Sure, you can sit with me! I have a story I would love to tell you, about a knight errant and the river ghasts of Lid...
Immerse yourself in a growing set of fantasy stories set in strange and wonderful lands.
...
The temple was huge. It loomed above them at the peak of the island, a shiny sleek structure pointing at the sky. It was in the centre of an uneven plateau, an expanse of rock and scrub.
The priests were waiting for them. They shuffled towards them as they came up the path. She knew what to expect, but she was still taken aback. They were short, the height of a child; but their hands were adult sized, their grey skin criss crossed with deep blue lines. Their robes hid most of their form, but she could see solemn dark eyes and mouth-less faces under their hoods. They beckoned to her, those long fingers expressive where their faces were not. She put her pack down, and walked to meet them.
This was her role in this business. The priests could not talk; they needed a truth speaker to communicate with the contestants. For a while, she was to be the voice of the temple of the artificer. She closed her eyes.
What she found shocked her. Thoughts to her were strands: threads knotted together, colours and textures giving clues to their content, to be teased out and read. This... this was nothing like that. It was like running your fingers over rough stone underwater, like touching bark. It was solid.
No, she thought. It's like sand. If you push, you can put your fingers through it. And here is a pebble, perfectly smooth. And here another. And the pebbles can be read, almost as if they have tiny writing on them. This is a message, and this and this.
Not for the first time, she wondered what the priests were.
Shivering, she opened her eyes. They were all looking at here, the priests with their sad eyes, the king and the boy. Why do I call him a boy?, she wondered. He's a man.
Because at some point, they are all just boys. Playing with their tools and knots and wood.
She licked her lips and tried to repeat what she had read.
'The priests of the temple welcome you. They are happy to see a contest, because they say things are changing, and this contest will be different. They also say you should have a rest and some water and food.'
Ara and the king looked at her, disconcerted.
'Different, how?'
'I don't know. The contest starts in two hours. Also, I think the food is roasted gull, so you might want to pass on that.'
The king shook his head.
'I don't care about the food. What has changed?'
She closed her eyes, and tried to get an answer.
'They say... they are nearly finished.'
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She got better at interpreting the priests. She had to: the instructions were specific and complex. She struggled with the vocabulary, and had to make up long phrases to convey the messages that she could see.
'It's like water, but it sticks, like a petty eel's venom.'
'The bits are fast, and dart through like a water monkey.'
