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THE TEMPLE OF LOST Hope was an expansive building, with several floors visible above ground and (as Cyrele knew from experience) more beneath the surface. Despite how much of the temple she’d walked thorough on her previous excursion, looking at it from the outside now...she realized she’d only seen a small fraction of the vast space contained within the temple’s walls.
Following Matiser up a grand staircase towards a tall doorway on the second floor—very likely the intended public entrance, for everything from the stairs to the intricate columns flanking the doorway drew the eye towards it—brought them inside a dusty room with a statue of a robed figure in the center and a pool of water behind the statue. Small reptiles clustered around the space behind the pool, covering the floor and walls. They stood so still Cyrele wondered if they were even alive.
For all that time should have been of the essence, with a trapped princess to rescue, the prince lingered by the glyphs along the walls. He stopped by a complex piece of glyphwriting. “How much of this can you understand?” he asked her. “What can you tell me about it?”
Cyrele came closer to the wall, wary of his intentions. Had he brought her here to test her?
Read it for him, a voice whispered in her mind. I went through the trouble of convincing the others that you were more valuable alive than dead. But they won’t remain convinced if you don’t show them your worth.
It must have been the first voice, back again. But the voices couldn’t see through her eyes, couldn’t read her thoughts. So how did this one know what Matiser had asked of her? Was the prince communicating with Avenah and Akaterin at this very moment? Were all three royals waiting for her to reveal herself?
Should she reveal herself? The royals weren’t to be trusted, but that didn’t mean everything they said was a lie. Perhaps they truly needed a glyphwriter who would do as instructed...or perhaps they were goading her into showing what she could do.
What did the passage actually say? Something about activating the traps and a receptacle filled with blood. After a few moments of consideration, she decided it must mean that the traps in the temple didn’t activate against those whose blood filled some receptacle...but how was that possible? How could glyphwriting create a magic that not only recognized the blood inside a receptacle, but matched it to the blood inside a person’s body?
Cyrele’s mind stretched to try to comprehend the enormity of what it would take to make such an instruction work. Yet she couldn’t deny what she was reading. The very walls told her that this magic was possible, and while she probably couldn’t figure out how to recreate such a complex piece of magical technology...she thought she might be able to use it.
The realization came with such a sharp tang of regret that she felt her throat clog up—because if only she had found this passage sooner, if only she’d first arrived at the temple through this entrance, then the sailors might still be alive. She and Aralath would only have needed to figure out where this receptacle was and added everyone’s blood to it, for all of them to wander through the temple freely. But instead, the sailors would never return home.
“I think it’s a way to avoid traps inside the temple?” she decided to say. Then, unsure if this was enough, she decided to hedge a bit more. “I can’t quite decipher how to do it yet, but I might figure out more if I had time to study the temple’s glyphwriting.”
I do hope you’re referring to the glyphwriting in this particular room, the voice told here. The rest of the temple will kill you if you don’t disarm the traps first.
Disarm the traps? Cyrele was certain this passage would only keep the traps from activating against a specific person, not disarm them entirely. Did the royals not know that? Or was the voice trying to trick her?
But Matiser had only heard her last words—not the information the voice had shared with her, nor the ensuing flurry of thoughts. His lips curled up in an amused smile as he considered the passage. “Everyone always wants more time. But I’m afraid our time today is limited.”
And yet, he certainly didn’t act like their time was limited. Or he wouldn’t dawdle here. “Your highness? Is the Princess Kamene still alive?”
“Yes. I know where she is. I’ve been able to sense where she is long before we found you and the translator.”
How long before? Long enough to sense Cyrele and Aralath inside the temple? Or only long enough to notice that Kamene wasn’t in the vault? Cyrele couldn’t help the spark of panic that came with not knowing what he meant, with not understanding what he was capable of.
Was there a way to find out more? After all, if he could sense Kamene from a distance, then he should also have sensed the people shipwrecked along the river’s bank—or at least, those who’d lasted this long on whatever provisions had washed up on the shore.
“Then are you also able to sense the survivors from the barges?” she asked, and though it was a calculated move to learn more about his range, she also found in herself a genuine desire to know the answer. “Will we find them?”
“Elei,” Matiser reprimanded. “Worry about yourself.”
Cyrele stiffened, sensing danger. “As you command, your highness.”
He paused, seeming to almost...reconsider, for a moment. But all he said was, “Come,” as he began striding towards door behind the pool, the reptiles in his path skittering away—alive after all.
Cyrele passed by the room’s statue as she followed him, noticing the words, ‘the liquid receptacle at our feet’ carved into the statue’s arm. Her heart began pounding, as the words gave away exactly what the receptacle was—the pool. And yet, Matiser had walked right by this pool without even glancing at it.
For all that she had to obey him, Cyrele still couldn’t help but hesitate. Did this mean he hadn’t intended to use the receptacle to keep the traps from attacking her? But why risk her reading a passage that contained information he didn’t intend to share?
“Aren’t the traps a danger?” she asked, gingerly following after him.
“I’m fully capable of protecting you from them, Elei,” he said.
Of course, Cyrele couldn’t help but notice that he only told her that he could protect her—not that he would.
