"The Nadir-night?" Micon half-whispered. "Already? I had lost count of the days!"
A fitful gust of wind stirred in the room, bringing a faint echo; a chant, in a strange wailing minor key, weirdly cadenced and prolonged. Rajasta's brows lifted and he inclined his head to listen, but Micon turned and went, not swiftly but with a concentrated intention, to the window again. There was deep trouble on his features, and the Priest came to stand beside him.
"Micon?" he said, with a questioning unhappiness.
"I know that chant!" the Atlantean gasped. "And what it forebodes—" He raised his thin hands and laid them gropingly on Rajasta's shoulders. "Stay thou with me, Rajasta! I—" His voice faltered. "I am afraid!"
The older man stared at him in ill-concealed horror, glad Micon could not see him. Rajasta had been with Micon through times of what seemed the ultimate of human extremity—yet never had the Initiate betrayed fear like this!
"I will not leave you, my brother," he promised—and the chant sounded again, ragged phrases borne eerily on the wind as the sun sank into the dusk. The Priest felt Micon grow tense, the wracked hands clutching on Rajasta's shoulders, the noble face ashen and trembling, a shivering that gradually crept over the man's entire body until every nerve seemed to quiver with a strained effort. . . . And then, despite the visible dread in Micon's bearing and features, the Atlantean released his hold on Rajasta and turned again to the window, to stare sightlessly at the gathering darkness, his face listening avidly.
"My brother lives," Micon said at last, and his words fell like drum-beats of doom, slow-paced in the falling night. "Would that he did not! None of the line of Ahtarrath chants thus, unless—unless—" His voice trailed away again, giving way to that listening stillness.
Suddenly Micon turned, letting his forehead fall against the older man's shoulder, clutching at him in the grip of emotions so intense that they found a mirror in Rajasta's mind, and both men trembled with unreasoning fear; nameless horrors flickered in their thoughts.
Only the wind had steadied: the broken cadences were more sustained now, rising and falling with a nightmarish, demanding, monotonous, aching insistence that kept somehow a perfect rhythm with the pounding of blood in their ears.
"They call on my power!" Micon gasped brokenly. "This is black betrayal! Rajasta!" He raised his head, and the unseeing features held a desperation that only increased the terror of the moment. "How shall I survive this night? And I must! I must! If they succeed—if that which they invoke—be summoned—only my single life stands between it and all of mankind!" He paused, gasping for breath, shivering uncontrollably. "If that link be made—then even I cannot be sure I can stay the evil!" He stood, half-swaying, at once twisted and yet utterly erect, clinging to Rajasta; his words fell like dropped stones. "Only three times in all our history has Ahtarrath summoned thus! And thrice that power has been harnessed but hardly."
Rajasta gently raised his own hands to echo Micon's, so that they stood with their hands upon each other's shoulders. "Micon!" said Rajasta sharply. "What must we do?"
The Atlantean's clutching hands relaxed a little, tightened, and then fell to his sides. "You would help me?" he said, in a broken, almost childish voice. "It means—"
"Do not tell me what it means," said Rajasta, his own voice quaking a little. "But I will help you."
Micon drew a shaky breath; the least bit of color returned to his face. "Yes," he murmured, and then, his voice becoming stronger, "yes, we have not much time."
II
Groping in the chest where he kept his private treasures, Micon took out a flexible cloak of some metallic fabric and drew it about his shoulders. Next he removed a sword wrapped in sheer, filmy cloth, which he set down close beside him. Muttering to himself in his native tongue, Micon rummaged in the chest for no little while until he at last brought out a small bronze gong, which he handed to Rajasta with the admonition that it must not touch the floor or walls.
All the time the awful chant rose and fell, rose and fell, with eerie wailing overtones and sobbing, savage cadences; a diapason of sonic minors that beat on the brain with boneshaking reiteration. Rajasta stood holding the gong, concentrating his attention fully on Micon as he bent over the chest again, shutting his mind and ears to that sound.
