On a black day when
Stars left their places,
Watching the Black Star of Doom.
Seven the Watchers,
Stealing a-tiptoe,
Seven stars stealing
Softly from their places,
Under the cover
Of the shielding sky.
The Black Star hovers
Silent in the shadows,
Stealing through the shadows,
Waiting for the fall of Night;
Over the mountain,
Hanging, hovering,
Darkly, a raven
In a crimson cloud.
Softly the Seven
Fall like shadows,
Star-shadows, blotted
In starless sunlight!
In a flaming shower,
Seven stars falling
Black on the Black Star of Doom!
Others who had gathered on the Star Field to observe the omens, attracted by the song, drew nearer, hushed and appreciative. Now Riveda's deep and resonant baritone took up a stern and rhythmic chant, spinning an undercurrent of weird harmonies beneath the silvery treble of Deoris.
The mountain trembles!
Thunder shakes the sunset,
Thunder at the summit!
As the Seven Watchers
Fall in showers,
Star-showers falling,
Flaming comets falling
On the Black Star!
The Ocean shakes in torment,
Mountains break and crumble!
Drowned lies the Dark Star
And Doomsday is dead!
In a muted, bell-like voice, Deoris chanted the lament:
Seven stars fallen,
Fallen from the heavens,
Fallen from the sky-crown,
Drowned where the Black Star fell!
Manoah the Merciful, Lord of Brightness,
Raised up the drowned ones,
The Black Star he banished
For endless ages,
Till he shall rise in light.
The Seven Good Watchers
He raised in brightness.
Crowning the mountain,
High above the Star-mountain,
Shine the Seven Watchers,
The Seven Guardians
Of the Earth and Sky.
The song died in the night; a little whispering wind murmured and was still. The folk that had gathered, some Acolytes and one or two Priests, made sounds of approval, and drifted away again, speaking in soft voices.
Micon lay motionless, his hand still clasped in Domaris's fingers. Rajasta brooded thoughtfully, watching these two he loved so much, and it was for him as if the rest of the world did not exist.
Riveda inclined his head to Deoris, his harsh and atavistic features softened in the starlight and shadows. "Your voice is lovely; would we had such a singer in the Grey Temple! Perhaps one day you may sing there."
Deoris muttered formalities, but frowned. The men of the Grey-robe sect were highly honored in the Temple, but their women were something of a mystery. Under strange and secret vows, they were scorned and shunned, referred to contemptuously as saji—though the meaning of the word was not known to Deoris, it had a bleak and awful sound. Many of the Grey-robe women were recruited from the commoners, and some were the children of slaves; this in great part accounted for their being shunned by the wives and daughters of the Priest's Caste. The suggestion that Deoris, daughter of the Arch-Administrator Talkannon, might choose to join the condemned saji so angered the child that she cared little for Riveda's compliment to her singing.
The Adept only smiled, however. His charm flowed out to surround her again and he said, softly. "As your sister is too tired to advise me, Deoris, perhaps you would interpret the stars for me?"
Deoris flushed crimson, and gazed upward intently, mustering her few scraps of knowledge. "A powerful man—or something in masculine form—threatens—some feminine function, through the force of the Guardians. An old evil—either has been or will be revived—" She stopped, aware that the others were looking at her. Abashed at her own presumption, Deoris let her gaze fell downward once more; her hands twisted nervously in her lap. "But that can have little to do with you, Lord Riveda," she murmured, almost inaudibly.
Rajasta chuckled. "It is good enough, child. Use what knowledge you have. You will learn more, as you grow older."
For some reason, the indulgent tolerance in Rajasta's voice annoyed Riveda, who had felt some astonishment at the sensitivity with which this untaught child had interpreted a pattern ominous enough to challenge a trained seer. That she had doubtless heard the others discussing the omens that beset Caratra made little difference, and Riveda said sharply, "Perhaps, Rajasta, you can—"
But the Adept never finished his sentence. The stocky, heavy-set figure of the Acolyte Arvath had cast its shadow across them.
III
"The story goes," Arvath said lightly, "that the Prophet of the Star-mountain lectured in the Temple before the Guardians when he had not told his twelfth year; so you may well listen to the least among you." The young Acolyte sounded amused as he bowed formally to Rajasta and Micon. "Sons of the Sun, we are honored in your presence. And yours, Lord Riveda." He leaned to twitch one of Deoris's ringlets. "Do you now seek to be a Prophetess, puss?" He turned to the other girl, saying, "Was it you singing, Domaris?"
"It was Deoris," said Domaris curtly, ruffled. Was she never to be free of Arvath's continual surveillance?
Arvath frowned, seeing that Micon was still almost in Domaris's arms. Domaris was his! Micon was an intruder and had no right between a man and his betrothed! Arvath's jealousy kept him from thinking very clearly, and he clenched his fists, furious with suppressed desire and the sense of injustice. I'll teach this presumptuous stranger his manners!
Arvath sat down beside them, and with a decisive movement encircled Domaris's waist with his arm. At least he could show this intruder that he was treading on forbidden ground! In a tone that was perfectly audible, but sounded intimate and soft, he asked her, "Were you waiting long for me?"
