Chapter 20
They knew they were on the road to Tisk’s temple long before they actually reached it. There were signs dotted on the verge, handmade wonky things that read STOP BY TISK’S EMPORIUM TODAY AND HAVE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE and LOOKING FOR A WAY TO MAKE YOUR FORTUNE? VISIT TISK, GOD OF ILLUSION.
‘Those are some big claims,’ said Artair.
‘The god of lies,’ mused Elver. Already on the road they had seen other travellers, men and women on horses, carts full of goods, and once a carriage that appeared to contain an entire family; cousins, aunties, and uncles and all.
A small child waved at Elver as they passed, and hesitantly, she had waved back.
The cub, who had been very difficult to coax from his cosy spot on Elver’s bed, had been placed, yawning, back into the sack.
He’d consented to be carried by Artair, who, Elver noticed, looked faintly pleased.
So far, they had seen no faceless priests.
As they walked, the faint autumn sunshine on the tops of their heads, Elver found her mind returning to the previous night.
Firstly, and most annoyingly, the sight of Lucian stripped down to his underclothes, the steam from the pool leaving droplets of water on his smooth skin.
When she looked at Artair now, she felt guilty, like she’d seen something she shouldn’t have.
Secondly, there was the memory Lucian had recovered.
With the gaps in what he knew, it was impossible to say whether the red-headed woman was Mother Maura or not, but the idea that he could also have been a sacrifice to the Bloody Claw wouldn’t quite leave her.
No one knew where the Sleepless came from, after all.
‘Did the sleep magic not work on you?’ asked Artair. He was looking at her with an expression of concern. ‘You seem out of sorts.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, thinking of his warm hand slipping around her foot. ‘I’m just very ready to be back in my forest, that’s all.’
‘Remember, if the Other—’
‘Lucian.’
‘—if he is keeping you awake with chatter, I am happy to be gagged before I go to sleep.’
‘I’m not sure that would help.’ Ahead of them on the road there was another sign, larger than all the others, and it pointed off down a turning lined with horse chestnut trees.
The sign read THIS WAY TO THE GLORIOUS TEMPLE OF TISK and next to the elaborately painted words was a relief carving of a fox leaping. ‘Looks like this is the place.’
They turned off down the side road, stepping around the green thorny casings that littered the ground.
Elver paused to pick up a shiny brown conker, enjoying the silkiness of it against her fingers before slipping it into her pocket: she was some distance from the Jih Forest, but the horse chestnuts reminded her of home—it felt good to take it with her.
The Temple of Tisk looked a lot like a ramshackle cottage; it had a thatched roof with a variety of plants and mosses growing through the straw, and standing in the front garden there were all manner of votive statues—they were all shapes and sizes and colours, and depicted all twelve gods in a variety of ways.
Elver spotted the Hooded Crow looming over the others, his long beak poking out of his cowl, painted entirely black; there was a statue of Vilon the Many Limbed, their arms and legs caught in the acts of dancing or wielding a paintbrush; there was even a striking figure of the Queen of Serpents, her humped body twisting and curling around the other statues—she had been painted a shining emerald green, which annoyed Elver.
Surely everyone knows she is yellow. The Bloody Claw was there too in the form of several identical figurines of a lion with one paw raised, its mouth open to expose its fangs.
Elver frowned as they stepped past them. It felt like a bad omen.
When she opened the cottage door a bell jingled somewhere, and as they stepped inside she realized it wasn’t a temple or a cottage truly—it was a shop.
There was stuff of all descriptions everywhere, crowding shelves and the floor, and behind a polished wooden desk a young woman was beaming at them hopefully.
‘Welcome to Tisk’s temple!’ she said. ‘How can I make your dreams come true today?’
‘This is a temple?’ asked Artair. He was looking around at the various goods. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to them that Elver could see.
‘It certainly is.’ The woman behind the desk—which was itself littered with candles and coins and tiny clay pots—was perhaps a few years older than them, with warm golden-brown skin and black hair.
Her eyes were dark and smudged with black pencil, and she wore a heavily embroidered jacket with wide sleeves over a mustard-coloured silk shirt.
She was strikingly beautiful. And then her face split into a rueful grin that, if anything, only made her more appealing.
She sketched a quick bow, scattering a few little pots with her sleeves.
‘I am Sunay Tiskertalia, a mage dedicated to our glorious and benevolent Lord Tisk. Here, in my humble temple, I collect the things that please him.’
‘It looks like a lot of things please him,’ said Elver.
‘Ah, you might well think that!’ said Sunay. ‘But all these strange and lovely objects have one thing in common. Can you guess it?’
Elver’s eyes had wandered to a painting that hung on the wall behind the woman’s head.
In it, a fox leapt over a wooden stile in a field, every line of him speaking of speed and agility; gold lines traced it all over like lacework, and when she moved one way or the other, the image changed—instead of a fox she saw a male figure with hair that stood up like a fox’s brush, with eyes of a dangerous, searing green.
‘All the things for sale here were once given to another god,’ said Artair. ‘That’s what Tisk desires in exchange for his magic—items that rightly belong to someone else.’
Sunay nodded happily. ‘Some of the things I offer him, he takes, but most he just enjoys for a time and gives back. And then I sell them on.’ She lowered her voice.
‘The idea of making coin from other gods’ possessions pleases him greatly.
So!’ She leaned back, smiling at them both. ‘Have you come to buy? Sell?’
‘We’ve come for a spell,’ said Elver. ‘A spell of illusion. Can we buy such a thing from you?’
