So rapidly had Deoris's emotions vacillated in the last minutes that at first she could only shake her head, speechless. Then, recovering her composure, she clarified, "Rajasta has said I am still too young. Domaris took no vows until she was past seventeen."
"I would not have you wait so long," Riveda demurred, "but it is true that there is no need of haste—" He fell silent again, gazing off across the plaza and into the distances beyond. At last, turning to Deoris, he said, "This is what I advise you: first, to seek initiation into the lowest grade of the Priestesses of Caratra. As you grow older, you may decide that your true place is among the Magicians—" Riveda checked her question with an imperative gesture. "I know, you do not wish to be saji, nor do I suggest it. However, as an Initiated Priestess of Caratra, you could rise in Her service to the highest levels—or enter the Grey Temple. Most women are not fit to attain the grade of Adept, but I believe you have inborn powers." He smiled down at her and added, "I only hope you will use them as you should."
She returned his gaze earnestly. "I don't know how—"
"But you will learn." He laid one of his hands on her shoulder. "Trust me."
"I do," she said confidingly, with the sudden realization that it was true.
In perfect seriousness, Riveda warned her, "Your Micon puts no faith in me, Deoris. Perhaps I'm not a good man to trust."
Deoris looked unhappily down at the flagstones. "Micon—Lord Micon has been so cruelly treated—perhaps he trusts no one any more," she hazarded, unable to face the idea that Micon might be right. She didn't want to believe anything unpleasant of Riveda.
The Adept let his hand fall away from her. "I will ask Karahama, then, to take you under her personal guidance," he said, with an air of dismissal. Deoris, accepting it, thanked him rather timidly and departed. Riveda stood watching her go, his arms folded on his chest, and though there was a trace of an ironic smile upon his lips, his eyes were thoughtful. Could Deoris be the woman he had visualized? No one knew better than he that the random memories of previous lives sometimes appear to one as presentiments of the future... . If he read this girl's character rightly, she was eager—over-eager, perhaps, even impetuous. Did she have any caution at all?
Unwilling to let his thoughts drift too far from current realities, Riveda turned on his heel and began to walk once more, his stride swiftly carrying him from the plaza. Deoris was still a little girl, and he must wait, perhaps for years, to be sure he was not mistaken—but he had made a beginning.
The Adept Riveda was not accustomed to waiting for what he wanted—but this once, it might prove worth the waiting!
Chapter Eleven: OF BLESSINGS AND CURSES
I
Her hands folded meekly before her, her hair simply braided, Deoris stood before the assembled Priestesses of Caratra. She wore, for the last time, her scribe's frock, and already it felt strange.
Even while she listened with serious attention to the grave admonitions of Karahama, Deoris was scared, even panicky, her thoughts running in wistful counterpoint to the Priestess's words. From this day and hour, she would no longer be "little Deoris," but a woman who had chosen her life's work—although for years to come she would be no more than an apprenticed Priestess, even this conferred upon her the responsibilities of an adult... .
And now Karahama beckoned her forward. Deoris stretched forth her hands, as she had been bidden.
"Adsartha, daughter of Talkannon, called Deoris, receive from my hands these ornaments it is now thy right to wear. Use them wisely, and profane them never," Karahama adjured. "Daughter thou art to the Great Mother; daughter and sister and mother to every other woman." Into the outstretched hands Karahama placed the sacred ornaments which Deoris must wear for the rest of her life. "May these hands be blessed for the Mother's work; may they be consecrated," said Karahama, and closed Deoris's small fingers over the ritual gems, holding them closed for a moment, then Signing them with a protective gesture.
Deoris did not consider herself in any way a superstitious person, and yet she half-expected to feel the touch of some great, warm, and mystic power flowing into her—or else, that the very walls would denounce her as unworthy. But she felt nothing, only a continuing nervous tension and a slight trembling in her calves from standing almost motionless throughout the long ceremony—which, clearly, was not yet ended.
Karahama raised her arms in yet another ritual gesture, saying, "Let the Priestess Deoris be invested as befits her rank."
Mother Ysouda, the old Priestess who had brought both Domaris and Deoris into the world and who had cared for them after the death of their mother, led her away; Domaris, in the place of her mother, accompanied them into the antechamber.
First the scribe's flaxen frock was taken from her and cast into the fire; Deoris stood naked, shivering on the stones. In prescribed silence, Mother Ysouda's face too forbidding to reassure either of them, Domaris unbraided her sister's heavy hair, and the ancient Priestesses sheared it off and cast the heavy dark ringlets into the flames. Deoris blinked back tears of humiliation as she watched them burn, but she did not utter a sound; it would have been unthinkable to weep during such a ceremony. While Mother Ysouda performed the elaborate rites of purification, and of dressing the shorn and chastened Deoris in the garments of a Priestess of the lowest grade, Domaris looked on with eyes shining. She was not sorry that Deoris had chosen a different service than herself; all were aspects of the hierarchy into which they had been born, and it seemed right that Deoris should choose the service of humanity, rather than her own choice of the esoteric wisdom of Light. Seeing Deoris in the simple novice's garments, Domaris's eyes filled and spilled over with tears of joy; she felt a mother's pride in a grown child, without a mother's sorrow that the child is grown past her control.
Once Deoris had been robed in the straight sleeveless garment of blue, cross-woven with white, they bound a plain blue girdle about her waist and fastened it with a single pearl—the stone of the Great Deep, brought from the womb of earth in danger and death, and thus symbolic of childbirth. About Deoris's throat was hung an amulet of carven crystal, which she would later learn to use as both hypnotic pendulum and psychic channel when this became necessary in her work.
Thus clothed and thus adorned, she was led back to the assembled Priestesses, who had broken their solemn circle and now crowded around the girl to welcome her to their order, kissing and embracing her, congratulating her, even teasing her a little about her shorn hair. Even Mother Ysouda, stern and bony, unbent enough to reminisce with the delighted Domaris—who stood apart from the throng of blue-clad women crowding about the newcomer.
"It hardly seems that it can have been fifteen years since I first laid her in your arms!"
"What was I like?" Deoris asked curiously.
Mother Ysouda straightened herself with a dignified air. "Very much like a little red monkey," she returned, but she smiled at Deoris and Domaris lovingly. "You have lost your little one, Domaris—but soon now I shall lay another child in your arms, shall I not?"