Chedan clasped his hands and bowed his head. “I think I understand. Thank you once more, wise Taret. You greatly honor me.” The mage stood and gave her the salute that one adept accords to another who stands high in the Mysteries. Then he made his way back to Reidel and the sailors, who looked relieved to have at least one of their charges safely back in their care.
“Tiriki,” the old woman said when he had gone, “little singer . . . You serve the Sun but, for true, you are priestess of the Mother.” Her fingers curved in a sign that Tiriki had thought unknown to anyone but an initiate of Ni-Terat and Caratra. Even as her fingers moved reflexively in the answering sign, Tiriki’s eyes widened at a sudden, clear memory of the vow her mother, Deoris, had made before she was born. Tiriki’s work in the temple had followed other paths, but always that primal allegiance was there, the foundation of her soul.
“You think us wild folk.” Taret’s youthful laughter cackled anew. “But we know Mysteries. In this land, nine wisewomen serve Her . . . Sometimes, we meet priestess from other lands. So I learn your talk, long ago.”
“You speak our language very well,” Damisa complimented.
“Not be so kind.” Taret gave the girl a smile. “But, know enough to teach the maiden Mysteries of red and white.” Damisa frowned in confusion, and Taret went on, “Soon you see. Rocks white where one stream comes—white rocks, white cave. Other spring leaves red stain, like moon blood. And you will go there.”
“You offer initiation into your Mysteries?” Tiriki asked doubtfully. “It is a great honor, but none of us can submit to any rite that may conflict with oaths we have already sworn—”
“We call on Thee, O Mother, Woman Eternal.” Taret tilted her head like some bright-eyed bird. “No conflict that oath—Eilantha.”
Hearing her sacred name, Tiriki felt the blood leave her face. What the old woman had said was the very oath that Tiriki’s aunt and mother had sworn for themselves and their offspring before her birth. “How—?” For a moment, her voice would not obey her. She had come to this new land to preserve the high magic of Atlantis, but this was something far more profound. On Ahtarrath the worship of Ni-Terat had been a minor cult, honored, but not particularly important; yet Taret plainly welcomed Tiriki not as a Guardian of the Light, but as a priestess of the Great Mother, as if that was a higher distinction. “How can you know?”
Taret only smiled. “Mysteries, Mysteries. Everywhere the same. Now you believe me? The Mother welcomes you . . . and your child . . .”
Tiriki swayed. Damisa reached out to support her, brows lifting in surprise.
“What?” Taret laughed, tipping her head to one side like some ancient bird. “You do not know?”
“I thought I was seasick,” she whispered, mind whirling back to her symptoms. She had never suspected. In sorrow for the children she had lost, she had repressed the very memory of what pregnancy was like. Without volition her hands moved to protect her belly, which was now no longer empty, if what the wisewoman said was true.
Tiriki shook her head. “How could I still be carrying a child, after what we have gone through? All the healers of Atlantis could not keep me from losing my babes before!”
“How you come here to Hidden Isle?” Taret laughed once more. “She wants you here—you and your kin!”
Tiriki curled forward, cradling her womb, remembering that last night when she had lain with Micail. Had his seed taken root in that moment of ecstasy? And if so, was it that part of him that lived within her that she was sensing, when she felt so certain he survived . . . ? Tiriki blinked, and then found herself weeping openly in Damisa’s arms, not knowing if it was joy or grief in her tears.
The news of Tiriki’s pregnancy spread like wildfire and was a ray of hope in a situation that seemed bleak despite the marsh dwellers’ welcome. The Atlanteans first needed housing, and in the days that followed, Tiriki was not the only one who found herself doing work she had not been trained for. Even if they had not all been heartily tired of life on shipboard, the Crimson Serpent could not serve as a long-term shelter. In fact, the vessel herself was in need of protection while undergoing repair.
