The mist cleared by mid-afternoon, and Azhure could see stands of great trees and ferns clustered beside the roadway.
“Much of the southern half of the island is twisted jungle,” Ysgryff explained at her querying glance, “and uninhabited. Apart from Temple Mount and the harbour surrounds, most of the island is as it was when first created by the gods; the pirates leave the jungle alone. Who knows, perhaps strange creatures do live within the deeper jungles.”
Azhure could now see the Mount itself rising before them, its majesty and beauty breathtaking. The sides of the peak rose sharply for a further two thousand paces, covered with low shrubbery between great granite slabs. The road twisted steeply up its side until, about two-thirds of the way up, it terminated in a wide ledge where the wagons could turn about.
From there steep steps climbed to the plateau.
StarDrifter, his earlier waspish mood forgotten, again locked anxious eyes with Ysgryff.
Azhure did not notice. “We’re almost there,” she whispered excitedly to Caelum. “That is where my mother lived!”
Despite the memories unlocked when Axis crashed through the barriers she had constructed so many years ago, Azhure still could not recall much about her mother. A kind and beautiful face, a few words, a gentle touch and an even gentler laugh…and the blackened corpse crackling almost apologetically on the hearth. But on the top of this mountain she hoped to find answers, not only about her mother, but also about herself. Both Niah and WolfStar had wanted her to come here, where they both had been. This was the only place the three of them had ever been together, even if one of them was only a barely conceived foetus.
And this was the place where WolfStar had told her she could learn, where others could teach her. What others? Azhure frowned as she crooned wordlessly into Caelum’s hair. The priestesses? Or those strange voices of her dream?
She hoped she would find all answers in this place, because without them, Azhure was terribly afraid Axis would face terrible peril.
The wagons creaked to a halt and Azhure jumped, surprised out of her reverie. She had not realised they’d climbed so far.
She handed Caelum to StarDrifter and let Ysgryff help her out of the wagon. The rest of her retinue, two score of servants and retainers, were climbing out of their wagons and passing down baggage. Azhure turned away from the sheer cliff face before her and gazed out across the island.
From this perspective, and with the now clear sky, the view was awe-inspiring. Far below her the island stretched away to the north and west, and the mist had cleared enough so that she could distinguish the hazy smoke rising from the chimneys of the town about the harbour. To the west lay impenetrable jungle, tendrils of mist still clinging among the leaves of the highest trees. Beyond the western edge of the jungle lay the sea, from this distance as green and mysterious as the trees.
“Azhure?” StarDrifter spoke behind her. “How do you feel? Can you climb the steps, or would you like Ysgryff or myself to carry you?”
Azhure turned. Everyone, wagon drivers and her own retinue, was regarding her silently. Her eyes flitted to the steps before her, and she cricked her neck slightly as she traced their flight towards the plateau; already the Alaunt had bounded up half their height. Did they think she could not manage?
The thought of climbing such a flight did concern her, but Azhure’s pride was stung by the image of being hauled bodily upwards by either StarDrifter or Ysgryff. Damn these babies, she cursed silently. Unencumbered I could have skipped those stairs without losing breath.
“Save your breath for the climb,” she said shortly, gathering her skirts to march resolutely to the foot of the steps. “I shall manage well enough.”
Within ten minutes everyone knew the lie of her words as she suddenly collapsed, scraping her shins and knees against the stone steps, frantically clinging to the slim iron railing with sweat-dampened hands to try to slow her slide. If Ysgryff had not been directly behind her, Azhure would undoubtedly have slid all the way to the foot of the steps, but he caught her in strong arms and hoisted her up.
“Cursed pride,” he muttered, out of breath himself. “No doubt she gets it from both her Nors and Icarii blood.”
StarDrifter stepped down and took Azhure’s face in his free hand, holding Caelum securely on his hip with the other.
“Can you or a member of the Wing fly her to the top, Enchanter?” Ysgryff asked.
“No,” StarDrifter said. “She’s too heavy. Will you manage?”