Half-startled, half-indignant, Domaris stared at him. She was too well-bred to make a scene; her first impulse, to push him angrily away from her, died unborn. She remained motionless, silent: she was used to caresses from Arvath, but this had a jealous and demanding force that dismayed her.
Irked by her unresponsiveness, Arvath seized her hands and drew them away from Micon's. Domaris gasped, freeing herself quickly from both of them. Micon made a little startled sound of question as she rose to her feet.
As if he had not seen, Rajasta intervened. "What say the stars to you, young Arvath?"
The life-long habit of immediate deference to a superior prevailed. Arvath inclined his head respectfully and said, "I have not yet made any conclusions, Son of the Sun. The Lady of the Heavens will not reach absolute zenith before the sixth hour, and before then it is not possible to interpret correctly."
Rajasta nodded agreeably. "Caution is a virtue of great worth," he said, mildly, but with a pointedness that made Arvath drop his eyes.
Riveda, predictably, chuckled; and the tension slackened, its focus diffused. Domaris dropped to the grass again, this time beside Rajasta, and the old Priest put a fatherly arm about her shoulders. He knew she had been deeply disturbed—and did not blame her, even though he felt that she could have dealt more tactfully with both men. But Domaris is still young—too young, Rajasta thought, almost in despair, to become the center of such conflict!
Arvath, for his part, began to think more clearly, and relaxed. After all, he had really seen nothing to warrant his jealousy; and certainly Rajasta could not permit his Acolyte to act in opposition to the customs of the Twelve. Thus Arvath comforted himself, conveniently forgetting all customs but those he himself wished enforced.
Most powerful, perhaps, in alleviating Arvath's anger was the fact that he really liked Micon. They were, moreover, countrymen. Soon the two were engaged in
casual, friendly conversation, although Micon, hypersensitive to Arvath's mood, answered at first with some reserve.
Domaris, no longer listening, hid herself from inner conflict in the earnest performance of her duty. Her eyes fixed on the stars, her mind intently stilled to meditation, she studied the portents of the night.
IV
Gradually, the Star Field quieted. One by one the little groups where the watchers clustered fell silent; only detached words rose now and then, curiously unearthly, from a particularly wakeful clique of young Priests in a far corner of the field. An idle breeze stirred the waving grasses, riffled cloaks and long hair, then dropped again; a cloud drifted across the face of the star that hovered near Caratra; somewhere a child wailed, and was hushed.
Far below them, a sullen flicker of red marked where fires had been built at the sea-wall, to warn ships from the rocks. Deoris had fallen asleep on the grass, her head on Riveda's knees and the Adept's long grey cloak tucked about her shoulders.
Arvath, like Domaris, sat studying the omens of the stars in a meditative trance; Micon, behind blind eyes, pursued his own silent thoughts. Rajasta, for some reason unknown even to himself, found his own gaze again and again turning to Riveda: still and motionless, his rough-cut head and sternly-straight back rising up in a blacker blackness against the starshine, Riveda sat in fixed reverie for hour after hour: the sight hypnotized Rajasta. The stars seemed to alternately fade and brighten behind the Adept. For an instant, past, present, and future, all slid together and were one to the Priest of Light. He saw Riveda's face, thinner and more haggard, the lips set in an attitude of grim determination. The stars had vanished utterly, but a reddish-yellow, as of thousands of filmy, wind-blown strips of gossamer, danced and twisted about the Adept.
Suddenly and brilliantly, a terrible halo of fire encircled Riveda's head. The dorje! Rajasta started, and with a shudder that was at once within him and without, his actual surroundings reasserted themselves. I must have slept, he told himself, shaken. That could have been no true vision! And yet, with every blink of the Priest of Light's eyes, the awful image persisted, until Rajasta, with a little groan, turned his face away.
A wind was blowing across the quiet Star Field, turning the perspiration on the Priest of Light's brow to icy droplets as Rajasta wavered between lingering, mindless horror, and intermittent waves of reasoning thought. The moments that passed before Rajasta calmed himself were, perhaps, the worst of his life, moments that seemed an unending prison of time.
The Priest of Light sat, hunched over, still unable to look in Riveda's direction for simple fear. It could only have been a nightmare, Rajasta told himself, without much conviction. But—if it was not? Rajasta shuddered anew at this prospect, then sternly mastered himself, forcing his keen mind to examine the unthinkable.
I must speak with Riveda about this, Rajasta decided, unwillingly. I must! Surely, if it was not a dream, it is meant for a warning—of great danger to him. Rajasta did not know how far Riveda had gotten in his investigations, but perhaps—perhaps the Adept had gotten so close to the Black-robe sect that they sought to set their hellish mark on him, and so protect themselves against discovery.
It can only mean that, Rajasta reassured himself, and shivered uncontrollably. Gods and spirits, protect us all!
V
With tired and sleepless eyes, Domaris watched the sun rise, a gilt toy in a bath of pink clouds. Dawn reddened over the Star Field slowly; the pale and pitiless light shone with a betraying starkness on the faces of those who slept there.
