It was many weeks before they allowed her to leave her bed, and months before she was permitted to walk about in the gardens. When, finally, she was well enough, she returned to her duties in the Temple of Caratra—more or less, for she found them all conspiring to find easy and useless tasks which would not tax her returning strength. She devoted much of her time to study as she grew stronger, attending lectures given to the apprentice healers even though she could not accompany them in their work. Often she would steal into a corner of the library to listen from afar to the discussions of the Priests of Light. Moreover, as the Priestess Deoris, she was now entitled to a scribe of her own; it was considered more intelligent to listen than to read, or the hearing could be more completely concentrated than the sight.
On the evening of her sixteenth birthday, one of the Priestesses had sent Deoris to a hill overlooking the Star Field, to gather certain flowers of medicinal value. The long walk had taxed her strength, and she sat down for a moment to rest before beginning the task when, suddenly, raising her head, she saw the Adept Riveda walking along the sunlit path in her direction. For a moment she could only stare. She had been so convinced of his death that she thought momentarily that the veil had thinned, that she saw not him but his spirit ... then, convinced she was not having hallucinations after all, she cried out and ran toward him.
Turning, he saw her and held out his arms. "Deoris," he said, and clasped her shoulders with his hands. "I have been anxious about you, they told me you had been dangerously ill. Are you quite recovered?" What he saw as he looked down into her face evidently satisfied him.
"I—I thought you were dead."
His rough smile was warmer than usual. "No, as you can see, I am very much alive. I have been away, on a journey to Atlantis. Perhaps some day I will tell you all about it ... I came to see you before I left, but you were too ill to know me. What are you doing here?"
"Gathering shaing flowers."
Riveda snorted. "Oh, a most worthy use of your talents! Well, now I have returned, perhaps I can find more suitable work for you. But at the moment I have errands of my own, so I must return you to your blossoms." He smiled again. "Such an important task must not be interrupted by a mere Adept!"
Deoris laughed, much cheered, and on an impulse Riveda bent and kissed her lightly before going on his way. He could not himself have explained the kiss—he was not given to impulsive actions. As he hastened toward the Temple, Riveda felt curiously disturbed, remembering the lassitude in the girl's eyes. Deoris had grown taller in the months of her illness, although she would never be very tall. Thin and frail, and yet beautiful with a fragile and wraithlike beauty, she was no longer a child, and yet she was hardly a woman. Riveda wondered, annoyed with himself for the direction his thoughts took, how young Chedan stood with his lovemaking. No, he decided, that is not the answer. Deoris had not the look of a girl mazed by the wakening of passion, nor the consciousness of sex that would have been there in that case. She had permitted his kiss, as innocently as a small child.
Riveda did not know that Deoris followed him with her eyes until he was quite out of sight, and that her face was flushed and alive again.
Chapter Three: CHOICE AND KARMA
I
The night was falling, folding like soft and moonless wings of indigo over the towered roofs of the Temple and the ancient city which lay beneath it, smothered in coils of darkness. A net of dim lights lay flung out over the blackness, and far away a pale phosphorescence hung around the heavier darkness of the sea-harbor. Starlight, faint and faulty, flickered around the railings which outlined the roof-platform of the great pyramid and made a ghostly haze around the two cloaked figures who stood there.
Deoris was shivering a little in the chilly breeze, holding, with lifted hands, the folds of her hooded cloak. The wind tugged at them, and finally she threw back the hood and let the short heavy ringlets of her hair blow as they would. She felt a little scared, and very young.
Riveda's face, starkly austere in the pallid light, brooded with a distant, inhuman calm. He had not spoken a single word since they had emerged onto the rooftop, and her few shy attempts to speak had been choked into silence by the impassive quiet of his eyes. When he made an abrupt movement, she started in sudden terror.
He leaned on the railing, one clenched hand supporting the leaning blackness of his body and said, in tones of command, "Tell me what troubles you, Deoris."
"I don't know," Deoris murmured. "So many new things are coming at once." Her voice grew hard and tight. "My sister Domaris is going to have another baby!"
Riveda stared a moment, his eyes narrowing. "I knew that. What did you expect?"
"Oh, I don't know... ." The girl's shoulders drooped. "It was different, somehow, with Micon. He was ..."
"He was a Son of the Sun," Riveda prompted gently, and there was no mockery in his voice.
Deoris looked up, almost despairing. "Yes. But Arvath—and so soon, like animals—Riveda, why?"
"Who can say?" Riveda replied, and his voice dropped, sorrowful and confiding. "It is a great pity. Domaris could have gone so far... ."
Deoris lifted her eyes, eager, mute questions in them.
The Adept smiled, a very little, over her head. "A woman's mind is strange, Deoris. You have been kept in innocence, and cannot yet understand how deeply the woman is in subjugation to her body. I do not say it is wrong, only that it is a great pity." He paused, and his voice grew grim. "So. Domaris has chosen her way. I expected it, and yet... ." He looked down at Deoris. "You asked me, why. It is for the same reason that so many maidens who enter the Grey Temple are saji, and use magic without knowing its meaning. But we of the Magicians would rather have our women free, make them SA#kti SidhA#na—know you what that is?"
She shook her head, dumbly.
"A woman who can use her powers to lead and complement a man's strength. Domaris had that kind of strength, she had the potentiality ..." A significant pause. "Once."
"Not now?"
Riveda did not answer directly, but mused, "Women rarely have the need, or the hunger, or the courage. To most women, learning is a game, wisdom a toy—attainment, only a sensation."
Timidly, Deoris asked, "But is there any other way for a woman?"
"A woman of your caste?" The Adept shrugged. "I have no right to advise you—and yet, Deoris ...
Riveda paused but a moment—yet the mood was shattered by a woman's cry of terror. The Adept whirled, swift as a hunting-cat; behind him Deoris started back, her hands at her throat. At the corner of the long stairway, she made out two white-robed figures and a crouching, grey and ghostly form which had suddenly risen before them.
Riveda rapped out several words in an alien tongue, then spoke ceremoniously to the white robes: "Be not alarmed, the poor lad is harmless. But his wits are not in their seat."
Clinging to Rajasta's arm, Domaris murmured in little gasps. "He rose out of the shadows—like a ghost."
Riveda's strong warm laughter filled the darkness. "I give you my word he is alive, and harmless." And this last, at least, was proven, for the grey-clad chela had scuttled away into the darkness once again and was lost to their sight. Riveda continued, his voice holding a deep deference exaggerated to the point of mockery, "Lord Guardian, I greet you; this is a pleasure I had ceased to expect!"
Rajasta said with asperity, "You are too courteous, Riveda. I trust we do not interrupt your meditations?"
"No, for I was not alone," Riveda retorted suavely, and beckoned Deoris to come forward. "You are remiss, my lady," he added to Domaris, "your sister has never seen this view, which is not a thing to be missed on a clear night."