A faint muttering swept through the room.
“Nothing we cannot handle,” Ansha continued, “but we will have to gain a more precise fix—preferably a site where two major pathways cross.”
“Are you saying that there is such a place?” Haladris, already one of the taller men in the room, drew himself up straight, his hooded eyes widening.
Prince Tjalan stepped forward again.
“Perhaps. A trader called Heshoth has recently arrived in Belsairath with a small party of traders in raw stuffs such as grain and hides. This Heshoth comes from a tribe called the Ai-Zir, which apparently dominates the plain that lies beyond the coastal downs north of here. At the center of their territory is a sanctuary. According to Heshoth, it is a place of great power. Their name for it means ‘a meeting of the god-ways.’ ”
“Are you certain you have understood him correctly?” asked Mahadalku. She was a powerful woman whose strong frame belied her years.
“Can he be trusted?” Metanor wanted to know.
“The merchants here consider him dependable,” Tjalan answered. “More to the point, he speaks our language. The first task, Lord Guardian, will be yours—” The prince addressed Haladris. “Use your skills to determine the potential of the site. The second component is military, and that responsibility, of course, is mine. I will be sending a patrol out to investigate the territory. We need to know if the population is numerous enough to supply us with a labor force that can support our projects.”
Is there any reason they would want to? wondered Micail, but Haladris and Mahadalku were nodding a grudging approval, and the others also seemed willing to go along. Perhaps they hadn’t considered that the natives here might not wish to become the foundation for a new Atlantean empire, or maybe they did not care. But if Atlantis was fated to rise anew in this wintry land, then Micail supposed it would do so, whatever anyone might say.
By local standards, Belsairath might be a metropolis, but it was in fact smaller than the least precinct of Ahtarra, Alkona, or even Taris. Elara and Cleta certainly had no difficulty in finding the Temple that Timul had built here for the Great Mother. Compared to the marble columns, spires, and gilded tiles that had adorned such temples in the Sea Kingdoms, this low, thatch-roofed building was less than imposing, but the wooden uprights of the portico were properly rounded and whitewashed, and the sigil of the Goddess was painted in blue on the pediment above the door.
“It would have been more sensible to build this in the hills, where the villas are,” said Cleta. Her round face brightened as the sun peeked through the clouds that had covered the sky all day. Almost as one, the two girls turned like flowers toward the summery light, welcoming its blaze through closed eyelids.
“There probably weren’t so many of them here then,” Elara murmured. “Oh, Day Star! It seems an eon since I felt Manoah’s warmth—” But even as she spoke she felt the brightness fade, and opening her eyes, watched the clouds close in once more.
“I shouldn’t have spoken. I frightened Him away. . . .” She smiled, then sighed as she saw Cleta looking at her in confusion. “It was a joke, Cleta. Never mind. Now that we’ve found the place, we may as well go in.”
There were more surprises inside. As the door opened, they found themselves in a long room with tinted walls and three inner doors. One of them opened and a priestess emerged, her face placid and unemotional, but as she recognized the white robes of the acolytes, the Blue Robe began to smile.
“Lodreimi! What are you doing here?” exclaimed Elara, recognizing her in turn. Apart from Timul herself, and Marona, whom Elara did not know well, the young Alkonan woman seemed to be the only other Atlantean-born initiate of Ni-Terat, or Caratra, in Belsairath. Elara had wanted to find her but no one had been able to tell her where Lodreimi was staying.
“Serving the Goddess . . .” The Alkonan’s usual gravity dissolved into another smile. “When I arrived here I felt so lost . . . Until I met Timul I didn’t know what to do! I just know you will gain from her wisdom, too. Wait here and I will call her!”
From somewhere deeper within they could hear the repetitive sound of singing or, rather, of girls learning a song. From another direction came the scent of herbs and a faint suggestion of incense. The noise of the muddy but busy thoroughfare just outside was no more than a distant hum. Elara felt her eyes pricking with reminiscent tears as the peace of the place enveloped her. The Temple of the Healers in Ahtarra had felt just the same.
