Ancestors of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “I cannot hold him! Help me!”

  At once Micail felt Tiriki’s unflinching rush of compassion.

  “Let Light balance Darkness—” Her thought became a song.

  “And Reaction, Rest—” He followed.

  “Let Love balance Hatred—” Warmth built between their clasped hands.

  “The Male, the Female—” Light grew between them, generating power to transform the tensions of the opposing forces.

  “There is Light—There is Form

  There is Shadow and Illusion

  and Proportion—”

  It seemed a long time that they stood so, while the vacant howling of the chained god receded, gradually, grudgingly, sullenly.

  When the shaking ceased at last, Micail drew a deep breath of relief, although his sensitized awareness felt the constant tremors beneath the equilibrium they had imposed upon the island.

  “It’s over.” Tiriki opened her eyes with a sigh.

  “No,” he said heavily, “only restrained, for a little while. Beloved—” Words failed him, and he clasped her more tightly. “I could not have held back that power alone.”

  “Do we have—time?”

  “Ask the gods,” Micail replied. “But at least no one will doubt our warning now.” He looked past her, his shoulders slumping as he saw on the floor beneath the window the shattered pot, spilled earth, and naked roots of his little feather tree.

  People died in that quake, he told himself. The city is burning. This is no time to weep over a tree. But as he shoved his spare sandals into the bag, his eyes burned with tears.

  The mood of the city had certainly altered, thought Damisa as she picked her way around a pile of rubble and continued toward the harbor. After the terror of the early morning, the bright sunlight seemed a mockery. The smoke from a dozen burning buildings had turned the light a strange, rich gold. Now and again, a vibration in the earth reminded her that though the dust from its toppled summit had dispersed, the Star Mountain was still wakeful.

  The taverns were doing a roaring business, selling wine to those who preferred to drown their fear rather than take steps to save themselves from the sea, but otherwise the marketplace looked deserted. A few insisted that the morning’s quake would be the last, but most people were at home, packing valuables to take on the ship or into the countryside. From the roof of the House of the Twelve, Damisa had seen the roads jammed with wagons. People were heading for the harbors or the inland hills, or anywhere away from the Star Mountain, whose crowning pyramid had come to a precarious stop about halfway down the slope. From the new, flattened summit, a plume of smoke continued to rise, a constant promise of more violence to come.

  And to think that there had been moments when she had resisted the Temple’s orderly serenity, its incessant imposition of patience and discipline. If this morning was a taste of what was coming, she suspected she would soon be remembering her life here as a paradise.

  In the emergency, even the twelve acolytes had been pressed into service as common messengers. Damisa had claimed the note meant for Prince Tjalan, and she meant to deliver it. Determined, she tiptoed around a pool of noxious liquids spilling from a market, and she headed down a reeking alley to the waterfront.

  The harbor yards were crowded and noisy as on any normal day, but now there was a barely restrained hysteria. She tugged her veil into place, and hastened her steps into the hubbub. She heard the drawling accents of Alkonath everywhere she turned. It must have been some kind of instinct that allowed her to distinguish Tjalan’s voice, ringing above the babble of men who toiled to stow a hundred different kinds of gear.

  As she drew nearer, she heard the sailor to whom the prince was speaking. “What does it matter if the seed grain goes above or below the bales of cloth?”

  “Do you eat cloth?” Tjalan asked sharply. “Wet linen will dry, but salt-soaked barley will mold, not grow. So get back down there, man, and do it right this time!”

  Damisa was relieved to see the prince’s expression lighten as he recognized her.

  “My dear—how goes it up there?” A wave of his hand indicated the temples and the palace on the hill.

  “How is it everywhere?” Damisa tried to keep her voice even, but had to look away. “Oh!” she brightened. “But there is good news! The priests who serve at the summit of the Star Mountain actually survived! They came in an hour ago, all except their leader. He sends word that he dwelled on that peak since he was a boy, so if the mountain wishes to be rid of the pyramid, he will return to the summit without it.”

  Tjalan laughed. “I have known men like him—‘deep in the Mercy of the Gods,’ as they say. He may outlast all of us!”