Ysgryff grinned. “When I can’t you’ll get your turn, birdman. And when she exhausts both of us I’ll call forward one of her burly men-at-arms.” He twisted his head slightly, trying to see Azhure’s face. “Azhure?”
“She’s fainted,” StarDrifter said. “Come on, man, I have no wish to waste any more of this day on the side of this mountain. The priestesses can care for her when we reach the top.”
They did, eventually, manage to carry Azhure safely to the top of the steps, the final score to the accompaniment of her soft moans as she came out of her faint. Ysgryff, who had taken Azhure back from StarDrifter some ten minutes earlier, set her down gently on the soft carpet of grass and watched the woman who had been waiting for them step silently forward.
“First Priestess,” he said. “We have a woman here, ill and pregnant, and she needs your help.”
But the First Priestess, grey-haired and gaunt, had eyes for neither Ysgryff or the woman crumpled at his feet.
“Enchanter,” she whispered, and bowed low in front of StarDrifter. “At last!”
“I greet you well enough,” StarDrifter said, “but I beg you to help this woman here.”
The priestess finally looked at Azhure, and squatted before her, lifting the woman’s head in her hands. For a long moment she stared into Azhure’s face, her complexion paling.
“Oh, by the Stars in the heavens,” she finally whispered, her hands tightening about Azhure’s face, “you are her daughter!”
17
TEMPLE MOUNT
Azhure slept for the rest of that day, throughout the night and well into the next morning. When she did awaken, it was to find a grey-haired woman sitting at the end of her bed, dressed in a white linen robe, a sky-blue sash about her waist and draped over her left shoulder.
“You are awake, Sacred Daughter. Good. Do you know where you are?”
“Temple Mount,” Azhure muttered, struggling to sit up.
“Yes, good.” The woman lifted a glass from the table. “Drink this.”
Azhure took the glass and raised it to her lips, realising that her mouth and throat were parched.
“It is a strengthening brew, Daughter,” the woman said. “You are sadly lacking in strength. But do not worry, your babies are well. They are, I think, what drains you so badly.”
Azhure finished the drink and handed the glass back to the woman, glancing about the sparsely furnished room. “Who are you?”
The woman smiled, her face losing its austerity. “I am First Priestess.” She paused. “I have no name.”
“You know who I am?”
The woman nodded. “Yes, I do, but…no! Hush. I do not want to speak of it now.”
Azhure’s eyes filled with tears and the Priestess leaned forward and cupped Azhure’s face in her hands. “You have questions,” she said, “I know that. But you have time enough for answers, for I do not think you will be going very far until those babies are born. For now you will eat, then I will bathe and dress you—for that will be my privilege alone—and then we will go and reassure both the Icarii and the Nors men outside who fret about you.”
She grinned impishly, at odds with her apparent age and authority. “Here we are surrounded by some of the greatest mysteries of this world, and all those outside can do is fret about the woman in this cell. But then,” her smile dimmed and she patted Azhure on the cheek, “I know who you are and how you were made, and I am not surprised that you command so much attention and love. Come, try some of this fruit. I
t will nourish you.”After the First Priestess had fed, bathed and dressed Azhure, she brought Caelum in, sitting silently while Azhure cuddled and suckled her son.
“They tell me his father is the StarMan of Prophecy,” she said eventually.
Azhure looked up from her son’s head. “Yes. Yes, he is.”
The First Priestess sighed and fingered the tassel of her sash. “Events and people of great moment walk, Azhure. I hope we may all prove to be worthy of them.”
“First Priestess, I did not come here only to discover my mother or the mystery of my conception. I also came here to discover myself.”
The Priestess slowly got to her feet, her joints creaking. “As do we all, my child, as do we all. Now, has your son finished? Good. Come, and I will show you the complex of the Temple of the Stars. Questions can wait until this evening.”
Outside the room, StarDrifter, Ysgryff, FreeFall, EvenSong and all the Alaunt were waiting, varying degrees of anxiety imprinted across human, Icarii and canine faces alike. Azhure cried out in delight when she saw EvenSong and hastily handed Caelum to his grandfather, hugging the Icarii woman to her fiercely.
