"If you had got off your rear end more often when we were in Belsairath you would be in better shape now," snapped Elara, surveying him with disfavor.
Almost without warning, Lanath had grown taller than she, but what muscle he had was still overlaid with a layer of what she could only describe as "pudge." His dark brown hair still flopped over his eyes like a child's, but he had the beginnings, finally, of a beard. Elara was resigned to their betrothal, but in no hurry for marriage, not when there were so many other interesting men around.
"Lord Ardravanant kept me more than busy enough," Lanath was saying, self-righteously. "Studying the stars mostly requires you to sit still."
"And to sleep late," added Cleta rather wistfully. She was sturdily built, and sober and smart, and when she had had a full night's sleep, she was good-tempered, too. . . .
"I expect the journey will toughen us all," said Li'ija brightly.
Karagon, who had joined the expedition with his master Valadur, snorted disdainfully. "Just a pleasant stroll to you, is it?"
"Absolutely. If we were not tied to the pace of those Ai-Zir ox carts," Li'ija persisted, with a smile that suggested she might not be entirely serious, "then we could go twice as fast!"
Lanath groaned at the thought, but the others laughed. Ardral was riding in one of those ox carts with their supplies and baggage, and Valadur to keep him company. Everyone else walked, as in fact they would have done at home, where only the powerful, or the aged and feeble, rode in sedan chairs.
Considering the state of the road, she wondered how long it would be before the Seventh Guardian was walking along with the rest of them, despite his advanced years . . . however many they might be.
She had inquired more than once, but no one seemed to know how old Ardral was. "Old enough to know bettera"and how I wish I did!" was his usual answer to anyone bold enough to ask. And there were other, darker, rumors about him. Some said that in his younger days Ardral had used his powers to kill. He himself denied it, or rather, he would say, no, his enemies only went mad and ran away . . . which was not exactly reassuring. Still, the densely forested hills they were passing through might conceal any number of dangers, from wild animals to bandits. She was glad to be traveling with any sort of mage.
Of course there were the soldiers, too. Half of them brought up the rear, while the others formed a protective vanguard around Heshoth, a pair of native guides, and Prince Tjalan. Micail walked sometimes with the prince and his bodyguards, but no less often with the other priests. There were the engineers, Naranshada and Ocathrel, and Jiritaren, whose job, Elara suspected, was partly to nursemaid Micail, but mostly to assist Ardral with his astronomical calculations . . .
Elara was much less sure what the priestess Kyrrdis was doing there. If they wanted a singer, she's good, but Mahadalku is better; and if they just wanted a woman along they could have brought one of the sajis. . . . She blushed.
Then there was Valadur. She was entirely mystified as to his function. The Grey Order had a very mixed reputation. . . . Ardral will keep him in line, she decided. That leaves . . . Valorin. Of course.
She slowed her steps, looking about, but still did not see Valorin anywhere. A priest from Alkonath who had been selected because of his vast knowledge of growing things, Valorin was continually leaving the beaten path to investigate some unfamiliar shrub or flower.
"Looka"is that a village over there?" Galara exclaimed, pointing toward an irregular collection of carefully laid-out plots radiating out from a round hut with a roof of green turf. At one end of the field a long green mound seemed to stand guard.
"A farm, at least," Cleta ventured, "though it does not look like the ones at home."
"Several farms," observed Karagon as they crested the road and more fields and buildings came into view. The plots were small, divided by hedges or ditches, and as they drew closer they saw the dirty brown backs of a flock of sheep being driven along by a small boy in a brown tunic with a stick and a yapping dog.
"There's water in those ditches!" Lanath said in surprise. "Just lying there."
As they drew closer, a man hoeing between rows of young grain called out a greeting in the local tongue, and Greha, one of the ferocious-looking native guides, replied. Both natives had the curly brown hair and grey eyes typical of these people, though Greha was both exceptionally broad and tall.
