III
The fire had burned out, and the room was very dark and still. Deoris, recovering a little, raised herself and looked at Domaris, and saw that a curious radiance still shone from the swollen breasts and burdened body. Awe and reverence dawned in her anew and she bent her head, turning her eyes on herself—and yes, there too, softly glowing, the Sign of the Goddess. . . .
She got to her knees and remained there, silent, absorbed in prayer and wonder. The visible glow soon was gone; indeed, Deoris could not be certain that she had ever seen it. Perhaps, her consciousness exalted and steeped in ritual, she had merely caught a glimpse of some normally invisible reality beyond her newness and her present self.
The night was waning when Domaris stirred at last, coming slowly back to consciousness from the trance of ecstasy, dragging herself upright with a little moan of pain. Labor was close on her, she knew it—knew also that she had brought it closer by what she had done. Not even Deoris knew so well the effects of ceremonial magic upon the complex nervous currents of a woman's body. Lingering awe and reverence helped her ignore the warning pains as Deoris's arms helped her upright—but for an instant Domaris pressed her forehead against her sister's shoulder, weak and not caring if it showed.
"May my son never hurt anyone else," she whispered, "as he hurts me. . . ."
"He'll never again have the opportunity," Deoris said, but her lightness was false. She was acutely conscious that she had been careless and added to her sister's pain; knew that words of contrition could not help. Her abnormal sensitivity to Domaris was almost physical, and she helped her sister with a comprehending tenderness in her young hands.
There was no reproach in Domaris's weary glance as she closed her hand around her sister's wrist. "Don't cry, kitten." Once seated on the divan, she stared into the dead embers of the brazier for several minutes before saying, quietly, "Deoris, later you shall know what I have done—and why. Are you afraid now?"
"Only—a little—for you." Again, it was not entirely a true statement, for Domaris's words warned Deoris that there was more to come. Domaris was bound to action by some rigid code of her own, and nothing Deoris could say or do would alter that; Domaris was in quiet, deadly earnest.
"I must leave you now, Deoris. Stay here until I return—promise me! You will do that for me, my little sister?" She drew Deoris to her with an almost savage possessiveness, held her and kissed her fiercely. "More than my sister, now! Be at peace," she said, and went from the room, moving swiftly despite her heaviness.
Deoris knelt, immobile, watching the closed door. She knew better than Domaris imagined what was encompassed by the rite into which she had been admitted; she had heard of it, guessed at its power—but had never dared dream that one day she herself might be a part of it!
Can this, she asked herself, be what gave Maleina entry where none could deny her? What permitted Karahama—a saji, one of the no-people—to serve the Temple of Caratra? A power that redeems the damned?
Knowing the answer, Deoris was no longer afraid. The radiance was gone, but the comfort remained, and she fell asleep there, kneeling, her head in her arms.
IV
Outside, clutched again with the warning fingers of her imminent travail, Domaris leaned against the wall. The fit passed quickly, and she straightened, to hurry along the corridor, silent and unobserved. Yet again she was forced to halt, bending double to the relentless pain that clawed at her loins; moaning softly, she waited for the spasm to pass. It took her some time to reach the seldom-used passage that gave on a hidden doorway.
She paused, forcing her breath to come evenly. She was about to violate an ancient sanctuary—to risk defilement beyond death. Every tenet of the hereditary priesthood of which she was product and participant screamed at her to turn back.
The legend of the Sleeping God was a thing of horror. Long ago—so ran the story—the Dark One had been chained and prisoned, until the day he should waken and ravage time and space alike with unending darkness and devastation, unto the total destruction of all that was or could ever be. . . .
Domaris knew better. It was power that had been sealed there, though—and she suspected that the power had been invoked and unleashed, and this made her afraid as she had never dreamed of being afraid; frightened for herself and the child she carried, for Deoris and the child conceived in that dark shrine, and for her people and everything that they stood for. . . .
She set her teeth, and sweat ran cold from her armpits. "I must!" she whispered aloud; and, giving herself no more time to think, she opened the door and slipped through, shutting it quickly behind her.
She stood at the top of an immense stairwell leading down . . . and down . . . and down, grey steps going down between grey walls in a grey haze beneath her, to which there seemed no end. She set her foot on the first step; holding to the rail, she began the journey . . . down.
It was slow, chill creeping. Her heaviness dragged at her. Pain twisted her at intervals. The thud of her sandalled feet jerked at her burdened belly with wrenching pulls. She moaned aloud at each brief torture—but went on, step down, thud, step down, thud, in senseless, dull repetition. She tried to count the steps, in an effort to prevent her mind from dredging up all the half-forgotten, awful stories she had heard of this place, to keep herself from wondering if she did, indeed, know better than to believe old fairy-tales. She gave it up after the hundred and eighty-first step.
Now she was no longer holding the rail, but reeling and scraping against the wall; again pain seized her, doubled and twisted her, forcing her to her knees. The greyness was shot through with crimson as she straightened, bewildered and enraged, almost forgetting what grim purpose had brought her to this immemorial mausoleum. . . .
