Last Priestess

Bride of the Condor Series, Vol 1 by Terry L. White

Join Qwana on the Nazca Plain where she is the last priestess to the Temple of the Moon. Follow the last priestess through her initiation, then onto the plain where visitors from another world wait to catapult her into another world.

ISBN 1-59431-606-6 Fiction / Sci-Fi / Romance/Series

Cover Art by Shelley Rodgerson



PROLOGUE The Bride of the Condor

Crs'tal looked up at the heavens. Far away, in the distance, she could see the last fading light of the great bird_like vehicle that carried her lover Jared away.

Crs'tal could not imagine how far a light would have to travel before it could not be seen by the naked eye, but she did know each moment that passed carried her beloved Jared and his ship further and further from the plain on which she stood.

Months before there had been a disturbance in the heavens and Jared's great sky ship had landed on the plain, casting The People into confusion, causing them to run from place to place in terror and to make endless bloody sacrifices to the ugly gods they worshiped.

The People were squat and dark, with hooked noses like the beaks of hawks. They had short sturdy limbs that allowed them to walk long distances over the rugged terrain of the plain and nearby mountains.

Their visitors had long, graceful limbs, fair skins, and hair the color of the sun.

The People carried on the activities of their daily lives with implements of soft, beaten copper and stone.

The visitors from the sky carried knives of hardened metal and weapons that belched fire and light. Those weapons brought death with voices as loud as thunder.

The People had watched from their hiding places as the fair visitors walked the streets of their village and examined their dwellings. It did not pass unnoticed that the visitors did no harm in their explorations. Satisfied the sky_born intruders were none of their own kind, The People came to the conclusion the entities who fell from the sky were Gods and thus, their priests and wise men made the decision to worship them with sacrifices of children and the deflowering of virgins.

The sky men turned away in horror.

Crs'tal had been one of the young women marked for sacrifice in honor of the visitors, but the Chief of the Sky Gods, Jared, had stopped her execution with a shout of outrage, and taken her hand to lead her from the bloody altar while The People watched with open mouths.

Jared had taken one look at the world in which Crs'tal lived and fallen into a spell, charmed by the woman's mysterious eyes and her beautiful surroundings.

Certainly the world of The People was beautiful, with its mysterious, brooding plains and the towering, Andes, the mountains whose saw_toothed peaks were often shrouded in dreamlike mists.

Yet something in this place felt like home to the man Jared, who had spent his life in travel from galaxy to galaxy looking for intelligent life on other worlds.

But Jared had been appalled at the casual way the priests and wise men of The People regarded life. He recognized the bloodthirsty attitude of The People as that of a race only recently ascended from the animal kingdom.

Like children, the dark citizens of the plain stood in ignorance, in desperate need of instruction. As his men watched to see no harm came to their leader, Jared set about making a set of laws for the innocent and savage people of "Earth," the name he had given the world he had found.

When those laws were complete, Jared set about teaching them to the holy men and women who tended the many gods and goddesses of the place.

Crs'tal, drawn by love and gratitude to the man_god who saved her life, soon become a voluntary slave to Jared, making him comfortable in the manner of her people, feeding him the best foods she could coax from the housewives of the clan and prepared with her slender hands, clothing his nakedness with fine textiles woven by the nimble fingers of temple women who usually toiled for kings alone. In time she came to his bed.

In return for her love Jared created a post of importance for Crs'tal _ as chief acolyte to the Mother Goddess, the Moon. Jared had decreed the women who served that office be called "The Mamacuna. The Mother's Chosen." No man of The People, priest or commoner, was to so much as lay a finger on the women who served the silver statue of the Goddess Jared ordered cast in Crs'tal's image and honor. He did, however, rule that if a woman of the Temple of the Goddess desired to take a lover, she could do so with no aspersions to be cast on her person or office.

And so, Crs'tal was safe, if _ in her newly sacred role _ lonelier than she had ever been in her life.

Crs'tal had known much tenderness at the hands of Jared and so she was saddened beyond telling when he told her he had to go back to his own world. "But I will not stay for long," Jared stood behind her, his arms wrapped across her chest, her head drawn back to touch his chin while his fine blue eyes roved the distant heavens. "I will come back. I could not live without you."

Crs'tal did not doubt Jared's words. Did he not speak in her own tongue? Who but a God could have fallen from the sky to save her from the knives of the priests would later whisper words of love while the night beings sang outside their window?

How she resented the hours Jared spent with the priests.

And that was even before she knew Jared meant to return to his home in the Milky Way: the sky formation known to The People as the Road to Infinity, the pathway to the Otherworld for the dead.

