Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon (17 page)

“I will gladly ask if they are willing,” Micail said slowly. “Certainly I myself have not yet given them much to do.” His mind whirled with guilt and speculation. The princess had said before that they faced the same task, and he saw now that it was true. How could the acolytes preserve the wisdom of Atlantis if he did not instruct them? But without Tiriki it seemed that the only thing he could teach was failure and despair.

“That is all I ask, Sir Prince.” Chaithala favored him with another charming smile and laid her hand upon his arm, gently drawing him back toward the swirling crowd. In a moment, she let go of him in order to introduce the priestess Timul, who had served the High Priestess of the Temple of Ni-Terat in Alkonath, and was now the head of the Blue Order in Belsairath. Like the princess, Timul had come to the new land a little more than a year ago and seemed to have transplanted very well.

Tiriki would like her,
Micail thought sadly.

 

Somehow he kept his eyes open and greeted everyone. Some were from Ahtarrath, among them his own older cousin Naranshada, the Fourth Vested Guardian. There was also old Metanor, who had been Fifth Vested Guardian in the Temple, and of course Ardral, whose position as Seventh Vested Guardian came nowhere near reflecting his actual prestige.

As the son of a royal house, Micail had been brought up to function in gatherings like this one. He knew that he ought to be moving around, establishing relationships, distinguishing the powerful from the merely influential, but he could not summon the energy. He had never realized how much he depended on Tiriki in situations like these. They had worked as a team, supporting each other.

A servant came by with a tray of
ila’anaat
liqueur in ceramic cups as fine as shell, and Micail grabbed two, downing the first in a single swallow. The stuff was tart and sweet and left a trail of fire from throat to belly.

“Yes, might as well enjoy that while we can,” said a wry voice. “The ila berry can’t be grown in this latitude.”

Through his watering eyes Micail recognized the bronzed and mustachioed face of Bennurajos, a muscular, middle-aged priest. Originally from Cosarrath, he had long served in Ahtarrath, and Micail remembered him as a strong singer and a specialist in the art of growing plants.

Micail took a smaller sip from his second cup and let the fire within build and diffuse through his limbs. “Pity. But I suppose you would know.”

Bennurajos wobbled his head from side to side. “There are some vines that look promising,” he said, “but I won’t be able to tell what they’re good for until they ripen.”

“I’m not even sure what season it is,” Micail murmured.

“Yes, it makes an interesting problem. At home, the sun was constant and we prayed for rainfall. Here it must be sunshine men dream of, the gods know there’s all the rain they need!”

Micail nodded. So far, it had rained every day. “If this is springtime, I dread the winter.” He blinked, suddenly queasy, and shook his head sharply, but the odd feeling would not go away.
Is it the heat in the room, the noises, smells, liquors—?

Bennurajos stepped back, sensing that Micail had lost interest in the conversation. Micail tried to say something courteous and friendly—he had always been fond of Bennurajos—but his self-control was eroding. He shook his head again, tears burning in his eyes.

“You must forgive him.” It was Jiritaren, appearing as if from nowhere. “Lord Micail suffered a severe fever on the voyage here and is not yet entirely well.”

“Where were you? Were you watching me?” Micail accused.

“Come away, Micail,” Jiri said softly. “There are too many people here. It will be cooler in the garden. Come outside with me.”

They pushed past a cluster of priests from Alkonath. He ought to know them—memory supplied the names of First Guardian Haladris, a rather proud and pompous man, and the famous singer Ocathrel, who held the rank of Fifth Guardian. And there were survivors from the Temple on Tarisseda, the priestess Mahadalku and Stathalkha the psychic. A gaggle of lesser priests and priestesses moved about on the fringes. More than a few seemed familiar to him, but that, he decided, was only because they looked so obviously to be priests of Light. But none of them interested Micail. There could never be a big enough crowd until it included the one person he wished for so desperately.

