“Your lady?”
“The goddess. Follow me, please.”
She led Jason inside and he felt an aura wash over him. It was unlike the aura of a person, more like an undercurrent that belonged to the building itself. It wasn’t overbearing, but he could feel a vast power behind it. It also had the flavour of the fleeting aura that had accompanied the disembodied voice he heard in the square.
They were walking between row after row of books, occasionally passing someone reading at a table. Some of the shelves, instead of books, held ornate tubes.
“Scrolls,” Gabrielle explained, seeing Jason’s curious glance. “The manuscripts here in the library are all copies. The originals are preserved in the archive.”
“So, does your boss talk to you a lot?” Jason asked.
“My boss?”
“The goddess.”
“Of course,” Gabrielle said. “I may be only a junior member of the clergy, but I am a member, nonetheless. I see and hear my lady every day.”
“That must be reaffirming. It doesn’t work that way where I come from.”
“Your world must be very strange. People serving gods that do not exist. How does that work, if I might ask?”
“Not really sure,” Jason said. “They seem to lean heavily on metaphor. You know I’m from a different world?”
“The lady has imparted some knowledge. It is her nature.”
“Her nature could use a privacy disclosure agreement. Where are you guiding me to, exactly?”
“The temple has a room for questions. Ask, and the lady will answer or not, as she chooses.”
“She’ll answer in person?”
“Answers come in many forms.”
“Sounds like she’s leaning on heavily metaphor, too.”
Gabrielle gave Jason a confident smile.
“You will soon see for yourself,” she said.
She led Jason to a set of double doors. They were larger than the ones that were the entrance to the temple, but just as plain. They were carved from wood, aged and unadorned but for a simple handle on each. Jason had the strange feeling they were older than the building in which they were affixed. Gabrielle pulled open the heavy doors with an ease that belied her small frame.
“This is as far as I take you,” she said, gesturing for Jason to continue on. He passed through the doors and she pushed them closed behind him.
46
Blatant Manipulation
The chamber was large and circular, a single room rising up five storeys to a glass ceiling. Light spilled in from above, reflecting from crystal mosaics that lined the walls to bathe the room in rainbow colours. This innermost chamber was the exact opposite of the temple’s plain exterior.
“That is certainly impressive.”
Jason walked into the room as Gabrielle closed the doors behind him. He looked at his arms as the light played over them. In the centre of the room there was a life-sized statue of a woman holding an open book. Jason walked around it, looking it over.
“Ask, and she shall answer or not, was it?”
Jason meandered around the room, looking at the crystal mosaics than ran from the floor, up five storeys to the ceiling. They depicted what he took to be various knowledge keepers: scribes, teachers, librarians. Rendered in colourful crystal and washed with light, they looked vibrant and bathed with glory.
He remained silent as he examined the artwork on the walls. He had always been prone to talking to himself, but the idea of expecting an answer back was disconcerting. He wondered if it was a little too close to prayer for his liking, then realised it actually was prayer.
“The idea,” a female voice spoke from behind him, “is that I choose whether to answer your questions, not whether you choose to ask them.”
It was the same voice he had heard in the square. He didn’t turn from where he was looking at the wall mosaics.
“And you’re in charge?” he asked.
“Definitively,” the voice said. “It is my temple.”
Her voice was melodious, with a hint of amusement. There was an undercurrent within it, an aura with the force of a tidal wave. It was somehow distant at the same time, like a photograph of a wild storm.
“Your house, your rules,” Jason said. “My mother had a similar attitude.”
“And you left,” the voice said. “You have the same option here.”
Jason turned around to find the statue had been replaced with a woman. She looked much the same as the people outside in the square, at least the human ones, with colourful clothes and Mediterranean features. She was beautiful, yet there was something detached and untouchable about her. Jason noticed that, unlike the statue, she wasn’t holding a book.
“So, were you the woman, or were you the book?”
“Neither.”
“Misdirection,” Jason said. “That’s a magician’s trick.”
“I’m not the Wizard of Oz, Jason.”
“You know my world?”
“I am Knowledge. Everything that is, or ever was known in this world. You brought your knowledge with you when you arrived.”
“What about the other gods?” Jason asked. “Knowing everything they know would be a bit overpowered.”
“We deities are of this world, but do not exist within it. Therefore their knowledge is not mine.”
Jason looked the goddess up and down.
“It looks like you exist within it,” he said.
“If you look at a pond and see a moon,” she said, “is that moon within the pond, or is it a reflection of something much greater, very far away?”
“Nice metaphor,” Jason said. “Classic religious imagery, but I suppose that’s part of the job. You say you’re not the man behind the curtain, but for all I know, you’re just some pretty lady with several judiciously-placed mirrors.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Well that’s just blatant manipulation,” Jason said. “If you already know everything, then asking me questions is just pantomime.”
She laughed, a pleasant, tinkling sound. It gave Jason the sense of a country stream on a warm summer’s day.
“You’re quite fun,” she told him. “You’ve felt my aura. And Hero’s.”
“A month ago I still thought auras were made up,” Jason said. “Who knows how many ways there are to trick someone like me.”
“I do, as it happens,” she said. “What about all the people outside when Hero appeared? Do you doubt them all? Do you think we hired actors?”
“Argumentum ad populum?” Jason said. “If you’re going to convince me you’re a god, you’ll need to do better than a second-rate apologist.”
“Have you considered how well the banana fits in the human hand?”
Jason burst into laughter.
“You’ve got jokes,” he said. “I like that.”
“If it makes you feel any better, just think of me as a vastly powerful, immortal entity. No need to use the G word.”
“Then what’s the difference between a god and some crazy-powerful super-being?”
“From your perspective? Very little. The nature of transcendent beings is not bound up in physical reality. God and goddess are mortal words.”
“It doesn’t matter until I hit the level cap, is what you’re saying.”
“Something like that.”
“Can you read my mind?”
“In a way,” she said. “My knowledge of this world is absolute. So long as you know what you are thinking, I know what you are thinking.”
“So you know what I’m going to ask?”
“I know that which is, and that which was, but not that which is yet to come.”
“I bet you make some bloody good guesses, though.”
She laughed again, the sound flooding his body with pleasant feelings.
“I know everything in this world,” she said, “yet you mortals are a constant source of surprise. I did not expect, for example, that you would turn back and save the people in that sacrificial chamber.”
“That one surprised me too,” Jason confessed. He looked the goddess up and down. “Why do you look like a local?”