7
Lyra was scared and filled with regret, but mostly she felt bitter anger. She had been tricked — she had let herself get tricked.
Kel’s face was inscrutable in the moonlight. “No wandering priestess is so sheltered. Even if you did not know the price in its entirety, you chose to pay it.”
The lack of sympathy in his voice stung. She turned away from him, facing the god again. Her hands shaking, she took a step into the temple. She wanted to scream at her, but the last dregs of her common sense told her she probably shouldn’t shout at something that had the power to yank an entire language out of her head without her noticing.
“I trusted you.” The words came out in a whisper. “I thought you were helping me.”
“I did help you, priestess. I have given you a great boon. Do you not speak the paladin’s tongue as if you were born to it?”
“I didn’t think you were going to steal my old language from me!”
“I have stolen nothing. I merely accepted the sacrifice you offered.”
She took a breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was louder. Close to a shout. “I thought you would learn what I know, not take it!”
When she heard the scuff of the swordsman’s boots on the road, she twitched, but she didn’t turn around until he spoke. “Priestess, perhaps—”
She turned to see him standing at the edge of the stone overhang just before the temple’s door swung shut with the sharp crack of rock colliding with rock. The grey woman appeared between it and Lyra, looming over her. Lyra’s breath caught in her throat.
Kel hadn’t shut that door, and she sure as hell hadn’t. It had to have been the god. She was trapped in the temple now, with the only light the pale moonlight that fell in a dim glow from the skylight, not doing much more than illuminating the part of the basin of water that it touched. Everything else was nearly pitch black, except the grey woman, who hovered before her in the darkness as clearly as she had in the daylight.
“Your prayers have been answered, priestess. Do not grieve; rejoice instead. This is the greatest boon I have granted in many years.”
“Let me out,” Lyra said, her voice suddenly hoarse. She thought the heard the muffled sound of someone shouting outside the temple, but it may just have been her pulse pounding in her ears.
“The paladin lingers still, and I will not let him cross the threshold into my temple. When he departs, I will open my doors again.”
“Let me out,” Lyra repeated. “Right now. Please. I don’t want to be trapped in here.”
“Have no fear, priestess, for you are safe. The water in my well is clean and pure. You have the food you brought from your land downstairs, and a bed to sleep in. Rest, and when the paladin departs, I shall open the temple door for you.”
“I don’t care if he’s still out there or not.”
It was almost funny, how quickly things had changed. She had spent most of the day hiding in here, terrified of the swordsman — or paladin, or whatever he was — and now she couldn’t care less about him. She just wanted to leave. She took a step forward and reached for the door, careful not to brush against the grey woman, but before her fingers touched the cool stone, a force that felt like a kickball smacking against her ribs knocked her back a couple of steps. The grey woman appeared between her and the door once more.
“I will not allow the paladin to bring his unholy blade into my temple!”
The words seemed to vibrate in Lyra’s bones, and she continued backing away until she backed into the basin of water and felt the cool wetness of the water that dripped over the edge soak into her trousers. Her arms prickled with goosebumps.
The silence stretched on. She couldn’t hear anything outside anymore, either. The grey woman floated in front of the door, unmoving. Ever so slowly, her heart went from humming-bird speed to jackrabbit speed.
After what had to have been minutes ticked by and the grey woman did nothing, Lyra dredged up the courage to speak.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll... I’ll go downstairs now, if that’s all right?”
The grey woman inclined her head slightly. “I will not keep you from your slumber, priestess. Rest. Perhaps morning shall bring with it hope and good cheer.”
Lyra very much doubted that, but she was too shaken to argue. She was too shaken to do anything other than back away from the grey woman and make her way across the room to the door that led to the chambers below. The hinges let out another high-pitched squeal, but the dimly flickering candlelight that lit up the stairwell felt welcoming. A hell of a lot more welcoming than the grey woman and her dark temple room did right now.
She didn’t look back as she went down the stairs and shut the door behind her. She felt lightheaded with horror at what she had done and a fresh fear toward the grey woman, more potent even than when she first saw her in the alley. The candle, when she got to the bottom of the stairs and could see it, was still burning, unchanged from earlier. She no longer doubted that there was something magical about it.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
She no longer had even the slightest hope that this was a dream or a hallucination.
Leaving the candle lit — the thought of blowing it out and being alone down here in the pitch blackness made her palms feel clammy — she kicked off her borrowed, too-small sandals and shuffled over to the bed. She shook the blankets out before crawling under them and pulling them up over her head, lying there on her side, her eyes staring at nothing.
She was going to die here, locked in this temple if the woman refused to open it, or die out there in one of a thousand different ways. Even if, by some miracle, she stumbled onto a way home, what was she going to do? She couldn’t speak her own language anymore. Maybe she could relearn it, but there would be no slipping back into her regular life even if she found a way home tomorrow. Not anymore.
