Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon (39 page)

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll live,” said Micail tightly, “and so will he. Fetch me a strap and a pad of cloth!” Not until Micail had finished binding Khattar’s wound did he look up at his cousin. “This was an evil deed.”

Tjalan only grinned. “What, are you sorry I rescued you?”

“The boy was already panicking. In another moment I would have talked myself free.”

“Perhaps—” The prince’s hawklike gaze rested for a moment upon his guards, who had taken up position around them. “But this moment was bound to come. As well now as later, wouldn’t you say?”

No,
thought Micail with a grimace,
better never. Rajasta’s prophecy did not predict this day . . .
but some inner warning kept him silent.

D
uring high summer in the marshes, the skies sometimes stayed clear for as long as a week. Standing in full sunlight with closed eyes, Damisa could almost imagine herself basking in the radiant heat of Ahtarrath. Even in the shade of the enclosure they had built for Selast to dwell in during the month of seclusion that preceded marriage, it was warm.

Too warm,
she thought, fanning her cheeks with her hand.
I have grown used to living in the mists,
and then,
I have been in this land too long.
And yet if they had been in the Sea Kingdoms, she still would not have had Selast to herself forever.

As Iriel and Elis stripped off the robe Selast had worn to her ritual bath in the Red Spring, sunlight falling through the branches that thatched the enclosure dappled her skin like the hide of a fawn. Five years in the fogs of the new land had faded her bronze skin to gold, and constant physical labor had given her angular limbs a wiry strength and a grace in movement that reminded Damisa once more of some creature more graceful than humankind. But Selast was not a fawn, she thought with a sudden pang; she was a young mare with a thick mane of wavy black hair and fire in her dark eyes.

“And now for the robe—” said Iriel, lifting the folds of blue linen in her arms, “and then we will crown you with flowers!” She looked around her, frowning as she realized the basket was empty. “Kestil and the other children were to have gathered them this morning! If they have forgotten . . .”

“I’ll run down to the village,” said Elis, starting for the door.

“If both of you go, you can cover the ground more quickly,” put in Damisa. “I will stay to watch over our bride.”

When they had gone, Selast paced about the enclosure. She picked up the white linen shift, and then the blue gown—made of linen from flax they had grown themselves and dyed with native woad. It was not quite the blue worn by the priestesses of Caratra at home, but close enough to make Damisa uncomfortable. To don that blue was to offer oneself to the service of the Mother. Damisa felt a little ill at the thought of Selast’s slender body swollen with child.

“Are you nervous?”

“Nervous?” Selast answered with the quick turn of the head that Damisa had learned to love. “A little, I suppose. What if I forget my lines?”

Damisa did not think it very likely. They had been trained in memorization since they were chosen for the Temple as children.

“Nervous about being married, I mean.”

“To Kalaran?” Selast laughed. “I have known him since I was nine years old, even before we were chosen as acolytes, though I have to admit I didn’t think much about him until that night last year when we were looking for Iriel. He always seemed so angry with everyone. It wasn’t until then that I realized how guilty he still feels for surviving when Kalhan and Lanath and the others were lost. That’s why he’s so . . . sarcastic sometimes. He’s trying to hide his pain.”

“Oh, is that the reason?” Damisa heard the sarcasm in her own voice and tried to smile. “Are you marrying him from pity, then, instead of duty?”

Selast stood still finally, staring at her with a frown. “Perhaps a little of both. And at least we are friends. Does it matter? This day had to come.”

“In Ahtarrath, yes, but here?” Damisa rose suddenly and gripped Selast’s slim shoulders. “We have no Temple, and little remains of our priesthood. Why should we ruin our lives in order to breed up more?”

Selast’s eyes widened, and she lifted her own hand to touch Damisa’s hair. “Are you jealous of Kalaran? It won’t change anything between you and me . . .”

But it already has, thought Damisa, staring down at her friend, wild-eyed. “You will sleep by his side and care for his home and bear his children, and you think you will not change?” She realized that she was shouting as Selast recoiled. “You don’t have to do this!” she pleaded, “Remember Taret’s tales of the island to the north where the warrior women train? We could go there and be together—”

Selast shook her head sharply, and with an abrupt movement slipped from Damisa’s grasp. “And to think that I was always the rebel, and you the proper priestess with her nose in the air! You don’t mean what you’re saying, Damisa—you are Tiriki’s acolyte!

“Kalaran needs me,” Selast continued. “That night on the mountain he told me that after the Sinking he lost all faith—he could no longer feel the unseen powers. But when we clung together, lost and shivering, he realized that he was not alone.”

“
I
need you!” Damisa exclaimed, but Selast shook her head.

“You
want
me, but you are strong enough to live without me. Do you think it was so we might seek our own pleasure that we were spared when so many others died?”

“Damn those who died, and damn Tiriki, too!” muttered Damisa. “Selast—I love you—” She reached out to take the other girl in her arms again, her heart full of everything she couldn’t say. She let go quickly as the gate swung open and Iriel and Elis pushed through, their arms filled with flowers. Face flaming, tongue-tied, Damisa fled the bride-house, and only the sound of laughter followed her.

 

The wedding procession was coming, curving around through the forest and starting up the path that led up the eastern slope of the Tor. Tiriki glimpsed their bright robes through the trees as the chime of bells was carried through the wind. Carefully, Chedan lit a waxed splinter from the lamp and thrust it into the kindling laid on the altar stone.

The wind whipped the spark into flame and fluttered the draperies of the priests and priestesses who waited within the circle of stones. The weight of necklet and diadem felt strange to Tiriki, who for so long had worn no ornament at all, and the silken draperies oddly smooth to one who had become accustomed to leather and coarse wool.

