gave him the parchment.
‘Ah yes,’ he murmured, running a finger down the list of names. ‘Hmm. I don’t know if this is a relief or not—’ He waved the paper at her. ‘I can see beside it like a shadow the list of those who will not escape – either because they choose to stay, or because there is not enough room. I had hoped that the only decisions required of me would be where to stow their gear.’
Damisa heard his bitterness and had to quell a powerful impulse to reach out to him. ‘Lord Micail and Lady Tiriki will be sailing with Captain Reidel, but I am on your list,’ she said softly.
‘Yes, little flower, and I am very glad of it!’ Tjalan’s gaze returned to her face, and his grim look lightened. ‘Who would have thought my skinny little cousin would have grown so—’
Another call from Dantu cut off whatever he had been about to say, but Damisa was to cherish those parting words for a long time. He had noticed that she was grown up. He had really seen her. Surely, the word he had not had the chance to say was ‘fair,’ or ‘lovely,’ or even ‘beautiful.’
The house where Reio-ta dwelt with Deoris was set into a hillside close to the Temple, with a view of the sea. As a small child, Tiriki had lived in the house of the priestesses with her aunt Domaris. They had brought her to Ahtarrath as an infant to save her from the danger she faced as the child of the Grey Mage whose magic had awakened the evil of Dyaus. Deoris had feared her daughter dead until she came to Ahtarrath and they met once more. By then, Tiriki thought of Domaris as her mother, and it was only after Domaris’s death that Tiriki lived with Deoris.
Now, as she climbed the broad steps of the house, arm in arm with Micail, she could not restrain a sudden sigh of appreciation for the harmony of the building and the gardens around it. As a child, confused and grieving, she had taken little notice of her surroundings, and by the time the pain of loss had faded, she had learned her way about too well to really see the place for what it was.
‘How glorious.’ Chedan, ascending close behind them, echoed her thought. ‘It is a sad fact that we often appreciate things most deeply when we are about to lose them.’
Tiriki nodded, surreptitiously wiping away a tear. When this is gone, how often will I regret all the times I passed this way without stopping to really look?
For a moment the three paused, gazing westward. From here, the greater part of the broken city was hidden by the glittering roofs of the Temple district. Beyond them was only the ambiguous blue of the sea.
‘It looks so peaceful,’ Chedan said.
‘An illusion,’ Micail gritted, as he led them through the portico. Tiriki shivered as they crossed the decorative bridge that had, she reminded herself, always swayed slightly beneath the lightest step, but since the morning’s quake, she had become preternaturally aware of the leashed stresses in the earth. Whenever anything shook, she tensed and wondered if the horror was about to begin again.
Here, she observed, there were no chaotic piles of keepsakes and discards, none of the frantic bustling that rippled through the rest of the city, just a soft-voiced servant, waiting to escort the visitors to Reio-ta and Deoris. Tiriki’s heart sank with a premonition that their errand here would fail. Clearly, her parents did not intend to leave.
Chedan had gone ahead of her into the wide chamber that looked out on the gardens, and stood, saluting Deoris. It seemed to Tiriki that his voice trembled as he spoke the conventional words. What had Chedan been to her mother, she wondered, when they were young together in the Ancient Land? Did he see the mature priestess, with silver threading auburn-black braids coiled like a diadem above her brow, or the shade of a rebellious girl with stormy eyes and a tangle of dark curls – the girl Domaris had described when she spoke of Tiriki’s mother, before Deoris came to Ahtarrath from the Ancient Land?
‘Have you…finished packing?’ Reio-ta was asking. ‘Is the Temple prepared for evacuation, and the acolytes ready to…go?’ The governor’s speech stumbled no more than usual. From his tone, it might have been a perfectly ordinary day.
‘Yes, all is going well,’ Micail answered, ‘or as well as can be expected. Some of the vessels have departed already. We expect to sail out on the morning tide.’
‘We have saved more than enough space on Reidel’s ship for both of you,’ added Tiriki. ‘You must come! Mother –Father—’ she held out her hands. ‘We will need your wisdom. We will need you!’
‘I love you too, darling – but don’t be foolish.’ Deoris’s voice was low and vibrant. ‘I need only see the two of you to know that we have already given you all that you need.’
Reio-ta nodded, his warm eyes smiling. ‘Have you forgotten, I…gave my word, in council? So long as any of my beloved people hold the land, I…I, too, shall stay.’
Tiriki and Micail exchanged a quick but meaningful glance. Time to try the other plan.
‘Then, dear Uncle,’ Micail said reasonably, ‘we must drink deep of your advice while we can.’
‘G-gladly,’ said Reio-ta, with a modest inclination of his head. ‘Perhaps you, Master Chedan, will…drink, of something sweeter? I can offer several good vintages. We have had some…banner years, in your absence.’
‘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