"You've learned a few words of the local patois, haven't you, Cleta?" Galara asked. "What are they saying?"
"Something about shepherds and sheep. I think they are talking about us!" Cleta's round face grew slightly pink. "Oh my. I hope the prince didn't hear that!"
With his bodyguard prowling around him, Prince Tjalan strode forward as boldly as the falcons that fluttered on his banners.
Behold the great lord of Atlantis, taking possession of the new land, Elara thought, but what will the new land take from him?
The journey took on a rhythm of its own as the days passed. They rose early and walked, with occasional pauses, until the middle of the afternoon, when the vanguard would seek out a campsite with good water. One night they were troubled by the howling of wolves, and more than once Lanath woke them with his nightmares, but otherwise all seemed peaceful. The acolytes and chelas soon grew accustomed to the exercise, and once they lost their fear of the unknown terrain, they were eager to go exploring.
Micail had not wanted them to go off on their own, but the trader Heshoth assured them that the folk here were not only peaceful but timid. When the natives saw the Atlanteans coming, with their brilliant white tunics and brightly colored mantles, not to mention the banners, spears, and swords, the pigherds and woodcutters of the forest ran away even faster than had the lads tending sheep or cattle in the meadows.
The next day the expedition turned gradually northward, tediously following the road around the end of a line of densely wooded hills. By late afternoon, the travelers approached a solitary hill with the oblong hump of an old barrow on its top, commanding the countryside.
"We should probably stop herea"" Heshoth pointed to a broad clearing between the road and the stream. "Once people came to this hill for the summer's-end ceremony, but then there was a war. No one left to come here now but us."
The day had been fair, and the long afternoon gave way to a lingering sunset as Prince Tjalan's servants prepared the pavilions and gathered wood to cook the evening meal. Until they had finished, there would be little for the acolytes and chelas to do. Meanwhile the hill beckoned, with its leafy slopes and dark hints of ancient tragedies.
"Let's climb it," Karagon suggested. "From the top we should get a fine view of the countryside."
"Haven't you had enough walking today?" Elara grumbed; but except for Lanath, who was muttering something about ghosts, the others seemed eager for the adventure. Li'ija and Karagon soon found a path that led almost directly up the hillside to the summit, and they made good progress. Presently they came to a ditch and a low bank, both quite overgrown. Oddly enough, the ditch had been dug in segments, with a walkway of solid ground left between them.
"Neither ditch nor bank seems very defensible," Karagon observed. "There must be another purpose here than fortification."
On the north face they found the timber posts of a gatehouse, still leaning against each other although the roof must have fallen in long ago.
"If it's not a fort," asked Li'ija, "what was this for?"
"It feels . . . odd . . ." Lanath shivered, then hastened to add, "Not unfriendly-odd, just very ancient. There's an echo of many voicesa""
"Yes," agreed Li'ija, "I can hear them tooa""
"It's wind. But something has been digging in one of those pits," said Cleta. She moved closer and squatted down, brushing away the soil. "There's a quern here, like the ones the native women use for grinding grain. But it's broken."
"Smashed," volunteered Elara.
"Sacrificed," Karagon whispered dramatically.
"Is that a pot?" Galara leaned over to see.
"It's a skull," Elara answered. "Maybe the woman who used the quern."
"Let's see what's inside," suggested Karagon, picking his way through the ruins of the gatehouse. Lanath and Galara protested again, then shrugged and followed the others.
"It's a stone circle!" said Elara, and stopped only a few steps inside, testing that expectant stillness as she had been trained to do, but there was no altar, only grasses waving in the twilit breeze and a few sapling hazel trees.
"I think," said Galara tremulously, "we've found their cemetery."
"Then why wasn't that body buried?" Li'ija pointed to the interior of the circle, where bleached bones lay scattered on the grass.
"Could have been burned," Cleta mused. That was done in Atlantis, in hope of loosening the ties of karma that bound the spirit and freeing it to seek a higher path; but there were no marks of charring on these bones.