The Atlantean's angry mutterings turned to a sigh of relief, and he brought forth a final object—a little brazier of bronze, curiously worked with embossed figures that bulged and intertwined in a fashion that confused the eye into thinking they moved. After a moment Rajasta recognized them for what they were, a representation of fire-elementals.
With the sparse economy of movement so characteristically his, Micon rose to his feet, the wrapped sword in one hand. "Rajasta," he said, "give me the gong." When this was done, the Atlantean went on, "Move the brazier to the center of the room, and build thou a fire—pine and cypress and ultar." His words were clipped and brief, as if he recited a lesson learned well.
Rajasta, ignoring the second thoughts that already besieged him, set about the task resolutely. Micon went to the window again, and placed the sword upon the little table next to the figurine of Nar-inabi. Unwrapping the cloth, he exposed the decorated blade and the bejewelled hilt of the ceremonial weapon, and grasped it firmly again, to stand facing the window in a strained, listening attitude; Rajasta could almost see the Initiate gathering strength to himself; in sudden sympathy, he laid his hand on Micon's arm.
Micon stirred, impatiently. "Is the fire ready?"
Rebuked, the Priest bent to the brazier; kindling the slivers of fragrant wood, scattering the grains of incense over the thin blaze. Clouds of misty white smoke billowed upward; the smouldering woods were tiny sullen eyes glaring through the smoke.
Far away the chant rose and fell, rose and fell, gathering strength and volume. The thin column of fire rolled narrowly upward through the smoke, and subsided.
"It is ready," Rajasta said—and the chanting swelled, a rising flood of sound; and around the sound crept silence, as if the very pulses of the living were hushed and slow and heavy.
Almost majestic of aspect, quite changed from the Micon Rajasta knew so well, the Atlantean Initiate moved slowly to the room's center, placed the very tip of the ceremonial blade upon the brazier's metal rim, and half-circled so that again he faced the window. The sword's point still touching the brazier, Micon raised the gong, and held it before him at arm's length a moment; the smoking incense rose to writhe about the gong, as metal filings to a magnet.
"Rajasta!" Micon said, commandingly. "Stand by me, your arm across my shoulders." He winced as the Priest of Light complied. "Gently, my brother! Good. And now—" He drew a deep breath. "We wait."
The keening wail deepened, a rushing crescendo of sonic vibrations that ranged away and above the audible tones. Then—silence.
They waited. The sudden quiet lengthened, dripped and shadowed, crept back and welled up, suggesting the starless vastnesses of the universe, drowning all sounds in a dead, immense weight of stillness that crushed them like the folds of burial robes.
Rajasta could feel Micon's body, straight and stiff and real beneath the metallic cloak, and it was somehow the only real thing in all that empty deadened stillness. With a rasping whisper a wind blew through the window, and the lights grew dim; the air about them quivered, and a prickling came and crawled over Rajasta's skin. He felt, rather than saw, a misty shivering in the gloom, sensed faint distortions in the outlines of the familiar room.
The trained resonance of the Initiate's voice rang through the weight of the silence: "I have not summoned! By the Gong—" Moving suddenly, he struck the gong a sharp, hard blow with the sword's pommel; the brazen clamor sounded dashingly through the deadness. "By the Sword—" Again Micon raised the sword and held it outstretched, the point toward the window. "And by the Word on the Sword—by iron and bronze and fire—" He plunged the sword down, into the flame, and there was a crackling and sputtering of sparks.
Then the Word came
slowly from Micon's throat, almost visible, in long tremolos of slow vibration that echoed and reechoed through octave over octave, thrilling and reverberating, sounding on . . . and on . . . and on, into some unimaginable infinity of time and space, quivering through universe after universe, into a stirring and a quickening that had neither place nor moment, but encompassed beginning and end and all between.