#
AS CYRELE APPROACHED the door, stepping around the reptiles—they did not flee from her as they had from Matiser—the air suddenly grew warm and moist. Was that why the reptiles kept close? Glancing at the glyphwriting around the doorframe, she spotted the passage controlling the temperature, though she couldn’t quite figure out how the humidity worked. Or why it was needed, for that matter.
Matiser crossed the threshold into the next room and instantly a soft red light sprang out from beyond the door. The light seemed to emanate from the glyphs carved along the walls of a wide hallway...and surprisingly, from the glyphs inscribed beneath the surface of a shallow pool, one that covered the floor of this entire room, giving the water a crimson tint. The only dry surfaces available to stand on were a small landing near the door and a thin sheet of metal floating in the center of the room, itself covered with small, glowing glyphs.
Cyrele couldn’t help stopping just beyond the threshold, gaping at the light in awe. How had the glyphwriters of old instructed the room to do this? The glyphs were inscribed, not painted on—the whole room should have glowed instead of merely the writing. And the light had only activated when the prince had entered—how could glyphwriting accomplish that?
But Matiser did nothing to acknowledge the extraordinary feats of magical technology before them. He merely glanced back at Cyrele, an off-putting lack of expression in his eyes, before turning his gaze to the floating sheet—which promptly launched itself across the water, sailing towards them and stopping before Matiser’s feet.
“You’ll need to travel across on this platform,” the prince told her. “Take care not to touch the water.”
His warning prompted Cyrele to search the glyphs beneath the surface for a reason why she shouldn’t touch the water. There—another glyph for temperature, but his time the number next to it was shockingly low.
Matiser let out an amused huff. “Rather than attempting to untangle a lost language in the span of a minute, I can simply show you what it does.”
He reached out towards one of the lizards on the walls. The creature tried to run away, but something invisible had it jolting back towards Matiser’s outstretched hand.
Cyrele began to feel uneasy. “My apologies, your highness, but a demonstration might not be necessary. I think I understand.”
“Worry not, it won’t be gruesome,” he said, voice unconcerned.
Then he grabbed hold of the reptile and tossed it into the pool. Half of the animal submerged beneath the shallow waters and froze solid in an instant, ending the creature’s flailing as death came to claim it.
“This is why I tell you take care,” Matiser explained. “You won’t die from touching the water, but you very well may lose body parts. Now, come here.”
She had to obey him, but her body refused to move.
The prince raised an eyebrow. “I’m not accustomed to repeating myself.”
She made herself take a few shaky steps towards the floating sheet. The moment she passed through the doorway, the once-warm air suddenly cooled enough to make her shiver—that was why the threshold radiated warmth, wasn’t it? To keep this bone-deep cold from seeping into the rest of the temple. And now Matiser wanted her to step on a sheet of metal surrounded by water that could turn her to ice...
...and the sheet was hardly big enough to fit one person, let alone two. Would they take turns?
She stopped on the edge of the platform, as the fear coursing through her made it impossible to take that last step onto the sheet. Did she truly have to do this? A glance at Matiser’s firm expression suggested that she did.
“Go on,” he said, and though the words were encouraging, his tone suggested he was beginning to lose his patience.
Steeling herself, she stepped onto the sheet. The she gathered up her skirt in her hands to keep it from contacting the water and crouched down, hoping it would keep her from losing her balance.
Next to her, Matiser’s sandaled foot stepped off the landing and onto the water, the surface turning to ice around him. His other foot landed next to the first one, and then he was standing on the surface of the water that had solidified just for him.
Cyrele hardly had time to grasp what he had done, when the sheet dislodged itself from the landing and began moving across the water, with her on top of it. Gasping in surprise, she huddled down. Matiser’s steps continued falling alongside her, setting an almost uncomfortably fast pace across the water. Yet the faster they went, the sooner this would be over.
Then something yanked at her skirt from behind. Sheer panic shot through her as she felt herself pulled off the sheet, plummeting backwards towards the water—and then everything stopped. She found herself suspended above the surface, with nothing but air between herself and icy pool beneath her. Her body trembled, her breath came out in shudders. Tears had formed at the corner of her eyes.
The metal sheet traveled backwards and she felt her body gently lower towards it, as something—was it Matiser’s power?—placed her on its surface. She could do nothing but collapse onto the sheet as shudders wracked her body, the fear she had accumulated finally overwhelming her.
After a long moment, she began hearing the cracking of ice as Matiser approached. “There now, you’re alright,” he said, voice gentle but detached.
His hands appeared in her line of sight, reaching for the end of her skirt—which she only now realized was trapped in a small section of the water that had turned to ice around it. Matiser pulled at the fabric and the ice turned back into water, releasing her dress.
“Take care,” he admonished her softly.
But hadn’t she taken care? How did the end of her skirt escape when she’d made sure to gather it close? And why had the water turned to ice around her skirt? Shouldn’t the fabric simply have frozen, like the lizard had, without the water changing its form around it? The prince’s footsteps may have turned the water to ice, true, but she’d assumed he had done that.
Something was wrong, Cyrele could feel it. But she didn’t know what.
Then Matiser asked, “Are you ready to continue?”
There was no time to question further and no sense in stalling. She didn’t wish to stay in this room for even a moment longer. “Yes, your highness,” she whispered. “Please.”
The sheet began moving across the hall once more, and Cyrele barely dared breath until she finally reached the other side.