But she must not let Prince Tjalan suspect her conflicting emotions. Her glance slid away from his and she saw that soldiers were bringing up Reidel, his wrists still bound. His lip was puffy where someone had hit him—hit him back, she corrected, noting the skinned knuckles on his right hand.
“My prince, you honor me,” she said a little breathlessly. “But I must not distract you with such considerations now.”
He smiled sardonically, but her answer had clearly satisfied him. His attention was already shifting to Haladris, who had begun to organize the singers within the circle of stones.
Reidel was looking at her with—anger? appeal? He had no right to either emotion. But even when she turned away, she could still feel his dark gaze.
Tiriki forced herself to look away from the dim haze to the east where she knew Micail and the others were preparing to strike against the Tor, and to look instead into the faces of the men and women who waited atop the Tor to defend it.
She cleared her throat and managed a smile. “The spirit of this place, the Shining One I call the Queen, has shown me what we are to do—”
“But how do we know if they will act today?” asked Elis.
“Or at all?” muttered someone else.
“I have seen the power building,” answered Tiriki. “But even if I had not, surely it will do us all no harm to practice our own skills.”
“Ah,” said Iriel archly, “more training!” And the tension eased a little as the other acolytes laughed.
“Yes, if you will,” said Tiriki blandly, and waited for quiet to return. “We have walked the spiral maze we cut into the hill to get here, and that puts us halfway to the Otherworld already. I would like everyone to sit in a circle and join hands—” Tiriki glanced at Chedan and he nodded.
Despite the exertion of getting up here, Chedan’s face was pale. He should have been in bed, she thought then, but they needed him too badly, and in truth, they were all hazarding their lives today. At least Domara was safe with Taret. Whatever happened, she would survive.
Tiriki stood in the center of the circle and lifted her hands to the pure light that streamed down from above. It was the second verse of the Evening Hymn that came to her now.
“Oh Holiest and Highest,
Sole wisdom worth the winning,
In Thee, we find our purpose,
Our end and our beginning.”
She made the sign of blessing on breast and brow, then took her place in the circle across from Chedan.
“Oh great Manoah, King of Gods, and Thou, Most High, who art the power behind all gods, to You we make our prayer—” She added then, “Not for glory or gain, but for the preservation of life, and of the knowledge You have given us. Protect this holy hill and all who shelter here, and let us bring those who work against us to the path of true wisdom . . .”
Her gaze was drawn eastward once more. What were those opponents—for even now she would not think of them as enemies—doing now?
“We are the inheritors of an ancient tradition,” said Haladris, “and today we shall demonstrate its strength. Our henge will protect our spirits, and Prince Tjalan’s soldiers will guard our bodies. Fear not, therefore, to put forth all of your power. Project a hammer of force from this circle that will strike terror into our foes.”
And what if we succeed? thought Micail grimly. He cast a quick glance at Naranshada and Jiritaren, who stood with him among the tenors near the midpoint of the crescent. Both their faces were lined with strain, their eyes narrowed and haunted by regrets, and in the moment, he knew that their unease was nothing new. They don’t like this either. I should have voiced my protests long ago . . . before things had gone so far . . . And yet if he had done so Tjalan would have put it beyond his power to act at all, and here, even now, he might be able to alter the outcome.
Haladris took his place in the center of the crescent of vested priests and priestesses, their bodies completing the circle outlined by the five trilithons, surrounded by the outer ring. He hummed a series of notes, and section by section, the singers released their tones. One would not have thought that so soft a sound could be powerful, but in a few moments Micail could hear the first response from the stones.
It was only a whisper, like the sound of many other voices chanting somewhere far away, but Micail felt the hairs stand up along his forearms. And then for a moment, pride in his achievement surged above his fear.
When Tiriki clasped hands with Kalaran and Iriel, Chedan felt a tingle of power and knew that the circle of energy had closed. As one, they slowed their breathing, seeking the deeper rhythm of trance. He felt the familiar dip and lurch of shifting consciousness, and he reached out to touch Tiriki’s mind. They gathered the attention of the others into a single awareness and opened their lips in a single soft note.
Our task is easier, he thought, trying to steady his nerves as a dozen voices swelled in sound. Our opponents must shape and guide an unwieldy energy to attack us, but we have only to affirm the power that is already here, at what is now the sacred center.
The tone grew louder, pulsing as the singers circled their breathing around the sound. Already the pure radiance of the sunlight was altering to the shimmering illumination of the Otherworld. And then, from the depths beneath them, Chedan heard the reverberation as the Omphalos Stone caught and amplified their song. His eyes met Tiriki’s then, and for a moment, their wonder balanced their fear.
Elara let her breath out in a pure exhalation of sound, trembling a little as the sopranos’ higher note matched it in harmony. Exhilaration tingled through every vein at the energy those vibrations were raising, resounding from the smooth surfaces of the stones. Whatever happened after, Elara thought she would never forget the sheer beauty of this sound.
