Priestess — David G. McDaniel

On an isolated world a small society has been struggling tosurvive in the hostile microcosm of a wooded vale for 900 years. Six cities,built outside the perimeter of a mighty temple, itselfbuilt thousands of years before by their distant ancestors. To their minds theyare the center of the universe.But one among them sees things differently.Raan, not yet a woman, no longer a girl,has just been confirmed as a priestess of the city of Aesho. After making a terrifying journeyto the ancient temple Mezopkhan, losing many warriors in combatalong the way, she decides that the laws of their elders must surely be amistake.Driven by this conviction she sets about a covertinvestigation of the temple archives, discovering her suspicions to be true:the Founders of their society hid a great secret nine hundred years ago. A secret since lost even in legend, known of only by an innercircle of scribes, keepers of the temple records.Uncovering this Raan is catapultedinto a scenario far beyond anything she could have imagined, triggering thearrival of another race, themselves long-agodescendants of the same pilgrims that founded her society. Only these humanshave advanced, moving at will among the stars. A federationof planets, warships ... a fight for an ideal.A revolution.Raan travels with them to a world calledNajolrecht, the center of their crusade. On thatworld they and a race of aliens are working to discover clues to aplanetary-scale tome left behind millions of years ago by the last trulygalactic race. A tome that would give them the technology to rule the galaxy...Encroaching on the borders of their heavily defended space,another more powerful republic wants nothing more than to see this searchbrought to an end.And so one girl, insignificant against this backdrop ofinterstellar intrigue, touches off a series of events that shape the outcome ofthe Najolrecht standoff, bring an entire race to war,a powerful republic to ruin and, indeed, when done will determine the fate ofthe ga