Deoris twisted her hand free, staring at the floor, her face white and pinched. Guilt, embarrassment and fear seemed to mingle in her dark eyes, and Domaris took the younger girl in her arms.
"Deoris, Deoris, don't look like that! I'm not blaming you!"
Deoris was rigid in her sister's kind arms. "Domaris, believe me, I didn't."
Domaris tipped back the little face until her sister's eyes, dark as crushed violets, met her own. "The father is Riveda," she said quietly; and this time, Deoris did not contradict her. "I like this not even a little. Something is very wrong, Deoris, or you would not be acting this way. You are not a child, you are not ignorant, you have had the same teaching as I, and more in this particular matter . . . you know—listen to me, Deoris! You know you need not have conceived a child save at your own and Riveda's wish," she finished inexorably, although Deoris sobbed and squirmed to get free of her hands and her condemning eyes. "Deoris—no, look at me, tell me the truth—did he force you, Deoris?"
"No!" And now the denial had the strength of truth. "I gave myself to Riveda of my free will, and he is not by law celibate!"
"This is so; but why then does he not take you to wife, or at the very least acknowledge your child?" Domaris demanded, stern-faced. "There is no need of this, Deoris. You bear the child of one of the great Adepts—no matter what I may think of him. You should walk in honor before all, not skulk girdled with a triple cord, forced to lie even to me. Enslaved! Does he know?"
"I—I think. . . ."
"You think!" Domaris's voice was as brittle as ice. "Be assured, little sister, if he does not know, he very soon shall! Child, child—the man wrongs you!"
"You—you have no right to interfere!" With a sudden burst of strength, Deoris twisted free of her sister, glaring angrily though she made no move to go.
"I do have the right to protect you, little sister."
"If I choose to bear Riveda's child . . ."
"Then Riveda must assume his responsibility," said Domaris sharply. Her hands went out to the girdle at her sister's waist again. "As for this foul thing . . ." Her fingers shrank from the emblems even as they plucked at the knotted cords. "I am going to burn it! My sister is no man's slave!"
Deoris sprang up, clutching at the links. "Now you go too far!" she raged, and seized the woman's wrist in strong hands, holding Domaris away from her. "You shall not touch it!"
"Deoris, I insist!"
"No, I say!" Though she looked frail, Deoris was a strong girl, and too angry to care what she did. She flung Domaris away from her with a furious blow that made the older woman cry out with pain. "Let me alone!"
Domaris dropped her hands—then gasped as her knees gave way.
Deoris quickly caught her sister in her arms, just in time to save her from falling heavily. "Domaris," she begged, in swift repentance, "Domaris, forgive me. Did I hurt you?"
Domaris, with repressed anger, freed herself from her sister's supporting arm and lowered herself slowly onto the divan.
Deoris began to sob. "I didn't mean to hurt you, you know I'd never. . . ."
"How can I know that!" Domaris flung at her, almost despairingly. "I have never forgotten what you . . ." She stopped, breathing hard. Micon had made her swear never to speak of that, impressing it on her repeatedly that Deoris had not had, would never have, the slightest memory of what she had almost done. At the stricken misery in Deoris's eyes, Domaris said, more gently, "I know you would never harm me willingly. But if you hurt my child I could not forgive you again: Now—give me that damned thing!" And she advanced on Deoris purposefully, her face one of disgust as she unfastened the cords, as if she touched something unclean.
The thin nightdress fell away as the girdle was loosened, and Domaris, putting out a hand to draw the folds together, stopped—jerked her hand back involuntarily from the bared breast. The girdle fell unheeded to the floor.
"Deoris!" she cried out in horror. "Let me see—no, I said let me see!" Her voice tightened commandingly as Deoris tried to pull the loosened robe over the betrayal of those naked scars. Domaris drew the folds aside; gently touched the raised sigil that gaped raggedly red across both rounded breasts, running swollen and raw like a jagged parody of a lightning-flash down the tender sides. "Oh, Deoris!" Domaris gasped in dismay. "Oh, little sister!"
