“It is so,” agreed Ayo. “My sister Taret speaks well of all you have done there.”
Tiriki lifted an eyebrow at this evidence of the link between all the wisewomen of the tribes. In Ayo, as in Taret, she sensed the mark of Caratra. She had no difficulty in accepting the Sacred Sister as a priestess whose status, though different, was equal to her own.
“You promised glory for King Khattar’s tribe,” Droshrad growled unexpectedly, “but you lied. You sought to make us slaves to your power.”
“That is true,” Micail sighed, “but surely we have endured our own punishment. Let the lives we have lost be payment for the harm we have done.”
“Easy words,” the shaman growled, but he subsided at a glance from the queen.
“But why these things were done—that is the thing I do not understand,” Ayo said then. “Was it conquest only? I do not feel that desire in you.”
“Because it is not there,” Tiriki put in, when it was clear that Micail either could not or would not answer. “You must understand. From childhood we knew our homeland faced destruction. But there was a prophecy that my husband would found a new Temple in a new land.”
“But I did not understand,” Micail said heavily. “I thought it must be a great and splendid building such as we had on Ahtarrath and in the Ancient Land. But I was mistaken. I think now that what we are meant to establish is a tradition—”
“A tradition,” said Tiriki, completing his thought, “in which the wisdom of the Temple of Light—and it is great, though we have given you little reason to think so until now—is joined with the earth power of those who live in this land.”
Ayo sat up straighter, eyeing them intently. “Does that mean that you will teach us your magic?”
“If that is what you wish, yes. Send us a few of your clever young women and we will train them, if the Sacred Sisters will agree to teach some of our own.”
“And your young men, too,” added Micail, meeting Droshrad’s scowl. “But you will have to send food with them—” He patted Tiriki’s shoulder. “My wife needs your good beef and bread to put some meat on her bones!”
“It is true that our resources are meager . . .” said Tiriki. “In the vales around the Tor, there is little solid land for farming, and it is a hard trial to be continuously gathering wild food.”
“It is true,” Khayan-e-Durr said, smiling. “The fields and pastures of the Ai-Zir are rich. If the Sacred Sisters agree, we will ensure the children we send you do not starve.”
“Young Cleta’s leg is still healing,” said Ayo thoughtfully. “Let her stay with us and send another of your maidens to join her. We will allow some of our young priestesses to join you in return.”
“What about Vialmar?” asked Micail. “He is Cleta’s betrothed, after all.”
“That one!” grunted Droshrad. “He pisses himself with fear when I look at him . . .”
“If he thinks he is needed to look after Cleta, he will find his courage fast enough,” said Micail.
“Maybe—” The shaman still did not look convinced, but he nodded at last. “I have a nephew. Maybe you can teach him something. He only makes trouble here! He thinks the sun talks to him.”
The air throbbed as if the plains of Azan had become a vast drumskin, vibrating to the rhythm beat out by the feet of the Ai-Zir. Even the stars seemed to blink in time to the rhythm, their sparkling reflected in the leaping fires below. Damisa had never seen anything like it—certainly not in the modest celebrations that were all that the marsh folk could manage—but it was more than that. There was something here that had not been evident even in the four-day festivals she had known as a child in Alkonath. She fussed with the sling that immobilized her shoulder, trying to make it more comfortable. At least the dizziness that had followed her concussion was mostly gone.
“If it wasn’t for us, they wouldn’t even know the exact date of the summer solstice,” said Cleta sourly, as they watched the dancers circling the bonfire. Damisa glanced down at the other girl’s splinted leg. She supposed it must be hurting again. Between us, she thought, we might just about put together one whole priestess.
On the far side of the bonfire they had heaped up a low mound where King Khattar sat in state on a bench covered with the hide of a red bull. Even the firelight could not make him look healthy. Damisa almost sympathized, but she had been assured that in time her shoulder would heal. Khattar was still acknowledged as high king, but it was clear that the power was passing to the nephew who sat beside him.
