She grinned impishly, at odds with her apparent age and authority. “Here we are surrounded by some of the greatest mysteries of this world, and all those outside can do is fret about the woman in this cell. But then,” her smile dimmed and she patted Azhure on the cheek, “I know who you are and how you were made, and I am not surprised that you command so much attention and love. Come, try some of this fruit. It will nourish you.”
After the First Priestess had fed, bathed and dressed Azhure, she brought Caelum in, sitting silently while Azhure cuddled and suckled her son.
“They tell me his father is the StarMan of Prophecy,” she said eventually.
Azhure looked up from her son’s head. “Yes. Yes, he is.”
The First Priestess sighed and fingered the tassel of her sash. “Events and people of great moment walk, Azhure. I hope we may all prove to be worthy of them.”
“First Priestess, I did not come here only to discover my mother or the mystery of my conception. I also came here to discover myself.”
The Priestess slowly got to her feet, her joints creaking. “As do we all, my child, as do we all. Now, has your son finished? Good. Come, and I will show you the complex of the Temple of the Stars. Questions can wait until this evening.”
Outside the room, StarDrifter, Ysgryff, FreeFall, EvenSong and all the Alaunt were waiting, varying degrees of anxiety imprinted across human, Icarii and canine faces alike. Azhure cried out in delight when she saw EvenSong and hastily handed Caelum to his grandfather, hugging the Icarii woman to her fiercely.
“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.