Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon (9 page)

“You know me too well,” the mage said softly.

Micail laughed. “If Reio-ta hadn’t offered,” he went on, disingenuously, “no doubt Chedan would have asked.” Catching Tiriki’s eye, Micail jerked his head slightly in the direction of the garden, as if to say,
The two of you could talk alone out there.

“Come, Mother,” Tiriki said brightly. “Let the men have their little ceremonies. Perhaps we might walk in your garden? I think that is what I will miss most.”

Deoris lifted an eyebrow, first at Tiriki and then at Micail, but she allowed her daughter to take her arm without comment. As they passed through the open doors, they could hear Chedan proposing the first toast.

The courtyard garden Reio-ta had built for his lady was unique in Ahtarrath and, since the fall of the Ancient Land, perhaps in the world. It had been designed as a place of meditation, a re-creation of the primal paradise. Even now the breeze was sweet with the continual trilling of songbirds, and the scent of herbs both sweet and pungent perfumed the air. In the shade of the willows, mints grew green and water-loving plants opened lush blossoms, while salvias and artemisia and other aromatic herbs had been planted in raised beds to harvest the sun. The spaces between the flagstones were filled with the tiny leaves and pale blue flowers of creeping thyme.

The path itself turned in a spiral so graceful that it seemed the work of nature rather than art, leading inward to the grotto where the image of the Goddess was enshrined, half veiled by hanging sprays of jasmine, whose waxy white flowers released their own incense into the warm air.

Tiriki turned and saw Deoris’s large eyes full of tears.

“What is it? I must admit a hope that you are finally willing to fear what must come, if it will persuade you—”

Deoris shook her head, with a strange smile. “Then I am sorry to disappoint you, my darling, but frankly the future has never had any real power to frighten me. No, Tiriki, I was only remembering . . . it hardly seems seventeen years ago that we were standing in this very spot—or no—it was up on the terrace. This garden was barely planted then. Now look at it! There are flowers here I still can’t name. Really I don’t know why anyone wants wine; I can grow quite drunken sometimes just on the perfumes here—”

“Seventeen years ago?” Tiriki prompted, a little too firmly.

“You and Micail were no more than children”—Deoris smiled—“when Rajasta came. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” answered Tiriki, “it was just before Domaris died.” For a moment she saw her own pain echoed in her mother’s eyes. “I still miss her.”

“She raised me, too, you know, with Rajasta, who was more of a father to me than my own,” Deoris said in a low voice. “After my mother died, and my father was too busy running the Temple to pay attention to us. Rajasta helped take care of me, and Domaris was the only mother I knew.”

Although she had heard these very words a thousand times, Tiriki stretched out her hand in swift compassion. “I have been fortunate, then, in having two!”

Deoris nodded. “And I have been blessed in you, Daughter, late though I came to know you! And in Galara, of course,” she added, with a look almost of reproof.

The gap in their ages had given Tiriki and the daughter Deoris had by Reio-ta few opportunities to know each other. She knew much more about Nari, the son Deoris had borne to fulfill her obligation to bear a child of the priestly caste, who had become a priest in Lesser Tarisseda.

“Galara,” Tiriki mused. “She is thirteen now?”

“Yes. Just the age you were when Rajasta brought me here. He was an eminent priest in the Ancient Land, perhaps our greatest authority on the meaning of the movements of the stars. He interpreted them to mean that we had seven years—but it was the date of his own death he foretold. We thought then that perhaps he had been completely mistaken. We hoped . . .” She plucked a sprig of lavender and turned it in her fingers as they walked. The sharp, sweet scent filled the air. “But I should not complain; I have had ten more years to love you and to enjoy this beautiful place. I should have died beside your father, many, many years ago!”

They had completed a circuit of the spiral path, and stood once more opposite the Mother’s shrine.

Tiriki stopped, realizing that her mother was speaking not of Reio-ta, who had been a kind stepfather, but of her true father. “Riveda,” she muttered, and in her mouth it was like a curse. “But you were innocent. He used you!”