Deoris lay still, her regular breathing not quite a snore; Riveda's cloak remained, snuggled around her, although Riveda himself had gone hours ago. Arvath sprawled wide-limbed in the grass as if sleep had stolen up upon him like a thief in the night. Domaris realized how much like a sturdy small boy he looked—his dark hair tumbled around his damp forehead, his smooth cheeks glowing with the heavy, healthy slumber of a very young man. Then her eyes returned to Micon, who also slept, his head resting across her knees, his hand in hers.
After Rajasta had gone away, hurrying after Riveda with a pale and shaken look, she had returned to Micon's side, careless of what Arvath might say or think. All night Domaris had felt the Atlantean's thin and ruined hands twitch, as if even in sleep there remained an irreducible residue of pain. Once or twice, so ashen and strengthless had Micon's face appeared in the grey and ghastly light before dawn that Domaris had bent to listen to his breathing to be sure he still lived; then, her own breathing hushed to silence, she would hear a faint sigh, and be at once relieved and terrified—waking could only bring more pain for this man she was beginning to adore.
At the uttermost ebb-tide of the night, Domaris had found herself half-wishing Micon might drift out silently into the peace he so desired . . . and this thought had frightened her so much that she had but barely restrained herself from the sudden longing to clasp him in her arms and by sheer force of love restore his full vitality. How can I be so full of life while Micon is so weak? Why, she wondered rebelliously, is he dying—and the devil who did this to him still walking around secure in his own worthless life?
As if her thoughts disturbed his sleep, Micon stirred, murmuring in a language Domaris did not understand. Then, with a long sigh, the blind eyes opened and the Atlantean drew himself slowly upright, reaching out with a curious gesture—and drawing his hand back in surprise as he touched her dress.
"It is I, Micon—Domaris," she said quickly, addressing him by name for the first time.
"Domaris—I remember now. I slept?"
"For hours. It is dawn."
He laughed, uneasily but with that peculiar inner mirth which never seemed to fail him. "A sorry sentry I should make nowadays! Is this how vigil is kept?"
Her instant laughter, soft and gentle, set him at ease. "Everyone sleeps after the middle hour of the night. You and I are likely the only ones awake. It is very early still."
When he spoke again, it was in a quieter tone, as if he feared he might wake the sleepers she had referred to so obliquely. "Is the sky red?"
She looked at him, bemused. "Yes. Bright red."
"I thought so," said Micon, nodding. "Ahtarrath's sons are all seamen; weather and storms are in our blood. At least I have not lost that."
"Storms?" Domaris repeated, dubiously glancing toward the distant, peaceful clouds.
Micon shrugged. "Perhaps we will be lucky, and it will not reach us," he said, "but it is in the air. I feel it."
Both were silent again, Domaris suddenly shy and self-conscious at the memory of the night's thoughts, and Micon thinking, So I have slept at her side through the night. . . . In Ahtarrath, that would amount almost to a pledge. He smiled. Perhaps that explains Arvath's temper, last night . . . yet in the end we were all at peace. She sheds peace, as a flower its perfume.
Domaris, meanwhile, had remembered Deoris, who still slept close by them, wrapped warm in Riveda's cloak. "My little sister has slept here in the grass all night," she said. "I must wake her and send her to bed."
Micon laughed lightly. "That seems a curiously pointless exercise," he remarked. "You have not slept at all."
It was not a question, and Domaris did not try to make any answer. Before his luminous face, she bent her head, forgetful that the morning light could not betray her to a blind man. Loosening her fingers gently from his, she said only, "I must wake Deoris."
VI
In her dream, Deoris wandered through an endless series of caverns, following the flickering flashes of light sparkling from the end of a strangely shaped wand held in the hand of a robed and cowled figure. Somehow, she was not afraid, nor cold, though she knew, in a way oddly detached from her senses, that the walls and the floor of these caverns were icy and damp. . . .
From somewhere quite nearby, a familiar but not immediately recognizable voice was calling her name. She came out of the dream slowly, nestling in folds of grey. "Don't," she murmured drowsily, putting her ringers over her face.<
br />
With tender laughter, Domaris shook the child's shoulder. "Wake up, little sleepyhead!"
The half-open eyes, still dream-dark, unclosed like bewildered violets; small fingers compressed a yawn. "Oh, Domaris, I meant to stay awake," Deoris murmured, and scrambled to her feet, instantly alert, the cloak felling from her. She bent to pick it up, holding it curiously at arm's length. "What's this? This isn't mine!"
Domaris took it from her hands. "It is Lord Riveda's. You went to sleep like a baby on his lap!"
Deoris frowned and looked sulky.
Domaris teased, "He left it, beyond doubt, so that he might see you again! Deoris! Have you found your first lover so young?"
Deoris stamped her foot, pouting. "Why are you so mean?"
"Why, I thought that would please you," said Domaris, and merrily flung the cloak about the child's bare shoulders.
Deoris cast if off again, angrily. "I think you're—horrid!" she wailed, and ran away down the hill to find the shelter of her own bed and cry herself back to sleep.
The Fall of Atlantis Page 7