"They laid the bodies out here so the birds and beasts could receive the flesh," Lanath said then, in a strange still voice. "The skull was placed in the family's pit with the offerings."
Elara looked at her betrothed in surprise. Lanath had never been able to read the history of a place this way before. She glanced at Li'ija as if to say, I thought this kind of thing was your talent?
Ocathrel's daughter shrugged and turned away.
"It's getting really late," said Galara with an exaggerated shiver. "Shouldn't we be going back? That slope will be harder going down."
Once outside the gatehouse, they all felt better, but the path that they took down the hill did not lead back to the encampment. Instead they found themselves entering what was obviously another enclosure, much more extensive than the first. Tangled vegetation covered fallen house-posts, and a series of overgrown hedges marked out paddocks for animals, and plots where a few sparse stalks of native wheat still grew.
"This one only seems deserted," Lanath said, "like somebody's about to come back. But at the same timea"it's like it was never really lived in."
"Perhaps they were temporary dwellings," Elara suggested. "The guide said people came here for a festival . . ."
"They should have stayed away, if they wanted to live," said Li'ija in an odd voice. Elara turned and saw her standing very still, staring at something in her hand.
"You found an arrowhead!" exclaimed Karagon. "Say, I didn't know you were a sensitive. What else do you pick up from it?"
"Blood," the girl said, "and hate. Cattle. A raid . . . men running . . . walls of flames . . ."
"These house-posts do looka"charred," said Galara uneasily.
"And that," Cleta pointed out, "is not an old wood-pile. Those are bones."
Elara put her arms around Li'ija and gently turned the chela's hand so that the bit of flint fell to the ground. The Alkonan girl shuddered and relaxed against her with a sigh.
"Are you all right?"
"I will be." Li'ija shivered again. "That was strange." She straightened, moving a little away from Elara. "I remembered my father telling me that there was a place near Belsairath that used to be a famous mine for flint, and I thought about the road we've been on, and that arrowheada"it was like it appeared out of the ground, winking at me. So I picked it up, and it justa""
"It was calling you. There are a lot of spirits here." Lanath looked around uneasily. "Their skulls were not buried. No one made the offerings. They're still waiting."
Everyone had moved closer together. The setting sun crowned the trees with fire, and bars of bloody light slanted across the ground, making wavering lines in the dim air.
"Yes," said Cleta, unexpectedly, "even I can feel that. Ugh! I hate this kind of thing. Let's get out of here!" she exclaimed, taking Li'ija by the hand.
By the time everyone had made it out of the enclosure, the first stars were beginning to appear. Li'ija seemed to recover quickly, but Cleta and Lanath continued to mutter about spirits. Everyone else seemed to expect Elara to know what to do. Grounding their energies might not be the best remedya"it was from the earth, after all, that the trouble came. Caratra's other face, she thought, and shuddered again.
The obvious solution was to get completely off the hill, but that proved to be more difficult than expected. Though the sky was fairly clear, there was no moon. Beneath the trees it was darker still, while every possible path turned and twisted as if trying to lead them astray. In the end, all they could do was to force their way downward through thorny shrubs and tangled saplings until they smelled wood smoke and heard Tjalan's servants chattering as they cooked the evening meal.
Most of the explorers stumbled the rest of the way down into the camp as fast as they were able, but Lanath tarried, and after a moment, Elara climbed back up to rejoin him. "Come along," she said softly. "It's over."
"No. We have not escaped . . ." Lanath whispered. "The one in the barrow on the hill. She is very old, the Mother of all her tribe. And she doesn't want anyone here . . ."
And no wonder, thought Elara, after the way we went blundering about among the bones! She gave Lanath a gentle push toward the campfire. "It's going to be all right," she said again. When he had gone, she turned back toward the woods, lifting her hands in salutation.
