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Now at that time, in that part of the world, the dice game that is played by the gods Fate and Chance came down in a decisive victory for Chance, and a quick-fingered acrobat stole into the Temple of Truth unseen.

By a cunning art they crawled along the marble ceiling like the quietest of insects, and by natural disposition - Chance smiled - contorted their body to slip through cracks betwixt wall and pillar, and in the inner domicile the arrow-chinks left so that defenders might cast stones and oil. All important matters had been settled earlier, and nothing left to - Fate nodded approvingly.

On the first day they had taken the barge that is the pilgrim’s only means of traversing the ever-golden river that is the temple’s [defense], slipping into a group of dancers for the god Noor-sha-naat, whose dress is not dissimilar to that of the acrobats of that land. Within the temple they had wandered, making note of the open galleries that beringed the central naos, the yellow-robed temple-wardens, guardsmen at the wide portals bearing two-bladed spears. Visitors clustered in small groups, and their hushed speech carried far across the marble halls. At an appropriate time they had vanished into shadows, wandering further until coming across the small x of rooms which was the quarters of the guardsmen and serving-people. All this was where the priestess had said. They searched further for the hidden door of which the priestess had heard only rumour and found it in a storeroom of trivial things. It opened on rocks, and further the gently lapping waters of the river Cyric, for whom it is always sunset.

On the second day there was no reason to return. The acrobat passed the hours in their usual fashion. When night fell they returned to the river, this time to its broad eastern bank, viewing the unpeopled side of the temple island silhouetted by the towers of the town yonder. Even by starlight - a sparkling cloudless sky, but without a moon - the river was illumined by late afternoon sunlight. Beside it the black night was blacker still.

The acrobat rowed across molten gold in one of the peculiar little river craft favoured by the fishers in that area, which are set very low in the water and seem almost to disappear. There was no wind; with little effort, and almost no sound, they came to the rocks from which they had looked east, drew their craft ashore, and hid it some ways away so that it would not be seen from the door should a guardsman do the rounds, though they suspected the door was known only to a few. It was difficult work dragging the ship about the rocks, and when it was done their bare feet were salt-crusted and bloody.

The door was not locked by night. The acrobat levered it open slowly, but all was quiet within and dark. They passed through the cramped corridors xxx. They entered out onto the temple floor - darkness. But for what light was cast across the tile floors by the singing river in undulations like fast-passing clouds, nothing stirred; the great doors downwards, the descent into Truth, were shut but unguarded. Operating by some impulse - and by a tale they remembered tell of that no torches were born into Truth, for divers theological reasons - they stole inside the doors. They were heavy, but quiet, and the acrobat opened one only a little to dart through. Inside they groped in darkness. The [setting???] of the portal, these explorations informed them, mirrored that of the x outside, great monumental marble slabs. Confirming this, they reached upwards to grasp the epistyle and swung their body upwards, finding a dusty space clustered with carvings in stone and broad enough for a man to lie comfortably. There they slept that night dreaming of gold.

Thus on the third day the acrobat awoke inside the temple, undiscovered and undisturbed. Murmurations from without the passage betokened that the building too had come awake. As they rubbed sleep from their eyes they looked downwards, and saw a warden garbed in yellow and a hooded pilgrim. In the warden’s hand was a torch - well, the acrobat thought smilingly, that tale is then false! - but its flickering light did not reach the crevice within the acrobat had secreted themself. It revealed rather an something something steep steps, disappearing again into a pool of blackness that receded a little as the pilgrim and their chaperone descended.

Casting their life into the hands of Chance the acrobat dropped from their hiding place and followed. As long as they were silent - and their bare feet on the cool stone, depressed a little in the centre of each stair from a thousand years of [??], were silent indeed - their quarry had no reason to look back, and they stayed many paces behind, feeling for each stair in darkness before they committed. Occasionally the pilgrim, who seemed now to be a man of middle years whose accent maybe was that of Bohn to the west, asked a question which echoed strangely in the low-ceilinged passage: “Can it be so deep within?” or something to that effect. The warden made no reply, and though the effect was solemn the acrobat struggled to keep from laughing aloud.