H
ow could I possibly know whether I like it here?” Grimacing, Damisa swatted a midge from her arm. “Ask me tomorrow!” “Will your opinion have changed?” Iriel’s words came muffled through the veils she had swathed around her face and throat to protect herself from the midges and other insects that seemed to swarm everywhere along the river. Reeds edged the shore and willows hung over the brown waters of the channel that the
Crimson Serpent
was following. Yesterday they had seen the sun and felt a promise of warmth in the air. But today the sky was as gloomy as their spirits, and mists hid the line of hills they had glimpsed from offshore.

“Not at all,” Damisa denied, with an envious eye for Iriel’s veils, “but I can’t help thinking, if you had asked me yesterday whether it wouldn’t be better to go back out to sea, I would have called you an idiot—”

“You’re the idiot,” said Iriel automatically, her own eyes still fixed upon the lush riverbank that was slowly passing beyond the railing. Damisa shook her head, suspecting she was not seeing whatever it was the younger girl was staring at.

To Damisa one meandering stretch of marshland was quite indistinguishable from another. If tangled willow trees weren’t overhanging a stretch of murky water, there were tall spiky reeds or thorny stunted shrubs. Either way, they couldn’t get anywhere near the solid ground.
The interior is probably all just foggy undergrowth anyway,
she thought. For three days, they had been misled by the numerous rivers that fed into the estuary, each broad and promising at its mouth, but becoming too choked with half-submerged oaks, willows, and vines for the ship to do anything but retreat. She hoped someone was making a map.

“Look!” said Iriel excitedly, as a flock of birds rose noisily from the reeds and scattered like a handful of stones flung across the pale sky.

“Enchanting,” Damisa said dully, not so easily shaken from her gloom. She was beginning to suspect that the hills they had seen from the sea were no more than a vision sent by mischievous sprites to entice them into this wilderness in which the
Crimson Serpent
was doomed to wander until they all sank into the muck and mire below.

The river had in fact become much more brackish as they moved inland, but its level was still determined by the sea. Yesterday the men Captain Reidel sent ashore as scouts stayed out too long and were stranded in the marshes until ebb tide. By the time they could get aboard, they were covered to their necks in mud that was full of leeches and . . . Damisa shuddered and swatted another tiny-winged predator from her eyebrow, swearing, and Iriel snorted with laughter behind her veils.

“Oh, shut up,” Damisa warned, watching Arcor, the grizzled old Ahtarran sailor, taking soundings from the ship’s bow.
How does he stand it?
she wondered. His knotted muscles flexed and released beneath the short sleeves of his tunic as he swung out the line and the lead splashed into the water, again and again. Midges clouded around him, but he never once paused to swat them. Even a few moments’ inattention could leave them stranded on a mudbank until the evening tide.

By sheer force of will, Damisa ignored the little insect now walking on her elbow.
I should not complain,
she told herself, thinking that even Arcor had an easier job than the men who rowed the small boat that was laboriously towing this one upriver . . . She hoped Reidel knew what he was doing. The only thing worse than being eaten alive as they floated through the wilderness would be to get stuck here, unable to move at all.

Suddenly Arcor stood up, peering ahead.

“What is it?” came Reidel’s calm voice. “What do you see?”

“Sorry, Cap’n. Thought ’twas a helmet,” Arcor joked. “ ’Tis only Teiron’s bald pate! And there’s our Cadis wit’ him, keepin’ the magpies off!”

The captain’s broad shoulders relaxed in a light laugh, and Damisa, watching, felt her own tension easing as well. Reidel was only a shipmaster, and a lot younger than he looked, but in the past weeks they had all come to depend on his quick mind and ever-ready strength. Even Master Chedan, to say nothing of Tiriki, seemed to defer to him, which seemed vaguely
wrong
to Damisa. Abruptly she realized that she had been assuming that their journeys would lead them to a new civilization and Temple in the new land. She and the other acolytes had spent quite a lot of time speculating about what the people here would look like and, to a lesser degree, how they lived, or where; but so far it seemed that there simply
were
no inhabitants.