When she could see again, the archpriestess herself stood before them, a comfortably rounded woman with auburn hair braided into a crown around her head, who radiated her own subtle authority. “Elara, Cleta, we have been hoping that you would come to see us. Lodreimi has told us so much about you. Are you chilled? Come into the kitchen and you shall have hot tea, and then I will show you what we are doing here . . .”
The right-hand door led down a hall. More doors opened off of it—they led to sleeping rooms, Timul told them, some used by the priestesses, and others reserved for women who might come to them needing refuge.
“It is hard here for some,” said the archpriestess. “Among the tribes here, women are respected, as a rule, but when they come to the town there is no clan structure to protect them.”
“You give them medicines?” asked Cleta as they passed into the kitchen.
“We give them whatever we can,” said Timul primly. “Food or refuge or healing, according to their need.”
“It was intended that I should become an herbalist,” Cleta said then, “but I have not been able to begin the training.”
“You may begin here whenever you like.” Timul nodded toward a saffron-robed woman who was squatting by the hearth, stirring a cauldron that hung above the fire. “Sadhisebo would welcome your assistance.”
“A saji?” Cleta said doubtfully, as the woman rose with a peculiar fluid grace and turned to greet them warmly. Elara shrank away. She had heard too many tales of the saji women who had served in the temples of the Grey Order in the old days. The Grey Robes studied magic, and magic was a power that might be put to many uses, not all of them approved by the Servants of Light. The mere sight of the diminutive, small-boned saji woman was disturbing in a way that she could not quite identify.
Timul smiled gently. “Did you think them mindless Temple whores? The arts of love are one path to the divine realm, to be sure, but Sahisebo and Saiyano, her sister, are highly skilled in herbal lore.”
“Herbs to cast forth a child?” Cleta wondered.
“Those too, if necessary,” Timul said austerely, “along with those to keep it safely in the womb. We serve life here, you must understand, and the greater good sometimes requires harsh deeds. In order to save, the Goddess must sometimes slay.”
“I do know that.” Elara bowed her head, smiling tentatively as the saji woman placed bowls of tea upon the low table before them. “Even before I was chosen as one of the Twelve I was consecrated to Ni-Terat. In Ahtarra I was the chela of the priestess Liala in the Blue Robe Temple.”
“So I had heard, and that is one reason why you are doubly welcome here . . . But this Temple is not dedicated to Ni-Terat, but to Caratra.”
Elara looked up in surprise. “But—are they not the same?”
“Are you the same child who was taken into that Temple?” Timul asked lightly.
“Of course,” Elara began, and then shook her head. “Oh. The answer, I suppose, is both yes and no. I remember being that child, but I am very different now . . .”
“And the Goddess changes too.” The hard features of the archpriestess grew softly radiant as she continued. “Only to men does she always appear as Ni-Terat, the Veiled One, for to men her clearest truths remain mysterious. But within the Temple, those mysteries are revealed, and so we call her always Caratra, the Nurturer.”
“But I was taught that Caratra was the daughter of Ni-Terat and Manoah,” said Cleta. “How can she be a mother as well?”
Elara lifted one eyebrow. “I s
uppose, in the usual way! How do you think that you came into the world?” She grinned.
“I know where babies come from, thank you!” Cleta flushed. “I am trying to understand the theology!”
“Of course you are,” put in Timul, though she, too, had to suppress a smile. “Drink your tea and I will try to explain it, but do not be surprised if this is not quite the way you have heard the story before. When we travel, we often arrive at new points of view as well as at new lands. But in ancient times the Queen of the Earth was called the Phoenix, because with the turning of time, she fades and is renewed.”
“Like the double-faced statue in the great square in Ahtarra?” asked Cleta.
“Exactly—” Timul agreed.
Elara grinned. “But is the statue of Ni-Terat or Banur?” She paused. “What, did you never hear that old joke?” she went on as Cleta stared at her in incomprehension. “Cleta, you are impossible!”