Already Damisa had learned more than she had ever wanted to know about tribal politics, which were beginning to remind her uncomfortably of the palace intrigues she had heard about on Alkonath as a child. It all made clear, she thought, the fact that the differences between the Atlanteans and the Ai-Zir were not so very real.
“Here come our valiant protectors now,” said Cleta, as Vialmar and Reidel threaded their way among the dancers toward them, a strangely painted beaker gripped in each hand.
“Cleta,” said Damisa, with raised eyebrows, “you are slipping! I do believe that was a joke.” The other girl weakly returned her smile, but said nothing; both of them knew that Vialmar’s thigh had been deeply gashed by the first of the flying stone fragments. He walked with a limp even now. And she remembered quite clearly that when the power exploded from the henge it had been she who had protected Reidel. As he handed her a beaker she was still wondering what madness had compelled her to do so.
“It’s called mead,” said Vialmar with enthusiasm. “Give it a try—it’s pretty good.”
Damisa took a cautious sip. The liquor was sweet and tasted very faintly like teli’ir, but fortunately for her head, did not seem to be nearly so strong. Still it seemed strange to be sitting here drinking when Tjalan and so many others were gone.
They sat talking for a time until Cleta had to admit that her leg was giving her a lot of pain. Vialmar, who was tall enough to do so, simply picked her up in his arms and, limping only a little, slowly carried her back to the compound, leaving Reidel and Damisa alone. Suddenly restless, she stood up.
“This stuff is going to my head. I need to walk a little while.”
“I’ll walk with you,” said Reidel, rising in turn.
She flushed, remembering what had happened the last time she accepted his escort from a celebration, but she knew it would not be wise to wander alone in such a crowd. There were not a few among the natives who had no love left for the Atlanteans. Silent, she let him lead her toward the path by the river. His hand was strong and warm, callused from labor, but then her own was not exactly soft and ladylike either.
“I have not thanked you for my life,” he said as the tumult of the festival faded behind them. “I was mad to think I could have done anything to stop the Working. I never imagined that you—”
“At least you tried!” she responded. “I just stood there watching.”
They walked for a little while in silence, listening to the ripple of the water and the wind in the trees.
“I am sorry for the death of Prince Tjalan,” Reidel said finally. “I know that you loved him.”
Her good shoulder lifted in a shrug. “Was it love, or only that he dazzled me?” Even now she felt a tremor at the memory of that lean, broad-shouldered figure and his flashing smile. It had taken her far too long to wonder what lay behind it. “Even though he was my cousin, in the end, I found I could not trust him.”
She frowned a little, wondering when she had abandoned that dream . . . Her eyes were stinging, and she blinked back tears.
“You’re weeping,” said Reidel. “Forgive me, I should not have said—”
“Be still!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you understand? Until now, I haven’t been able to let him go.”
“He was a great man . . .” Reidel said with difficulty. “And he was royal, and your kin. I wanted you to know”—he swallowed—“to know that I understand now. It was madness for me to think that you and I—” He stopped ag
ain as Damisa turned and gripped the front of his tunic.
“There is something I want you to know,” she said softly. “I have had a lot of time to think, lying in that bed while the healers fussed over me. A lot of what happened at the Sun Wheel is blurred in my memory. But one thing I do remember. When the stones started falling, you were the one I felt I had to save. Not Tjalan—you!”
“Yes. You ordered me to live.”
It sounded as if he were smiling. Breath quickening, she dared to look up at him, and very gently, he eased his arms around her. Did she love him? Even now, she did not quite know. But it felt good to stand there in the circle of his arms.
“I will lead you a sad life, Reidel,” she said, in a voice so small she could hardly believe it was her own. “But I need you! I know that now.”
“I’ll consider myself lucky to have you under any circumstances.” Now he was the one who sounded breathless. “I always loved the challenge of sailing into a storm . . .”
