Riwenne & the Bionic Witches

by Kristen S. Walker

  I stretched out on my back with an extra pillow under my elbow to keep me from bumping it and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, the airship was gliding along close to the ground with no real direction. After breakfast, Tika called a meeting for everyone in the cockpit.

  Uqra looked exhausted after yesterday’s ordeal. I wanted to thank her for helping to save me, but she was on Amena’s shoulder and even more withdrawn than usual. Amena was sitting next to Kyra, looking very cozy. I sat behind Janera and tried not to look at the pair.

  Tika perched on the back of an empty seat. “Time for a new plan. We still need to figure out how to free Quilla.” She looked at me, and I shrank under her gaze. “I don’t think we should risk Riwenne’s health by pushing her to contact the moon goddess.”

  I looked at the floor. “Still, I’ll keep trying. Just not sure how to contact her since Rennu took away my old crystal.”

  Tika cocked her head to one side. “I don’t know if that matters since the crystal was drained. He won’t be able to get any use out of it.” She straightened up. “Anyway, we need a new method to uncover information about Quilla.”

  Janera lifted her hand like she was asking a question in school. “Can’t we ask another god? We could summon Qachmy again, or d’you think anyone else would know more?”

  “Magic is too dangerous,” Amena said automatically.

  Tika shook her head. “And the only god who knows the whole truth is Chysa. Even if we dared to speak with her, she wouldn’t tell us anything.”

  Kyra turned to Amena and whispered, “What about the old temples?”

  Tika clacked her beak. “Speak up so we can all hear you, please.”

  Kyra turned back and cleared her throat. “It’s something I remembered when we were looking over the maps. Every town has a temple or a shrine to Chysa which gets used every day. But there are temples dedicated to other gods scattered all over, many abandoned. Some are remote so we could sneak in and look for clues.”

  Deryt leaned forward with interest. “I’ve seen a couple. The rebels like to use them for meeting places. But what could we learn from a bunch of old, falling down ruins?”

  “If you’re looking for old stories, they’d be one place to start.”

  I perked up. “What about a library or somewhere else with old books?” Reading sounded much less dangerous than sneaking into a ruined temple.

  “No,” Amena said. “The only books printed are those approved by the imperial government. The older, handwritten volumes are all kept under lock and key.” She patted Kyra’s thigh. “She’s right, if we want any information that isn’t the official version, we need to go somewhere that isn’t under their control.”

  Janera scowled. “So we only get their version of our own history?”

  Deryt nodded. “Controlling information is a big way of controlling the people. Some rebels have tried to find out what they don’t want us to know, but it’s dangerous and difficult.” He folded his arms. “I don’t think they’d leave any big secrets just lying around in old temples.”

  Kyra tossed back her hair. “That depends on knowing how to look. A trained priestess can find things a casual observer would miss.” She unrolled a map and pointed to a spot in the mountains north of the bay. “The older and more remote, the more valuable information we’re likely to find. This is the first one I’d like to check. It’s not too far, and it hasn’t been used in decades.”

  Deryt took the map. “It shows nothing there.”

  “There’s a cave complex,” Kyra said confidently. “Which used to be a major site for cheese production, before they built factories. Where there’s herds, there’s a temple for Xiso.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “How do you know about it?”

  Kyra smiled in a way that made me very nervous. “Because it’s supposed to be haunted.”

  11

  The Haunted Temple

  The last thing I wanted to do was explore a haunted cave in the middle of nowhere. Kyra used to work as an exorcist for the temple, so she didn’t use words like “haunted” lightly. The last time she followed rumors of ghosts, we ended up fighting a giant mechanical crocodile in the city sewers. This cave could be haunted by real ghosts or something worse. And I’d have to face it with no magic.

  But everyone else ignored my objections to the plan. Deryt said he could have us there by tomorrow afternoon, and he turned the airship south to head back into the mountains. He and Janera would take turns on the flight controls while the rest of us slept.