“But what is the answer?” the younger girl asked.
Timul was smiling broadly now. “The answer, my child, is yes. That is the Mystery. All the gods are one god, and all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator. Surely, even in the Temple of Light, they taught you that. . . .”
“Of course!” said Elara. “But—I was always given to understand that it meant we should seek past forms and images to that which lies beyond them all.”
“The essence of the gods is beyond our comprehension, except for those moments when the spirit takes wings—” Timul looked from one girl to the other.
Elara bowed her head, remembering a moment in her childhood when she had stood watching the sun sink into the sea, straining for something she felt just beyond her grasp. And then, at the moment of greatest splendor, the door had suddenly opened, and for a moment she had felt as though she were one with the sky and the earth. Cleta also nodded, and Elara wondered what memory had come into her mind.
“But we still make statues—” Cleta brought them back to awareness of the present once more.
“We do, because we are in mortal bodies surrounded by physical forms. The Deep Mind speaks a language that uses symbols, not words. No amount of talking about the Goddess can communicate as much as one lovely image.”
“That still does not answer my question about Caratra,” Cleta said stubbornly.
“I was wandering, wasn’t I?” Timul shook her head. “Forgive me. The women here are true daughters of the Goddess, but except for Lodreimi, they do not have the training to discuss theology.”
“Caratra,” Elara repeated, with a sidelong grin for Cleta.
“It is all a matter of levels, you see,” Timul replied. “At the highest level, there is only One, unmanifest, ungendered, all-encompassing, self-sufficient. But when there is only Being, there is no action.”
“And that is why we speak of God and Goddess,” said Cleta. “That much I know. The One becomes Two, and the Two interact to bring spirit into manifestation. The female force awakens the male, he impregnates her, and she gives birth to the world. . . .”
“In each land the gods are different. Some peoples have only a few gods while others worship many. In the Sea Kingdoms, we worshipped four,” continued Timul.
“Nar-Inabi, Lord of the Sea and the Stars, to whom we prayed to bring us through the dark night when Ahtarrath fell,” whispered Elara.
“And Manoah, Lord of Day, whom we honor in the Temple of Light,” Cleta agreed.
“But also Four-Faced Banur, who both preserves and destroys, and Ni-Terat, who is the earth and the Dark Mother of All,” Elara said.
“In Atlantis all we saw of the earth were islands, and so Ni-Terat remained veiled.” Timul reached down to touch the packed earth floor in reverence. “Here,” she said, straightening, “it is otherwise. This place is also an island, but so great that if you go inland you can travel for days with neither sight nor sound of the sea. And so we remember another story. In the Temple of the Goddess it is said that the Age of the Goddess is coming, but this is not something we speak of with outsiders, for too many of them would see any diminution of the primacy of Manoah as a rebellion against the Light itself. . . .”
“What does that have to do with the Temple that the priests are going to build?” asked Cleta, setting down her tea.
Timul’s face grew darker. “I hope very little. The Goddess needs no temples of stone. Indeed, She may be honored more fitly in a garden or a holy grove. The cult of the Great Mother flourished in this land long ago, and there are still some among the natives who can rightly be called priestesses. It is my hope to find them and build on that ancient allegiance . . . It will not matter what the priesthood does then.”
Elara lowered her eyes to her bowl and took another sip of tea. And if it does come to a serious conflict of interest, she asked herself, where will my loyalties lie?
Still deep in thought, she followed the archpriestess through the door that led into the shrine.
The space was all in darkness, save for a single lamp flickering upon the altar. When her eyes became accustomed to the masses of shadow, Elara observed that the walls were frescoed with images that seemed to move in the subtly shifting light.
“The four powers we honor are a little different here,” whispered Timul. “Behold—”
On the eastern wall the Goddess was pictured as a maiden dancing among flowers. The southern wall bore a mural of Caratra as Mother, enthroned with a laughing child upon her knee and all the fruits of the earth around her. In the west was the familiar representation of Ni-Terat, veiled with grey mystery, crowned with stars; but the north wall set Elara’s heart to pounding, for there the Goddess was shown standing with sword in hand, and her face was a skull.
