Ancestors of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Her startled gaze flew to his before he could hide the thought that had come to him, that she would need any comfort she could find if the plague got worse, and he did not survive . . .

  A shadow flickered across the grass. He looked up, his heart lifting despite his anxiety as he glimpsed the graceful shape of a falcon against the sun.

  Twelve

  The falcon floated above the plain, a speck of life against the grey immensity of sky. To the falcon’s eye, there was no difference between priest and ploughman, between the humans who hoed the fields and those who toiled to move the great sarsen stones out on the plain. The falcon viewed all the activities of men with the same lordly detachment. Micail, striving to weld seven singers into an instrument able to levitate stone, wished he could feel the same.

  Last night he had dreamed that he sat with Chedan in a little taverna in Ahtarra just below the library, sipping raf ni’iri and letting their conversation range as it sometimes did with Ardral. In fact he was rather surprised that it had not been Ardral, and he wondered if for some reason he were projecting one man’s face onto the other; though he had respected the Alkonan mage, he had never seen enough of him for them to become close friends. But no doubt this was merely some scenario born of his current preoccupation, of no significance. They had been discussing the training of chelas, as he remembered, and the various uses of song.

  “All right, then—” Wrenching his thoughts back to the present, he pointed toward a rock he had placed on a stump about ten feet away. “Give me your notes, softly first, and at my signal, focus the vibration upon the stone . . .”

  He had brought his untried stand of singers to a bit of woodland that lay between the plain and the cluster of huts the Ai-Zir had built to house their guests. They had now been here for more than a year already, and if he could not yet call this place home, at least it was a refuge.

  “That’s fine,” Micail said, as the voices quavered and veered into disharmony. “Best to begin with the more experienced singers.” He gestured to the Alkonan priest Ocathrel, who had until yesterday been out on the plain with Naranshada and the trainee engineers, selecting and splitting sarsen stones to make the great ring formation. Sarsen rock was a kind of sandstone, but forces which even Ardral could not entirely explain had in some distant eon compressed it so that it was both harder and more dense that any natural rock the Atlanteans had ever seen. If it had not been formed between bands of lighter stone it would not have been possible to crack such large slabs loose at all. But that same compression had aligned the crystalline particles mixed into the stone, and the hammering had awakened them.

  This was not the promised Temple, but the means to build it, a construct that would not only allow them to calculate the movements of the heavens, but to raise and focus power.

  Only this morning, Ocathrel had volunteered to help teach the acolytes, partly because he had three daughters of his own and felt he might know better how to motivate them. Micail had been dubious at first, but it was soon apparent that the older priest had spoken nothing less than the truth.

  Ocathrel smiled, smoothed his thinning hair, and filled his lungs. He then released a note so deep, so resonant, Micail could feel its vibration coursing slowly through his own bones. He himself was a tenor, but he could handle the baritone range, and came in on the next note, four steps up.

  Lanath was already sweating with strain, his tone wavering, but Micail commanded him with a glance, and after that the boy’s quaver resolved and held true. In the same moment Kyrrdis brought Elara in, four notes up in the contralto range, and then in turn Cleta and Galara, who both had proven rather unexpectedly to have fine, if not particularly powerful, soprano voices.

  Brows furrowed in concentration, the singers kept the sound going through circular breathing until the seven tones united into a simple chord; and though it grew no louder, the vibrations perceptibly shifted in quality. Micail damped his excitement and redirected their focus to the piece of stone waiting on the stump. The harmonics rose and fell slightly, making a unity that thrummed through the shady grove, one with the wind . . . until the rock began slowly to rise, higher and then . . . higher . . . With a gasp, Lanath lost his place in the rhythm. The chorus turned ragged, and the rock teetered and fell to the ground.

  “When one fails, all fail!” Micail snapped. “Now pull in your energies and ground!” The seven closed their eyes, consciously regularizing their breathing.

  “I’m sorry!” whispered Lanath, his face red with embarrassment. “I can do it just fine when I’m alone . . .”

