Riveda moved finally, as if with pain. The single ray of light outlined his face, harshly unrelenting, before her longing eyes. "Deoris," he whispered, and the manacled hand groped at her waist . . . then he sighed. "Of course. They have burned it!" He stopped, his voice still hoarse and rasping. "Forgive me," he said. "It was best—you never knew—our child!" He made a strange blurred sound like a sob, then turned his face into her hand and with a reverence as great as it was unexpected, pressed his lips into the palm. His manacled hand fell, with a clashing of chains.
For the first time in his long and impersonally concentrated life, Riveda felt a deep and personal despair. He did not fear death for himself; he had cast the lots and they had turned against him. But what lot have I cast for Deoris? She must live—and after me her child will live—that child! Suddenly Riveda knew the full effect of his actions, faced responsibility and found it a bitter, self-poisoned brew. In the darkness, he held Deoris as close and as tenderly as he could in the circumstances, as if straining to give the protection he had too long neglected . . . and his thoughts ran a black torrent.
But for Deoris the greyness was gone. In despair and pain she had finally found the man she had always seen and known and loved behind the fearful outer mask he wore to the world. In that hour, she was no longer a frightened child, but a woman, stronger than life or death in the soft violence of her love for this man she could never manage to hate. Her strength would not last—but as she knelt beside him, she forgot everything but her love of Riveda. She held his chained body in her arms, and time stopped for them both.
She was still holding him like that when the Priests came to take them away.
II
The great hall was crowded with the robes of priests: white, blue, flaxen, and grey-robed, the men and women of the Temple precincts mingled before the raised däis of judgment. They parted with hushed murmurings as Domaris walked slowly forward, her burning hair the only fleck of color about her, and her face whiter than the pallid glimmer of her mantle. She was flanked by two white-robed priests who paced with silent gravity one step behind her, alert lest she fall—but she moved steadily, though slowly, and her impassive eyes betrayed nothing of her thoughts.
Inexorably they came to the däis; here the priests halted, but Domaris went on, slow-paced as fate, and mounted the steps. She spared no glance at the gaunt, manacled scarecrow at the foot of the däis, nor for the girl who crouched with her face hidden in Riveda's lap, her long hair scattered in a dark tangle about them both. Domaris forced herself to climb regally upward, and take her place between Rajasta and Ragamon. Behind them, Cadamiri and the other Guardians were shadowy faces hidden within their golden hoods.
Rajasta stepped forward, looking out over the assembled Priests and Priestesses; his eyes seemed to seek out each and every face in the room. Finally he sighed, and spoke with ceremonious formality: "Ye have heard the accusations. Do you believe? Have they been proved?"
A deep, threatening, ragged thunder rolled the answer: "We believe! It is proved!"
"Do you accept the guilt of this man?"
"We accept!"
"And what is your will?" Rajasta questioned gravely. "Do ye pardon?"
Again the thunder of massed voices, like the long roll of breakers on the seashore: "We pardon not!"
Riveda's face was impassive, though Deoris flinched.
"What is your wall?" Rajasta challenged. "Do ye then condemn?"
"We condemn!"
"What is your will?" said Rajasta again—but his voice was breaking. He knew what the answer would be.
Cadamiri's voice came, firm and strong, from the left: "Death to him who has misused his power!"
"Death!" The word rolled and reverberated around the room, dying into frail, whispering echoes.
Rajasta turned and face the judgment seat. "Do ye concur?"
"We concur!" Cadamiri's strong voice drowned other sounds: Ragamon's was a harsh tremolo, the others mere murmurs in their wake. Domaris spoke so faintly that Rajasta had to bend to hear her, "We—concur."
"It is your will. I concur." Rajasta turned again, to face the chained Riveda. "You have heard your sentence," he charged gravely. "Have you anything to say?"
The blue, frigid eyes met Rajasta's, in a long look, as if the Adept were pondering a number of answers, any one of which would have shaken the ground from under Rajasta's feet—but the rough-cut jaw, covered now by a faint shadow of reddish-gold beard, only turned up a little in something that was neither smile nor grimace. "Nothing, nothing at all," he said, in a low and curiously gentle voice.
Rajasta gestured ritually. "The decree stands! Fire cleanses—and to the fire we send you!" He paused, and added sternly, "Be ye purified!"
"What of the saji?" shouted someone at the back of the hall.
"Drive her from the Temple!" another voice cried shrilly.
"Burn her! Stone her! Burn her, too! Sorceress! Harlot!" It was a storm of hissing voices, and not for several minutes did Rajasta's upraised hand command silence. Riveda's hand had tightened on Deoris's shoulder, and his jaw was set, his teeth clenched in his lip. Deoris did not move. She might have been lying dead at his knees already.
"She shall be punished," said Rajasta severely, "but she is woman—and with child!"
"Shall the seed of a sorcerer live?" an anonymous voice demanded; and the storm of voices rose again, drowning Rajasta's admonitions with the clamor and chaos.
Domaris rose and stood, swaying a little, then advanced a step. The riot slowly died away as the Guardian stood motionless, her hair a burning in the shadowy spaces. Her voice was even and low: "My Lords, this cannot be. I pledge my life for her."