In the dark hour that falls just before dawn, Tiriki stood with Micail before the broken ring of stones. Festival fires still glimmered here and there like fallen stars upon the plain. But the heavens were more constant. The moon was hidden, and offered no challenge to the amazing glow of the stars. Chedan could have read their message easily, but she realized that she had absorbed more of his astrological lore than she had thought.
Above, the stars of Purity and Righteousness and Choice glittered in the belt of Manoah—the Hunter of Destiny, as the constellation was named by the people here. A year ago, Chedan had told her that when the star called the Sorcerer and the sun walked in the Sign of the Torch, new light came into the world. But at that time, the Sovereign and the Blood Star had opposed them. Now the Red Star dwelt with the Peacemaker, and Caratra’s star had moved to calm the Winged Bull. There was hope in the heavens, but on earth there were conflicts which remained to be resolved.
Her future with Micail was one of them, and that, she supposed, must depend on whether he was able to take up his priesthood once more. During these past weeks she had nursed him, challenged him, loved him—and the love at least would not change. But she was no longer simply his mate and priestess. She had grown, and she did not yet know whether Micail had emerged from his own testing with a strength to balance hers.
Micail had put on the diadem of a First Guardian, but she wore Caratra’s blue. Before them, the surviving stones of the great henge bulked blacker than the space between the stars. Only three of the trilithons in the inner horseshoe still stood intact, and there were gaps in the part of the outer circle that had been completed before. Even from here she could feel the power of those stones, confused and angry despite the peaceful night.
Tiriki’s left hand was enfolded in Micail’s. In the other she carried Chedan’s staff, marked with the sigil of a mage. Micail had not asked her about that, and she had not yet decided what to say. In the past week she had gradually drawn him back into the world of the living and watched him gain in strength and sureness with each day. But Chedan had left a powerful legacy unclaimed. Was Micail strong enough to bear it? Was he worthy? In this, she could not afford to be blinded by her love for him.
Why had he brought her, garbed in the regalia of a priestess, to the Sun Circle at this hour? She shivered in the cold wind that blows before dawn. They were to start the journey to the Tor tomorrow. Perhaps, she thought, he has come to say a private farewell. This, after all, was his life and his work for four years—his cruel son, he called it.
She blinked as a sudden red light glowed on the stones. But they were looking westward—she clutched at Micail, remembering again the lurid glow in the heavens as Ahtarrath had died.
“What is it?” His arm tightened around her.
“The flames! Can’t you see them?” Memories overwhelmed her like the wave that had drowned the Sea Kingdoms. “I can see it all—Ahtarrath is burning—the islands of Ruta and Tarisseda and all Atlantis sinking beneath the waves!” She strove for control.
“No, it is only some guardsman, building up his fire,” Micail said soothingly, but she shook her head.
“That fire will burn for so long as we remember. Why did the gods allow this to happen? Why are we still alive when so many others are gone?”
Micail sighed, but she could feel the arm that held her trembling. “My beloved, I do not know. Was it a reward to be saved in order that we might fulfill the prophecy, or will we be punished because we carried away the secrets of the Temple—even though we were commanded to do so?”
Yes, he had certainly been doing some thinking. Within her breast Tiriki felt hope. “Do you think, in lives to come, that we will remember?” she asked then.
“So long as the Wheel carries us from life to life upon this earth, how can we forget? Our mothers’ oaths still bind us, is it not so? The manner of our remembering may alter, as new lives bring us new griefs and challenges, but maybe we will dream of this moment. There are some things that will always be the same . . .”
“My love for you, and yours for me?” She turned in his arms and he held her tightly until her shivering began to ease. He kissed her then, and she felt the warmth of life surge through her limbs once more.
“That above all,” he answered, a little breathless as their lips parted. “Perhaps that is the greatest treasure we brought out of Atlantis, for no matter how we try to preserve the ancient wisdom, it is bound to change in this new land.”
“The secrets will be lost, and the knowledge will fade,” she said somberly. “Atlantis will become a legend, a fading rumor of glory, and a warning to those who would manipulate powers never meant to be grasped by humankind.”
