After all the excitement and crises of the last months, Mikayla found it very pleasant to be back at the Temple of Meret. As she had promised, she bespoke Red-Eye every night, even though she had nothing to tell him. It was virtually no different from the previous year.
She took the Youngest Daughter’s part in the Spring Festival, representing the Goddess in the procession, and spent most of the day being carried about by the young men of the Temple on a richly carved high-backed wooden throne while the other Daughters, dressed in green robes, walked on either side of the throne carrying fans that prevented most of the congregation from seeing whether she was sitting there at all. She didn’t even have to sing the chants for the Festival that she had learned the previous year.
She dutifully reported this to Red-Eye, along with her opinion that the ritual was even more boring for the Youngest Daughter. “I could be replaced with a fan, and no one would know the difference.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Red-Eye said. “Perhaps that will discourage you from volunteering to do it again.”
“We don’t volunteer,” Mikayla reminded him. “The Goddess chooses whomever She wants. But I’m glad to be done with it.”
When the Husband of the Goddess Meret came to the Daughters’ room for the Choosing, and someone else was chosen as the Youngest Daughter for next year, Mikayla was happy to move down one place in the order.
She spent the rest of the month enjoying the peace and quiet and the orderly life imposed by the rituals. At the end of the month, Red-Eye came for her again and took her back to the Tower.
Having Uzun for company had improved Haramis’s temper considerably. The harp that had formerly been his body still functioned perfectly well as a harp, and Haramis had recovered enough to walk down the stairs to the study each morning. She spent her days on the couch, listening to Uzun play and sing his old ballads to her, and then climbed back up the stairs to her own bed at night. She seemed perfectly happy to live her life in this fashion and didn’t seem to care about anything else.
She bid Mikayla welcome, refrained from asking where she had been, and said nothing about further training for her. Now that she had her old friend Uzun back, she seemed quite indifferent to Mikayla’s actions, or indeed, to her whereabouts.
Mikayla took advantage of this disinterest to spend her afternoons in the ice caves studying the mirror and some of the other devices left there. Now that she and the mirror understood each other—and now that she had learned to read well enough to recognize warning labels on old containers—she was able to poke through the storeroom without having to worry about setting anything on fire or blowing the Tower up. She spoke to Fiolon in the evenings, using her sphere, which Red-Eye had returned to her when he brought her back from the Temple, keeping Fiolon apprised of anything interesting that she found. Fiolon, in turn, told her of life at court in Var, and of the logging operations he was still running when he wasn’t in court. He seemed to find the court in Mutavari rather boring, for he was most often in Let, his own dukedom.
“It seems strange,” he told her, laughing, “to be assigned a portion of the Land and told that I’m responsible for it. The King doesn’t know that I’m responsible for his entire Kingdom.”
“That’s probably just as well,” Mikayla pointed out. “In a Kingdom without a tradition of having an Archimage, he might regard you as a threat to his crown.”
“Really, Mika”—Fiolon laughed—“be serious. We’re only seventeen years old.”
“I am serious,” Mikayla said. “I’ve been reading the history of Labornok, and they have executed children for high treason. We’re not children, even if we are growing more slowly than normal.”
“At least we are growing,” Fiolon said. “I never did get a chance to tell you, but I found out why a sorcerer grows so slowly. It’s just because we live so much longer than normal people, that’s all—it doesn’t mean that we’ll be children forever. Even as young as we started, we should be physically mature by the time we’re thirty at the latest.”
“That’s a relief,” Mikayla admitted. “The thought of looking like a child of twelve for the next two hundreds wasn’t appealing.”
Mikayla frequently slipped out at night to go flying with Red-Eye, until it seemed to her that she knew the land by night better than she did by day. But she enjoyed its company, and it seemed to enjoy hers.
Life was good that year, until one morning in the early spring, when Mikayla woke suddenly before dawn, moments before an earthquake hit.
“Oh, no, not again!” she groaned, rolling out of bed and running for Haramis’s room. Uzun arrived right behind her, with Enya only a few minutes behind him. Mikayla left them to put Haramis back to bed and send for Kimbri—not that she thought there was much the Healer could do—while she went to the ice caves and had the mirror show her where damage was occurring in the land.