Sternly, Ragamon put the question: "By what right?"
"She has been sealed to the Mother," said Domaris; and her great eyes looked haunted as she went on, "She is Initiate, and beyond the vengeance of man. Ask of the Priestesses—she is sacrosanct, under the Law. Mine be her guilt; I have failed as Guardian, and as sister. I am guilty further: with the ancient power of the Guardians, invested in me, I have cursed this man who stands condemned before you." Domaris's eyes rested, gently almost, on Riveda's arrogant head, "I cursed him life to life, on the circles of karma . . . by Ritual and Power, I cursed him. Let my guilt be punished." She dropped her hands and stood staring at Rajasta, self-accused, waiting.
He gazed back at her in consternation. The future had suddenly turned black before his eyes. Will Domaris never learn caution? She leaves me no choice. . . . Wearily, Rajasta said, "The Guardian has claimed responsibility! Deoris I leave to her sister, that she may bring forth, and her fate shall be decided later—but I strip her of honor. No more may she be called Priestess or Scribe." He paused, and addressed the assembly again. "The Guardian claims that she has cursed—by ancient Ritual, and the ancient Power. Is that misuse?"
The hall hissed with the sibilance of vague replies; unanimity was gone, the voices few and doubtful, half lost in the vaulted spaces. Riveda's guilt had been proved in open trial, and it was a tangible guilt; this was a priestly secret known but to a few, and when it was forced out like this, the common priesthood was more bewildered than indignant, for they had little idea what was meant.
One voice, bolder than the rest, called through the uneasy looks and vague shiftings and whispers: "Let Rajasta deal with his Acolyte!" A storm of voices took up the cry: "On Rajasta's head! Let Rajasta deal with his Acolyte!"
"Acolyte no longer!" Rajasta's voice was a whiplash, and Domaris winced with pain. "Yet I accept the responsibility. So be it!"
"So be it!" the thronged Priests thundered, again with a single voice.
Rajasta bowed ceremoniously. "The decrees stand," he announced, and seated himself, watching Domaris, who was still standing, and none too steadily. In anger and sorrow, Rajasta wondered if she had the faintest idea what might be made of her confession. He was appalled at the chain of events which she—Initiate and Adept—had set in motion. The power vested in her was a very rea
l thing, and in cursing Riveda as she had, she had used it to a base end. He knew she would pay—and the knowledge put his own courage at a low ebb. She had generated endless karma for which she, and who knew how many others, must pay . . . It was a fault in him, also, that Domaris should have let this happen, and Rajasta did not deny the responsibility, even within himself.
And Deoris. . . .
Domaris had spoken of the Mystery of Caratra, which no man might penetrate; in that single phrase, she had effectively cut herself off from him. Her fate was now in the hands of the Goddess; Rajasta could not intervene, even to show mercy. Deoris, too, was beyond the Temple's touch. It could only be decided whether or no this Temple might continue to harbor the sisters. . . .
Domaris slowly descended the steps, moving with a sort of concentrated effort, as if force of will would overcome her body's frailty. She went to Deoris and, bending, tried to draw her away. The younger girl resisted frantically, and finally, in despair, Domaris signaled to one of her attendant Priests to carry her away—but as the Priest laid hands on the girl, Deoris shrieked and clung to Riveda in a frenzy.
"No! Never, never! Let me die, too! I won't go!"
The Adept raised his head once more, and looked into Deoris's eyes. "Go, child," he said softly. "This is the last command I shall ever lay upon you." With his manacled hands, he touched her dark curls. "You swore to obey me to the last," he murmured. "Now the last is come. Go, Deoris."
The girl collapsed in terrible sobbing, but allowed herself to be led away. Riveda's eyes followed her, naked emotion betrayed there, and his lips moved as he whispered, for the first and last time, "Oh, my beloved!"
After a long pause, he looked up again, and his eyes, hard and controlled once more, met those of the woman who stood before him robed in white.
"Your triumph, Domaris," he said bitterly.
On a strange impulse, she exclaimed, "Our defeat!"
Riveda's frigid blue eyes glinted oddly, and he laughed aloud. "You are—a worthy antagonist," he said.
Domaris smiled fleetingly; never before had Riveda acknowledged her as an equal.
Rajasta had risen to put the final challenge to the Priests. "Who speaks for mercy?"
Silence.
Riveda turned his head and looked out at his accusers, facing them squarely, without appeal.
And Domaris said quietly, "I speak for mercy, my lords. He could have let her die! He saved Deoris, he risked his own life—when he could have let her die! He let her live, to bear the scars that would forever accuse him. It is but a feather against the weight of his sin—but on the scales of the Gods, a feather may balance against a whole human soul. I speak for mercy!"
"It is your privilege," Rajasta conceded, hoarsely.
Domaris drew from her robe the beaten-gold dagger, symbolic of her office. "To your use, this," she said, and thrust it into Riveda's hand. "I too have need of mercy," she added, and was gone, her white and golden robes retreating slowly between the ranks of Priests.
