Marion Bradley - The Fall Of Atlantis

"It would be better for all," Karahama repeated, "most of all for Deoris, if that child never drew breath."

Maleina stepped forward, motioning Karahama to silence. "Adsartha," said the woman Adept severely—and the use of her priest-name wakened response even in the frightened, apathetic Deoris. "Your child was truly conceived within the Dark Shrine?"

Domaris opened her lips, but Maleina said stiffly, "I beg you, Isarma, allow her to speak for herself. That was on the Night of Nadir, you say?"

Timidly, Deoris whispered assent.

"Records within the Temple of Caratra, to which Mother Ysouda may testify," Maleina said, with chilly deliberateness, "show that each month, at the dark of the moon—observe this, with perfect regularity—Deoris was excused her duties, because at this time she was sacramentally impure. I myself noted this in the Grey Temple." Maleina's mouth tightened briefly as if with pain, remembering in whose company Deoris had spent most of her time in the Grey Temple. "The Night of Nadir falls at moon-dark ..." She paused; but Domaris and the men only looked baffled, though from Karahama's heavy-lidded eyes, something like comprehension glinted. "Look you," Maleina said, a little impatiently. "Riveda was Grey-robe long before he was sorcerer. The habits of the Magicians are strict and unbreakable. He would not have allowed a woman in the days of her impurity even to come into his presence! As for taking her into such a ritual—it would have invalidated his purpose entirely. Must I explain the rudimentary facts of nature to you my brothers? Riveda may have been evil—but believe me, he was not an utter fool!"

"Well, Deoris?" Rajasta spoke impersonally, but hope began to show upon his face.

"On the Nadir-night?" Maleina pressed.

Deoris felt herself turning white and rigid; she would not let herself think why. "No," she whispered, trembling, "no, I wasn't!"

"Riveda was a madman!" Cadamiri snorted. "So he violated his own ritual—what of it? Was this not just another blasphemy? I do not follow your reasoning."

Maleina faced him, standing very erect. "It means this," she said with a thin, ironic smile. "Deoris was already pregnant and Riveda's rite was a meaningless charade which he, himself, had thwarted!" The woman Adept paused to savor the thought. "What a joke on him!"

But Deoris had crumpled, senseless, to the floor.

I

After lengthy consideration, sentence had been pronounced upon Domaris: exile forever from the Temple of Light. She would go in honor, as Priestess and Initiate; the merit she had earned could not be taken from her. But she would go alone. Not even Micail could accompany her, for he had been confided by his father to Rajasta's guardianship. But by curious instinct, choice in her place of exile had fallen on the New Temple, in Atlantis, near Ahtarrath.

Deoris had not been sentenced; her penance could not be determined until after her child's birth. And because of the oath which could not be violated, Domaris could claim the right to remain with her younger sister until the child was born. No further concession could be made.

One afternoon a few days later, Rajasta sat alone in the library, a birth-chart spread before him—but his thoughts were of the bitter altercation which had broken out when Deoris had been carried away in a faint.

"They do not hide behind mysteries, Cadamiri," Maleina had said quietly, heavily. "I who am Initiate of Ni-Terat—whom you call Caratra here—I have seen the Sign, which cannot be counterfeited."

Cadamiri's wrath had burst all bonds. "So they are to go unpunished, then? One for sorcery—since even if her child is not child to the Dark Shrine, she concurred in the ritual which would have made it so—and the other for a vile misuse of the holy rites? Then let us make all our criminals, apostates, and heretics Initiates of the Holy Orders and have done with it!"

"It was not misuse," Maleina insisted, her face grey with weariness. "Any woman may invoke the protection of the Dark Mother, and if their prayers are answered, no one can gainsay it. And say not they go unpunished, Priest! They have thrown themselves upon the judgment of the Gods, and we dare not add to what they have invoked! Know you not," her old voice shook with ill-hidden dread, "they have bound themselves and the unborn till the end of Time? Through all their lives—all their lives, not this life alone but from life to life! Never shall one have home, love, child, but the pain of the other, deprived, shall tear her soul to shreds! Never shall one find love without searing the soul of the other! Never shall they be free, until they have wholly atoned; the life of one shall bear on the hearts of both. We could punish them, yes—in this life. But they have willfully invoked the judgment of the Dark Mother, until such time as the curse of Domaris has worked itself out on the cycles of karma, and Riveda goes free." Maleina's words rolled to silence; fading echoes settled slowly. At last, the woman Adept murmured, "The curses of men are little things compared to that!"

And for this, even Cadamiri could find no answer, but sat with hands clasped before him for some time after all others had left the hall; and none could say whether it was in prayer, or anger, or shock.

II

Rajasta, having read the stars for Deoris's unborn child, finally called Domaris to him, and spread out the scroll before her. "Maleina was right," he said. "Deoris lied. Her child could not possibly have been conceived on the Nadir-night. Not possibly."

"Deoris would not lie under that oath, Rajasta."

Rajasta looked shrewdly at the girl he knew so well. "You trust her still?" He paused, and accepted. "Had Riveda but known that, many lives would have been saved. I can think of nothing more futile than taking a girl already pregnant into a—a rite of that kind." His voice had a cold irony that was quite new to him.

Domaris, unheeding of it, caught her hands to her throat, and whispered weakly, "Then—her child is not—not the horror she fears?"

"No." Rajasta's face softened. "Had Riveda but known!" he repeated. "He went to his death thinking he had begotten the child of a foul sorcery!"

"Such was his intent." Domaris's eyes were cold and unforgiving. "Men suffer for their intentions, not their actions."

"And for them he will pay," Rajasta retorted. "Your curses will not add to his fate!"

"Nor my forgiveness lighten it," Domaris returned inflexibly, but tears began to roll slowly down her cheeks. "Still, if the knowledge had eased his death ..."

Gently, Rajasta placed the scroll in her hand. "Deoris lives," he reminded her. "Wherever Riveda may be now, Domaris, the crudest of all hells to him—he who worshipped the forces of Life with all that was best in him, so that he even bent in reverence to you—this would be cruellest to him, that Deoris should hate his child; that she, who had been Priestess of Caratra, should torture herself, binding her body until it is like enough that the child will be born crippled, or worse!"

Domaris could only stare at him, speechless.

"Do you think I did not know that?" Rajasta murmured softly. "Now go. Take this to her, Domaris—for there is now no reason for her to hate her child."

III

His white robes whispering, Rajasta paced soberly to the side of the man who lay on a low, hard pallet in a small, cold room as austere as a cell. "Peace, younger brother," he said—then, quickly preventing him: "No, do not try to rise!"

"He is stronger today," said Cadamiri from his seat by the narrow window. "And there is something which he will say only to you, it seems."

Rajasta nodded, and Cadamiri withdrew from the room. Taking the seat thus vacated, Rajasta sat looking down at the man who had been Riveda's chela. The long illness had wasted the Atlantean to emaciation again, but Rajasta hardly needed Cadamiri's assurances to tell him that Reio-ta of Ahtarrath was as sane as the Guardian himself.