Mikayla knew that Haramis would have used the sand table for this task, but Mikayla didn’t share Haramis’s prejudice against technology. The mirror would show her what was happening in the land without her having to expend the energy required to sense the land’s condition through the sand table. All she needed to do the repair work—aside from a lot of her own energy—was a clear visualization of what she was doing, and that could be done more easily with the mirror as well. This meant that nearly all of Mikayla’s energy could be devoted to the work that actually needed to be done. She spent the rest of the day damping down earthquakes and aftershocks, diverting flooding rivers away from populated areas, and hoping that this time the conditions wouldn’t be right for fish-death to return.
Several hours after dark, when she was feeling cold and tired, having exhausted her usual ability to control such physical failings, Fiolon came in, bundled up in warm clothing and carrying a mug of hot ladu-juice.
“Red-Eye fetched me,” he explained. “Drink this, go eat something, and go to bed. I’ll take the next watch.”
“Thank you,” Mikayla said, rubbing her cold hands together until she had enough feeling in them to hold the mug. “Watch the spot where the Nothar River runs into the Upper Mutar—it’s been threatening to flood for the last four hours. And we’re still getting aftershocks from the earthquake, all over the place.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Fiolon said. “You eat and get some sleep.”
Mikayla just nodded as she staggered toward her room.
She relieved Fiolon shortly after dawn, and for the next few days they took turns so that one of them was always watching and ready to fix any damage. After a few days, the worst was over and the aftershocks had subsided enough so that they couldn’t be felt by anyone who didn’t have land sense. Uzun volunteered to watch the mirror while they both got some badly needed rest.
“I’m so glad that they made him strong enough to withstand these temperatures,” Mikayla remarked to Fiolon as they went up the tunnel back to the Tower. “In his natural form he would have frozen to death there.”
“It certainly helps,” Fiolon agreed. “How many more years do you have to go back to the Temple to finish paying for this?”
Mikayla counted on her fingers. “I’ve done two, so that leaves five more. I’ll be twenty-one my last year there.”
“How long before you have to go back there this year?”
Mikayla groaned. “Two weeks. I’d really better get some rest.”
“I’ll stay here while you’re gone,” Fiolon volunteered. “Uzun may need some help. He’s a decent enough magician, but land magic’s a bit different.”
So Mikayla went back to the Temple of Meret for the third year. It was peaceful enough, and it gave her much-needed respite from holding Ruwenda together and watching Haramis make an even slower recovery than she had before. But when the Choosing came, Mikayla was dismayed to be chosen again.
“That’s twice in three years,” she complained when she told Red-Eye. “You’d think the Goddess could spread it out a bit more—after all, there are five of us.”
“Did
they say anything about a jubilee?” the bird asked anxiously.
“Yes,” Mikayla admitted. “There was some brief reference to it during the presentation to the congregation. You wouldn’t believe how heavy that wretched headdress is—it’s given me an awful headache. What’s a jubilee?”
“I’ll tell you when I fetch you at the end of the month,” Red-Eye said.
“Fine,” Mikayla said. “At least after the presentation to the Goddess tomorrow morning I don’t have to wear the headdress again, and the ritual isn’t until next year.”
Red-Eye fetched her at the end of her month of service. Instead of taking her back to the Tower, it took her to its cave on Mount Rotolo. But when it tried to explain the concept of the Goddess’s Jubilee, she didn’t believe it.
“You’re crazy, Red-Eye,” she said. “They aren’t going to kill me; I still owe them three more years of service after next year.”
“But that’s what the Jubilee is,” Red-Eye insisted. “Every two hundreds the Goddess needs a new heart to renew her life and rule for the next two hundreds. And it’s the Youngest Daughter of the Goddess that they sacrifice.”
“If they haven’t done it for two hundreds,” Mikayla pointed out, “you can’t possibly know about it.”
“But I do,” it insisted. “The Priests of the Time of Darkness—the ones who made me—are the ones who perform the sacrifice. They are part of the priesthood of the Goddess Meret.”