Riveda studied the weapon in bis hands for a long moment. By some strange fatality, Domaris's one gift to him was death, and it was the supreme gift. In a single, fleeting instant, he wondered if Micon had been right; had he, Domaris, Deoris, sowed events that would draw them all together yet again, beyond this parting, life to life . . . ?
He smiled—a weary, scholarly smile. He sincerely hoped not.
Rising to his feet, he surrendered the symbol of mercy to Rajasta—long centuries had passed since the mercy-dagger was put to its original use—and in turn accepted the jewelled cup. The Adept held it, as he had the dagger, in his hands for a long, considering minute, thinking—with an almost sensuous pleasure, the curious sensuality of the ascetic—of darkness beyond; that darkness which he had, all his life, loved and sought. His entire life had led to this moment, and in a swift, half-conscious thought, it occurred to him that it was precisely this he had desired—and that he could have accomplished it far more easily.
Again he smiled. "The wonder-world of Night," he said aloud, and drained the death-cup in a single draught; then, with his last strength, raised it—and with a laugh, hurled it straight and unerring toward the däis. It struck Rajasta on the temple, and the old man fell senseless, struck unconscious at the same instant that Riveda, with a clamor of brazen chains, fell lifeless on the stone floor.
Chapter Eight
LEGACY
I
The small affairs of everyday went on with such sameness that Deoris was confused. She lived almost in a shell of glass; her mind seemed to have slid back somehow to the old days when she and Domaris had been children together. Deliberately she clung to these daydreams and fancies, encouraging them, and if a thought from the present slipped through, she banished it at once.
Although her body was heavy, quickened with that strange, strong other life, she refused to think of her unborn child. Her mind remained slammed shut on that night in the Crypt—except for the nightmares that woke her screaming. What monster demon did she bear, what lay in wait for birth . . . ?
On a deeper level, where her thoughts were not clear, she was fascinated, afraid, outraged. Her body—the invincible citadel of her very being—was no longer her own, but invaded, defiled. By what night-haunted thing of darkness, working in Riveda, has she been made mother—and to what hell-spawn?
She had begun to hate her rebel body as a thing violated, an ugliness to be hidden and despised. Of late she had taken to binding herself tightly with a wide girdle, forcing the rebellious contours into some semblance of her old slenderness, although she was careful to arrange her clothing so that this would not be too apparent, and to conceal it from Domaris.
Domaris was not ignorant of Deoris's feelings—she could even understand them to some faint extent: the dread, the reluctance to remember and to face the future, the despairing horror. She gave the younger girl a few days of dreams and silence, hoping Deoris would come out of it by herself . . . but finally she forced the issue, unwillingly, but driven by real necessity. This latest development was no daydream, but painfully real.
"Deoris, your child will almost certainly be born crippled if you bind the life from him that way," she said. She spoke gently, pityingly, as if to a child. "You know better than that!"
Deoris flung rebelliously away from her hand. "I won't go about shamed so that every slut in the Temple can point her finger at me and reckon up when I am to give birth!"
Domaris covered her face with her hands for a moment, sick with pity. Deoris had, indeed, been mocked and tormented in the days following Riveda's death. But this—this violence to nature! And Deoris, who had been Priestess of Caratra!
"Listen, Deoris," she said, more severely than she had spoken since the disasters, "if you are so sensitive, then stay within our own courts where no one will see you. But you must not injure yourself and your child this way!" She took the tight binding in her hands, gently loosening the fastenings; on the reddened skin beneath were white lateral marks where the bandages had cut deep. "My child, my poor little girl! What drove you to this? How could you?"
Deoris averted her face in bitter silence, and Domaris sighed. The girl must stop this—this idiotic refusal to face the plain facts!
"You must be properly cared for," said Domaris. "If not by me, then by another."
Deoris said a swift, frightened, "No! No, Domaris, you—you won't leave me!"
"I cannot if I would," Domaris answered; then, with one of her rare attempts at humor, she teased, "Your dresses will not fit you now! But are you so fond of these dresses that you come to this?"
Deoris gave the usual listless, apathetic smile.
Domaris, smiling, set about looking through her sister's things. After a few minutes, she straightened in astonishment. "But you have no others that are suitable! You should have provided yourself . . ."
Deoris turned away in a hostile silence; and it was evident to the stunned Domaris that the oversight had been deliberate. Without further speech, bu
t feeling as if she had been attacked by a beast that leaped from a dark place, Domaris went and searched here and there among her own possessions, until she found some lengths of cloth, gossamer-fine, gaily colored, from which the loose conventional robes could be draped. I wore these before Micail's birth, she mused, reminiscent. She had been more slender then—they could be made to fit Deoris's smaller slighter body. . . .
"Come then," she said with laughter, putting aside thoughts of the time she had herself worn this cloth, "I will show you one thing, at least, I know better than you!" As if she were dressing a doll, she drew Deoris to her feet, and with a pantomime of assumed gaiety, attempted to show her sister how to arrange the conventional robe.
She was not prepared for her sister's reaction. Deoris almost at once caught the lengths of cloth from her sister's hands, and with a frantic, furious gesture, rent them across and flung them to the floor. Then, shuddering, Deoris threw herself upon the cold tiles too, and began to weep wildly.