The shimmering distortion swirled and sparkled, faster and faster as if the masonry walls spun around and closed in upon them. Once more Micon raised the sword and sounded the gong with its pommel; again he thrust the blade's point into the brazier. There came a dull, distant roaring as the fire flared and tongued its way up the embedded blade. The distortions continued to twist around them, closer but less dizzyingly swift now; no longer did the room seem about to collapse.
Red and sullen orange, the hot light glowed in a streak across the Initiate's dark face. Slowly, slowly, the shimmerings wrapped themselves around the sword-blade, and for a moment lingered, a blue-white corona pulsing, before flowing down the blade into the flickering fire—which, with a hiss and a whisper, extinguished itself. The floor beneath them quaked and rattled. Then all was quiet.
Micon let himself lean against Rajasta, shivering, the aura of power and majesty quite gone from him. The sword remained, still upright in the burnt-out coals of the brazier. Rajasta was about to speak when there was a final, ear-splitting boom from far away.
"Fear not," Micon whispered, harshly. "The power returns through those who sought to use it, unsanctioned. Our work is—ended, now. And I—" He sagged suddenly and went limp, a dead weight in the Priest's arms.
Rajasta lifted the Atlantean bodily and carried him to the bed. He laid Micon down, gently loosed and removed the leather thong about the Initiate's wrist, from which the gong had hung suspended. Setting the instrument aside, Rajasta dampened a bit of cloth he found nearby and bathed the beaded sweat from the unconscious man's face. Micon stirred and moaned
Rajasta frowned sternly, his lips pursed with worry. The Atlantean had a white and death-like pallor, a waxen quality that boded no good. This, Rajasta reflected, is exactly what I do not like about magic! It weakens the strong, enervates the weak! It would be a fine thing, he thought angrily, if Micon drove away one danger, only to succumb to this!
The Atlantean groaned again, and Rajasta rose up, to stride to the door with a sudden decision. Summoning a slave, the Priest said only, "Send for the Healer Riveda."
III
For Domaris, drugged but tense with half-waking, formless shadows and horrors, the Nadir-night was a confused nightmare. It was almost a relief to struggle to awareness and find imperative physical pain substituted for dreams of dread; her child's birth, she suddenly realized, was imminent. On a fatalistic impulse, she sent no word to Micon or Rajasta. Deoris was nowhere to be found, and only Elara knew when she went, alone and afoot as the custom required, to the House of Birth.
And then there was the long waiting, more tiresome at first than painful. She submitted to the minor irritations of the preliminary stages with good grace, for Domaris was too well-disciplined to waste her strength in resentment: answering questions, giving all sorts of intimate information, being handled and examined like some animal (like a kittening cat, she told herself, trying to be amused instead of annoyed) kept her mind off her discomfort.
She was not exactly afraid: in common with all Temple women, she had served in Caratra's Temple many times, and the processes of birth held no mysteries for her. But her life had been one of radiant health, and this was almost her first experience with pain and its completely personal quality.
Moreover, and worse, she felt sorry for the little girl they had left with her during this first time of waiting. It was all too obviously the child's first attendance at a confinement, and she acted frightened. This did not add to Domaris's assurance, for she hated blundering of any sort, and if she had one deep-rooted fear, it was of being placed in unskilled hands when she could not help herself. And yet, irrationally, her annoyance grew, rather than lessening, when little Cetris told her, by way of reassurance, that the Priestess Karahama had chosen to attend her confinement.
Karahama! thought Domaris. That daughter-to-the-winds!
It seemed a long time, although it was barely past noon, when Cetris sent for the Priestess. To Domaris's complete astonishment, Deoris came into the room with her. It was the first time since the ceremony that Domaris had seen her sister robed as a Priestess of Caratra, and for a moment she hardly recognized the little white face beneath the blue veil. It seemed to her that Deoris's face was the most welcome thing she had ever seen in her life.
She turned toward her little sister—they had kept her on her feet—and held out her arms. But Deoris stood, stricken, in the doorway, making no move to come near her.
Domaris's knuckles were white as she clenched her hands together. "Deoris!" she pleaded. With frozenly reluctant steps, Deoris went to her sister's side and stood beside Domaris, while Karahama took Cetris to a far corner and questioned her in an undertone.
