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 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