The stairs descended for time uncounting, but the darkness without the torchlight was a reassurance; the glittering river was surely held off by many leagues of rock. At last a white line no broader than a blade of grass revealed itself as the space between two heavy doors matching that at the naos’ outer entrance, and the warden opened these and bid the pilgrim enter. In the room beyond the acrobat saw briefly every surface glittering with a thousand years of tribute, fitted into statues and settings but more [approachably??] atop the altar and sitting in piles - in the illumination thus afforded to the stairway they saw also a second ornamental epistyle atop the doors, this far more complex than the other, depicting a figure in its centre whose face was the sun - Truth.

The acrobat found a handhold in one of Truth’s many little petitioners and once more found a place atop the door to sit awhile. They yawned, and near slept again, and ate a peach which they had found in their pocket. Eventually the door swung open again to admit its light and the pilgrim, who sounded as though he was weeping, and fled upwards without sight even as the warden emerged in a pool of flame to guide him. The acrobat smiled indulgently at the poor man as he receded into the distance and all became still and dark, but for the little sliver of light which emerged from the doors; when quite convinced they were alone, the acrobat sprung back down and slipped inside themself.

It was as they had seen - a circular chamber, heaped with jewels, with recesses in its walls holding statues of Great Kings, patrons of the temple maybe, and in the chamber’s centre a pit of decent size with steps about its edges spiralling downwards far beyond sight. Where the light in the room came from they could not say - not the pit, even if it did as it seemed lead downwards into the heart of the world, for it was unlit - but its harsh white quality was not that of Cyric.

Haste was in the acrobat’s interest and they moved at once, untying the sack from their belt and heaping it with treasures. The wardens saw this room many dozens of times per day, so they surmised, and probably took only the most cursory glances at its contents now - all that was necessary was to take things that were not outwardly visible and to disturb very little the general appearance of the heaps. Accordingly, though they sighed with shame, they touched not the massive rubies or the golden goddess-figurines with diamonds for eyes, but carried off their weight in little earrings and ankle-chains, gem-encrusted scabbards that had like as not been wedged behind heavy chests for the past century, and a finely-wrought silver circlet that they pressed into their now dust-matted hair - for it would not fit in the sack.

Now Fate tapped the acrobat’s shoulder and a sense of calamity took hold of their heart, and they with their treasures emerged from the door and again attained the epistyle, tucking their lightly clinking bag into a niche in the carving; not a moment later soft sounds of speech came from further up the stairway. It was another warden, this one by some token revealing herself other than the one before, though her garb was the same. She led two pilgrims and engaged them into altogether more personable speech. The little band entered the naos. They were within for longer than the gentleman, and the acrobat spent the time familiarising themself with their treasures by touch alone. When the group was gone they returned to the chamber.

This little dance repeated itself half a dozen more times till the temple was defrauded entire, though from a passing glance - the acrobat congratulated themself - all appeared unchanged. Throughout they had felt no presence of the god Truth, which was a sadness, unless the god in fact aided in their deception! Now they left the spoils in their hiding-place and returned one last time, for there was a matter of distasteful import remaining.

Somewhere amongst these busts of lords long dead and gold-threaded mantles and ivory tableware was a tiny trinket, and the acrobat fished inside their tunic for the little scrap of lambskin on which the image was drawn. It was a little birdcage, maybe, with long spires at either end, and within was something like a marble. It was not drawn particularly well. They began the search with a degree of reluctance.

The trinket had not been carelessly cast amongst the silver platters; they did not find it by shaking out the brocaded mantles of yellow silk mouldering from age; it was not within a quiver of arrows topped with peacock feathers. None of the Great Kings held it in his outstretched hand, nor did it make for any of them a glinting eye. With increasing impatience and greater carelessness the acrobat sifted through illuminated scrolls and volumes bound in something like manskin - then they heard sounds at the chamber entrance, and the door began to open.

With less than a second’s thought they cast themselves into the pit. They took the steps two at a time, near-silent on the stone with their feet bare, and ducked first below the sightline from the door, then continued downward with more careful movements. If there was nowhere at the bottom of this pit to hide, that of course was no good, and they would blithely submit themself to Chance, but the chamber held no fitting hiding place.

