Marion Bradley - The Fall Of Atlantis

"Riveda told me to look after you," Demira said pertly, and Deoris recalled tardily that the Grey-robes observed no caste laws. She went acquiescently with Demira, who immediately began to bubble over, "I have thought about you so much, Deoris! The Priestess Domaris is your sister, is she not? She is so beautiful! You are pretty, too," she added as an afterthought.

Deoris flushed, thinking secretly that Demira was the loveliest little creature she had ever seen. She was very fair, all the same shade of silvery gold: the long straight hair, her lashes and level brows, even the splash of gilt freckles across her pale face. Even Demira's eyes looked silver, although in a different light they might have been grey, or even blue. Her voice was very soft and light and sweet, and she moved with the heedless grace of a blown feather and just as irresponsibly.

She squeezed Deoris's fingers excitedly and said, "You were frightened, weren't you? I was watching, and I felt so sorry for you."

Deoris did not answer, but this did not seem to disturb Demira at all. Of course, Deoris thought, she is probably used to being ignored! The Magicians and Adepts are not the most talkative people in the world!

The cold moonlight played on them like sea-spray, and other women, singly and in little groups surrounded them on the path. But no one spoke to them. Several of the women, indeed, came up to greet Demira, but something—perhaps only the childlike way the two walked, hand in hand—prevented them. Or perhaps they recognized Deoris as Riveda's novice, and that fact made them a little nervous. Deoris had noted something of the sort on other occasions.

They passed into an enclosed court where a fountain spouted cool silver into a wide oval pool. All around, sheltering trees, silvery black, concealed all but the merest strips of the star-dusted sky. The air was scented with many flowers.

Opening on this court were literally dozens of tiny rooms, hardly more than cubicles, and into one of these Demira led her. Deoris glanced round fearfully. She wasn't used to such small, dim rooms, and felt as if the walls were squeezing inward, suffocating her. An old woman, crouched on a pallet in the corner, got wheezily to her feet and shuffled toward them.

"Take off your sandals," Demira said in a reproving whisper, and Deoris, surprised, bent to comply. The old woman, with an indignant snort, took them and set them outside the door.

Once more Deoris peered around the little room. It was furnished sparsely with a low, rather narrow bed covered with gauzy canopies, a brazier of metal that looked incredibly ancient, an old carved chest, and a divan with a few embroidered cushions; that was all.

Demira noted her scrutiny and said proudly, "Oh, some of the others have nothing but a straw pallet, they live in stone cells and practice austerities like the young priests, but the Grey Temple does not force such things on anyone, and I do not care. Well, you will know that later. Come along, we must bathe before we sleep; and you've been in the Ring! There are some things—I'll show you what to do." Demira turned to the old woman suddenly and stamped her foot. "Don't stand there staring at us! I can't stand it!"

The crone cackled like a hen. "And who is this one, my missy? One of Maleina's little pretties who grows lonely when the woman has gone to the rites with—" She broke off and ducked, with surprising nimbleness, as one of Demira's sandals came flying at her head.

Demira stamped her bare foot again furiously. "Hold your tongue, you ugly witch!"

The old woman's cackling only grew louder. "She's sure too old for the Priests to take in and—"

"I said hold your tongue!" Demira flew at the old woman and cuffed her angrily. "I will tell Maleina what you have said about her and she will have you crucified!"

"What I could say about Maleina," the old witch mumbled, unhumbled, "would make little missy turn to one big blush forever—if she has not already lost that talent here!" Abruptly she grasped Demira's shoulders in her withered claws and held the girl firmly for an instant, until the angry light faded from Demira's colorless eyes. Giggling, the girl slid free of the crone's hands.

"Get us something to eat, then take yourself off," Demira said carelessly, and as the hag hustled away she sank down languidly on the divan, smiling at Deoris. "Don't listen to her, she's old and half-witted, but phew! she should be more careful, what Maleina would do if she heard her!" The light laughter bubbled up again. "I'd not want to be the one to mock Maleina, no, not even in the deepest chambers of the labyrinth! She might strike me with a spell so I walked blind for three days, as she did to the priest Nadastor when he laid lewd hands on her." Suddenly she leaped to her feet and went to Deoris, who still stood as if frozen. "You look as if struck with a spell yourself!" she laughed; then, sobering, she said kindly, "I know you are afraid, we are all afraid at first. You should have seen me staring about and squalling like a legless cat when they first brought me here, five years ago! No one will hurt you, Deoris, no matter what you have heard of us! Don't be afraid. Come to the pool."

II

Around the edge of the great stone basin, women lounged, talking and splashing in the fountain. A few seemed preoccupied and solitary, but the majority were chirping about as heedlessly and sociably as a flock of winter sparrows. Deoris peered at them with frightened curiosity, and all the horror-tales of the saji flooded back into her mind.

They were a heterogenous group: some of the brown-skinned pygmy slave race, a few fair, plump and yellow-haired like the commoners of the city, and a very few like Deoris herself—tall and light-skinned, with the silky black or reddish curls of the Priest's Caste. Yet even here Demira stood out as unusual.

They were all immodestly stripped, but that was nothing new to Deoris except for the careless mingling of castes. Some wore curious girdles or pectorals on their young bodies, engraved with symbols that looked vaguely obscene to the still relatively innocent Deoris; one or two were tattooed with even older symbols, and the scraps of conversation which she caught were incredibly frank and shameless. One girl, a darker beauty with something about her eyes that reminded Deoris of traders from Kei-Lin, glanced at Deoris as she shyly divested herself of the saffron veils Riveda had asked her to wear, then asked Demira an indecent question which made Deoris want to sink through the earth; suddenly she realized what the old slave woman had meant by her taunts.

Demira only murmured an amused negative, while Deoris stared, wanting to cry, not understanding that she was simply being teased in the traditional fashion for all newcomers. Why did Riveda throw me in with these—these harlots! Who are they to mock me? She set her lips proudly, but she felt more like bursting into tears.

Demira, ignoring the teasing, bent over the edge of the pool and, dipping up water in her palms, with murmured words, began swiftly to go through a stylized and conventional ritual of purification, touching lips and breasts, in a ritual so formalized that the symbols had all but lost their original form and meaning, and done swiftly, as if from habit. Once finished, however, she led Deoris to the water and in an undertone explained the symbolic gestures.

Deoris cut her short in surprise: it was similar in form to the purification ceremonies imposed on a Priestess of Caratra—but the Grey-robe version seemed an adaptation so stylized that Demira herself did not seem to understand the meaning of the words and gestures involved. Still, the similarity did a great deal to reassure Deoris. The symbolism of the Grey-robe ceremonies was strongly sexual, and now Deoris understood even more. She went through the brief lustral rite with a thoroughness that somehow calmed and assuaged her feeling of defilement.