She had never seen him clothed in aught but the voluminous grey robe, or a simpler grey smock for magical work. Tonight he blazed in raw colors that made him look crude, sinister—frightening. His silver-gilt hair shone like virgin gold beneath a horned diadem which partially concealed his face; he wore a tabard of crimson like her own, with symbols worked in black from which Deoris turned away shamed eyes: the emblems were legitimate magical symbols, but in company with the ornaments of her clothing they seemed obscene. Under the crimson surcoat, Riveda wore a close-fitting tunic dyed blue—and this to Deoris was the crowning obscenity, for blue was the color sacred to Caratra, and reserved for women; she found she could not look at it on his body, and her face was aflame. Over all, he wore the loose magician's cloak which could be drawn about him to form the Black Robe. Seeing her blushes slowly whiten, Riveda smiled sternly.
"You are not thinking, Deoris! You are reacting to your childhood's superstitions. Come, what have I taught you about vibration and color?"
She felt all the more shamed and foolish at the reminder. "Red vitalizes and stimulates," she muttered, reciting, "where blue produces calmness and peace, mediating all inflamed and feverish conditions. And black absorbs and intensifies vibrations."
"That's better," he approved, smilingly. He then surveyed her costume critically, and once satisfied, said, "One thing remains; will you wear this for me, Deoris?"
He held out a girdle to her. Carved of wooden links, it was bound with crimson cords knotted in odd patterns. Runes were incised in the wood, and for a moment some instinct surged up in Deoris, and her fingers refused to touch the thing.
Riveda, more sternly, said, "Are you afraid to wear this, Deoris? Must we waste time with a lengthy explanation?"
She shook her head, chastened, and began to fasten it about her body—but Riveda bent and prevented her. With his strong, scarred hands he cinctured it carefully about her waist, tying the cords into a firm knot and ending with a gesture incomprehensible to her.
"Wear this until I give you leave to take it off," he told her. "Now come."
She almost rebelled again when she saw where he was taking her—to the terrible shrouded Crypt of the Avatar, where the Man with Crossed Hands lay, continually bound. Once within, she watched, frozen, as Riveda kindled ritual fire upon the altar which had been dark for a million years.
In his deepest voice, blazing in his symbolic robes, he began to intone the invocatory chant and Deoris, recognizing it, knew in trembling terror what it invoked. Was Riveda mad indeed? Or splendidly, superbly courageous? This was blackest blasphemy—or was it? And for what?
Shivering, she had no real choice but to add her own voice to the invocation. Voice answered voice in dark supplication, strophe and antistrophe, summoning . . . entreating. . . .
Riveda turned abruptly to the high stone altar where a child lay, and with a surge of horror Deoris saw what Riveda held in his hands. She clasped her own hands over her mouth so that she would not scream aloud as she recognized the child: Larmin. Karahama's son, Demira's little brother—Riveda's own son . . .
The child watched with incurious drugged eyes. The thing was done with such swiftness that the child gave only a single smothered whimper of apprehension, then fell back into the drugged sleep. Riveda turned back to the terrible ceremony which had become, to Deoris, a devil's rite conducted by a maniac.
Nadastor glided from the shadows, unbound the little boy, lifted the small senseless figure from the altar-stone and bore it from the Crypt. Deoris and Riveda were alone in the Dark Shrine—the very shrine where Micon had been tortured, alone with the Unrevealed God.
Her mind reeling with the impact of sound and sight, she began to comprehend if not the whole, then the drift of the blasphemous ritual: Riveda meant nothing less than to loose the terrible chained power of the Dark God, to bring the return of the Black Star. But there was something more, something she could not quite understand . . . or was it that she dared not understand?
She sank to her knees; a deathly intangible horror held her by the throat, and though her mind screamed No! No-no-no-no! in the grip of that hypnotic dream she could not move or cry out. With a single word or gesture of protest she could so distort and shatter the pattern of the ritual that Riveda must fail—but sound was beyond her power, and she could not raise a hand or move her head so much as a fraction to one side or the other . . . and because in this crisis she could not summon the courage to defy Riveda, her mind slid off into incoherence, seeking an escape from personal guilt.
