Shade and Sorceress (20 page)

The temples were made of stone and packed red earth. From about halfway up they were perforated with a great many rounded, doorless entries. Precarious wooden walkways and stairways wound right around the outside walls. As they drew closer to the temples, the Faithful began to crowd around the donkey, talking excitedly in a language Eliza didn’t understand, reaching to touch her tunic. By the time the donkey had reached the largest temple she had a whole crowd trailing behind her, chattering and pointing. The donkey stopped at the base of the temple by one of the many stairways.

“Now what?” Eliza asked Charlie nervously, but he remained a donkey, unresponsive. The crowd behind her laughed to hear her talking to her donkey and jostled closer. Eliza was tempted to stay on the donkey’s back, for the sea of black-robed beings all around her was more than a little unnerving, but she knew she couldn’t just stay where she was forever. So she climbed off the donkey and was immediately locked in a circle of bodies roughly her own height. One of the Faithful caught hold of her staff and tried to take it from her, tugging and tugging. Eliza clung to it with her one good arm and looked around imploringly at the hooded, scarved beings. They did not seem dangerous, but nor were they particularly friendly.

“I need help,” she said, which caused a great commotion, but nobody seemed to understand what she was saying. “I need to talk to the Oracle of the Ancients.”

The one who had tried to lay claim to her staff finally gave up and the crowd parted for a being whose hood was decorated with glittering red beads. She seemed to possess some authority, for the others quieted while she spoke to Eliza gently and at some length. Listening carefully, Eliza realized that she was speaking the Language of First Days, but she didn’t know enough to understand her.

Eliza gave a helpless gesture and said, “I’m sorry. Do you speak Kallanese?”

The being spoke again and Eliza just shook her head.

“I want to see the Oracle,” she repeated pointlessly.

The red-beaded being held out a hand to Eliza. Eliza looked around for Charlie and saw the donkey wandering off back the way they had come. He really was just leaving her here. There was nothing to do but follow the being, so Eliza took her hand. The crowd made way for them, and she led Eliza up the side of the temple on a rickety wooden stairway that creaked with each step. Eliza found herself tiring as they climbed, struggling to match the even steps of her guide, who was not even breathing hard. A little more than halfway up, they turned abruptly off the stairs onto a long platform, then into the temple through a low doorway and along a candle-lit corridor.

The inside of the temple rang with the sound of singing and clapping and the shuffle of feet. They passed frescoed rooms where black-robed worshippers danced among still, bright statuettes, the air thick with smoke and incense, until they reached a large empty room with brilliant woven rectangles of carpet on the floor. Here Eliza’s guide gestured for her to sit down and at last removed her own scarf and hood.

She was a strange-looking creature, with a wild sort of beauty. Eliza realized that the reason their eyes all seemed so wide and staring was because they were lidless, set deep in cavernous sockets. The size of her eyes was exaggerated too by the lower half of her face tapering into a sharp little chin. Her skin was papery white and black glossy hair was wound on top of her head. She touched a finger to her nose and said, “Rhianu.” Eliza guessed this must be her name, so she touched her own nose and said: “Eliza.” The being smiled and repeated, “Eliza.” So Eliza repeated the being’s name: “Rhianu. Hello.”

Rhianu laughed and called something over her shoulder. Three others, also unhooded, emerged from another passageway. They gathered round Eliza, kneeling down and chatting with each other and smiling at her in a friendly way. One of them reached out shyly and touched her cheek, then withdrew, giggling. Another held up one of her unruly curls and they all laughed then.

“Stop it,” said Eliza, standing up. She didn’t like being treated like a strange animal. They all drew back in alarm and Rhianu said something to Eliza rather sharply. Eliza sat down again, wary, and they stared at her with their bright, lidless eyes.

One of the Faithful brought out a plate with bread on it and a bowl of steaming stew. Immediately Eliza forgot her anger and confusion. Her last meal had been on the Crossing, at least a full day ago, and she was famished. A cup of something sweet and milky was set on the carpet in front of her. Then they all settled around her to watch her eat, but she was too hungry to care. The stew was a rather tasteless mix of vegetables and something bean-like. She devoured it gratefully and drank back whatever was in the cup.

