Marion Bradley - The Fall Of Atlantis

Her voice was high and hysterical. "Go away! Just go away, away!"

Chedan's hands dropped, and his cheeks flamed with wrathful pride. "Fine, I'm going," he said curtly, and the door slammed behind him.

Deoris, shaking with nervous chill, crept to her bed and dragged the sheet over her head. She was ashamed and unhappy and her loneliness was like a physical presence in the room. Even Chedan's presence would have been a comfort.

Restless, she got out of bed and wandered about the room. What had happened? One moment she had been contented, lying in his arms and feeling some emptiness within her heart solaced and filled by his closeness—and in the next instant, a fury of revolt had swept through her whole body. Yet for years she and Chedan had been moving, slowly and inexorably, toward such a moment. Probably everyone in the Temple believed they were already lovers! Why, faced with the prospect itself, had she exploded into this storm of passionate refusal?

Obeying a causeless impulse, she drew a light cape over her night-dress, and went out on the lawn. The dew was cold on her bare feet, but the night air felt moist and pleasant on her hot face. She moved into the moonlight, and the man who was slowly pacing up the path caught his breath, in sharp satisfaction.

"Deoris," Riveda said.

She whirled in terror, and for an instant the Adept thought she would flee; then she recognized his voice, and a long sigh fluttered between her lips.

"Riveda! I was frightened ... it is you?"

"None other," he laughed, and came toward her, his big lean body making a blackness against the stars, his robes shimmering like frost; he seemed to gather the darkness about himself and pour it forth again. She put out a small hand, confidingly, toward his; he took it.

"Why, Deoris, your feet are bare! What brought you to me like this? Not that I am displeased," he added.

She lowered her eyes, returning awareness and shame touching her whole body. "To—you?" she asked, rebellious.

"You always come to me," Riveda said. It was not a statement made in pride, but a casual statement of fact; as if he had said, the sun rises to the East. "You must know by now that I am the end of all your paths—you must know that now as I have known it for a long time. Deoris, will you come with me?"

And Deoris heard herself say, "Of course," and realized that the decision had been made long ago. She whispered, "But where? Where are we going?"

Riveda gazed at her in silence for a moment. "To the Crypt where the God sleeps," he said at length.

She caught her hands against her throat. Sacrilege this, for a Daughter of Light—she knew this, now. And when last she had accompanied Riveda to the Grey Temple, the consequences had been frightening. Yet Riveda—he said, and she believed him—had not been responsible for what had happened then. What had happened then ... she fought to remember, but it was fogged in her mind. She whispered, "Must I—?" and her voice broke.

Riveda's hands fell to his sides, releasing her.

"All Gods past, present, and future forbid that I should ever constrain you, Deoris."

Had he commanded, had he pleaded, had he spoken a word of persuasion, Deoris would have fled. But before his silent face she could only say, gravely, "I will come."

"Come, then." Riveda took her shoulder lightly in his hand, turning her toward the pyramid. "I took you tonight to the summit; now I will show you the depths. That, too, is a Mystery." He put his hand on her arm, but the touch was altogether impersonal. "Look to your steps, the hill is dangerous in the dark," he cautioned.

She went beside him, docile; he stopped for a moment, turned to her, and his arm moved; but she pulled away, panicky with denial.

"So?" Riveda mused, almost inaudibly. "I have had my question answered without asking."

"What do you mean?"

"You really don't know?" Riveda laughed shortly, unamused. "Well, you shall learn that, too, perhaps; but at your own will, always at your own will. Remember that. The summit—and the depths. You shall see."

He led her on toward the raised square of darkness.

II

Steps—uncounted, interminable steps—wound down, down, endlessly, into dim gloom. The filtered light cast no shadows. Cold, stone steps, as grey as the light; and the soft pad of her bare feet followed her in echoes that re-echoed forever. Her breathing sounded with harsh sibilance, and seemed to creep after her with the echoes, hounding at her heels. She forced herself on, one hand thrusting at the wall... . Her going had the feeling of flight, although her feet refused to change their tempo, and the echoes had a steady insistence, like heartbeats.

Another turn; more steps. The grayness curled around them, and Deoris shivered with a chill not born altogether of the dank cold. She waded in grey fog beside grey-robed Riveda, and the fear of closed places squeezed her throat; the knowledge of her sacrilege knifed her mind.

Down and down, through eternities of aching effort.

Her nerves screamed at her to run, run, but the quicksand cold dragged her almost to a standstill. Abruptly the steps came to an end. Another turn led into a vast, vaulted chamber, pallidly lighted with flickering greyness. Deoris advanced with timid steps into the catacomb and stood frozen.

She could not know that the simulacrum of the Sleeping God revealed itself to each seeker in different fashion. She knew only this: Long and long ago, beyond the short memory of mankind, the Light had triumphed, and reigned now supreme in the Sun. But in the everlasting cycles of time—so even the Priests of Light conceded—the reign of the Sun must end, and the Light should emerge back into Dyaus, the Unrevealed God, the Sleeper ... and he would burst his chains and rule in a vast, chaotic Night.

Before her strained eyes she beheld, seated beneath his carven bird of stone, the image of the Man with Crossed Hands ...

She wanted to scream aloud; but the screams died in her throat. She advanced slowly, Riveda's words fresh in her mind; and before the wavering Image, she knelt in homage.

III

At last she rose, cold and cramped, to see Riveda standing nearby, the cowl thrown back from his massive head, his silvered hair shining like an aureole in the pale light. His face was lighted with a rare smile.

"You have courage," he said quietly. "There will be other tests; but for now, it is enough." Unbending, he stood beside her before the great Image, looking up toward what was, to him, an erect image, faceless, formidable, stern but not terrible, a power restricted but not bound. Wondering how Deoris saw the Avatar, he laid a light hand on her wrist, and with a moment of Vision, he caught a brief glimpse in which the God seemed to flow and change and assume, for an instant, the figure of a seated man with hands crossed upon his breast. Riveda shook his head slightly, with a dismissing gesture, and, tightening his grasp upon the girl's wrist, he led her through an archway into a series of curiously furnished rooms which opened out from the great Crypt.

This underground maze was a Mystery forbidden to most of the Temple folk. Even the members of the Grey-robe sect, though their Order and their ritual served and guarded the Unrevealed God, came here but rarely.

Riveda himself did not know the full extent of these caverns. He had never tried to explore more than a little way into the incredible labyrinth of what must, once, have been a vast underground temple in daily use. It honeycombed the entire land beneath the Temple of Light; Riveda could not even guess when or by whom these great underground passages and apartments had been constructed, or for what purpose.

It was rumored that the hidden sect of Black-robes used these forbidden precincts for their secret practice of sorcery; but although Riveda had often wished to seek them out, capture them and try them for their crimes, he had neither the time nor the resources to explore the maze more than little way. Once, indeed, on the Nadir-night when someone unsanctioned—Black-robes or others—had sought to draw down the awesome thunder-voiced powers of the Lords of Ahtarrath and of the Sea Kingdoms, Riveda had come into these caverns; and there, on that ill-fated night, he had found seven dead men, lying blasted and withered within their black robes, their hands curled and blackened and charred as with fire, their faces unrecognizable, charred skulls. But the dead could neither be questioned nor punished; and when he sought to explore further into the labyrinthine mazes of the underground Temple, he had quickly become lost; it had taken him hours of weary wandering to find his way back to this point, and he had not dared it again. He could not explore it alone, and there was, as yet, no one he could trust to aid him. Perhaps now ... but he cut off the thought, calling years of discipline to his aid. That time had not come. Perhaps it would never come.