Swiftly nothing could be seen at all save a small white circle above. Those above did not immediately follow. Like as not there was some ritual dialogue properly held before the descent, and if the acrobat strained their ears they indeed heard some droning chant. They followed the stairs with a hand on the wall for balance, noting unhappily the wetness of stone and recalling the great river some leagues above.

All at once the small white circle was gone; the acrobat, though they yet walked, hung in darkness. A voice came out of this darkness.

“Hail, friend thief,” said this voice. It came not from above or below, nor even from the stone, but was emitted from the very air as are (so it is said) the voices of gods.

The acrobat understood at once, and felt the breed of strange comfort that one feels to have been caught at their own game and to at last give it up. “Hail, Truth,” said they. “I hope you are not very unhappy that I have taken some things of yours. Since you are Truth and it seems to be that I cannot lie in your presence, I hope you understand that it is my nature, to which I am ever loyal.”

“I am worshipped in this place as Truth, and these men do homage to me and bring me other men, so that I may eat of what is in their minds; it is food and water to me. I am freely fed the secrets of this land and its little people and its great. We will bargain together, for I sorrow of easy meat. I will give you a gift with which you will go from here and seek for me provisions of secrets unwillingly given, and you will have that which you look for, which I have heard from your heart.”

The acrobat smiled, and it seemed the tone of the unearthly voice too was smiling, speaking almost in a whisper, as if two children colluding at a game they played. They replied, “But I am followed into your dwelling, great Truth, and when I am found I will make no good sport for you.”

Happily, playfully, the voice: “Only make my bargain and you will see.”

The acrobat said, “Then I will have it,” and the darkness said then, “Then you are my friend, little thief,” and the acrobat awoke suddenly in their little secret space in the niche as the door was opened below and a group of pilgrims passed into the naos making light conversation. Nothing was amiss. Indeed it seemed nothing had happened at all, but that the acrobat felt a sting and opened their hand. In the last moment of stolen light as the door swung shut again they beheld laying in their palm a little burnished silver thing no bigger than a key, caged by a complicated filigree netting, with a little marble rattling within.

There was no time for thought. The acrobat - whose essential character could not be much altered - held fast to the sack of trinkets that had been hidden in the niche alongside them as they swung down from the epistyle and hurriedly attained the stairs, though knowing all the while that the wardens would not admit another band till those behind them were done. Perhaps their eyes had at last adjusted, for it seemed that the steps up which they bounded were faintly visible, and something glittered in the walls.

At the second set of doors they swung up their sack and then climbed up themself, settling in where they had slept that past night, and prepared for sleep again. There were no peaches now, but they were used to hunger and furthermore to resting wherever necessary. Besides, when the warden and their charges finally emerged from the naos and the door to the outer temple was opened, the acrobat had the strange sense that the daylight that briefly flooded the passage was that of late afternoon - or perhaps it was only the ever-sunset glow of magic Cyric.

The remainder of the third day passed in such a fashion: the acrobat crouched atop the doors till their knees ached, clutching at their prizes, dozing occasionally, and ever peering downwards at the groups that passed, hoping to judge which were the day’s last. The moment came when all that passed through the door was torchlight. It did not open again for - the acrobat counted, and counted, and considered the time of night it had been when their little boat reached the island, and counted longer. When they judged the time might be fitting they hailed Chance, god of thieves, and after a second thought hailed Truth also.

The temple was quiet as they emerged. Out of habit the acrobat ducked behind pillars and favoured western aisles where the moonlight had not yet reached, but they encountered nothing, and the torches were to a one unlit or left to gutter uselessly.

The way to the quarters of the guards was ajar. Inside, laughing speech, sounds that gradually resolved themselves into armour being removed and weapons left in stands. It would be safest to sit in silence waiting - eventually the guards would drink themselves merry and fall to slumber - but the acrobat had conceived of a dislike for the building, having slept on ledges till the shape of the stones was engraven in their face, and wished to leave at once. Therefore they entered the warren of little rooms, moving slowly so that their precious bag did not clink, and skirted the room where a fire had been lit and someone had begun to play one of those stringed boxes invented across the river in Bohn. Someone rifled through one of the storerooms, perhaps for wine. The acrobat crept by this room in silence, hand protectively over the bag, moving only once every ten heartbeats, and finally plunged back into the further corridors, and at last the disused storeroom which opened onto the rocks.

