Fortune's Fool by Mercedes Lackey Page B

called her, it was pretty clear that she was very powerful. It was also quite clear that she was both ruthless and evil.
    The old man himself had been the first to bar her way, with amulets binding both wrists and a blessed staff to protect him, he had interposed himself between the witch and the others.
    Amulets and blessed staff had been utterly useless. With a simple gesture, she had flung him through the air at the bell frame just outside. And that was literally the last thing he knew until he’d woken up again, in terrible pain, lying at the foot of the bell shrine with a broken arm and cracked ribs.
    He had staggered into the sanctuary to find his fellow priests dead, lying where they too had been thrown, and the stone wrenched out of the statue.
    “It must have been important, some sort of amulet or talisman,” the old man said brokenly. “But we were simple priests. We never had any magic of our own, only magic in things we were given and the power of our faith. How were we to know?”
    “You couldn’t,” she soothed him, as she helped him into bed. “You could not have known.”
    It was clear that the attack had broken his spirit as well as his body.
    The old man had cremated his fellow priests by the simple expedient of dragging their poor bodies to an unused shed, drenching them with oil, and setting fire to the place. He had then waited for someone from the village to come to send word of what had happened to his superiors.
    But no one ever came, and he was too weak to make the walk himself. And by now, he had lost faith that they still lived.
    “Be easy, Grandfather,” she said into the darkness. “Tomorrow this will be dealt with. I am young and strong. If there is help to be found for you nearby, I will find it. If there is none, I will take you to where help is.”
    As soon as he was asleep, she got up again, and stole out.
    She needed very little sleep, and right now she needed information far more than sleep. Thanks to the old man, she knew where the village should be, and the first piece of information she needed was whether or not there was anyone still alive there.
    Under the cover of darkness, she sprinted down the road and before the moon was very high, she had come to the village. She had feared that what she uncovered would be “what was left” of the village, and to her intense relief found it still standing.
    Easy enough to see from a distance, it was like a collection of toy houses all lit up. She caught a hint of the steep thatched roofs in the moonlight, but most of the light came from lanterns outside the doors and being carried by people milling about. The houses all seemed to be like the shrine; substantial in size, raised off the ground, and sometimes going to two or three stories.
    Evidently, there was a meeting of some sort going on in what looked like a village square. Katya slowed to a walk, and then, after pausing for a moment in the shadows, worked her way toward the ones that seemed to be doing the most talking.
    She listened silently, on the outskirts of the crowd, keeping herself in shadows. She had the notion that if she stayed very quiet, since she was a female, the men might not notice her. And she was right. There were other women and children hovering half in the shadows, listening, but none of them said a word.
    She examined these villagers as well as listening to them; for the most part, they wore the same kind of loose trews and wrapped tunic that she had purloined. The men were quite muscular. The women looked quite strong, too, leading Katya to think that, as in the Sea Kingdom the women of this land were not inclined to hide behind their menfolk, even if they did defer to them.
    The “meeting” consisted of a great deal of quarreling, not to the point of shouting, but very near. A minority of the men, mostly young, wanted to find out what had happened at the shrine. The majority were still too frightened to go, and kept reminding the others that “she” had