"No, please, Domaris!" The girl pulled feverishly at her loosened clothing. "It's nothing . . ." But her frantic efforts at concealment only confirmed Domaris's worst suspicions.
"Nothing, indeed!" said Domaris wrathfully. "I suppose you will try to tell me that those are ordinary burns? More of Riveda's work, I suppose!" She loosed her grip on the girl's arm, staring somberly at her. "Riveda's work. Always Riveda," she whispered, looking down at the cowering girl . . . Then, slowly, deliberately, she raised her arms in invocation, and her voice, low and quiveringly clear, rang through the silent room: "Be he accurst!"
Deoris started back, raising her hands to her mouth as she stared in horror.
"Be he accurst!" Domaris repeated. "Accurst in the lightning that reveals his work, accurst in thunder that will lay it low! Be he accurst in the waters of the flood that shall sweep his life sterile! Be he cursed by sun and moon and earth, rising and setting, waking and sleeping, living and dying, here and hereafter! Be he accurst beyond life and beyond death and beyond redemption—forever!"
Deoris choked on harsh sobs, staggering away from her sister as if she were herself the target of Domaris's curses. "No!" she whimpered, "no!"
Domaris paid her no heed, but went on, "Accurst be he sevenfold, a hundredfold, until his sin be wiped out, his karma undone! Be he cursed, he and his seed, unto the sons and the son's sons and their sons unto eternity! Be he accurst in his last hour—and my life ransom for his, lest I see this undone!"
With a shriek, Deoris crumpled to the floor and lay as if dead; but Micail only twisted slightly beneath his blanket as he slept.
II
When Deoris drifted up out of her brief spell of unconsciousness, she found Domaris kneeling beside her, gently examining the dorje scars on her breasts. Deoris closed her eyes, her mind still half blank, poised between relief, terror, and nothingness.
"Another experiment which he could not control?" asked Domaris, not unkindly.
Deoris looked up at her older sister and murmured, "It was not all his fault—he himself was hurt far worse. . . ." Her words had pronounced a final indictment, but Deoris did not realize the fact.
Domaris's horror was evident, however. "The man has you bewitched! Will you always defend . . . ?" She broke off, begging almost desperately, "Listen, you must—a stop must and shall be put to this, lest others suffer! If you cannot—then you are incapable of acting like an adult, and others must intervene to protect you! Gods, Deoris, are you insane, that you would have allowed—this?"
"What right have you—" Deoris faltered as her sister drew away.
"My sworn duty," Deoris rebuked sternly, in a very low voice. "Even if you were not my sister—did you not know? I am Guardian here."
Deoris, speechless, could only stare at Domaris; and it was like looking at a complete stranger who only resembled her sister. An icy rage showed in Domaris's forced stillness, in her brittle voice and the smoldering sparks behind her eyes—a cold wrath all the more dreadful for its composure.
"Yet I must consider you in this, Deoris," Domaris went on, tight-lipped.
"You—and your child."
"Riveda's," said Deoris dully. "What—what are you going to do?" she whispered.
Domaris looked down somberly, and her hands trembled as she fastened the robes about her little sister once more. She hoped she would not have to use what she knew against the sister she still loved more than anyone or anything, except her own children, Micail and the unborn. . . . But Domaris felt weak. The treble cord, and the awful control it implied; the fearful form of the scars on Deoris's body; she bent, awkwardly, and picked up the girdle from the floor where it lay almost forgotten.
> "I will do what I must," Domaris said. "I do not want to take from you something you seem to prize, but . . ." Her face was white and her knuckles white as she gripped the carven links, hating the symbols and what she considered the vile use to which they had been put. "Unless you swear not to wear it again, I will burn the damned thing!"
