StarMan (22 page)

"I am well," she said to their queries. "A little tired, but well."

"But not if you keep crowding her as you do," the First Priestess said testily. "I am taking Azhure for a tour of the complex. StarDrifter, you may accompany us because I have yet to speak with you at length.

EvenSong, you may accompany us to carry the baby. The other men must stay behind. I will allow
one
of the hounds."

The First Priestess marched forth and Ysgryff and FreeFall stepped back hastily. Azhure smiled apologetically at them as she passed, Sicarius pressing close to hef legs, but she took a deep breath of delight when the Priestess led them into a cloister facing a delightful garden of lavender beds and low juniper trees.

"You were in the dormitory of the priestesses, Azhure," the First Priestess explained, leading them down the cloisters then turning left onto a walkway by a high stone building, "and this . is the Temple Library. You can see inside some other time."

"It's where FreeFall spends most of his time," EvenSong said by Azhure's side. EvenSong was softer than Azhure remembered, and it was strange to see her dressed in a robe rather than trousers. The Icarii woman bounced Caelum in her arms, smiling at him, then winked at Azhure. "But I make sure FreeFall occasionally remembers that I am here too, and that not all the wonders of the Temple complex are contained within
stone
portals."

Azhure smothered a laugh, then gasped in utter astonishment as the First Priestess led them across a small bridge and onto a magnificent paved avenue, lined with colonnades of smooth granite columns that straddled narrow, fern-bracketed waterways filled with flashing fish and waterlilies.

"The Avenue," the First Priestess said. She pointed to her right. "It leads from the cliff-face steps to the Temple of the Stars."

Azhure followed the woman's hand. To her left, on a slight rise, appeared to be a large marble-floored circle. Azhure frowned. Where was the Temple?

StarDrifter smiled at the incomprehension on Azhure's face, but he did not say anything.

"Come," the First Priestess said. "There are other places I wish to show you first."

She led them across the Avenue and across another small bridge onto smooth lawns, indicating some smaller buildings further to their right. "The school houses and children's quarters," she said, and made to walk forward again, but Azhure caught at her arm.

"School houses? Children?"

The Priestess arched an eyebrow. "We are not totally isolated, Azhure. Many of the Nors nobles have their children educated here, as do most of the folk from Pirates' Town."

Azhure and StarDrifter gazed incredulously at each other. How had the secret of the island remained so inviolate if many of the Nors nobility sent their children here for their schooling? And pirates...

educated
pirates?

The Priestess marched off through a pleasant garden towards a huge circular windowless building, tight-walled with pale stone.

"Ah," StarDrifter said softly by Azhure's side. "I know what this is - as will you, Azhure, when you see inside."

The Priestess led them under an archway at the foot of the walls, then up some stairs. StarDrifter took Azhure's elbow, and she was not ungrateful for his support as they climbed the stairs and stepped onto an internal open-air balcony halfway up the structure.

"Oh," was all Azhure could say, and she felt StarDrifter's fingers tighten about her arm.

"One day," EvenSong said behind them, "we will all come home to roost here. And when we do, Father, you should be the one to greet us and speak to us the words of arrival and welcome."

Azhure would not begrudge StarDrifter that right. They stood halfway up one of the walls of the Icarii Assembly, circles

of seats falling away beneath them and rising into the sky above. The original Assembly, from a time when the Icarii had graced the skies of all Tencendor. It was still in perfect condition, and Azhure was not surprised when she heard, many days later, that every month or so some forty or fifty men and women journeyed from Pirates' Town to weed and polish the stone steps and colonnades. This Assembly was twelve or fifteen times the size of the Assembly Chamber in Talon Spike and relied on sheer size to inspire rather than intricate or overwhelming carving or tracery. From the circular floor great rings of pale gold stone steps rose into the sky, so far that the lower third of the Assembly lay in shadow.

The only decoration Azhure could see was the floor; unlike Talon Spike's Assembly Chamber which was floored in golden-veined marble, the floor of this Assembly had been laid in multicoloured mosaics depicting constellations and galaxies -a star map.