  “There are some,” she found herself saying, “who believe that when the earth began to shake, we should have made . . . a special offering . . .”

  Tjalan blinked, brows furrowing. “Sweet child—do not even think such things!” His bronzed face had gone taut and pale. “We are not barbarians who sacrifice children! The gods would be right to destroy us if we were!”

  “But they are destroying us,” she muttered, unable to tear her gaze from the flattened, smoking peak.

  “They are certainly unmaking the islands,” Tjalan corrected gently. “But they granted us warning first, did they not—first by the prophecies and now by the tremors? We were given time to prepare an escape—” His gesture embraced the ships, the people, the boxes, bags, and barrels of provisions. “Even the gods cannot do everything for us!”

  He is as wise as any priest. Damisa admired the strength in his profile as he turned to answer a question from the captain, a man called Dantu. I can be proud to be kin to such a man, she thought, and not for the first time. She had not originally been destined for the Temple—it was her grandmother who proposed her as a candidate for the Twelve. When she had dreamed of a royal marriage as a little girl, Tjalan had been her model for a worthy consort. It was a relief to find that a more mature judgment justified her original opinion. He made Kalhan look like the boy he was!

  “Mind yourselves!” The prince was glaring at a group of sailors who stopped work to goggle at two buxom, saffron-draped saji girls who were pulling a cart full of parcels from the Temple of Caratra.

  One of the men smacked his lips and made a kissing noise at the girls, who giggled behind their veils. “Wouldn’ mind packing you into my hold . . .”

  “You there!” Tjalan repeated. “Back to work. They’re not for such as you!”

  What the sajis were for had been the subject of much wild-eyed speculation among the acolytes. In the old days, it was said, sajis had been trained to assist in certain kinds of magic that involved the sexual energies. Damisa shuddered, glad that she had not experience enough to guess what those might be. The acolytes were free to take lovers before they married, but she had been too fastidious to do so, and Kalhan, chosen as her betrothed by some arcane procedure of astrology, had not tempted her to experiment ahead of time.

  “I almost forgot!” she exclaimed. “I have brought a list of candidates to sail in the royal vessel, with—with you.” As Prince Tjalan turned to her again, she opened her scroll case and gave him the parchment.

  “Ah yes,” he murmured, running a finger down the list of names. “Hmm. I don’t know if this is a relief or not—” He waved the paper at her. “I can see beside it like a shadow the list of those who will not escape—either because they choose to stay, or because there is not enough room. I had hoped that the only decisions required of me would be where to stow their gear.”

  Damisa heard his bitterness and had to quell a powerful impulse to reach out to him. “Lord Micail and Lady Tiriki will be sailing with Captain Reidel, but I am on your list,” she said softly.

  “Yes, little flower, and I am very glad of it!” Tjalan’s gaze returned to her face, and his grim look lightened. “Who would have thought my skinny little cousin would have grown so—”

  Another call from Dantu cut off whatever he had been about to
say, but Damisa was to cherish those parting words for a long time. He had noticed that she was grown up. He had really seen her. Surely, the word he had not had the chance to say was “fair,” or “lovely,” or even “beautiful.”

  The house where Reio-ta dwelt with Deoris was set into a hillside close to the Temple, with a view of the sea. As a small child, Tiriki had lived in the house of the priestesses with her aunt Domaris. They had brought her to Ahtarrath as an infant to save her from the danger she faced as the child of the Grey Mage whose magic had awakened the evil of Dyaus. Deoris had feared her daughter dead until she came to Ahtarrath and they met once more. By then, Tiriki thought of Domaris as her mother, and it was only after Domaris’s death that Tiriki lived with Deoris.

  Now, as she climbed the broad steps of the house, arm in arm with Micail, she could not restrain a sudden sigh of appreciation for the harmony of the building and the gardens around it. As a child, confused and grieving, she had taken little notice of her surroundings, and by the time the pain of loss had faded, she had learned her way about too well to really see the place for what it was.

