Ancestors of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “It was storm winds that drove us here as well,” Chedan mused. “Maybe none can find this place, except they are called by the gods . . .”

  “What we may offer you is little enough,” said Tiriki, “but we had some warning of your arrival, and so a hot meal awaits you, and dry, warm dwellings for you to rest in. Come now, let us begin to be friends.” She drew the merchant and his family toward the wooden trackway that led to the settlement below the Tor . . .

  “I suppose,” Selast grumbled, “this means we will have to go to bed hungry—”

  But no one was listening. Iriel clutched Damisa’s arm and pointed at a strange figure just crossing the plank from the fishing boat. “Who is that?”

  Tall, rather gaunt, the stranger wore a dingy white robe that, after a moment’s examination, identified him as a priest of the Temple of Light. In each hand, he clutched a large leather satchel. Frowning, he stopped at the center of the plank, peering nervously at the curious crowd, but his face brightened as he recognized Chedan.

  “Wise One!” He bowed as well as he could without dropping his bags in the mud of the wharf. “I am Dannetrasa of Caris. I doubt that you will remember me, but in Ahtarra I served with the Guardian Ardravanant in the Hall of Records—”

  “Ardral!” Chedan explained. “Have you news of him? Did he escape?”

  “Ah, if I only knew,” said Dannetrasa apologetically. “But if you knew him—”

  “He was my uncle.”

  “Then you know there is no reason to believe he would not escape! He was prepared, if any man ever was—” Dannetrasa paused again, and then hefted his satchels. “Of course you know, it was our duty to preserve what we could. And I have with me still a number of maps and several treatises about the stars—and some other things that may be useful—” Dannetrasa broke off again, as some sad memory seemed to pass before his eyes.

  Chedan’s expression grew concerned. “Come with me, friend. I can see you have had a bitter time—let us make you welcome. You shall join the feast, such as it is, and then you will show me what treasures you bring in these sacks of yours!”

  “Many things,” Dannetrasa repeated, with a grimace, “but no texts on healing, alas . . . Still, maybe they would not have helped. The sickness that drove us from Olbairos was unlike anything we had known.”

  Despite the still-bright sunlight, Damisa shuddered, just as glad she could not hear the further details of their conversation as the two men moved away. Reidel, she observed, had taken it upon himself to arrange a proper welcome for the crew of the fishing craft. It was strange how relieved she felt at seeing him safely returned.

  “A whole family of survivors!” Iriel was bubbling. “And the man said there were others, too. Maybe we will not always be so isolated here! But did you see that little girl? What incredible sparkly eyes! I hope—”

  “It’s not like we don’t already have a family,” Damisa said suddenly, but only realized she had spoken aloud when the other two turned to her, Selast frowning, Iriel curious. “In a way we do,” Damisa insisted. “Chedan is our father, and Tiriki our mother. And aren’t they always saying we are all sisters and brothers here?”

  “Then come, sisters,” said Iriel with a grin, as she linked their arms in her own. “The headman’s son Otter promised me some cuts from that deer he killed yesterday, and I will gladly share them with you . . .”

  “Sweet Iriel!” said Selast merrily. “Why couldn’t I be betrothed to you?”

  On the day after the new ship came to the Tor, Chedan met with the priestesses beneath the willow tree by the stream to discuss the implications of the recent arrivals. It was one of those spring days in which sun and cloud become intermingled, at one moment almost as warm as summer, at another threatening rain. At first the conversation focused on food and housing, but in the mage’s midnight ponderings, other issues had occurred to him.

  “Let us leave such considerations for a moment,” he said finally. “They are obviously important, and for that very reason, unlikely to be ignored. We spend so much of our energy worrying about physical survival that we forget the reason that we dared the seas instead of staying to die with our land.”

  “We were sent to save the ancient wisdom,” Tiriki said slowly, as if she were repeating an almost forgotten lesson. “We were to establish a Temple of Light in new soil.” As if in answer, light broke through the clouds and gleamed from her bright hair.

