The Fall Of Atlantis

Chapter Nine: THE SEA AND THE SHIP

I

As summer gave way to autumn, even the children abandoned the hope and pretense that Domaris might recover. Day after day she lay in her high room, watching the sun flicker on the white waves, dreaming. Sometimes when one of the high-bannered wing-bird ships slid over the horizon, she wondered if Rajasta had received her message ... but not even that seemed important any more. Days, then months slipped over her head, and with each day she grew paler, more strengthless, worn with pain brought to the point beyond which even pain cannot go, weary even with the effort of drawing breath to live.

The old master, Rathor, came once and stood for a long time close to her bedside, his hand between her two pale ones and his old blind eyes bent upon her worn face as if they saw not some faraway and distant thing, but the face of the dying woman.

As the year turned again, Deoris, pale with long nights and days of nursing her sister, was commanded unequivocally to take more rest; much of the time, now, Domaris did not know her, and there was little that anyone could do. Reluctantly, Deoris left her sister to the hands of the other Healer-priestesses, and—one morning—took her children to the seashore. Micail joined them there, for since his mother's illness he had seen little of Tiriki. Micail was to remember this day, afterward, as the last day he was a child among children.

Tiriki, her long pale hair all unbraided, dragged her little brother by the hand as she flew here and there. Micail raced after them, and all three went wild with shouting and splashing and rowdy playing, chasing in and out of the sloshing waves on the sand. Even Deoris flung away her sandals and dashed gaily into the tidewaters with them. When they tired of this, Tiriki began to build in the sand for her little brother, while Micail picked up shells at the high-water mark and dumped them into Tiriki's lap.

Deoris, sitting on a large sun-warmed rock to watch them, thought, They are only playing at being children, for Nari's sake and mine. They have grown up, those two, while I have been absorbed in Domaris ... It did not seem quite right, to Deoris, that a boy of sixteen and a girl of thirteen should be so mature, so serious, so adult—though they were acting, now, like children half their age!

But they quieted at last, and lay on the sand at Deoris's feet, calling on her to admire their sand-sculpture.

"Look," said Micail, "a palace, and a Temple!"

"See my pyramid?" little Nari demanded shrilly.

Tiriki pointed. "From here, the palace is like a jewel set atop a green hill . . . Reio-ta told me, once... ." Abruptly she sat up and demanded, "Deoris, did I ever have a real father? I love Reio-ta as if he truly were my father, but—you and Kiha Domaris are sisters; and Reio-ta is the brother of Micail's father . . ." Breaking off again, she glanced unquietly at Micail.

He understood what she meant immediately, and reached out to tweak her ear—but his impulse changed, and he only twitched it playfully instead.

Deoris looked soberly at her daughter. "Of course, Tiriki. But your father died—before you could be acknowledged."

"What was he like?" the girl asked, reflectively.

Before Deoris could answer, little Nari looked up with pouting scorn. "If he died before 'nowledging her, how could he be her father?" he asked, with devastating small-boy logic. He poked a chubby finger into his half-sister's ribs. "Dig me a hole, Tiriki!"

"Silly baby," Micail rebuked him.

Nari scowled. "Not a baby," he insisted. "My father was a Priest!"

"So was Micail's, Nari; so was Tiriki's," Deoris said gently. "We are all the children of Priests here."

But Nari only returned to the paradox he had seized on with new vigor. "If Tiriki's father died before she was born, then she don't have a father because he wasn't live to be her father!"

Micail, tickled by the whimsy of Nari's childish innocence, grinned delightedly. Even Tiriki giggled—then sobered, seeing the look on Deoris's face.

"Don't you want to talk about him?"

Again pain twisted oddly in Deoris's heart. Sometimes for months she did not think of Riveda at all—then a chance word or gesture from Tiriki would bring him back, and stir again that taut, half-sweet aching within her. Riveda was burned on her soul as ineradicably as the dorje scars on her breasts, but she had learned calm and control. After a moment she spoke, and her voice was perfectly steady. "He was an Adept of the Magicians, Tiriki."

"A Priest, like Micail's father, you said?"

"No, child, nothing like Micail's father. I said he was a Priest, because—well the Adepts are like Priests, of a sort. But your father was of the Grey-robe sect, though they are not regarded so highly in the Ancient Land. And he was a Northman of Zaiadan; you have your hair and eyes from him. He was a Healer of great skill."

"What was his name?" Tiriki asked intently.

For a moment, Deoris did not answer. It occurred to her then Domaris had never spoken of this, and since she had raised Tiriki as Reio-ta's daughter, it was her right not to ... At last Deoris said, "Tiriki, in every way that matters, Reio-ta is your father."

"Oh, I know, it isn't that I don't love him!" Tiriki exclaimed, penitently—but as if drawn by an irresistible impetus, she went on, "But tell me, Deoris, because I remember, when I was only a baby—Domaris spoke of him to another Priestess—no, it was a Priest—oh, I can't remember really, but ..." She made a strange little helpless gesture with her hands.

Deoris sighed. "Have it as you will. His name was Riveda."

Tiriki repeated the name curiously. "Riveda... ."

"I did not know that!" Micail broke in, with sudden disquiet. "Deoris, can it be the same Riveda I heard talk in the Priest's Court as a child? Was he—the sorcerer, the heretic?" He stopped short at the dismay in Deoris's eyes, her pained mouth.

