Rajasta felt as if he were stifling. It was all he could do to mutter the words, "Go on!"
"Two special marks he had—a gap between his great front teeth—and such eyes! Have you seen the pr-Priestess, Karahama? Cat's eyes, tiger's eyes—the eyes in his face might have been her own. . . ."
Rajasta covered his face with his hand. A hundred memories rushed over him. I have been blinder than Micon! Fool—fool that I was not to question Micon's tale of kind men who brought him to Talkannon's house! Fool to trust . . . Rajasta gritted his teeth, uncovered his eyes, and asked, still in that stifled voice, "Know you whom you have described, my son?"
"Aye." Reio-ta dropped back on the pillow, his eyes closed, his face weary and resigned. He was sure Rajasta had not believed a single word. "Aye, I know. Talkannon."
And Rajasta repeated, in stunned and bitter belief, "Talkannon!"
Chapter Ten
BLACK SHADOWS
I
Domaris laid the scroll in her sister's lap. "Can you read a birth-chart, Deoris?" she asked gently. "I would read this to you, but I have never learned."
Listlessly, Deoris said, "Karahama taught me, years ago. Why?"
"Rajasta gave me this for you. No," she checked her sister's protest, "you have refused to face this thing until the time was past when I could have forced action. Now we must make some arrangement. Your child must be acknowledged. If your own position means nothing to you, think of your child's as one of the no-people!"
"Does it matter?" Deoris asked indifferently.
"To you, now, perhaps not," Domaris returned, "but to your child—who must live—it is the difference between living humanly or as an outcaste." Her eyes dwelt sternly on the rebellious young face. "Rajasta tells me you will bear a daughter. Would you have her live as Demira?"
"Don't!" cried Deoris convulsively. She slumped, and defeat was in her face. "But who, now, would acknowledge me?"
"One has offered."
Deoris was young, and against her will a gleam of curiosity lightened her apathetic face. "Who?"
"Riveda's chela." Domaris made no attempt to soften it; Deoris had denied too many facts. Let her chew on this one!
"Ugh!" Deoris sprang up defiantly. "No! Never! He's mad!"
"He is no longer mad," Domaris said quietly, "and he offers this as partial reparation."
"Reparation!" Deoris cried in rage. "What right has he . . . ?" She broke off as she met Domaris's unwavering stare. "You really think I should allow—"
"I do advise it," said Domaris inflexibly.
"Oh, Domaris! I hate him! Please, don't make me. . . ." Deoris was crying piteously now, but the older woman stood unbending at her side.
"All that is required of you, Deoris, is that you be present at the acknowledgement," she said curtly. "He will ask . . ." She looked straight into her sister's eyes. "He will allow no more!"
Deoris straightened, and tottered back into her seat, white and miserable. "You are hard, Domaris . . . Be it as you will, then." She sighed. "I hope I die!"
"Dying is not that easy, Deoris."
"Oh, Domaris, why?" Deoris begged, "Why do you make me do this?"
"I cannot tell you that." Relenting somewhat, Domaris knelt and gathered her sister into her arms. "You know I love you, Deoris! Don't you trust me?"
"Well, yes, of course, but . . ."
"Then do this—because you trust me, darling."
Deoris clung to the older woman in exhaustion. "I can't fight you," she murmured, "I will do as you say. There is no one else."
"Child, child—you and Micail are all I love. And I shall love your baby, Deoris!"
"I—cannot!" It was a bewildered cry of torment, of shame.
The older woman's throat tightened and she felt tears gathering in her eyes; but she only patted the listless head and promised, "You will love her, when you see her."
Deoris only whimpered and stirred restlessly in her arms, and Domaris, letting her embrace loosen, bent to retrieve the scroll, wincing a little—for she was not altogether free of pain.
"Read this, Deoris."