Elara shut her eyes, unable to bear that implacable regard.
“The Maiden, the Mother, and the Wisewoman are the faces of the Goddess that all women know,” said Timul quietly. “We honor Caratra as the source of life, but we who are priestesses must accept and revere both of Ni-Terat’s faces as well, for it is through Her judgment that we will pass in order to be reborn.”
It is true, thought Elara, eyes still closed. I can still feel the Goddess looking at me. But even as that awareness passed through her mind she felt the power that surrounded her changing, warming, holding her like the arms of her mother.
“Now you understand,” came a thought that was not her own. “But do not be afraid, for in darkness and in light, I am here.”
Nine
To those who had relished the sultry noon-tides of an Ahtarran summer, the light of the new land seemed always less gold than silver, just as, for a true Atlantean, the warmest of these northern waters would always evoke a shiver. But none could have denied that a change had come, bringing the marshlands to ever more vibrant life. The refugees welcomed every lengthening minute of light. Even if the sky would never achieve the deep turquoise blue that had crowned Atlantis, still no meadow of the old world could have matched the vivid green of these hills.
For Tiriki, the luxuriant growth seemed one with her own fertility. As the hawthorn bloomed in the copses and primroses opened their glowing petals beneath the trees, her own body rounded and her face grew rosy in the sun. With the fruits of the woodland she ripened, the child within her growing with a vigor unknown in her previous pregnancies, and she gave thanks to Caratra the Nurturer.
The coming of Micail’s child renewed her hope, and new hopes were sparked in the acolytes as well. Tiriki’s child became their link to the future, their talisman of survival. They found excuses to visit her, and gossiped among themselves over every tiny change. Iriel bubbled and cooed and fretted; Elis cooked and cleaned for Tiriki at the slightest opportunity; and Damisa became like a solicitous shadow, except when she was annoyed. Tiriki accepted it all with good grace—indeed, she would have been completely happy—only sometimes in the night she woke weeping, because Micail, who should have shared her joy, was lost, and she knew she must bear and raise the child alone.
There was a spot
on the bank where willow trees made a whispering enclosure by the rushing river. It had become a retreat where the senior clergy could gather; warm sunlight still fell dappled through the leaves, strong enough to sparkle in Alyssa’s grizzled hair.
“One is lost . . . one is found . . . many tread the sacred round . . . from the hill unto the plain . . . and two will be one once again . . .” The seeress’s voice trailed to silence, and she smiled, eyes focused on nothing. Chedan watched her, wondering whether this time there would be some significance to her meanderings.
With an effort, he kept his features serene as he gestured to Liala to fill the seeress’s bowl with tea. Oracles, the mage reminded himself, were problematic enough when delivered in a properly prepared setting, in response to specific questions. But although in the months since their arrival, the Omphalos Stone, wrapped in silk and enclosed in its own shelter of stone near the hut Alyssa and Liala shared, had been quiescent, Alyssa had begun to drift in and out of the prophetic state without warning, as if she had been uprooted not only from Ahtarrath but from ordinary reality.
The scent of mint and lemongrass filled the air as Liala poured tea from an earthenware beaker into four carven beechwood bowls.
“It is just as I was saying. . . .” Tiriki paused to accept a bowl of her own. “We must never forget that our lives are not only our own. Before, there were always the rules of the Temple to guide us. Now it is our own feet that create the path, and we must be prepared to see them falter from time to time.” She paused again, and Chedan knew she was thinking about Maleara, the older Blue Robe priestess, who had attempted to hang herself the night before.
“I believe Malaera has not completely lost her way,” Tiriki continued, “although we will have to keep watch on her for a while. She is confused and heartsick, and who among us has not felt something similar? Worse, she suffers from aching joints, so there is little for her to do that does not cause her actual pain.”
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