Deoris grabbed the slim shoulders and shook Demira, hard. "Come out of it!" she commanded, in a high, scared voice. "Do you even know what you are saying?"
Demira smiled queerly, her face lax and distorted. "Domaris, and you, and I—Domaris, Deoris, Demira; if you say the three names very quickly it is hard to tell which one you are saying, no? We are bound together by more than that, though, we are all three linked by our fates, all three with child."
"No!" Deoris cried out, in a denial as swift as it was vehement. No, no, not from Riveda, not that cruelty, not that betrayal . . .
She bent her head, troubled and afraid, unable to face Demira's wise young eyes. Since the night when she and Riveda and the chela had been trapped in the ritual which had loosed the Fire-spirit on them, scarring her with the blasting seal of the dorje, Deoris had not once had to seclude herself for the ritual purifications . . . She had thought about that, remembering horror-tales heard among the saji, of women struck and blasted barren, remembering Maleina's warnings long ago. Secretly, she had come to believe that, just as her breasts were scarred past healing, so she had been blasted in the citadel of her womanhood and become a sapped and sexless thing, the mere shell of a woman. Even when Domaris had suggested a simpler explanation—that she might be pregnant—she could not accept it. Surely if she were capable of conception, she would have borne Riveda's child long before this time!
Or would she? Riveda was versed in the mysteries, able to prevent conception if it pleased him. With a flash of horrified intuition, the thought came, to be at once rejected. Oh no, not from that night in the Crypt—the mad invocation—the girdle, even now concealed beneath my nightdress . . .
With a desperate effort, she snapped shut her mind on the memory. It never happened, it was a dream . . . except for the girdle. But if that's real—no. There must be some explanation . . .
Then her mind caught up with the other thing Demira had said, seizing on it almost with relief. "You!"
Demira looked up plaintively at Deoris. "You'll believe me," she said pitifully. "You will not mock me?"
"Oh, no, Demira, no, of course not." Deoris looked down into the pixyish face that now laid itself confidingly on her shoulder. Demira, at least, had not changed much in these three years; she was still the same, strange, suffering, wild little girl who had excited first Deoris's distrust and fear, and later her pity and love. Demira was now fifteen, but she seemed essentially the same, and she looked much as she had at twelve: taller than Deoris but slight, fragile, with the peculiar, deceptive appearance of immaturity and wisdom intermingled.
Demira sat up and began to reckon on her fingers. "It was like an awful dream. It happened, oh, perhaps one change of the moon after you left us."
"Five months ago," Deoris prompted gently.
"One of the little children had told me I was wanted in a sound-chamber. I thought nothing of it. I had been working with one of Nadastor's chelas. But it was empty. I waited there and then—and then a priest came in, but he was—he was masked, and in black, with horns across his face! He didn't say anything, he only—caught at me, and—oh Deoris!" The child collapsed in bitter sobbing.
"Demira, no!"
Demira made an effort to stifle her tears, murmuring, "You do believe me—you will not mock me?"
Deoris rocked her back and forth like a baby. "No, no, darling, no," she soothed. She knew very well what Demira meant. Outside the Grey Temple, Demira and her like were scorned as harlots or worse; but Deoris, who had lived in the Grey Temple, knew that such as Demira were held in high honor and respect, for she and her kind were sacred, indispensable, under protection of the highest Adepts. The thought of a saji being raped by an unknown was unthinkable, fantastic . . . Almost unbelieving, Deoris asked, "Have you no idea who he was?"
"No—oh, I should have told Riveda, I should have told, but I couldn't, I just couldn't! After the—the Black-robe went away, I—I just lay there, crying and crying, I couldn't stop myself, I—it was Riveda who heard me, he came and found me there. He was . . . for once he was kind, he picked me up and held me, and—and scolded me until I stopped crying. He—he tried to make me tell him what had happened, but I—I was afraid he wouldn't believe me . . ."
Deoris let Demira go, remaining as still as if she had been turned to a statue. Scraps of a half-heard conversation had returned to float through her mind; her intuition now turned them to knowledge, and almost automatically she whispered the invocation, "Mother Caratra! Guard her," for the first time in years.
It couldn't be, it simply was not possible, not thinkable . . .
She sat motionless, afraid her face would betray her to the child.
At last Deoris said, frozenly, "But you have told Maleina, child? Surely you know she would protect you. I think she would kill with her own hands anyone who harmed you or caused you pain."
Demira shook her head mutely; only after several moments did she whisper, "I am afraid of Maleina. I came to you because—because of Domaris. She has influence with Rajasta . . . When last the Black-robes came into our temple, there was much terror and death, and now, if they have returned—the Guardians should know of it. And Domaris is—is so kind, and beautiful—she might have pity, even on me—"
"I will tell Domaris when I can," Deoris promised, her lips stiff; but conflict tore at her. "Demira, you must not expect too much."
"Oh, you are good, Deoris! Deoris, how I love you!" Demira clung to the older girl, her eyes bright with tears. "And Deoris, if Riveda must know—will you tell him? He will allow you anything, but no one else dares approach him now, since you left us no one dares speak to him unless he undresses them, and even then . . . " Demira broke off. "He was kind, when he found me, but I was so afraid."
