The Complete Tamuli Trilogy: Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City

The night was silent except for the guttering of the torches and the sighing of the breeze in the dark forest surrounding the meadow.

They waited as the silvery line of moonlight crept down the wall.

Then the ancient Atan gave a signal, and a dozen trumpeters raised brazen horns to greet the new day and to signal the beginning of the Rite which would end Mirtai’s childhood.

The Atans sang. There were no words, for this rite was too sacred for words. Their song began with a single deep rumbling male voice, swelling and rising as other voices joined it in soaring and complex harmonies.

King Androl and Queen Betuana moved with slow and stately pace along a broad, torchlit avenue toward the ageless trees and the flower-decked altar. Their bronze faces were serene, and their golden helmets gleamed in the torchlight. When they reached the altar, they turned, expectant.

There was a pause while the torches flared and the organ-song of the Atans rose and swelled. Then the melody subsided into a tightly controlled hum, scarcely more than a whisper.

Engessa and Ehlana, both in deep blue robes, escorted Mirtai out of the shadows near the city wall. Mirtai was all in white, and her raven hair was unadorned. Her eyes were modestly down-cast as her parents led her toward the altar.

The song swelled again with a different melody and a different counterpoint.

‘The approach of the child,’ Norkan murmured to Sparhawk and the others. The sophisticated, even cynical Tamul’s voice was respectful, almost awed, and his world-weary eyes glistened. Sparhawk felt a small tug on his hand, and he lifted his daughter so that she might better see.

Mirtai and her family reached the altar and bowed to Androl and Betuana. The song sank to a whisper.

Engessa spoke to the king and queen of the Atans. His voice was loud and forceful. The Tamul tongue flowed musically from his lips as he declared his daughter fit. Then he turned, opened his robe and drew his sword. He spoke again, and there was a note of challenge in his voice.

‘What did he say?’ Talen whispered to Oscagne.

‘He offered to do violence to anyone who objected to his daughter’s passage.’ Oscagne replied. His voice was also profoundly respectful, even slightly choked with emotion.

Then Ehlana spoke, also in Tamul. Her voice rang out like a silver trumpet as she also declared that her child was fit and ready to assume her place as an adult.

‘She wasn’t supposed to say that last bit,’ Danae whispered in Sparhawk’s ear. ‘She’s adding things.’

‘You know your mother,’ he smiled.

Then the Queen of Elenia turned to look at the assembled Atans, and her voice took on a flinty note of challenge as she also opened her robe and drew a silver-hilted sword. Sparhawk was startled by the professional way she held it.

Then Mirtai spoke to the king and queen.

‘The child entreats passage,’ Norkan told them.

King Androl spoke his reply, his voice loud and commanding, and his queen added her agreement. Then they too drew their swords and stepped forward to flank the child’s parents, joining in their challenge.

The song of the Atans soared, and the trumpets added a brazen fanfare. Then the sound diminished again.

Mirtai faced her people and drew her daggers. She spoke to them, and Sparhawk needed no translation. He knew that tone of voice.

The song raised, triumphant, and the five at the altar turned to face the roughly-chiselled stone block. In the centre of the altar lay a black velvet cushion, and nestled on it there was a plain gold circlet.

The song swelled, and it echoed back from nearby mountains.

And then, out of the velvet black throat of night, a star fell. It was an incandescently brilliant white light streaking down across the sky. Down and down it arched, and then it exploded into a shower of brilliant sparks.

‘Stop that!’ Sparhawk hissed to his daughter.

‘I didn’t do it,’ she protested. ‘I might have, but I didn’t think of it. How did they do that?’ She sounded genuinely baffled.

Then, as the glowing shards of the star drifted slowly toward the earth filling the night with glowing sparks, the golden circlet on the altar rose unaided, drifting up like a ring of smoke. It hesitated as the Atan song swelled with an aching kind of yearning, and then, like a gossamer cobweb, it settled on the head of the child, and when Mirtai turned with exultant face, she was a child no longer.

The mountains rang back the joyous sound as the Atans greeted her.

Chapter 20 (#ulink_71d06d69-c12d-5f7c-bb13-619f406f245d)

‘They know nothing of magic.’ Zalasta said it quite emphatically.

‘That circlet didn’t rise up into the air all by itself, Zalasta,’ Vanion disagreed, ‘and the arrival of the falling star at just exactly the right moment stretches the possibility of coincidence further than I’m willing to go.’

‘Chicanery of some kind perhaps?’ Patriarch Emban suggested. ‘There was a charlatan in Ucera when I was a boy who was very good at that sort of thing. I’d be inclined to look for hidden wires and burning arrows.’ They were gathered in the Peloi camp outside the city the following morning, puzzling over the spectacular conclusion of Mirtai’s Rite of Passage.

‘Why would they do something like that, your Grace?’ Khalad asked him.

‘To make an impression maybe. How would I know?’

‘Who would they have been trying to impress?’

‘Us, obviously.’

‘It doesn’t seem to fit the Atan character,’ Tynian said, frowning. ‘Would the Atans cheapen a holy rite with that kind of gratuitous trickery, Ambassador Oscagne?’

The Tamul Emissary shook his head. Totally out of the question, Sir Tynian. The rite is as central to their culture as a wedding or a funeral. They’d never demean it just to impress strangers – and it wasn’t performed for our benefit. The ceremony was for Atana Mirtai.’

‘Exactly,’ Khalad agreed, ‘and if there were hidden wires coming down from those tree-branches she’d have known they were there. They just wouldn’t have done that to her. A cheap trick like that would have been an insult, and we all know how Atans respond to insults.’

‘Norkan will be here in a little while,’ Oscagne told them. ‘He’s been in Atan for quite some time. I’m sure he’ll be able to explain it.’

‘It cannot have been magic,’ Zalasta insisted. It seemed very important to him for some reason. Sparhawk had the uneasy feeling that it had to do with the shaggy-browed magician’s racial ego. So long as Styrics were the only people who could perform magic or instruct others in its use, they were unique in the world. If any other race could do the same thing, their importance would be diminished.

‘How long are we going to stay here?’ Kalten asked. This is a nervous kind of place. Some young knight or one of the Peloi is bound to make a mistake sooner or later. If somebody blunders into a deadly insult, I think all this good feeling will evaporate. We don’t want to have to fight our way out of town.’

‘Norkan will be able to tell us,’ Oscagne replied. ‘We don’t want to insult the Atans by leaving too early either.’

‘How far is it from here to Matherion, Oscagne?’ Emban asked.

‘About five hundred leagues.’

Emban sighed. ‘Almost two more months,’ he lamented. ‘I feel as if this journey’s lasted for years.’

‘You do look more fit, though, your Grace,’ Bevier told him.

‘I don’t want to look fit, Bevier. I want to look fat, lazy and pampered. I want to be fat, lazy and pampered – and I want a decent meal with lots of butter and gravy and delicacies and fine wines.’

‘You did volunteer to come along, your Grace,’ Sparhawk reminded him.