‘Ah.’ Sunay’s face became more serious. She left the desk and went over to the front door, flipping the sign that hung there over to CLOSED . ‘Come with me,’ she said, beckoning to a smaller door to the right of the desk. ‘This sounds like something we should discuss in cosier surroundings.’
Beyond the door there was a little sitting room. In here, the items were finer, as though Sunay herself had picked them for their glitter and shine. Magpie , thought Elver. The three of them sat on overstuffed chairs, and Sunay poured some fragrant cold tea into three silver cups.
‘Tell me then… who are you? What’s your story?’
Elver spoke before Artair could. ‘We are a brother and sister from Addersport. We need an illusion spell to fool the man who is trying to swindle our mother.’
Artair looked at her like she’d grown another head.
Sunay smiled and sipped from her tea. ‘Try again. You two are never brother and sister.’
‘I…’
‘Something you should know about Tisk’s mages, my sweet. When your magic is tied to the god of lies, you get very good at spotting them in the wild.’
Elver sat back in her chair a little. Since they had asked about the spell, something about Sunay had changed. She was still warm and friendly, but there was a new perceptiveness about the mage that made her a little uneasy.
‘Another mage has kidnapped some friends of mine,’ said Artair. ‘In exchange for them she has asked me to bring her something… but it’s something that is not mine to give. We want to give her an illusion instead.’
As he spoke, Sunay’s eyebrows inched up over her forehead.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but this is delicious . Interfering in another mage’s business, and therefore another god’s business… My lord will love this. And how are you involved?’ She looked at Elver.
‘The thing that he’s taken. It belongs to another god. And she has asked me to get it back.’
‘Two gods!’ Sunay looked absolutely delighted. ‘But there’s something else you two are not telling me.’ She leaned over the small table towards them, her dark eyes liquid with intrigue. ‘It’s right in front of my nose, I am sure of it…’
Artair glanced at Elver. ‘There’s nothing left to know,’ he said quickly. ‘Otherwise we are very normal. Very normal people from Addersport.’
‘Another lie!’ said Sunay triumphantly. ‘There, I see it now.’ She pointed her index and middle finger on her right hand, indicating both of them at once.
‘It’s in the way you sit here waiting to be found out.
And your stunning golden eyes, of course, my sweet.
Jih. Monster spirits. Which makes me wonder what in Tisk’s name it is that this mage wants from you. ’
Elver sighed and pulled the neck of the sack open.
Inside it, the cub was sleeping with his paws over his nose.
Sunay stood up. For a second, Elver wondered if the mage was going to run screaming from the temple to summon the nearest guards or even bring the faceless priests down upon them, but instead she began to walk briskly around the room, as though she couldn’t contain her excitement.
‘What a day! This is going to be quite the scam. I mean, my Lord Tisk will certainly be interested in helping you, but creating an illusion of a living, breathing creature—a monster, no less—is not easy, and the tithe to be paid will be significant. This cannot be any old votive offering snatched from the altar of Barleycorn or the Lady Dusk. Oh no. This must be special .’ She paused in her scampering and lifted her head.
A solid orange glow, like the last light of sunset, rose in her eyes, and then departed again. ‘Yes. Oho , my lord is very clever.’
‘What is it?’ asked Artair. ‘Only, neither of us own very much. We do have some gold…’
‘No, no, nothing you can simply buy. Tisk asks that you go to the nearby Temple of Threshold, and from there, you procure for him a Frozen Heart.’
‘And what is that, exactly?’ asked Elver. She had the distinct feeling that every word out of Sunay’s mouth was adding days to her time away from the forest. And there were the novices—how much longer did they have left to live?
‘The Frozen Heart is one of the key artefacts in the Temple of Threshold, given to those who come seeking the blessing of that particularly powerful god. It has magical properties,’ Sunay waved her hand airily, ‘but you don’t need to worry about that.
You will, however, have to lie your way into the temple. ’
‘Couldn’t we just ask for it?’ said Artair. ‘Perhaps if we explained…’
‘No, no, no, the lies are the point, don’t you see? If it were given freely, my Lord Tisk would not want it. And you’ll have to leave him here, with me.’ She nodded to the sack. The cub had woken up fully, his green eyes flashing with their eldritch glow.
‘I don’t know about that.’ Elver frowned. Being asked to trust this magpie with the cub felt like a step too far. ‘He won’t like it.’
‘Nonsense. There’s plenty of food. Does he like bacon? I’ll bet he does.’
Elver knelt down by the sack and put her hand between the cub’s feathery ears.
‘We’ve got to go and fetch something. Will you be okay here?’
This place smells weird. Lots of weird smells. The cub eyed Sunay. Can I bite her?
‘Probably better that you don’t.’
The cub’s eyes glowed brighter for a handful of seconds, lighting up the little parlour. Sunay gave a low gasp. She turned to Artair.
‘Is she talking to the little creature?’
‘She is,’ said Artair, smiling a little. ‘It’s part of her magic.’
I miss the forest , said the cub. I miss my mum. When are we going back?
A pang of sorrow moved through Elver’s chest. ‘Soon, I promise.’ Once I’ve made Maura pay , she thought. ‘And when we’re back, we’ll go and collect snails together. The really tasty ones. How about that?’
The little creature snuffled with pleasure, and Elver stood up.
‘Fine. He’ll stay here with you.’
‘Marvellous. Quite marvellous.’ The mage grinned at them. ‘Now then. You’re going to need some very specific lies to get into the Temple of Threshold. Don’t worry, you’re in the hands of an expert.’