Chedan had in his day supervised the construction of more than one Temple—and not all of them had been built from stone—but his expertise was limited to the esoteric requirements for sacred space, and the aesthetics of design. And though he understood the magic by which song might be used to move stone, without enough trained bass and baritone voices to make up even a single stand of singers, there was little they could do. And the actual cutting of stone was the guarded specialty of the guild of stonemasons, none of whose members had ended up on the Crimson Serpent.
The marsh folk built with wood, a craft with which the priesthood was not familiar. But in the more rural communities of the Sea Kingdoms, where most if not all of the sailors had been raised, the peasants lived in huts that were not too different from those they saw here. Moreover, shipbuilding itself required a woodworker’s skills, and Reidel, the son of a shipmaster, had learned quite a lot about the craft.
Once again, Damisa found herself grumbling, our bold captain takes charge. She had to admit he was doing a good job. In next to no time, he had set the seamen to the work of construction, but Damisa had to wonder how they would take to it. Sailors from Ahtarrath or elsewhere might not mind, but on Alkonath the men of the sea were a privileged caste. Damisa had grown up near the Great Harbor, and remembered all too well their scorn of landsmen’s tasks.
Now, pausing at the edge of the woods with an arm-load of willow branches, she heard raised voices and detoured around a hawthorn bush to see what was happening.
“Not another log will I lift, an’ I dare ye give me reason why I should!” From the thick Alkonan accent, Damisa identified the speaker as the sailor Aven, threatening Chedan with balled fists and a ferocious frown.
“You’ll need a roof to sleep under, will you not? Surely that should be ample reason.” Chedan’s tone was perfectly level.
Who can argue with that? Damisa thought, as she pulled up her hood. The blue skies that greeted the morning had already disappeared behind grey clouds that seemed ready to dissolve into rain.
“Our tents serve well enough!” Aven argued. “If all of us get back t’ work on the Crimson Serpent—” The Alkonan had already lowered his hands. Now his manner eased even more. “In a week we could be away from this benighted foul backwater! ’Tis no place for the likes of us, holy one! Let us be off t’ some civilized land!”
“I have told you that this place is our destiny.” Chedan’s voice was stern. “Do you question the wisdom of the priests’ caste?”
“Not I!” Aven answered with a smirk. “All I know o’ destiny is, I’m no tree-grubber! And beggin’ your flip-pin’ pardon, but I’m not your slave neither.”
“Well then, my good man,” said Chedan in a controlled tone, “if your destiny is so different, we must not detain you here. Can we assume that you will not be attempting to claim any further share of our food and drink?”
“What?” Once more Aven’s stance became threatening—and that was enough for Damisa. She dropped her load of branches and began to run down the path to the shore.
As she had hoped, the captain was close by the ship, planing down a piece of wood to replace a plank that had been cracked by a sunken rock. The day was chilly, but the work had made him warm enough to be comfortable, and he was stripped to his clout. In Ahtarrah, that would not have been worth noting, but here, the cold made most of the exiles go about layered in every garment they owned. To see his muscular bronze body flexing in easy motion as the plane rasped down the plank was . . . a surprise.
She had no time to analyze her reaction, for at the sound of her swift footsteps Reidel had straightened, eyes widening in alarm.
“What is it? Are you—no, I see you are unhurt. What has happened?”
“It’s what’s going to happen!” she replied. “Aven is close to mutiny. Says we should be working on the ship i
nstead of—”
“Damned fool!” A dangerous glow lit Reidel’s eyes. He snatched up his tunic and strode off so swiftly that Damisa had to run to catch up with him.
In moments they had reached the clearing. She had not been gone long, and Aven apparently had not progressed beyond insulting words and postures, but the air had a charged tingle that she did not like. Chedan stood immobile as a pillar of stone, but his hair was bristling and the pupils of his eyes expanded with the focus of the force within. The air was becoming super heated. Everyone could feel it, especially Aven, though he tried to seem unaffected as sweat began to pour from his face and shoulders.
“Owwat last!” he croaked defiantly. “A warm breeze. The wind gods do confirm me words to yez!” With uncommon impudence he reached toward Chedan, but his nerve failed as the cuff of his shirt caught fire, and he withdrew his hand with a gasp.
