‘Good. Then I can die in peace. Go. May Weda Krizhtawn bless you.’
‘But the Raggah … they will torture you!’
‘No. This bag contains a small vial of poison. They will find only a corpse. If
they find me at all.’
Masha burst into tears, but she took the jar, and after kissing Smhee again, she
rode off, his horse trotting behind hers. At the top of the hill she stopped to
look behind at the hut. Far off, coming swiftly, was a dark mass. The Raggah.
She turned away and urged her horse into a gallop.
GODDESS
By David Drake
‘By Savankala and the Son!’ Regli swore, ‘why can’t she bear and be done with
it? And why does she demand to see her brother but won’t see me?’ The young
lord’s sweat-stained tunic looked as if it had been slept in. Indeed, Regli
would have slept in it if he had slept any during the two days he had paced
outside the bedroom, now couching room, of his wife. Regli’s hands repeatedly
flexed the shank of his riding crop. There were those – and not all of them
women – who would have said that agitation heightened – Regli’s already notably
good looks, but he had no mind for such nonsense now. Not with his heir at risk!
‘Now, now,’ said Doctor Mernorad, patting the silver-worked lapels of his robe.
The older man prided himself as much on his ability to see both sides of a
question as he did on his skill at physic – though neither ability seemed much
valued today in Regli’s townhouse. ‘One can’t hurry the gods, you know. The
child will be born when Sabellia says it should be. Any attempt to hasten