The Priest led him through the inner corridors of the temple with
great care. They were all of uniform sandstone and none of them were decorated,
but he clearly knew the way.
‘How easy is it to get lost in here?’
asked the Thief
The Priest neither slowed down nor
looked back. He seemed to be concentrating very hard.
‘Inevitable...’ he said
The Thief, who had stopped briefly to
ask his question, hurried to catch up with him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Wanderer tells me where to go...’
‘How can that be? Surely once you have
learned the way then you can remember it?’
The Priest hurried on; his follower had
to strain to hear his reply.
‘My memory has always been poor. But, in
any case, the way shifts constantly’
The Thief was astonished.
‘So you are listening to the Lord Greycloak
now?’ he asked
The priest stopped, turned to his
companion, scowling at the question.
‘No – I do not commune with non-existent
or defunct beings’
The Thief was annoyed at his mistake.
‘The Wanderer, I meant... are you
receiving instructions from him?’
‘In a way, yes...’ the Priest muttered,
‘...but now we really need to get on...’
The Thief shut up – he was regretting
distracting his guide. This didn’t look like a good place to get lost.
The labyrinth continued, and they weaved
through it, effortlessly avoiding the many dead ends that loomed to their left,
right and ahead at almost every turn. It was bewildering and the journey seemed
to go on for hours.
‘How often do you do this?’ asked the
Thief, beginning to flag.
‘This is my first time’ replied the
Priest.
This made the Thief’s stomach lurch
‘What?’ he asked, hoping that he had
misheard.
This time the Priest didn’t even look
back.
‘I’ve never had a reason to go here
before’ he explained, ‘but I know exactly what we will find’
‘Where is it were going?’ the Thief
shouted ahead, but the Priest either didn’t hear his call or he chose to ignore
it. They carried on.
About five turn later they came to a
heavy iron door. It was clear that once this had had some sort of embossed
sigil or icon on it, but that appeared to have been rubbed out, leaving only
the faintest outline of something. A
winged human perhaps, or a huge bird, thought the Thief, although it was
very hard to tell. He briefly considered asking his guide, but then decided
against it.
The Priest pushed against the door. The
Thief had half-expected it to swing open soundlessly but instead it groaned at
the hinges. The Priest looked at him a little pointedly and so he rushed
forward to help. Pushing together they were able to force the door open but it
was hard work. No-one had oiled the hinges in a very long time.
The Priest stepped inside and the Thief
followed. They entered a very large hemispherical room, lit by bright orbs that
hovered just above human head height. Above them was a black ceiling dotted
with white twinkling stars. For a second the Thief thought they were looking at
the real night sky. He stared up wishing
that he’d learned anything about the constellations.
‘This is the sky room’ explained the
Priest, his voice dropping to a susurration, ‘here is where the Wanderer used
to roam through time and space’
The thief sensed how excited his guide
was to be in this room. The Priest’s eyes roamed eagerly across everything and finally
fixed on a tall stone seat in the middle of the room, like an austere throne,
the armrests were shaped into the
imprint of hands and arms; either they had been made like that or they had been
worn down by someone sitting in the seat for a very long time. Hanging behind
the seat was a grey mantle with a large round hood – it crackled with
unharnessed energy, the grey pulsing like an angry cloud. They approached it
slowly – The Priest with something like reverence, the Thief with extreme apprehension.
He could very well guess what was expected of him. But how could dare to wear
the raiment of a god?
They got very close to the cloak before
they noticed the snake, but after they’d seen it, it was hard to miss. It
slithered towards them from some dark edge of the room. It was very large and light
green. The Thief had seen many like this before, for this was a python, although
much larger than the any that he ever seen in the past. He had a sudden memory
of the boa constrictor he had once seen in a country lane, its belly distended
by the shape of the thing inside it, which might once been a deer.
‘Who
are you?’ the snake asked in perfect Tlaxacan.
The Priest stepped forward so that he
was between the snake and the Thief. All that the thief wanted to do was run –
but he knew there was no safe way back.
‘I
will not talk in that tongue’ the Priest answered in Ethian.
The snake’s eyes narrowed. For a moment
she hesitated.
‘I speak all the languages of the world’
she said, switching effortlessly to the new tongue, ‘so I will ask again, in the strange language
of humans – who are you?’
The Priest showed her his open palms.
‘I am a priest of the Grey Wanderer. I
am here to use the grey cloak. There’s your answer – so now, who are you and
why are you here?
The serpent lifted
her head up and swayed backwards and forwards in front of the Priest’s bony
face. The thief was astonished at the deep green of her ophidian eyes.
‘I’m a Naga’ she said, ‘we guard the lost things that are
not meant to be found’
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