Lady Knight Read Free Page A

her decision to rest beneath a roof.
    The dusty track led across a shallow stream and ended in a rough courtyard
bounded by several wooden buildings of different sizes. Smoke poured from two of
them.
    “Shite,” Alan said.
    Men, horses, and donkeys crammed the tiny compound and spilled into the
surrounding trees. Riannon’s gaze quickly skipped from men in green tunics to
two covered carriages. The entourage was large enough for a countess, but the
green cloth of the carriages – which bore no noble symbols – hinted at a very
high-ranking priestess.
    When Riannon’s feet hit the ground, pain jarred her as if someone had sliced her
clean through with a sword. She clung to the saddle and bit back an oath. She
still fought to recover her breathing when her squire returned.
    “We’re unfortunate,” Alan said. “All these people belong to the escort of no
less a person than a naer of the groves. The exalted lady rests here this night.
They’ve no beds nor space to spare for travellers. But I made an offering of
coin, and we can camp in a clearing through there. I’ll have John take the
horses.”
    Riannon grunted.
    “They have a healer priestess,” Alan said. “She’ll see you if you enter the door
that is never closed.”
    Riannon released the saddle and turned. Pain stabbed deep into her chest. Her
knees buckled and she pitched into darkness.
    Riannon woke with a cool, damp cloth dabbed against her forehead. She lay on a
narrow cot looking up at a thatched roof. The tiny room sported only the cot, a
rudimentary shelf, and a wooden symbol of the quartered-circle nailed to the
wall. A pretty young woman in a faded green robe of a junior priestess sat
beside the cot. She wrung the cloth in a wooden bowl of water and softly hummed
what sounded like a fairing song rather than a hymn. She turned to see Riannon
watching her and froze.
    “Your… your pardon, lady.”
    “You make a sweet sound,” Riannon said. “Pray, continue.” The priestess glanced
over her shoulder towards the door. Riannon heard muffled voices. The priestess
shot to her feet and spilled some of the water down the front of her robe.
    “I… I’m to inform her Eminence, the naer, when you wake,” she said.
    “A naer?” Riannon asked.
    This place appeared too humble to house a priestess of so elevated a rank, and
the nervous young sio in her faded robes seemed an unlikely attendant to such an
exalted lady of the order.
    “We’re blessed beyond imagining,” the priestess said. “Her Eminence chose our
house to break her travels. She’s been with us a day and a night. It’s been
right cramped. We’ve had to send for ever so much salted fish and goats and
grain. More than I’ve seen before in my whole life. I have to share a pallet
with Sio Gwynis in the cookhouse, for there are scores and scores in the naer’s
escort. It’s marvellous. So colourful. And so many horses and donkeys. Men all
talking and jesting. Like a yearly market, though without the mummers. I can
scarce believe I’d ever see such a high and mighty lady. And she has spoken to
me!”
    “If you must be gone, sio, I’ll not detain you.”
    The priestess dropped a hasty curtsy and departed. After the door closed,
Riannon allowed herself a grin for the priestess’s tumbling enthusiasm and awe.
The young woman had probably been born of a peasant family not two miles away
and pledged at an early age. It wasn’t surprising she had seen no such
magnificence before as so august a personage as a naer of the groves. Riannon
had rarely witnessed it herself.
    Riannon sat up and looked around for her clothes to cover her nakedness. She
paused as she shoved the thin woollen blanket aside. She did not hurt.
    She frowned down at herself and lifted a hand to the puckered, shiny pink scar
slashing across her torso. With a finger she traced part of the old wound where
it had cut away most of her right breast and sliced down across her ribs. Her
flesh felt no more sensitive than