a mockery. The smoke from a dozen burning buildings had turned the light a strange, rich gold. Now and again, a vibration in the earth reminded her that though the dust from its toppled summit had dispersed, the Star Mountain was still wakeful.
The taverns were doing a roaring business, selling wine to those who preferred to drown their fear rather than take steps to save themselves from the sea, but otherwise the marketplace looked deserted. A few insisted that the morning’s quake would be the last, but most people were at home, packing valuables to take on the ship or into the countryside. From the roof of the House of the Twelve, Damisa had seen the roads jammed with wagons. People were heading for the harbors or the inland hills, or anywhere away from the Star Mountain, whose crowning pyramid had come to a precarious stop about halfway down the slope. From the new, flattened summit, a plume of smoke continued to rise, a constant promise of more violence to come.
And to think that there had been moments when she had resisted the Temple’s orderly serenity, its incessant imposition of patience and discipline. If this morning was a taste of what was coming, she suspected she would soon be remembering her life here as a paradise.
In the emergency, even the twelve acolytes had been pressed into service as common messengers. Damisa had claimed the note meant for Prince Tjalan, and she meant to deliver it. Determined, she tiptoed around a pool of noxious liquids spilling from a market, and she headed down a reeking alley to the waterfront.
The harbor yards were crowded and noisy as on any normal day, but now there was a barely restrained hysteria. She tugged her veil into place, and hastened her steps into the hubbub. She heard the drawling accents of Alkonath everywhere she turned. It must have been some kind of instinct that allowed her to distinguish Tjalan’s voice, ringing above the babble of men who toiled to stow a hundred different kinds of gear.
As she drew nearer, she heard the sailor to whom the prince was speaking. ‘What does it matter if the seed grain goes above or below the bales of cloth?’
‘Do you eat cloth?’ Tjalan asked sharply. ‘Wet linen will dry, but salt-soaked barley will mold, not grow. So get back down there, man, and do it right this time!’
Damisa was relieved to see the prince’s expression lighten as he recognized her.
‘My dear – how goes it up there?’ A wave of his hand indicated the temples and the palace on the hill.
‘How is it everywhere?’ Damisa tried to keep her voice even, but had to look away. ‘Oh!’ she brightened. ‘But there is good news! The priests who serve at the summit of the Star Mountain actually survived! They came in an hour ago, all except their leader. He sends word that he dwelled on that peak since he was a boy, so if the mountain wishes to be rid of the pyramid, he will return to the summit without it.’
Tjalan laughed. ‘I have known men like him – “deep in the Mercy of the Gods,” as they say. He may outlast all of us!’
‘There are some,’ she found herself saying, ‘who believe that when the earth began to shake, we should have made…a special offering…’
Tjalan blinked, brows furrowing. ‘Sweet child – do not even think such things!’ His bronzed face had gone taut and pale. ‘We are not barbarians who sacrifice children! The gods would be right to destroy us if we were!’
‘But they are destroying us,’ she muttered, unable to tear her gaze from the flattened, smoking peak.
‘They are certainly unmaking the islands,’ Tjalan corrected gently. ‘But they granted us warning first, did they not – first by the prophecies and now by the tremors? We were given time to prepare an escape—’ His gesture embraced the ships, the people, the boxes, bags, and barrels of provisions. ‘Even the gods cannot do everything for us!’
He is as wise as any priest. Damisa admired the strength in his profile as he turned to answer a question from the captain, a man called Dantu. I can be proud to be kin to such a man, she thought, and not for the first time. She had not originally been destined for the Temple – it was her grandmother who proposed her as a candidate for the Twelve. When she had dreamed of a royal marriage as a little girl, Tjalan had been her model for a worthy consort. It was a relief to find that a more mature judgment justified her original opinion. He made Kalhan look like the boy he was!
‘Mind yourselves!’ The prince was glaring at a group of sailors who stopped work to goggle at two buxom, saffron-draped saji girls who were pulling a cart full of parcels from the Temple of Caratra.
One of the men smacked his lips and made a kissing noise at the girls, who giggled behind their veils. ‘Wouldn’ mind packing you into my hold…’
‘You there!’ Tjalan repeated, ‘back to work. They’re not for such as you!’
What the sajis were for had been the subject of much wild-eyed speculation among the acolytes. In the old days, it was said, sajis had been trained to assist in certain kinds of magic that involved the sexual energies. Damisa shuddered, glad that she had not experience enough to guess what those might be. The acolytes were free to take lovers before they married, but she had been too fastidious to do so, and Kalhan, chosen as her betrothed by some arcane procedure of astrology, had not tempted her to experiment ahead of time.
‘I almost forgot!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have brought a list of candidates to sail in the royal vessel, with – with you.’ As Prince Tjalan turned to her again, she opened her scroll case and 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