Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon (42 page)

The adults might complain about the seemingly unending regimen of strenuous labor, but the children were in their element, happy to dig until they were muddy from head to heels. If only the youngsters could have been depended upon to stick to the work, the elders could have left the job to them, thought Tiriki as the divots flew. But even Domara, who was so insistent on helping in every grown-up task that they called her “little priestess,” could be distracted by a butterfly.

As Tiriki hacked into the earth again she felt something give. The bindings that held the antler tine to the stock were loose again. She sighed. “Domara, my love, will you take this back down to Heron and ask if he can fix it?”

When the child had started down the hill, Tiriki picked up a bone shoulder blade and knelt on the path to smooth the earth and shift the displaced dirt to the downhill side. Soon it would be time to stop. She had cleared a full length this morning, and had almost reached the point where Kalaran’s section began. Except for Liala and Alyssa, who were sick, and Selast, who was pregnant, everyone in the community was working on the maze, even the Lake folk, although they found this kind of exercise as foreign to their normal lifestyle as did any Atlantean priest or priestess.

Chedan had been forbidden to work. Of course he had protested, saying that inaction would only make him feel worse, but she knew how his bones pained him. He had done his part and more, she had told him, when he had taken the image of the pathway through the hill from Tiriki’s memory and translated it into the pattern of an oval maze that wound back and forth along the slopes of the Tor. Starting as if it meant to go straight up the spine of the hill, the way led sunwise around the middle slope and then dipped and turned back. It circled widdershins almost to the beginning before dropping again and skirting the base of the hill, only to turn and start upward again, a little above the initial path. From there it wound back and forth to nearly touch the summit, but instead doubled back in another curve that brought it at last to the stone circle at the crest.

It had taken a year’s effort to dig out the full three-foot width of pathway for the initial circuit alone. Now they were working down and around on the first return course. The rest of the way was carefully marked out by sticks thrust into the soil, but already it had been trodden often enough to wear a narrow footpath, scarcely wider than a deer trail, into the ground.

Tiriki swayed with a faint sense of vertigo as she visualized the maze—even Chedan’s first sketches had dizzied her, reminding her of a symbol or inscription she was certain she had seen before, though she could not remember where or when. The mage had assured her that its shape was unlike any character or hieroglyph that he was familiar with, and Dannetrasa, who was even more widely read, echoed his conclusion, yet the notion continued to haunt her.

Ancient or new, the pattern worked. She and Chedan had walked it more than once, and each time felt the proximity of another world and touched the inner spirit of the land. This was not the Temple that the prophecies had described, but its power was profound and manifest. When the path was completed, anyone, she was sure, would be able to follow it, and they would find a blessing.

Tiriki scraped the bone blade across the soil again, breathing deeply as the rich scent filled the air. Here, beneath the trees that clothed the base of the Tor, the earth was rich with the humus of many centuries of fallen leaves. The digging would be more difficult on the grassy upper slopes, where the rocky substrate was barely covered with topsoil. She rooted her fingers in the earth and felt its strength flow up into her, as if she were herself part of the complex of life on the Tor, growing from wind and rain, sun and soil—

Startled, she lifted her hands and the eerie voice silenced.

Storm?
wondered Tiriki, gazing at the cloudless sky. But the old ship gong was ringing to announce the noonday meal, and her belly told her it would be welcome.

 

Long red rays from the westering sun slanted through the trees above the hedges. To the east, a sliver of moon was rising over the Tor. Damisa stood in the pool of the Red Spring, ladling water with her hands and then letting it pour down over her body. The iron-rich water had passed first through a shallow pool where it absorbed some slight heat from the sun, but its chill still set goose bumps in her flesh.

Taret had taught them to seek the spring, weather permitting, on the day after their monthly courses were done. This, too, was a rite of passage.
“Women are like the moon,”
the wisewoman would say.
“Every month we start new.”
Damisa hoped it was true. Sometimes she felt that she would like to start her whole life over. It was all wasted anyway. She had been born into the luxuries of Alkonan nobility and trained to serve the Temple of Light, not to work herself ragged in the gritty world of hoes and cookpots.