Someone had been there - a cloak and goblet made a little nest where the golden river now greedily sucked, and a growing night-wind howled amongst the jagged stones. The acrobat squinted their eyes against the sudden light. They could detect no movement of man, and when they clambered across the rocks to their hiding-place the boat was undisturbed. Moving now with haste rather than secrecy they left their prizes at the door and dragged their craft down to the water’s edge, a task just as unpleasant as it had been before, except that they were now fired with the closeness of flight.

When all was done and the bag was safely sequestered beneath their seat - and the tiny silver thing shoved into the pouch in their trousers where they most trusted to its safety - the acrobat, showered with dust, covered in salt, unwashed, a little bloody, quite hungry, and with their fingernails broken though they recalled not how, pushed off from the rocks and rowed into the night. Like as not the yellow-robed wardens of the Temple of Truth kept some ledger of the presents given unto the god and the theft would not go forever undiscovered, but for the time being there was little danger, and the acrobat’s heart was cheered. They were pleased too that the wind died down a little at the most perilous point of their crossing, for that rang of the pleasure of Chance, who is beloved of rogues; but their meeting in darkness and their profit thereby had the ring of Fate, which moved pieces on the board as it pleased and was true to itself alone; and whether the third presence that now intervened in the acrobat’s favour was lesser or greater than those twain was a matter far beyond the ken of a simple performer, contortionist, and sometimes thief, such as now descended to the eastern shore of the river Cyric and swept the silver circlet from their dusty hair with an expression of triumph.

 

Two weeks perhaps passed between the acrobat’s departure from the Temple of Truth and their return to the low city, far to its west. Now this was on account of their lingering a time in the town from which the bronze-oared barge to the Temple of Truth departs, and the name of that town is Halys. The industry of the town is dependent on its temple; it is little more than waystations for travellers and markets too for their edification, and none live there but that fail to discern between this pilgrim and that, seeing so many pass. The first thing the acrobat sold was their boat, and they did this on the other side of town from where they had bought it, and none was any the wiser. They dined on fried fish that morning and slept a day away in their rented room above the workshop of a music-box maker.

Over the week the acrobat lingered in Halys, for it was a pleasant place, very dirty and crowded, full of shouting and the sounds of commerce and the crying of horses, they gradually rid themself of perhaps two thirds of their ill-gotten gains. These they traded largely for money, till their pouch rang mostly with the heterodox sun-faced coins as well as a few old gold pieces minted by some claimant king in a forgotten interregnum, but they also bartered for the pouch. And a pair of shoes, and an embroidered coat with the fur turned to the inside, for Neurath would soon enter its cold season and remain there for the better part of the year, though they had left when it was warm.

The rest of their treasures they wore till they were weighed down with rings and anklets and bangles, and they wandered the earthen streets of Halys on the last day with the ringing of a host of bells, admiring the children playing in the dirt; the stalls loaded with things no man could ever need; the traffic eastwise to the temple, marked by the shifting eyes of those weighed down by lies they must needs unburden. Lovely Halys! Yet the silver trinket was a burning weight, and it overcame revulsion eventually, and the acrobat turned west.

In bartering for passage across the grass plains they disposed of further of their jewels. A few little emeralds were given away to amuse the little children in the cart, to distract from its endless rattling, and the grasslands stretching out to meet the setting sun in one direction and the rising moon in another, and Halys a sunken little toy-castle of loveliness receding to nothing beneath the latter. Then an earring traded for a cup of milk in the outlying farmlands as they passed through, for there is nothing like the luminous beauty of white milk; then fine ivory bangles for the guards at the gates of Bohn, who remembered thieves by face but were pleasant enough if they could profit by theft! In the outer rings of the city they went by various inns and guild-halls and ?? to greet various friends and lovers, and each was vouchsafed a present to look after a while. Teasingly they diverted all questions as to their whereabouts in the last weeks, and aided in the effect of this diversion by means of a jug of yellow wine bought with a little golden chain unclipped from around their ankle, and put off still the inner rings of the city until they could be put off no more. Last of all the acrobat buried their bulging coin-purse in a favourite garden, accessible only by a series of rooftops and left many years to grow wild.

