“Haladris and Mahadalku particularly—” The prince smiled and returned his full attention to Micail. “At home, those two were accustomed to being in charge of their own temples! It does no harm to let them have their say now. When all of our people are united once more, you are the one who will rule the new Temple. That position was always destined for you.”
But could I bear such a responsibility? wondered Micail, as he and Ardral resolutely left Tjalan alone with his throne, his guards, his dreams of empire at last. Is this the destiny Rajasta’s prophecy predicted for me? It is as if I stand between hungry beasts, trying to choose which one will devour me.
He made polite noises and permitted Ardral to escort him to the gate, but almost as soon as the senior Guardian had returned into the shadows of Tjalan’s fortress, Micail turned around and did the same thing, though by a different route.
After some searching, he found Reidel and one of his men talking in the hall. When he asked what they were doing there, Reidel only pointed through the door, where Damisa sat beside a fire, surrounded by what looked to be most of the acolytes and chelas. For a moment Micail hesitated. They all seemed so young, so vigorous and hopeful. Did he have a right to disturb them with his anxieties? But he had to know.
Their faces turned toward him as he stepped into the light. He saw welcome and speculation, and even an unexpected compassion in Elara’s warm eyes—but then she always seemed to know when he was overwrought. Still, it was Damisa who had his attention.
“Will you . . . ?” He cleared his throat. “Damisa, I do not wish to part you from your friends too quickly, but I would be very grateful if you would walk with me for a little while.”
“Of course—” In a single smooth movement she was on her feet. “You will want all the news, and I will have plenty of time to talk to these”—she paused, grinning—“rather less holy servants of Light!”
As they turned to go, he felt again the watchful gaze of the stranger Reidel and almost paused to reassure the former ship’s captain that he would return the girl safely. But Reidel was a priest now and outranked even by an acolyte. Surely he had no right to question anything that a Vested Guardian might choose to do.
“That young man,” Micail mused, as he and Damisa walked away. “Reidel? He seems . . . oddly protective. Does he imagine I might do you harm?”
“Oh, no!” Damisa exclaimed, half turning to glare behind her. “I apologize for him, Lord Guardian. He thinks he is in love with me.”
“But you don’t return the feeling?” Micail nodded to the guard as they passed through the gate and started along the path toward the river. The rain had stopped, and the sun was setting through bands of cloud that flared like banners of flame above the distant hills. Tiriki sees that same sunset, he thought with a surge of emotion.
“To be honest,” Damisa said dully, “I suppose I gave him some reason to think I might. But it was a mistake. I tried to explain. He doesn’t say anything about it anymore, but he . . . looks at me.”
“If he troubles you—” Micail began, but she shook her head.
“No!” She flushed. “I am sorry. I am so used to the informal life of the Tor and the marshes. I’ve embarrassed myself in front of Prince Tjalan already. Please, Lord Guardian! Reidel is my problem—my mistake. My responsibility. Please.”
Micail nodded, eyeing her appraisingly. She was certainly not the serious little girl he had met in Ahtarrath, and yet the young woman standing before him still had that precariously balanced intensity. “You have been well taught, I see,” he said with a smile. “But you need not call me Lord Guardian. I get enough of that already. Call me Micail. And please tell me about Tiriki,” he added hungrily.
“Of course,” Damisa answered him. “She’s in good health, praise Caratra. It is she who has kept us going these past years—she and Chedan.”
“Then why didn’t she come with you?”
“I’m sure she wanted to,” Damisa said quickly. “But she had already been up all night by Alyssa’s deathbed. And to learn you were here—in such a strange way—it was a shock to her. Not that she ever gave up believing she would find you some day, but she had . . . put the hope aside. So Chedan felt it would be better to send someone stronger—more expendable, I guess that means—” She grinned. “I expect that when she woke up and found we were gone, she was furious at Chedan and let him know it.” Damisa blushed again.
