The Fall Of Atlantis

Chapter Eleven: THE DARK SHRINE

I

Deoris remained within the subterranean labyrinth for a month, cared for by Riveda and Nadastor. She saw no other person, save an old deaf-mute who brought her food. Nadastor treated Deoris with a ceremonious deference which astonished and terrified the girl—particularly after she heard one fragment of conversation ...

She and Riveda had grown by degrees into a tender companionship like nothing the girl had ever known. He had no black, surly moods now. On this day he had remained near her for some time, translating some of the ancient inscriptions with an almost lewd gaiety, coaxing her to eat with all sorts of playful little games, as if she were an ailing child. After a time, for she still tired quickly, he laid her down and drew a blanket of woven wool over her shoulders, and left her; she slept until she was wakened by a voice, raised a little as if he had forgotten her in his annoyance.

"... all my life have I held that in abhorrence!"

"Even within the Temple of Light," Nadastor was saying, "brothers and sisters marry sometimes; their line is kept pure, they want no unknown blood which might bring back those traits they have bred out of the Priest's Caste. Children of incest are often natural clairvoyants."

"When they are not mad," said Riveda cynically.

Deoris closed her eyes again as the voices fell to a murmur; then Riveda raised his voice angrily again.

"Which of Talkannon's ... ?"

"You will wake the girl," Nadastor rebuked; and for minutes they spoke so softly that Deoris could hear nothing. The next thing she caught was Nadastor's flat statement, "Men breed animals for what they want them to become. Should they scatter the seed of their own bodies?" The voice fell again, then surged upward: "I have watched you, Riveda, for a long time. I knew that one day you would weary of the restraints laid on you by the Ritual!"

"Then you knew more than I," Riveda retorted. "Well, I have no regrets—and whatever you may think, no scruples in that line. Let us see if I understand you. The child of a man past the age of passion, and a girl just barely old enough to conceive, can be—almost outside the laws of nature ..."

"And as little bound by them," Nadastor added. He rose and left the room, and Riveda came to look down at Deoris. She shut her eyes, and after a moment, thinking her still sleeping, he turned away.

II

The burns on her back and shoulders had healed quickly, but the cruel brand on her breasts had bitten deep; even by the time she was able to be up again, they were still swathed in bandages which she could not bear to touch. She was growing restless; never had she been so long absent from the Temple of Light, and Domaris must be growing anxious about her—at the very least, she might make inquiries.

Riveda soothed her fear a little.

"I have told a tale to account for you," he said. "I told Cadamiri that you had fallen from the sea-wall and been burned at one of the beacon fires; that also explained my own hurt." He held out his hands, free now of bandages, but terribly scarred, too stiff even to recover their old skill.

"No one questions my ability as Healer, Deoris, so they did not protest when I said you must be left in peace. And your sister—" His eyes narrowed slightly. "She waylaid me today in the library. She is anxious about you; and in all truth, Deoris, I could give no reason why she should not see you, so tomorrow it would be well if you left this place. You must see her, and reassure her, else ..." he laid a heavy hand on her arm, "the Guardians may descend on us. Tell Domaris—whatever you like, I care not, but—whatever you do, Deoris, unless you want me to die like a dog, let not even Domaris see the scars on your breasts until they are wholly healed. And Deoris, if your sister insists, you may have to return to the Temple of Light. I—I grieve to send you from me, and would not have it so, but—the Ritual forbids any maiden of the Light-born to live among Grey-robes. It is an old law, and seldom invoked; it has been ignored time and time again. But Domaris reminded me of it, and—I dare not endanger you by angering her."

Deoris nodded without speaking. She had known that this interlude could not last forever. In spite of all the pain, all the terror, her new dread of Riveda, this had been a sort of idyll, suspended in nothingness and wrapped in an unexpected certainty of Riveda's nearness and his love; and now, already it was part of the past.