When she had finished eating Rhianu patted her on the shoulder, smiling as if to say, Isn’t that better? And it was.

“Thank you,” she said, bobbing her head in a sort of half-bow. “I’m ready to meet the Oracle now.”

She searched Rhianu’s face for some sign of comprehension. Her expression impassive, Rhianu gestured for her to rise and follow again.

The inside of the temple was a multi-storied warren of corridors and rooms for worship. At the very centre, a spiral stairway wound down around a heavy pillar, leading from the top of the temple to the bottom. It was so narrow that when they met other Faithful coming up they had to press themselves to the wall to let them pass. By the time they reached the bottom Eliza was dizzy from going in circles. They stopped in a little room with a basket in the corner. Rhianu took a black robe like her own out of the basket and handed it to Eliza, then stood and waited.

“Should I...do you want me to put this on?” asked Eliza uncertainly.

Rhianu said nothing.

Eliza stood wavering for a few moments longer while Rhianu watched her and waited. Then, reluctantly, she put down her staff and satchel. Rhianu picked them up immediately and put them in the basket. Eliza did not like this at all but didn’t see that she had much choice. Hurriedly she peeled off her tunic and put on the robe. Rhianu put the tunic in the basket with her other things, then stepped forward to help her tie the hood and scarf on. She held Eliza by the shoulders, looking her over carefully, gave a short nod of approval, and turned and headed down a corridor that sloped sharply downwards. It grew so narrow that Eliza’s shoulders brushed the walls. Eventually it ran straight into a solid wall. Rhianu knelt on the ground before the wall, touched her forehead to the ground, and pulled up a flagstone from the ground. She gestured for Eliza to go down. Eliza peered into the black hole. A rope ladder hung into darkness.

Every part of her wanted to say
no.
But she climbed down into the dark. Rhianu did not follow her.

“Hello?” she said. No reply. She was quite alone.

“Are you still up there?” she called, but she could hear Rhianu’s footsteps retreating now. The darkness was absolute. She felt her breathing coming fast and panicky and fumbled around until she found a wall. That was comforting, in a way, just to have something to touch in the dark. She felt her way around an octagonal room with stone walls and an earth floor. There were no doors. Doing her best to squash her fear, she sat by one of the walls and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. But the dark grew no less, and she could see nothing at all, not even her hand in front of her face. It was a black blindness equal to the white blindness on the Crossing. She breathed, and waited and listened to her heart thudding in her chest. Time passed, time and more time.

Her legs ached, so she walked around the room a bit more. The rope ladder was gone, which made her panic again, but she forced herself to sit and breathe until she felt a little calmer. She wasn’t sure if this was some kind of prison or if she was waiting for the Oracle. Surely Charlie would come for her if she didn’t return from this place; she told herself it was his job, after all, to take her to the Xia Sorceress. She tried to calm herself with this, and as the hours passed in darkness and silence, she dozed.

She dreamed. Or perhaps it wasn’t a dream. Later, she couldn’t decide. She opened her eyes, and she was lying down in a bright bare room, alone. The white tiger from her visions of the Arctic was sitting in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, sitting up, heart racing.

The tiger didn’t speak. It stood and loped away, glancing at Eliza over its shoulder. Eliza rose and followed. The corridors of the Temple were dark and empty. The tiger moved purposefully on silent paws through the twisting web of hallways and then he was gone. She stood at the entrance to a small room. Inside, a candle burned before a statue of two women conjoined but splitting apart, facing in different directions. Eliza picked up the candle and carried it around the room, looking at the frescoes on the walls. She knew this story. In the first panel, a red Giant looked upon a shining planet and a tear dropped from its eye. Within the tear two human forms twined together like twins in the womb. In the next panel, two girls crawled out of the earth in a dark wood. A Mancer stood over one girl, his hand on her head, and a demon of some kind stood over the other. The final image confused her the most. A Mancer stood with a black bird tied to his hand. The demon lay dead and a white tiger bent over it, its mouth red with blood. The tiger in the picture licked its lips and said: “This is the difference between you and me.”