“How could I have spent three years in Her Temple and never met them?” Mikayla asked skeptically.
“You’ve spent three months there,” the bird replied, “not three years, and you’ve spent it all shut up with the Temple virgins, which doesn’t let you see much of what goes on in the Temple as a whole. The Priests of the Time of Darkness are nocturnal. Your rituals run from Dawn to the Second Hour of Darkness. The rest of the night is theirs. The only time they come out in the daytime is for the sacrifice.”
“If you say so,” Mikayla said politely, privately thinking that the bird was paranoid about its creators, even if they did belong to the Temple. “I think you’d better take me back to the Tower, Red-Eye. Last I heard, Haramis wasn’t well at all. I’m probably needed there.”
Haramis was indeed still very unwell, unable even to rise from her bed. Uzun spent all his time with her, and Fiolon left for Var shortly after Mikayla’s return, saying that he had to see to things in Let.
Mikayla spent most of the next year being bored and feeling useless, so when the time came for her to return to the Temple, she was ready to go. But to her amazement, Red-Eye flatly refused to take her.
“I told you they’ll kill you if you go there,” it said, almost hysterically. “You can’t go!”
“I promised I would,” Mikayla said. “If you won’t take me, I’ll just have to wait until morning and ask one of the other lammergeiers.”
“I’ll tell your cousin,” Red-Eye declared. “He’ll stop you.”
“He’s in Var,” Mikayla pointed out. “And he knows that keeping my promises is important to me. He won’t try to stop me.”
27
Haramis sat bolt upright in bed and stared at Uzun in horror. “Mikayla is doing what?”
“She’s going to be sacrificed to Meret,” Uzun said wretchedly. “That was the bargain she made in exchange for my new body. But she didn’t know what she was agreeing to,” he added urgently. “We have to stop her!”
“When and where is this taking place?” Haramis asked, feeling sick. I knew the girl was unhappy here, I knew she didn’t like me, but I had no idea …
“The day after tomorrow, at dawn,” Uzun replied grimly. “At Meret’s Temple on Mount Gidris.”
“Why Mikayla?” Haramis asked. Uzun sighed, and she said hastily, “I know you said it was in exchange for your body, but why would they want to sacrifice Mikayla, rather than someone else? What makes her special to them?”
“She’s a royal virgin,” Uzun said bitterly. “I’ll bet they were thrilled when she fell into their hands. I should never have complained about being a harp,” he added miserably.
“She’s hardly the only royal virgin in existence,” Haramis pointed out. “Her youngest brother is probably still one—what is he now, sixteen? And Fiolon is royal and presumably still a virgin.”
“They’re male,” Uzun said. “Mikayla’s the virgin daughter of a King.”
“So what?” Haramis said without thinking. “So am I.” Then she realized what she had said, and repeated it with a different inflection. “So am I. If all they want is the virgin daughter of a king …” Her voice trailed off as she thought.
“No, you could not take her place,” Uzun snapped. “You don’t look anything like Mikayla.”
“A simple glamour,” Haramis said. “She and I are nearly the same size; all we’d have to do is change clothes.”
“Haramis,” Uzun said through clenched wooden teeth. “You can’t cast a simple glamour. You can’t even talk to the lammergeiers anymore. You can’t even scry! You have been ill, and you do not yet have your powers back.”
Haramis just looked at him, feeling the pieces of her life slip into a pattern. “I’m sorry, old friend,” she said softly. “I can take her place, and I must. I owe it to her, and I owe it to the land. I have had,” she continued dispassionately, “at least two major brainstorms in the last five years, and the Flower only knows”—her fingers went to the bit of Trillium embedded in amber in the Talisman about her neck—“how many minor ones. I haven’t been able to talk to the lammergeiers since the first one, and with each successive attack, I lose more of my abilities. I have virtually no magic left, and my physical body is failing. Since it’s over two hundreds old, that shouldn’t be too surprising. And every time that I get sick, so does the land. Look what happened last time—the damage was so bad that Fiolon came running up here all the way from Var! If the inhabitants of Var are noticing our troubles, I am not doing my job.”