  When we arrived at the site, there was nowhere to tether the airship. Deryt landed us in a field on the side of the mountain. It was very open to the sky, but our maps claimed there was no one around for miles, so Amena said we had a low risk of any patrols in the area. I hoped she was right.

  I stepped off the ship with some hesitation. We were above the tree line, so there was nothing but grass and rocks. The air was clear and easy to breathe. The sun was bright. Out here, it felt peaceful, safe. Maybe I could stay behind and let the others investigate without me. But wasn’t it my responsibility to look for Quilla?

  Kyra led the way as if she’d been here before. She pointed out the abandoned buildings. “These are all at least three hundred years old. These outlying structures are newer, built as the temple expanded to house the growing number of priestesses and flocks.”

  I eyed her. I knew for a fact she’d never left the city before our escape, so there was no way she could have first-hand knowledge of anything here. Her old know-it-all attitude from class was coming back.

  The buildings were large and spread out in a rectangle around a central courtyard. The doors, windows, and roofs were all gone, but the stone shells looked strong enough to withstand centuries. The stones were unevenly cut, nothing like the symmetrical brick work of the city, but when I touched a wall, they were so tightly fit that even a sheet of paper couldn’t have slipped between them.

  The temple was the largest, built so it leaned against the mountain, with its stone roof still intact. Amena passed around lit torches before we went inside, reminding us not to use magic.

  While most of the buildings were plain, the main entrance was heavily decorated. Tall pillars, carved to resemble strange, menacing creatures, ran down the immense hall in rows to support the high roof. The walls showed traces of old paintings. Huge potted plants brightened up the room, and some of these had overgrown the floor, their blooms filling the hall with their sweet, heavy perfume. An extravagance of candles sat in every available nook and cranny in the windowless room, dripping into veritable mountains and rivers of wax built up over centuries of use. We lit several with our torches to get a better look.

  Kyra gestured at the paintings. “Here’s our first clue. See anything unusual?”

  I craned my neck upward. Everything looked strange to me. The artwork was in an older style I’d never seen before, although the bold lines and symbols reminded me of our temple’s design back home. The lowest pictures on the wall showed ebu, the horned mountain sheep that gave thick wool and rich milk for cheese. These basic pictures showed the yearly cycle of humans caring for the sheep: herding them to graze in mountain pastures, birthing the lambs, sheering their wool in the warmer seasons, milking them, making cheese and storing it to ripen in the caves.

  Above the sheep pictures, there were more elaborate designs of gods who seemed to observe or bless the humans’ works. The largest figure, repeated often, looked like Xiso—except instead of wearing a llama’s pelt, he had a sheepskin cape and an ebu ram’s horns on his head. I recognized a female figure over the birthing scene as Mitta, the goddess of motherhood. There were at least a dozen deities I’d never seen before.

  “What counts as unusual?” I pointed to a figure I didn’t recognize, one who didn’t look masculine or feminine. “I don’t know who that’s supposed to be.”

  Tika landed on my shoulder. “Zavy,” she chirped. “They’re in charge of wool and weaving, t
hat’s why they’re blessing the sheering.”

  I frowned, looking closer, but their gender remained ambiguous. “They? So they’re non-binary?”

  “Exactly,” Tika said. “Lots of gods don’t identify with a gender, and some prefer to take different genders at different times. Even Xiso, that tricksy shapeshifter, took female form to birth the first llama.”

  I scanned the walls and found another section with Xiso’s exploits. He shape-shifted into many animals, mostly for breeding. One picture matched Tika’s description of the first llama’s birth rather graphically. I glanced away.

  “I thought Ibda was the only non-binary deity,” Janera said, coming over to see Zavy.

  “The only one the temples mention now,” Kyra said with a sigh. She pointed to another goddess’s picture. “There’s Charuza, the goddess of cheese. I’ve only found vague references to her in our books. She must have been important here.”

  Janera put a hand to her head. “But how do you keep these gods straight? Are there really five hundred?”