  “I know, lad. And you did very well, until the end.” Micail forced himself to speak with kindness. The glares the girls were giving the boy were enough reproof for now. “You just lost your concentration; that is not a fatal flaw. But from now on I want you to practice when you’re in company until you can hold that note, no matter what is going on!” He turned to the others. “Ocathrel, Kyrrdis—thank you for your help. I know you have other tasks to perform. As do we all—” He frowned at the others. “Go on then. Wait, Galara—Ardral wants you to copy a text. Come with me.”

  “But why do we need another copy of The Struggle of Ardath?” Galara muttered as they walked back through the woods. “It might as well have happened a million years ago—”

  “More like eight hundred. And I warrant you will find it is something more than just an old legend,” Micail replied with hard-learned patience. At first he had feared that working with Tiriki’s half sister would only remind them both too painfully of all that they had lost. Instead, they seemed to find a strange comfort together.

  Galara proved to have very little in common with Tiriki, who to his certain knowledge had never, even at age fifteen, exhibited anything like this girl’s mercurial moods that so self-indulgently veered between sullen poses and outright rebellion. He had to remind himself how much younger the girl was. They had not been raised as sisters, so why should they be alike?

  “I mean, what does any of it matter?” Galara raged. “I mean—what did you tell me, practically the first thing? When you first said we’d have to leave? That there would be very limited resources in the new land! And you were right! So why is it the first thing everyone wants to do is build another Temple to the same gods who did nothing for us when we needed them most?”

  Micail stopped in his tracks, glaring. “Hush, now, Gal-lie,” he muttered, with a quick glance about to see if anyone had heard her. Keeping up morale among the Atlanteans was almost as important as presenting a united face to the Ai-Zir. “Who but the gods preserved us? They did not need to send any messenger to warn us, but in fact they sent many—to whom we did not even truly listen. They saved us to reestablish our Temple—”

  “Do you really believe that?” Galara laid a hand on his arm, gazing up at him intensely. “I can’t—not when you have to do it with lackwits like Lanath and that sourpuss Cleta! If the gods really wanted the Temple rebuilt, why didn’t they save Tiriki instead of them?”

  “Don’t say it! Don’t ever say that to me!” Sudden rage surged through him and he thrust her away.

  Galara took a quick step to regain her balance, her face suddenly pale. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

  “You didn’t think!” Micail got out through clenched teeth. He had believed his sorrow healed. He could go for weeks, even months at a time now, without dreaming of Tiriki—and then some memory would tear the wound open again.

  “Go! You know the way. Leave me be. Plague Ardral with your endless questions, if you dare,” he managed at last. “I don’t know why the gods chose us to live. I no longer even know if saving anything of Atlantis is the right thing to do! But the prophecy did not say that you or I would rule the new land—only that I would found the new Temple here. And that, by all the gods, is what I shall do!”

  “The lord Micail—say you he too was a royal prince?” Khayan-e-Durr, Queen of the Ai-Zir, inclined her head as Micail passed by the sunshade beneath which the women sat sp
inning. “Uneasy the land with so many rulers,” said the queen, speculatively, “yet he has some appeal . . .”

  Elara traded glances with Cleta and suppressed a smile. It had taken some months for them to learn the language well enough to be accepted, and only now was real communication beginning to be possible. Micail is indeed a man whom women’s eyes follow, she thought, as he slowed for a moment and bowed in return. She doubted, though, that he had really been aware of the queen’s salutation. It was an automatic response, trained into him at the court of Mikantor in Ahtarrath.

  “He was the heir of the eldest son, yes,” Elara answered at last. “In the Ten Kingdoms, and the Ancient Land before them, there were powers that descended mostly through the male line of the royal house. But my lord’s preference has always been for the priesthood. It was his uncle, Reio-ta, who actually ruled.”

  “So the prince did not take his throne, and the land was lost,” the queen replied. “We have a similar story that the people sometimes tell. Still, the blood of kings is always worth something. A pity the man has sired no child. Our shaman, Droshrad, says you outlanders came with the wind and will soon go, but I am not so sure.” She paused, considering, and Elara raised an eyebrow at this hint of conflict between the shamans and the women of the tribe.