Nari raised his head and clamored, "What's a heretic?"

Micail, immediately repenting his rash outburst, unfolded his long legs and hoisted the little boy to his shoulder. "A heretic is one who does wicked things, and I will do a wicked thing and throw you into the sea if you do not stop plaguing Deoris with foolish questions! Look, I think that ship is coming to anchor, come, let's watch it; I'll carry you on my shoulder!"

Nari crowed in shrill delight, and Micail galloped off with him. Soon they were little more than tiny figures far along the beach.

Deoris came out of her daydream to find Tiriki slipping her hand into hers, saying with a low voice, "I did not mean to trouble, you, Deoris. I—I only had to be sure that—that Micail and I were not cousins twice over." She blushed, and then said, entreatingly, "Oh, Deoris, you must know why!" For the first time, of her own will, Tiriki put up her face for her mother's kiss.

Deoris caught the slender child in her arms. "Of course I know, my little blossom, and I am very happy," she said. "Come—shall we go and see the ship too?" Hand in hand, close together, they followed the trail of Micail's hurrying feet through the sand until all four stood together again.

Deoris picked up her son (Nari at least was hers alone, for a time at least, she was thinking) and listened smiling as Micail, his arm around Tiriki, talked of the wing-bird which was gliding to harbor. The sea was in his blood as it had been in his father's; on the long voyage from the Ancient Land he had been made with joy.

"I wonder if that ship is from the Ancient Land?" Tiriki said curiously.

"I would not be surprised," Micail answered wisely. "Look—they're putting out a boat from the ship, though; that's strange, they don't usually land boats here at the Temple, usually they go on to the City."

"There is a Priest in the first boat," Tiriki said as the small craft beached. Six men, common sailors, turned away along the lower path, but the seventh stood still, glancing up toward where the Temple gleamed like a white star atop the hill. Deori's heart nearly stopped; it was ...

"Rajasta!" Micail cried out, suddenly and joyously; and, forgetting his new-found dignity, he sped swiftly across the sands toward the white-robed man.

The Priest looked up, and his face glowed as he saw the boy. "My dear, dear son!" he exclaimed, clasping Micail in his arms. Deoris, following slowly with her children, saw that the old Guardian's face was wet with tears.

His arm about Micail, Rajasta turned to greet the others; Deoris would have knelt, but he embraced her with his free arm. "Little daughter, this is a lucky omen for my mission, though it is not a mission of joy," he told her. To her own surprise, Deoris discovered that she was weeping. Rajasta held her close, with a sort of dismayed embarrassment, comforting her awkwardly as she sobbed, and little Nari tugged at his mother's skirt.

"You'd spank me for that, D'ris," he rebuked shrilly.

Deoris laughed at this, recovering her composure somewhat. "Forgive me, Lord Rajasta," she said, flushing deeply, and drew Tiriki forward. "A miracle befell me, my father, for when I came here I found—my own small daughter, in Domaris's care."

Rajasta's smile was a benediction. "I knew of that, my daughter, for Reio-ta told me of his plan."

"You knew? And all those years ... ?" Deoris bent her head. It had, indeed been wisest that she learn to think of her child as lost to her forever.

Tiriki clung to Deoris, bashfully, and Rajasta laid his hand on her silky head. "Do not be frightened little one; I knew your mother when she was younger than you, and your father was my kinsman. You may call me Uncle, if you wish."

Nari peeped from behind his sister. "My father is a Priest!" he said valiantly. "Are you my Uncle, too, Lord Guardian?"

"If you like," said Rajasta mildly, and patted the tangled curls. "Is Domaris well, my daughter?"

Deoris paled in consternation. "Did you not receive her letter? You do not know?"

Rajasta, too, turned pale. "No, I have had no word—all is confusion at the Temple, Deoris, we have had no letters. I have come on Temple business, though indeed I had hoped to see you both. What—what has befallen her?"

"Domaris is dying," Deoris said unsteadily.

The Priest's pale cheeks looked haggard—for the first time in her life, Deoris realized that Rajasta was an old, old man. "I feared—I felt," the Guardian said, hoarsely, "some premonition of evil upon her... ." He looked again at Micail's thin, proud face. "You are like your father, my son. You have his eyes ..." But Rajasta's thoughts went on beyond his words: He is like Domaris, too. Domaris, whom he loved as more than a daughter—no one begotten of his own flesh had ever been half so dear to Rajasta; and Deoris said she was dying! But the essential part of Domaris, he reminded himself sternly and sadly, has long been dead... .

They dismissed the children as they neared the dormitory of the Priestesses. Alone together, Rajasta and Deoris climbed the stairs. "You will find her very changed," Deoris warned.

"I know," said Rajasta, and his voice held a deep sorrow; he leaned heavily on the young woman's offered arm. Deoris tapped gently on the door.

"Deoris?" a faint voice asked from within, and Deoris stepped aside for the Guardian to precede her. She heard her own name again, raised questioningly, then a glad cry: "Rajasta! Rajasta—my father!"

Domaris's voice broke in a sob, and Rajasta hastened to her side. Domaris tried to raise herself, but her face twisted with pain and she had to fall back. Rajasta bent and elapsed her gently in his arms, saying, "Domaris, my child, my lovely child!"

Deoris very quietly withdrew and left them alone.