Micail blinked, trying to imagine his gentle Tiriki upbraiding anyone. “Then it is Chedan who is your first?”
“Not really—oh, in a way, maybe. He always says we’re too small a group to need an official leader. In almost every way, really, he and Tiriki share the responsibility.”
As she and I used to do at home. How else does he replace me? thought Micail, with a flicker of envy. But even as the idea burned in him, he knew that he had no right to resent anything his wife might have had to do to survive in an environment that sounded considerably more hostile than Belsairath or even Azan.
A light wind was rustling in the willows, and from somewhere out above the plain came the call of a hunting owl. Oddly, those small sounds only seemed to intensify the quiet. The dark ranks of trees along the river blotted out any actual sight of the plain, but even with his eyes closed he could have pointed toward the henge.
“Chedan might also have felt she ought not to leave the child,” Damisa said into the silence.
Micail’s head jerked up, the Sun Wheel forgotten. From his tight throat he squeezed out the words, “What child?”
“Why hers—yours, I mean. I am sure of it now. Domara’s hair is exactly like yours! You really look like her—I mean she looks—”
“But Tiriki wasn’t—she never told me!” He wondered if his pounding heart would burst through his chest.
“She didn’t know,” said Damisa, with sudden sympathy. “On the voyage here she thought she was seasick. She suffered terribly. It was Taret who told her—the wisewoman at the Tor. She has the Sight—”
“A daughter,” Micail whispered.
“Called Domara. I should have mentioned her when I first reported, but we’ve become so accustomed to having her around, I didn’t think—In any case, you must be just as glad not to have had such news in the middle of a meeting! Domara was born at winter solstice, that first year. She turned five this year. A real darling—”
Micail, calculating in his head, scarcely heard. The dates fit, if Tiriki had conceived in those last days before the Sinking. But how—when his seed had never taken root in all their years of peace—how could she have carried a babe to term in the midst of disaster?
Unaware of his turmoil, Damisa continued to talk. “Selast’s child will be born this summer, so you see we have quite a number of children at the Tor. But I suppose there must have been a lot of births among your people too . . .”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. To have noticed such things, he suddenly realized, would only have caused him more pain. What he felt now, he was not certain. Pride? Joy? Terror? It did not matter. His heart was singing. I have a child!
Obviously, thought Damisa as she sat down in the chair Prince Tjalan offered her, this was her evening for interviews. No sooner had Micail brought her back to the acolytes’ quarters than a servant came to summon her to the prince’s court, at the center of the compound. Since there was no hill against which the masons might have constructed a more stylish fortress, they had built up the sides with stone and plastered the walls.
She settled onto the cushions, sighing as her body remembered what it felt like to sink into such softness. At the Tor they had a few hammocks, but many more hard stools, and a lot of crude benches made from fitted logs. It had been a long time since she sat in a real chair. Her eyes misted as she recognized the Alkonan patterns of the hangings on the walls.
A silent servant placed an elegant flagon and two filigreed goblets on a green-and-gold table and withdrew. I am dreaming! she thought. The last five years were an evil dream, and I am awak
ening safe at home once more ... But she could not ignore the bitter lines in Prince Tjalan’s face, nor the new silver laced through the black of his hair.
A pale golden liquid gurgled entrancingly from the flagon into the goblets. “What shall we toast?” said the prince, offering one of them to her. “The Bright Empire? The Seven Guardians?”
“The hope of the new land?” she answered, a little shyly, raising her cup to meet his.
“Ha! Yes.” Tjalan grinned fiercely. “You are indeed a relative of mine!”
The liqueur was deceptively sweet, but she could feel it burning all the way down.
“It’s raf ni’iri,” Tjalan warned her, “so be careful. I always find it is a little stronger than even I expect.” He eased back in his own chair, cradling the goblet between long fingers to inhale its delicate aroma. But even as he did so, she noticed, he was surveying her with a most ambiguous smile . . . Damisa felt her cheeks grow warm, and could not tell if it resulted from embarrassment or the potency of the drink.
