The walls of Thira towered over them, bleak and almost featureless. The island stabbed out of the bright sea, a nondescript stub of some ancient mountain that had remained above the waves during the Drowning. No sign of green marred the crumbling stone and twisted lava. The skiff slid down deeper and deeper troughs between the waves, and now the roar of their crash against the dark shore drowned out all conversation. Thyatis leaned into the oars, her face lashed with spray and the skiff crabbed to the side. A riptide rose up before the boat, a white boil of crashing water, and in the prow, Shirin pointed urgently off to one side. A dark spine of volcanic rock was momentarily revealed by the surging waves. Thyatis rowed furiously, feeling her muscles stretched to their fullest for the first time in weeks. The boat danced aside, swept around the black tooth by the next swell.

The cliff face before them- a sheer rampart of dark shale and glassy lava- suddenly split, drawing a shout of wonder from Shirin, and Thyatis shipped the oars. With smooth, practiced movements, she lashed one oar with a line from the bottom of the boat and slid the other back into the rear rudder lock. A wave swelled behind them, curling up out of blue-green waters. The skiff was carried up its inner face, and Thyatis held the steering oar free of the water, waiting.

The island and the horizon tipped as the boat rode up, higher and higher. In the front of the skiff, Shirin had wedged herself into the bottom of the boat, her arms hooked around the forward bench. Thyatis half stood at the back of the skiff, her head suddenly outlined against the brilliantly blue sky. She braced her feet on the thwarts, feeling the wave gather strength under her. Before them, a narrow passage appeared in the cliff, filled with the roar of the sea. The wave rushed into the slot and the boat rocketed down its inner face. Thyatis' hand was gentle on the oar, keeping the skiff balanced just before the wave crest.

Towering walls of jagged stone whipped past on either side, and the sea boiled against them. The air was filled with brilliant white spray. From the bottom of the boat, Shirin half saw arches of worked stone blur past above her, then there was a great roaring sound and the skiff spun around like a leaf on a mill-race.

Thyatis dug the steering oar in suddenly, and the boat leapt to the side. Gray-green walls of cut stone rushed past, and they were in a dark passage. Waves slapped against walls shrouded in the gloom, and then the skiff sailed out into the light again.

"You must stand and be seen," Thyatis said from the rear of the boat. Shirin looked back and saw that her friend was drenched from her slicked-back red hair to the bare foot braced against one side of the skiff. The cotton shirt and short linen skirt were plastered to her muscular body like some wall painting from the City of the Great Kings. Shirin swallowed a little whistle and turned away. She stood, one bare foot braced against the prow and the other on the first bench. Nervously, she ran slim fingers through her thick hair. It was not as tangled as she feared. She looked up and around.

A great circle of gloriously blue-green water greeted her. Sunlight danced on the wave tops, barely obscuring the tremendous depth of the water. Shirin looked down and laughed aloud- a merry sound- to see a great school of orange and yellow fish darting through the water below the keel of the boat. Under them golden sand and thousands more fish swam in a lagoon of water clearer than the finest glass. Great towers of coral and sea fern rose from the floor of the hidden bay. Around the lagoon, high cliffs rose up, forming a ring of stone and rock hundreds of feet high. At the far edge was a narrow half circle of pure white sand, and there- where half of the encircling wall stood in shadow and half in sun- a pier of white marble thrust from the strand.

On the pier stood three figures, each dressed in flowing white robes. One held a parasol of pale sea green over the head of the central figure. The others were motionless, waiting. Behind them the pier ran back into the face of a temple carved from the rock and faced with soaring columns. Above it, temple buildings climbed the cliff, seemingly half grown from the dark rock. The gleam of white marble stunned the eye, even as the senses were excited by the beauty of the statues and pediments that were so exposed. Far up, on the rim of the bowl, great colonnaded archways peered down, and in them were small figures, adorned with bright flowers and colorful garments.

"This is Thira, my friend."

Shirin barely heard Thyatis' words. A hidden city lay at the center of the island, a city of beautiful cream-colored buildings and graceful white pillars. The skiff sailed over transparent waters, seemingly aloft in an ocean of blue air. Thyatis guided the boat to the end of the pier with sure strokes of the oar. One of the figures, slighter than the other two and with dusky skin, reached down and caught the prow of the boat with a looped rope. Thyatis bowed deeply to the other two figures and oared the rear of the boat to a gentle contact with the stone of the quay.

"Greetings, Lady of the Island. Two women seek refuge here among the daughters of Artemis."

The middle figure smiled, her long face split with a merry grin. She was almost as tall as Thyatis and lean, but her once-dark hair was streaked with white, and her features showed the graceful onset of great age. She wore a clean-lined gown of simple wool, and her only jewelry was a single sapphire on a pendant around her neck. At her side, holding the parasol, another woman stood, enough like her to be a sister or daughter, but she was of middle age, and her bright eyes measured the two women in the boat.

"Well met, wayward daughter," the Matron said. "We welcome you to the island. Please, step ashore."

Shirin stepped off of the boat and onto the dock, the stone cool under her bare feet. The dusky-skinned woman who had snared the boat held out a hand to help her, and Shirin suppressed a start of surprise when she felt the strength in the thin fingers. This woman was very short, barely four and a half feet tall, olive skinned with a golden tinge to it that Shirin had never seen before. Her oval face seemed made for smiling, but she was calm and self-possessed. Shirin met her coal-dark eyes and felt disoriented for a moment. Then it passed, and she made a graceful bow to the Matron of the Island.

"Greetings, lost daughter," the elderly woman said, a muted smile on her lips.

"Greetings, Daughter of the Archer," Shirin replied, carefully pronouncing the archaic words as Thyatis had taught her. "I seek shelter from storm. I seek shelter from the rage of men. I seek shelter from fate and the gods. Bright lady, hear my prayer and grant me peace and surcease from the world. I pray you let me into sanctuary and I will bind up my hair for you and follow your ways in all the days of my life."

The snow white eyebrows of the Matron rose up, and she darted a fierce look at Thyatis, who had also stepped out of the boat and had stripped off the soaked cotton shirt. The red-haired woman met her gaze and held it, all innocence while she wrung the seawater out of the garment. The Matron turned back to Shirin, noting for the first time the archaic line of the garment she was wearing and the classical styling of her hair. "I see: my lost daughter brings a new student, and a troublesome one at that."

The younger woman with the parasol made a slight coughing sound. The Matron rolled her eyes and batted a hand at her. "Peace, Aurelia, I will abide by the conventions of the island and the Order."

The Matron turned a steely gaze upon Shirin and considered her for a long moment. "O girl, you who come before the goddess as ephebe, you give yourself to the Order of the Huntress?"