Obediently but without interest the girl glanced at the traced figures, then suddenly bent over them and began to read with furious concentration, her lips moving, her small fingers gripping the parchment so tightly that Domaris thought for a moment it would tear across. Then Deoris flung herself forward, her head pillowed on the scroll, in a passion of wild weeping.
Domaris watched with puzzled consternation, for she—even she—did not wholly understand the girl's terrible fear and its sudden release; even less could she know of that single night Deoris had hoarded apart like a treasure in her memory, when Riveda had been not Adept and teacher, but lover . . . Still, intuition prompted her to take Deoris very gently into her arms again, holding her with tender concern, not speaking a word, hardly breathing, while Deoris sobbed and wept until she could weep no more.
Domaris was relieved beyond telling; grief she could understand, but Deoris's childlike, dazed lethargy, the fits of furious rage which alternated with apathy, had frightened the older woman more than she knew. Now, as Deoris lay spent on her shoulder, her eyes closed and her arm around Domaris's neck, it was for a moment almost as if all the years had rolled back and they were again what they had been before Micon's coming . . .
With a flash of inner, intuitive sight, Domaris knew what had been wrought of love; and some touch of her own loss and grief returned, transfigured. Micon, Riveda—what matter? The love and bereavement are the same. And to the depths of her being Domaris was glad—glad that after so long, Deoris could at last weep for Riveda.
II
But Deoris was dry-eyed again, sullen and rigidly polite, when she was confronted with Reio-ta outside the hall where they must go before the Vested Five. Her memory of him was still that of a mad chela ghosting cat-footed after the dark Adept—this handsome, self-possessed young Priest startled her. For a moment she actually did not know who he could be. Her voice stumbled as she said, formally, "Prince Reio-ta of Ahtarrath, I am grateful for this kindness."
Reio-ta smiled faintly without raising his eye to her. "There is no d-debt, Deoris, I am y-yours to command in all things."
She kept her eyes fixed upon the blue hem of her loose, ungainly garment, but she did take his offered hand, touching him with scared hesitation. Her face burned with shame and misery as she felt his eyes study her awkward body; she did not raise her own to see the sadness and compassion in his gaze.
The ceremony, though very brief, seemed endless to Deoris. Only Reio-ta's strong hand, tightly clasped over her own, gave her the courage to whisper, faintly, the responses; and she was shaking so violently that when they knelt together for the benediction, Reio-ta had to put his arm around her and hold her upright.
At last Ragamon put the question: "The child's name?"
Deoris sobbed aloud, and looked in appeal at Reio-ta, meeting his eyes for almost the first time.
He smiled at her, and then, seeing the Vested Five, said quietly, "The stars have been read. This daughter of mine I name—Eilantha."
Eilantha! Deoris had climbed high enough in the priesthood to interpret that name. Eilantha—the effect of a sown cause, the ripple of a dropped stone, the force of karma.
"Eilantha, thy coming life is acknowledged and welcome," the Priest gave answer—and from that moment Deoris's child was Reio-ta's own, as if truly begotten of him. The sonorous blessing rolled over their bent heads; then Reio-ta assisted the woman to rise, and although she would have drawn away from him, he conducted her ceremoniously to the doorway of the hall, and retained her fingers for a moment.
"Deoris," he said gravely, "I would not b-burden you with cares. I know you are not well. Yet a few things must be said between us. Our child . . ."
Again Deoris sobbed aloud and, violently wrenching her hands away from his, ran precipitately away from the building. Reio-ta called after her sharply in hurt puzzlement, then started to hasten after the fleeing girl,
fearful lest she should fell and injure herself.
But when he turned the corner, she was nowhere to be seen.
III
Deoris came to rest finally in a distant corner of the Temple gardens, suddenly realizing that she had run much further than she had intended. She had never come here before, and was not certain which of the out-branching paths led back toward the house of Mother Ysouda. As she turned hesitantly backward and forward, trying to decide precisely where she was and which way to go, a crouching form rose up out of the shrubbery and she found herself face to face with Karahama. Instinctively Deoris drew back, resentful and frightened.