“Master, please!” Damisa shrieked. “He’s just an ignorant man—”
“No, don’t stop!” Reidel’s voice cracked like a whip.
“But Cap’n,” Aven wailed, childlike, “this be no work for honest sailors! Just le’ me return to the ship. I’ll blister me fingers for ye, only we leave these marshes and get back where we belong!”
“Oh?” asked Reidel very softly. “And where might that be?”
“Back on Al—on—” Aven’s voice faltered.
“Indeed”—Reidel nodded—“that’s just where you would be, were it not for Master Chedan—on Alkonath, or Ahtarrath—at the bottom of the sea!”
Damisa released her breath in a long sigh as the last of the defiance went out of her countryman.
“Truth, I grant,” said Aven desperately, “but why here?”
Reidel’s gaze flicked to Chedan, who appeared quite relaxed, though his voice was edged with strain.
“The error is mine,” said the mage, “for while this is the haven which the gods have vouchsafed us, I forget sometimes that not all of us have sworn the vows of a servant of Light. Why were we saved when so many died? Precisely so that we might come here. Though you see it not, there is power here enough to make this place a beacon for all the world. And in this life and beyond, I am bound to do all that I may to further that possibility. Will you not consider, at least, that you also may have been brought here for a purpose, and lend us what help you can?”
Aven stared at the ground, as sulky as a boy. Chedan yawned and declared his intention to go and have a drink from the White Spring while Reidel, hands on his hips, shook his head.
“Master Chedan is too kind,” he observed. “When this community is secure, Aven, you shall go where you will, but until that day comes, we will all work together—and you will obey Master Chedan as you would a prince of the blood!”
After that, there was no further defiance and surprisingly little grumbling. A week of hard work got them all under some sort of shelter. The construction was simple enough—following the example of the villagers, they had made walls by weaving slender branches of willow between log posts driven into the soil and thatched the roofs with bundles of reeds. Plastering the walls with mud to make them wind and watertight would take longer, but at least they were out of the rain.
Alyssa had finally been carried up from the ship to share a large round hut with the Blue Robes, Liala and Malaera. Close by was a small enclosure in which the Omphalos Stone waited, still in its cabinet, wrapped with silks. Nearby, two more huts, small but private, had been erected for Tiriki and Chedan. Around these were three larger dwellings. The female acolytes were lodged in one; the saji Metia and her sisters occupied another. Kalaran had a bed in a third, which he shared with a white-robed priest named Rendano. Reidel and the crew, along with the merchant Jarata, and a few other surviving Ahtarran townsfolk, had built another scatter of shelters for themselves near the place where the wingbird had come to ground.
It was well on the way to becoming a community. But though the results of their work were good enough to keep them dry, by Atlantean standards none of it could be called homelike, or even warm. Huddling over a peat fire in her drafty hut, Tiriki shivered and sniffled and wondered if she was coming down with a premonition of disaster or only a cold. She cast a beseeching glance at the image of the Mother she had set up in a little alcove of stones, but in the flickering firelight even the Goddess seemed to be shivering. The ache and tingle of her breasts supported the mysterious Taret’s diagnosis, but what hope had she of carrying a child to term in this wilderness? Had the refugees survived the fall of Atlantis and the voyage only to be defeated by the climate of this new land?
Even allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, Damisa’s account of the confrontation between Aven and Chedan left Tiriki’s belly clenching with a pain quite different from the pregnancy-induced nausea that had finally begun to subside. It did not help that she understood, as her acolyte had not, that Aven had challenged not merely the mage’s authority but that of all the priesthood. And Chedan was of the Old Temple. There was no real choice for him but to defend his caste.
He does not do this for his own glory, she had reminded Damisa. What he does, he does for you and for me. And there is no way of judging how the confrontation would have turned out without your interference.