 

So it was that they divested themself of all their profits of the theft save coat and shoes, and came wearing nothing finer than a copper bracelet inlaid with rubies and smaragds to the house of Orfero.

“That is a pretty bauble,” said he, and bid them come closer to see it more keenly, for he was seated beside a bubbling brazier, and around him the hall was dark. That light caught little on the mosaic floor, dulled as it was from its great age. There was not a window but that was heavily curtained and draped with old tapestries to hide the sun and all sound besides: thus the people of the hall called this the Inner Chamber.

As ever in the rooms of Orfero, a bell seemed to toll of Fate. In his eyes was a terrible doom. Though at this time he spoke quite pleasantly.

“You found nothing else?” he continued.

“Lord, the defenses were many,” said the acrobat, casting their eyes demurely low. They had the sense that this line of questioning was a mummery put on between the two of them: that he had put forth the question to judge their skill at lying, and expected them to conceal their secret wealth, which in fact he had no need of. It is true that Orfero possessed riches beyond the knowledge of any man, though the nature of these riches too were beyond most knowledge, and the acrobat glimpsed them only obscurely. Across his robéd knees laid the box of jet which they had seen opened only once, and gravely.

But for Orfero speaking with the acrobat the only sounds of the Inner Chamber were the sputtering fire - now yellow, now green - and the work of the wizard at one of the far tables heaped with bronze-hinged diptychoi and obscure implements. She was grinding at something: perhaps a rare and storied herb, the object of some other fanciful quest from which some other servitor had just returned.

The acrobat had something of a fellow-feeling with this wizard, with whom, in the normal courses of life, their path would never have crossed. The harpist, in whose company the acrobat might more readily have been found outside Orfero’s service, was nowhere to be seen.

“Nevertheless you have that for which you were sent,” Orfero said then in his very mild speech, and the acrobat was diverted from attempting to catch the wizard’s eye through the sulfuric sorcery-smoke. They presented with a mummer’s flourish the tiny marble in its silver cage, and Orfero’s yellow eyes glinted with pleasure.

He swiped it from their outstretched hand and barked for the wizard to attend; she came with long robes swishing across the mosaic, bearing in her hands an arrangement of silver rings and glass discs, comparable perhaps to the models of the heavens favoured by the astronomers of Neurath. The silver thing was inserted in some depression within the base of the arrangement. So far as the acrobat could tell, this had no effect whatsoever. While Orfero was distracted with delight at this progress in his opaque design, they again sought to communicate by some sign with the wizard, and she again rebuffed them - perhaps deliberately. She was very pale. The acrobat was sorry to leave her in the low smokey chamber when they were inevitably dismissed, for Orfero had no further interest in them.

Now the acrobat bethought them mournfully of the musicians and bright speech and ale-slick floors they had left only the night before to descend once more into this pit: though in fact the rooms of Orfero were at the city of Bohn’s highest peak, and were any of the windows to be uncovered, the whole city would unfold magnificently before the viewer. Instead all outwards-facing view was taboo for an obscure sorcerous reason, and only the columned courtyard in the villa’s centre was the recipient of any natural light. There was a very pretty fountain there, and it made the usual meeting-place of the lighter-minded members of Orfero’s retinue. The acrobat lingered for a time warming their feet. It seemed no messages had been left for them, tucked beneath the courtyard stones or hidden by any other means, though the secrecy of such messages was itself a fiction.

That night as they retired to bed a little uneasily in their usual quarters deep within the villa another voice came to them out of darkness, though it was now no sibilant hiss from without the world, but rather a harsh whisper from somewhere in space. Awakening by degrees from sleep, the scene revealed itself: the bookkeeper, his hair wild, crouched above them on the couch, bearing a covered lantern. As he saw the acrobat awaken he removed this cover and let a gentle sputtering light out into the chamber. The lantern was of the usual kind produced in the city, in that it had the appearance of fire guttering out from a weeping face. That which the bookkeeper had whispered was “Of all the times to sleep!”