Karahama's eyes were filled with a sullen fire. "You!" the Priestess spat contemptuously at Deoris. "Daughter of Light!" Karahama's blue garment was rent from head to foot; her unkempt, uncombed hair hung raggedly about a face no longer calm but congested and swollen, with eyes red and inflamed, and lips drawn back like an animal's over her teeth.
Deoris, in an excess of terror, shrank against the wall—but Karahama leaned so close that she touched the girl. Suddenly, with awful clarity, Deoris knew: Karahama was insane!
"Torturer of children! Sorceress! Bitch!" A rabid wrath snarled in Karahama's voice. "Talkannon's proudest daughter! Better I had been thrown to die upon the city wall than see this day! And you for whom I suffered, daughter of the high lady who could not stoop to see my poor mother—and what of Talkannon now, Daughter of Light? He will wish he had hanged himself like Demira when the priests have done with him! Or has the proud Domaris kept that away from you, too? Rend your clothing, Talkannon's daughter!" With a savage gesture, Karahama's clawed hands ripped Deoris's smock from neck to ankle.
Screaming with fright, Deoris caught the torn robe about her and sought to twist free—but Karahama, leaning over her, pressed Deoris back against the crumbling wall with a heavy, careless hand against her shoulder.
"Rend you clothing, Daughter of Light! Tear your hair! Daughter of Talkannon—who dies today! And Domaris, who was cast out like a harlot, cast out by Arvath for the barren stalk she is!" She spat, and shoved Deoris violently back against the wall again. "And you—my sister, my little sister!" There was a vague, mocking hint of Domaris's intonation in the phrase, a sing-song eeriness, an echo like a ghost. "And your own womb heavy with a sister to those children you wronged!" Karahama's tawny eyes, lowered between squinting lashes, suddenly widened and she looked at Deoris through dilated pupils, flat and beast-red, as she shouted, "May slaves and the daughters of harlots attend your bed! May you give birth to monsters!"
Deoris's knees went lifeless under her and she collapsed on the sandy path, crouching against the stones of the wall. "Karahama, Karahama, curse me not!" she implored. "The Gods know—The Gods know I meant no harm!"
"She meant no harm," Karahama mocked in that mad, eerie sing-song.
"Karahama, the Gods know I have loved you. I loved your daughter, curse me not!"
Suddenly Karahama knelt at her side. Deoris cringed away—but with easy, compassionate hands the woman lifted her to her feet. The mad light had quite suddenly died from her eyes, and the face between the dishevelled braids was sane again and sorrowful.
"So, once, was I, Deoris—not innocent, but much hurt. Neither are you innocent! But I curse you no more."
Deoris sobbed in relief, and Karahama's face, a mask of pain, swam in a ruddy light through her tears. The crumbling stones of the garden wall were a rasping pain against her shoulders, but she could not have stood, unsupported. Suddenly she could hear the low, insistent lapping of the tide, and knew where she was.
"You are not to blame," said Karahama, in a voice hardly louder than the waves. "Nor he—nor I, Deoris! All these things are shadows, but they are very black. I bid you go in peace, little sister . . . your hour is upon you, and it may be that you will do a bit of cursing yourself, one day!"
Deoris covered her face with her hands—and then the world went dark about her, a dizzy gulf opened out beneath her mind, and she heard herself screaming as she fell—fell for eternities, while the sun went out.
Chapter Eleven
VISIONS
I
When Deoris failed to return, Domaris slowly grew anxious, and finally went in search of her sister—a search that was fruitless. The shadows stretched into long, gaunt corpses, and still she sought; her anxiety mounted to apprehension, and then to terror. The words Deoris had flung at her in anger years ago returned to her, a thundering echo in her mind: On the day I know myself with child, I will fling myself into the sea . . .