  “How glorious.” Chedan, ascending close behind them, echoed her thought. “It is a sad fact that we often appreciate things most deeply when we are about to lose them.”

  Tiriki nodded, surreptitiously wiping away a tear. When this is gone, how often will I regret all the times I passed this way without stopping to really look?

  For a moment the three paused, gazing westward. From here, the greater part of the broken city was hidden by the glittering roofs of the Temple district. Beyond them was only the ambiguous blue of the sea.

  “It looks so peaceful,” Chedan said.

  “An illusion,” Micail gritted, as he led them through the portico. Tiriki shivered as they crossed the decorative bridge that had, she reminded herself, always swayed slightly beneath the lightest step, but since the morning’s quake, she had become preternaturally aware of the leashed stresses in the earth. Whenever anything shook, she tensed and wondered if the horror was about to begin again.

  Here, she observed, there were no chaotic piles of keepsakes and discards, none of the frantic bustling that rippled through the rest of the city, just a soft-voiced servant, waiting to escort the visitors to Reio-ta and Deoris. Tiriki’s heart sank with a premonition that their errand here would fail. Clearly, her parents did not intend to leave.

  Chedan had gone ahead of her into the wide chamber that looked out on the gardens, and stood, saluting Deoris. It seemed to Tiriki that his voice trembled as he spoke the conventional words. What had Chedan been to her mother, she wondered, when they were young together in the Ancient Land? Did he see the mature priestess, with silver threading auburn-black braids coiled like a diadem above her brow, or the shade of a rebellious girl with stormy eyes and a tangle of dark curls—the girl Domaris had described when she spoke of Tiriki’s mother, before Deoris came to Ahtarrath from the Ancient Land?

  “Have you . . . finished packing?” Reio-ta was asking. “Is the Temple prepared for evacuation, and the acolytes ready to . . . go?” The governor’s speech stumbled no more than usual. From his tone, it might have been a perfectly ordinary day.

  “Yes, all is going well,” Micail answered, “or as well as can be expected. Some of the vessels have departed already. We expect to sail out on the morning tide.”

  “We have saved more than enough space on Reidel’s ship for both of you,” added Tiriki. “You must come! Mother—Father—” She held out her hands. “We will need your wisdom. We will need you!”

  “I love you too, darling—but don’t be foolish.” Deoris’s voice was low and vibrant. “I need only see the two of you to know that we have already given you all that you need.”

  Reio-ta nodded, his warm eyes smiling. “Have you forgotten, I . . . gave my word, in council? So long as any of my beloved people hold the land, I . . . I, too, shall stay.”

  Tiriki and Micail exchanged a quick but meaningful glance. Time to try the other plan.

  “Then, dear Uncle,” Micail said reasonably, “we must drink deep of your advice while we can.”

  “G-gladly,” said Reio-ta, with a modest inclination of his head. “Perhaps you, Master Chedan, will . . . drink, of something sweeter? I can offer several good vintages. We have had some . . . banner years, in your absence.”

  “You know me too well,” the mage said softly.

  Micail laughed. “If Reio-ta hadn’t offered,” he went on, disingenuously, “no doubt Chedan would have asked.” Catching Tiriki’s eye, Micail jerked his head slightly in the direction of the garden, as if to say, The two of you could talk alone out there.

  “Come, Mother,” Tiriki said brightly. “Let the men have their little ceremonies. Perhaps we might walk in your garden? I think that is what I will miss most.”

  Deoris lifted an eyebrow, first at Tiriki and then at Micail, but she allowed her daughter to take her arm without comment. As they passed through the open doors, they could hear Chedan proposing the first toast.

  The courtyard garden Reio-ta had built for his lady was unique in Ahtarrath and, since the fall of the Ancient Land, perhaps in the world. It had been designed as a place of meditation, a re-creation of the primal paradise. Even now the breeze was sweet with the continual trilling of songbirds, and the scent of herbs both sweet and pungent perfumed the air. In the shade of the willows, mints grew green and water-loving plants opened lush blossoms, while salvias and artemisia and other aromatic herbs had been planted in raised beds to harvest the sun. The spaces between the flagstones were filled with the tiny leaves and pale blue flowers of creeping thyme.

