The Witch Woman's Prophecy

31 | The Temple |

For the next few days I wandered around Polemmy or sat in the garden carving. The guards were busy excavating the places Soni and I had discovered together and each site yielded relics. At the end of each day's work, Soni told me what had been discovered. Often the guards only dug up fragments of broken metal or other things that seemed of no value. Late one especially hot morning, she came back to the house for food and water.

'What have you found so far?' I asked, hoping that there would be something more interesting than scrap metal for a change.

'Three metal pipes with indentations to place the fingers. They were about as long as my arm and light enough for me to be able to hold without effort. Then we uncovered a pair of silver metal cylinders, pitted with age, which make a humming sound when they are rubbed with a cloth. We wondered if the pipes and cylinders might be some kind of musical instruments. I suppose the Forgotten People could have made music...' She sat still, her thoughts turned inward, making guesses about the things she had just seen.

After a while she looked up at me and the corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled. 'There will be no further work until this evening now it is too hot to dig. What would you like to do this afternoon? The Head Ustel has taken charge of today's relics, so I can take you out into the city.'

'I would like to see the Temple.' I'd been thinking about visiting it ever since I'd first seen its shining crystal dome. I didn't want to go without Soni, not after my experience in the storeroom beneath the Council Hall. I did not fully trust my guards.

Soni frowned and looked unhappy, which surprised me as I had imagined the chance to see any relics in the Temple would have excited her.

'The relic worshippers do not let those who live in Polemmy enter the Temple. It has been this way for many years. The council forced the relic worshippers from their homes and out of Polemmy many years ago. In return they keep all non-worshippers out of the Temple. You will not be allowed inside. Even if you were, the relic worshippers would not let me or the guards in with you, so you would not be safe.'

Her words made me sad, I was sure the Temple would be full of wonders. Then an unpleasant thought struck me and I stiffened. What if it had been the relic worshippers who had tried to kill me? I had no idea why they would want to, but being alone with them didn't seem a good idea.

'Well, if I can't go in I will make do with a look at the outside,' I said, smiling at her and pushing down my frustration.

Soni sighed, then nodded her head. I went to my room and ate two of the remaining pellets. One might not be enough since there was so much relic metal at the Temple.

***

Only a few people were out in the midday heat, and they all moved slowly, as though they were dreaming. Although I was desperate to see the Temple, the heat and the pellets I had eaten sapped my energy too. I moved in a kind of daze, following Soni through the crowds.

As we drew closer to the Temple, details became clearer. I stopped walking and shielded my eyes from the brilliant glare of the sun as I gazed up. I was close enough for the first time to see the dome was not a single piece of curved glass, but many separate triangular panes held in the place by thick strips of metal. The dome came down to a man's height above the ground and rested on a metal wall which curved away from us to the left and the right. Why had the Forgotten People built the Temple? Was it really a temple or had they built it for some other purpose?

The agony of being close to relic metal was present, but the pellets masked it. The pain was still there in my head, but I had ceased to care about it.

Somebody inside the building must have been watching us, for a door opened as we approached. Like the door in the metal building in the desert, it slid sideways and disappeared inside the wall, although there was nobody pushing this door and it made a faint rumble as it moved aside.