"Grandmother, our apologies. We mean only good to you and your people, honor to the dead and the living alike. Let me set out an offering for you in the forest, and in the morning we will depart from here. This one night I ask for your protection. Send us no evil dreams!"
Throughout the following day the acolytes and chelas remained unusually close together, but walked mostly in silence. The next day, the travelers turned to the east once more. Micail found himself oddly reluctant to head in that direction, for that night in the camp beneath the barrow-crowned hill, Micail had dreamed of Tiriki as she might have become if she had reached this chilly land. For the first time in a year he had awakened smiling. So clear had the image been that he almost seemed to see her still, crowned with hawthorn bloom, framed by lush green hills . . .
But as they moved toward the rising sun, that awareness of Tiriki began to fade. What do you expect? It was just a dream, he told himself sternly.
They camped that night at the edge of the hills. Before them lay a new countryside whose gentle undulations flattened into a broad plain that rolled away to a misty horizon. The countryside here seemed more thickly settled than any they had yet seen, but the same hedge and ditch system defined the fields where new wheat stood thick and green. Beyond that lay more open pastures where little brown sheep or wide-horned cattle grazed. The round farmhouses were much larger than the ones they had seen near the coast and were roofed with straw thatch instead of grassy turves.
"This is Azana"the Bull pena"where King Khattar rules!" Heshoth proclaimed. Clearly the trader was proud of his ruler. "At the noon meal we will stop, and you may put on festival clothing to honor him."
Tjalan caught Micail's eye with an amused smile, but plainly he found the counsel good. "We begin," the prince murmured, "by impressing this native chieftain, but soon, I think, he will honor us the more."
"Do you know anything of this king?" Micail asked, just as softly.
"From what Heshoth has said, Khattar is lord over the many chieftains whose holdings ring this plain. They war with one another over grazing rights, then gather at a central shrine for their great festivalsa"over which the king presides. They say that he carried off and married the woman who is now high priestess for all the people of the Bull. His reputation as a warrior was apparently great enough to discourage retribution." He shrugged. "But Heshoth tells me that it's not his wife but his sister who is called queen. Her name is Khayan-e-Durr, and her son will be his heir. It's all rather complex and primitive, and as I say, I don't fully understand it. But you know what they say, when in Khem, walk sideways."
"How will he receive us, do you think?" Micail cast a quizzical look at his old friend. "As allies, or as a threat to his supremacy?"
"Ah, well, that will depend on how we handle this embassy," Tjalan answered with a laugh. "I hope you brought your best bracelets."
They came to Azan-Ylir, the home and stronghold of the high king, at the time when the cookfires had been lit and the savor of roast meat was beginning to scent the air. The village was set on a rise above willow-clad banks where the river Aman flowed gently down from the north. The afternoon sunlight shone sweetly through the new leaves. Heshoth's ferocious bodyguard, Greha, had disappeared during the noon rest, so Micail was not surprised to find that they were expected.
Greha was waiting, with a line of warriors dressed as he was, in tanned leathers and furs, and armed with bronze weapons. They stood in two groups on each side of gateposts made out of gigantic tree trunks that towered above the logs of the palisade, twice the height of a man. As the Atlanteans marched through the gate, the guards fell in behind them.
Are they threat or protection? Micail wondered. And then, remembering his conversation with Tjalan, Which are we?
The village consisted of a collection of roundhouses whose conical roofs were thatched with straw, interspersed with storage structures and pens for valued livestock. But a single central building dominateda"a great roundhouse whose roof was built in two sections, the inner cone lifted on pillars above the outer ring so that smoke could filter out beneath it. Inside, light filtering down from above added to the illumination of the central fire.
The hall was filled with people, but in that first moment, Micail saw only the man who lounged on a high seat placed between the tallest posts and closest to the fire. He was as broad as a barrel, but the shape of his shoulders suggested that most of his girth was muscle as well. His neck needed to be strong as well to support his headdress, crowned by the horns of a bull. But the man's grey eyes were clear and intelligent.