  “And we haven’t done a very good job of it, have we?” Liala sighed.

  “How could we, when it has taken most of our time and energy just to survive?” Tiriki exclaimed. “But I cannot imagine building the kind of Temple we had on Ahtarrath here. Even if we had the resources, it would be . . . wrong.” Tiriki sighed, and whispered, “There is so much we do not know, that I did not trouble myself to learn. How can we build a new Temple out of golden memories, when memory itself is failed and scattered across the seas?”

  Chedan nodded. “This place has power of its own, and that is what makes the situation so complicated. These new faces have reminded me of matters we should have been dealing with all along. Tiriki at least knows the story of what happened when Reio-ta and his brother, Micail’s father, were captured by the Black Robes. Micon could not allow himself to die under their torture, because he had not yet begotten a son to inherit the power of the storm. He could not allow that power to pass to one of the Black Robes who happened to be his kinsman. And yet, Micail’s was not the only power that may stray from its hereditary holder.”

  Alyssa, playing with a pinecone, suddenly giggled. “The sun is unrisen, the son is not born. The power is hidden, the Sea King forlorn.” Over the past few months, the mental state of the seeress had become increasingly unstable.

  They frowned at her, wondering if there would be more, but the seeress only went on toying with the pinecone. Liala turned back to Chedan, saying, “What do you mean?”

  The mage hesitated before he spoke. “What I fear is that latent abilities in us, in our acolytes, even in the sailors or merchants, may be awakened by the powers in this land.”

  “Not evil!” Liala exclaimed.

  “Very few powers are evil in themselves,” the mage reminded her. “But an untrained psychic is a danger to himself and everyone around him.”

  “We must complete the acolytes’ initiations,” Tiriki said slowly. “They will be better able to deal with such energies when they have been taught the advanced practices and received the sigils, and when they have been sealed to the rulers of their proper degrees.”

  “The initiations themselves could threaten to unleash evil forces,” observed Liala. “But I agree that we have to try. Damisa’s progress is—adequate. But she is Tiriki’s acolyte. We should be giving each of them individual training.”

  The mage smiled at her. “You are quite correct, Lady Atlialmaris,” he said then, using her full, formal name. “We have delayed long enough, hoping others would arrive and lift some of these burdens from us. But it is clear that no others of the priesthood will arrive. I suppose that Kalaran should be apprenticed to me. I have reviewed his astrology and his personal history, and I believe the lad is up to the challenge.

  “He has learned some useful skills, too, and the discipline to apply them. I think he now knows himself well enough that he will welcome more knowledge. I only fear—” He stopped, and the two women looked at him inquiringly.

  “I’m afraid he will look at me and see an old man, a ghost of the past—unable to tell him what he most wants to know, which is how to make a future out of so much uncertainty.”

  “Do any of us know how to teach that?” said Tiriki, touching his hand.

  “Well—” Chedan cleared his throat. “Just so. I shall speak to him tomorrow, and set up a schedule. And if he has the potential I suspect, I will also show him how to keep watch for signs that one of the sailors, or anyone, may be awakening to spiritual power.”

  “Do you think that will happen?”

  “It may
have happened already,” Tiriki observed. “We all know that Reidel is interested in Damisa. She ignores him, but I have seen that he has a gift for anticipating—not only Damisa’s needs, which might be the result of love, but also mine, or Domara’s, or anyone he is around. When something falls, he is there to catch it, and when no action is needed, he knows how to be still.”

  “That’s so,” said Chedan. “I observed it on the voyage. I will speak with him. For them to study together might be good for Kalaran as well.”

  “That leaves the girls for us, then,” Liala said briskly. She looked over at Alyssa, but the seeress was leaning against the willow trunk with her eyes closed, apparently asleep.

  Liala continued, “Elis is ready to be inducted as a priestess of Caratra. She has the touch for growing things, and you’ve seen how good she is with Domara, or any child. And she’s a singer. I mean, she could be a real singer. The Temple had planned to apprentice her to the singer Kyrrdis, before. I’m no great singer, I say; but I know enough to set Elis on that path. If she’s willing to walk it.”