For a time, at least, she had found some hope for joy—or at least a little happiness—but that was plainly over now. Not only was Selast lost to her, fixated on her approaching child, but Damisa herself had driven Reidel away. She liked to think that it was honor that kept her from seeking him out again when all she had desired was the comfort of someone’s arms. But in all this time, she had found no one else to whom she was willing to turn. She dribbled more water over her head and watched the drops catch like jewels, twinkling red and gold in her long auburn hair.

On impulse, she turned and kissed her hand to the slender rind of pearl that floated in the twilit sky.

A silly child’s rhyme, Damisa thought with a smile, wondering what the moon would have wanted to teach her today.

A sudden burst of wind stirred the treetops and she shivered. As she turned toward the bank where her clothing waited, she remembered that she had promised to bring Alyssa some water from the spring. She stretched to hold a ceramic jug beneath the little waterfall that fed the pool, then climbed out and began to scrub her skin vigorously with a woolen towel.

By the time Damisa reached the hut where the seeress lived, dusk was laying gentle blue veils across the land. She tapped gently on the doorpost, but heard no answer. These days the Grey Adept slept a good deal, but one or another of the saji women who tended her should have been somewhere near. She was tempted to simply leave the jug by the door and go away, but as she bent, she heard an odd sound from within.

Hesitantly she drew aside the hide that curtained the door and saw what she at first took to be a pile of grey cloth heaped beside the hearth. Then she realized that it was shaking and from it came the strange noise. A swift step brought her to Alyssa’s side.

“Where are your helpers?” Damisa said, as she carefully plucked the cloth away from the old woman’s face and tried to straighten her contorting limbs. It occurred to her that whoever had been here had probably already gone to summon assistance. “It’s all right now—be easy—I’m here,” Damisa said, knowing even as she murmured the words that they were untrue. Alyssa was most definitely
not
all right.

“The circle is unbalanced!” the seeress muttered. “If they use it they will die . . .”

“What? Who will die?” Damisa asked desperately. “Tell me!”

“The Falcon of the Sun runs like a serpent in the sky . . .” Alyssa’s eyes blinked open, staring wildly. “The circle is square, but the sun goes round, while the stone unbound grows round with sound . . .”

For a moment then Damisa saw a plain where three vast squared arches stood within a circle of mighty pillars, as if Alyssa had somehow transmitted the image mind to mind. Then the woman’s head began to twitch and Damisa had to struggle to keep her from battering it against the hearthstones.

She heard muffled voices and looked up in relief to see Virja pull back the curtain. Then Chedan came limping in, with Tiriki following.

“She has not wakened?” the mage asked sharply.

“She has
spoken,
” answered Damisa. “She even made
me
see what she . . . was looking at! But I couldn’t understand it.”

The ruddy light cast by the fire on the Grey Adept’s face created an illusion of health. But her closed eyes were sunken pools of shadow. She looked like a dead woman already, save that she was breathing . . .

Chedan lowered himself carefully to a stool and, leaning his weight on his carved staff, bent to take Alyssa’s waxen hand in his own. “Alyssa of Caris!” he said sternly. “Neniath! You hear my voice, you know me. Out of space and time I do summon you,
return
!”

Virja was whispering to Tiriki, “All day she was sleepy. First I could not get her to eat, and then I could not wake her—”

“I hear you, son of Naduil—” The words were strong and clear, but Alyssa’s eyes remained tightly shut.

“Tell me, seeress, what do you see?”

“Joy where there has been sorrow—fear where there should be joy. The one who will open the door is among you, but look beyond him. Little singer—”

They all looked at Tiriki, since that was the meaning of her name. Quickly she knelt between Chedan and Alyssa.

“I am here, Neniath. What would you say to me?”