Once, near the end of Jared's stay on Earth, trying to help Crs'tal picture how far away his world, Deesa, was from her own; he had walked with her on the plain. The night had been clear, unmarred by mist or cloud, and the Pleiades, the sister stars that foretold times of famine of plenty for The People had shone clearly upon their faces.

"Out there," Jared pointed to a mass of tiny lights along the outer edge of the star_mass. "Is a world nearly as beautiful as this..." He sighed like a lover who misses his mate.

"You wish to return to Deesa so soon? Are you so sad here?" Crs'tal asked.

"My wife died before I began this journey," Jared shook his head. "I loved her very much."

Crs'tal had looked away in pain. She loved Jared, but although he treated her tenderly, Jared did not seem like a man in love. She sometimes wondered if she had left some lover's thing undone to have him treat her like a pet cony.

"Your moon is so beautiful," Jared said, interrupting Crs'tal's reverie. He'd told her world had three moons, but none so large and silvery as the single moon of this beautiful world.

"The Moon is the Mother of life," Crs'tal reminded him with a whisper. She turned away so he could not see the tears on her cheeks.

"I shall remember," Jared said gently and turned the small dark maiden to face him. "As I shall remember you, Crs'tal. In a strange way we belong to one another. You saved my life and I have saved yours. I thought I could never love again."

"Love?" Crs'tal whispered. "You said your love was dead."

"I love you, Crs'tal," Jared turned her to him, and tipped back her head to claim her lips. "I love you more than I have ever loved anything in my life."

And so, they pledged themselves in the light of Mother Moon and a child was conceived of their mating there on the windswept plain.

But Jared had to leave her before Crs'tal had been sure his seed had taken root in her belly. His sky boat became no more than a pinpoint of light in the heavens, a light she watched nightly, until it was no more.

Only the yellow tracks of his ship remained, the gray skin of the plain torn away by forces The People could not understand or explain.



CHAPTER ONE

Qwana peered across the plain and felt a pang of sorrow. This was her last day of freedom. Far away across the misty span of earth, a pair of dark figures toiled, cutting away the grayish earth, leaving a broad, pinkish_yellow line that wound in a spiral toward a central point on the Nazca plain.

The air was very clear and from where she stood, Qwana could hear the chants of the workers as they toiled to discharge their religious obligation to the Sun. They sang to the Sun and to acacila, the Spirits of the Winds. The worker's songs, although faint because they were so far away, reminded her of her duty to the Goddess. When this day ended, she would no longer be free to walk the plains and watch the condors and ravens wheel overhead as they searched for mice and cavas, the small pig_like rodents that burrowed beneath the stones of the plain.

Never again would she be allowed to walk to the foothills of the mighty Andes to the spring for fresh water to quench her thirst. No more would she grind meal and shape it into little cakes to bake at the side of a comfortable fire. No more would she tend and harvest her Sister, Corn. All things physical would be done for her, and more, for she was to be one of the chosen, the Mamacuna. This very day she would take her place as an aella, a sacred virgin in the Temple of the Moon to serve The Mother Goddess.

She had no choice in the matter. Her path had been planned since before she was born.

Qwana threw herself on the ground and wept a little for the life she was about to leave.

Which was no more like the lives of the other young women in Loa than night was like day. Qwana had always been different. The circumstances of her birth had marked her in secret ways, leaving her apart and lonely during the growing_up time when girls played at being mothers and worked with the older women of the community learning women's ways.

If only her father had not had his heart set on a male child, everything might have been so different.

By all accounts Qwana had been born in the ordinary way, with the holy women chanting prayers as her mother, Maya, squatted upon a sweet grass mat and leaned on the arms of her elder sister, Nana, for support. Her face shone with scented oil and perspiration as she labored to bring forth her child.

"You must work harder, Sister," Nana urged when Maya's strength faltered. "Toxli awaits his son."

Maya's bronze fingers gripped her sister's arm so the flesh stood out white. She breathed the holy sisters' bitter incense. "Toxli can wait," she panted and gave herself to the pain. She bore down hard, then relaxed as the spasm passed. "If I had seen the end of it when he put this child's spirit within me with his honeyed tongue and silken fingers, I would have cut his throat and given his blood as a sacrifice to the Gods of Darkness.... Aeii!" Her groan of anguish signaled a new and more violent stage of her labor.

Two women, tempered by age and wisdom, the Mamacuna chanted their magic and sang soft songs of encouragement. Among their duties as priestesses to the Mother, was attending the labor of high_born ladies.

The four women worked for what seemed like hours, then, after the terrible struggle all souls must endure when they chose to enter the world of mankind, Qwana was born.