Somehow, she fell asleep, but her rest was fitful. She got up once when her bladder couldn’t take it anymore to drag one of the empty wooden buckets into the crypt room and use it as a makeshift bathroom, and spent an agonizing few moments staring up the stairs and thinking of that basin of clear water, so thirsty she thought she was going to go mad with it, before forcing herself to go back to bed and ignore her thirst.
The grey woman had said the water was safe twice now, but Lyra no longer trusted her in the slightest. She wasn’t going to drink that water unless she had to.
Tears of fear and sadness, loneliness and betrayal came as she got back into the bed, and she cried herself to sleep a little while later. She didn’t know how long she slept, or how many times she woke up, but it was a night filled with disorientation. Each time her eyes opened, she expected to see her bedroom, and each time it took her a few long seconds to remember where she was, the impossibility of what had happened to her, and the crushing sensation of being trapped -- both in the temple and in this world -- came back tenfold.
She had no idea what time it was when she finally woke up for good. With no windows, it was impossible to tell if the sun was even up yet. The flickering light of the candle hadn’t changed, and there was no sound from above.
Lyra rose and walked over to the desk, pausing to slip the straw sandals onto her feet. From the surface of the desk, she took the... the glass and metal rectangle she no longer had the name for and held down the button on the side to wake it up. The glass lit up with the numbers for entering her password, but she could no longer recognize the digits. She remembered the pattern, however, and it let her through, but it was clear that checking the time on it was useless. She didn’t know what the numbers meant.
Almost reluctantly, she touched the image that she knew would allow her to play music, and chose a song at random. It played, the sound alien in this windowless stone room, and while the music and the sound of the singer’s voice were familiar to her, the words held no meaning even though she knew what they singer was supposed to be saying.
She held down the side button to turn the thing off, wanting to preserve its energy even though it was all but useless to her, and felt her stomach rumble. She had missed two meals yesterday, and her body was reminding her of how hungry she was.
Even though she knew it would make her even more thirsty, she opened the bagged loaf of bread and tore a chunk from the end, chewing on it as she started up the stairs. She opened the door at the top, wincing at the squeal of metal, and had to fight a visceral surge of thirst when she first heard, then saw, the slowly flowing, crystal clear water in the basin.
She was so, so thirsty.
She forced herself to ignore the temptation of the water and shoved the rest of the bread into her mouth, hoping she would feel better once the food hit her stomach. The grey woman wasn’t in the temple at the moment, and the temple door was propped open a few inches again. Sunlight streamed in through both the open door and the skylight in the ceiling.
Something brushed against her ankles and she nearly screamed before realizing it was the tabby cat. Purring, the cat turned around and twined around her ankles a second time. Letting out a shaky breath, she stooped to run her hand along the cat’s back. The feline arched her spine into the touch, pleased.
“Do you think it's safe to leave? She’s not going to slam the door in my face?”
The cat butted her head against Lyra’s knee, which wasn’t much of an answer, but she felt a little better anyway. A little less terrified. The cat made everything feel a little more... normal.
She took a deep breath and started across the temple, half certain that the grey woman was going to return and trap her inside again at any moment. But she reached the door without issue and when she pushed it, it swung open the rest of the way without making a sound. Judging from the sun in the sky, it was midmorning. It was already a hot day, but not yet as sweltering as it had been when she first arrived.
The area directly outside the temple was quiet, but she could hear noises coming from further away. A horse neighed and children laughed. A bird kept repeating a high-pitched song, which was echoed by its mate in the distance. Somewhere, someone was hammering on metal. The scents of wood-smoke and horse manure filled the air, along with that of baking bread and cooking food.
The grey woman was still nowhere to be seen. She stepped out under the under the overhang, only to leap back when Kel shifted, moving from the pillar she hadn’t noticed him leaning against to face her. He was only a couple feet away from her, but seemed to be careful not to step under the overhang. He was taller than her by a good six or eight inches, and was wearing the same loose shirt and trousers he had been in the night before, though this morning, his sword was nowhere to be seen. His eyes were somewhere between blue and grey, which she noticed when he looked her up and down once, perfunctorily.
“I see you’ve survived uninjured, priestess,” he said, leaning his shoulder against the pillar. “I have rarely seen one of your kind so foolish as to anger a god in its own temple.”
“She was mad at you,” Lyra snapped, her nerves making her short-tempered. “She didn’t want you to come into the temple. She said something about your sword being unholy.”
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, something unidentifiable flitting across his face, then sighed.
“Then I apologize for causing her to close the temple last night, and I will not attempt to enter again. Will you speak with me today?”
It was an easy enough decision. After last night, the last place she wanted to be was the temple, and the grey woman had already said she couldn’t help her anyway.
“Yes, but first, I need something to drink. Please. I’m so thirsty.”
His eyes flocked back into the dim temple behind her. “There is clean water in the well, is there not?”
“I’m not drinking that.”
He must have heard the flat refusal in her tone, because he just inclined his head in a minute nod and said, “Walk with me to the river, then. We shall speak on the way.”