Clikit tensed. But over the fear he smiled. So, he had taken refuge in one of the ruined temples of Kirke, eastern god of Myetra. Well, at least he was traveling in the right direction. It was Myetra he had set out for, uncountable days, if not weeks, ago.
In a corner the ceiling had fallen. Water filmed the wall, with lime streaks at the edge. A puddle spread the tile, building up, spilling a handsbreadth, building again, inching through blue light. As he looked down at the expanding reflection of the ruined ceiling, he pondered the light’s origin, for — save the lightning — it was black outside.
He walked to the wall’s broken end and looked behind for the source — and sucked in his breath.
Centered on white sand a bronze brazier burned with unflickering flame. Heaped about its ornate feet were rubies, gold chains, damascened blades set with emeralds, silver proof, crowns clotted with sapphires and amethysts. Every muscle in Clikit’s body began to shake. Each atom of his feral soul quivered against its neighbor. He would have run forward, scooped up handfuls of the gems, and fled into the wild wet night, but he saw the figure in the far door.
It was a woman.
Through white veils he could see the ruby points of her breasts, then the lift of her hip as she walked out onto the sand, leaving fine footprints.
Her hair was black. Her eyes were blue. “Who are you, stranger?” And her face…
“I’m Clikit…and I’m a thief, Lady! Yes, I steal for a living. I admit it! But I’m not a very good thief. I mean a very bad one.” Something in the expression that hugged her high cheekbones that balanced over her lightly cleft chin made him want to tell her everything about himself. “But you don’t have to be afraid of me, Lady. No, really! Who are — ”
“I am a priestess of Kirke. What do you wish here, Clikit?”
“I was…” Dusty and ragged, Clikit drew himself up to his full four feet eleven inches. “I was admiring your jewels there.”
She laughed. And the laugh made Clikit marvel at how a mouth could shape itself to such a delicate sound. A smile broke on his own stubbled face, which was all wonder and confusion and unknowing imitation. She said, “Those jewels are nothing to the real treasure of this temple.” She gestured toward them with a slim hand, the nails so carefully filed and polished they made Clikit want to hide his own broad, blunt fingers back under his filthy cloak.
Clikit’s eyes darted about between the fortune piled before him (and beside him! and behind him!) and the woman who spoke so slightingly of it. Her ebon hair, though the light from the brazier was steady, danced with inner blues.
“Where are you from?” she asked. “Where are you going? And would you like to see the real treasure of the temple?”
“I am only a poor thief, Lady. But I haven’t stolen anything for days, I haven’t! I live out of the pockets of the rich who stroll the markets of Voydrir, or from what I can find not tied down on the docks of Lehryard, or from what is left out in the gardens of the affluent suburbs in Jawahlo. But recently, though, I’ve heard of the wealth of Myetra. I only thought I would journey to see for myself.”
“You are very near Myetra, little thief.” Absently she raised one hand, thumb and forefinger just touching, as if she held something as fine as the translucent stuffs that clothed her.
And dirty Clikit thought: it is my life she holds, my happiness, my future — all I ever wanted or all I could ever want.
“You must be tired,” she went on, dropping her hand. “You have come a long way. I will give you food, rest; moreover, I shall display for you our real treasure. Would you like that?”
Clikit’s back teeth almost always pained him, and he had noticed just that morning that another of his front ones (next to the space left from the one that had fallen out by itself a month ago) was loose enough to move with his tongue. He set his jaw hard, swallowed, and opened his mouth again. “That’s…kind of you,” he said, laying two fingers against his knotted jaw muscle, eyes tearing with the pain. “I hope I have the talents to appreciate it.”
“Then follow.” She turned away with a smile he desperately wanted to see again — to see whether it was taunting him or shining at him. What he remembered of it, as he trotted after her, had lain in the maddeningly ambiguous between.
Then he glanced down at her footprints. Fear shivered in him. Alabaster toe and pink heel had peeked at him from under her shift. But the prints on the white sand were not of a fleshed foot. He stared at the drawn lines — was it some great bird’s claw? No, it was bone! A skeleton’s print!
Stooping over the clawlike impression, Clikit thought quickly and futilely. If he went to search along the walls for pebbles and stones and fallen chunks of plaster, she would surely see. At once he swept up one, another, and a third handful of sand into his cloak; then he stood, gathering the edges together, twisting the cloak into a club — which he thrust behind him. At another arch the woman turned, motioning him to follow: he was shaking so much he didn’t see if she smiled or not. Clikit hurried forward, hands at his back, clutching the sandy weight.
As he crossed the high threshold, he wondered what good such a bludgeon would do if she were really a ghost or a witch.
Another brazier lit the hall they entered with blue flame. He went on quickly, deciding that at least he must try. But as he reached her, without stopping she looked over her shoulder. “The real treasure of this temple is not its jewels. They are as worthless as the sands that strew the tile. Before the true prize hidden in these halls, you will hardly think of them.” Her expression had no smile in it at all. Rather, it was intense entreaty. The blue light made her eyes luminous. “Tell me, Clikit — tell me, little thief — what would you like more than all the jewels in the world?” At a turn in the passage, the light took on a reddish cast. “What would you like more than money, good food, fine clothes, a castle with slaves?”
Clikit managed a gappy grin. “There’s very little I prefer over good food, Lady!”—one of his most frequent prevarications. There were few foods he could chew without commencing minutes of agony, and it had been that way so long that the whole notion of eating was for him now irritating, inevitable, and awful.
A hint of that smile. “Are you really so hungry, Clikit?”
True. With the coming of his fear, his appetite, always unwelcome, had gone. “I’m hungry enough to eat a bear,” he lied, clutching the sand-filled cloak. She looked away….
He was about to swing, but she turned through another arch, looking back.
Clikit stumbled after. His knees felt as though the joints had come strangely loose. In this odd yellow light her face looked older. The lines of character were more like lines of age.
“The treasure — the real treasure — of this temple is something eternal, deadly, and deathless, something that many have sought, that few have ever found.”
“Eh…what is it?”
“Love,” she said, and the smile, a moment before he could decide its motivation, crumbled on her face into laughter. Again she turned from him. Again he remembered he ought to bring his bundle of sand up over his own balding head and down on the back of hers — but she was descending narrow steps. “Follow me down.”
And she was again just too far ahead.
Tripods on the landings flared green, then red, then white — all with that unmoving glow. The descent, long and turning and long again, was hypnotic.
She moved out into an amber-lit hall. “This way.”
“What do you mean — love?” Clikit thought to call after her.
When she looked back, Clikit wondered: was it this light, or did her skin simply keep its yellowish hue from the light they had passed through above?