We take shelter the rest of the day as we can. Which mostly consists of pressing our backs against the baking stone and praying the sun doesn’t scorch us. I shut my eyes and will the shadows to grow. Finally the small patch of dark creeps forward and covers me from the worst of the sun. Not a moment too soon.
I must drift off like that. I wake with a jolt when a donkey brays. It’s dusk, and the sun is dipping low over the horizon. “Come, thief, we have another night’s ride ahead.”
With a sigh, I gather my things and mount my donkey. Muscles I didn’t know I owned ache, and my ass is tender, but I don’t let it show on my face.
I’m so glad to get off the damned donkey when we arrive, I barely look at our destination. My legs are shaky, and I know I’ll be sore for days.
Then I stop to really take it in. I might have gone right past this place if my companions hadn’t stopped here. It doesn’t look like much. Sand covers most of the ruins, piled up in large drifts against crumbling blocks of stone. But when I look closer, I start to notice promising details.
Inscriptions in a script I do not recognize signify the site’s age. And beneath the sand, indented pockets where gemstones wereonce embedded in the stone. The site has been raided, probably more than once. Does anything remain of the riches which were once here?
I guess we’ll find out.
He leads me to a place where the sand has been brushed or blown away to reveal a tiny cavity. It is barely the width of my forearm and only about as high. I crouch to get a better look.
“Can you fit through?” He eyes me speculatively.
Leaning closer, I brush at the sand with my fingertips and the stone crumbles away as well. Getting in won’t be a problem. Getting out, however…
I brush that off like the sand. Today won’t be the day that ends my lifelong lucky streak. I’ve been in tight scrapes before, and I always manage to get out somehow.
“Yeah, I’ll fit.”
He grunts and goes back to the donkeys, which his friend is tethering to a nearby column.
“What am I looking for exactly?” I call back to them.
Curious, I stretch out on my belly and wriggle close to the hole to get a better look. It wasn’t made as an entrance. I see that much straightaway. The darkness twists and coils around a large cavern, parting before my eyes to reveal a straight, flat shape which looks like the side of a building. It drops down about five feet to another flat surface which must have been a roof once upon a time, and opposite is another tower stretching up until it disappears into the sand.
From behind me, Gada speaks. “Someone told us this used to be the temple of a wind spirit. And you know what you find in temples?”
I shuffle backward and look up at him. “Offerings. And you want me to plunder the temple offerings, huh?”
He shrugs. “Didn’t pick you for the religious type.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
I look across at Ellys standing with the donkeys. “And neither of you is coming with me?”
“Can’t fit.”
He’s not wrong. His belly juts out over his belt, and his companion is equally as rotund. I guess it’s me on my own, then. “You got a torch?”
They light one and hand it to me, and I stick my feet through the hole, wriggling until my hips are through. It’s a tight fit, but it’s my shoulders that give me the most trouble. By putting one arm through first, I slide in further until my toes touch sandstone and only my head and my right arm stick out through the hole.
Gada passes me the torch, and I pull myself into the cavern where it smokes and gutters wildly for a moment, making me cough.
Blinking, I look around.
Just as I thought. I’m standing on the roof of the buried temple. At my feet is a small window, barely bigger than the hole I just crawled through. There’s no indication how far the drop might be on the other side if I squeeze through. I try to look, but the torchlight flickers so badly I can’t get more than a glimpse.
I think I see the ground not too far below.
With a whispered prayer to whatever god has protected me so far in life, I turn and shimmy through the gap.
Yalina