  Cleta was frowning. “I had heard that Droshrad opposed your decision to welcome us,” she said guardedly, “but I thought he had come to appreciate the knowledge we bring—at least there has been no difficulty in recent moons.”

  “Fear the wolf that prowls, not the one that howls,” the queen answered. “That old man goes into the woods to lay plots and mutter spells. It would be better if your people made blood-bond with our tribe. Perhaps out-breeding will improve Prince Micail’s fertility, as it does among the herds. Yes,” Khayan-e-Durr chuckled softly, “we shall have to find your unripe lord a wife of good family, from a royal clan.”

  Elara schooled her face to hide her shock, both at the content and the calculation in those words. Almost equally appalling was the flare of possessive fury that heated her cheeks. The queen had a point—it would be a pity to lose Micail’s bloodline. But his seed belonged to the sacred lineage of the Temple. If a mate who was unrelated must be found, there were others who qualified: Cleta, or—her pulse quickened unexpectedly—she herself could certainly bear him a child.

  But she controlled her reaction and looked at the queen with a sigh. “My lord still mourns his wife, who was lost in the escape,” the acolyte said solemnly. “I do not think he is ready to think of such things.”

  But I am, she could not help thinking, and not with Lanath! She cast another swift glance at Cleta and realized that she, too, was watching Micail as he finally disappeared in a crowd of Ai-Zir. It was strange. Elara had always thought of Micail as the husband of the high priestess. It was strange to view him suddenly as . . . a man, and an available one, at that.

  “Well, there is no urgency yet,” the queen said comfortably, as she set her spindle turning, “but the alliance between our peoples would be strengthened by a marriage.”

  Elara had been in Azan-Ylir long enough to understand that according to tradition, almost all matings were arranged by the matriarchs of the clan. She eyed the queen again, uncertainly. In the warm sunlight she had taken off her royal cape of finely tanned doeskin painted with the symbols of her rank and tribe. The elbow-length sleeves and hem of her upper garment of pale grey-green wool was edged in a patterned braid sewn with discs of bone, straining a little over an ample bosom on which lay necklaces of amber and jet. A voluminous skirt with interwoven woolen stripes of different colors fell in folds about her feet. Khayan-e-Durr’s brown hair, bundled into a net of twisted cord, was threaded with grey, but the queen had a majesty about her that did not depend on fine attire.

  Over the preceding months it had become clear that the Women’s Side held a very real, if different, kind of power. According to custom, the queen was not Khattar’s wife, but his elder sister, and at times seemed to view him as hardly grown. It was her son Khensu, not his, who would be Khattar’s heir; moreover, she and the clan mothers had the right of final decision to go to war.

  They recorded the matings of the beasts as well as men, and before the men could make war, the women must agree they had the resources to do so. In the priestly caste of Atlantis, certain powers were inherited by the men or the women, but nevertheless, in Temple or palace, gender was no barrier to leadership. The soul, after all, changed sex from one lifetime to another. But one did not expect to find that knowledge among unschooled primitives.

  “The king has a daughter called Anet,” Khayan was saying now. “She is ripe for the marriage bed. She has been at the sanctuary of the Goddess at Carn Ava with her mother, but she will return before winter. We will see how she likes him. Yes . . . that mating might well serve . . .”

  Cleta bent her head to whisper, “But will Micail like her? And what will Tjalan say?”

  Khayan was clearly concerned with the welfare of her people, but did she support the king’s dream of making his tribe supreme? During the past months she had made something of a pet of Elara, and Tj alan, on his most recent visit to Azan, had urged her to gain the queen’s confidence . . . yet Elara felt she was no closer than ever to learning Khayan’s true mind.

  “And you young ones,” the queen said suddenly, “you too must think of your husbands to be.”

  “Oh, Cleta has a betrothed who is still in Belsairath. And I am betrothed to Lanath,” Elara said, a trifle bitterly.

  “You said that you were not married.”