Which—
she frowned—
might be better.
At the moment they were quite simply castaways. Reidel had done well enough at sea—maybe even remarkably well—but how would he fare against angry savages?

Lost in thought, Damisa jumped when the undergrowth shivered and two men suddenly pushed into view, muddy to their calves and perspiring freely. But she saw their teeth flash in fierce grins and recognized them as Teiron and Cadis, who had been sent out to explore earlier. Arcor tossed a rope over the side and they scrambled aboard to the welcoming jokes and laughter of the other sailors.

Tiriki and Chedan emerged from below, accompanied by Selast and Kalaran. It occurred to Damisa that she had not seen Elis since morning. Was she still trapped below deck, assigned to cheer up the priestess Malaera, who was still weeping for all they had lost? Damisa shuddered . . .
That’s right, she drew today’s duty with the Stone. Ugh. Even with it in its box, just sitting outside the cabin door, it makes me uncomfortable. Better the bog-rats! Or even Malaera’s endless tears . . .

“Good news, gentles,” the shaved-head Alkonan sailor Teiron was saying. “There be someone in these parts! Where ’e live I don’t know, but someone made that trackway in the marsh!”

“Trackway?” Chedan repeated. “What do you mean?”

Teiron moved his hands tentatively, sketching on air. “It’s—a raised pathway, over the muck. Too weak to take a chariot I guess, but still good an’ solid. Made from split planks—laid across logs—everything pegged into place. An’ since some logs are old and some are new, someone must keep ’em repaired.”

“But where does the path go?” Iriel wondered out loud. “Didn’t you even look? Are there lions?”

“No, no lions, little mistress,” the Alkonan said mildly. “At least I didn’t see any. But we were under orders to return quickly—”

“
I’d
guess the plank road leads there,” said Cadis, pointing past the trees that lined the shore. The mist had begun to fade away. Before them they could see the spreading blue waters of the lake that fed the stream. Beyond it, thin spring sunlight glistened on the green protruding tip of a hillside perhaps a thousand ells farther in.

 

Tiriki gripped Chedan’s arm as they advanced across the muddy trackway. The carefully cut planks seemed to sway alarmingly underfoot, but after so many days on shipboard, she suspected she would have felt unsteady walking on the smooth granite stones of the Processional Way in Ahtarrah. She swallowed, fighting back the familiar nausea. She no longer felt as wretched as she had at sea, but she was far from her usual self, and she felt bloated, even though she could see that her wrists were growing thin.

On the high ground just ahead, a group of marsh dwellers in leather kilts awaited them with faces that were impassive but not, she hoped, implacable. They were small in stature, but wiry and well muscled, and pale where the sun had not browned them. Their dark hair glinted with rusty highlights in the sun.

Tiriki focused on her feet. It would not befit the dignity of a priestess of Light to arrive with her backside smeared with mud, even if the hems of her robes were stained already.
If I slip now, likely I will drag down Chedan with me, and maybe Damisa and old Liala as well.
Taking a deep breath, she kept her steps as measured and solemn as if she walked not amid a ragtag of sailors and refugees, but at the head of the Great Procession to the Star Mountain.

I should have worn my cloak,
she told herself as the sweat cooled on her brow. The sun was finally shining, but the sky remained cloudy, and the air held a chilling dampness. Why that should surprise her she did not know. Chedan had said often enough that the weather here was peculiar.
But I haven’t been truly warm since last Micail held me . . .
Ruthlessly, she put the thought away.

Only the faint cries of birds disturbed the silence, as the natives continued to stare. Their black eyes seemed to examine every detail as they approached—from the elaborate priestly costumes and the glittering metal that gilded Chedan’s ceremonial dagger to Reidel’s short-sword and the short pikes of the sailors. Some of the natives carried cudgels or spears, but most were armed with bows of finely worked, polished yew, the arrows flint-pointed. The sailors noticed that the marsh folk did not seem to even have bronze and took heart. A little swagger even came back into their steps.