Deoris averted her eyes in something like disgust. "How do you endure it?" she asked.
Elis laughed merrily without troubling to answer; her complaints had been only in jest, and she thought Deoris's question equally frivolous. Babies were always nursed for two full years, and only an overworked slave-woman or a prostitute would have dreamed of shirking the full time of suckling.
Elis leaned back, cradling Lissa on her arm, and picked another handful of berries. "You sound like Chedan, Deoris! I sometimes think he hates my poor baby! Still—" She made a comical face and thrust another berry between her lips. "Sometimes I wonder, when she bites me—"
"And you will no sooner wean her," Ista remarked with gleeful gravity, "than she will begin to shed her baby teeth."
Domaris frowned: she alone knew that Deoris had not been joking. Lissa's eyes were closed, now, in sleepy contentment, and her face, a pink petal framed in sunny curls, lay like a curled bud on her mother's breast. Domaris felt a sudden stab of longing so great that it was almost pain. Elis, raising her eyes, met Domaris's glance; the intuitive wisdom of their caste was especially strong in Elis, and the girl guessed at a story that closely paralleled her own. Reaching her free hand to her cousin, Elis gave the narrow fingers a little squeeze; Domaris returned the pressure, furtively, grateful for the implied understanding.
"Little nuisance," crooned Elis, rocking the sleepy baby. "Fat little elf ..."
The sun wavered, hiding itself behind a bank of cloud. Deoris and Ista nodded over their flower-work, still drowsily tying stems. Domaris suddenly shivered; then her whole body froze, tense, in an attitude of stilled, incredulous listening. And once again it came, somewhere deep inside her body, a faint and indescribable fluttering like nothing she had ever felt before, but unmistakable, like the beating of prisoned wings—it came and went so swiftly that she was hardly sure what she had felt. And yet she knew.
"What's the matter?" Elis asked in a low voice, and Domaris realized that she was still holding Elis's hand, but that her fingers had tightened, crushing her cousin's fingers together painfully. She let go of Elis, drawing back her hand quickly and in apology—but she did not speak, and her other hand remained resting lightly and secretly against her body, where once again that little instantaneous fluttering came and went and then was stilled. Domaris remembered to breathe; but she stayed very still, unable to think beyond that final, unmistakable surety that the concealed secret was now a confirmable truth, that there within her womb Micon's son—she dared not think that it was other than a son—stirred to life.
Deoris's eyes, large and somewhat afraid, met her sister's, and the expression in them was too much for the taut Domaris. She began to laugh, at first softly, then uncontrollably—because she dared not cry, she would not cry... . The laughter became hysterical, and Domaris scrambled to her feet and fled down the hill toward the seashore, leaving the three girls to stare at one another.
Deoris half rose, but Elis, on an intuitive impulse, pulled her back. "She would rather be alone for a while, I think. Here, hold Lissa for me, won't you, while I fasten my dress!" She plumped the baby into Deoris's lap, and carefully knotted the fastenings of her dress, taking her time, to avert a minor crisis.
II
At the edge of the salt-marshes, Domaris flung herself full-length into the long grass and lay hidden there, her face against the pungent earth, her hands clasped across her body in a wonder that was half fright. She lay motionless, feeling the long grasses wavering with the wind, her thoughts trembling as they did, but without stirring the surface of her mind. She was afraid to think clearly.
Noon paled and retreated, and Domaris, raising herself as if by instinct, saw Micon walking slowly along the shore. She got to her feet, her hair tumbling loose about her waist, her dress billowing in the wind, and began to run toward him on impatient feet. Hearing the quick, uneven steps, he stopped.
"Micon!"
"Domaris—where are you?" His blind face turned to follow the sound of her voice, and she darted to him, pausing—no longer even regretful that she could not throw herself into his arms—a careful step away, and lightly touching his arm, raised her face for his kiss.
His lips lingered an instant longer than usual; then he withdrew his face a little and murmured, "Heart of flame, you are excited. You bring news."
"I bring news." Her voice was softly triumphant, but failed her. She took the racked hands lightly in her own and pressed them softly against her body, begging him to understand without being told... . Perhaps he read her thoughts; perhaps he only guessed from the gesture. Whichever it may have been, his face grew bright with an inner brilliance, and his arms went out to gather her close.
"You bring light," he whispered, and kissed her again
She hid her face on his breast. "It is sure now beloved. This time it is sure! I have guessed it for weeks, and I would not speak of it, for fear that—but now there is no doubt! He—our son—stirred today!"
"Domaris—beloved—"
The man's voice choked, and she felt burning tears drop from the blind eyes onto her face. His hands, usually so sternly controlled, trembled so violently that he could not raise them to hers, and as she held herself to him, loving him and almost drowning in the intensity of this love so closely akin to worship, she felt Micon's trembling as even a strong tree will tremble a little before a hurricane.
"My beloved, my blessed one ..." With a reverence that hurt and frightened the girl, Micon dropped to his knees, in the sand, and managed to clasp her two hands, pressing them to his cheeks, his lips. "Bearer of Light, it is my life you hold, my freedom," he whispered.
"Micon! I love you, I love you," the girl stammered incoherently—because there was nothing else that she could possibly have said.
The Initiate rose, his control somewhat regained, though still trembling slightly, and gently dried her tears. "Domaris," he said, with tender gravity, "I—there is no way to tell you—I mean, I will try, but—" His mouth took on an even greater seriousness, and the twist of pain and regret and uncertainty there was like knives in Domaris's heart.
"Domaris," he said, and his voice rang in the deep and practiced tones that she recognized as the Atlantean's oath-voice. "I will—try," he promised solemnly, "to stay with you until our son is born."
And Domaris knew that she had pronounced the beginning of the end.
Chapter Six: IN THE SISTERHOOD
I
The Temple of Caratra, which overlooked the Shrine and the holy pool, was one of the most beautiful buildings of the entire Temple precinct. It was fashioned of milky stone, veined with shimmering, opalescent fires in the heart of the rock. Long gardens, linked by palisaded arbors covered with trailing vines, surrounded pool and Temple; cool fountains splashed in the courts where a profusion of flowers bloomed the year round.
Within these white and glistening walls, every child of the Temple was born, whether child to slave-maiden or to the High Priestess. Here, also, every young girl within the Temple was sent to render service in her turn (for all women owed service to the Mother of All Men); in assisting the Priestesses, in caring for the mothers and for the newly born, even (if she was of a satisfactory rank in the Priest's Caste) in learning the secrets of bringing children to birth. And every year thereafter she spent a certain assigned period—ranging from a single day for slave women and commoners, to an entire month for Acolytes and Priestesses—living and serving in the Temple of the Mother; and from this assigned yearly service, not the humblest slave nor the highest Initiate was ever exempted.