But even as the thought was completed, she realized that the music was changing. Haladris was conducting the lower ranges into an oddly discordant note that rattled her heart. She heard two or three singers waver, but Mahadalku’s glares brought them swiftly back on pitch. She almost could see the sound vibrations shifting as they bounced from stone to stone, and spiraled westward toward the Tor.
Tiriki felt the attack as a change in pressure, a tension in the air like an oncoming thunderstorm. She tightened her grip on Selast’s hand and felt a ripple of added alertness pass around their circle.
“Maintain the note,” came Chedan’s mental command. “Do not be afraid. Remember, all we have to do is hold on . . .”
As we did when the great wave struck our boat after the Sinking? wondered Tiriki as the first shock buffeted them. Somehow, she forced her focus back to the chambered lattices of stone beneath her and the Seed of Light within them, the twin powers that fountained up from the Red and White Springs in the depths, the vibrant ringing of her soul . . .
The pressure increased, as if, having been rebuffed, Tjalan’s priests had turned up the intensity of their own singing. The brilliance flashed and refracted as if she sat in the heart of a crystal, while weird lightnings crackled above the Tor.
She reached deeper, drawing on the power of the Omphalos Stone. She fought to maintain the vision of a bubble, a sphere of protection against which all the waves of power she could feel coming against them would break in vain. She could feel the others setting themselves to resist as well. Handgrips tightened until bones creaked and knuckles whitened, but that was the least of their agony.
For Domara . . . she thought with gritted teeth, and Selast and her unborn child.
For Otter . . . came Iriel’s plea. For Forolin and Adeyna and Kestil . . . for Heron and Taret . . .
For all of those they had learned to love in this land, the litany of names went on, and they held on, fiercely enduring in the name of all that they had already lost.
“Damisa, I can’t see into the circle!” exclaimed Tjalan. “Is something wrong?”
Damisa twitched free of his proprietary hand. Already, she had heard what sounded like a distant rumbling from the circle of stones, and realize
d that the Working had begun. But there was surprisingly little noise. It must be true, then, that the circle of stones captured sound. Now the figures of the people within it appeared to be wavering, as a distant scene might be distorted on a very hot day. But she did not think this country could produce the kind of heat needed for that to occur.
“My eyes see no more than yours do,” she muttered. “It is a by-product, I think of the vibration. Dust may be rising from the soil, or perhaps the light is simply . . . distorted. You can feel it through the ground.”
At least I can, she thought, though Tjalan’s sturdy soldier’s sandals might insulate him from the tremor that came through the thin soles of her own sandals, queasily reminiscent of the way the earth of Ahtarrath had trembled before the Sinking. She considered advising him to bend down and put his ear to the ground, but that would probably not have accorded with his dignity. What must it be like to be inside the circle, working with all that power? she wondered, repressing a pang of envy.
The stones at Azan were dancing.
Micail blinked, but his vision was not the problem. The ground beneath his feet was shaking, and as Mahadalku guided the singing of the sopranos even higher, the sarsen uprights vibrated in time with the sound. This was not the precise and ordered singing that had raised the stones, but a calculated disharmony that scraped and seared in every nerve and bone.
Micail realized that he was not the only one who had fallen silent, but with three full stands in the choir, there were still enough singers to maintain the vibration. He wondered how anything could stand against this onslaught, but clearly the Tor was doing so. He could feel the distortion as the waves struck something that repelled them and then rolled them back again.
We cannot break through! he exulted. But did Haladris know it? The Alkonan priest was singing even more loudly, warping the harmonies. From the scraped chalk surface within the circle a fine white dust was rising. The priest was pale and perspiring, with the fixed stare of one whose vision is focused within. Micail realized that Haladris could not see what was happening around him. The upright stones had been set deeply and braced in the pits that held them, but they had never been designed to resist such a protracted shaking. Stone groaned and rasped as one of the sarsen pillars in the northernmost trilithon shifted, jiggled, twisted, only kept in place by the knob that linked it to its lintel . . .
Although Micail refused to contribute his full strength to the Working, even in his detachment he felt the expanding waver that shuddered through the flow of power. He suspected that the resistance from the Tor was about to break. But it would make no difference to the unraveling energies here; in fact without direction those forces would cause far greater havoc, both in the circle and at the Tor, than the simple warning slap that Haladris had intended.
I have to stop this before the whole henge comes down! He reached out to his beloved stones and, suddenly, a voice he knew to be that of his father reverberated in his heart—
“Speak with the powers of the storm and the wind—of sun and rain, water and air, earth and fire!” He realized that this moment was the reason for the reawakening of his inherited powers.
“I am the Heir-to-the-Word-of-Thunder!” Micail cried. “And I claim this land!”
The line of soldiers staggered, casting frantic glances toward Tjalan, as a tremor ran through the soil outside the henge.
“We’re winning!” cried the prince, gripping Damisa’s arm. “No one can stay conscious if that hits them! Do you feel the power?”
“Never!” Reidel shouted. “Not while I live!” As the earth heaved again, he broke from his captors and staggered toward the circle of stones.
“Reidel, no!” cried Damisa. The idiot was going to get himself killed!
“Stop him!” roared Tjalan, but it was all his soldiers could do to stay upright. With a curse he let go of Damisa and lurched after Reidel, drawing his sword.