“Not entirely,” Deoris said simply, “I—I loved him.” She looked around at her daughter, fixing her with those stormy eyes whose color could shift so swiftly from grey to blue. “What do you know of Riveda—or rather, what do you think you know?”

Tiriki hid her frown behind a flower. “He was a healer, whose treatises on medicine have become a standard for our training today—even though he was executed as a black sorcerer!” She lowered her voice. “What else do I need to know?” she asked, forcing a smile. “In every way that matters, Reio-ta has been my father.”

“Oh, Tiriki, Tiriki.” Deoris shook her head, her eyes filled with secret thoughts. “It is true, Reio-ta was born to be a father, and a good one. But still there is a duty of blood that is different than the honor you owe the man who raised you. You need to understand what it was that Riveda was seeking—why it was that he fell.”

They had come to the center of the spiral, where the Goddess smiled serenely through her curtain of flowers. Deoris paused, bowing her head in reverence. Behind her was a garden seat carved of stone, inlaid with a golden pattern of turtles. She sank down upon it as if her legs did not have the strength to carry both her and the weight of her memories.

Tiriki nodded to the Power the image represented, then leaned against a nearby olive tree and crossed her arms beneath her breasts, waiting. It was not the Great Mother, but the woman who had borne her whose words interested her now.

“Your father had the most brilliant mind of anyone I have ever known. And except perhaps for Micail’s father, Micon, he had the strongest will. We never fell in love with ordinary men, Domaris and I,” Deoris added with a rueful smile. “But what you must understand first of all is that Riveda was not a destroyer. Both black and white are mingled in the grey robes his order wore. He knew from his studies and the practice of medicine that any living thing that does not grow and change will die. Riveda tested the laws of the Temple because he desired to make it stronger, and ultimately he broke them for the same reason. He came to believe that the priesthood had become so locked into ancient dogmas that it could not adapt, no matter what disaster might occur.”

“That is
not
so,” Tiriki replied indignantly, defending the traditions and training that had shaped her life.

“I sincerely hope that it is not.” Deoris smiled tolerantly. “But it is up to you and Micail to prove him wrong. And you will never have a better chance. You will lose much that is fair in this exile, but you will escape our old sins as well.”

“And so will you, Mother! You must agree to come away—”

“Hush,” said Deoris, “I cannot. I will not. Riveda was tried and executed not only for his own deeds, but also for much that was done by others—the Black Robes, who were only caught and punished later. It was their work that broke the bonds Riveda had loosened. They sought power, but Riveda wanted knowledge. That was why I helped him. If Riveda deserved his fate—then my guilt is no less.”

“Mother—” Tiriki began, for still she did not entirely understand.

“Give my place to your sister,” Deoris said, resolutely changing the subject. “I have already arranged for an escort to bring Galara and her baggage to your chambers the first thing in the morning, so you will have a hard time turning her away.”

“I assumed you would send her,” Tiriki said, exasperated.

“Then that’s settled. And now,” said Deoris as she got to her feet, “I think it’s time we rejoined the men. I doubt that Chedan and Micail have had any more luck in persuading Reio-ta than you have had with me. But they are two against one, and my husband may be feeling in need of reinforcement by now.”

Defeated, Tiriki followed her mother back to the porch, where the men were sitting with goblets and two small jugs of Carian wine. But Micail looked thunderous, and Chedan was also glaring at his drink. Only Reio-ta showed any sign of serenity.

Tiriki shot Micail a glance, as if to say,
I take it he is also still determined to stay?

Micail nodded faintly, and Tiriki turned to her stepfather, intending to beg him to go with them.

Instead, she pointed to Deoris, exclaiming, “You would go fast enough if
she
decided on it! You are sacrificing each other, for no good reason. You must agree to come with us!”

Deoris and Reio-ta exchanged tired glances, and Tiriki felt a sudden chill, as if she were a novice priestess chancing upon forbidden mysteries.

“It is your destiny to carry the truth of the Guardians to a new land,” said Deoris gently, “and it is our karma to remain. It is not sacrifice but an atonement, which we have owed since—”

Reio-ta completed her thought. “Since before the . . . fall of the Ancient Land.”