  “Nobody worshiped that many at once,” Tika said. She gestured with her wing. “These deities watched over the herds and making cheese, so people venerated them here. Other temples served different gods depending on their function. But your empire has forgotten many of the old ways and rites that used to be part of daily life. Things are so automated in the factories, people don’t call on the gods.”

  I shivered and glanced back to the sunlight outside. No wonder people said this old temple was haunted. If there was even a trace of the neglected gods, but modern people didn’t know who they were, they must get confused and frightened. But I didn’t sense any divine presences, even as we spoke their names aloud. The gods must have lost their ties to this temple after decades of being ignored.

  “So the gods used to be a bigger part of everyday life.” There was no mention of Chysa or Quilla. “But this doesn’t tell us how to free Quilla. Where could you find a temple to the moon goddess?”

  Uqra raised her head from her perch on Amena’s shoulder. “Quilla and Chysa used to have rituals outside, beneath the sky. There were a few temples dedicated to tracking the movements of the sun and the moon using standing stones. When Quilla was imprisoned, they destroyed all the lunar temples.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” Kyra said. She wandered farther down the hall, raising her torch to scan the walls. “Everyone would need a calendar to keep track of the seasons and festivals, and that used to follow the lunar cycle. Somewhere, there has to be a record…”

  Past the opulent main hall, there were doorways branching off into other rooms of the temple—shrines to other gods. Amena found the sun goddess’s shrine, much smaller than the modern temple in Lyndamon City. Quilla would be the opposite of her sister, so I turned around. There was an identical shrine across the hall.

  But when I entered the moon goddess’s shrine, there was nothing but destruction. The altar was smashed into pieces, there was a headless statue lying on the floor, and the walls looked like someone had taken a chisel to all the paintings. Nothing was recognizable.

  I put my hand over my mouth and turned away from the ruined shrine. So much hatred, to destroy a place meant to honor a goddess. I knew that her worship was forbidden, that her temples were gone. But seeing the systematic way they’d gone about obliterating everything related to her—it made me sick to my stomach. What could Quilla have done to earn such horrible treatment?

  Janera put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it would be this bad. You shouldn’t have to look at it.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “I thought there would be even a trace I could learn from.”

  Amena stirred the rubble on the floor so the rocks knocked together. “Someone did a pretty thorough job to make sure there was nothing left behind. I think we’d better look for another temple.”

  “We haven’t checked everywhere yet,” Kyra’s voice came from down the hall.

  Something in her voice made me lift my head. She was heading deeper into the temple, but where could she go? The hallway of shrines was ending.

  The caves—the ones that could be haunted. “Wait,” I said, my voice cracking on the word. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  Kyra lifted her torch to show the entrance where the stone building met the face of the mountain. There was nothing beyond her but darkness. “Maybe we’ll find some really aged cheese,” she joked, but no one laughed. Then she stepped into the tunnel.

  Amena and Deryt followed Kyra into the dark tunnel. Within moments, the light of their torches had disappeared as if they’d been swallowed up by the mountain.

  Janera hung back with me. “Do you want to wait out here?”

  I glanced at Quilla’s ruined shrine and shook my head. “No. We came this far.”

  We clutched our torches as we entered the tunnel. The atmosphere shifted. The walls were much closer, and the air felt heavier, cool and damp with the musky scent of animals. The smell made me the most nervous. Was it lingering from the old herds, or were there wild animals sheltered in these caves? I hoped we didn’t disturb sleeping bats—or worse.

  As we got farther in, I realized the passage had been widened by tools and the path was worn. It must have been used a lot in the past. I couldn’t imagine having to come inside such a creepy place. What had life been like for those priestesses?

  We caught up to the others standing in a large chamber, staring around them. The light from the torches glinted off the uneven surface of the cavern walls, throwing into sharp relief the grooves worn into the rock. Odd—the markings here didn’t match the tools in the passage. They looked much smoother, as if they had been polished by hand. It seemed as if there were images in the grooves and whorls, but the flickering light turned them into a chaotic jumble.