She could not—she dared not understand what she was hearing and seeing; her brain refused to seize on it. Her eyes became blank, blind and though Riveda saw the last remnant of sanity fade from her wide eyes, it was with only the least of his attention; the rest of him was caught up in what he did.
The fire on the shrine blazed up.
The chained and faceless image stirred . . .
Deoris saw the smile of the Man with Crossed Hands leering from the distorted shadows. Then, for an instant, she saw what Riveda saw, a chained and faceless figure standing upright—but that too swam away. Where they had been a great and fearful form hulked, recumbent and swathed in corpse-windings—an image that stirred and fought its bonds.
Then Deoris saw only an exploding pinwheel of lights into which she fell headlong. She barely knew it when Riveda seized her; she was inert, half-conscious at best, her true mind drowned in the compassionate stare of the Man with Crossed Hands, blinded by the spinning wheel of lights that whirled blazing above them. She knew, dimly, that Riveda lifted and laid her on the altar, and she felt a momentary shock of chill awareness and fear as she was forced back onto the wet stone. Not here, not here, not on the stone stained with the child's blood . . .
But he isn't dead! she thought with idiotic irrelevance, he isn't dead, Riveda didn't kill him, it's all right if he isn't dead . . .
IV
As if breaking the crest of a deep dark wave, Deoris came to consciousness suddenly, sensible of cold, and of pain from her half-healed burns. The fire on the shrine was extinguished; the Man with Crossed Hands had become but a veiled darkness.
Riveda, the frenzy gone, was lifting her carefully from the altar. With his normal, composed severity, he assisted her to rearrange her robes. She felt bruised and limp and sick, and leaned heavily on Riveda, stumbling a little on the icy stones—and she guessed, rightly, that he was remembering another night in this crypt, years before.
Somewhere in the labyrinth she could hear a child's distant sobs of pain and fright. They seemed to blend with her own confusion and terror that she put her hands up to her face to be sure that she was not crying, whether the sounds came from within or without.
At the door of the room where she had lain all during her long illness, Riveda paused, beckoning the deaf-mute woman and giving her some orders in sign-language.
He turned to Deoris again, and spoke with a cold formality that chilled her to the bone: "Tomorrow you will be conducted above ground. Do not fear to trust Demira, but be very careful. Remember what I have told you, especially in regard to your sister Domaris!" He paused, for once at a loss for words; then, with sudden and unexpected reverence, the Adept dropped to his knees before the terrified girl and taking her icy hand in his, he pressed it to his lips, then to his heart.
"Deoris," he said, falteringly. "O, my love—"
Quickly he let go her hand, rose to his feet and was gone before the girl could utter a single word.
BOOK FOUR
Riveda
" . . . common wisdom has it that Good has a tendency to grow and preserve itself, whereas Evil tends to grow until it destroys itself. But perhaps there is a flaw in our definitions—for would it be evil for Good to grow until it crowded Evil out of existence?
" . . . everyone is born with a store of knowledge he doesn't know he possesses. . . . The human body of flesh and blood, which has to feed itself upon plants and their fruits, and upon animal meats, is not a fit ha
bitation for the eternal spirit that moves us—and for this, we must die—but somewhere in the future is the assurance of a new body-type which can outlast the stones which do not die. . . . The things we learn strike sparks, and the sparks light fires; and the firelight reveals strange things moving in the darkness. . . . The darkness can teach you things that the light has never seen, and will never be able to see. . . .
"Unwilling to continue a merely mineral existence, plants were the first rebels; but the pleasures of a plant are limited to the number of ways in which it can circumvent the laws governing the mineral world. . . . There are poisonous minerals that can kill plants or animals or men. There are poisonous plants that can kill animals or men. There are poisonous animals (mostly reptiles) which can kill men—but man is unable to continue the poisonous chain, poison other creatures though he may, because he has never developed a means for poisoning the gods. . . ."