  Elara shrugged. “There is—much to do first. We must complete our studies—”

  “Huh!” The queen grinned. “Maidens think to be young forever. But it is true, the priestess-born are different.” There was a brief pause, but before anyone else could speak, Khayan resumed. “Your Lady Timul is far away, but you are here. Maybe I should send you to Ayo.”

  Cleta frowned, trying to understand. “Ayo? The king’s wife?”

  “But also the Sacred Sister, who dwells at the Sanctuary,” Khayan nodded, smiling. “The women of the tribes share information that sometimes the men do not know. One has come to us from your village by the shore. She says that the Blue Robe priestesses who build the Mother’s Temple there know something of our Mysteries. And this—this is no business for the shamans. Yes, I think the sisterhood will wish to speak with you.”

  I must tell Ardral—Elara stared at the queen, her mind whirling. Or should I? Khayan was only an Ai-Zir, maybe, but she was right. These were women’s mysteries, not to be shared with any man. Somehow she would have to get a message to Timul . . .

  She found her voice at last. “I would be most interested in meeting them.”

  Micail took a long, deep breath of the fair wind that caressed the plain. He had walked out to the site where the henge of stones would be built early that morning, when the rising sun had just begun to promise a blazing day. Now, at its closing, the scent of ripe grass was like incense—an incense of the earth, flavored with the warmer odors of the cattle who ate the grass. In the middle distance one of the small herds kept on the plain for milking in summer was following the lead cow homeward, their brown hides glowing like copper in the slanting twilight.

  Slowly he was coming to understand their importance to the people here. An ordinary Atlantean meal had consisted of fruit, vegetables, and boiled grains, with perhaps a few small fish for flavoring.

  In Azan, cattle were the life of the nation, their health and numbers the gauge of a tribe’s power, their leather and their bones worn as clothing and decoration, or used for myriad other purposes. Grains were eaten as porridge or flatbread, and wild greens in season, but at every season of the year, the people fed by preference upon the meat and milk of their cows.

  At first, most of the Atlanteans had found it difficult to digest the high-protein diet, and even when they grew accustomed, found it even harder to metabolize efficiently. All of us, he thought r
uefully as he patted his middle, have become more substantial . . . except for Ardral. The old guardian appeared to survive on air and native beer, though he continually pronounced the latter a poor substitute for proper liquors. Still, whatever Ardral was or wasn’t eating, it gave him plenty of energy. He never seemed to cease moving from one part of the work site to another, observing, ordering, correcting, his robes flapping around him like the wings of one of the great cranes that stalked the river and the ruins.

  Outside the line of sticks that had been stuck in the ground to mark the circle, men were shaping two great sarsen blocks with round mauls of the same hard stone. The song of the singers had succeeded in cracking the great slabs free from larger pieces of rock that lay scattered everywhere across the plain, but the fine shaping had to be done by human hands. The pounding of the mauls made a dull music in the cooling air.

  “Come here, will you?” Ardral’s call roused Micail from his abstraction. “Bring Lanath. I need a second check on this alignment.”

  Micail looked around and saw his acolyte standing next to one of the holes left by an uprooted bluestone, gazing across the plain toward the slow fading of the light.

  “Lanath, we’re wanted,” he said softly. “Come, lad, there’s nothing out there to see.”

  “Only the Heralding Stars,” Lanath responded dully. “But anything could be creeping unseen in the darkness. This whole countryside is ghost-ridden—” and he motioned toward the rounded humps of barrows on the plain. “When night falls it all belongs to them. Maybe that’s what Kanar’s telling me.”

  “Kanar!” exclaimed Micail. “Your former master? Is this another of your dreams?”

  “He talks to me,” Lanath replied in that same strange small voice.

  “Ghosts are notoriously untrustworthy messengers, especially when you don’t know the right questions to ask,” Micail replied more roughly than he intended. “Let’s have no more about it now; the shamans’ tales have made the men nervous enough without adding to their fancies! We need their labor, lad—we cannot do all the work with song!” He grasped Lanath’s shoulder and hauled him back to the center of the circle, where Ardral was gazing at the wooden poles that were set to mark the rising and setting of the midsummer sun.