‘Why are you outside at this time?’ A few feet from them, a maiden wearing a dark red dress scolded a young girl dressed in white, carrying a massive gourd on her head. The girl curtsied and started explaining in a hushed tone. The colours of a maiden’s apparel announced her status within the temple. Red meant she’d completed that training; white that she was a maiden in training; and gold that she was more than a temple maiden: she had become a weapon, the sharp end of the temple’s spear. The maidens reminded L’?r? of the song she’d grown up hearing.When you see white, hide. When you see red, run. When you see gold, pray to the gods, new and old. Either way, you’re going to die.
L’?r? was still watching when Kyà grabbed her hand and whispered, ‘Step back slowly.’
‘You there!’
L’?r? froze again. The pointing finger and the maiden’s glare made it clear she was talking to them this time.
‘What are you doing here?’
It wasn’t unusual to see royal guards in the temple during the day, but they weren’t stationed at the temple, especially not at night, so they needed to come up with a story. Fast.
Kyà spoke first, ‘We came for prayers.’
‘It’s late. Get out,’ the temple maiden said, and turned but stopped when L’?r? and Kyà didn’t move.
L’?r? remained still. A lump caught in her throat as the maiden eyed them from head to toe, surveying their uniforms. That was probably the only reason she hadn’t slit their necks yet.
Kyà answered again, ‘This is my sister. Our brother is fighting Ogun tonight, and we came to pray for his victory.’
It was a good story. Quick and plausible, but the maiden’s frown only deepened. She wasn’t buying it, or she didn’t care. ‘If your brother needs your prayers, then he’s dead already. Out!’
L’?r? squeezed her fingers tighter against her blades, ready to unleash them if needed. Just then, they heard a loud crash. The young girl in white had dropped the gourd on her head and spilt its contents. The temple maiden looked like she would burst, and when she scolded the girl, even L’?r? trembled.
L’?r? looked at Kyà, and they dashed into the maze that circled the inner temple. It was both a refuge and a trap. The five-metre clay walls shielded them, but if they missed a single turn, they’d be lost for hours and would definitely get caught. Baba-Ìtàn had told them that temple maidens were stationed at each tower, looking at people as they navigated the maze. Those who wandered or lost their way got spotted and plucked out quickly.
She’d learned a few things after spending her entire life reading and studying maps and stars. And one of them was to remember. She never forgot a single line of text or image committed to memory. So, as she led the way through the maze – turning left, right, right, left, right, left, left – she saw in her mind the exact path Baba-Ìtàn had traced out for them.
‘The entrance to the inner temple is here. There should be a false stone,’ she said, rubbing her fingers over the stone wall on the east side of the temple.
‘How will we find it? Everything looks and feels the same,’ Kyà asked, then turned on his agbára.
L’?r? quickly folded his palm into a fist. ‘No, put that away.The priests don’t have agbára oru, remember? They won’t make a secret passage that needs powers they don’t possess.’
Kyà nodded. ‘Okay, you search low, and I’ll check high. We’ll have to do this quickly. Anyone can come by here.’
They both started working the stone wall, tapping and checking for something that felt different in the darkness. They went back and forth the length of the side of the building twice before Kyà finally found the right spot. The wall sunk into itself, letting out a soft groan, and he used his full weight to push it open, revealing the tunnel they needed to get to the south tower unseen. Baba-Ìtàn had said that it was an old passageway with a secret entrance that the priests used to leave the temple or sneak in their mistresses when they got bored with their maiden and the routine life of priesthood.
L’?r? let him lead the way, one hand lighting up the tunnel and the other holding on to her. They hadn’t walked far when they found a door set into the tunnel’s right wall, light glowing from the other side.
Kyà walked through the door first. L’?r? gasped when she entered the room. She stepped onto a wet mush of something dark and sticky. The stench of stale blood was so strong it wiped out the heavy incense that filled the rest of the temple. The once white limestone walls of this hidden sanctum were streaked with blood splashes. All around them were displays of knives and blades, different shapes and sizes, and in the middle of the room was a large wooden table with four metal cuffs at each edge and a pile of rumpled, bloody sheets. It looked as though someone had been wiping off and soaking up the blood that pooled around the table and left in a hurry.
An uncomfortable shudder passed through L’?r?, and she tensed. ‘What in the world is happening here?’
‘I don’t want to find out,’ Kyà said, heading back into the tunnel.
‘Hold on. We can still check where that other door leads to. We could be close.’
‘Any moment now, someone is going to open that door,’ Kyà said. ‘I don’t want to be here when that happens. Besides, your father said we’d have to go to the end of the tunnel.’
L’?r? looked around again and pursed her lips. ‘Fine,’ she said, following him back into the tunnel. She took in a deep breath and plunged back into the darkness.
After what felt like forever, creeping through the underbelly of the temple, they came out into a passageway full of lanterns hanging on the walls. They followed the trail of lights and ended up in a courtyard with a large willow tree in its centre.
‘That’s the tree Baba-Ìtàn told us about,’ L’?r? said. ‘We are going in the right direction. We need to get to the other side, and the tunnel beneath it will be a straight line to the south tower.’ She pressed forward, but then her eyes caught on something that made her stop in her tracks.
‘What are you doing?’ Kyà asked, a tone of panic in his voice as she headed off in another direction, through a part-open door in the wall of the courtyard.
L’?r? ignored him and walked into the room in front of her. It was empty but for the sand portraits on the wall, all of women. The floor looked like it had been scrubbed, but when she squinted, she could see traces of dark spots on it. Something tugged at her mind, a strange yet familiar feeling.
