He tried to make his hands stop shaking, but it was no use. He rubbed them, made them into fists, pounded them together, and held them to his heart, but still they shook, sending waved of shivers over his thin body. His figure looked so small as it was hunched over, knees resting on the stone floor, head low, eyes on the ground. Black tendrils of hair fell all around his pale face, hiding most of his visage. He let out a sob.
There was no one in the temple tonight. The doors were locked and barred, protecting the holy place from the evils of the night. There was one light lit in the topmost window, and to the crying man knelt before the door, it was a brilliant star; a beacon for his journey. The rain fell all around him, soaking him to the skin, and thunder rumbled over head. The man noticed none of it.
He could still hear the banging. Glorious Talon, how his head pounded. He wanted to yell at them, no one’s home! But they had stopped before he could utter a single anguished word. The stranger at the door left him, alone in that dark apartment, alone in the world.
Talon was his only companion now. Talon would be his father, and his brother; his mother and his sister. Talon would lead the man into a new world; be the light that guided him through darkness, the words whispered into his ear, the sentinel who protected his mind.
There was still blood on his hands, he noticed, as he pulled them together in a silent prayer. Red was never really his colour, he remembered. Was it so ironic that dearest Pate was always the one who looked so gallant in that brilliant shade? His wonderful wife, too, her black and red dress fitting nicely over her pregnant body. He had tailored that lovely dress for her, he recalled. But now they both lay in that dark apartment, servants now to Talon.
Another sob broke the constant pound of the rain.
