A haunting sadness drifted across Micon's face as, with a lingeringly gentle touch, he set the exquisitely carven, opalescent figurine carefully on a little table by the window. "My poor brother," he whispered, almost inaudibly—and Rajasta, hearing, could not be quite sure that Micon referred to Reio-ta.
Realizing that he had to say something, the Priest of Light took refuge in pleasantries. "Already it is the Nadir-night, Micon, and you need have no fear; your son will surely not be born tonight. I have just come from Domaris; she and those who tend her assure me of that. She will sleep soundly in her own rooms," Rajasta went on, "without awakening and without fear of any omens or portents. I have asked Cadamiri to give her a sleeping drug... ."
Yet, as he had spoken, the Priest of Light had stumbled slightly over the name of Cadamiri, as his newfound apprehension conflicted with his desire to assure Micon. The Atlantean, sensing this without knowing the precise reason for Rajasta's nervousness, grew rigid with tension.
"The Nadir-night?" Micon half-whispered. "Already? I had lost count of the days!"
A fitful gust of wind stirred in the room, bringing a faint echo; a chant, in a strange wailing minor key, weirdly cadenced and prolonged. Rajasta's brows lifted and he inclined his head to listen, but Micon turned and went, not swiftly but with a concentrated intention, to the window again. There was deep trouble on his features, and the Priest came to stand beside him.
"Micon?" he said, with a questioning unhappiness.
"I know that chant!" the Atlantean gasped. "And what it forebodes—" He raised his thin hands and laid them gropingly on Rajasta's shoulders. "Stay thou with me, Rajasta! I—" His voice faltered. "I am afraid!"
The older man stared at him in ill-concealed horror, glad Micon could not see him. Rajasta had been with Micon through times of what seemed the ultimate of human extremity—yet never had the Initiate betrayed fear like this!
"I will not leave you, my brother," he promised—and the chant sounded again, ragged phrases borne eerily on the wind as the sun sank into the dusk. The Priest felt Micon grow tense, the wracked hands clutching on Rajasta's shoulders, the noble face ashen and trembling, a shivering that gradually crept over the man's entire body until every nerve seemed to quiver with a strained effort... . And then, despite the visible dread in Micon's bearing and features, the Atlantean released his hold on Rajasta and turned again to the window, to stare sightlessly at the gathering darkness, his face listening avidly.
"My brother lives," Micon said at last, and his words fell like drum-beats of doom, slow-paced in the falling night. "Would that he did not! None of the line of Ahtarrath chants thus, unless—unless—" His voice trailed away again, giving way to that listening stillness.
Suddenly Micon turned, letting his forehead fall against the older man's shoulder, clutching at him in the grip of emotions so intense that they found a mirror in Rajasta's mind, and both men trembled with unreasoning fear; nameless horrors flickered in their thoughts.
Only the wind had steadied: the broken cadences were more sustained now, rising and falling with a nightmarish, demanding, monotonous, aching insistence that kept somehow a perfect rhythm with the pounding of blood in their ears.
"They call on my power!" Micon gasped brokenly. "This is black betrayal! Rajasta!" He raised his head, and the unseeing features held a desperation that only increased the terror of the moment. "How shall I survive this night? And I must! I must! If they succeed—if that which they invoke—be summoned—only my single life stands between it and all of mankind!" He paused, gasping for breath, shivering uncontrollably. "If that link be made—then even I cannot be sure I can stay the evil!" He stood, half-swaying, at once twisted and yet utterly erect, clinging to Rajasta; his words fell like dropped stones. "Only three times in all our history has Ahtarrath summoned thus! And thrice that power has been harnessed but hardly."
Rajasta gently raised his own hands to echo Micon's, so that they stood with their hands upon each other's shoulders. "Micon!" said Rajasta sharply. "What must we do?"
The Atlantean's clutching hands relaxed a little, tightened, and then fell to his sides. "You would help me?" he said, in a broken, almost childish voice. "It means—"
"Do not tell me what it means," said Rajasta, his own voice quaking a little. "But I will help you."
Micon drew a shaky breath; the least bit of color returned to his face. "Yes," he murmured, and then, his voice becoming stronger, "yes, we have not much time."
II
Groping in the chest where he kept his private treasures, Micon took out a flexible cloak of some metallic fabric and drew it about his shoulders. Next he removed a sword wrapped in sheer, filmy cloth, which he set down close beside him. Muttering to himself in his native tongue, Micon rummaged in the chest for no little while until he at last brought out a small bronze gong, which he handed to Rajasta with the admonition that it must not touch the floor or walls.
All the time the awful chant rose and fell, rose and fell, with eerie wailing overtones and sobbing, savage cadences; a diapason of sonic minors that beat on the brain with boneshaking reiteration. Rajasta stood holding the gong, concentrating his attention fully on Micon as he bent over the chest again, shutting his mind and ears to that sound.
The Atlantean's angry mutterings turned to a sigh of relief, and he brought forth a final object—a little brazier of bronze, curiously worked with embossed figures that bulged and intertwined in a fashion that confused the eye into thinking they moved. After a moment Rajasta recognized them for what they were, a representation of fire-elementals.
With the sparse economy of movement so characteristically his, Micon rose to his feet, the wrapped sword in one hand. "Rajasta," he said, "give me the gong." When this was done, the Atlantean went on, "Move the brazier to the center of the room, and build thou a fire—pine and cypress and ultar." His words were clipped and brief, as if he recited a lesson learned well.
Rajasta, ignoring the second thoughts that already besieged him, set about the task resolutely. Micon went to the window again, and placed the sword upon the little table next to the figurine of Nar-inabi. Unwrapping the cloth, he exposed the decorated blade and the bejewelled hilt of the ceremonial weapon, and grasped it firmly again, to stand facing the window in a strained, listening attitude; Rajasta could almost see the Initiate gathering strength to himself; in sudden sympathy, he laid his hand on Micon's arm.
Micon stirred, impatiently. "Is the fire ready?"
Rebuked, the Priest bent to the brazier; kindling the slivers of fragrant wood, scattering the grains of incense over the thin blaze. Clouds of misty white smoke billowed upward; the smouldering woods were tiny sullen eyes glaring through the smoke.
Far away the chant rose and fell, rose and fell, gathering strength and volume. The thin column of fire rolled narrowly upward through the smoke, and subsided.
"It is ready," Rajasta said—and the chanting swelled, a rising flood of sound; and around the sound crept silence, as if the very pulses of the living were hushed and slow and heavy.
Almost majestic of aspect, quite changed from the Micon Rajasta knew so well, the Atlantean Initiate moved slowly to the room's center, placed the very tip of the ceremonial blade upon the brazier's metal rim, and half-circled so that again he faced the window. The sword's point still touching the brazier, Micon raised the gong, and held it before him at arm's length a moment; the smoking incense rose to writhe about the gong, as metal filings to a magnet.