"No!" Deoris sprang to her feet, a feverish sparkle in her eyes. "I won't let you! Domaris, give it to me!"
"I would rather see you dead than made a tool—and to such use!" Domaris's face might have been chiselled in stone, and her voice, too, had a rocklike quality as the words clanged harshly in the air. The skin of her face had stretched taut over her cheekbones, and even her lips were colorless.
Deoris stretched imploring hands—then shrank from the clear, contemptuous judgment in Domaris's eyes.
"You have been taught as I have," the older woman said. "How could you permit it, Deoris? You that Micon loved—you that he treated almost as a disciple! You, who could have . . ." With a despairing gesture, Domaris broke off and turned away, moving clumsily toward the brazier in the near corner. Deoris, belatedly realizing her intention, sprang after her—but Domaris had already thrust the girdle deep into the live coals. The tinder-dry wood blazed up with a flickering and a roar as the cord writhed like a white-hot snake. In seconds the thing was only ashes.
Domaris turned around again and saw her sister gazing helplessly into the flames, weeping as if she saw Riveda himself burning there—and at the sight, much of her hard, icy anger melted away. "Deoris," she said, "Deoris, tell me—you have been to the Dark Shrine? To the Sleeping God?"
"Yes," Deoris whispered.
Domaris needed to know no more; the pattern of the girdle had told her the rest. Well for Deoris that I have acted in time! Fire cleanses!
"Domaris!" It was a pathetic, horrified plea.
"Oh, my little sister, little cat . . . " Domaris was all protective love now, and crooning, she took the trembling girl into her arms again.
Deoris hid her face on her sister's shoulder. With the burning of the girdle, she had begun to dimly see certain implications, as if a fog had lifted from her mind; she could not cease from thinking of the things that had taken place in the Crypt—and now she knew that none of it had been dream.
"I'm afraid, Domaris! I'm so afraid—I wish I were dead! Will they—will they burn me, too?"
Domaris's teeth gritted with sudden, sick fear. For Riveda there could be no hope for clemency; and Deoris, even if innocent—and of that, Domaris had grave doubts—bore the seed of blasphemy, begotten in sacrilege and fostered beneath that hideous treble symbol—A child I myself have cursed! And with this realization, an idea came to her; and Domaris did not stop to count the cost, but acted to comfort and protect this child who was her sister—even to protect that other child, whose black beginnings need not, perhaps, end in utter darkness. . . .
"Deoris," she said quietly, taking her sister's hand, "ask me no questions. I can protect you, and I will, but do not ask me to explain what I must do!"
Deoris swallowed hard, and somehow forced herself to murmur her promise.
Domaris, in a last hesitation, glanced at Micail. But the child still sprawled in untidy, baby sleep: Domaris discarded her misgivings and turned her attention once more to Deoris.
A low, half-sung note banished the brilliance from the room, which gave way to a golden twilight; in this soft radiance the sisters faced one another, Deoris slim and young, the fearful scars angry across her breasts, her coming motherhood only a shadow in the fall of her light robes—and Domaris, her beautiful body distorted and big, but still somehow holding something of the ageless calm of what she invoked. Clasping her hands, she lifted them slowly before her; parted and lowered them in an odd, ceremonious manner. Something in the gesture and movement, some instinctive memory, perhaps, or intuition, struck the half-formed question from Deoris's parted lips.
"Be far from us, all profane," Domaris murmured in her clear soprano. "Be far from us, all that lives in evil. Be far from where we stand, for here has Eternity cast its shadow. Depart, ye mists and vapors, ye stars of darkness, begone; stand ye afar from the print of Her footsteps and the shadow of Her veil. Here have we taken shelter, under the curtain of the night and within the circle of Her own white stars."