“Hello,” said the acrobat, stretching luxuriously and drawing the sheets over their shoulders as a shawl. They were never troubled to be woken in the place they were supposed to be sleeping rather than stumbled upon by irate watchmen. Nevertheless, the bookkeeper slapped them across the face.

“Listen, for I have not long to speak with you,” he said. “Would that I need not do so at all! yet our allies are now very few. You lingered longer away than you ought to have, and much has changed here.”

His very tone spoke of dire DANGER!, as did his wildly flashing eyes, and the very ?? of this midnight intrusion; thus the acrobat felt it necessary to conceal their own misgivings, for such was their nature. “I lose track of time when I am at my tasks: and anyway his lordship was pleased to see me.”

"Hist, tightrope-walker! The lord has placed a geas on his wizard. She is now not to speak."

"And she so loved her speaking," sighed the acrobat, recalling the very diverting arguments between the two of them. Their laughing wit -- her ponderous intonements! There was a little amusement to be had in the grim halls of Orfero.

In the bookkeeper’s ire he swung forth the lantern towards them, and they ducked away laughing, and at this laughter he turned to the door and listened intently for a moment. None intruded, and indeed the halls of Orfero were not patrolled by night, nor even by day. How very oddly he was behaving! thought the acrobat, lightly. The worst of it was that a little lamp-oil had spilled onto their couch.

The bookkeeper continued, speaking very quickly, as though to have done with the acrobat’s presence sooner: “It was rumoured to me that she had some plot to recover her name, and did not share it with any of us perhaps due to some taboo associated with the spell. Enchantment, I think, would have the best hope of overcoming enchantment. Now there is no hope of it, if he knows. And there is more. None have sighted the swordsman in days. Orfero was asked direct --"

"I pity the poor soul!"

"It was the equestrian, who was in his favour at the time. Now hush. Orfero, on this matter, said he no longer had need of any swordsman, for the time was close at hand when the might of swords would be unavailing against him."

"If the swordsman has gone from here, may good Chance go with him! Perhaps he has been given a store of gold in severance and sworn to secrecy, and perhaps even his name."

"Yet he was not seen to be dismissed, and none have sighted him in days."

The acrobat shrugged their bare shoulders again, yet still uneasy, and began to long for another assignment that would take them far from this place of conspiracies and plots - for to simply leave was not easily done. They could not ignore that of which the bookkeeper spoke, but wished that he would not say it to them; also they felt a curious resistance to the thought of asking after the harpist.

“You realise, of course, Orfero knows all you say to me,” they said after some thought.

The bookkeeper responded, with some venom, that this much was obvious to him, and that he repeated only information he could have gathered from here and there and that was not concealed to him, at which Orfero could not wax wrothful, for he had allowed it to be known. This was a reasoned argument to the acrobat’s ears. “Even so, you would not speak this way before his seat; do you not seek to collude with me?”

“If his lordship had any hope of loyalty, he would return me my name,” the bookkeeper replied.

"Perhaps you might pay me a living wage, Orfero," the acrobat called out ringingly into the dark bedchamber, "then I might not be prevailed upon to steal so profitably -- "

The bookkeeper hastened to cover their mouth then, and the terror in his eyes was the terror of death.

In the long moment of resounding quiet as both now strained to hear a passing guard - still knowing that there were none - and as the wind beat at the outside walls of the villa and as the last of the oil in the bookkeeper’s lantern sputtered out and the weeping mouth closed, and darkness again fell, a voice spoke out of it. “I am well fed,” it said happily, and the acrobat recognised this voice. “I will give you another little present; sleep and dream and find it there.”

There was nothing further. The acrobat fumbled a moment before finding the small cypress-wood box kept beside their couch and the tapers within. They kept a careful eye on the bookkeeper as they lit one, but his manner was unchanged. It seemed to them that he had heard nothing. They dismissed him then, blithely lying that the danger grew greater the longer he lingered, and he went willingly, whether he had more to share or no.

When last the acrobat had obeyed this thing Truth, it had been a gainful venture. Therefore they cast the sheet over their head and went to sleep at once, smiling as does a cat that dreams of cream, or a thief that dreams of gold.