  “That at least is very good news,” said Tiriki. “Damisa and I have tried to ensure that they keep up with their basic exercises.”

  “One thing at a time,” Liala said. “First she’ll have to find her inner pitch. But as for Iriel and Selast—well, I just don’t know. Selast doesn’t really talk to me, not if she can possibly avoid it, and Iriel, well, she says so much sometimes I can hardly follow her!”

  “I often have the same feeling.” Chedan nodded. “They still seem so very young sometimes, even after all they have been through.”

  “Young,” Tiriki echoed, “but not foolish. Iriel is a very canny judge of people and only rarely abuses her sensitivity to them. Perhaps we might simply team her with Selast more than we have. Selast is small for her age, but she’s as strong as a little horse, and generally shows good sense—”

  “It would not prosper them—” Alyssa’s eyes opened suddenly, and for that moment she was back with them, fully awake and aware. “Their spirits sing from different cores. Selast will follow only Damisa, until blood calls her to her man . . . Let Iriel sit with Taret for a time, less to study than to learn that patience is not only for the children of Atlantis, and that to be wise is not to depart from joy, but to see instead its many sides.”

  The newcomers had in fact brought a little food with them, but it became clear that they had made another contribution, which proved far less welcome, and put their physical survival in jeopardy. Within days of their arrival, Heron, the village headman, came to Chedan complaining of aching muscles and a headache. The marsh folk might be impervious to the weather here, but they had no resistance to the invisible spirits of disease that the ship had brought from the continent.

  An ague, Chedan called it, and said he had encountered such fevers more than once in his travels. Before anyone could even ask her, Metia had gone to confer with Taret concerning the brewing of healing herbs.

  It was odd, thought Chedan as he watched her go with Iriel chattering along beside her, how they had all without even noticing gradually come to accept the saji women as part of their community. At home the sajis would never have been allowed to speak to a priestess of the Light, but Metia had been a devoted nurse to little Domara, and her sisters had quite naturally taken over as Alyssa’s caretakers. In the Sea Kingdoms, the scions of the priests’ caste saw the temple girls only from a distance, darting through some courtyard or passage like a flock of bright-winged birds.

  Rumor had held that they were at best licentious and unclean, that they were recruited exclusively from outcastes—the unclaimed babes of the trade towns or worse. And that was partly true. But even after the Grey Temple had been dissolved it was popularly believed that the sajis were used for the most outrageous of semilicit rituals. And that was bigotry of the worst sort.

  It was only after he had observed how patiently the sajis had endured the voyage on the Crimson Serpent that Chedan had given them any thought at all, and he dredged up from his memory a story that long ago their ancestors had been devotees of a discipline no less respected than his own. The very word saji was nothing more than a contraction of a very archaic word for “displaced foreigner.”

  But wherever they came from, he was glad indeed that the saji-women were with them now, as they were experts in the mixing of natural remedies.

  The illness brought by the refugees had spread quickly though the marsh folk and the sailors alike. Damisa and Selast were sent out often to gather not food but herbs, while the sajis, or Liala and Elis, were kept busy moving from one sickbed to another. Faces veiled against sneezes, they patiently pressed cold compresses against burning brows and dosed them with tea made from willow bark and other things. Yet the sickness continued to spread.

  One grey morning, Chedan emerged from the headman’s hut to find Tiriki waiting for him, with her daughter in her arms. Mist lay low across the Tor, veiling the treetops, but somewhere above the clouds there was sunshine, for in the distance he could hear a falcon’s hunting cry.

  “Heron is recovering,” Chedan said, in answer to the question in Tiriki’s eyes, “as are many of the others. But his son Otter has been hard hit by the disease.”

  “Why should he be so vulnerable?” Tiriki’s face creased in a worried frown. “Otter is the strongest boy here.”

  Chedan sighed. “The young and strong, if they succumb at all, sometimes prove to have less resistance than those who are more accustomed to illness.”