There was no roof.

"In the old days, Azhure," StarDrifter said, his fingers gentler now, "the Icarii would float down into the Assembly from the night stars, all carrying torches. They would sing with joy as they came, and they say that some nights the stars themselves accompanied them. I cannot..." His voice broke, and he paused to recompose himself, "I cannot wait to see that sight again."

The First Priestess stared at the Enchanter, then shifted her eyes to Azhure. She opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, then gestured to the steps behind them. "Come on," she said, "there is yet more to see." Outside, StarDrifter let Azhure's elbow go and managed a smile. "I did not think the sight of the Assembly would affect me so."

EvenSong took her father's arm, feeling closer to him than she ever had before, and for a time the group walked in silence through orchards and vineyards. Sicarius, relaxed now his anxiety over Azhure was assuaged, sniffed about the tree trunks and grunted at a peach-coloured cat quivering high among some

branches. Eventually they approached a low dome of strange green stone, about a hundred paces in circumference.

Azhure expected that the Priestess would stop and lead them inside or, at the least, provide some explanation for the structure, but the old woman only muttered, "The Dome," before marching resolutely past, her back ramrod straight.

The Dome of the Stars, Azhure,StarDrifter said in Azhure's mind.

Why does she ignore it so?

The Dome is particularly sacred to the Order of the Stars, to the Priestesses. Only the First among them may ever go in there.StarDrifter paused. /
do not know what they find within.

Once past the Dome the First's shoulders relaxed and she led the small group to the very cliff face at the southern-most point of the island. Thousands of paces below them the sea crashed against rocks.

StarDrifter, Azhure and EvenSong, still holding Caelum in her arms, all stood easily at the very lip of the cliff, their Icarii blood lending them both the balance and the courage to ignore the sheer drop beneath their feet. With them stood the hound, the edge of the cliff crumbling slightly beneath his forepaws.

The Priestess, of human blood, stood prudently some paces back from the lip. "See?" she said, pointing, "see the steps?"

The others looked to where she pointed. A flight of steps, so narrow that only one person could ever negotiate them at a time, dropped from the cliff edge and hugged the cliff face, leading down until they were lost in the upper reaches of the spray of the waves that beat themselves to death against the cliff.

"Where -" Azhure began, but the First cut her off.

"They lead to the Sepulchre of the Moon, Azhure."

StarDrifter lifted his head. "I thought the Sepulchre of the Moon had been bricked up, First Priestess.

Forgotten. Disused."

The First stared at him momentarily, wondering at his beauty here in the sunlight as the wind ruffled his hair and the feathers of his wings. How glad she was that she had survived to see this. "It is still open, Enchanter, but it chooses its visitors carefully. Make sure
you
do not choose to visit."

Her voice was harsh with warning, and StarDrifter took a step back from the cliff. EvenSong stepped back too, but Azhure paused, thinking she heard voices amid the crashing waves.

Is this her?

How can we know it is her?

Does she wear the Circle?

Azhure? Azhure? Azhure?

"Azhure?" StarDrifter's voice cut sharply across her mind and she jumped. "Do you want to see the Temple of the Stars?"

She smiled and followed her companions up the grassy slopes towards the Temple on the highest point of the plateau. But the cries of the waves stayed in her mind for a long time.

The Temple was not what Azhure had expected. Her face fell in disappointment as she crested the slight rise and saw the Temple in all its...glory?

"I thought Ysgryff said the Temple was well maintained," she whispered. "Intact."

"And so it is, Azhure, so it is," StarDrifter said softly, riveted by the sight the Icarii had been so long denied.

Azhure could not believe him. All she could see was a large flat circle of marble covering the entire top of the rise, perhaps fifty or sixty paces from side to side. The marble wasn't even well polished, merely well swept, and that likely by the wind rather than by human hand. There was not a column, not an altar, not an icon or a single piece of carving in sight.

"Is this it?" she asked. "Is this all there is?"

