Page 159 of Sun Warrior

“She is full-bosomed and her skin is almost unmarred.” Lily spoke under her breath to her Mistress. “I’ve overheard several of the men calling her beautiful.”

“Disrobe, Rabbit. Show yourself to our God.” Even though Dove could feel Rabbit’s eagerness and heard her clothes slithering immediately to the ground, still her stomach rolled. “My Lord? Does this Attendant please You?”

Dove heard Death chuckle low, intimately, in a tone she understood all too well. “She will do just fine. Now, as I said, leave me! I tire of you.”

“Get us out of here. Forever,” Dove told Lily quietly. “Now!”

Against the backdrop of low sighs, girlish giggles, and deep moans of ecstasy, Lily pretended to lead Dove to the rear of the chamber and her private area, but they paused there only long enough for Dove and Lily to pull on the shoes they had hidden under her pallet. Then Lily peered back and announced, “They are all watching Rabbit please the God—even the Reapers who were inside the chamber.”

“It is time. Circle around my private area. Then we pause to be quite certain no one is watching before we head out of the Temple.”

Lily did as her Mistress and friend asked, pausing to peer across the wide chamber.

“Daisy and Lace have joined Rabbit. They are dancing for the God. The Reapers cannot take their eyes from them,” Lily reported. “We can leave without being seen!”

Dove should have rushed out of the Temple to freedom, but she hesitated one last time. “Lily, are you quite sure there are no other Attendants who feel as we do?”

“Mistress, I’ve told you before—no. The Attendants like the attention of the Reapers. The men are finally strong, healthy, and they have the ear of a God. They want to live the future Death has planned for thePeople. They are content to be cared for and to imagine a life lived in the trees, free of disease and death.”

“But they won’t be free of Death. He will subjugate them all.”

“It is a subjugation they welcome,” Lily said.

Dove lifted her chin. “Then let us leave this awful place. But slowly. We should walk as if we are doing nothing out of the ordinary.”

“I understand.”

Holding hands tightly, the two girls walked across the God’s chamber, following the narrow path that led through the rubble that was the stairway to the courtyard. There they paused.

“What do you see?” Dove asked.

“The firepots are lit. They’re being tended by some of the sick ones. You know, the People who are too old or too ill to be of interest to the God, so He has left them unchanged and given them menial tasks to perform until they die. I’ve hidden our packs behind the rubble on the far side of the courtyard.”

“Then let us go there.”

“The old ones will see you, Mistress,” Lily said.

“I’m not worried about them. I’m worried about Death.”

“Then you have no worries, at least not until much later. For the time being, He is well entertained,” Lily said.

“And after that, He will be attacking the Others. I won’t worry until tomorrow.”

“And by tomorrow, we will be well away from this place,” Lily said.

They moved across the courtyard slowly, as if the Oracle and her favorite Attendant were out for a stroll. Several of the old, sick People called greetings to Dove. She smiled and nodded, careful to behave as she would any other day.

Her and Lily’s travel packs were where Lily had left them. Behind the concealment of a broken building, the girls strapped the packs across their backs. Lily took her Mistress’s hand again.

“Are you ready?”

“I’m trying to be.” Dove’s breath had gotten short and she felt hot and cold at the same time.

“Mistress, are you well?”

“I’ve never been outside the courtyard,” Dove blurted. “When I was born, I was brought directly to the Watchers to be sacrificed to the God, but one of the crones proclaimed that I was born sightless because the God had gifted me with inner sight so that I could part the veils of the world and see the Divine. I have known sixteen winters since then. I have known fear and anger, love and joy, hate and disgust, but I have never known anything outside the God’s Temple and this courtyard.”

“Mistress, I believe the Watchers were right. You can peer into the Divine. Have—have you looked through the veil and glimpsed our future?” Lily asked hesitantly.