“My dear, you have more than fulfilled your promise,” the prince said at last. “You have matured from a delicate flower into an enchanting woman. One who knows how to propose a toast, at that!”
She felt her blushes deepen. It was odd that when Reidel said this sort of thing, she believed he meant it. With Tjalan—she shook her head. Of course, he was only being polite. His wife was—had been—a famous beauty, after all.
“You think me a flatterer, eh?” Tjalan chuckled at her discomfiture. “Well, when I take you to Belsairath, my dear, we shall dress you as befits a princess of the royal house, and then you will see some real flattery!”
But I am a priestess, not a princess . . . She blinked up at him. He was right; this stuff is very strong. She held the goblet to her nostrils and pretended to sniff it, as he had done, then set it firmly down on the table.
“When we have rescued the rest of your party from those marshes and finished building the Sun Wheel, we will create a new empire in this land . . .”
Tjalan’s eyes brightened as he began to describe the cities he would raise here, the roads and harbors—his words painted a vision of all that they had lost restored, more splendid than before. Part of Damisa’s mind was wondering whether this new empire was really possible. From what Micail had said, Tjalan did not have that many priests or soldiers.
Have old Chedan’s doubts infected me? she chided herself. Have I, too, begun to think that what has been lost can never be restored? She never spoke to anyone, even Selast, about the many nightmares in which she had tried and failed to face the eerie forces that had radiated from the Omphalos Stone. Chedan said, she thought muzzily, I had better not tell anyone that the Stone is at the Tor.
“And so,” he was saying now, “when we go to bring them back here, I will rely upon you to help me to explain.”
She roused herself, frowning. “I’m not sure Tiriki will want to leave. She’s put a lot of work into—the place. It would be better for us to simply go back and talk to them—once we can get another guide.”
“You don’t know the way?” he said sharply, and a shiver of unease sobered her still more.
“Oh, out of sight of the Tor, one hill still looks like another to me,” she lied cheerfully, “and I’m sure it’s not much different for Reidel. He’s always saying it’s simpler on the sea.”
Chedan had cautioned her to keep their location vague until she was certain it was safe to reveal it, and she realized that she did not quite trust Tjalan, despite his flattery, or perhaps because of it. Besides, she assured herself, one should not spend all one’s resources at once. Information is the only coin I have.
“That is . . . unfortunate,” said Tjalan. “Well, you have had an exhausting day. Best you get some rest now. My servant will show you where you are to stay.”
A little surprised by his abruptness, Damisa allowed herself to be led away to a bed that seemed almost too soft. Her limbs had become accustomed to mattresses of deer hide stuffed with straw, and it was hard to get to sleep. She woke long after morning prayers were ended, with a headache that throbbed behind her eyes. By the time she finally did get moving, she found that none of the acolytes seemed to know where Reidel and his three sailors had spent the night.
When she made her way to the gate, thinking that a walk by the river might clear her head, a smiling guard barred her way with his spear. It was then that Damisa realized she was a prisoner.
“Have you seen Damisa this morning?” Lanath took Elara’s arm and drew her toward the log benches beneath a trio of chestnut trees where the other acolytes and chelas were waiting. When weather permitted they often gathered there for lessons, but today the senior priesthood were sequestered in its own conclave. Still, Elara suspected that the topic their elders were discussing might be the same as their own.
Since the arrival of Damisa and Reidel, rumors had begun to whisper through the compound like wind in the trees—the tribes were planning an uprising . . . Reidel’s sailors were coming to rescue their captain . . . The prince was mounting an expedition to quell a rebellion . . . Lightnings that did not come from the sky had terrified some workers at the henge . . . All that could be said for certain was that Tjalan’s soldiers were sharpening their swords and mending their leather armor.
“See her?” Elara echoed as she sat down. “I heard her—cursing out a guard who would not let her through the gate. I met them marching her back to Tjalan’s house, and as they passed, she whispered, ‘Find Reidel!’ But I couldn’t find him.”
