The Priestess and the Thief

“Oh…oh, yes, of course.” Feeling flustered, she took his arm and they walked under the archway and into the palace courtyard.

She had no idea of all the strange things that would happen to her before she left again.

Sixteen

The first thing Elli noticed was that there were covered walkways everywhere. Even the open courtyard had many little covered lanes winding through it, all branching off from the main path, which she and Roke were walking on.

“Why in the world do you think they need so many walkways?” she asked under her breath. “And why are they all covered?”

“The Tenebrians dislike rain,” he murmured back. “They don’t want to get wet, apparently.”

“Oh, yes.” Elli remembered again that Tully had told her something like that on their ride to Capital City. She’d seemed to think the Tenebrians were frightened of the rain—though why would any people be afraid of water?

Elli didn’t know, but she wondered if she would get a chance to find out.

They made their way through the open courtyard and down a short set of steps to a set of elaborately carved double doors which seemed to lead into the main part of the palace. There were two more guards here, but they didn’t ask Elli and Roke’s names. They simply opened the doors silently, allowing them to pass into the cool, dimly lighted hall within.

The hall was broad and long with a high, arched ceiling, hung with banners and garlands of alien flowers Elli had never seen before. The floor was a checkerboard pattern of creamy white and deep brown. Both kinds of stone were polished to a high gloss and had little golden flecks inlaid in them, which made the entire floor glimmer in the torchlight.

The torches themselves were placed at three-foot intervals along the walls, held in brackets that resembled pale blue Tenebrian hands. Their flames were golden-blue and entirely smokeless.

There was no one else in the long hallway and Elli couldn’t help thinking she was glad Roke was with her. If she had been all alone, the spooky blue hand torch holders and the perfectly empty hall would have been deeply unsettling.

“Looks like we’re the only ones here,” Roke murmured, his deep voice echoing in the empty hallway. “Guess we’d better go find out where the rest of the Tenebrian Court is.”

“I guess so,” Elli murmured, disliking the way the empty corridor echoed her words.

They proceeded down the long hallway, Roke’s boots tapping on the cream and brown stone floor and Elli’s slippers making a soft shush-shush sound while her skirts swished around her legs. The silence and solitude was just making Elli think of stories she’d read as a little girl about enchanted castles where monstrous beasts lived, when suddenly a door at the end of the hallway burst open and the Duke of the Closewild Lands came rushing out.

“Oh, there you are!” he exclaimed, seeing Elli and Roke. “May all the gods be praised! Hurry up or you’re going to be late to the Formal Introduction and Announcement!”

He hurried them down the hall and through another set of thick, double doors and finally Elli saw where the rest of the Court had gone—they were all gathered in what could only be the ThRoke Room, since there was an elaborately carved golden thRoke sitting at the far end of it.

The Court of Tenebrian nobles were standing on either side of the thRoke, all of them dressed in expensive styles and rich fabrics and laces. Elli was extremely glad to be wearing the crimson gown Roke had bought her. Surrounded by such opulence, she would have felt like a peasant in her stained white Novice robes. As it was, her dress was a little plain compared to some of the more elaborate styles she saw around her, but not enough to be out of place.

In the center of the room was a carved wooden archway. It was decked with purple vines that sprouted richly colored flowers—crimson and ultramarine and vermillion blooms as big as a man’s head that looked like living jewels. The archway reminded Elli of the trellis in the Sacred Grove where the statue of the Goddess stood.

Elli wondered why she hadn’t been able to hear so many people when they were outside in the hallway—there must have been two or three hundred gathered in the vast thRoke room. But maybe it was because everyone was being quiet and focusing on what appeared to be a kind of ceremony taking place around the wooden arch.

There was a line of couples—about five of them—standing to one side of the arch. A Tenebrian in a black frock coat and an important looking silver hat with a single white plume sticking out from the middle, was bringing them through the arch and introducing them to the male sitting on the golden thRoke—the Crown Prince, no doubt—who was too far away for Elli to make out.