Ring Around the Sky - Allyn Gibson [21]
“What do you seek?” he heard from behind him. Eevraith turned. The cleric. He was short, his voice deep, his head and body covered by the white robe he wore. Eevraith couldn’t place his accent. One of the southern continents, perhaps.
“I was to meet someone here,” said Eevraith. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, it was probably of no importance.” He turned and started back down the steps.
“Wait,” said the cleric. Eevraith turned, and the cleric held before him the key to the sanctuary.
He looked past the cleric and nodded toward the doors. “There’s someone within?”
The cleric nodded. “Perhaps even the answers you seek.”
Eevraith chuckled silently. “I have no questions.”
“None that you have asked.”
Eevraith closed the space between them. “Are clerics always so cryptic?”
The cleric ignored the question, and turned and unlocked the sanctuary doors. Eevraith pushed him to the side, took the brass handles, and pulled the doors open.
Inside the sanctuary was quite dark, with only the lit candles along the walls and at the pulpit providing any illumination. Eevraith slowly stepped inside.
He walked halfway up the central aisle, his footfalls on the polished stone echoing loudly in the silent chamber. He looked back over his shoulder twice toward the doors, hoping to see the cleric, hoping for some reassurance that there was some meaning to this midnight rendezvous, but the cleric had vanished, and Eevraith continued onward alone.
He heard footfalls, and turned. Framed in the door, backlit by the street lamps outside, was a Tellarite. From his distance, Eevraith could judge nothing—height, age, even gender. “Who are you?”
No answer. The newcomer took a few tentative steps into the Chrainolga’s sanctuary, then stopped.
“Come no closer!” shouted Eevraith, and his voice reverberated off the carved stone walls. “I’m armed.”
The newcomer took something from his side—perhaps a weapon—and held it up.
“What are you doing?” said Eevraith, his voice rattling.
A brilliant light blinded him, and Eevraith clutched his eyes in pain. The footfalls began again and came closer, and Eevraith fell to the ground in pain and fear. “Who are you?” he cried again.
The footfalls stopped, somewhere near his head. “Eevraith?” he heard.
He opened his eyes. Purple afterimages filled his vision, and his eyes were unable to focus. “Tev?” he said, half-recognizing the voice. “Tev, what’s the meaning of this?”
Rough hands grasped his shoulder and yanked him up off the sanctuary floor, then shoved him into a seat on a wooden bench. “You could hurt yourself like that, Eevraith.”
“Tev, you blinded me with that light!” Eevraith shouted. His vision had begun to clear, but the interior of the sanctuary and Tev still appeared murky to him. Tev took his torchlight and set it atop a table pointing upward, and the interior was bathed in twilight as light reflected from the high ceiling.
“How was I to have known you would look directly into my light?” Tev took a seat on a bench opposite Eevraith and propped his head in his hands.
Eevraith rubbed his eyes. “What do you want, Tev? I haven’t the time for this. I have a meeting of some sort.” Realization dawned on him, and he looked up at Tev through his bleary eyes. “The meeting. It was you. This was all your idea.”
“I knew I could appeal to your baser natures—curiosity and your career. Who would send you a cryptic note, asking for a clandestine meeting at a little-visited location at an inconvenient hour, offering to further your own political ambitions? You had to know. You wouldn’t have been you if you hadn’t come.”
Eevraith’s head hurt. “We’re not children anymore, Tev.” He paused and looked at Tev. “How did you get that message into my office?” Before Tev could answer, he realized the answer. “The transporter. You beamed it into my office, onto my desk.”
Tev shrugged.