Танит Ли: Anackire

The passage was lofty but unornamented, somber stone, that gave none of the magnification to his movements he had expected, no echo. The fount of the infinitesimal light seemed to be ahead of him. Gradually he discerned that what lay ahead was a blank and featureless wall. But he proceeded, and beheld that on either side of this wall the end of the passage branched into a new corridor. In each of these the light was a little more definite, and they curved away, out from the heart of the building. Randomly, he entered the left-hand corridor and followed the curve of it. The light was decidedly more vivid, but again there were no decorations, no painting or carving of any kind. The wealth of Shansar-conquered Karmiss had been diverted to create this place, and gifts had come from Dorthar, and tribute from Xarabiss, Alisaar and Lan. It could have been one of the richest wonders of the continent, a-drip with jewels, its temple guard stationed like statuary—but Ankabek had no guard. Only mysteries.

The curve turned out, then inward, circling. But the light unencouragingly dwindled. Then the wall ended ahead and Rem, passing beyond its angle, found himself, just as he had been some minutes before, beside blank stone at the juncture of three passages, his one of them, the largest leading off to a pair of tall shut doors. It was a replica of the entry in every respect.

Rem strode down toward the new exit, but here the doors did not respond. He retraced his way therefore, and took the new left-hand curving corridor. This, leading back, became the right-hand corridor of the entry, as he had suspected.

In the original passage, Rem cursed softly. There would be a secret kept at the center of all this, inside the black drum of stone that the passages endlessly led to and encircled. The means of getting to it, however, were well-concealed. There was no mark on the stone to indicate anything at all.

All at once, the windowless, pointless O filled him with doubts. The light which had, it seemed, no source, began to make him uneasy. He took another long stride back toward the first pair of doors—

And the pain shot through Rem’s skull like a lance.

He fell against the wall, shocked and powerless—it was too soon for this thing to happen again. Then the world went and the pictures came.

There was a mask, half of it cast from black marble and half from white. Then a second mask replacing the first, half gold, half silver. And then a third, half fire, half snow—

A man dashed from behind the mask. He was a Zakorian, howling and in agony. He had been poisoned by wine—no, not wine, by fruit, yellow fruit rolling under his feet, while behind him a bonfire flapped its skirt at the sky. The fire was that of burning ships, reflecting in black water. In the air also, where Zastis blazed. Then the flames sank. There were three women. One had hair like ice, and one hair like ebony, and one hair like blood. He saw into the womb of each of them, and in each case it was filled. The woman with ebony hair raised her fist and her face grew ugly. It was his mother, Lyki. She darted toward him with the rod gripped to strike and he flung up one arm to shield his head.

“No!” The voice that came out of him appalled him, it was not the voice of a child, but of an adult man.

He stared at the woman. Nor was she Lyki, but a stranger, Vis, dressed for the temple, and her hands relaxed at her sides. Behind her, two shadow-shapes: male priests.

This was almost amusing, to be caught twice. Next time, when? Next year? Tomorrow? Perhaps in a fight or battle, killed because the vision came and he could not control it. No, not the vision. The madness.

“Forgive me,” Rem said to the Vis priestess of Anackire. “I was trying to find the inner sanctum. I’m very tired. Dizziness—”

Her dark eyes looked back into his paler ones. He knew, as if she had told him so, that she did not believe what he said. That she knew, and the men behind her knew, he had been possessed. Lowland telepathy learnt by the Vis. . . . Had she peered inside his skull?

“You wished,” she said, “to find the Sanctuary of the goddess?”

“It’s well-hidden.”

“I will show you.”

Rem balked. He was nauseated, superstition crowding him, and the undertow of fear.

“No.”

“Come,” she said, and his eyes followed her though he did not.

She went to the blank wall between the three passages and knelt, and leaned to it as if to kiss. After a moment, the stone quivered and a portion of it fell slowly backward. A glow of light poured out. It was a mechanism like the doors, then, if not so amenable. Probably the marks on the wall were clear enough to those trained to recognize them.

He did not want to enter their temple anymore. It had become saturated by what had happened to him. Yet, in those instants, there seemed nowhere else to go.

Rem walked after the priestess, and the two priests, like guards, came after him. Perhaps, despite this show, he was trespassing and they meant to punish him. It occurred to him that he expected punishment in every avenue of life, expected and no longer resented punishment, and that this might be a fatal flaw.

The piece of wall which had fallen in had formed a tilted bridge on to a flight of ascending steps. At the top of these an opened arch let out the light.

The priestess glided ahead of him. In the arch she became a silhouette, stepped to one side and vanished from sight. Rem reached the arch.

The core of the stone, as the windings had suggested, was round. There were no colonnades, and still no carvings. All about the perimeter of the floor jets of fire spurted from openings, volcanic in appearance and certainly unnatural. They lit the high vault of the great black chamber, and sent waves of brilliance across and across the floor itself, which was one whole extraordinary mosaic. Gems flashed there and skeins of color. Myriad legends seemed depicted, legends or dreams—figures of men and beasts, winged things, chariots and ships and hurtling golden stars—his eyes abandoned it giddily. And there was something else to gaze on.

Across the wide room, four black pillars stood up against a curtain of gold. Closing off the crescent of the chamber’s end, the curtain was perhaps sixty feet in length, in height much more. Its folds hung thickly, and as the light burst on the faces of these, the curtain seemed made of laval rain. Scales of pure metal composed it. Thousands of them. The gold curtain alone showed where the rich offerings of Vis might have gone.

One of the priests said to him, “In this manner, the Lowland temples were made.”

“And so finely dressed?” Rem blurted in marveling anger.

“Yes,” the woman answered, “centuries ago. So finely, and more finely.”

“And beyond the curtain,” Rem said. “What’s there?”

“She is there.”

He shrugged to stop himself shivering. “Your goddess.”

“Anackire.”

The outer temple, the passages—they were a trick, a safeguard. Uninvited, none might enter here. Yet they had brought him here, because they sensed some supernatural element at work on him. He should resist, or he would lose himself. He winced at his thoughts. They were out of all proportion—Yet the sensation did not abate. He was turning to go when one of the men behind him, the other who had not spoken before, said quietly, “Cross the mosaic. When your feet touch the sky-borne dragons, the curtain will open.”

“More technology to astound the credulous.”

The man’s head was lifted in its hood. The eyes which looked into his were the color of the scaled curtain.

“Only logic,” the Lowlander said. “To approach so close to Her expresses a wish that you might see Her. And yet, to see Her at once, and always: How then are we to remember what She is, that an effort must be made to attain Her? Men grow too easy with familiar things.”