The Fall Of Atlantis

Chapter One: THE PROMISE

I

"Lord Rajasta," Deoris greeted the old Priest anxiously. "I am glad you are come! Domaris is so—so strange!"

Rajasta's lined face quirked into an enquiring glance.

Deoris rushed on impetuously, "I can't understand—she does everything she should, she isn't crying all the time any more, but—" The words came out as a sort of wail: "She isn't there!"

Nodding slowly, Rajasta touched the child's shoulder in a comforting caress. "I feared this—I will see her. Is she alone now?"

"Yes, Domaris wouldn't look at them when they came, wouldn't answer when they spoke, just sat staring at the wall—" Deoris began to cry.

Rajasta attempted to soothe her, and after a few moments managed to discover that "they" referred to Elis and Mother Ysouda. His wise, old eyes looked down into Deoris's small face, white and mournful, and what he saw there made him stroke her hair lingeringly before he said, with gentle insistence, "You are stronger than she, now, though it may not seem so. You must be kind to her. She needs all your love and all your strength, too." Leading the still sniffling Deoris to a nearby couch, and settling her upon it, he said, "I will go to her now."

In the inner room, Domaris sat motionless, her eyes fixed on distances past imagining, her hands idle at her sides. Her face was as a statue's, still and remote.

"Domaris," said Rajasta softly. "My daughter."

Very slowly, from some secret place of the spirit, the woman came back; her eyes took cognizance of her surroundings. "Lord Rajasta," she acknowledged, her voice little more than a ripple in the silence.

"Domaris," Rajasta repeated, with an oddly regretful undertone. "My Acolyte, you neglect your duties. This is not worthy of you."

"I have done what I must," Domaris said tonelessly, as if she did not even mean to deny the accusation.

"You mean, you make the gestures," Rajasta corrected her. "Do you think I do not know you are willing yourself to die? You can do that, if you are coward enough. But your son, and Micon's—" Her eyes winced, and seeing even this momentary reaction, Rajasta insisted, "Micon's son needs you."

Now Domaris's face came alive with pain. "No," she said, "even in that I have failed! My baby has been put to a wet nurse!"

"Which need not have happened, had you not let your grief master you," Rajasta charged. "Blind, foolish girl! Micon loved and honored and trusted you above all others—and you fail him like this! You shame his memory, if his trust was misplaced—and you betray yourself—and you disgrace me, who taught you so poorly!"

Domaris sprang to her feet, raising protesting hands, but at Rajasta's imperative gesture she stilled the words rising in her throat, and listened with bent head.

"Do you think you are alone in grieving, Domaris? Do you not know that Micon was more than friend, more than brother to me? I am lonely since I can no longer walk at his side. But I cannot cease to live because one I loved has gone beyond my ability to follow!" He added, more gently, "Deoris, too, grieves for Micon—and she has not even the memory of his love to comfort her."

The woman's head drooped, and she began to weep, stormily, frantically; and Rajasta, his austere face kind again, gathered her in his arms and held her close until the crisis of desolate sobbing worked itself out, leaving Domaris exhausted, but alive.

"Thank you, Rajasta," she whispered, with a smile that almost made the man weep too. "I—I will be good."

II

Restlessly, Domaris paced the floor of her apartments. The weary hours and days that had worn away had only brought the unavoidable nearer, and now the moment of decision was upon her. Decision? No, the decision had been made. Only the time of action had come, when she must grant the fulfillment of her pledged word. What did it matter that her promise to Arvath had been given when she was wholly ignorant of what it entailed?

With a tight smile, she remembered words spoken many years ago: Yes, my Lords of the Council, I accept my duty to marry. As well Arvath as another—I like him somewhat. That had been long ago, before she had dreamed that love between man and woman was more than a romance of pretty words, before birth and death and loss had become personal to her. She had been, she reflected dryly, thirteen years old at the time.

Her face, thinner than it had been a month ago, now turned impassive, for she recognized the step at the door. She turned and greeted Arvath, and for a moment Arvath could only stand and stammer her name. He had not seen her since Micon's death, and the change in her appalled him. Domaris was beautiful—more beautiful than ever—but her face was pale and her eyes remote, as if they had looked upon secret things. From a gay and laughing girl she had changed to a woman—a woman of marble? Or of ice? Or merely a stilled flame that burned behind the quiet eyes?

"I hope you are well," he said banally, at last.

"Oh, yes, they have taken good care of me," Domaris said, and looked at him with tense exasperation. She knew what he wanted (she thought with a faint sarcasm that was new to her); why didn't he come to the point—why evade the issue with courtesies?

Arvath sensed that her mood was not entirely angelic, and it made him even more constrained. "I have come to ask—to claim—your promise... ."

"As is your right," Domaris acknowledged formally, stifling with the attempt to control her breathing.

Arvath's impetuous hands went out and he clasped her close to him. "O beloved! May I claim you tonight before the Vested Five?"

"If you wish," she said, almost indifferently. One time was no worse than another. Then the old Domaris came back for a moment in a burst of impulsive sincerity. "O Arvath, forgive me that I—that I bring you no more than I can give," she begged, and briefly clung to him.

"That you give yourself is enough," he said tenderly.

She looked at him, with a wise sorrow in her eyes but said nothing.

His arms tightened around her demandingly. "I will make you happy," he vowed. "I swear it!"

She remained passive in his embrace; but Arvath knew, with a nagging sense of futility, that she was unstirred by the torment that swept him. He repeated, and it sounded like a challenge, "I swear it—that I will make you forget!"

After an instant, Domaris put up her hands and freed herself from him; not with any revulsion, but with an indifference that filled the man with apprehension . . . Quickly he swept the disturbing thought aside. He would awaken her to love, he thought confidently—and it never occurred to him that she was far more aware of love's nature than he.

Still, he had seen the momentary softening of pity in her eyes, and he knew enough not to press his advantage too far. He whispered, against her hair, "Be beautiful for me, my wife!" Then, brushing her temple with a swift kiss, he left her.

Domaris stood for a long minute, facing the closed door, and the deep pity in her eyes paled gradually to a white dread. "He's—he's hungry," she breathed, and a hidden trembling started and would not be stilled through her entire body. "How can I—I can't! I can't! Oh. Micon, Micon!"