Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon (33 page)

“What?” said Jiritaren. “Is this true, Micail?”

“So—you like our feast?” interrupted King Khattar in badly accented but quite serviceable standard Atlantean.

He learns fast,
thought Micail, with a reflexive smile.
A good reminder that even though we may use the most arcane Temple dialects, we must be more careful what we say.

“The meat is fat and the beer is strong, Great King,” Naranshada answered politely. Micail echoed him, observing that the carved circles and lozenges on the houseposts were already beginning to twist and blur. Perhaps he had better go easy on the drink for a while.

“It has been a good harvest!” The king’s glare dared anyone to disagree. “The Old Ones are pleased. Soon they have their new Temple!”

“We are fortunate that the ancestors have the patience of eternity. But the work progresses well.” Not for the first time, Micail wondered how well Khattar actually understood their explanations of the purpose to be served by the alignment of stones.

And what,
he asked himself,
do the stones mean to me? The first step in creating the Temple I was destined to build, or simply a reason to live another day?

“Good,” the king approved. “How long?”

“The sarsens for the trilithons in the inner court have been transported to the site,” said Naranshada, ticking them off on his fingers. “That’s fifteen stones. Most of them have yet to be shaped, but one crew can work on that until more stones arrive. Just over ten sarsens have been cut for the outer ring—that leaves another forty uprights to find—we could make do with less, I suppose, but we underestimated before and we may have to reject some of the new ones too. I’d rather err on the inclusive side. And of course that doesn’t include the lintels to conjoin them.”

Khatar frowned. “It will take many men to move so many.”

“Yes,” agreed Jiritaren, “but if everything goes according to plan, we should be able to raise the trilithons—” He looked to Naranshada.

“Oh, certainly by next year,” Ansha smiled, a little tipsily. “But when does anything ever go according to plan?”

“
That
is why farmers belong in fields, not pulling stones.” Droshrad’s guttural speech issued from somewhere behind the king. “Gods hold back grain harvest when they are not enough served. I warn you before, King Khattar—people mutter too loud.”

Micail glanced toward the king’s nephew Khensu, who sat with the young warriors on the northern side of the hall and saw a similar calculation in the eyes that leaped to meet his own. As in the Sea Kingdoms, a prince was the soul of his land. Micail’s father chose to endure torture rather than betray that sacred trust. But here, Micail was beginning to realize, the relationship between king and country was even more basic. The queen served the nameless goddess of the land, who was eternal, but the god who made her fertile was represented by the king. If the crops failed too often, a more virile man must be chosen, and the old king must die.

Ignoring the shaman, Khattar held up one hand, fingers splayed. “You make five big stones for the five mother-tribes, and the outside circle for the clans.”

“Well, that’s not exactly—” Naranshada began, but Jiritaren poked him hard.

Droshrad’s scowl deepened.

“You bring sun-power into the circle—” Khattar began, but the rest of his speech was drowned out by cheers, and the first staccato bursts of drumming were heard.

At the beginning of the feast, the bonfire had been so hot that a wide space had been left around it. But as the hours passed, the logs had burned down to a gentle glow, their residual heat enough to maintain a comfortable warmth in the hall. Now the drummers were convening around the fire, some still angling their drums toward the heat to tighten the skins, while the others began to build the soft rhythmic patterings that compelled attention. All conversations stilled as the drumming commenced.

The king’s nephew stood up, beckoning to his friends, and those who were sober enough joined him beside the fire. With their hands on one anothers’ shoulders, they danced around it, bending and leaping in perfect rhythm. As they picked up the pace, they added more and more complex kicks, until first one and then another stumbled, and ducked out of the line laughing. Micail was not surprised to see that the last man to remain dancing was Khensu. He moved with more power than grace, but his energy was impressive. With curling brown hair and a muscular frame, he suggested what King Khattar must have looked like in youth. Either of them would be formidable in a fight, Micail thought, and wondered why a dance should remind him of war. Then Khensu, too, halted, lifting his hands to accept the people’s acclaim as the king watched with an expression that suggested he might have preferred his successor to be received a little less enthusiastically.

“You raise stones quick—mine first,” Khattar muttered. “Then ancestors give me power.” He held out his beaker to be refilled.

Micail sighed and said nothing, hoping the interrogation would end there. It came down to a question of power, but for what purpose and for whom? Khattar wanted the stones in order to make himself preeminent among the local tribes. Tjalan wanted them as a focal point around which he might restore the Sea Kingdoms, or even the empire. Naranshada and Ocathrel and most of the other priests wanted them, if at all, as an opportunity to demonstrate their skills, proof that there had been some purpose in their survival . . .
I felt that way at first,
thought Micail,
and maybe I still do. What did Ardral say the other day? It’s like sculptors making a statue of a god—just to see if it can be done.

And what do
I
want the new Temple for?
It was a question he had never thought to ask himself until very recently, and now it had become a constant itch in his awareness.

“Ah!” Khattar breathed hoarsely, laying his fat-smeared, beer-sticky hand on Micail’s shoulder. “This, you will like! Watch!”

There were rustlings and murmurs from the Women’s Side as several of its benches emptied. The young men began whistling as a line of girls moved into the firelight, shawled and skirted in wool and leather with long fringes that swung as their bodies swayed. Necklaces of carved wood and bone, of jet and of amber, shifted gently upon young breasts. With downcast eyes and linked hands they circled, feet treading a pattern as complex as the beat of the drums, while a bone flute twittered and sang. Their slender bodies curved and straightened like young birches at the edge of the forest, like willows beside a rippling stream. Even Micail could not help smiling.

“You like our girls, yes!” The king wiped beer from his mustache and grinned.