I will remember,
thought Tiriki as the wedding party crested the rim of the hill,
but I will not weep. I will cast no shadow on Selast and Kalaran’s day.

Tiriki and Micail had been married in the temple that crowned the Star Mountain—the most sacred precinct of Ahtarrath. Their union was witnessed by Deoris and Reio-ta and the senior clergy of the Temple, and blessed by the old Guardian Rajasta in one of the last rites he had performed before he died.

Now it was Chedan who stood to welcome the bridal pair with the sacred symbols that adorned his tabard gleaming in the sun. Instead of the Star Mountain, their temple was this rough circle of stones atop the Tor. But though this sanctuary in the marsh lacked Ahtarrath’s majesty, Tiriki had learned enough in the past five years to suspect it might be a match in power.

Micail had been resplendent in white, the band of gold across his brow no brighter than his hair, and she had for the first time donned the blue robe and fillet of Caratra, though she herself had been little more than a child.
Did I seek to begin bearing too young?
she wondered then.
Was that why I could never birth a living child? Until we came here,
she added as Kestil and Domara came dancing ahead of the procession, strewing the path with flowers. But Selast had reached her twentieth year, and life in this wilderness had made her healthy and strong. Her babes would thrive.

Domara emptied her basket of flowers and came running to her mother’s side. Tiriki gathered her up gratefully, delighting in the child’s warm weight and the wildflower scent of her red hair.
Micail is lost to me, but in his daughter, a part of him lives still . . .

Her preoccupation had kept her from hearing Chedan’s words of welcome. She had been so excited at her own wedding, so completely focused on Micail, that she had scarcely heard them that first time, either. Already the mage was binding Kalaran’s right wrist to Selast’s left and passing them, still linked, over the flickering flame. Then, still bound together, the couple processed sunwise around the altar stone.

Chedan led them through the formal oaths in which they promised to bring up their children in the service of Light, and act as priest and priestess to each other. There were no words of love, Tiriki noticed now, but for herself and Micail the love had been there already.

The stars themselves foretold our union!
her heart cried, released by the stress of the moment from the control that had enabled her to survive.
So why were we torn apart so soon?

Kalaran’s voice wavered, but Selast’s responses were loud and firm. They had respect for each other, and perhaps in time the love would grow. As the lengthy oaths were finished, Chedan lifted his hands in benediction and faced them across the fire.

“To this woman and this man grant wisdom and courage, O Great Unknown! Grant them peace and understanding! Grant purity of purpose and true knowledge to the two souls who stand here before you. Give unto them growth according to their needs, and the fortitude to do their duty in the fullest measure. O Thou Who Art, both female and male and more than either, let these two live in Thee, and for Thee.”

This part, Tiriki remembered. Bound wrist to wrist, she had felt Micail’s warmth as her own, and in the invocation, something further, a third essence that enfolded them both in a power that united them even as it transcended. She could sense that sphere of energy now, even though she stood on its fringes, aware for a moment not only of the link between Selast and Kalaran, but of the web of energy that connected everyone in the circle, and beyond that, the land around them, resonating into realms she now knew existed within and beyond it, but could not see.

“O Thou Who Art,”
Tiriki’s heart cried, still thinking of Micail.
“Let us all live in Thee!”

 

It was strange, thought Chedan as he set down the deer rib he had been gnawing, how scarcity changed one’s attitude to food. Watching Tiriki and the others tuck into the feast which the folk of the Lake village had created to honor the newlyweds, he remembered how, in the Ancient Land, the priesthood had seen food as a distraction from the cultivation of the soul. But in the Sea Kingdoms, whatever land and sea might lack, the trading ships could supply. In Alkonath, not so many years ago, Chedan had been on the verge of becoming portly. He could count his own ribs now.

There had been times, particularly during the winter months when the only thing left to eat was millet gruel, when Chedan had wondered why he fought so hard to keep the body alive. But even the Temple had recognized that the pleasures of the table and the marriage bed helped reconcile men to incarnation in physical bodies, whose lessons were necessary to the evolution of the soul. And so he chewed slowly, savoring the interplay of salt and fat and the flavors of the herbs with which the roast had been rubbed, and the juicy red meat of the deer.

“That was a beautiful ceremony,” Liala commented. “And the power in the Tor is—even more than we had thought. Is it not?” She had been ill for much of the spring, but she had refused to miss this celebration.

“I suppose someone must have known that, even here, because they built the circle of stones to focus the power,” observed Rendano, who was sitting on the other side of the table. He frowned as if doubting that these primitives could manage such a feat.

“We are not the first of our kind to come here,” said Alyssa in a flat voice. “The Temple of the Sun that stood beside the river Naradek on the coast of this land is in ruins now, but the wisewoman of these people is an initiate of sorts.”

“Of sorts!” Rendano said disdainfully. “Is that all we will leave behind us? What will
her
children know of the greatness of Atlantis?” He gestured toward Selast, who was attempting to feed a piece of bannock to a laughing Kalaran.

“Atlantis is lost,” Chedan said quietly, “but the Mysteries remain. There is much for us to do here.”

“Yes . . . Do you remember the maze below the temple on the Star Mountain?” Tiriki asked then. “Was it not intended to teach the way to pass between the worlds?”

“Only in legends,” Rendano scoffed. “Such devices are a training for the soul.”

“That night when Iriel was lost . . .” She struggled to find the right words. “I walked the maze in the heart of the hill and came to a place that was not this world.”