the severed shadow out, eyed it clinically, and sliced it neatly about midway
down its writhing length. One of the halves she stuffed into the rotting bole of
a nearby willow, and even as she turned away toward Siveni, the willow’s long
bare branches put out numberless leaves of thin, trembling darkness. “Here,”
Ischade said. Siveni put out her hand and took the crumpled half-shadow as if
she were being handed a scorpion.
“Stilcho,” Ischade said.
Stilcho backed away a pace. Behind him, with a small, terrible smile on his
face, Haught held up the lantern. The third scream was the worst of all.
“Maybe you have been suffering too much in my service,” Ischade said, as she
sliced his soul-shadow too and draped half of it over the branches of a shrub
hard by the altar. “Maybe I should let you go back to being quite dead …” The
shrub came out in leaves and little round berries of blackness, trembling.
“We’ll talk about it when I come back,” said Ischade. She tucked the crumpled
shadow into her dark robes. “Mor-am, Haught, guard this spot until an hour
before dawn. We won’t be coming back this way. Look for us at the house, by the
back gate. And don’t forget Stilcho’s body.” She glided over to the altar,
lifting the dark-stained sickle again. “Be ready, goddesses.”
“What about Tyr?” said Siveni.
“She’ll ride this soul,” said Ischade. Her hand had fallen on the ram’s head
again. It looked up at her, and up, and helplessly, up; and Ischade swung the
sickle. In the unlight of the dark lantern, the ram’s eyes blazed horribly, then