Chedan had closed his eyes in pain. Micail looked from one to the other, brows knitting in sudden surmise.

“Atonement,” Micail echoed softly. “Tell me, Uncle—what do you know about the
Man with Crossed Hands
?” His voice shook, and Tiriki also felt a tremor in the stone beneath her feet, as if something else had heard his words.

“What?” rasped Reio-ta, his dark face going ashen. “He shows himself to you?”

“Yes,”
whispered Tiriki, “this morning, when the earth shook—he was trying to break his chains. And I—
I knew his name!
How can that be?”

Once more an odd look passed between Deoris and her husband, and he reached out to take her hand.

“Then you unwittingly bring the clearest proof,” said Deoris quietly, “that it
is
our fate and our duty to stay. Sit.” She gestured imperiously. “Tiriki, I see now that I must tell you and Micail the rest of the story, and even you, Chedan, old friend. Great adept though you are, your teachers could not give you the parts of the story that they did not know.”

Reio-ta took a deep breath. “I . . . loved my brother.” His gaze flickered toward Micail in momentary appeal. “Even in the Temple of Light . . . there have always been some who . . . served the darkness. We were . . . taken by the Black Robes who . . . sought for themselves the power of Ahtarrath. I agreed to let them use me . . . if they would spare him. They betrayed me, and tried to kill him. But Micon . . . forced himself to . . . live, long enough to sire you and pass to you his power.” He looked at Micail again, struggling for words.

Tiriki gazed at them with quick compassion, understanding now why it was Micail, not Reio-ta, who held the magical heritage of his royal line. If Micon had died before his son was born, the powers of Ahtarrath would have descended to Reio-ta, and thereby to the black sorcerers who then held him in thrall.

“They . . . broke . . . his body,” stammered Reio-ta. “And . . . my mind. I did not know myself till . . . long after. Riveda took me in and I . . . helped him. . . .”

Tiriki looked back at her mother. What did this have to do with the Man with Crossed Hands?

“Reio-ta helped Riveda as a dog will serve the one who feeds him,” Deoris said defensively, “not understanding what he did. I assisted Riveda because I loved the spirit in him that yearned to bring new life into the world. In the crypt beneath the Temple of Light there was an . . . image, whose form seemed different to each one who beheld it. To me, it always appeared as a bound god, crossed arms straining against his chains. But the image was a prison that confined the forces of chaos. Together we worked the rite that would release that power because Riveda thought that by unleashing that force he could wield the energies that power the world. But my sister forced me to tell her what we had done. The wards were already unraveling when Domaris went down into that dark crypt alone, at risk of life and limb, to repair them—”

“All these things I knew,” Chedan put in quietly. “The power of the Omphalos Stone can only slow the destructive forces unleashed by these rites long ago. The disintegration has been gradual, but it is still happening. We can only hope that when Atlantis falls, there will be an end.”

“Didn’t Rajasta use to say, ‘To give in instead of fighting death is cowardice’?” Micail put in, tartly.

“But he would also say,” Deoris replied with painful sweetness, “ ‘When you break something, it is your duty to mend it, or at least sweep up the debris.’ Although we meant no evil, we made the choices that brought it forth—we set in motion a chain of events that has doomed our way of life.”

A long moment passed in silence. The four of them sat as motionless as the carven friezes that framed the doorway.

“We must stay because there is one final ritual to perform.” By Reio-ta’s steady speech, they recognized the depth of his emotion. “When the Man with Crossed Hands breaks his chains, we who know him so well must confront him.”

“Spirit to spirit we will address him,” added Deoris, her great eyes shining. “There is no Power in the world without a purpose. The chaos that Dyaus brings shall be as a great wind that strips trees and scatters seeds far and wide. You are born to preserve those seeds, my children—glorious branches from the ageless tree of Atlantis, freed of its rot, free to take root in new lands. Perhaps the Maker will understand this, and be appeased.”

Was it truly so? At this moment, Tiriki knew only that this day offered her the last sight that she would ever have of her mother. Sobbing, she moved forward and folded the older woman in her arms.