"You will be safest under your sister's protection. She loves you, and will ask no questions, I think." Riveda clasped her hand in his own and sat without moving or speaking for a long time; at last, he said, "I told you, once, Deoris, that I am not a good man to trust. By now I imagine I have proved that to you." The bitter and despondent tone was back in his voice. Then, evenly and carefully, he asked, "Are you still—my Priestess? I have forfeited the right to command you, Deoris. I offer to release you, if you wish it."

As she had done years ago, Deoris let go of his hand, dropped to her knees and pressed her face to his robes in surrender. She whispered, "I have told you I will defy all for you. Why will you never believe me?"

After a moment, Riveda raised her gently, his touch careful and light. "One thing remains," he said in a low voice. "You have suffered much, and I—I would not force this on you, but—but if not tonight, a year's full cycle must go by before we can try again. This is the Night of Nadir, and the only night on which I can complete this."

Deoris did not hesitate even a moment, although her voice shook a little. "I am at your command," she whispered, in the ritual phrase of the Grey-robes.

III

Some few hours later, the old deaf-mute woman came. She stripped Deoris, bathed and purified her, and robed her in the curious garments Riveda had sent. First a long, full robe of transparent linen, and over this a tabard of stiffly embroidered silk, decorated with symbols of whose meaning Deoris was not wholly certain. Her hair, now grown thick and long, was confined in a silver fillet, and her feet stained with dark pigment. As the deaf-mute completed this final task, Riveda returned—and Deoris forgot her own unusual garb in amazement at the change in him.

She had never seen him clothed in aught but the voluminous grey robe, or a simpler grey smock for magical work. Tonight he blazed in raw colors that made him look crude, sinister—frightening. His silver-gilt hair shone like virgin gold beneath a horned diadem which partially concealed his face; he wore a tabard of crimson like her own, with symbols worked in black from which Deoris turned away shamed eyes: the emblems were legitimate magical symbols, but in company with the ornaments of her clothing they seemed obscene. Under the crimson surcoat, Riveda wore a close-fitting tunic dyed blue—and this to Deoris was the crowning obscenity, for blue was the color sacred to Caratra, and reserved for women; she found she could not look at it on his body, and her face was aflame. Over all, he wore the loose magician's cloak which could be drawn about him to form the Black Robe. Seeing her blushes slowly whiten, Riveda smiled sternly.

"You are not thinking, Deoris! You are reacting to your childhood's superstitions. Come, what have I taught you about vibration and color?"

She felt all the more shamed and foolish at the reminder. "Red vitalizes and stimulates," she muttered, reciting, "where blue produces calmness and peace, mediating all inflamed and feverish conditions. And black absorbs and intensifies vibrations."

"That's better," he approved, smilingly. He then surveyed her costume critically, and once satisfied, said, "One thing remains; will you wear this for me, Deoris?"

He held out a girdle to her. Carved of wooden links, it was bound with crimson cords knotted in odd patterns. Runes were incised in the wood, and for a moment some instinct surged up in Deoris, and her fingers refused to touch the thing.

Riveda, more sternly, said, "Are you afraid to wear this, Deoris? Must we waste time with a lengthy explanation?"

She shook her head, chastened, and began to fasten it about her body—but Riveda bent and prevented her. With his strong, scarred hands he cinctured it carefully about her waist, tying the cords into a firm knot and ending with a gesture incomprehensible to her.

"Wear this until I give you leave to take it off," he told her. "Now come."

She almost rebelled again when she saw where he was taking her—to the terrible shrouded Crypt of the Avatar, where the Man with Crossed Hands lay, continually bound. Once within, she watched, frozen, as Riveda kindled ritual fire upon the altar which had been dark for a million years.

In his deepest voice, blazing in his symbolic robes, he began to intone the invocatory chant and Deoris, recognizing it, knew in trembling terror what it invoked. Was Riveda mad indeed? Or splendidly, superbly courageous? This was blackest blasphemy—or was it? And for what?

Shivering, she had no real choice but to add her own voice to the invocation. Voice answered voice in dark supplication, strophe and antistrophe, summoning . . . entreating... .

