Nemesis by Louise Cooper

Author:Louise Cooper [Cooper, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780586213339
Google: DaxqAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0727844636
Goodreads: 5296205
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 1991-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

·CHAPTER·X·

The herders' village was tucked between two folds of land, a collection of dun-colored buildings against the greening slopes of the hills that protected it. As they approached the gated palisade a gaggle of children gathered to stare mutely at the stranger; dressed in bright clothes but with small, solemn faces, they were their elders in miniature. A woman's shrill voice called them away, and they reluctantly dispersed as Indigo's hosts-or captors-led her through the gate.

She had little time for first impressions of the village, gathering only an image of thatched, single-story houses set in a rough circle around a patch of dusty and hard-trodden earth with a well at its center. Small fields straggled up the slopes beyond the buildings; near the top of the rise she saw an irrigation pump worked by two dogs harnessed to a whim. More dogs, distant kin to the hunting hounds of the Southern Isles, came fawning or snarling, each to its nature, around the horses' feet; the chestnut mare sidestepped nervously and rolled her eyes until a curt order from one of the herdsmen sent the dogs slinking away.

As the mare settled again, an old woman shouldered through the crowd toward them, and the villagers made way for her with a deference that suggested she was an important personage. She was grotesquely fat, and in contrast to the bright colors around her, her many layers of clothing were plain black. Her only adornment was a headband of beaten copper disks; beneath it her eyes were black and sharp in a face seamed like rock strata. She stopped, and looked Indigo up and down as though assessing a carcass at a market. Then she turned, gestured imperiously to two women standing nearby and uttered a shrill, staccato volley of orders.

The women hastened forward, and the herdsman's lance jabbed toward Indigo's thigh, indicating that she should dismount and give herself into their care. She could barely put her left foot to the ground; seeing her disability, the women chattered like agitated birds and half walked, half carried her to a long, thatched house, larger than the others, which seemed to be some kind of communal hall. They lowered her onto a heather-stuffed pallet near the sluggish peat fire that burned in the center of the hall, and with a good deal of gesticulating began to ease the boot from her left foot. She sat mute while they clucked over her swollen ankle, and submitted to the application of a poultice. Though she couldn't understand a word of their voluble conversation, she was reassured by their attitude, which seemed to imply that she was a guest rather than a prisoner.

They had almost finished their work when the door opened, spilling light into the hall, and the old woman in black entered, accompanied by an equally elderly man with a bald pate and a thin fringe of beard under his chin. He, too, wore disks of copper at his brow, and from the haste with which

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