Chapter Four #5
This final panel depicted the Eye of the One-Eyed God, hovering above the scene, and a group of Temple Priests below, in their traditional yellow and gold robes.
The guide droned on about how the color represented the old belief that gold would draw out pestilence, a superstition which no one believed any longer but which lingered in the colors the Priests wore, the jewelry on their bodies, and the ornamentation in the Temple buildings.
I wasn’t really listening. I was looking at the ghostly figures behind the Priests.
Their silhouettes overlapped in some places, but differed in others.
The embroidered Priests had their faces upturned and arms lifted towards the Eye, as if in supplication, but behind that I could see …
I squinted. If only I could touch it. I needed the slide of the fabric beneath my fingers to read it fully.
Given time alone with it, I was sure I could decipher whatever secrets …
“You!”
I jumped. The guide was pointing right at me, and the elderly couple were glaring in righteous disapproval. I realized that my nose was almost touching the cloth.
“Sorry,” I murmured, stepping back.
He started lecturing again, a little louder this time, as if to punish me for not listening.
I returned my attention to the images. There were definitely other figures, behind those of the Priests, that had been erased or reworked.
The tiny, almost invisible pattern of unpicked stitches showed me their hands had been outstretched before them, and they had been facing forward—not praying to the great Eye, but either warding off or attacking something in front of them.
Something that was no longer pictured. But what?
I approached the little group of seamstresses diffidently and stood for a moment observing one in particular, whose needle moved like quicksilver through the rich cloth. After a moment, I said, “Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt. I had a question about the tapestry.”
She looked up and smiled. The yellow hood turned her skin a sickly shade, but despite that she was pretty and cheerful looking.
“I was wondering about that last panel,” I said. “The one that looks like it was unpicked and stitched over.”
“You have a good eye,” she said. “No one really knows the true story, but we are told that a former Pontiff was dissatisfied with the work and demanded it be redone.” She winked. “Who knows?”
The guide cleared his throat pointedly from behind me, and I rejoined the elderly couple, chastened.
By the time we came to the end of the tapestry—and his lecture—we had reached the altar to the One-Eyed God, positioned as if offering itself as a conclusion to the story.
A burgundy rug carpeted the stone floor here, so thick that it rendered my footsteps silent as I approached, and the altar itself was also stone—a great rough slab, not carved or shaped at all, with an elaborate altar cloth draped over it.
The same motifs repeated over and over on the altar cloth—the lock of hair, the tooth, the outspread hand, the skull, and that lidless, lashless eye that had been staring at me since I arrived in Quell.
Another novice busied himself behind the altar, no doubt preparing himself for a service—and behind him was the great maw of the largest cremation oven I could imagine, with gold velvet curtains pulled to either side and secured with tasseled ropes.
The metal track leading in to the oven had a hand crank to one side, which I suppose a Priest would use to move the coffin along until it had passed through the curtain.
The whole thing stank of expensive incense, and it was starting to make me feel dizzy.
“Bones don’t burn,” said a voice in my ear. “Isn’t that interesting?”
I jumped. Behind me was a tall man, so tall that my eyes were just level with his collarbone. I recognized him as the man who had picked up my embroidery from the Temple floor. He did not wear Priestly robes, but he had an air of assurance that made me think he worked there in some capacity.
“Oh,” I said faintly. I craned to look behind him. The guide and the elderly couple had moved away. The Novice behind the altar had disappeared. The seamstress had her head down, focused on her work, but I could somehow feel her attention.
“They burn the bodies,” the man went on, “but the skeleton survives. And all the teeth.”
I swallowed.
“They have to grind them down.” He leaned in. Gold winked from his smile. “Great big pestle and mortar, with two men to hold it.”
His breath smelled stale and dead, as if he himself were already half a corpse. With that and the stink of the flowery incense from behind me, I thought I might be sick.
“Excuse me,” I said, and pushed past him. I murmured a thank-you to the guide, ignored his outstretched palm, and stumbled back down the central aisle to the great doors that still stood a little ajar.
