Floaters were waiting to transport them from the Second Cliff landing stage to the final sled station at the base of Third Cliff. Quickly they traversed the Second Cliff terraces, where the pilgrims completed their training so that they could move on as acolytes to the highest level of the Isle and aid the Lady in her task. Up there on Third Cliff the Lady’s vast staff of acolytes nightly donned the silver circlets that permitted one mind to touch another across any distance, and sent their spirits forth to heal through benign dreams those whose souls were in pain: to guide, to counsel, to console. On previous visits Prestimion, wonderstruck, had watched the Lady’s legions at their work. But there would be no time for such diversions now.
The travelers reached the last of the floater-sled depots by mid-morning. Now came the final upward leap, to the flat summit of the Isle, thousands of feet above their starting point down at sea level.
The younger boys were excited by the astonishing clarity of the air of Third Cliff and the brilliance of the sunlight, which made everything take on a strange unworldly glow. As soon as the sled had landed they came rushing out and began to chase each other around the sled depot, while Taradath called out to them, “Hey, careful, you two! The air is really thin, up this high!” They paid no attention. The summit of Castle Mount was ever so much higher than this, after all. But the air of Castle Mount was artificial; what they were breathing here was the real thing, depleted of oxygen by the altitude, and before long Simbilon and Akbalik were feeling the effect of it, slowing down, panting hard now, staggering dizzily about.
Prestimion, who was standing beside Taradath, leaned close and whispered, “Don’t say it.”
Taradath did not seem to understand at all. “Don’t say what, father?”
“ ‘I told you so.’ Just don’t say it.” Prestimion put a little crackle into his voice. “All right? They know now that the air is different up here. No need for you to rub it in.”
Taradath blinked a couple of times. “Oh,” he said, and his cheeks reddened as he began to grasp Prestimion’s meaning. “Of course I won’t, father.”
“Good.”
Prestimion turned away, covering his mouth with his hand to hide his grin. Another small step in the boy’s education, he thought. But there was still a long way to go.
The Terrace of Shadows, where the Lady Therissa had made her home since giving up the powers that had been hers, lay within the wall that separated the sheltered sanctuary that was Inner Temple from the rest of Third Cliff. Varaile and the children remained behind at the Third Cliff guesthouse. “Your mother’s house is on the far side of Inner Temple,” Taliesme told Prestimion. She led him through the immaculate garden that surrounded the lovely eight-sided marble building that was now her home, across a close-cut grassy lawn, and into a forested zone beyond that Prestimion had never entered before.
No buildings were visible here: only a curving row of smallish trees of a sort he did not recognize, rising directly in front of him. They had thick, smooth, reddish-brown trunks that bulged oddly in the middle, and bushy crowns of shining blue-green leaves that were lobed so that they looked almost like upturned hands. The trees had been planted so closely, one fat swelling trunk nuzzling up against the next, that they constituted what amounted to a wall. Only in a single place had a narrow space been left, marked by white marble flagstones, by means of which one could enter the very private sector that lay behind the grove.
“Come, majesty,” Taliesme said, and beckoned Prestimion to follow her through.
It was dark and mysterious within. Prestimion found himself in another garden, less regular in form and not as carefully manicured as the one surrounding Inner Temple. It was planted mainly with what looked like palm trees—they had slender, ribbed trunks that rose to a phenomenal height without branching—that exploded far overhead into tremendous clusters of fan-shaped leaves so huge that it seemed they would prevent any sunlight from breaking through the shield that they formed. Yet these gigantic leaves were attached to wiry, tremulous stems that moved about freely in the slightest breeze, so that openings constantly were made in the leafy roof overhead, and bright shimmering shafts of light did penetrate in quickly darting bursts, creating a shifting pattern of shadows beneath.
“There is your mother’s home,” Taliesme said, pointing to a low, sprawling villa directly ahead. It was a handsome flat-roofed structure that had been fashioned of the same smooth white stone as had been used in the making of Inner Temple. Secondary buildings, similar in design, flanked it: servants’ homes, Prestimion supposed. Other houses were dimly visible farther in. Those were the homes of senior hierarchs, Taliesme told him. “The Lady Therissa is expecting you. The hierarch Zenianthe, who is her companion, will take you to her.”
Zenianthe, a slim, dignified white-haired woman who seemed to be of about his mother’s age, was waiting for him on a portico lined with potted ferns. She made the Labyrinth symbol to Prestimion and gracefully signalled for him to enter.
The house was smaller within than it appeared from outside, and modestly furnished: the home of someone who has put aside the outer glories of life. The hierarch took Prestimion down a starkly simple corridor, past several little rooms that appeared at a quick glance to be virtually empty, and into a kind of conservatory at the heart of the house, glass-roofed, with a small round pool at its center and pots of greenery arranged along its margin. Prestimion’s mother stood quietly to one side of the pool.
His eyes met hers. The jolt he got at his first sight of her was a far greater shock than he was expecting.
He had done as much as he could to prepare himself for this meeting. The Lady Therissa was five years older now than she had been at their last meeting; she had suffered a crushing loss in the death of her youngest son; and she had been assailed besides by whatever sort of diabolical torments Mandralisca had been sending against her by night. Prestimion knew that the effects of all that would surely be a doleful thing to behold.
He thought, though, that he had succeeded in fortifying himself against the worst of surprises; but now that he was in her presence at last, struggling with the impact of what he was seeing, he realized that no degree of preparation, perhaps, could have been sufficient.
The curious thing was that her great beauty appeared to have survived despite everything. She had always seemed much younger than her years: a slender, regal woman of superb grace and elegance, famous for her pale smooth skin, her dark gleaming hair, her calm unshakable spirit.
Those things, Prestimion knew, were the outward manifestations of the perfection of her soul. Other women might maintain eternal youthfulness with the aid of sorcerers’ incantations and potions, but never the Lady Therissa. She looked the way she looked, over the years, because she was who she was. Neither her early widowhood nor the civil war that had nearly denied her eldest son Prestimion the crown that was rightfully his, nor the death of her second son Taradath in that same war, nor the great responsibilities that had devolved upon her when she had become Lady of the Isle, nor the later convulsion that had come over the world during the time of the plague of madness, had been able in any way to leave any sort of external mark on her.
Now, wondrous to behold, her hair was nearly as dark as ever—and naturally so, Prestimion was certain. Her face, though the lines of age had begun to enter it years ago, was still unwithered: the face of the most beautiful of women, rendered even more lovely, if that was possible, by the work of time. And as he moved around the side of the pool and went forward to greet her, her posture as she awaited him was as erect as ever, her entire bearing as queenly. In all ways the Lady Therissa seemed to be a woman twenty or thirty years younger than she actually was.