The chela started back a little. "My Prince—my brother—forgive me!" he begged.
Micon's mouth was a stern line in the pallid light. "My forgiveness cannot lighten your ultimate fate. Nor could my curses add to it. I bear you no malice, Reio-ta. I could wish you no worse fate than you have brought upon yourself. May you reap no worse than you have sown... ."
"I—" The chela inched closer once more, still half crouching before Micon. "I would strive to hold it worthily, our power ..."
Micon stood, straight, stiff, and very still. "That task is not for you, not now." He paused, holding himself immobile, and in the silence the fountain gushed and spattered echoingly behind them. "Brother, fear not: you shall betray our house not twee!"
The figure at Micon's feet groaned, and turned his face away, hiding it in his hands.
Inflexibly, Micon went on, "That much I may prevent! Nay—say no more of it! You cannot, you know you cannot use our powers while I live—and I hold death from me, until I know you cannot so debase our line! Unless you kill me here and now, my son will inherit the power I hold!"
Reio-ta's grovelling figure sank lower still, until the prematurely old face rested against Micon's sandalled feet. "My Prince—I knew not of this—"
Micon smiled faintly. "This?" he repeated. "I forgive you this—and that I see not. But your apostasy I cannot forgive, for it is a cause that you, yourself, set in motion, and its effect will reach you; you will be ever incomplete. Thus far, and not further, can you go. My brother—" His voice softened. "I love you still, but our ways part here. Now go—before you rob me of what poor strength remains to me. Go—or end my life now, take the power and try to hold it. But you will not be able to! You are not ready to master the storm-wrack, the deep forces of earth and sky—and now you shall never be! Go!"
Reio-ta groaned in anguished sorrow, clasping Micon's knees. "I cannot bear—"
"Go!" said Micon again, sternly, steadily. "Go—while I may yet hold back your destiny, as I hold back my own. Make what restitution you may."
"I cannot bear my guilt ..." The voice of the chela was broken now, and sadder than tears. "Say one kind word to me—that I may know you remember that we were once brothers... ."
"You are my brother," Micon acknowledged gently. "I have said that I love you still. I do not abandon you utterly. But this must be our parting." He bent and laid a wasted hand upon the chela's head.
Crying out sharply, Reio-ta cringed away. "Micon! Your pain—burns!"
Slowly and with effort, Micon straightened and withdrew. "Go quickly," he commanded, and added, as if against his own will, in a voice of raw torture, "I can bear no more!"
The chela sprang to his feet and stood a moment, gazing haggardly at the other, as if imprinting Micon's features upon his memory for all time; then turned and ran, with stumbling feet, from his brother's presence.
The blind Initiate remained, motionless, for many minutes. The wind had risen, and dry leaves skittered on the path and all about him; he did not notice. Weakly, as if forcing his steps through quicksand, he turned at last and went toward the fountain, where he sank down upon the dampened stone rim, fighting the hurricane clamor of the pain that he refused to give mental lease. Finally, his strength all but gone, he lay huddled on the flagstones amid the windblown leaves, victoriously master of himself, but so spent that he could not move.
In response to some inner uneasiness, Rajasta came—and the face of the Guardian was a terrible thing to see as he gathered Micon up into his strong arms, and bore him away.
The next day, the whole force of the Temple gathered for the search. Riveda, suspected of connivance, was taken into custody for many hours, while they sought throughout the Temple precincts, and even in the city below, for the unknown chela who had once been Reio-ta of Ahtarrath.
But he had disappeared—and the Night of the Nadir was one day closer to them all.
Chapter Fourteen: THE UNREVEALED GOD
I
About three months after Deoris had been received into the Temple of Caratra, Riveda encountered her one evening in the gardens. The last rays of the setting sun turned the young Priestess into a fairy shape of mystery, and Riveda studied her slim, blue-garbed form and grave, delicate young face with a new interest as he carefully phrased his request. "Who would forbid you, if I should invite you to visit the Grey Temple with me, this evening?"
Deoris felt her pulses twitch. To visit the Grey Temple—in the company of their highest Adept! Riveda did her honor indeed! Still she asked, warily, "Why?"
The man laughed. "Why not? There is a ceremony this evening. It is beautiful—there will be some singing. Many of our ceremonials are secret, but to this one I may invite you."
"I will come," Deoris said. She spoke demurely, but inwardly she danced with excitement: Karahama's guarded confidences had awakened her curiosity, not only about the Grey-robes, but about Riveda himself.
They walked silently under the blossoming stars. Riveda's hand was light on her shoulder, but Deoris was intensely aware of the touch, and it made her too shy to speak until they neared the great windowless loom of the Temple. As Riveda held aside the heavy bronze doors for her to pass, Deoris shrank in amazed terror from the bent wraith that slipped past them—the chela!
Riveda's hand tightened on her arm until Deoris almost cried out. "Say nothing of this to Micon, child," he warned sternly. "Rajasta has been told that he lives; but it would kill Micon to be confronted with him again!"
Deoris bent her head and promised. Since that night when Cadamiri had carried her, senseless, from Micon's rooms, her awareness of Micon had been almost as complete as that of Domaris; the Atlantean's undercurrents of emotion and thought were clear to her, except where they concerned herself. Her broadened perceptions had gone almost unnoticed, except for her swift mastery of work far beyond her supposed skill in the Temple; not even Domaris had guessed at Deoris's wakening awareness. Domaris was now wholly absorbed in Micon, and in their coming child. And the waiting, Deoris knew—and there was still more than a month to wait—was an unbearable torment to both, a joy and yet an insufferable pain.
The bronze doors clamored shut. They stood in a narrow corridor, dimly dark, that stretched away between rows of closed stone doors. The haggard, haunted figure of the chela was nowhere to be seen.
Their footsteps were soundless, muffled in the dead air, and Deoris, moving in the silence, felt some electric tension in the man beside her, a coiled strength that was almost sensible to her nerves. At the end of the corridor was an arched door bound about with iron. Riveda knocked, using a curious pattern of taps, and from nowhere a shrill, high, bodiless voice challenged in unfamiliar syllables. Riveda spoke equally cryptic words in response; an invisible bell sounded in midair, and the door swung inward.
They passed into—greyness.
There was no lack of light, but warmth or color there was none; the illumination was serene and cold, a mere shimmer, a pallor, an absence of darkness rather than a positive light. The room was immense, lost above their heads in a grey dimness like a heavy fog, or solidified smoke. Beneath their feet, the floor was grey stone, cold and sprinkled with chips of crystal and mica; the walls, too, had a translucent glitter, like winter moonlight. The forms that moved tenuously, like wraiths of mist in the wan radiance, were grey as well; tenebrous shadows, cloaked and cowled and mantled in sorcerer's grey—and there were women among them, women who moved restlessly like chained flames, robed in shrouding veils of saffron color, dull and lightless. Deoris glanced guardedly at the women, in the moment before Riveda's strong hands turned her gently about so that she faced—