She caught at the rail with both hands, fighting for balance as her face twisted terribly and she sobbed aloud, hating the sanity that drove her on and down.
"Oh Gods! No, no, take me instead!" she whispered, and clung there desperately for a moment; then, her face impassive again, holding herself grimly upright, she let the desperate need to do what must be done carry her down, into the pallid greyness.
Chapter Three
DARK DAWN
I
The sudden, brief jar of falling brought Deoris sharply upright, staring into the darkness in sudden fear. Micail still slept in a chubby heap, and in the shadowy room, now lighted with the pale pink of dawn, there was no sound but the little boy's soft breathing; but like a distant echo Deoris seemed to hear a cry and a palpable silence, the silence of the tomb, of the Crypt.
Domaris! Where was Domaris? She had not returned. With sudden and terrible awareness, Deoris knew where Domaris was! She did not pause even to throw a garment over her nightclothes; yet she glanced unsurely at Micail. Surely Domaris's slaves would hear if he woke and cried—and there was no time to waste! She ran out of the room and fled downward, through the deserted garden.
Blindly, dizzily, she ran as if sheer motion could ward off her fear. Her heart pounded frantically, and her sides sent piercing ribbons of pain through her whole body—but she did not stop until she stood in the shadow of the great pyramid. Holding her hands hard against the hurt in her sides, she was shocked at last into a wide-awake sanity by the cold winds of dawn.
A lesser priest, only a dim figure in luminous robes, paced slowly toward her. "Woman," he said severely, "it is forbidden to walk here. Go your way in peace."
Deoris raised her face to him, unafraid. "I am Talkannon's daughter," she said in a clear and ringing voice. "Is the Guardian Rajasta within?"
The priest's tone and expression changed as he recognized her. "He is there, young sister," he said courteously, "but it is forbidden to interrupt the vigil—" He fell silent in amazement; the sun, as they talked, had crept around the pyramid's edge, to fall upon them, revealing Deoris's unbound hair, her disarranged and insufficient clothing.
"It is life or death!" Deoris pleaded, desperately. "I must see him!"
"My child
—I do not have the authority. . . ."
"Oh, you fool!" Deoris raged, and with a catlike movement, she dodged under his startled arm and fled up the gleaming stone steps. She struggled a moment with the unfamiliar workings of the great brazen door; twitched aside the shielding curtain, and stepped into brilliant light.
At the faint whisper of her bare feet—for the door moved silently despite its weight—Rajasta turned from the altar. Disregarding his warning gesture, Deoris ran to fling herself on her knees before him.
"Rajasta, Rajasta!"
With cold distaste, the Priest of Light bent and raised her, eyeing the wild disarray of her clothing and hair sternly. "Deoris," he said, "what are you doing here, you know the law—and why like this! You're only half dressed, have you gone completely mad?"
Indeed, there was some justification for his question, for Deoris met his gaze with a feverish face, and her voice was practically a babble as her last scraps of composure deserted her. "Domaris! Domaris! She must have gone to the Crypt—to the Dark Shrine."
"You have taken leave of your senses!" Unceremoniously, Rajasta half thrust her to a further distance from the altar. "You know you may not stand here like this!"
"I know, yes, I know, but listen to me! I feel it, I know it! She burned the girdle and made me tell her . . ." Deoris stopped, her face drawn with conflict and guilt, for she had suddenly realized that she was now of her own volition betraying her sworn oath to Riveda! And yet—she was bound to Domaris by an oath stronger still.
Rajasta gripped her shoulder, demanding, "What sort of gibberish is this!" Then, seeing that the girl was trembling so violently that she could hardly stand upright, he put an arm gingerly about her and helped her to a seat. "Now tell me sensibly, if you can, what you are talking about," he said, in a voice that held almost equal measures of compassion and contempt, "if you are talking about anything at all! I suppose Domaris has discovered that you were Riveda's saji."
"I wasn't! I never was!" Deoris flared; then said, wearily, "Oh, that doesn't matter, you don't understand, you wouldn't believe me anyhow! What matters is this: Domaris has gone to the Dark Shrine."
Rajasta's face was perceptibly altering as he began to guess what she was trying to say. "What—but why?"
"She saw—a girdle I was wearing, that Riveda gave me—and the scars of the dorje."
Almost before she had spoken the word, Rajasta moved like lightning to clamp his hand across her lips. "Say that not here!" he commanded, white-faced. Deoris collapsed, crying, her head in her arms, and Rajasta seized her shoulders and forced her to look at him. "Listen to me, girl! For Domaris's sake—for your own—yes, even for Riveda's! A girdle? And the—that word you spoke; what of that? What is this all about?"
Deoris dared not keep silent, dared not lie—and under his deep-boring eyes, she stammered, "A treble cord—knotted—wooden links carved with . . ." She gestured.
Rajasta caught her wrist and held it immobile. "Keep your disgusting Grey-robe signs for the Grey Temple! But even there that would not have been allowed! You must deliver it to me!"
"Domaris burned it."
"Thank the Gods for that," said Rajasta bleakly. "Riveda has gone among the Black-robes?" But it was a statement, not a question. "Who else?"