  The path itself turned in a spiral so graceful that it seemed the work of nature rather than art, leading inward to the grotto where the image of the Goddess was enshrined, half veiled by hanging sprays of jasmine, whose waxy white flowers released their own incense into the warm air.

  Tiriki turned and saw Deoris’s large eyes full of tears.

  “What is it? I must admit a hope that you are finally willing to fear what must come, if it will persuade you—”

  Deoris shook her head, with a strange smile. “Then I am sorry to disappoint you, my darling, but frankly the future has never had any real power to frighten me. No, Tiriki, I was only remembering . . . it hardly seems seventeen years ago that we were standing in this very spot—or no—it was up on the terrace. This garden was barely planted then. Now look at it! There are flowers here I still can’t name. Really I don’t know why anyone wants wine; I can grow quite drunken sometimes just on the perfumes here—”

  “Seventeen years ago?” Tiriki prompted, a little too firmly.

  “You and Micail were no more than children”—Deoris smiled—“when Rajasta came. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” answered Tiriki, “it was just before Domaris died.” For a moment she saw her own pain echoed in her mother’s eyes. “I still miss her.”

  “She raised me, too, you know, with Rajasta, who was more of a father to me than my own,” Deoris said in a low voice. “After my mother died, and my father was too busy running the Temple to pay attention to us. Rajasta helped take care of me, and Domaris was the only mother I knew.”

  Although she had heard these very words a thousand times, Tiriki stretched out her hand in swift compassion. “I have been fortunate, then, in having two!”

  Deoris nodded. “And I have been blessed in you, Daughter, late though I came to know you! And in Galara, of course,” she added, with a look almost of reproof.

  The gap in their ages had given Tiriki and the daughter Deoris had by Reio-ta few opportunities to know each other. She knew much more about Nari, the son Deoris had borne to fulfill her obligation to bear a child of the priestly caste, who had become a priest in Lesser Tarisseda.

  “Galara,” Tiriki mused. “She is thirteen now?”

  “Yes. Just the age you were when Rajasta brought me here. He was an eminent priest in the Ancient Land, perhaps our greatest authority on the
meaning of the movements of the stars. He interpreted them to mean that we had seven years—but it was the date of his own death he foretold. We thought then that perhaps he had been completely mistaken. We hoped . . .” She plucked a sprig of lavender and turned it in her fingers as they walked. The sharp, sweet scent filled the air. “But I should not complain; I have had ten more years to love you and to enjoy this beautiful place. I should have died beside your father, many, many years ago!”

  They had completed a circuit of the spiral path, and stood once more opposite the Mother’s shrine.

  Tiriki stopped, realizing that her mother was speaking not of Reio-ta, who had been a kind stepfather, but of her true father. “Riveda,” she muttered, and in her mouth it was like a curse. “But you were innocent. He used you!”

  “Not entirely,” Deoris said simply, “I—I loved him.” She looked around at her daughter, fixing her with those stormy eyes whose color could shift so swiftly from grey to blue. “What do you know of Riveda—or rather, what do you think you know?”

  Tiriki hid her frown behind a flower. “He was a healer, whose treatises on medicine have become a standard for our training today—even though he was executed as a black sorcerer!” She lowered her voice. “What else do I need to know?” she asked, forcing a smile. “In every way that matters, Reio-ta has been my father.”

  “Oh, Tiriki, Tiriki.” Deoris shook her head, her eyes filled with secret thoughts. “It is true, Reio-ta was born to be a father, and a good one. But still there is a duty of blood that is different than the honor you owe the man who raised you. You need to understand what it was that Riveda was seeking—why it was that he fell.”

  They had come to the center of the spiral, where the Goddess smiled serenely through her curtain of flowers. Deoris paused, bowing her head in reverence. Behind her was a garden seat carved of stone, inlaid with a golden pattern of turtles. She sank down upon it as if her legs did not have the strength to carry both her and the weight of her memories.