Our best theories said the disc represented the sun, though why it should be winged, no one knew. Equipped with my knowledge that dragon-headed people were real, I found myself re-evaluating the basis of Draconean religion: was the sun itself perhaps what they worshipped? The winged disc often held a central place at any site, either hovering over Draconean figures, or on its own. Then again, real Draconeans did not rule out the possibility of mythical ones as well. After all, human religions have often depicted the gods as human in shape. Moreover, I had no certainty that the faith practiced here was the same as that which had prevailed when the Draconeans reigned over a worldwide civilization. Indeed, I should be surprised if it had not undergone changes.
With a wry smile, I added “religion” to the list of topics I must broach with the sisters when time and vocabulary permitted. The list was approximately a thousand items long, and grew with every passing day.
I turned my attention once more to my surroundings. The chamber was large, but not large enough to accommodate together all the Draconeans I had seen upstairs. Its furnishings were sparse. The reflections I had seen were from the winged disc and the gold tracery adorning the braziers, all of which had been polished to a mirror sheen. Finely carved benches occupied part of the floor, but not all. Beneath the sun disc stood what I presumed was an altar, with what appeared to be offerings. Approaching, I found branches of greenery and a bowl of seeds. The former were still springy to the touch; they could not have been cut more than a day or two before.
Which meant that someone visited this place during the winter. Did the temple, too, have a caretaker? Or did the wakeful herdswomen come to pay their respects?
Either way, it meant I should not linger. I had already been longer in the temple than I intended; I should collect my yak and go. But there were curtained openings off the central room, two flanking the altar, several along the side walls, and I could not depart without at least glancing inside. I pulled aside one of the curtains near the entrance and found a corridor behind, hewn, like the rest of the temple, from the living rock of the mountain.
(It did occur to me to wonder if this place, like the Watchers’ Heart, had any hidden doors. But I could hardly spare the time to hunt for such a thing, especially when I had no clues to guide me, such as we had enjoyed during our search in the Labyrinth.)
The corridor led me on a short way before debouching into a smaller room. A mandala adorned one wall, but this one was different; a Draconean figure dominated the center of the design. I could not help but evaluate it with an artist’s eye, noting the similarities to ancient art as well as the changes. A great deal of time had passed since the height of their civilization, but religious artwork is often highly conservative, harkening back to the styles and motifs of one’s forebears. Gone was the strange perspective which depicted figures in a combination of profile and facing stances, but the Draconean still adopted a familiar posture, striding forward with its hands at its sides.
I caught myself thinking of the figure as “it,” and shook my head. “Truly,” I murmured under my breath, “I must contrive a way to see some male Draconeans.” Thus far I had no data on sexual dimorphism among their kind. Certainly the sisters had no breasts, which was only to be expected among organisms that laid eggs. (Monotremes notwithstanding—that is to say, the platypus and certain kinds of echidna—mammals are not generally oviparous.) There might well be some males upstairs, but I did not quite dare to go back up and search for them.
Indeed, I should have departed already. With one last glance about the room, I hurried back down the corridor, my little lamp flickering with my speed.
When I flung the curtain aside, two Draconeans spun to face me.
Ruzt leapt forward, clapping one hand over my mouth. She needn’t have bothered: by then the instinct to remain quiet was deeply ingrained in me. I sagged in boneless relief, for it was only Ruzt and Zam, not strangers, who had come upon me.
My relief did not last long.
Zam wrenched me from Ruzt’s grasp, snarling. I had seen the sisters confront their neighbours who came begging; I had never seen one in a true fury before. Her ruff stood up high, her wings spread, and her lips peeled back to expose her formidable teeth. The words she spat at her sister and myself were too gutteral for me to have any hope of making them out, but I could guess at their meaning: she was enraged that I had trespassed upon their holy place.
My reasoning in entering the temple was sound. But reasoning is of very little use when faced with a sight like that; guilt and fear came down upon me in equal quantities. I could only babble apologies in my broken Draconean: “I think no bad” was the closest I could come to “I meant no harm.” But “I am sorry” came easily to my tongue, for it was a phrase I had used a thousand times before, albeit never with such heartfelt fervor.
Zam was not mollified. She divided her snarls between me and her sister. When Ruzt stepped forward, hands outstretched, Zam hurled me toward the altar. I had seen her lift heavy sacks of feed, but had never been on the receiving end of that strength before. I was briefly airborne; then I struck a bench and went sprawling. Instinct told me to stay down, to appear as contrite and unthreatening as possible. Zam disliked me; Zam had feared me from the start. Now she could kill me with one swipe of those claws.
When she seized me again, all the restraint in the world could not keep me from yelping. Zam dragged me to my feet and shoved me forward, in the manner of one marching a prisoner to execution. But a swift, terrified glance showed me that Ruzt was re-lighting my fallen lamp and following along behind. Surely I could trust her to protect me, if Zam had decided upon my death? I did not know. Perhaps she had concluded that this enterprise was a failure, that they never should have troubled themselves to rescue a human from the snow. Our legends and Scripture were filled with tales of murderous Draconean rituals, and a part of me expected to be the victim of one now.
Zam shoved me through the opening to the left of the altar. I did not expect stairs, and half fell down several of them, catching myself against the walls. When Ruzt passed through the curtain, providing a pittance of light, I saw the path led downward in a spiral much like the one I had followed upstairs. More hibernating Draconeans? The ruler of this place, who would decide my fate?
Neither. Reaching the bottom of the steps, I stumbled into another small room, this one painted with murals in a much older style.
Zam took me by the scruff of the neck and spat out the first intelligible word I’d heard from her that day. “Look.”
I would have looked even if she had not forced me to. The murals were crude imitations of those I had seen in the Watchers’ Heart, but I could follow their meaning clearly enough. On the right, which was the customary beginning for Draconean sequences, adoring humans knelt at the feet of a splendid dragon-headed figure, who dispensed livestock, baskets of grain, and other largess to its subjects. But this was soon followed by scenes of strife: layered bands in which humans turned their backs on pleading Draconeans and set fire to buildings or killed cattle in pointless slaughter. Warfare ensued.
“This is the past,” I whispered, heedless of which language I was speaking. It might have been Akhian; it might have been Scirling. I cannot recall. “The past as you remember it.” Their account differed from ours rather a lot: Segulist and Amaneen scriptures tell of tyrannical rulers who lived in decadence and oppressed their subjects until the Lord’s prophets led the people to overthrow them. Stories in other parts of the world have their own variations on that theme.