—from The Codex of the Adept Riveda
Chapter One
A WORLD OF DREAMS
I
"But Domaris, why?" Deoris demanded. "Why do you hate him so?"
Domaris leaned against the back of the stone bench where they sat, idly fingering a fallen leaf from the folds of her dress before casting it into the pool at their feet. Tiny ripples fanned out, winking in the sunlight.
"I don't believe that I do hate Riveda," Domaris mused, and shifted her swollen body awkwardly, as if in pain. "But I distrust him. There is—something about him that makes me shiver." She looked at Deoris, and what she saw in her sister's pale face made her add, with a deprecating gesture, "Pay not too much attention to me. You know Riveda better than I. And—oh, it may all be my imagination! Pregnant women have foolish fancies."
At the far end of the enclosed court, Micail's tousled head popped up from behind a bush and as quickly ducked down again; he and Lissa were playing some sort of hiding game.
The little girl scampered across the grass. "I see you, M'cail!" she cried shrilly, crouching down beside Domaris's skirt, "Pe-eep!"
Domaris laughed and petted the little girl's shoulder, looking with satisfaction at Deoris. The last six months had wrought many changes in the younger girl; Deoris was not now the frail, huge-eyed wraith bound in bandages and weak with pain, whom Domaris had brought from the Grey Temple. Her face had begun to regain its color, though she was still paler than Domaris liked, if no longer so terribly thin . . . Domaris frowned as another, persistent suspicion came back to her. That change I can recognize! Domaris never forced a confidence, but she could not keep herself from wondering, angrily, just what had been done to Deoris. That story of falling from the sea-wall into a watch-fire . . . did not ring true, somehow.
"You don't have foolish fancies, Domaris," the girl insisted. "Why do you distrust Riveda?"
"Because—because he doesn't feel true to me; he hides his mind from me, and I think he has lied to me more than once." Domaris's voice hardened to ice. "But mostly because of what he is doing to you! The man is using you, Deoris . . . Is he your lover?" she asked suddenly, her eyes searching the young face.
"No!" The denial was angry, almost instinctive.
Lissa, forgotten at Domaris's knee, stared from one sister to the other for a moment, confused and a little worried; then she smiled slightly, and ran to chase Micail. Grown-ups had these exchanges. It didn't usually mean anything, as far as Lissa could tell, and so she rarely paid attention to such talk—though she had learned not to interrupt.
Domaris moved a little closer to Deoris and asked, more gently, "Then—who?"
"I—I don't know what you mean," Deoris said; but the look in her eyes was that of a trapped and frightened creature.
"Deoris," her sister said kindly, "be honest with me, kitten; do you think you can hide it forever? I have served Caratra longer than you—if not as well."
"I am not pregnant! It isn't possible—I won't!" Then, controlling her panic, Deoris took refuge in arrogance. "I have no lover!"
The grave grey eyes studied her again. "You may be sorceress," Domaris said deliberately, "but all your magic could not compass that miracle." She put her arm around Deoris, but the girl flung it petulantly away.
"Don't! I'm not!"
The response was so immediate, so angry, that Domaris only stared, open-mouthed. How could Deoris lie with such conviction, unless—unless . . . Has that damned Grey-robe, then, taught her his own deceptive skills? The thought troubled her. "Deoris," she said, half-questioning, "it is Riveda?"
Deoris edged away from her, sullenly, scared. "And if it were so—which it is not!—it is my right! You claimed yours!"
Domaris sighed; Deoris was going to be tiresome. "Yes," the older woman said tiredly, "I have no right to blame. Yet—" She looked away across the garden to the tussling children, her brows contracting in a half-troubled smile. "I can wish it were any other man."
"You do hate him!" Deoris cried, "I think you're—I hate you!" She rose precipitately to her feet, and ran from the garden, without a backward glance. Domaris half rose to follow her, then sank back heavily, sighing.