She let her arms drop to her sides; then they moved together to the shrine to be found in every sleeping-room within the Temple precincts. With difficulty, Domaris knelt—and divining her intention, Deoris knelt quickly at her side and, taking the taper from her sister's hand, lighted the perfumed oil of devotion. Although she meant to honor her promise not to question, Deoris was beginning to guess what Domaris was doing. Years ago she had fled from a suggestion of this rite; now, facing unthinkable fear, her child's imminence a faint presence in her womb, Deoris could still find a moment to be grateful that it was with Domaris that she faced this, and not some woman or priestess whom she must fear. By taking up her own part, by touching the light to the incense which opened the gates to ritual, she accepted it; and the brief, delicate pressure of Domaris's long narrow fingers on hers showed that the older woman was aware of the acceptance, and of what it meant . . . It was only a fleeting touch; then Domaris signalled to her to rise.
Standing, Domaris stretched a hand to her sister yet again, to touch her brow, lips, breasts, and—guided by Domaris—Deoris repeated the sign. Then Domaris took her sister in her arms and held her close for a moment.
"Deoris, repeat my words," she commanded softly—and Deoris, awed, but in some secret part of her being feeling the urge to break away, to laugh, to scream aloud and shatter the gathering mood, only closed her eyes for a moment.
Domaris's low voice intoned quiet words; Deoris's voice was a thin echo, without the assurance that was in her sister's.
"Here we two, women and sisters, pledge thee,
Mother of Life—
Woman—and more than woman . . .
Sister—and more than sister . . .
Here where we stand in darkness . . .
And under the shadow of death . . .
We call on thee, O Mother . . .
By thine own sorrows, O Woman . . .
By the life we bear . . .
Together before thee, O Mother, O Woman
Eternal . . .
And this be our plea. . . ."
Now even the golden light within the room was gone, extinguished without any signal from them. The streaming moonlight itself seemed to vanish, and it seemed to the half-terrified, half-fascinated Deoris that they stood in the center of a vast and empty space, upon nothingness. All the universe had been extinguished, save for a single, flickering flame which glowed like a tiny, pulsating eye. Was it the brazier fire? The reflection of a vaster light which she sensed but could not see? Domaris's arms, still close about her, were the only reality anywhere, the only real and living thing in the great spaces, and the words Domaris intoned softly, like spun fibers of silken sound, mantras which wove a silvery net of magic within the mystical darkness. . . .
The flame, whatever it was, glowed and darkened, glowed and darkened, with the hypnotic intensity of some vast heart's beating, in time to the murmured invocation:
"May the fruit of our lives be bound and sealed
To thee, O Mother, O Woman Eternal,
Who holdest the inmost life of each of thy daughters
Between the hands upon her heart. . . ."
And there was more, which Deoris, frightened and exalted, could scarce believe she heard. This was the most sacred of rituals; they vowed themselves to the Mother-Goddess from incarnation to incarnation, from age to age, throughout eternity, with the lesser vow that bound them and their children inextricably to one another—a karmic knot, life to life, forever.
Carried away by her emotion, Domaris went much further into the ritual than she had realized, far further than she had intended—and at last an invisible Hand signed them both with an ancient seal. Full Initiates of the most a
ncient and holy of all the rites in the Temple or in the world, they were protected by and sealed to the Mother—not Caratra, but the Greater Mother, the Dark Mother behind all men and all rites and all created things. The faint flickerings deepened, swelled, became great wings of flame which lapped out to surround them with radiance.
The two women sank to their knees, then lay prostrate, side by side. Deoris felt her sister's child move against her body, and the faint, dreamlike stirring of her own unborn child, and in a flutter of insensate, magical prescience, she guessed some deeper involvement beyond this life and beyond this time, a ripple moving out into the turbulent sea which must involve more than these two . . . and the effulgent glory about them became a voice; not a voice that they could hear, but something more direct, something they felt with every nerve, every atom of their bodies.
"Thou art mine, then, from age to age, while Time endures . . . while Life brings forth Life. Sisters, and more than sisters . . . women, and more than women . . . know this, together, by the Sign I give you. . . ."