But there was no time to linger and learn. The holiest sanctuary of all, Third Cliff, the abode of the Lady of the Isle, still had to be attained.
One more breathtaking vertical sled-ride and they were there. Prestimion was struck at once by the singular quality of the air up here, thousands of feet above the sea. It was cool and amazingly clear, so that every topographic detail of the Isle below them stood out as though magnified in a glass. The unfamiliar quality of everything—the light, the sky, the trees—so enthralled him that he paid no attention as the hierarchs called off the names of the terraces through which they were passing, until at last he heard one say, “And this is the Terrace of Adoration, the gateway to Inner Temple.”
It was a place of low, rambling buildings of whitewashed stone, set in gardens of surpassing beauty and serenity. The Lady, they were informed, awaited them; but first they must refresh themselves from their journey. Acolytes conducted them to a secluded lodge in a garden of venerable gnarled trees and arbors of serpentine vines laden with many-petaled blue flowers. A sunken tub lined with cunningly interwoven strips of smooth green and turquoise stone seemed irresistible. They bathed together, and Prestimion, smiling, ran his hand lightly over the swelling curve of Varaile’s abdomen. Afterward they dressed themselves in soft white robes that had been provided for them, and servitors brought them a meal of grilled fish and some delectable blue berries, which they washed down with chilled gray wine of a kind Prestimion was unable to identify; and then, only then, did one of the hierarchs who had accompanied them on their ascent tell them that they were summoned to the presence of the Lady. It was all very much like a dream. So solemn and majestic had the entire process been, and so beautiful, that Prestimion found it almost impossible to realize that what he was actually doing was paying a visit to his own mother.
But she was much more than just his mother, now. She was mother to all the world: mother-goddess, even.
They reached Inner Temple, where she was waiting for them, by crossing a slender arch of white stone that carried them over a pond of big-eyed golden fish into a green field where every blade of grass seemed to be of precisely the same height. At its far end was a low flat-roofed rotunda, its facade completely without ornamentation, that had been fashioned from the same translucent white stone as the bridge. Eight narrow wings, equidistantly placed, radiated from it like starbeams.
The hierarch gestured toward the rotunda. “Enter. Please.”
The simple room at the heart of the rotunda was octagonal in design, a white marble chamber without furnishings of any kind. In its center was a shallow pool, also eight-sided. The Lady Therissa stood beside it, smiling, holding out her hands in welcome.
“Prestimion. Varaile.”
She seemed, as ever, miraculously youthful, dark-haired and graceful and smooth of skin. Some said that all that was achieved through sorcery, but Prestimion knew that that was untrue. Not that the Lady Therissa had ever shown any disdain for the services of sorcerers: she had long had a magus or two in her employ at Muldemar House. But she kept them there to predict the fortunes of the grape harvest, not to cast spells that would guard her from the ravages of age. Even now she had a magical amulet about her wrist, a golden band inscribed in emerald shards with runes of some kind, but that too, Prestimion was certain, was there for some reason other than vanity’s sake. He was unshakably convinced that it was by her own inner radiance and not any kind of wizardry that his mother had preserved her beauty so far into her middle years.
But her ascent to the Ladyship had given her a new kind of lustre, an unfamiliar queenly aura that enhanced and deepened her great beauty. The silver circlet about her forehead that was the Lady of the Isle’s badge of office enshrined her in a wondrous glowing aura.
He had heard tales of that, how the silver circlet inevitably transformed its wearer, and thus it must have happened to the Lady Therissa. Plainly this was the role she had waited all her life to play. Her chief claim to distinction, once upon a time, had been that she was the wife of the Prince of Muldemar, and when that title passed to Prestimion she had been known for being the mother of the Prince of Muldemar; but now at last she had become someone of distinction in her own right, holder of the title of Lady of the Isle, one of the three Powers of the Realm. A position for which, Prestimion thought, she had quietly been preparing herself all the time that he had been heir-presumptive to Confalume’s throne, and which now provided her with the duties that she had been born to perform, for years not in any way knowing that she had been born for them, but born for them all the same.
She embraced Varaile first, a long warm enfolding of her in her arms, several times calling her “daughter,” and tenderly stroking her cheek. She had never had a daughter of her own, and Prestimion was the first of her sons to marry.
Varaile’s pregnancy seemed to be no surprise to her: she spoke of it at once, and referred to the child as “him,” as though there could be no doubt of that. Prestimion stood to one side a long while as the two women spoke.
Then at last she turned to him and embraced him also, but much more quickly, though at her touch he was able to feel the tingling power of her office, the force that marked her off from all other beings in the world. As she stepped back from him Prestimion saw that her demeanor was different now from what it had been with Varaile a moment before, her warm smile fading away, the expression of her eyes darkening. She was turning to the true business of the visit. “Prestimion, what has happened to the world? Do you know what I see, whenever I send my mind outward into it?”
He had been certain it was going to be this. “The madness, you mean?”
“The madness, yes. I find it everywhere. I encounter bewilderment and pain wherever I look. It is, of course, the task of the Lady and her acolytes to go up and down the world reaching out to those who are suffering and offering them the comfort of kind dreams, and we do what we can; but what’s going on now is beyond the scope of our abilities here. We work day and night to heal those who need us; but there are millions, Prestimion. Millions. And the number grows daily.”
“I know. I’ve seen it in one city after another as I travel. The chaos, the pain. Varaile’s own father has been taken by it. And—”
“But have you seen it, Prestimion? Have you? Not as I have, I think. Come with me.”
7
She turned and went from the room, beckoning him to follow her. Prestimion hesitated, frowning, and glanced at Varaile, not sure whether the invitation extended to her; but then he gestured to her to accompany him. The Lady Therissa could always send Varaile away if she was not meant to see whatever it was that the Lady Therissa meant to show him.
Already she was far down the hallway, moving past one and then a second of the spoke-like wings that spread outward from the core of the temple. Glancing in, Prestimion saw acolytes and perhaps hierarchs seated at long tables, heads bowed in what looked like meditation. Their eyes were closed. All wore silver circlets much like the Lady’s own around their foreheads. The mysteries of the Isle, he thought: they are casting their minds outward, searching for those in need, bringing dreams of healing to them. Was it sorcery or science by which their questing spirits roved the world? There was a difference between the two, he knew, although the means by which the Lady and her people went about their tasks here seemed every bit as magical to him as the spells and incantations of the mages.