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and down into the inky blue darkness. She would have to wait until the uneasy
seabed lifted the island higher before she could get her hands on the prize. Patience,
she told herself. You have waited so long already; you can wait a little while
longer. What is time to you?
Still, she could not bear to go back without at least touching one of the stones,
making contact with the home she had lost so long ago. Glancing at her diving
watch, she noted the time remaining on her air tank, and dove towards the heap.
She reached the top of the mound, thrilled by the uniform size and shape of the
massive stones. Looking back the way she had come, she followed the straight and
unbroken line. From her vantage point, it was clear what that line represented: the
remnant of an enormous wall. And the mound of tumbled stone had once been a
high tower on a corner of that wall.
An image of that wall and tower came into her mind s eye, and she saw it as it once
had been. The wall was not high, but it was broad and wider at the bottom than the
top so that the wall face slanted inward as it rose. The breastwork at the top was a
single solid rim of stone; there were no crenellations, only pyramidlike projections,
roughly man-sized, at regular intervals along the top.
In all, there had been five towers one at each of the four corners and one over the
wide, iron-clad timber gate at the entrance. The towers were taller than the walls,
rising above the squat solidity of the ramparts like long, tapering fingers. Slender
windows, twelve in all, pierced each tower near the sharp-peaked roof, allowing light
into the round upper rooms any time of the day.
Moving carefully over the cluttered heap of stone, Moira began searching among the
individual blocks. She found a place where several larger stones had fallen together
in such a way as to form a shallow cave. After first trying her weight against the
massive blocks, she reached into the nylon bag at her belt, removed a small diving
torch, and switched it on. She shined the torch into the hollow to make sure there
were no nasty surprises inside, and then went in.
The floor of this hollow cavity was littered with broken stone. Holding the torch with
one hand, she began turning the smaller pieces over, examining them and setting
them aside. In this way, she dug down into the heap, exposing fresh stone to the
light. After shifting a dozen or so broken pieces out of the way, the torch beam fell
upon an altogether different shape: long and slender, and flared outward at either
end.
She knew, even before the light found it, what she would see: a long serpentine rib,
running the length of the fragment like an artist s representation of water as a
stylized series of waves, each crest and trough exactly the same.
Moira stared at the simple design, her heart thudding with the shock of recognition.
She reached out a gloved finger to trace the pattern, and saw the fragment restored: it
was a piece of stone tracery which had formed the inner frame of one of the tower s
twelve windows. She saw this, and into her mind flashed the image of a
golden-haired young woman gazing out to sea, her face illumined by the fiery
brilliance of the westering sun. High above, the keening cry of seabirds filled the
cloudless sky, circling, circling and diving; far below the wave-figured window, the
fretful sea, red as blood in the dying light, dashed itself upon the rocks.
There in the underwater cavern, Moira crouched, cradling the fragment of shaped
stone to her cold breast, remembering.
She heard again the sound that had filled her with such piercing longing: a young man
singing; he was sitting on the cliff top in the flame-colored twilight, singing a song of
love to an unknown lover. She held her breath as the shimmering notes of the harp
quivered on the air, and Taliesin s matchless voice rose like a graceful and effortless
prayer towards the heavens.
Oh, the desire awakened by that voice was more powerful than anything she had
ever known. She wanted to possess the object of that yearning, to own it, to worship
it. But even as she felt her heart lifted on the first waves of desire, she knew it would
forever remain beyond her. It belonged to a world she could not inhabit. Even as she
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