Marion Bradley - Ancestors of Avalon

‘Present that at the palace and my servants will give you what I owe—’

‘You are too kind,’ Tiriki jested softly, as they were at last permitted to leave the taverna. ‘The man plainly felt honored by a visit from the prince and wished to make you a gift in return. Why did you not allow it?’

‘Think of it as an affirmation,’ Micail smiled, a little grimly. ‘That bit of clay represents my belief that someone will be here tomorrow. And if, as you say, he would prefer the honor, well, there is nothing to force him to redeem the debt. Memory fades. But he has my seal for a keepsake—’

Slowly, they walked back to the palace, speaking of ordinary things, but Tiriki could not help recalling how the screams of the seeress had echoed from the crypt.

When Damisa returned to the House of the Falling Leaves, the other acolytes were just finishing a lesson. Elara of Ahtarrath was the first to see her come in. Elara, dark-haired and buxom, was a native of this island, and it had fallen to her to make the newcomers from the other Sea Kingdoms welcome as they arrived.

On each island, the temples trained priests and priestesses. But from among the most talented young people in each generation, twelve were chosen to learn the greater Mysteries. Some would one day return to their own islands as senior clergy, while others explored specialties such as healing or astrology. From the Twelve came the adepts, who served all Atlantis as Vested Guardians in the Temple of Light.

The house was a low, sprawling structure of oddly aligned corridors and oversize suites, rumored to have been built a century or more ago for a foreign dignitary. The acolytes often amused themselves with suggesting other explanations for the stone mermaids in the weathered fountain in the central courtyard. Whatever its origins, until quite recently the strange old villa had served as a dormitory for unmarried priests, pilgrims, and refugees. Now it was the House of the Twelve.

Some of the acolytes welcomed Elara’s help while others resisted her, but Damisa, who was a cousin of the prince of Alkonath, was usually the most self-sufficient of them all. Right now, thought Elara, she looked terrible.

‘Damisa? What has happened to you? Are you ill?’ She flinched as the other girl turned to her with a blind stare. ‘Did something happen at the ceremony?’ Elara took a firm grip on Damisa’s elbow and made her sit down by the fountain. She turned to get the attention of one of the others. ‘Lanath, go get her some water!’ Elara said in a low voice as all the acolytes surrounded them. Elara sat down, pushing back the black curls that kept falling into her eyes. ‘Be quiet, all of you!’ she glared until they moved back. ‘Let her breathe!’

She knew that Damisa had been called to attend Lady Tiriki early that morning, and she had envied her. Elara’s role as chela to the Blue Robe priestess Liala in the Temple of Ni-Terat was a pleasant enough assignment, but hardly glamorous. The acolytes had been told that their apprenticeships were determined by the placement of their stars and the will of the gods. It made sense that Elara’s betrothed, Lanath, was assigned to the Temple astrologer because he had a good head for figures, but Elara had always suspected that Damisa’s royal connections had got her the place with Tiriki, who was not only a priestess but Princess of Ahtarrath, after all. But she did not envy Damisa now.

‘Tell us, Damisa,’ she murmured as the other girl drank. ‘Was someone hurt? Has something gone wrong?’

‘Wrong!’ Damisa closed her eyes for a moment, then straightened and looked around the circle. ‘Haven’t you heard the rumors that have been going around the city?’

‘Of course we have. But where were you?’ asked little Iriel.

‘At an equinox ritual, attending my lady,’ Damisa replied.

‘Those rituals are usually held in the Great Temple of Manoah,’ observed Elis, who was also a native of the city. ‘It wouldn’t take you this long to get back from there!’

‘We weren’t at the Temple of Light,’ Damisa said tightly. ‘We went to another place, a sanctuary built into the cliffs at the eastern edge of the city. The portico looks ordinary enough, but the actual Temple is deep underground. Or at least I suppose so. I was told to wait in the alcove at the head of the passage.’

‘Banur’s bones!’ Elara exclaimed, ‘That’s the Temple of – I don’t know what it is – no one ever goes there!’

‘I don’t know what it is, either,’ Damisa responded with a return of her usual arrogance, ‘but some Power is down there. I could see odd flashes of light all the way up the passageway.’

‘It’s the Sinking…’ said Kalaran in a dull voice. ‘My own island is gone and now this one is going to go, too. My parents migrated to Alkonath, but I was chosen for the Temple. They thought it was an honor for me to come here…’

The acolytes looked at one another, shaken.

‘We don’t know that the ritual failed,’ Elara said bracingly. ‘We must wait – we will be told—’

‘They had to carry the seeress out of that chamber,’ Damisa interrupted. ‘She looked half dead. They’ve taken her to Liala and the healers at the House of Ni-Terat.’

‘I should go there,’ said Elara. ‘Liala may need my assistance.’

‘Why bother?’ glowered Lanath. ‘We’re all going to die.’

‘Be still!’ Elara rounded on him, wondering what had possessed the astrologers to betroth her to a boy who would run from his own shadow if it barked at him. ‘All of you – calm down. We are the Chosen Twelve, not a pack of backcountry peasants. Do you think our elders have not foreseen this disaster and made some kind of plan? Our duty is to help them however we can.’ She pushed her dark hair back again, hoping that what she had said was true.

‘And if they haven’t?’ asked Damisa’s betrothed, a rather stodgy, brown-haired lad called Kalhan.

‘Then we will die,’ Damisa recovered herself enough to scowl at him.

‘Well, if we do,’ said little Iriel, with her irrepressible smile, ‘I am going to have a few strong words to say to the gods!’

When Micail and Tiriki returned to the palace they found a blue-robed priestess waiting at the gate, bearing news from Mesira. Alyssa had awakened and was expected to make a good recovery.

If only, Tiriki thought darkly, we could do so well at healing her prophecy…

Yet she kept a smile on her lips as she accompanied Micail upstairs to the suite of rooms they shared on the upper floor. The veil before the alcove that held the shrine to the goddess, and the hangings that curtained the doors to the balcony stirred in the night wind from the sea. The whitewashed walls were frescoed with a frieze of golden falcons above a bed of crimson lilies. In the flickering light of the hanging lamps, the birds soared and the flowers seemed to bend in an invisible breeze.

When he had changed into a fresh robe, Micail went off to confer with Reio-ta. Left alone, Tiriki ordered soft-footed servants to fill her bath with cool, scented water. When she had bathed, they waited to pat her dry. When they had gone, she walked out onto the balcony and gazed at the city below. To the east, the Star Mountain loomed against the crisp night sky. Groves of cypress covered the lower slopes, but the cone rose sharply above. The perpetual flame in the Temple at its summit appeared as a faint, pyramidal glow. Scattered points of light marked outlying farmsteads on the lower slopes, dimming one by one as the inhabitants sought their beds. In the city, folk stayed up later. Bobbing torches moved along the streets in the entertainment quarter.

As the air cooled, the land gave up scents of drying grass and freshly turned earth like a rich perfume. She gazed out upon the peace of the night and in her heart, the words of the evening hymn became a prayer—