Damisa had gone away suitably chastened, but the tale continued to haunt Tiriki, as palpable a presence in the drafty hut as a bowl of spoiled milk. Tiriki did not doubt that he was capable of it, but could not quite accept the notion that Chedan, whom she knew to be gentle and reasonable, would actually have burned an Alkonan sailor to ash. But that did not prevent her thanking the gods and goddesses that Reidel had put a stop to it, even though the real problem had only been suppressed, not resolved.
Aven was not the problem. He had only been the first to say out loud what she had already heard others mutter when they thought no one was listening.
“Micail, Micail,” she whispered, “why did we even try? It would have been better to meet fate with our own people, hand in hand. By now the pain would be ended, and we would be at peace.”
You know why, the voice of her spirit answered. You are sworn to the Light and the prophecy.
A sudden shift in the wind sent the billowing smoke into her eyes. By the time she had stopped coughing she was weeping in earnest.
“Damn the prophecy!” Roughly she thrust aside the deerskin tacked across her doorway and went outside. The air was fresh and sweet with the scent of greenery, a powerful reminder of her mother’s garden, and of Galara, who should also have been at her side. She blinked away tears and only then realized that the clouds had gone. The sun shone full and bright overhead, and she raised her arms, exultantly voicing the ageless hymn of greeting—
“Lift up thy light unto day, O eastern star,
Joy and giver of Light, awake!”
She let her arms lower slowly, eyes half closed, luxuriating in the benign radiance that shone on every land. What month was it now? The moon had shown full and the Dark Sisters dimmed since the equinox. Even in these misty hills, summer should have begun some time ago . . . Chedan’s theory about the gradual slowing of seasons came to mind.
Sun Children, Taret called us . . . Of course! Tiriki’s hands fell at last to her sides. Atlanteans do not like to huddle in the dark! No wonder everything seems so grim and gloomy. I’ve got to get away from here.
Aware that the others might be watching, she found herself moving quickly through the trees. Without any clear idea of where she was going, her feet found a pathway. In moments she was alone, beyond sight and sound of the settlement.
Instinctively Tiriki chose the way that led upward. The path disappeared; not even a deer run or rabbit track marked the ascent. She felt strongly that she must get away from the encampment and the marshes, and respond to the whisper of the breeze and the clarion call of the sun. Since their arrival she had wondered what lay at the top of the Tor, and so she was not surprised to realize that every footstep was taking her closer to it, though the undergrowth forced her to
double back upon her tracks in order to find a way through, so that she ended up tracing her way back and forth around the Tor.
Soon, perspiring, she pulled off her mantle and looked about. She was high enough up that the trees had mostly given way to scattered shrubs and bracken, but between them stretched grass—brilliant with the sun, more vibrantly green than anything she had ever seen. Once more, tears sprang to her eyes, but they were tears of joy. Silly girl, she told herself, did you actually think there could be no beauty in the new land?
A last scramble brought her to the summit—a gently rounded oval expanse with a coverlet of the same richly green turf. Even in that first moment, half blinded by glorious sunlight, she was aware of it, like another kind of radiance . . .
Her eyes adjusted quickly. From here, high above the primeval forest that girdled the Tor, even the marshes below revealed to her a strange, wild beauty, for the vast fields of green spring reeds were spangled and veined with pale blue whenever the water reflected the sun.
Magnificent, she told herself, but her sigh of appreciation at once gave way to a sudden stab of nostalgia. In Ahtarrath she and Micail had often greeted the day from the summit of the Star Mountain, where the blazing sun above the diamond sea had revealed each and every feature of the countryside and glittered on a thousand decorated rooftops with breathtaking clarity. Here, even on a cloudless day, the view fell away into a misty shadow of rolling hills backed by a foreign sea.
In Ahtarrath she had always known who and where she was. Here she had no such clarity. Instead, what she saw in the subtly veiled landscape before her was . . . possibility.
Slowly she turned, noting how the long ridge to the south and the higher hills to the north sheltered the levels between. To the east, the mist was turning to a brown haze, but Tiriki scarcely noticed. Before her, at the summit of the Tor, was a circle of standing stones.
Ancestors of Avalon Page 14