What's the use? She felt weary and worn, not at all inclined to soothe her sister's tantrums. Domaris felt unable to deal with her own life at present—how could she handle her sister's?
When she had carried Micon's child, Domaris had felt an odd reverence for her body; not even the knowledge that Micon's fate followed them like a shadow had dimmed her joy. Bearing Arvath's was different; this was duty, the honoring of a pledge. She was resigned, rather than rejoicing. Vised in pain, she walked with recurrent fear, and Mother Ysouda's words whispering in her mind. Domaris felt a guilty, apologetic love for Arvath's unborn son—as if she had wronged him by conceiving him.
And now—why is Deoris like that? Perhaps it isn't Riveda's child, and she's afraid of what he'll do . . . ? Domaris shook her head, unable to fathom the mystery.
From certain small but unmistakable signs, she was certain of her sister's condition; the girl's denial saddened and hurt Domaris. The lie itself was not important to her, but the reason for it was of great moment.
What have I done, that my own sister denies me her confidence?
She got up, with a little sigh, and went heavily toward the archway leading into the building, blaming herself bitterly for her neglect. She had been lost in grief for Micon—and then had come her marriage, and the long illness that followed the loss of her other child—and her Temple duties were onerous. Yet, somehow, Deoris's needs should have been met.
Rajasta warned me, years ago, Domaris thought sadly. Was it this he foresaw? Would that I had listened to him! If Deoris has ceased to trust me—Pausing, Domaris tried to reassure herself. Deoris is a strange girl; she has always been rebellious. And she's been so ill, perhaps she wasn't really lying; maybe she really doesn't know, hasn't bothered to think about the physical aspects of the thing. That would be just like Deoris!
For a moment, Domaris saw the garden rainbowed through sudden tears.
II
In the last months, Deoris had abandoned herself to the moment, not thinking ahead, not letting herself dwell on the past. She drifted on the surface of events; and when she slept, she dreamed obsessively of that night in the Crypt—so many terrifying nightmares that she almost managed to convince herself that the bloodletting, the blasphemous invocation, all that had transpired there, had been only another, more frightening dream.
This had been reinforced by the ease with which she had been able to pick up most of the broken threads of her life. Riveda's story had been accepted without question.
At her sister's insistence, Deoris had returned to Domaris's home. It was not the same. The House of the Twelve now contained a new group of Acolytes; Domaris and Arvath, with Elis and Chedan and another young couple, occupied pleasant apartments in a separate dwelling. Into this home Deoris had been welcomed, made a part of their family life. Until this moment, Domaris had never once questioned the past years.
But I should have known! Deori
s thought superstitiously, and shivered. Only last night, very late, Demira had stolen secretly into the courts and into her room, whispering desperately, "Deoris—oh, Deoris, I shouldn't be here, I know, but don't send me away, I'm so terribly, terribly frightened!"
Deoris had taken the child into her bed and held her until the scared crying quieted, and then asked, incredulously, "But what is it, Demira, what's happened? I won't send you away, darling, no matter what it was, you can tell me what's the matter!" She looked at the thin, huddled girl beside her with troubled eyes, and said, "It's not likely Domaris would come into my rooms at this hour of the night, either; but if she did, I'll tell her—tell her something."
"Domaris," said Demira, slowly, and smiled—that wise and sad smile which always saddened Deoris; it seemed such an old smile for the childlike face. "Ah, Domaris doesn't know I exist, Deoris. Seeing me wouldn't change that." Demira sat up then, and looked at Deoris a moment before her silvery-grey eyes slid away again, blank and unseeing, the white showing all around the pupil. "One of us three will die very soon," she said suddenly, in a strange, flat voice as unfocussed as her eyes. "One of us three will die, and her child with her. The second will walk beside Death, but it will take only her child. And the third will pray for Death to come for herself and her child, and both will live to curse the very air they breathe."