Riveda turned abruptly to the high stone altar where a child lay, and with a surge of horror Deoris saw what Riveda held in his hands. She clasped her own hands over her mouth so that she would not scream aloud as she recognized the child: Larmin. Karahama's son, Demira's little brother—Riveda's own son ...

The child watched with incurious drugged eyes. The thing was done with such swiftness that the child gave only a single smothered whimper of apprehension, then fell back into the drugged sleep. Riveda turned back to the terrible ceremony which had become, to Deoris, a devil's rite conducted by a maniac.

Nadastor glided from the shadows, unbound the little boy, lifted the small senseless figure from the altar-stone and bore it from the Crypt. Deoris and Riveda were alone in the Dark Shrine—the very shrine where Micon had been tortured, alone with the Unrevealed God.

Her mind reeling with the impact of sound and sight, she began to comprehend if not the whole, then the drift of the blasphemous ritual: Riveda meant nothing less than to loose the terrible chained power of the Dark God, to bring the return of the Black Star. But there was something more, something she could not quite understand ... or was it that she dared not understand?

She sank to her knees; a deathly intangible horror held her by the throat, and though her mind screamed No! No-no-no-no! in the grip of that hypnotic dream she could not move or cry out. With a single word or gesture of protest she could so distort and shatter the pattern of the ritual that Riveda must fail—but sound was beyond her power, and she could not raise a hand or move her head so much as a fraction to one side or the other ... and because in this crisis she could not summon the courage to defy Riveda, her mind slid off into incoherence, seeking an escape from personal guilt.

She could not—she dared not understand what she was hearing and seeing; her brain refused to seize on it. Her eyes became blank, blind and though Riveda saw the last remnant of sanity fade from her wide eyes, it was with only the least of his attention; the rest of him was caught up in what he did.

The fire on the shrine blazed up.

The chained and faceless image stirred ...

Deoris saw the smile of the Man with Crossed Hands leering from the distorted shadows. Then, for an instant, she saw what Riveda saw, a chained and faceless figure standing upright—but that too swam away. Where they had been a great and fearful form hulked, recumbent and swathed in corpse-windings—an image that stirred and fought its bonds.

Then Deoris saw only an exploding pinwheel of lights into which she fell headlong. She barely knew it when Riveda seized her; she was inert, half-conscious at best, her true mind drowned in the compassionate stare of the Man with Crossed Hands, blinded by the spinning wheel of lights that whirled blazing above them. She knew, dimly, that Riveda lifted and laid her on the altar, and she felt a momentary shock of chill awareness and fear as she was forced back onto the wet stone. Not here, not here, not on the stone stained with the child's blood ...

But he isn't dead! she thought with idiotic irrelevance, he isn't dead, Riveda didn't kill him, it's all right if he isn't dead ...

IV

As if breaking the crest of a deep dark wave, Deoris came to consciousness suddenly, sensible of cold, and of pain from her half-healed burns. The fire on the shrine was extinguished; the Man with Crossed Hands had become but a veiled darkness.

Riveda, the frenzy gone, was lifting her carefully from the altar. With his normal, composed severity, he assisted her to rearrange her robes. She felt bruised and limp and sick, and leaned heavily on Riveda, stumbling a little on the icy stones—and she guessed, rightly, that he was remembering another night in this crypt, years before.

Somewhere in the labyrinth she could hear a child's distant sobs of pain and fright. They seemed to blend with her own confusion and terror that she put her hands up to her face to be sure that she was not crying, whether the sounds came from within or without.

At the door of the room where she had lain all during her long illness, Riveda paused, beckoning the deaf-mute woman and giving her some orders in sign-language.

He turned to Deoris again, and spoke with a cold formality that chilled her to the bone: "Tomorrow you will be conducted above ground. Do not fear to trust Demira, but be very careful. Remember what I have told you, especially in regard to your sister Domaris!" He paused, for once at a loss for words; then, with sudden and unexpected reverence, the Adept dropped to his knees before the terrified girl and taking her icy hand in his, he pressed it to his lips, then to his heart.

"Deoris," he said, falteringly. "O, my love—"

Quickly he let go her hand, rose to his feet and was gone before the girl could utter a single word.