The stranger stopped two paces away. Summoning what little strength I had, I stepped so close, we could have kissed-and set my blade at his throat.
“Who are you?” I growled, ready to slit at a moment.
“H-have you seen a god here?”
By all the demons of far Avedega, I knew that voice. “Septio?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
I could hear him getting angry. I could smell it. “That skinless freak was yours?”
He pushed the blade away. I did not fight. “What happened?” he demanded. “Who are you?”
“I am Green. And your… thing… has stolen away my Dancing Mistress.” Just saying the words made me want to plunge my knife into his gut. I withheld my hand.
He must have heard my desire in my tone, for the bluff was gone from his voice when he answered. “Then she will be lucky if she dies quickly. An avatar of Blackblood has slipped our nooses and gone hunting.”
That sounded horrifying. “What happens when it finds its prey?”
“Eventually it returns to the god.”
“Break the Wheel!” I cursed. “How do we rescue her?”
His answer was chillingly simple. “We don’t.” Then: “Green. You do not sound well. Let us find a quiet place and talk about what it is that may be done.”
“Qu-quiet, yes.” I managed to put my knife away without stabbing my thigh. I very badly wanted to sit down, in safety.
She was gone. My greatest teacher was gone. A sick emptiness took everything good and right within me as I followed close behind this priest who might once have been my friend.
I kept enough sense of direction, even in my upset, to know that we were heading for the Temple Quarter. Goddess, protect me from Your sisters and brothers here.
Septio led me slowly to a colony of coldfire, for I could not walk fast. This time we both took plentiful swaths in hand. Somewhere in the darkness, we’d left behind the mine gallery with its corroded, bulking machines. Now the gleaming silver light showed a wealth of carvings. Faces and forms crowded the stone from the floor all the way up to and across the ceiling. The details of their features were wrapped in soft shadow, melting and flowing as we walked. Gnomons, for the dark-bound sundial of the underworld.
I let them distract me from the cracked well of my grief.
The Blood Fountain had originally been built much the same way. Kalimpura had entire temples in a similar style, buildings where every exposed face had been carved in a frenzied riot of detail.
I could not see why such a great effort would be made to line a tunnel few knew the existence of.
Eventually we found a tall, cold room lit by spitting gas lamps. Though it was at the level of the tunnel, the gas told me we were in the undercellar of some building of the Temple Quarter. How deep did the clever architecture go?
I found myself focusing on the smallest details as a distraction from my grief. This room had eight sides of equal length, making the floor an even octagon about twelve feet across. The corners where the sides met were relieved with little projections that rose the thirty feet to the ceiling to form a blunted vault. The walls were rimed with frost, as was the floor. A sigil was etched in marble beneath the frost.
Each wall held a doorway of blank stone. We had entered through the only opening. Septio stepped to the middle of the room. “Join me.”
I did so. He shut his eyes, so I shut mine. I had the sudden sense of something larger and meaty close by us, though it did not have the blind, questing hunger of the skinned thing that had taken the Dancing Mistress. I clenched my fists and stood firm beside the priest, unready to surrender anything more.
His arm brushed mine. “Come.”
The doors had moved. Stone blocked the path where our footprints disturbed the frost on the floor, and the opening now beckoned over virgin rime.
“Dread magic,” I asked, “or a slowly rotating floor?”
Septio gave me a sour look. “Follow where the road leads, Green.”
“I have spent too much time in a temple, and among practical women.” The Dancing Mistress had been one, of course. The greatest of them. My eyes stung with the thought of her.
We passed through the darkness into a room almost as tall as the octagonal chamber, but longer, and thus relatively more narrow in aspect. This one was ranked by stands of dark candles, some deep brown beeswax. As we entered, the tapers flared to life to form a wave of light that reached the far end of the room and bloomed off the hammered silver mirror on that wall. The floor was littered with rugs and cushions and bolsters. A low table holding a few trays and bowls sat at the middle of the room amid the brightest candles.
“Come,” said Septio. “Sit. Let us talk in a safe and peaceful place.”
I watched the mirror as we moved to the center of the room. The reflection was delayed slightly, the way an echo might dally to follow after a noise. I had never known light to do that, and wondered what glamer was on the mirror. Or possibly on me.
“Below has not been good to me lately,” I said as I sat beside the table. Something among the bowls had an interesting aroma. My body, starved for blood, began to hunger for it. I felt guilt at the hunger, as if my need were a betrayal of my lost mistress.
Septio tucked himself down next to me, not touching but still quite close, and reached for one of the bowls. “Try this.”
“How will it help me find her?” I demanded. Or her corpse.
“Trust me in this. You need your strength, and we have time.”
I did not trust him, but neither did I have much choice. Finely shredded meat in a very dark sauce. I lifted some with my fingers and tasted. Salty and rich, with a jolt of spice I would not have thought to find in Stone Coast cooking.
It was a balm to my thinned blood.
Dropping my veil, I began to eat. It was difficult not to make noises as I tore into the food. I felt like a beggar outside a bakery, driven half-mad by the scent and stuffing myself on the scraps before someone took the tray away.
After a few minutes, I slowed myself. There was no reason to lose control in front of this man, even if I did half-count him as a friend. “Now I have trusted you. Tell me, where is she?”
“I told you. With the avatar.”
“And you said rescue was not possible for me. It happens I believe you, or I’d already be destroying this room looking for the way out to find her.” An empty boast, though sitting in a decent amount of warmth and safety was doing much to restore me from the assault. “You led me to believe there might be other paths.” I leaned so close that the warmth of his face mingled with mine. “Tell me now,” I growled.
“That depends upon the god’s aspect.” Septio’s voice was low to match mine. “Skinless is not a theopomp, so it will not lay her directly before the altar. She will be held awhile.”
“Safely, or in pain and fear?”
“Green, what sort of god do we follow here?”
I exploded. “ Why? Why do you honor such a cheap storybook villain? Life is difficult enough without mortifying yourself before a monster!”
“Do you know what we do here? Do you know why?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Then do not criticize. The Sundering of Heaven was a stroke that has echoed across all of the world’s time.”
“You refer to theogenic dispersion.” Sundering of Heaven. I despised his cant. The Temple of the Silver Lily seemed to have managed largely without the mummery so often associated with priests and gods. Simple description had been enough.
“Yes.” Septio was surprised. “It is easier to talk of sundering, for most people.”
I grabbed a lock of his brown, curling hair and yanked him close. “I am not most people. I will grant you that your god is a liver-eater worthy of your respect. Grant me that I know something of what I am doing.”