As the newcomers came to a halt before the hearth, the king said something in the guttural tongue of the tribes.
"Khattar, son of Sayet, heir of heroes, Great Bull of Azan, and King of Kings, bids you welcome to his halla"" translated Heshoth.
Tjalan was murmuring a polite thanks, introducing himself and his company to the trader, who translated it in turn. It was a courteous way to let the rest of them know what was being said. Tjalan had been studying the native language since his first voyage to this land, several years before. I have wasted my time, Micail realized. I ought to have spent the past year learning the native ways as well. But what he did know of native manners suggested that it would not be until much later that they would get down to discussion of the Atlanteans' purpose here.
There was another interchange, and Heshoth motioned the men in the group to benches set before trestle tables on the southern side of the hall. Only then did Micail realize that, except for Tjalan's faithful shadow Antar, their military escort had been kept outside.
The Atlantean women were gently escorted to a separate section in the east, near a sort of lesser throne, where a woman draped in a shawl sewn with small bits of gold sat facing the king. Now that he had leisure to look about, Micail saw a golden lozenge sewn to the front of the king's sleeveless tunic and bracelets of gold that flashed on his arms. A few of the native men who sat at the other benches also wore gold or bronze, but mostly their ornaments were of jet or finely worked antler or bone. Micail understood then why Tjalan had insisted that he have a new set of royal dragon bracelets and headband made for him in Belsairath. It was still not as grand as his own regalia, of course, but that had perished with Ahtarrath . . .
More compliments were exchanged, and great slabs and joints of smoking beef and mutton were brought in, arranged on beds of boiled grain on wooden trays. There was drink as well, a yeasty brew with a hint of honey, served in finely made pottery beakers. King Khattar, he noticed, drank from a beaker made of gold.
The king's bards sang of his victories in battle, and a leather-robed man called Droshrad, whom Micail recognized as some kind of priest, boasted of how the gods had given Khattar power.
By the time darkness had fallen, Micail was beginning to suspect the king's plan was to stupefy them with food and drink. Their situation did not seem certain enough to allow him to comfortably take more than a few polite sips of the brew, but the demands of courtesy required him to eat more meat than he was accustomed to tasting in a month. Tjalan, however, was in fine form, joking with Heshoth and commiserating with the king on difficulties with crops or neighbors, just the kind of conversation that had bored Micail to madness in Ahtarrath, and which he found no more interesting in translation . . . But the ordeal did at last seem to draw to an end. Singly and in groups, the feasters took leave of the court.
The king and queen themselves, however, remained in their places with a few attendants around them. The shaman Droshrad and his fellows stayed behind as well. Micail caught Ardral's eye and found the old man observing the situation with his usual sardonic smile.
"Yes, of course we have the manpower to build barrows for our honored chieftains," Heshoth translated the king's most recent words, "but in the old days many tribes came together to make greater monuments. To build a new one with mighty stones would surely prove my power!"
"There were many such monuments in my country," answered Tjalan, "and they have uses that you have never dreamed . . ."
"Maybe so"a"the king grinned backa""but your laborers lie under the sea, and with them, your power."
"No, my lord, the men who have the magic to raise the stones for you are here . . ." Tjalan spoke very softly, holding Khattar's gaze with his own.
Micail came to full attention, eyeing his cousin narrowly. They had discussed asking this king for permission to investigate the site identified by their calculations, and then perhaps to build there. What game was Tjalan playing?
"The men of my race have many powers," the prince continued, "but as you have said, our people are, at the moment, few. Yours are many, and if we work together, you will becomea"greater. The People of the Bull will rule this land forever."
Khattar pulled at his beard, eyes narrowing, as the shaman whispered in his ear. Micail watched them, and realized how hard he had been gripping his beaker only when he let go and saw the corded pattern imprinted upon his hand.
"What advantage for you is in this offer?" Khattar asked at last.