Book 2 The Gods of Light and Liars

Chapter Thirteen: A pilgrimage into the Dark

The return to the stables went well enough. She slid like a child back down to the pylon's base, the Nexus retreating further and further away as she fell. Her friends, too, further away, their help and their wisdom now out of her reach. But she'd chosen this. Her other choice was to walk away, and that was unacceptable. She needed to either exonerate the Studdards' of Alex's murder, or prove they had done what the mythology said.

There wasn't enough blood in the universe to put out the wrath she felt burbling now, ever beneath the surface. Divine blood might do it, if she could get to it fast enough. What was her alternative to wrath and ragnarok? Collapse into the sucking black hole of grief newly incarnate within her body? Mourn via melodramatic poetry while other people risked their lives? And what about the twelve hundred parents for the six hundred missing children? What right did she have to fold when those parents deserved the same answers she wanted?

No. She needed to go.

She crawled back to the stable door, went inside and slammed the doors shut. She couldn't lock them and the bar was out of reach. She supposed the Archon would put it back together. She found two of the Hares saddled up, bridles in place, all four of the packs she'd helped build strapped to their backs. She guessed what was desired, took hold of the bridles, and walked out into the courtyard.

It was bustling, to put it mildly. White robes and green robes were everywhere, moving huge bags of hard tack, huge sacks of fresh fruit and vegetables, and a great deal of dried and salted meat. This was loaded onto the back of creatures who looked like a cross between oxen and, once again, rabbits. Only these did not have long, velvet soft ears, but truncated little things that reminded Hawk of a doberman's ears. She hoped that didn't mean that they'd docked the poor things' ears. She suspected they had.

She made her way through the cacophony. A few times she was stopped, as often by white robes as by green. No one here knew her. She would say "Archon said," and then be waved off and allowed to wander. Apparently what Archons said was law. Nice, as long as they were talking about the Archon of Light. Hawk didn't trust the other woman any further than she could throw her...and they were about to go on a trip together. Lovely.

She managed to get a green-robe to tell her where the Archons were, and she walked in the indicated direction with the Hares. The indicated pavilion had just been built with many panels of green and gold, plants running from deep green to that strange pale white, and flowers in jewel tones, each seeming to glow slightly in the blinding Temple light. There was even a fountain, which was kept in perpetual motion by a single green-robed child and a cup. The robe itself was beautiful, with many strange, alien animals embroidered into its hem. The child was too frantic, too frightened to be beautiful. Her big-eyed stare reminded Hawk of those 80s kitsch paintings of round-eyed children. Down she bent, and filled her golden cup with water as hastily as she could. Then she sprang up so hard she bounced a bit, and stretched as high as she could to pour the water down the fountain. The water splashed and splashed and made the gentle babbling brook noises you'd expect from a good fountain, and as soon as the cup was empty she started again, fast as she could, so that the flow of water over the fountain was never interrupted.

She ducked into the pavilion with the Hares in tow, and quietly made her way to the Archon of Light, who naturally sat beside the Archon of Earth. He saw her before she was too near and waved her over. When she was part-way there, two green-robes relieved her of the Hares, though these were brought over to the Archon of Light. There was a line of twenty Hares on the Earth-side of the room.

The two Archons sat with a fire-pit between them, a thing of chilling wrought iron that had little connection to the opulence in the rest of the tent. There were golden trays of grapes before it, and cuts of meat and a selection of cheeses, candied cakes, jam tarts that were perfect for all they'd been made in haste. There were flowers piled up, arrayed in columns, wrapped into garlands strewn throughout that tent. But the Fire-pit...there was something very wrong about it. Hawk thought of blood and seared things when she looked at it.