  “But he will live?” She shifted the restless redheaded child from her arms to her hip. For a moment the sight of the toddler’s face eased Chedan’s heart, but he shook his head.

  “Only the gods know how this will end. In any case, I don’t want you and Domara—or Kestil, for that matter—anywhere near the sick.”

  “As healing is part of your duty, so it is mine!” Tiriki spoke softly so as not to disturb her daughter, but there was no concealing her mutinous glare. For a moment the mage regarded her. To ordinary sight she was no more than a slender young woman, yet there was a new maturity in her now, a radiance that had come with the birth of the child. Indeed, he thought with a smile, it seems to me the air of this northern land suits her—though I suspect she would not appreciate my saying it.

  “What of Domara?” he said aloud, and grimly. “Would you risk her as well?”

  Tiriki’s arms tightened around her daughter. “You have not taken the sickness,” she observed.

  “Not yet at least,” said the mage, more gently. “I suspect this may be a new form of an illness to which, in my travels, I may have gained some resistance, but perhaps not. Now let me add, there is good reason to be hopeful! I am glad Dannetrasa was on that ship—he and the sajis have proven invaluable! And Alyssa was certainly right about Iriel and Taret. No, I do not think we will suffer the fate of Olbairos. But really, only one thing can be said with certainty. Everything that can be done is being done. You will help us best by keeping the children and yourself well away from danger. I know you are used to having Metia’s help, but I think you are doing perfectly well without her. Is it not so?”

  Conflicting emotions warred in Tiriki’s face, but at last, however reluctantly, she nodded. “May the gods be with you,” she whispered, and gave him the salutation of his grade, as if they were completing some ritual.

  “Blessings upon you, daughters,” he said in a low voice, saluting her and the child in reply. As he lowered his hands, they brushed across a hard shape in the pouch that hung at his waist.

  “Wait! Here I am determined to send you away—but it just so happens I have something here I’ve meant to give you.” He pulled out the small cedar box and offered it to her.

  “But . . . that’s mine!” Tiriki exclaimed, her luminous eyes moving from the box to his face. “How did you come by it?”

  “I was rummaging through one of my travel sacks, looking for a packet of herbs, and there it was. Micail gave it to me. It was on the day before .
. .” He left the sentence unfinished, knowing she would understand. “With all the excitement, I lost track of it. We had been snatching a bite as we went over the lists, and suddenly Micail just handed the box to me, saying—what was it he said?”

  Chedan shook his head a little, forcing back the accompanying memory of hot, bright air and the taste of fear. “Micail said you ought to have it, but you were packing so efficiently you would only say it would be better left behind. He”—Chedan smiled raggedly—“he said he was fairly sure you wouldn’t let him keep it, either.”

  “It sounds just like him,” Tiriki laughed. “We argued several times about what to take, what to leave.” Her eyes misted, and seeking to cover her emotions, she flicked the box’s catch and looked inside. It was crammed full of various small items, a jumble of earrings, pendants on chains, odd rings. “Princes have strange priorities.” She started to close up the box again, and then her eyes abruptly focused.

  “Mother of Night,” she breathed, “bless you, Chedan. Bless you both.”

  The mage craned his neck, trying to see. “What is it?”

  She opened her hand and he saw the glint of a ring, a little thing of improbably numerous surfaces, scaly and smooth, intaglio and cameo in one, a filigree of shadows and gleamings . . . “We were little more than children when he gave this to me. Probably it was an heirloom bauble, appropriated from his grandmother’s regalia.”

  Chedan nodded, recognizing the representation of the Imperial dragons, red and white locked in their perpetual wrestling match of good against better. But he could also see that to Tiriki it was not an emblem of the Sea Kingdoms, but the first, best token of Micail’s love.

  “Will it still fit? I wonder,” she murmured shakily. “It has been so long . . .” She slid it along her finger, grimaced as it stuck on the knuckle, then forced it past.

  “You see,” Chedan said gently, “no matter what happens, Micail’s love still holds you.”