Free Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon by Diana L. Paxson Page A

little ceremonies. Perhaps we might walk in your garden? I think that is what I will miss most.”
    Deoris lifted an eyebrow, first at Tiriki and then at Micail, but she allowed her daughter to take her arm without comment. As they passed through the open doors, they could hear Chedan proposing the first toast.
    The courtyard garden Reio-ta had built for his lady was unique in Ahtarrath and, since the fall of the Ancient Land, perhaps in the world. It had been designed as a place of meditation, a re-creation of the primal paradise. Even now the breeze was sweet with the continual trilling of songbirds, and the scent of herbs both sweet and pungent perfumed the air. In the shade of the willows, mints grew green and water-loving plants opened lush blossoms, while salvias and artemisia and other aromatic herbs had been planted in raised beds to harvest the sun. The spaces between the flagstones were filled with the tiny leaves and pale blue flowers of creeping thyme.
    The path itself turned in a spiral so graceful that it seemed the work of nature rather than art, leading inward to the grotto where the image of the Goddess was enshrined, half veiled by hanging sprays of jasmine, whose waxy white flowers released their own incense into the warm air.
    Tiriki turned and saw Deoris’s large eyes full of tears.
    “What is it? I must admit a hope that you are finally willing to fear what must come, if it will persuade you—”
    Deoris shook her head, with a strange smile. “Then I am sorry to disappoint you, my darling, but frankly the future has never had any real power to frighten me. No, Tiriki, I was only remembering . . . it hardly seems seventeen years ago that we were standing in this very spot—or no—it was up on the terrace. This garden was barely planted then. Now look at it! There are flowers here I still can’t name. Really I don’t know why anyone wants wine; I can grow quite drunken sometimes just on the perfumes here—”
    “Seventeen years ago?” Tiriki prompted, a little too firmly.
    “You and Micail were no more than children”—Deoris smiled—“when Rajasta came. Do you remember?”
    “Yes,” answered Tiriki, “it was just before Domaris died.” For a moment she saw her own pain echoed in her mother’s eyes. “I still miss her.”
    “She raised me, too, you know, with Rajasta, who was more of a father to me than my own,” Deoris said in a low voice. “After my mother died, and my father was too busy running the Temple to pay attention to us. Rajasta helped take care of me, and Domaris was the only mother I knew.”
    Although she had heard these very words a thousand times, Tiriki stretched out her hand in swift compassion. “I have been fortunate, then, in having two!”
    Deoris nodded. “And I have been blessed in you, Daughter, late though I came to know you! And in Galara, of course,” she added, with a look almost of reproof.
    The gap in their ages had given Tiriki and the daughter Deoris had by Reio-ta few opportunities to know each other. She knew much more about Nari, the son Deoris had borne to fulfill her obligation to bear a child of the priestly caste, who had become a priest in Lesser Tarisseda.
    “Galara,” Tiriki mused. “She is thirteen now?”
    “Yes. Just the age you were when Rajasta brought me here. He was an eminent priest in the Ancient Land, perhaps our greatest authority on the meaning of the movements of the stars. He interpreted them to mean that we had seven years—but it was the date of his own death he foretold. We thought then that perhaps he had been completely mistaken. We hoped . . .” She plucked a sprig of lavender and turned it in her fingers as they walked. The sharp, sweet scent filled the air. “But I should not complain; I have had ten more years to love you and to enjoy this beautiful place. I should have died beside your father, many, many years ago!”
    They had completed a circuit of the spiral path, and stood once more opposite the