She lay, glistening with birth fluids on the mat between her mother's feet, a tiny scrap of humanity, waiting for a purpose for which to live. Unlike some newborns, who screeched their protests at being deprived of their warm harbor, Maya's child seemed to gaze calmly at the women gathered to honor her entrance into their world. A small smile of what may have been amusement formed on her tiny lips.

"It is only a girl," Maya whimpered at last and rose on trembling limbs to be cleansed. "She is marked," she pointed with a sigh to a large red crescent birthmark that defaced the child's perfect features. The mark was not only large, but placed as it was at the site of the third eye in the middle of the baby's forehead, it gave Maya even more cause to be disappointed. Not only was her child not perfect, it was also not a son. She felt beaten, defeated. A son she had promised Toxli, and this thing, this miserable, marked girl child had been given. If she had been stronger, she would have taken her to the plain herself and left her there to feed the ravens.

Maya was weak from her ordeal, her legs trembled. She turned away and did not reach for the child as a new mother should. Instead, she lay down upon the clean mat of sweet grass her midwives spread for her and allowed a soft sling of woven grasses lined with cotton fibers to be secured between her legs to catch the remainder of the birth fluids. And then, with a sigh that seemed to call up all the sadness and hurt in the universe, Maya turned her face to the wall. "Go away," she commanded. "Leave me alone so I can die."

Nana could not understand her sister's attitude. "You will not die, and you should be happy, Sister, this child is beautiful." Her sister tried to interest Maya in the new daughter of The People. "Toxli will make do with a daughter easily enough, and the birthmark will hardly show when the little one has her ceremonial markings." she said firmly, then took the beautifully formed girl child up in her hands. "This One has the eyes of a jaguar," she said with satisfaction as she handed the baby to the old priestesses for their examination, which would be done before the child would be cleansed of the cheesy substance that clung to her tiny limbs and features.

When the old women muttered their blessings over the new life, Nana, whose forehead, cheekbones, and earlobes were tattooed with ancient patterns that bespoke her rank and womanhood, took up the child, cleansed her with scented oil and wrapped her in a clean cloth worked in a pattern of moon and stars. The infant remained placid, although her aunt's hands were rough and hard from hours at the loom and her grinding stone.

"Give her to me again," A'ruz the elder of the priestesses, held out hands as gnarled as the thorn bushes of the plain. She watched impatiently as the child was swaddled. Her sister_priestess, Mix'la took up a chant, fanning clouds of bitter smoke up from her pot of burning herbs to cleanse every corner of the dwelling. The sound of her song rose and fell as the older woman examined the newcomer for the second time.

"This One is a child of the Spirit People," she announced after a long study of the infant. "She bears the mark of The Mother." Her tone was grave, touched with awe. There had been signs and portents that a female child would come to The People, and that this particular child would be different, would be marked in a particular way, and have an important destiny.

A comet had flown only the night before, and A'ruz had watched its fiery course across the night sky and known the child of fate would soon enter the earth plane. When Nana had asked the priestesses to attend the birth of her sister's child, although most women of Loa preferred to stay apart for their labor, she had secretly rejoiced, knowing before the labor this was the child for which she had waited all her life.

Holding the newborn in her left arm, A'ruz fumbled in the prayer bag at her waist and produced a large, clear crystal. A quartz nugget the size of a raven's egg, the crystal gleamed and scintillated as the light from the fire collected in its depths. It became a living thing in the old woman's knotted fingers.

Intoning a guttural prayer, A'ruz held the bright bauble before the infant and watched as her tiny hands reached for the crystal. The flower mouth once more resumed its tender smile. Avoiding contact with the baby's batting hands, A'ruz placed the crystal in the center of the child's forehead, at its exact center, where the God Eye in men creates visions of the past and the future for those who know the secrets of its awakening.

"This one will soar as the condor," she muttered after a careful perusal of the crystal. "Her name shall be exalted, her deeds will change the course of history for The People ...," The old woman's voice trailed off, caught up in the baby's crow of delight at the bright thing above her head.

"This one will give the people a gift more precious than gold or jade," A'ruz stopped suddenly as if uncertain as to how to interpret the visions the crystal presented. "This one shall be a child of destiny," she stopped at last. Spent, she gave the tiny child to Nana and looked at her sister priestess who huddled over her pot of smoldering herbs.

Mix'la cast down her eyes for the terror in A'ruz's eyes had been frightening to behold. She puffed harder on her incense to drive away evil spirits that seemed to congregate in the corners of the room, and she continued her chant as clouds of fragrant smoke carried her prayers upward to the ears of the Goddess ....

"Now is the hour of birth,

The Sun rejoices.

Now is the hour of life,

The Moon dances.

Now is the hour of destiny, The Earth stands still ...."



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