"Ignorance is worse than evil intent," Rajasta warned, and Riveda sighed.
"See for yourself, if you will," he said, and stepped to the open door, speaking in a low voice to someone in the court. After a moment, a young man came noiselessly into the room.
II
He was slight and small and looked very young, but on a second glance it could be seen that the features, though smooth as a boy's, were devoid of eyelashes as well as of beard. His brows were but the thinnest, light line, yet his hair was heavy and black, felling in lank locks which had been trimmed squarely at his shoulders. Light grey eyes gazed at Rajasta, unfocussed as if he were blind; and he was darkly tanned, although some strange pallor underlying the skin gave him a sickly look. Rajasta studied the haggard face intently, noting that the chela held himself stiffly erect, arms away from his body, thin hands hanging curled like a newborn child's at his sides. He had moved so lightly, so noiselessly, that Rajasta wondered, half-seriously, if the creature had pads like a cat's on his feet.
He beckoned the chela to approach, and asked kindly, "What is your name, my son?"
The dull eyes woke suddenly in an unhealthy glitter. He looked about and took a step backward, then opened his mouth once or twice. Finally, in a husky voice—as if unaccustomed to speaking—he said, "My name? I am ... only a fool."
"Who are you?" Rajasta persisted. "Where are you from?"
The chela took another step backward, and the furtive swivelling of his sick eyes intensified. "I can see you are a Priest," he said craftily. "Aren't you wise enough to know? Why should I twist my poor brain to remember, when the High Gods know, and bid me be silent, be silent, sing silent when the stars glow, mooning driftward in a surge of light... ." The words slid off into a humming croon.
Rajasta could only stare, thunderstruck.
Riveda gestured to the chela in dismissal. "That will do," he said; and as the boy slipped from the room like a mumbling fog-wraith, the Adept added, in explanation to Rajasta, "Questions always excite him—as if at some time he'd been questioned until he—withdrew."
Rajasta, finding his tongue, exclaimed, "He's mad as a seagull!"
Riveda chuckled wryly. "I'm sorry. He does have intervals when he's reasonably lucid, and can talk quite rationally. But if you question—he slips back into madness. If you can avoid anything like a question—"
"I wish you had warned me of that,' Rajasta said, in genuine distress. "You told me he gave the correct responses—"
Riveda shrugged this off. "Our Signs and counter-Signs are not in the form of questions," he remarked, "at least he can betray none of my secrets! Have you no secrets in the Temple of Light, Rajasta?"
"Our secrets are available to any who will seek sincerely."
Riveda's frigid eyes glittered with offense. "As our secrets are more dangerous, so we conceal them more carefully. The harmless secrets of the Temple of Light, your pretty ceremonies and rites—no man could harm anyone even if he meddled with the knowledge unworthily! But we work with dangerous powers—and if one man know them and be unfit to trust with such secrets, then such things come as befell young Micon of Ahtarrath!" He turned savagely on Rajasta. "You of all men should know why we have cause to keep our secrets for those who are fit to use them!"
Rajasta's lips twisted. "Such as your crazy chela?"
"He knows them already; we can but make sure he does not misuse them in his madness." Riveda's voice was flat and definite. "You are no child to babble of ideals. Look at Micon ... you honor him, I respect him greatly, your little Acolyte—what is her name? Domaris—adores him. Yet what is he but a broken reed?"
"Such is accomplishment," from Rajasta, very low.
"And at what price? I think my crazy boy is happier. Micon, unfortunately—" Riveda smiled, "is still able to think, and remember."
Sudden anger gusted up in Rajasta. "Enough! The man is my guest, keep your mocking tongue from him! Look you to your Order, and forbear mocking your betters!" He turned his back on the Adept, and strode from the room, his firm tread echoing and dying away on stone flooring; and never heard Riveda's slow-kindled laughter that followed him all the way.
Chapter Three: THE UNION
I
The sacred chamber was walled with tall windows fretted and overlaid with intricate stone-work casements. The dimmed moonlight and patterns of shadow bestowed an elusive, unreal quality upon the plain chairs and the very simple furnishings. A high-placed oval window let the silvery rays fall full on the altar, where glowed a pulsing flame.
Micon on one side, Rajasta on the other, Domaris passed beneath the softly shadowed archway; in silence, the two men each took one of the woman's hands, and led her to a seat, one of three facing the altar.
"Kneel," said Rajasta softly, and Domaris, with the soft sibilance of her robes, knelt. Micon's hand withdrew from hers, and was laid upon the crown of her head.
"Grant wisdom and courage to this woman, O Great Unknown!" the Atlantean prayed, his voice low-pitched, yet filling the chamber with its controlled resonances. "Grant her peace and understanding, O Unknowable!" Stepping back a pace, Micon permitted Rajasta to take his place.
"Grant purity of purpose and true knowledge to this woman," said the Priest of Light. "Grant her growth according to her needs, and the fortitude to do her duty in the fullest measure. O Thou which Art, let her be in Thee, and of Thee." Rajasta took his hand from her head and himself withdrew.
The silence was complete. Domaris felt herself oddly alone upon the raised platform before the altar, though she had not heard the rustlings of robes, the slapping of sandals which would have accompanied Micon and Rajasta out of the room. Her heartbeats sounded dully in her ears, a muffled throbbing that slowed to a long drawn-out rhythm, a deep pulsing that seemed to take its tempo from the quivering flame upon the altar. Then, without warning, the two men raised her up and seated her between them.
Her hands resting in theirs, her face stilled to an unearthly beauty, Domaris felt as if she were rising, expanding to touch the far-flung stars. Even there a steady beat, a regular cadence that was both sound and light fused, filled and engulfed her. Domaris's senses shifted, rapidly reversing, painlessly twisting and contorting into an indescribable blending in which all past experience was suddenly quite useless. It was around her and in her and of her, a sustenance that, somehow, she herself fed, and slowly, very slowly, as if over centuries, the pulsing bright static of the stars gave way to the hot darkness of the beating heart of the earth. Of this, too, she was a part: it was she; she was.
With this realization, as if borne upward by the warm tides of the waters of life, Domaris came back to the surface of existence. About her, the sacred chamber was silent; to either side of her, she could see the face of a man transfigured even as Domaris had been. As one, the three breathed deeply, rose, and went forth in silence from that place, newly consecrated to a purpose that, for a little time, they could almost understand.
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Chapter Four: STORM WARNINGS
I
A cool breeze stirred the leaves, and what light penetrated the branches was a shimmering, shifting dance of golden and green. Rajasta, approaching along a shrubbery-lined path, thought the big tree and the trio beneath it made a pleasing picture: Deoris, with her softly curling hair, looked shadowy and very dark as she sat on her scribe's stool, reading from a scroll; before her, in contrast, Micon's pallor was luminous, almost translucent. Close by the Atlantean's side, yet not much more distant from her little sister, Domaris was like a stilled flame, the controlled serenity of her face a pool of quiet.