“I am well,” she said to their queries. “A little tired, but well.”
“But not if you keep crowding her as you do,” the First Priestess said testily. “I am taking Azhure for a tour of the complex. StarDrifter, you may accompany us because I have yet to speak with you at length. EvenSong, you may accompany us to carry the baby. The other men must stay behind. I will allow one of the hounds.”
The First Priestess marched forth and Ysgryff and FreeFall stepped back hastily. Azhure smiled apologetically at them as she passed, Sicarius pressing close to her legs, but she took a deep breath of delight when the Priestess led them into a cloister facing a delightful garden of lavender beds and low juniper trees.
“You were in the dormitory of the priestesses, Azhure,” the First Priestess explained, leading them down the cloisters then turning left onto a walkway by a high stone building, “and this is the Temple Library. You can see inside some other time.”
“It’s where FreeFall spends most of his time,” EvenSong said by Azhure’s side. EvenSong was softer than Azhure remembered, and it was strange to see her dressed in a robe rather than trousers. The Icarii woman bounced Caelum in her arms, smiling at him, then winked at Azhure. “But I make sure FreeFall occasionally remembers that I am here too, and that not all the wonders of the Temple complex are contained within stone portals.”
Azhure smothered a laugh, then gasped in utter astonishment as the First Priestess led them across a small bridge and onto a magnificent paved avenue, lined with colonnades of smooth granite columns that straddled narrow, fern-bracketed waterways filled with flashing fish and waterlilies.
“The Avenue,” the First Priestess said. She pointed to her right. “It leads from the cliff-face steps to the Temple of the Stars.”
Azhure followed the woman’s hand. To her left, on a slight rise, appeared to be a large marble-floored circle. Azhure frowned. Where was the Temple?
StarDrifter smiled at the incomprehension on Azhure’s face, but he did not say anything.
“Come,” the First Priestess said. “There are other places I wish to show you first.”
She led them across the Avenue and across another small bridge onto smooth lawns, indicating some smaller buildings further to their right. “The school houses and children’s quarters,” she said, and made to walk forward again, but Azhure caught at her arm.
“School houses? Children?”
The Priestess arched an eyebrow. “We are not totally isolated, Azhure. Many of the Nors nobles have their children educated here, as do most of the folk from Pirates’ Town.”
Azhure and StarDrifter gazed incredulously at each other. How had the secret of the island remained so inviolate if many of the Nors nobility sent their children here for their schooling? And pirates…educated pirates?
The Priestess marched off through a pleasant garden towards a huge circular windowless building, tight-walled with pale stone.
“Ah,” StarDrifter said softly by Azhure’s side. “I know what this is—as will you, Azhure, when you see inside.”
The Priestess led them under an archway at the foot of the walls, then up some stairs. StarDrifter took Azhure’s elbow, and she was not ungrateful for his support as they climbed the stairs and stepped onto an internal open-air balcony halfway up the structure.
“Oh,” was all Azhure could say, and she felt StarDrifter’s fingers tighten about her arm.
“One day,” EvenSong said behind them, “we will all come home to roost here. And when we do, Father, you should be the one to greet us and speak to us the words of arrival and welcome.”
Azhure would not begrudge StarDrifter that right. They stood halfway up one of the walls of the Icarii Assembly, circles of seats falling away beneath them and rising into the sky above. The original Assembly, from a time when the Icarii had graced the skies of all Tencendor. It was still in perfect condition, and Azhure was not surprised when she heard, many days later, that every month or so some forty or fifty men and women journeyed from Pirates’ Town to weed and polish the stone steps and colonnades.
This Assembly was twelve or fifteen times the size of the Assembly Chamber in Talon Spike and relied on sheer size to inspire rather than intricate or overwhelming carving or tracery. From the circular floor great rings of pale gold stone steps rose into the sky, so far that the lower third of the Assembly lay in shadow. The only decoration Azhure could see was the floor; unlike Talon Spike’s Assembly Chamber which was floored in golden-veined marble, the floor of this Assembly had been laid in multicoloured mosaics depicting constellations and galaxies—a star map.