“They are as beautiful as young heifers in a green field,” Micail replied, and the king shook with deep laughter.

“We make a bull of you yet, outland man!”

The servants circulated through the crowd with baskets of nuts and dried berries, the last of the autumn’s bounty, and many hard rounds of cheese. Micail wiped his greasy hands on his tunic and took a handful of nuts, and then several berries, ruefully remembering the countless filigreed bowls filled with scented waters that would, at home, have been circulating for guests to cleanse their fingers. He also missed the exquisite glasses brimming with the most fragrant of wines. Instead, he would obviously have to drink still more of the native beer that was already making him feel off balance. But that seemed to be the custom here—the men on the outer benches were plainly drunk already—and when the next serving girl came to fill his beaker, Micail did not object.

The dancing maidens undulated back to their sector of the hall, but the drums did not cease their throbbing beat. The crowd, instead of relaxing into the banter that would signal an end to a formal ceremony, sat up even straighter on their benches and waited in excited silence.

Finally the drumming did stop and the broad doorway opened, its creaking terribly audible in the stillness, and someone entered. No one noticed the doorway closing as a slim figure moved forward into the firelight—a girl wrapped in a bearskin cloak, her dun-colored hair knotted high on her head, with the ends falling down her back in a glossy tail.

The king stepped forward and gazed at her with an unreadable expression.

“My father, I salute you.” The girl’s slim arm, braceleted in amber, emerged from the folds of fur to touch her brow, lips, and breast.

“My daughter, I welcome you,” the king replied. “Do you bring your mother’s blessing to our festival?”

“I do—and that of the Mother!” she answered, stepping forward with a centered grace that Micail recognized with some surprise as the mark of a spiritual discipline. This must be Anet, the royal daughter of whom Elara had told him, then, whose mother was high priestess here.

King Khattar sat back. “Then bestow it,” he said softly.

The girl smiled again, and turning to the drummers, loosed her grip on the glossy fur of her cloak and let it fall. Micail’s eyes widened, for beneath it the girl wore only a quantity of jet and amber jewelry, and a brief skirt of twisted strands of wool bound at top and bottom with woven bands. But the whisper that swept the hall was one of satisfaction. Obviously this was expected, a part of the ceremony; and why should that surprise Micail, who had seen the saji girls of the Ancient Land dance clad only in their saffron veils?

The tightest drums spoke sharply, once, twice, and again, as Anet moved into the clear space before the fire, her shapely arms raised high. Then the other drums broke in with their own exclamations, a wordless interplay of question and answer that set Micail’s pulse beating a hot response in his veins—and still the dancer had not even moved. Only when the figure of polished amber that lay between her young breasts flared with light did he realize that every inch of her flesh was—
shimmering,
in controlled tremors that swept from knee to breast and back again.

“She channels power,” said Naranshada in a low, awed voice, and Jiritaren nodded drunkenly.

“If this is what they teach them at the sanctuary at Carn Ava, we should send our girls there!” replied Jiritaren.

Micail heard them, but could not speak. It was too hard to breathe, and his skin tingled. He was aware of every hair at the back of his neck—the very air seemed to crackle with tension. This girl was nothing like his beloved, and yet there was a focus, a grace in her poise, that reminded him oddly of Tiriki at prayer.

Almost imperceptibly she had begun to bend her knees, arms gradually coiling down, around, up again, a continuing sinuous motion that carried her forward to spiral around the tall posts holding up the roofs. The firelight brightened her brown hair so that it became the same patchy gold as the dry grass on the hills when touched by the sun. To Micail’s eyes it was as if she glowed with the very radiance of Manoah, and he thought,
She is dancing Light back into the world . . .

Four times around she passed, weaving in and out among the circle of houseposts. Each time she paused, faced a different direction, sank to her knees and arched backward, then straightened both legs and arms, as her back bent like a bow, until with a sudden twist she came upright, arms raised, to begin again. With a twirling, sidewise step, she then made one final circle, scooped up her bearskin cloak and flung it about her. It was as if the light had vanished from the room. She stood unmoving, smiling faintly as her audience let out its breath in a collective sigh, then she turned and swept through the crowd toward the open door.

Briefly, as she passed, her gaze met Micail’s. She had green eyes.

“What an astonishing girl!” said Jiritaren, a little too fervently.

“Aye. Like her mother when she was young, and I first ran off with her.” The king grinned reminiscently, bad teeth showing through his grizzled beard. “Got to find Anet a good husband before some hotblood with more balls than sense decides to copy me!” His shrewd gaze caught Micail’s. “Khayan-e-Durr says I should marry her to you, outland holy man. What do
you
say?”

Micail stared up at him in shock.
But I am married to Tiriki,
he thought, and at the same time, realized that he did not dare to answer at all. It was Naranshada who rescued him.

“Great King, we appreciate the honor you do us, but I beg you to remember, my Lord Micail is royal among our people—and can make no alliance with—without consulting with Prince Tjalan,” Ansha finished, almost as smoothly as if he had known what he was going to say.

Beyond Khattar’s burly shoulder Micail could see Droshrad scowling, if possible, more deeply than he had before. This proposal had come as a shock to the shaman, too. The realization that there might be more reasons than his own confusion to avoid an immediate answer washed over Micail with cold clarity.

“It is so,” he stammered, and watched the king’s face darken.

“Then take counsel to your other prince, from me,” Khattar snarled, in his badly accented Atlantean. “You Sea People say you wish to serve me, make me great among tribes. But without the Royal Woman, I have no power! Consider your answer how you like, but do not take long. Without blood-bond, you will lose your labor force, your stones, and everything else that is here.”