“Fiolon was the only one who noticed,” Uzun said, “and he and Mikayla were able to fix the damage. Besides, that was the time before last, not last time. Nothing dreadful happened last time.”
“Mikayla ran away again.” Haramis shot a sharp look at Uzun. “What do you mean ‘Fiolon was the only one who noticed’—why should he be the only one?”
Uzun sighed. “Fiolon is the Archimage of Var.”
“What?” Haramis gaped at him. Whatever she had been expecting to hear, she told herself, it wasn’t this. “You mean that he’s still linked with Mikayla, and—”
“No.” The reply was definite. “Oh, he’s probably still linked with Mikayla—and thank the Flower for that, because that’s the way we’re getting most of our information; they still talk to each other every night.”
“How?” Haramis asked.
“They found a pair of spheres in the old ruins on the Golobar right before you brought them here. The first time you sent Fiolon away, they discovered they could use them to scry each other—in fact, Mikayla uses hers to scry everything, unless you’re watching her. When Mikayla’s at the Temple and can’t hide the sphere from the priests, she has her favorite lammergeier keep it for her, and then she and Fiolon both communicate through the bird.”
“So they’ve been in constant communication for the past five years?” Haramis asked. “Even when I sent Fiolon back to Var?”
“Exactly,” Uzun said. “You may remember that Mikayla made a bit of a fuss over that.…”
“She locked herself in her room for two days,” Haramis said, remembering. “And she was awfully quiet for a long while after she came out.”
“She locked herself in her room and linked with Fiolon,” Uzun said. “She told me about it later. It seems that she’d been sharing all of her lessons with him—and you had taught her quite a bit by then, probably more than you realize. You still held the power and the land sense for Ruwenda, but nobody did for Var, and the second Fiolon set foot on the ground there he got its land sense.”
&nbs
p; “And Mikayla, of course, got the backlash.” Haramis didn’t need that part explained to her. “No wonder she suddenly got interested in what it meant to have land sense and be Archimage. I thought she was finally becoming resigned to her fate. But she was just gathering information for Fiolon, wasn’t she?”
“To her mind, yes,” Uzun said. “But she’s not stupid, and she couldn’t pass on to him what she hadn’t learned herself.”
“A male Archimage.” Haramis shook her head in wonder. “Are you absolutely sure, Uzun?”
“Yes,” Uzun replied. “But if you doubt my perceptions, question him yourself.” He crossed to the bellpull and gave it a savage tug.
“Is he here, then?” Haramis asked. “I hadn’t realized that we had guests.”
“He is here as my guest,” Uzun said. “I don’t know what you have against him, Haramis, other than the fact that he’s male, but I like him.”
Enya arrived while Haramis was still trying to think of a reply to that. Uzun asked her to find Fiolon and send him to Haramis’s room. Haramis didn’t protest, but Enya did.
“But, Master Uzun, he’s probably back in that cave; that’s where he was headed—”
“So send one of the Vispi for him,” Uzun snapped. “The Lady wants to see him, and surely you don’t expect her to go down there after him!”
“No, Master Uzun.” Enya curtsied her way out of the room. “I’ll have him fetched at once, Lady.”
Of course, when it involved sending someone below the Tower and along the tunnel to the ice cave, and then having the person you wanted make the return journey, “at once” was a long time. Uzun spent the time trying to convince Haramis that she couldn’t possibly take Mikayla’s place, but he wasn’t making any headway when Fiolon joined them.
“White Lady.” Fiolon bowed formally to Haramis, then smiled at Uzun. “Master Uzun. How may I serve you?”
Haramis studied the young man. He didn’t look at all like the young men she had known when she was a girl. He had the ageless, serene quality of a great Adept—or of an Archimage. She tried to remember how old he would be by now. Let’s see, he’s the same age as Mikayla, which would make him—eighteen? Yes, eighteen. Uzun must be at least partially correct, she realized. This is definitely not your normal eighteen-year-old.
Lady of the Trillium Page 27