StarDrifter turned and stared at her, his face alive with power. "A temple can be built of many things, Azhure. Sometimes of stone or wood. Sometimes of brick and mortar. Sometimes of blood and the hopes and fears of those who would worship within it. Sometimes of ideas. And sometimes . . .

sometimes a temple can be built of light and music."

NiahThat evening, after she had rested and eaten, Azhure sat with the First in her bare apartment. A single lamp burned on the desk between them, the shadows flickering over both women's faces, momentarily lending one the beauty of her youth and the other the serenity she normally lacked.

"Will you tell me of my mother?" Azhure finally asked.

The First paused, then inclined her head. "Yes. I have no choice."

"What do you mean, no choice?"

The First smiled, but there was little humour in it. "Your mother told me that one day you would sit here in this room and ask me questions." She laughed, the sound harsh. "I did not believe her. But I should have. I should have."

Azhure leaned forward, her hands on the desk.
"Tell me!"

The Priestess' hands stole to her sash and fiddled with it. "Your mother came to the Temple as a child for her schooling, as did so many Nors children. But she loved it here, and asked to stay once her schooling was completed. I was five years her junior, in mid-school as she entered the novitiate of the Order, but I remember those days well...as I remember everything about your mother."

"She was very beautiful, and kind, and she loved me."

"Yes to all those. More beautiful than you are now, but perhaps you have yet to grow into your true beauty. Kind,

certainly, and she knew how to love. But I see these qualities in you too, and, in these shadows, I think that perhaps it is
her
sitting before me, not her daughter."

"Her name is...was Niah."

"I knew of her name," the First said, "but, child, you must know that all priestesses give up their names once they enter the novitiate. She never had a name to me...but she was everything to me."

She paused, and when she resumed her voice was heavy with sadness. "She's dead, isn't she?"

Azhure bowed her head. "Yes. She died when I was five. She...she ..."

"I do not want to hear it!"

Azhure's head jerked up, her eyes suddenly hard and angry. "Niah's death has been too long lost in pain and denial, priestess who claims to have been her friend! If you respected her, if you loved her, then witness her death! Do
that
at least for her!"

The Priestess' eyes widened and her hands stilled as she looked over Azhure's shoulder. In the dim recesses of the room she could see movement, hear voices, and then she saw...she saw ...

She saw the man bent over the woman's struggling form, saw him hold his hands to her throat, saw him shake her and curse her. She saw him thrust the woman's head into the flames, and then saw the flames flicker and burst over the woman's entire body. She heard the woman scream and grunt with pain, and she heard her cry out to the little girl huddled terrified in the corner.

"Azhure! You are a child of the gods. Seek the answer on Temple Mount! Aaah!"

And again the woman screamed.

"Azhure!" Her voice crackled horrifyingly from the ball of flame that engulfed her entire head. "Live!

Live! Your father...Ah! Azhure...Ah! Your father!"

"Oh gods!" the First screamed, and covered her face with her hands.
"Oh gods!"

"Thus died Niah," Azhure whispered, her eyes now still and calm. "Thus died my mother. And thus here I am, seeking the answers to why she died.
Tell me!"

Eventually the First lowered her hands and raised her grief-stained face to the woman who sat opposite her. "She said that she had to leave. But I did not know where she went. I did not know why she ..." Her voice broke, and she spent some time composing herself. "She never sent word, and I often wondered about her. How she was, what kind of child she had birthed, whether she was happy."

"But you knew she was pregnant when she left."

"Yes." The First's hands fluttered at a drawer in the desk and her face was grey in the lamp light.

"Azhure ..." She took a deep breath and abruptly opened the drawer, withdrawing a sealed parchment.

"Your mother left this for you. Read it. I will wait outside. Call me when you are ready."

For a long time Azhure sat and looked at the square of parchment lying on the desk. When she eventually reached for it, her hands trembled so badly that she had to clench them into tight fists to regain some control over their muscles.

She had not expected this. Not this.

She turned the square over. It had a single word scratched boldly across it in dark ink.
Azhure.

Still trembling, Azhure picked it up, broke the seal, and began to read.