In the centre of the dusty floor a circular shape had been revealed, decorated with fragments of tile stained with bright glazes: blue, turquoise and grass-green.

‘A mosaic pavement.’ Khassian knelt down to look more closely.

‘Isn’t it exquisite?’

‘A flight of dragonflies…’ Khassian’s hands hovered above the mosaic, slowly tracing the pattern Jolaine Tradescar had uncovered.

‘And you led me to them.’

‘I? It was as much Orial as myself.’

‘Orial has always had a particular affection for this chamber.’ Jolaine Tradescar gestured to the painted walls. Khassian could vaguely make out the figure of a woman, hands crossed on her breast. She stood knee-high in a meadow of white star-lilies on the borders of a stream. Dragonflies encircled her head, in a winged cloud.

‘Star-lilies. A symbol of death for the Lifhendil. These meadows represent the Other World, the afterlife.’

Khassian was only half-listening. He could see Orial, wandering through that lily meadow, her hair unbound about her thin shoulders.

A symbol of death…

At that moment he could not have identified the bright pain that lit his heart, the reason for the sudden quickening of his breath. The image melted away, as swiftly as it had come, spring snow in sunlight.

‘The circle. The spinning circle. The image recurs throughout the depictions of their mysteries.’

‘“The ceaseless round…” ‘Khassian murmured, recalling the words of the ancient psalm he had sung as a boy.

‘“The harmony of the spinning spheres”… yes, yes, I recall it too. But I don’t think the Lifhendil understood it merely in a metaphysical, cosmological sense. To them it was a reality. The Winged Ones, the Eä-Endil. Orial’s illness is the sign that she is ready to be translated, to become part of the circle.’

‘To die,’ Khassian said bluntly.

‘No.’ Jolaine Tradescar’s response was so vehement it took him by surprise. ‘We’re such sceptics. In Tourmalise, reason and enlightenment prevail. We cannot begin to imagine a world which moves to a different rhythm, a world where the numinous is made manifest. It contradicts everything we have been taught –’

‘Trespassers!’

Khassian spun around to see a Priestess standing in the entrance to the hall. In the flickering lotos-light she looked, in her starry veils, as if she had stepped down from one of the wall-paintings. But when she came closer, shaking her finger at Jolaine Tradescar, the momentary illusion passed.

‘Dame Tradescar, you were expressly forbidden to enter the Undercity today. I am sent to escort you both back to the Main Hall.’

Jolaine Tradescar sighed and reluctantly gathered up her belongings.

‘Why do you violate the sanctity of our ceremony?’ The Priestess asked. Khassian sensed that they had held this conversation before. ‘It only comes once a year. You know how important it is.’

As they drew near to the Main Reservoir, the perfumed scent of the lotos-candles filled the vaults with the drowsy sweetness of a summer’s meadow.