Damisa was hard on his heels. Both of them were idiots. This whole situation was mad. Between fear and fury, her thoughts were scarcely coherent, but with a burst of unexpected energy, she caught up with Tjalan, grabbed his sword arm, and spun him aside. The prince screamed in frustration, but she kept going, and in a moment she had tackled and brought down Reidel. His body was warm and solid, and she held on to him, gasping, as once she had gripped him while they made love.
“You will live, damn you!” she whispered as his eyes widened in surprise.
Micail bestrode chaos and wielded thunder. In the Word of his Power he found a new sound to counter the escalating vibrations that threatened to unmake the land. But the energy had to go somewhere. For a hot white instant that seemed an eon, doom hung around him like a frozen explosion. He had time to calculate the forces, note the position of every life-spark and measure the gaps between the stones.
“Get back!” he cried to the others. “Get clear if you can!” And then he sang out the note that he hoped would angle the energy away from the other singers, holding it with all the strength that was in him as shrilling forces blasted outward through the trilithons.
Chedan felt the ebb of the assault and swayed as if the wind against which he stood had suddenly failed. Only now, when the pressure was gone, did he realize how the effort had drained him. Tiriki, sagging against Kalaran, had gone as white as her linen gown, but she was smiling. In the faces of each of the others he saw the same astonished joy.
We have survived! he thought, feeling his tired heart pound in his breast. And in that moment, the forces that they had thought vanquished came roiling through the relapsing barrier like a stampede of maddened bulls.
Responses honed by a lifetime’s disciplined trance-work brought Chedan back to his feet with the speed of instinct, his staff swinging outward.
“Begone!” His shout reverberated across the land. In desperation he flung his spirit after it into the windy heavens, driving those terrible energies before him. He never knew when the flesh he had worn slumped to the earth, to move no more.
From the northeast to the southwest sides of the henge the power blasted free, radiating out in a semicircle that toppled the trilithon of the Yellow Bulls in the north, spraying fragments of rock outward to fell the nearest singers. One upright of the great central trilithon of the Red Bull tribe stood firm, but its lintel was flung aside and its partner split into two pieces as it crashed down across the altar stone. From there the burgeoning force rushed outward, toppling most of the uprights on the circle’s western side. The soldiers who had not yet fled were pelted by flying stones. A large chunk brought Prince Tjalan down, while shards fell on Damisa, whose body still sheltered that of Reidel.
But at the center of the henge Micail still stood, surrounded by a few cowering figures. Still singing, he stood until the last reverberation faded, and only billowing dust remained to bear witness to the violence that had passed over the plain. Only then did he fall, with the same slow deliberation as the stones.
Twenty
“The sun is rising, darkness flees,
The flame is rising, the spirit frees.
All hail to the soul ascended,
All mortal ill now mended,
Hail and farewell!”
Smoke swirled westward as if driven toward the shadowed horizon by song as the flames flared beneath the funeral pyre. Everyone who could crowd onto the top of the Tor was present—priests and priestesses of Atlantis mingling with sailors and merchants and the folk of the marshes—united by a common sorrow. Tiriki had seen more splendid funerals on Ahtarrath, but never more heartfelt grief; Chedan Arados had been beloved by all.
It had seemed the most bitter of betrayals to recover from that final attack only to find Chedan’s body deserted. Most of them understood what must have happened; they knew that if Chedan had not acted they might all have died. But all their wisdom was little consolation for the loss.
On the Crimson Serpent, Tiriki remembered, she and Chedan had been forced to perform an amputation on a sailor whose hand had been c
rushed by a falling mast. The man had lived, but she remembered how wrenching it had been to see him reach out for something and then realize that his hand was gone. Now I am as he was—Tiriki wept—but you are not here to make me a hook for my missing hand . . . Chedan, Chedan, I wish that I had been crippled in my body rather than being left alone without your wisdom . . . your counsel . . . your patient smile . . .
“Sun Hawk has left us!” wailed a woman of the marsh folk whose children the mage had saved from the plague. But even as the keening of the mourners faded, Otter pointed upward, and all their tears turned to wonder. A falcon—Tiriki thought it was a merlin—circled above the Tor, hovering high in the pillar of smoke as if Chedan’s spirit had taken the form of his namesake for one final farewell. And even as they gazed, the hawk abruptly angled its wings and went spiraling eastward through the brightening air.
“I understand,” whispered Tiriki, bending in salutation as if the mage himself stood again before her. She felt his warmth then, like a palpable thing. Perhaps that was why she found herself thinking about the last evening before the battle, when Chedan had spoken to her—really, had forced her to listen, as he spoke of his continued faith in the prophecy. “You were not to know, but Micail was elected as my successor,” he had told her, “and for that reason, despite everything that has happened, I still believe he is destined to establish the new Temple.”
She had not wanted to think about it, but Chedan had persisted, saying, “Of all the things we mortals are called upon to do, the most difficult is forgiveness; in order to truly do it, you will probably have to behave as if you already have forgiven for quite a while before you have actually done so.”