brought back to the manor would be useful for certain dark arts. Useful in a terminal sense. As would young Rip, your friend’s brother.’
Jimmy winced. He was used to beatings, stabbings and affrays: he’d taken part in them himself. But human sacrifice was another matter altogether. ‘This is getting beyond belief,’ he said. ‘Children, then wayfarers—’
‘One specific wayfarer,’ Jarvis said carefully as if reflecting on that fact.
The old woman made a noise and her husband tried to shush her, but she pushed him aside. ‘Four days, you say, priestess’s servant?’
Jarvis bowed. ‘Goodwife.’
‘That would be seventeen years to the day from the time Mistress Elaine died in childbed,’ she said. ‘Seventeen years to the very hour, at midnight.’
Jarvis’s face changed. A shadow of fear—and maybe disgust—passed over it. Uh-oh, Jimmy thought. This is bad news.
‘Did you . . . were you sure she died?’ Jarvis held up his hand. ‘Did you see the body laid out?’
The midwife shook her head. ‘He thrust us all out of the room, and later word was sent that things had been done,’ she said softly. ‘Thrust us all out, but kept with him a chance-met guest he’d been hosting that night, a scholar.’
‘Ah. I doubt that it was entirely chance, not on that night—certain happenings cast their own shadows, forward and backward in time.’ Jarvis looked down at the talisman. ‘Have you anything of the lady’s?’ he said. ‘Anything that touched her body?’
The old woman rose and went over to her pole-frame bed and dragged out a cedarwood chest that looked incongruously fine in the wattle cottage. Prodding around inside it, she brought out a small bundle wrapped in silk stained with old, dried blood. ‘She were fond of me, and a kind lady,’ the midwife said. ‘She knew she could trust old Meg; many a secret a midwife hears. This she gave me, for safekeeping. It would have been as much as her life were worth, did the Baron find it.’
Jimmy came close as Jarvis took the bundle from the old woman and swept the rough wooden surface of the table clean of crusts and crockery before he laid it down and began to unfold it.
‘Should the talisman be doing that?’ Jimmy asked.
The needle beneath the crystal lid was jerking; first it pointed southwest, toward Baron Bernarr’s manor; then it swung towards the bundle.
‘No, it should not,’ Jarvis said. Inside the silken handkerchief was a true locket, a delicate shell of electrum. ‘Even if this is the lady’s blood from the birthing—’
‘It is,’ the old woman said.