There was no roof.
“In the old days, Azhure,” StarDrifter said, his fingers gentler now, “the Icarii would float down into the Assembly from the night stars, all carrying torches. They would sing with joy as they came, and they say that some nights the stars themselves accompanied them. I cannot…” His voice broke, and he paused to recompose himself. “I cannot wait to see that sight again.”
The First Priestess stared at the Enchanter, then shifted her eyes to Azhure. She opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, then gestured to the steps behind them.
“Come on,” she said, “there is yet more to see.”
Outside, StarDrifter let Azhure’s elbow go and managed a smile. “I did not think the sight of the Assembly would affect me so.”
EvenSong took her father’s arm, feeling closer to him than she ever had before, and for a time the group walked in silence through orchards and vineyards. Sicarius, relaxed now his anxiety over Azhure was assuaged, sniffed about the tree trunks and grunted at a peach-coloured cat quivering high among some branches. Eventually they approached a low dome of strange green stone, about a hundred paces in circumference.
Azhure expected that the Priestess would stop and lead them inside or, at the least, provide some explanation for the structure, but the old woman only muttered, “The Dome,” before marching resolutely past, her back ramrod straight.
The Dome of the Stars, Azhure, StarDrifter said in Azhure’s mind.
Why does she ignore it so?
The Dome is particularly sacred to the Order of the Stars, to the Priestesses. Only the First among them may ever go in there. StarDrifter paused. I do not know what they find within.
Once past the Dome the First’s shoulders relaxed and she led the small group to the very cliff face at the southern-most point of the island. Thousands of paces below them the sea crashed against rocks. StarDrifter, Azhure and EvenSong, still holding Caelum in her arms, all stood easily at the very lip of the cliff, their Icarii blood lending them both the balance and the courage to ignore the sheer drop beneath their feet. With them stood the hound, the edge of the cliff crumbling slightly beneath his forepaws.
The Priestess, of human blood, stood prudently some paces back from the lip. ??
?See?” she said, pointing, “see the steps?”
The others looked to where she pointed. A flight of steps, so narrow that only one person could ever negotiate them at a time, dropped from the cliff edge and hugged the cliff face, leading down until they were lost in the upper reaches of the spray of the waves that beat themselves to death against the cliff.
“Where—” Azhure began, but the First cut her off.
“They lead to the Sepulchre of the Moon, Azhure.”
StarDrifter lifted his head. “I thought the Sepulchre of the Moon had been bricked up, First Priestess. Forgotten. Disused.”
The First stared at him momentarily, wondering at his beauty here in the sunlight as the wind ruffled his hair and the feathers of his wings. How glad she was that she had survived to see this. “It is still open, Enchanter, but it chooses its visitors carefully. Make sure you do not choose to visit.”
Her voice was harsh with warning, and StarDrifter took a step back from the cliff. EvenSong stepped back too, but Azhure paused, thinking she heard voices amid the crashing waves.
Is this her?
How can we know it is her?
Does she wear the Circle?
Azhure? Azhure? Azhure?
“Azhure?” StarDrifter’s voice cut sharply across her mind and she jumped. “Do you want to see the Temple of the Stars?”
She smiled and followed her companions up the grassy slopes towards the Temple on the highest point of the plateau. But the cries of the waves stayed in her mind for a long time.
The Temple was not what Azhure had expected. Her face fell in disappointment as she crested the slight rise and saw the Temple in all its…glory?
“I thought Ysgryff said the Temple was well maintained,” she whispered. “Intact.”
“And so it is, Azhure, so it is,” StarDrifter said softly, riveted by the sight the Icarii had been so long denied.
Azhure could not believe him. All she could see was a large flat circle of marble covering the entire top of the rise, perhaps fifty or sixty paces from side to side. The marble wasn’t even well polished, merely well swept, and that likely by the wind rather than by human hand. There was not a column, not an altar, not an icon or a single piece of carving in sight.