"Reio-ta—I mean, the chela." Deoris was crying and stammering; there was a powerful block in her mind, inhibiting speech—but the concentrated power of Rajasta's will forced her. The Priest of Light was well aware that this use of his powers had only the most dubious ethical justification, and regretted the necessity; but he knew that all of Riveda's spells would be pitted against him, and if he was to safeguard others as his Guardian's vows commanded, he dared not spare the girl. Deoris was almost fainting from the hypnotic pressure Rajasta exerted against the bond of silence Riveda had forced on her will. Slowly, syllable by syllable at times, at best sentence by reluctant sentence, she told Rajasta enough to damn Riveda tenfold.
The Priest of Light was merciless; he had to be. He was hardly more than a pair of bleak eyes and toneless, pitiless voice, commanding. "Go on. What—and how—and who . . ."
"I was sent over the Closed Places—as a channel of power—and when I could no longer serve, then Larmin—Riveda's son—took my place as scryer. . . ."
"Wait!" Rajasta leaped to his feet, pulling the girl upright with him. "By the Central Sun! You are lying, or out of your senses! A boy cannot serve in the Closed Places, only a virgin girl, or a woman prepared by ritual, or—or—a boy cannot, unless he is . . ." Rajasta was pasty-faced now, stammering himself, almost incoherent. "Deoris. What was done to Larmin?"
Deoris trembled before Rajasta's awful eyes, cowering before the surge of violent, seemingly uncontrollable wrath and disgust that surged across the Guardian's face. He shook her, roughly.
"Answer me, girl! Did he castrate the child?"
She did not have to answer. Rajasta abruptly took his hands from her as if contaminated by her presence, and when she collapsed he let her fall heavily to the floor. He was physically sick with the knowledge.
Weeping, whimpering, Deoris moved a little toward him, and he spat, pushing her away with his sandalled foot. "Gods, Deoris—you of all people! Look at me if you dare—you that Micon called sister!"
The girl cringed at his feet, but there was no mercy in the Guardian's voice: "On your knees! On your knees before the shrine you have defiled—the Light you have darkened—the fathers you have shamed—the Gods you have forgotten!"
Rocking to and fro in anguished dread, Deoris could not see the compassion that suddenly blotted out the awful fury on Rajasta's face. He was not blind to the fact that Deoris had willingly risked all hopes of clemency for herself in order to save Domaris—but it would take much penance to wipe out her crime. With a last, pitying look at the bent head, he turned and left the Temple. He was more shocked than angry; more sickened even than shocked. His maturity and experience foresaw what even Domaris had not seen.
He hastened down the steps of the pyramid, and the priest on guard sprang to attend him—then stopped his mouth wide.
"Lord Guardian!"
"Go you," said Rajasta curtly, "with ten others, to take the Adept Riveda into custody, in my name. Put him in chains if need be."
"The Healer-priest, Lord? Riveda?" The guard was bug-eyed with disbelief. "The Adept of the Magicians—in chains?"
"The damned filthy sorcerer Riveda—Adept and former Healer!" With an effort, Rajasta lowered his hoarse voice to a normal volume. "Then go and find a boy, about eleven years old, called Larmin—Karahama's son."
Stiffly, the priest said, "Lord, with your pardon, the woman Karahama has no child."
Rajasta, impatient with this reminder of Temple etiquette which refused the no-people even a legal existence, said angrily, "You will find a boy of the Grey Temple who is called Larmin—and don't bother with that nonsense of pretending not to know who he is! Don't harm or frighten the boy, just keep him safely where he can be produced at a moment's notice—and where he can't be conveniently murdered to destroy evidence! Then find . . ." He paused. "Swear you will not reveal the names I speak!"
The priest made the holy sign. "I swear, Lord!"
"Find Ragamon the Elder and Cadamiri, and bid them summon the Guardians to meet here at high noon. Then seek the Arch-priest Talkannon, and say to him quietly that we have at last found evidence. No more—he will understand."
The priest hurried away, leaving, for the first time in easily three centuries—the Temple of Light unattended. Rajasta, his face grim, broke into a run.
II
Just as Domaris had, he hesitated, uncertain, at the entrance to the concealed stairs. Was it wise, he wondered, to go alone? Should he not summon aid?
A rush of cool air stirred up from the long shaft beneath him; borne out of unfathomable spaces came a sound, almost a cry. Incredibly far down, dimmed and distorted by echo, it might have been the shriek of a bat, or the echoes of his own sighing breath—but Rajasta's hesitat
ion was gone.
Down the long stairway he hurried, taking the steps two and three at a time, steadying himself now against one sheer wall, now against the shuddering railing. His steps clattered with desperate haste, waking hurried, clanging echoes—and he knew he warned away anyone below, but the time was past for stealth and silence. His throat was dry and his breath came in choking gasps, for he was not a young man and ever at his back loomed the nightmare need for haste that pushed him down and down the lightless stairs, down that grey and immemorial shaft through reverberating eternities that clutched at him with tattered cobweb fingers, his heels throwing up dust long, long undisturbed, to begrime the luminous white of his robes . . . Down and down and down he went, until distance became a mockery.