Deoris stroked the little girl's shoulder gently, and her own face grew stern. Her last shred of doubt vanished. Riveda heard her crying? In a sealed sound-chamber? That I'll believe taken the sun shines at midnight!
"Yes," said Deoris grimly, "I will talk to Riveda."
III
"She did not even guess, Deoris. I did not mean that you should know, either, but since you are so shrewd, yes, I admit it." Riveda's voice was as deep and harsh as winter surf; in the same icy bass he went on, "Should you seek to tell her, I—Deoris, much as you mean to me, I think I would kill you first!"
"Take heed lest you be the one killed," Deoris said coldly. "Suppose Maleina makes the same wise guess I did?"
"Maleina!" Riveda practically spat the woman Adept's name. "She did what she could to ruin the child—nevertheless, I am not a monster, Deoris. What Demira does not know will not torment her. It is—unfortunate that she knows I am her father; fool that I was to let it be guessed even in the Grey Temple. I will bear the responsibility; it is better that Demira know nothing more than she does now."
Sickened, Deoris cried out, "And this you will confess to me?"
Slowly, Riveda nodded. "I know now that Demira was begotten and reared for this one purpose alone. Otherwise, why should I have stretched out my hand to save her from squalling to death on the city wall? I knew not what I did, not then. But is it not miraculous, you see, how all things fall together to have meaning? The girl is worthless for anything else—she made Karahama hate me, just by being born." And for the first time Deoris sensed a weak spot in the Adept's icy armor, but he went on swiftly, "But now you see how it all makes a part of the great pattern? I did not know when she was born, but Karahama's blood is one with yours, and so is Demira's, that strain of the Priest's Line, sensitive—and so even this unregarded nothing shall serve some part in the Great work."
"Do you care for nothing else?" Deoris looked at Riveda as if he were a stranger; at this moment he seemed as alien as if he had come from far beyond the unknown seas. This talk of patterns, as if he had planned that Demira should be born for this . . . was he mad, then? Always Deoris had believed that the strangeness of his talk hid some great and lofty purpose which she was too young and ignorant to understand. But this,
this she did understand for the corrupt madness it was, and of this he spoke as if it were more of the same high purpose. Was it all madness and illusion then, had she been dragged into insanity and corruption under the belief that she was the chosen of the great Adept? Her mouth was trembling; she fought not to break down.
Riveda's mouth curved in a brutal smile. "Why, you little fool, I believe you're jealous!"
Mutely, Deoris shook her head. She did not trust herself to speak. She turned away, but Riveda caught her arm with a strong hand. "Are you going to tell Demira this?" he demanded.
"To what purpose?" Deoris asked coldly, "To make her sick, as I am? No, I will keep your secret. Now take your hands from me!"
His eyes widened briefly, and his hand dropped to his side. "Deoris," he said in a more persuasive voice, "you have always understood me before."
Tears gathered at her eyelids. "Understood you? No, never. Nor have you been like this before! This is—sorcery, distortion—black magic!"
Riveda bit off his first answer unspoken, and only muttered, rather despondently, "Well, call me Black Magician then, and have done with it." Then, with the tenderness which was so rare, he drew her stiff and unresponsive form to him. "Deoris," he said, and it was like a plea, "you have always been my strength. Don't desert me now! Has Domaris so quickly turned you against me?"
She could not answer; she was fighting back tears.
"Deoris, the thing is done, and I stand by it. It is too late to crawl out of it now, and repentance would not undo it in any case. Perhaps it was—unwise; it may have been cruel. But it is done. Deoris, you are the only one I dare to trust: make Demira your care, Deoris, let her be your child. Her mother has long forsworn her, and I—I have no rights any more, if ever I did." He stopped, his face twisted. Lightly he touched the fearful scars hidden by her clothing; then his hands strayed gently to her waist, to touch the wooden links of the carved symbolic girdle with a curiously tentative gesture. He raised his eyes, and she saw in his face a painful look of question and fear which she did not yet understand as he murmured, "You do not yet know—the Gods save you, the Gods protect you all! I have forfeited their protection; I have been cruel to you—Deoris, help me! Help me, help me—"
And in a moment the melting of his icy reserve was complete—and with it fled all Deoris's anger. Choking, she flung her arms about him, saying half incoherently, "I will, Riveda, always—I will!"
Chapter Two
THE BLASPHEMY
I
Somewhere in the night the sound of a child's sudden shrill wailing shredded the silence into ribbons, and Deoris raised her head from the pillow, pressing her hands to her aching eyes. The room was filled with heavy blackness barred by shuttered moonlight. She was so used to the silence of the saji courts—she had been dreaming—then memory came back. She was not in the Grey Temple, nor even in Riveda's austere habitation, but in Domaris's home; it must be Micail crying . . .
She slid from the bed, and barefoot, crossed the narrow hall into her sister's room. At the sound of the opening door, Domaris raised her head; she was half-clad, her unbound hair a coppery mist streaming over the little boy who clung to her, still sobbing.
