“And if I do not?” Rosethorn asked. Really, this is absurd, she thought impatiently. I have the Treasures; I found this hole in the wall — these holes in the wall. What more do they want of me?
“The temple protects itself,” the voice replied.
“Did you hear that?” Rosethorn muttered to the horse as she dismounted. “The temple protects itself. The rest of us can enjoy our nice little mountain vacation that we took when others need us.” She went about removing the horse’s saddle.
“Grumbling will not assist you,” the voice told her. “The animal will be looked after.”
“Grumbling makes me feel better,” she retorted. “If you don’t like it, you should have given the First Dedicate instructions, or made it possible for him to bring this burden to you. And I was taught that it’s proper to look after your own mount.” She did so, rubbing him down, feeding him grain, and settling him on the grass. Once that was done, she moved her pack to her chest, having placed it on her back to care for the horse, and looked at the three openings. The glowing path went straight through the smallest opening, the one that was covered with cobwebs.
Lark, Rosethorn thought, bringing her lover’s face before her mind’s eye in case this did not go well. She took a deep breath, picked up a stick that lay on the ground, and advanced on the cave. Using the stick, she cleared away most of the cobwebs before she walked inside. The glowing path led her down a narrow tunnel, so narrow that in some places the stone brushed her shoulders. Rosethorn bit her lip and went on.
As the daylight faded behind her, she saw light from another source. A fungus she did not know grew high on the walls and the roof of the tunnel. The farther she came from natural light, the brighter glowed the fungus. It gave off a whitish-green illumination, one that was not favorable to her skin. She grimaced at the sight of her corpse-green hands, but consoled herself with the thought that no one would possibly care about her looks down here. As a religious dedicate she knew it was a weakness to be vain of her creamy skin. It was doubly so because she spent nearly all of her time in the sun.
“Concern for appearance is a folly of the world,” the voice said, as if he’d read her mind.
Rosethorn spun. Behind her stood a black-skinned man so large he had to bend to keep from bumping his head on the roof. He wore a plain Gyongxin jacket, breeches, and boots. A white mark in the shape of an eye was painted on the middle of his forehead.
Rosethorn clutched the Treasures tightly. She didn’t want him to see that she was shaking. No man had seen her frightened since she had run away from the chains in her father’s farmhouse. “I don’t know how you read my mind, but it’s rude,” she snapped. “And my weaknesses as a dedicate are between me and my own First Dedicates.”
“In the Temple of the Sealed Eye all is known,” the man said. “Continue to go forward. Keep to the left of the tunnel.”
She didn’t like to turn her back to him, but it was a question either of staying here or going ahead. She certainly couldn’t go back, through him. As she moved on, the Treasures gripped her mind. They showed her strange images: a great city under attack; a young black man trying to get two girls who resembled him out of a beautiful house; soldiers in Yanjingyi armor surrounding them. They were separated and sold, the girls and the young man, in a Yanjingyi city. The young man was made to work on a rice farm. Then he found his way through forests and up into mountain passes, starved and half naked, until he collapsed. The last thing Rosethorn saw was a Gyongxin woman with the white eye painted on her forehead: She was bending over the fallen young man.
The vision faded.
“Is that you?” she asked, forgetting the big man most likely couldn’t see what she did. “You were an escaped slave?” She looked back at him.
He sighed. “Your Treasures could leave me my secrets.” He reached out. “Careful!”
She bumped a tall rock on her right. Something there hissed and scraped, darting at her. She stumbled back. The thing retreated, hissing still. Rosethorn turned to face it and carefully backed up until she struck the opposite wall. On the flat top of the rock was a serpent-like thing with a human skull. Its body seemed to be all vertebrae. It had no skin, no flesh, no muscle; its material was shaped like bone, but it looked to be a combination of metals.
“The cave snakes are the substance of the Drimbakangs,” the man told her. “In the beginning they made themselves of tin, copper, and gold.”
“They made themselves?” Rosethorn asked.
“At first,” the man replied.
She didn’t know if she was unsure or astonished. The cave snake rose up on its coils and hissed again, leaning out until its face was immediately in front of Rosethorn’s. The thing’s breath was cold, wet, and scented like the depths far underground. To her horror, Rosethorn saw movement beyond the beast’s small skull as several more of the snakeish things rose up inside her coils, hissing softly.
“They are very irritable when brooding a nest,” Rosethorn’s companion said belatedly.
Rosethorn took a deep breath. “I am sorry that I disturbed you and your nest,” she told the cave snake mother, fixing her eyes on the eye hollows in her skull. The thing must not know she was frightened. “It was not my intention. I would not like to see this become an argument between us.”
“It would be a shame on both sides,” a newcomer said as the cave snake drew in tight around her nest.