The cold and sooty air of the city felt like a blessing. I stood still for a moment on the steps, my face upturned to the light rain that had started to fall, breathing it in and letting it disperse the lingering perfume. Thankfully, my hair never seemed to absorb any scents.
Baldbeak swooped down from the roof of the Temple and landed heavily on my shoulder, adjusting his perch with affectionate disregard for my dress and the skin beneath. He nibbled at my earlobe, as he did when he was feeling particularly loving, or when he was worrying about something.
Not a good place, he said. No birds.
“What do you mean?”
No birds on the Temple roof. They have put spikes up there.
The word “spikes” was laced with unmistakable indignation.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” I said, putting up my hand so he could nudge it gently with his beak.
Baldbeak dug his claws into my shoulder and gave a warning rattle.
“You, girl,” said a voice. I looked up. And up. The remarkably tall man loomed over me, smiling with all his teeth. I tensed.
“Are you lost?” he said, extending a hand. Bruise-colored ink writhed from his wrist to the tip of his index finger. “Here, let me help you.”
I took a step back, feeling a prickle of caution. “No, thank you.”
I was so exposed here. There had been a few other stragglers leaving the Temple, but they had melted away when the man spoke to me. I couldn’t blame them.
His smile stayed in place. As did his hand.
“No, thank you,” I said louder, but he didn’t move.
The prickle of caution had turned into a stabbing warning.
Run, run, run, the animal part of my brain chanted.
I started to move away, but he grabbed my wrist so tightly that I yelped, and started to drag me up the steps, back towards the Temple doors.
Baldbeak screeched, launching himself at the man’s head with his claws outstretched and wings rattling.
Baldbeak was large even for a raven, and a furious bird the size of a chicken flapping in his face was enough to give even this enormous man pause.
While he teetered, momentarily off-balance, the Hair snapped out like a whip and lashed his wrist, leaving a red weal.
He cursed and let go. Seizing the opportunity, I ducked under his outstretched arm and ran down the steps.
“Come back here!” he yelled, but I stumbled on, slipping a little on the slick stone, wiping the rain from my eyes with my forearm, sprinting down the remainder of the steps and into the street, Baldbeak flapping behind.
Quell was not the kind of town where people went out of their way to help each other, it seemed, particularly if a large man with elaborate tattoos was involved.
I ducked down a narrow alley—less an alley than a glorified gap, so narrow that the brick brushed my shoulders at either side.
It reeked of urine and garbage. The cobbles were slick beneath my boots.
I risked a glance behind. The man was closing the distance, moving sideways between the brick walls like a malevolent spider and pulling himself through with his hands.
I burst out of the alley into a small courtyard, completely enclosed, with wet washing strung overhead.
Spinning around, I looked for a door into one of the buildings, or a way to climb the soot-streaked wall, but there was nothing but a balcony overhead.
A wooden ladder above was clearly meant to be lowered from the balcony to allow the owner access to the courtyard, but it was drawn up and roped in place, too far above my head to reach. There was no way out.
My attacker squeezed himself through the last of the gap and into the courtyard, his face red with exertion, but smugly smiling.
“Cornered, little rat,” he said.
I backed against the nearest wall, hands feeling hopelessly behind me for something, anything, to grab and use as a weapon.
My Hair floated about my head as if I were underwater.
Baldbeak hovered above, making as much noise as he could, but the glyph tattoos on the man’s hands were glowing bright blue, and they seemed to be keeping the raven from getting any closer.
I scrabbled behind me, but found nothing but strands of dead ivy and loose mortar.
“I didn’t do anything,” I managed to say, my voice trembling. “Why do you want me?”
He just grinned, grabbing me by the wrists and pulling them sharply to my front, as if preparing to bind them. I writhed in his grasp. My Hair lashed out at him again, leaving a welt across his cheek, but his grin did not falter. Panic rose in my throat, and my head throbbed.
Suddenly—a shudder in the ground, bone-deep. An unpleasant, low, humming note. An earthquake? I didn’t know where the sound and sensation were coming from, but felt them rise from below my feet to fill me, rattling my teeth in my skull and making my limbs feel loose and pliant in their sockets.