She was a vibrant, intelligent young woman whose natural enthusiasms were all too frequently curbed by the political realities of her birth rank. For other girls, the choice to study engineering might have surprised people, including the engineers who taught their discipline to new generations, but at least it would have been possible. For Andrin, that door was almost certainly closed, and her father deeply regretted that. He looked back down at her and brushed hair back from her brow.
"You do understand, Andrin, don't you?" he asked softly.
Her eyes were as gray as the wind-chopped water of the Ibral Sea. No guile lived in those forthright eyes, but there was a depth of reserve, a sense that they looked steadily at a thing, measured it carefully against a host of complex factors, and sought to understand it within its many shifting contexts. They were eyes too old for a girl of seventeen, yet strangely vulnerable and young.
"Yes, Papa," she said equally softly, and the smile that touched her lips was sad. "I understand. I have to be too many other things to think about indulging a passing fancy."
Or even a serious one, he added silently.
"I wish it weren't so," he said aloud. "But we can change neither the world, nor our place in it. And that's enough said on the subject. Look," he pointed to the left-hand bank, "isn't that the most beautiful Temple of Shalana you've ever seen?"
Andrin looked, then let out a long "Ohhhh!" of appreciation. A tall needle-shaped tower rose from the top of a soaring dome. The needle was gold?genuine gold filigree?and the dome was a patchwork of gold and blue in a swirling, striped pattern that boiled intricately down its curved surface. The gold portion, like the needle tower, really was genuine gold, applied as a thin foil in layer upon successive layer by thousands upon thousands of pilgrims, and the blue swirls were brilliant lapis, a mosaic of thousands upon thousands of tiles cut from the semi-precious blue stone that was sacred to Shalana. The strips of lapis were, in turn, inlaid with other stones?blue stones that caught the sunlight with a fiery dazzle of light. Faceted sapphires by the thousands encrusted the dome in a breathtaking display of the wealth controlled by Shalana's ruling order of priestesses, and the Grand Temple's walls were white marble, inlaid with still more lapis in an intricate geometric pattern of sunbursts and stylized waves. The Order of Shalana was reputed to be the most powerful religious order in the world, with temples?and banks?in nearly every country in Sharona, and Andrin could believe it as she gazed at that gloriously beautiful structure.
"I've never seen anything so lovely in my life!" Andrin breathed softly. "It's more beautiful than any of the temples in Ternathia. Anywhere in Ternathia."
Then she gasped and pointed to the right hand bank.
"What's that?" she demanded, but understanding dawned almost instantly as she recognized the vast structure dominating the right hand bank, rising high on a hill overlooking the Ylani Strait.
"It's the Palace!" she squealed, and for just that moment, she sounded exactly like the young girl she really was beneath the layers of poise, caution, and politically necessary reserve.
It was, indeed, the Great Palace of the ancient Ternathian Empire. And it was also still a residence, occupied by the Seneschal of Othmaliz and his vast staff, but not his family.
The Kingdom of Othmaliz was not ruled by a dynastic kingship, but it was far from a democratic republic. The title of Seneschal had originally been held by the official who had governed the day-to-day affairs of Tajvana in the name of the emperors of Ternathia. After the Empire had withdrawn, the title had become a theocratic one, for Othmaliz was ruled by a priest?an unmarried priest, as the holy laws of Othmaliz decreed. He wasn't celibate, far from it, but he didn't marry, and his many offspring could not inherit his title or the wealth which went with it. Nor did they live in the Palace with him. When a Seneschal died, the new Seneschal was chosen from the highest ranking priests in the Order of Bergahl. More than one Seneschal had been succeeded by a son or a grandson, but only when the successful candidate had attained sufficient seniority within the order to stand for election in his own right.
It had always struck Zindel as a ridiculous waste of space to use the entire vast Great Palace to house one man and his staff. The Palace covered fifty acres of ground, and that was only the roofed portion; the grounds were even larger. Now he stood beside his daughter, savoring her delight as she beheld the ancient home of her ancestors at last.
The Great Palace's walls were a glittering sight, inlaid with sheets of mineral mica that sent sparkles of light cascading and shimmering across its surface. The roof was an astonishing fairyland of glittering domes and steep-sided slopes that were covered not with the ubiquitous tiles prevalent throughout the region, but with imported slabs of slate. The slate glittered golden in the brilliant sunshine, like the scales of some fantastic fish sent as a gift by the god of the sea, for every slab had been edged in gold leaf, so that the entire vast structure shone with an unearthly brilliance.
The effect was stunning against the backdrop of bone dry stone walls and sundrenched rooftops whose homely red clay tiles had faded into a dusty, washed out shade of pink. The light shimmering around the sparkling, mica-flecked walls and the incandescent rooftop made the entire, fifty-acre edifice appear to be floating above the city. The optical illusion was so strong that Andrin kept blinking, trying to clear her dazzled vision to see what was really there, the solid stone that anchored the building to the hot and thirsty soil of Tajvana. It didn't seem possible mere human hands could have built it.
She felt numb as she tried to take in the fact that her own family, her direct ancestors, had walked its rooms, run through its corridors, lived in it, laughed and played and hated and loved within its walls and beneath its glittering roof. They'd ruled half the world from that floating palace. But the world they'd ruled was gone. It had vanished quietly down the corridors of time, a world not so much lost as relinquished with passing regret, and gazing at what her family had given up, Andrin was devastated.
Yet even as those thoughts tumbled through her mind, another thought blew through her like a chill wind. The world Andrin lived in had changed just as completely as the world of her ancient ancestors, and far more abruptly. Hers was a new and frightening place, and everything?and everyone?in it was threatened with destruction by a faceless enemy. For one ghastly moment, she saw the Great Palace spouting flames against a night sky, with smoke pouring from it, and people rushing towards the inferno?or perhaps running headlong away, trying to reach safety. She gasped and clutched the ship's rail, unsure whether the vision had been a true Glimpse or merely the product of an over-active imagination giving shape and form to her fear for the only world she knew.
She drew down a gulp of air, trying to steady her badly shaken nerves, and glanced up at her father. She was surprised by the thoughtful frown which had driven a vertical slash between his brows. Whatever his thoughts were, they were as brooding and disturbed as her own, so she turned uneasily away and studied the harbor, instead. Or, rather, Tajvana's harbors. There were several, split between both banks, but the massive docks on the left-hand bank were clearly for utilitarian commercial purposes, whereas the docks on the right bank appeared to be equipped for the passenger trade, handling small personal yachts and the larger passenger liners and ferries plying the routes to some of the world's most popular resorts and business destinations.