Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar by Louise Cooper - Indigo 06

Indigo; and that, added to the lodestone’s emphatic message, turned Grimya’s early suspicion into certainty. The next demon was here, she was in no doubt of it now. And she believed she knew the form it had taken.
    The sun had vanished behind the trees, and the blood-red reflections were fading from the lake as its surface dulled to pewter gray. The ritual was coming to an end; the drums fell silent as the priestesses’ cries ceased and the returning procession made its way toward the ziggurat. Grimya watched them pass, and shivered. Indigo , she thought, you must get well again quickly! There is so much I have to tell you ... and I don’t think it would be wise to wait much longer.
     
    On their third morning in the citadel, Shalune at last pronounced her patient fully fit. Grimya was deeply relieved, for the healer had kept Indigo sedated and therefore unreachable throughout her relapse, and this was the first time since the ceremony on the cliff top that the wolf had been able to talk to her.
    Grimya was dismayed to discover that Indigo recalled almost nothing of what had happened at the ceremony. At first she wondered if the aftereffects of Shalune’s herbal drugs were clouding her friend’s memory, but Indigo was too lucid and too clearheaded for such a theory to be possible. She simply didn’t remember; and when she heard what Grimya had to tell her, she was deeply disturbed.
    “You say that I changed ?” They were alone in the cave while Shalune was about other business, but Indigo suspected that they wouldn’t have their privacy for long.
    “Not in the way you l-ooked,” Grimya told her. “But I sensed someone—or something—else where your mind should have been. And I did not l-like it. Then, when you began to speak, I knew that that, too, was not you.”
    “What did I say?”
    “I don’t know. I did not under-stand the words. But the women grew very excited, and there was r-rejoicing.” (What had Shalune said as they watched the lakeside ceremony the next evening? “The Ancestral Lady is pleased with us....”) Grimya hesitated, then: “Indigo, have you st-udied the lodestone since you woke? For I fear that...” She stopped as she saw her friend’s expression, and Indigo nodded gravely.
    “Yes, Grimya, I’ve studied it, and it confirmed what we both suspected. The demon’s here in the citadel. And you believe we’ve found it, don’t you?”
    “Yess,” Grimya growled softly. “I believe it takes the form of this cr-reature they call the An-cestral Lady.” She showed her teeth in an uneasy gesture. “I also think she was the one who came into your mind when you sat in the stone chair. I smelled death, like rr-otten meat, and she is very closely con-cerned with death.”
    The thought that such a being might have gained control of her mind, however briefly, made Indigo shudder. “By the Mother, this is some kind of insanity,” she said, softly but with feeling. “I’m not an oracle!”
    “The women here think that you are.” Grimya hesitated, then added ominously, “It would seem that the An-cestral Lady thinks so, too.”
    Suddenly, unbidden, an image of dark eyes fringed with silver flicked momentarily through Indigo’s mind. She was startled by it, and Grimya’s head came up sharply as she caught the momentary disturbance in her mind. “Indigo? What is wrr-ong?”
    “I don’t know.” The image had gone, and Indigo shook her head. “I thought for a moment that some memory from that night was coming back to me, but I must have been mistaken.” She glanced toward the cave’s entrance. “I wish I could talk to Uluye. If only I could speak her language, I might make her understand that I am not what she thinks me.”
    Grimya remembered the spear-wielding priestesses who had subtly but emphatically reinforced Uluye’s will during the ceremony. “I am not s-sure if that would be wise,” she said. “Uluye has great power here—worldly power, that is; I don’t know