  I reached out to touch one groove. My thumb fit inside it perfectly. It was warm, like a living creature. I jerked my hand back.

  Heavy footsteps echoed from deeper in the cave. We spun around and froze.

  An enormous ebu ram strode into the room. He towered over us, even Deryt. When he raised his shaggy green head, his curved horns almost touched the high ceiling. His deep brown eyes scanned over us with a look of intelligence before settling on Kyra.

  “You’ve come at last, my champion.” A warm, masculine voice echoed through the cave. The ram walked up to Kyra and lowered his head to stare at her. “You could have warned me so I had a chance to clean.”

  Kyra dropped into a deep bow. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you would be here. I meant no disrespect!”

  I saw the others also bowing. This wasn’t a normal animal. I hurried to do the same, although I kept my eyes fixed on him. It made me uneasy to see the god getting so close to Kyra. Was he going to punish her?

  The ram laughed. “Relax, I’m just teasing you.” Xiso’s form shimmered and shifted into a man with curly green hair, taking a more normal height, but he kept the ram’s horns. “This place has been empty for so long.”

  Kyra raised her head. Even from across the cave, I could see how her face lit up with adoration. “After all this time, it’s finally you.” She wiped her cheeks. Could she be crying? “I have so many questions, like why did you choose me? Were you the one who gave me my powers years ago? Did you—”

  “Don’t pester him with all of those useless thoughts,” Tika interrupted. She launched off my shoulder and flew to Kyra. “Remember what we came here for.”

  Xiso’s eyes narrowed at the sand piper. “Tika. I see you’re still as bossy as ever.”

  Tika puffed up her feathers and pecked at Xiso’s hand, still on Kyra’s shoulder. “And you’re still as flirtatious and fickle as you always were. I won’t let you take advantage of these children, even the one you’ve claimed as your champion.”

  Xiso raised his hands in the air and stepped back. “You don’t need to get violent. I’ll behave.” He folded his arms. “If all you care about is finding Quilla, you won’t find her
here. I’m afraid they have erased every trace of the moon goddess.”

  My heart sank. Was this just a waste of time? Xiso was strange compared to the other goddesses we’d met, like he didn’t take any of this seriously. Maybe it was blasphemous to think it, but for a god, he wasn’t very godly.

  Xiso’s head whipped toward me. In the blink of an eye, he was standing right in front of me, with his huge ram horns towering over my head. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. I take all this very seriously.”

  I froze under his intense stare, feeling the immense power looming over me. He could read my thoughts? I was in serious trouble. I tried to think of something more respectful, to remember any of the prayers to Xiso, but my mind blanked with fear. In his eyes, I could see infinite lives—ebu climbing on rocky mountainsides, guinea pigs rummaging through the grass, chickens nesting on their eggs….

  “Enough,” Tika’s voice snapped. “If you want help, you need to ask the right question.”

  Xiso lifted his head, breaking eye contact with me, and I was released from his hold. I gasped for air and dropped my head. I saw the god’s cloven hooves walking away.

  Amena cleared her throat. “I guess the question we need to ask is, where do we go for better information about Quilla?”

  Xiso chuckled. “Now you’re starting to understand.” He gestured to the cave. “This temple is old, but not the oldest. You could learn more if you went further back.”

  “With all due respect,” Amena said, “I don’t think a riddle will help us. We can’t go around trying to guess which temple is the oldest.”

  Uqra piped up. “It’s not a riddle, it’s an answer. The oldest temples are all where the first Arqans landed, before they founded the empire.”

  My head popped up with a smile. I wasn’t a big history buff, but I knew exactly what they were talking about. “Sawycha’s temple,” I said, looking over at Tika. “The one St. Jenatta built to thank the sea goddess for the successful voyage to Arkia from the Heartlands. It’s in Damondytti Port, right on Jenatta’s Bay.”