“What do you mean?” whispered Eliza. The black bird in the Mancer’s hand let out a piteous cry.

“The difference,” said the tiger, and it stepped out of the wall and brushed against her, impossibly soft, “between captivity and freedom.”

~

Hours passed, perhaps a day, or so it seemed to Eliza, before Rhianu returned with a lamp and lowered the rope ladder again. Eliza climbed out shakily, weak with hunger. She followed Rhianu through the maze of corridors and winding staircases to a room where an old, bent woman sat on the floor. She had no teeth and her gigantic eyes were so pale they appeared almost white.

The woman gestured for Eliza to sit down on a mat in the middle of the room.

“Are you the Oracle?” asked Eliza. “I need help.”

The woman just gave her a toothless grin and shook her head. Eliza sat. The whole room was covered in brilliant frescoes. She recognized the story of the Making of Tian Di and the departure of the Ancients. The Ancients were depicted as red giants with planets or moons in their hands. The meaning of the other stories eluded her. An old man seated on a cloud had opened his mouth wide and dragons poured out of it. The dragons’ eyes were all scratched out. A radiant golden being gave a bright box to a smaller, fair-haired being all dressed in feathers. The fair-haired feather-wearers were in another story as well, within a winged palace, and this one caught her eye because across from them she recognized the Mancers inside a very accurate depiction of their Citadel. Between the winged palace and the Citadel, a girl in a black tunic fought a horde of monsters. Eliza’s heart gave a little jolt.

The woman began to croon something now. She rose and walked circles around Eliza. A hole in the ground held a pile of herbs, which the woman lit on fire, and the room filled with sweet smoke. The woman took her injured arm and unwound the bandage. Eliza resisted at first, but the woman gave her a wild, angry stare and Eliza was too weary and frightened to do anything but relent. The bandage came off. She was unprepared for the sight of the scabbed, purple, mangled limb that hung useless at her side.

“There was this hound,” she faltered, and her voice sounded distant and unfamiliar. Others were there now, many figures in black robes. They packed some kind of dark sludge against her arm, where it dried in moments. Somebody brought her food and she ate it. Somebody handed her a cup of cool water, and she drank it. They washed her face with a damp cloth, then painted it with oils. She submitted to everything, like a sleepy child being readied for bed. The room swam before her and she heard herself speaking in a language she didn’t know. She couldn’t understand her own words, didn’t know where they were coming from, but she knew she was describing the images that raced across her mind’s eye. She saw armies of Mancers, a gryphon soaring across blue skies, and herself in the snow, falling, her staff split in two. She saw a single tree in the desert, a river that flowed between the dark paws of some giant beast, a vast carved hall with a vaulted ceiling, a black shifting sky. The Faithful came in and out with candles and spoke and chanted. She was singing something now, a sad song that she knew had to do with her dead mother, her father. The Faithful took both her hands and held them still. She could feel the prick of the needle and tears ran down her face. Then they led her to another room with bare walls and a woven mat on the floor and laid her down. This time, she slept dreamlessly.

When she woke up, her arm was bandaged again and both her hands were wrapped in black cloth. Alarmed, she tore the cloth from her hands with her teeth and saw that her palms had been tattooed. On her left palm was a black raven. On her right palm, a dagger, pointing towards her.

~

Eliza ate in the same upper-story room with the rest of the Faithful, a bowl of something soft and bland and porridge-like. Then she followed Rhianu again down the stairs and the long corridor to the dark, empty room at the bottom of the Temple. Her heart clenched and she longed to refuse, to run away, to leave this place. But outside the walls were searching Mancers, and perhaps Charlie waiting to take her to the Arctic, and this was what she had asked for, this was what she had come for, this chance, and so she descended the rope ladder again. And again, she waited. She was hungry, she was thirsty. It was dark. She slept a little, but if she dreamed, she did not remember much. Rhianu came again, let her out. Shook her head. She ate and she slept, she came and went from the room, with no sense of time. The Temple bustled around her, the Faithful cleaning, chanting, singing, making candles, painting, cooking. She lay in the dark, at the bottom of this hive of activity, and she waited. The Oracle did not come.