“An acolyte held prisoner?” muttered Galara. “That has to be wrong.”
“We ought to try to learn where he is,” Elara repeated.
“I don’t like it,” muttered Lanath. “It’s like we’re going behind our elders’ backs.”
Cleta scowled at him. “Do you think they are going to ask our opinion? What choice do we have?”
“I don’t understand why it is such a problem,” put in Vialmar, brushing his coarse black hair out of his eyes. “Why wouldn’t they want to join us? I really want to see Kalaran again, and the others too. Don’t they want to see us? I mean, this place is bad enough—” He looked across at the palisade as if he thought a horde of maddened Ai-Zir warriors might charge at any moment. “But from what Damisa said last night, out there they have nothing. I should think they would be only too happy to come here.”
“Whatever they do or don’t have,” observed Elara, “they have learned to survive. I don’t know how many casks of wine Tjalan and the others brought with them, but when they are emptied, there will be no more. Maybe Chedan and Tiriki are wiser than we, to begin by learning how to live as we shall all have to do one day.”
“Not once the stone circle is finished,” put in Karagon. “We’ll have enough power to deal with anything then.”
“Should it be finished?” asked Lanath. “There’s something about this whole place that gives me the shivers.”
“The point is, people should be free to make up their own minds, and locking them up or forcing them to move does not accord with the traditions of the Temple that I learned!” Elara said.
Cleta nodded. “I agree. In Ahtarrath, Lord Micail was both prince and archpriest, so there was no conflict—but lately—I don’t know. I would feel happier if we knew what has happened to Reidel.”
“He’s just some common sailor,” sneered Karagon.
“No, Damisa said he was an initiate,” corrected Li’ija. “But it doesn’t matter. Tjalan should not just spirit either of them away.”
Galara sighed. “All right. What do you suggest we do?”
“I told you I went looking,” Elara said. “I checked every building. He is not in the compound.”
“Maybe he already ran home,” Karagon offered hopefully.
“Let’s not count on it,” Cleta recommended. “If he is not here, he may be in the village.”
One by one, all the heads turned again toward Elara. She was the one who had developed the mos
t significant ties among the Ai-Zir.
“Very well. I will go.”
She found Queen Khayan-e-Durr at her usual occupation, spinning wool with her women in the warm spring sun. After the customary ceremonious greetings, Elara began to tell her story, but she was not really surprised to find that the queen already knew. The problem, evidently, was how to make her care.
“If Prince Tjalan has his way there will be no chieftainship for your son to inherit. If the prince seeks to corral his own people, do you think he will let yours roam free?” Elara could not tell if she was making any impression. “Anything that helps those who have different ideas will hobble his power.”
“That’s so,” said the queen, “but many years ago, two of our shamans had a quarrel. By the time it was ended, a plague had struck both tribes. Who will lie dead, I wonder, when your mages are done?”
“Would you rather live safely as slaves?” exclaimed Elara. “You will have to choose a side!” When, she wondered then, did I choose?
Khayan gave her an odd look. “So you betray your own people?”
“I don’t believe I do,” she answered soberly. “I think that some of them betray themselves. As for me, I am faithful to my gods.”
The queen sketched the sign of Caratra on her breast. “This Tiriki, Lord Micail’s wife. She is sworn to the Goddess?”
“So I have heard—although she has served the Temple of Light.”
“We will seek to help her.” Khayan smiled. “But whether the result will be to reunite her with Micail or to estrange them is in the lap of the gods . . . It is not enough to release these prisoners, if that is truly what they are. Soon enough, Tjalan will find someone from the tribes who knows the way to the Lake lands. We do not often go there, but the way is no secret. This Reidel, too, will need a guide, or his enemies will arrive before he does. A guide, and an offer of alliance,” she added thoughtfully, “else we may all be sucked into a needless war. I will tell this to Tjalan once they are safely gone.”