He turned to look at the henge. The stars were fading as the world turned toward morning. “I poured all my knowledge into building this—but not my wisdom, for that is not what I was seeking. Only power . . .”
“If you could,” she asked then, “would you restore the fallen stones, and finish the Sun Wheel as it was designed?”
Micail shook his head. “The chieftains of the tribes have asked me to do it, but I told them that too many of our adepts died. Let the stones lie. If Droshrad or someone else cares enough to try to restore them through brute manpower alone, so be it. But the tribesmen fear to touch them, and by the time that fear has faded, they will no longer remember what the Sun Wheel was intended to do.”
“They are right to fear,” murmured Tiriki. “There is still anger in these stones.” She had sensed it in the smoky shadow coiling among them when she had passed on the way to the village. Now her inner senses perceived it as an angry glow.
“Enough of the sarsens remain upright to calculate the movements of the heavens and to mark the crossing of the flow of power. The true Temple is within our hearts. We need raise no edifice of orichalcum and gold.”
“It is not only our love for each other that will bind us,” Tiriki said then, “but our love for this land. I fought to save the Tor itself as much as I did the people in my care. In future lives, we may fare elsewhere, but I think that these places will always draw us back again.”
“And yet you have changed the Tor by burying the Omphalos there.”
“Do you think I have not had nightmares of what might happen if its power was loosed upon this land? But I had the blessing of the powers that dwell there, and the world is balanced once again.”
“For a time,” Micail said quietly. “When Dyaus breaks loose, he brings destruction, but also . . . things change. As they must. As they are meant to. We are lord and lady of Ahtarrath no longer. The men of Alkonath who survived have given me the falcon banner—they look to me now to lead them, but the only realm I wish to rule is that of my own soul.”
“That banner is not all you have inherited.” Tiriki suddenly realized that she had made her decision. “Chedan said you were his heir. This is his staff . . .” She held it out, and after a moment of wonder, he took it in his hand.
“It’s curious,” she went on. “I think I told
you the marsh folk call me Morgan, the woman from the sea. But they called Chedan Sun Hawk. Or sometimes Merlin. Both are names for the native falcon.”
“I used to dream that Chedan was instructing me,” Micail said in a shaken voice. He turned to look once more at the stones. “Watch and bear witness, Tiriki! Now I know why I had to come here, and what I must do. When we sang we left a residue of power in the circle. I must sing the stones back to stillness, or there will never be peace in this land.”
She wanted to protest, to haul him away from the angry energies that pulsed through those broken stones. But as a priestess she knew that what he said was true, and as a priest it was his duty to heal where he had harmed. If he could . . .
And so she watched, trembling as he moved past the fallen sarsens and into the circle. With all her senses focused upon it, she could both see and feel the turgid red glimmer that pulsed uneasily from stone to stone. She swayed, wondering how he could bear the red heat, staying upright herself only by grounding into the earth below . . .
Micail’s tall shape was a pale blur as the sarsens responded to his presence like coals wakened by the wind. Would he be able to master them? Instinctively Tiriki lifted her arms, drawing up power from the ground she stood on, channeling it toward him through the palms of her hands.
Tiriki could see that he was singing. Be still! her heart cried to the stones. Be at peace! Find balance, and rest . . .
Micail continued to pace among them, leaning on Chedan’s carven staff. But whether because of his song or her prayer, the pulsing glow was—not dimming, but changing—from angry red to sullen gold, which only slowly faded from sight.
By the time he had finished, the sky was growing pale. Tiriki quivered from the cold, but as he walked back toward her, Micail was radiant with the heat of rightly used power.
“It is done,” he said softly, warming her hands between his own. “Now the ring will anchor the lines of power as it was meant to, and mark the wheel of the seasons. A day will come when people will forget, and this will be no more than a ring of ancient stones. But I will remember what we did here, and I will come back to you, beloved. Through life and beyond life, that I swear.”