Marion Bradley - Ancestors of Avalon

Can this truly be the prophesied Time of Ending? Tiriki wondered silently. After so many warnings?

Resolutely, she rejoined her voice to the rising architecture of sound, whose manipulation was perhaps the most powerful tool of Atlantean magic.

‘Moving, we become more still,

Impassioned, we are bound by will,

Turning in perpetuity

While Time becomes Eternity …’

The shadows thickened, contorting the swirls of incense that at last spiraled into the chill air.

The music stopped.

Light blazed forth from the Stone, filling the shrine as completely as darkness had before. Light was everywhere, so radiant that Tiriki was surprised to find that it carried no heat. Even the torches shone more brightly. The singers released a collective sigh. Now they could begin.

First to take off his hood and move toward the Stone was Reio-ta, governor of the Temple. Beside him the blue-robed Mesira, leader of the healers, lifted her veil. Tiriki and Micail stepped out to face them across the Stone. In that light, Micail’s red hair shone like flame, while the wisps that escaped Tiriki’s coiled braids glistened gold and silver.

Reio-ta’s rich tenor took up the invocation…

‘In this place of Ni-Terat, Dark Queen of Earth,

Now bright with the Spirit of Manoah’s Light,

Confirm we now the Sacred Center,

The Omphalos, Navel of the World.’

The richness of her husky contralto belied Mesira’s age. ‘The center is not a place, but a state of being. The Omphalos is of another realm. Many ages the Stone lay undisturbed in the sanctuaries of the Ancient Land, but the center was not there, nor is it in Ahtarrath.’

Micail voiced the formal response, ‘Mindful that all here have vowed that what is, is worth preserving, and to that end bending might and will…’ He smiled at Tiriki, and reached again for her hand. Together they drew breath for the closing words.

‘We arrive forever in the Realm of the True, which can never be destroyed.’

And the rest responded in chorus, ‘While we keep faith, Light lives in us!’

The otherworldly illumination throbbed as Mesira spoke once more.

‘So we invoke the Equilibrium of the Stone, that the people may know peace once more. For we cannot ignore the portents we have seen. We meet in a place of wisdom to seek answers. Seeress, I summon thee—’ Mesira extended both arms to the grey figure who now stepped forward. ‘The time is come. Be thou our eyes and our voice before the Eternal.’

The seeress drew back her veils. In the intense brilliance of the Stone’s light it was not difficult to recognize Alyssa, her black hair hanging loose around her shoulders, her eyes already dilated by trance. With strange, half-bowing steps, she moved into the altar’s radiance.

The singers watched nervously as the seeress rested her fingertips upon the Stone. Translucent patterns of power pooled and eddied within. Alyssa stiffened, but instead of retreating, she moved even nearer.

‘It is…it is so,’ she whispered. ‘One with the Stone am I. What it knows, ye shall know. Let the sacred song bear us to the doors of Fate.’

As she spoke, the singers began to hum softly. Micail’s voice soared in the cadence of Command, calling the seeress by her Temple name.

‘Neniath, seeress, dost thou know me?

I, Osinarmen, do address thee.

Part us from dreams as thou dost wake

By the answer thou wilt make.’

‘I hear.’ The voice was quite different from Alyssa’s, sharp and ringing. ‘I am here. What wouldst thou know?’

‘Speak if it please thee, and we shall attend.’ Micail sang the formal phrase in one sustained exhalation, but in his voice, Tiriki could hear the strain. ‘We come because the Stone has called us, whispering secretly in the night.’

A moment passed. ‘The answer, thou dost already know,’ the seeress murmured. ‘The question lies before the truth. Yet the door that was cast open will not be shut. Stone upon stone rises higher, doomed to fall. The forests fill with tinder. The power which has waited at the heart of the world shifts…and it hungers.’

Tiriki felt a momentary unsteadiness, but could not tell if it came from beneath the flooring stones, or from her own heart. She looked to Micail, but he stood frozen, his face a grimacing mask.

Reio-ta forced out words. ‘Darkness has broken loose before,’ he said with grim concentration, ‘and always, it has been contained. What must we do this time to bind it?’

‘Can you do aught but sing again while silence grows?’ Alyssa shook with unexpected, bitter laughter; and this time the earth shuddered with her.

A ripple of fright shook the singers. They cried out as one, ‘We are servants of Light Unfailing! The Darkness can never prevail!’

But the tremors did not cease. The torches flickered out. Scarlet lightnings shot from the Stone. For a moment Tiriki thought the cavern around them was groaning, but it was Alyssa’s throat from which those horrific sounds came.

The seeress was speaking, or trying to, but the words came garbled and unintelligible. Fighting their dread, the singers inched closer to Alyssa, straining to hear; but the seeress shrank away from them, arms flailing against the Stone.

‘It climbs!’ Her shrieks echoed far beyond the circular chamber. ‘The foul flower! Blood and fire! YOU ARE TOO LATE!’

As the echoes diminished, the strength faded from the taut body of the seeress. Only Micail’s swift movement prevented her from falling.

‘Take her—’ Reio-ta gasped. ‘Mesira, go with them! We will f-finish here—’

Nodding, Micail bore the seeress from the chamber.

The alcove by the entrance to the shrine where they brought the seeress seemed strangely quiet. While the earth beneath them had finally stilled, Tiriki’s spirit was still shaken. As she entered, her acolyte Damisa, who had waited here with the other attendants during the ceremony, looked up with anxious green eyes.

Micail pressed past her, touching Tiriki’s hand in a swift caress that was more intimate than an embrace. Eyes met in an unspoken assurance – I am here…I am here. We will survive, though the heavens fall.

From the chamber beyond came a babble of voices.

‘How are they?’ murmured Micail, with a nod toward the sound.

Tiriki shrugged, but held on to his hand. ‘Half of them are assuring one another that we did not understand Alyssa’s words, and the others are convinced that Ahtarra is about to fall into the sea. Reio-ta will deal with them.’ She looked at Alyssa, who lay upon a bench with Mesira beside her. ‘How is she?’

The face of the seeress was pale, and the long hair which this morning had shone like a raven’s wing was now brindled with streaks of grey.

‘She sleeps,’ Mesira said simply. In the soft light that came through the doorway, the healer’s face showed all its years. ‘As for her waking…it will be some time, I believe, before we know whether this day’s work has harmed her. You may as well go. I think we have received all the answers we are going to get. My chela is fetching a litter, that we may take her back to the Healers Hall. If there is any change, I will send word.’

Micail had already removed his vestments and slipped the emblem of his rank beneath the neck of his sleeveless tunic. Tiriki folded her veil and outer robe and handed them to Damisa. ‘Shall we too call for bearers?’ she asked.

Micail shook his head. ‘Are you up to walking? I need to feel the touch of honest daylight on my skin.’

The hot bright air of the outdoors was a blessing, baking the chill of the underground chambers from their bones. Tiriki felt the tightness easing from her neck and shoulders, and lengthened her steps to keep up with her husband’s longer stride. Through the red and white stone columns of the Temple that marked the entrance to the underground shrine, she glimpsed a string of roofs tiled in blue. Farther down the slope, a scattering of newly built domes in cream and red were set amid the gardens of the city. Beyond them, the glittering sea stretched away to infinity.