“I say beware. Love is your foe—only through loss can that love be fulfilled. You preserved the Stone—but now it becomes the seed of Light. That must be planted deeper still.”

“The Omphalos Stone,” breathed Chedan, as if unaware that he had spoken the words aloud. He had once said he still had nightmares in which he alone had to wrestle it down to the ship . . .

With all else that was lost,
thought Damisa,
why could not the Stone too have slipped beneath the sea?

“You spoke of—a foe—disguised as love?” Tiriki was saying, with confusion. “I do not understand! What must I
do
?”

“You will know . . .” Alyssa’s voice weakened. “But can you risk all . . . to gain all . . . ?” They listened tensely, but there was only a rasping as the seeress struggled to breathe.

“Alyssa, how do you fare?” Chedan asked, after a little while had passed.

“I am weary—and Ni-Terat awaits. Her dark veils wrap me round. Please—give me leave to go—”

The mage passed his hands above Alyssa’s body, but his smile was sad. For a moment dappled light swirled above the body of the seeress, then faded away.

“Stay but a little while, my sister, and we will sing you on your journey,” the mage said gently.

Tiriki touched Damisa’s arm. “Go now and fetch the others—”

As Damisa ducked through the door, she heard Chedan’s voice begin the Evening Hymn.

For many hours, the priests and priestesses sang in shifts to ease Alyssa’s passing, but Chedan and Tiriki stayed with the Grey Adept until the end, hoping for another moment of clarity. Even when they were not seers, the sight of those who stood on the threshold of death often extended far indeed; but when she did speak again, Alyssa seemed to think she was on the isle of Caris where she had been born. It would have been cruelty to call her back again.

 

They agreed that Alyssa’s body would be burned the next night, on top of the Tor. Until then, work on the path had been suspended. Domara was sent off with the village children to gather wildflowers to adorn the bier. It relieved the child from the sorrow of her elders, but Tiriki thought the house seemed very silent without her. With no other duties to keep her occupied, Tiriki decided to join Liala on her afternoon visit to Taret’s hut, slowing her swift steps to match the careful progress of the other priestess, who could not get around these days without a walking stick.

“We have suffered other deaths, of course,” said Liala heavily as they made their way along the path, “but she is the first of
her kind
to go.” Tiriki nodded. She knew what the older woman meant. Even poor sad Malaera had been only a simple priestess, with no special talents or powers. Alyssa was the first seeress to die in the new land. Would her troubled soul find rest or continue to wander, caught between the past and the future?

“It was that last Temple ritual, with the Omphalos Stone.” Without meaning to, Tiriki found herself glancing back toward the hut where that egg of ill-omen now lay. “Something in her mind broke, even before Ahtarrath did. After that . . . she was never the same again.”

“Caratra rest her!” Liala made the sign of the Goddess on her breast and brow.

“Yes, she walks with the Nurturer now,” said Tiriki, but her thoughts were far away. She had thought to come along to help Liala, but now realized that she very much needed the comfort of Taret’s wisdom. The old wisewoman had served the Great Goddess for longer than she could imagine. She would help them to understand.

The door to Taret’s house was propped open, and as they approached it, they could hear her saying, in the tongue of the Lake tribe, “You see, she is here now, just as I told you . . . Come in, my daughters,” Taret added. “My visitor has a message for you.”

Seated on the far side of the fire was a young woman wearing a short, sleeveless tunic of blue-dyed wool. She was slim and supple, and her dun-colored hair was caught up in a tail at the back of her head. She had taken off her journey shoes, and her feet were those of a dancer, high-arched and strong.

Seeing the blue tunic, Liala offered the salute of one priestess of Caratra to another—as did Tiriki. The stranger’s dark eyes grew wide.

“They both serve the Mother, too, yes,” said Taret, her birdlike glance darting between them. “This is Anet, daughter to Ayo, Sacred Sister for the people of Azan. They send her with news they cannot entrust to other messengers.”