Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [34]
The temple seemed to crawl out of the fog toward us. We stopped. To the left, where fish were scaled, gutted and packed, there stood a row of stalls. Even the wood of them stank, the very grain impregnated with fish oils and blood. To the right were small shacks where fishermen and their families lived. The temple sat between, on an artificial rise, and it had not always been a temple. It was low and squat, and old, built to last, of solid oak and walnut. I figured it originally for a council lodge of some sort. Nothing moved in our fields of vision, though somewhere a sail flapped.
I strode up the stone steps of the temple and pushed at the brass-banded doors, which opened quietly enough to show that the hinges were oiled regularly. The others followed, eyes warily scanning the too-empty night. I stepped inside, where cressets smoked gently. An open skylight let in mist that made a faint golden haze. The room was empty except for light and shadows, and at the far end an altar of peeled tlatel wood. I motioned with a finger and Kreeg stepped into the shadows to keep watch.
Whatever burned in the cressets had been impregnated with rundal oil. I could smell it sweetly curling in my nostrils. And though rundal oil is relatively cheap, poor people such as these fishermen would not casually waste it.
“Why keep it lighted?” Graye asked, echoing my thoughts.
“Perhaps Vohanna fears the dark,” I said, shrugging as I started forward through the empty temple toward the altar. Or perhaps, I thought, someone here was expecting visitors tonight.
I considered then my reasons for being in this place. Some connection in my head had argued that the worship of Vohanna was at the heart of both the attacks on Nyshphal and the mystery of my brother’s whereabouts. That connection was built out of historical oddities and strange tattoos that were more than they appeared. It linked extinct cults with the present day hiring of mercenaries, and mixed them all with a twisted feeling of dread in my own mind. And there was the strange way that Vohanna’s name kept popping up in my experience. To free the Klar slaves we’d had to fight a cult who worshiped Vessoth, Vohanna’s supposed husband among the gods.* Now, here was Vohanna again. I knew I could be wrong, but what else did I have to go on if I wanted to find Bryce? I stepped behind the low altar and bent to peer at the shelves beneath. Copper bells were there, and a slender dagger, censers, an aspergillum, and other tools of the priestly trade. I shifted a pile of parchments and felt a chill flash through my chest. My hand found a reddish, horseshoe-sized oval of stone and drew it out to set on the altar. It was smooth, about four inches thick, and flat on top except for a dozen empty depressions where something rounded would fit. I recognized it as a matrix for holding toir’in-or stones, a tool of sorcery.
[*See Swords of Talera.]
“What is it?” Valyan asked over my shoulder.
I started to explain, but a voice interrupted.
“What do you here?” a man called from the doorway.
He was an old man. He quavered. He quavered even more when Kreeg slipped corded arms around his neck from behind to press a dagger to his throat. A button of blood appeared on the sun-wrinkled skin and I motioned Kreeg to stillness. None of us except Kreeg had heard the door open, and Diken Graye stepped forward to close it again and drop the thick lock-board across it. He leaned there so no one else could come in. Not easily anyway.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” I said to the man, my voice echoing in the open space. “But we need information. Are you the priest of this temple?”
The old man shook his head slightly but stopped as Kreeg’s dagger pricked. “No...no,” he said. “I’m only the caretaker.