Deoris felt sick, seeing the familiar agony seize on Domaris. Domaris! Her sister, always to Deoris a little more than human. The realization shook something which lay buried in Deoris's heart; somehow, she had thought it would have to be different with Domaris. Ordinary things could not touch her! All that—the pain and the danger and the blood—it couldn't happen to Domaris!
And yet it could, it would. It was happening now, before her eyes.
Karahama dismissed Cetris—the little girls of twelve and thirteen were allotted only these simple tasks of waiting, of fetching and carrying and running errands—and came to Domaris, looking down at her with a reassuring smile. "You may rest now," she remarked, good-humouredly, and Domaris sank gratefully down on the couch. Deoris, steadying her with quick, strong hands, felt that Domaris was trembling, and sensed—with a terrible sensitivity—the effort Domaris was making not to struggle, or cry out.
Domaris made herself smile at Deoris and whisper, "Don't look like that, you silly child!" Domaris felt quite bewildered: what was the matter with Deoris? She had seen Deoris's work, had made a point of informing herself, for personal reasons, about her sister's progress. She knew that Deoris was already permitted to work without supervision, even to go unattended into the city to deliver the wives of such commoners or merchant women as might request the attendance of a Priestess; a token of skill which not even Elis had won as yet.
Karahama, noticing the smile and the rigid control, nodded with satisfaction. Good! This Domaris has courage! She felt kindly disposed toward her more fortunate half-sister, and now, bending above her, said pleasantly, "You will find the waiting easier now, I think. Deoris, the rule has not yet been broken—only bent a little." Karahama smiled at her own tiny joke as she added in dismissal, "You may go now."
Domaris heard the sentence with her heart sinking. "Oh, please let her stay with me!" she begged.
Deoris added her own plea: "I will be good!"
Karahama only smiled tolerantly and reminded them of the law: both women must surely know that in Caratra's House it was forbidden for a woman's sibling sister to attend the birth of her child. "Moreover," Karahama added, with a deferential movement of her head, "as an Initiate of Light, Domaris must be attended only by her equals."
"How interesting," Domaris murmured dryly, "that my own sister is not my equal."
Karahama said, with a little tightening of her mouth, "The rule does not refer to equality of birth. True, you are both daughters to the Arch-Priest—but you are Acolyte to the Guardian of the Gate, and an Initiate-Priestess. You must be attended by Priestesses of equivalent achievement."
"Has not the Healer-Priest Riveda, as well as yourself, pronounced Deoris capable?" Domaris argued, persisting despite the inner knowledge that it would serve no purpose.
Karahama deferentially repeated that the law was the law, and that if an exception was made now, exception would pile upon exception unti
l the law crumbled away completely. Deoris, afraid to disobey, bent miserably to kiss her sister goodbye. Domaris's lips thinned in anger; this bastard half-sister presumed to lecture them on law, and speak of equals—either of birth or achievement! But a sudden wrench of pain stopped the protests on her tongue; she endured the pain for a moment, then cried out, clutching at Deoris's hands, twisting in sudden torment. Deoris could not have freed herself if she had tried, and Karahama, watching not unsympathetically for all her icy reserve, made no motion to interfere.
At last the spasm passed, and Domaris raised her face; sweat glistened on her forehead and her upper lip. Her voice had a knife's edge: "As an Initiate of Light," she said, throwing Karahama's words back to her, "I have the right to suspend that law! Deoris stays! Because I wish it!" She added the indomitable formula—"As I have said it."
It was the first time Domaris had used her new rank to command. A queer little glow thrilled through her, to be drowned in the recurring pain. An ironical reflection stirred in the back of her mind: she had power over pain for others, but she was powerless to save herself any of this. Men's laws she might suspend almost as she willed; but she might not abrogate Nature so much as a fraction for her own sake, whatever her power, for she must experience fully, to her own completion. She endured.