"Deoris, darling, did he wake you? I'm sorry." She stroked Micail's tangled curls as she rocked the child gently against her shoulder. "There now, there now, hush, hush you," she murmured.
Micail hiccoughed sleepily with the subsidence of his sobs. His head dropped onto Domaris's shoulder, then perked up momentarily. "De'ris," he murmured.
The younger girl came quickly to him. "Domaris, let me take Micail, he's too heavy for you to lift now," she rebuked softly. Domaris demurred, but gave the heavy child into her sister's arms. Deoris looked down at the drooping eyes, darkly blue, and the smudge of freckles across the turned-up nose.
"He will be very like . . ." she murmured; but Domaris put out her hands as if to ward off a physical blow, and the younger woman swallowed Micon's name. "Where shall I put him?"
"Into my bed; I'll take him to sleep with me, and perhaps he will be quiet. I am sorry he woke you, Deoris. You look—so tired." Domaris gazed into her sister's face, pale and pinched, with a strange look of weary lethargy. "You are not well, Deoris."
"Well enough," said Deoris indifferently. "You worry too much. You're not in the best health yourself," she accused, suddenly frightened. With the eyes of a trained Healer-priestess, Deoris now saw what her self-absorption had hidden: how thin Domaris was in spite of her pregnancy; how the fine bones of her face grew sharp beneath the white skin, how swollen and blue the veins in her forehead were, and those in her thin white hands . . .
Domaris shook her head, but the weight of her unborn child was heavy on her, and her drawn features betrayed the lie. She knew it and smiled, running her hands down her swollen sides with a resigned shrug. "Ill-will and pregnancy grow never less," she quoted lightly. "See—Micail's already asleep."
Deoris would not be distracted. "Where is Arvath?" she asked firmly.
Domaris sighed. "He is not here, he . . ." Her thin face crimsoned, the color flooding into the neck of her shapeless robe. "Deoris, I—I have fulfilled my bargain now! Nor have I complained, nor stinted duty! Nor did I use what Elis . . ." She bit her lip savagely, and went on, "This will be the son he desires! And that should content him!"
Deoris, though she knew nothing of Mother Ysouda's warning, remembered her own; and intuition told her the rest. "He is cruel to you, Domaris?"
"The fault is mine, I think I have killed kindness in the man. Enough! I should not complain. But his love is like a punishment! I cannot endure it any more!" The color had receded from her face, leaving a deathly pallor.
Deoris mercifully turned away, bending to tuck a cover around Micail. "Why don't you let Elara take him nights?" she protested. "You'll get no sleep at all!"
Domaris smiled. "I would sleep still less if he were away from me," she said, and looked tenderly at her son. "Remember when I could not understand why Elis kept Lissa so close to her? Besides, Elara attends even me only in the days, now. Since her marriage I would have freed her entirely, but she says she will not leave me to a strange woman while I am like this." Her laugh was a tiny ghost of its normal self. "Her child will be born soon after mine! Even in that she serves me!"
Deoris said sulkily, "I think every woman in this Temple must be bearing a child!" With a guilty start, she silenced herself.
Domaris appeared not to notice. "Childbearing is a disease easily caught," she quoted lightly, then straightened and came close to her sister. "Don't go, Deoris—stay and talk to me a little. I've missed you."
"If you want me," Deoris said ungraciously; then, penitent, she came to Domaris and the two sat on a low divan.
The older woman smiled. "I always want you, little sister."
"I'm not little any more," Deoris said irritably, tossing her head. "Why must you treat me like a baby?"
Domaris suppressed a laugh and lifted her sister's slender, beringed hand. "Perhaps—because you were my baby, before Micail was born." Her glance fell on the narrow, carven girdle which Deoris wore cinctured loosely over her night-dress. "Deoris, what is that?" she asked softly. "I don't believe I've seen you wearing it before."
"Only a girdle."
"How stupid of me," said Domaris dryly. Her slim fingers touched the crimson cord which knotted the links together, strangely twined through the carven wooden symbols. Clumsily, she bent to examine it more closely—and with a sharply indrawn breath, counted the links. The cord, twined into oddly knotted patterns, was treble; thrice sevenfold the flat carved emblems. It was beautiful, and yet, somehow . . .
"Deoris!" she breathed, her voice holding sudden sharpness. "Did Riveda give you this?"
Scared by her tone, Deoris went sulky and defensive. "Why not?"
"Why not indeed?" Domaris's words were edged with ice; her hand closed hard around Deoris's thin wrist. "And why should he bind you with a—a thing like that? Deoris, answer me!"
"He has the right . . ."
"No lover has that right, Deoris."
"He is not—"
Domaris shook her head. "You lie, Deoris," she said wearily. "If your lover were any other man, he would kill Riveda before he let him put that—that thing on you!" She made a queer sound that was almost a sob. "Please—don't lie to me any more, Deoris. Do you think you can hide it forever? How long must I pretend not to see that you are carrying a child beneath that—that—" Her voice failed her. How pitifully simple Deoris was, as if by denying a fact she could wish it out of existence!