At last, sick with fright, she went to the one person in all the Temple precincts on whom Deoris now had the slightest claim, and implored his assistance. Reio-ta, far from laughing at her formless fears, took them with an apprehension that matched her own. Aided by his servants, they sought through the night, through the red and sullen firelight of the beaches, along the pathways and in the thickets at the edge of the enclosure. Near morning they found where she had fallen; a section of the wall had given way, and the two women lay half in, half out of the water. Karahama's head had been crushed by fallen stones, but the scarred, half-naked form of Deoris was so crumpled and twisted that for sickening minutes they believed that she, too, was lifeless.
They carried her to a fisherman's hut near the tide-mark, and there, by smoldering candlelight, with no aid save the unskilled hands of Domaris's slave-girl, was born Eilantha, whose name had been written that same day upon the rolls of the Temple. A tiny, delicately-formed girl-child, thrust two months too soon into an unwelcoming world, she was so frail that Domaris dared not hope for her survival. She wrapped the delicate bud of life in her veil and laid it inside her robes against her own breast, in the desperate hope that the warmth would revive it. She sat there weeping, in reborn grief for her own lost child, while the slave-girl tended Deoris and aided Reio-ta to set the broken arm.
After a time the infant stirred and began feebly to wail again, and the thin sound roused Deoris. Domaris moved swiftly as she stirred, and bent over her.
"Do not try to move your arm, Deoris; it is broken at the shoulder."
Deoris's words were less than a whisper. "What has happened? Where?" Then memory flooded back. "Oh! Karahama!"
"She is dead, Deoris," Domaris told her gently—and found herself wondering, in a remote way, whether Deoris had flung herself over the wall and Karahama had been killed in attempting to prevent it—whether they had simply fallen—or whether Karahama had thrust her sister over the wall. No one, not even Deoris was ever to know.
"How did you find me?" Deoris asked, without interest.
"Reio-ta helped me."
Deoris's eyes slipped wearily shut. "Why could he not . . . attend to his own affairs . . . this one last time?" she asked, and turned her face away. The child at Domaris's breast began its whimpering wail again, and Deoris's eyes flickered briefly open. "What is . . . I don't . . ."
Cautiously, Domaris lowered the infant toward her sister, but Deoris, after a momentary glimpse at the little creature, shut her eyes again. She felt no emotion except faint relief. The child was not a monster—and in the wrinkled, monkey-like face she could discern no resemblance whatever to Riveda.
"Take it away," she said tiredly, and slept.
Domaris looked down at the young mother, with despair in her face which lightened to a haunted tenderness. "Thy mother is tired and ill, little daughter," she murmured, and cradled the baby against her breasts. "I think she will love thee—when she knows thee."
But her steps and her voice dragged with exhaustion; her own strength was nearly gone. Domaris had never fully recovered from the brutal treatment she had received at the hands of the Black-robes; moreover, she dared not keep this a secret for long. Deoris was not, as far as Domaris could judge, in physical danger; the child had been born easily and so swiftly that there had been no time even to summon help. But she was suffering from exposure and shock.
Domaris did not know if she dared to take any furth
er responsibility. With the baby still snuggled inside her robes, she sat down on a low stool, to watch and think. . . .
II
When Deoris awoke, she was alone. She lay unmoving, not asleep, but heavy with weariness and lassitude. Gradually, as the effect of the drugs began to weaken, the pain stole back, a slow pulsing of hurt through her torn and outraged body. Slowly, and with difficulty, she turned her head, and made out the dim outline or a basket of reeds, and in the basket something that kicked and whimpered fretfully. She thought dully that she would like to hold the child now, but she was too weak and weary to move.
What happened after that, Deoris never really knew. She seemed to lie half asleep through all that followed, her eyes open but unable to move, unable even to speak, gripped by nightmares in which there was no clue to what was real—and afterward there was no one who could or would tell her what really happened on that night after Riveda's child was born, in the little hut by the sea. . . .