"Domaris," said Demira, slowly, and smiled—that wise and sad smile which always saddened Deoris; it seemed such an old smile for the childlike face. "Ah, Domaris doesn't know I exist, Deoris. Seeing me wouldn't change that." Demira sat up then, and looked at Deoris a moment before her silvery-grey eyes slid away again, blank and unseeing, the white showing all around the pupil. "One of us three will die very soon," she said suddenly, in a strange, flat voice as unfocussed as her eyes. "One of us three will die, and her child with her. The second will walk beside Death, but it will take only her child. And the third will pray for Death to come for herself and her child, and both will live to curse the very air they breathe."

Deoris grabbed the slim shoulders and shook Demira, hard. "Come out of it!" she commanded, in a high, scared voice. "Do you even know what you are saying?"

Demira smiled queerly, her face lax and distorted. "Domaris, and you, and I—Domaris, Deoris, Demira; if you say the three names very quickly it is hard to tell which one you are saying, no? We are bound together by more than that, though, we are all three linked by our fates, all three with child."

"No!" Deoris cried out, in a denial as swift as it was vehement. No, no, not from Riveda, not that cruelty, not that betrayal ...

She bent her head, troubled and afraid, unable to face Demira's wise young eyes. Since the night when she and Riveda and the chela had been trapped in the ritual which had loosed the Fire-spirit on them, scarring her with the blasting seal of the dorje, Deoris had not once had to seclude herself for the ritual purifications ... She had thought about that, remembering horror-tales heard among the saji, of women struck and blasted barren, remembering Maleina's warnings long ago. Secretly, she had come to believe that, just as her breasts were scarred past healing, so she had been blasted in the citadel of her womanhood and become a sapped and sexless thing, the mere shell of a woman. Even when Domaris had suggested a simpler explanation—that she might be pregnant—she could not accept it. Surely if she were capable of conception, she would have borne Riveda's child long before this time!

Or would she? Riveda was versed in the mysteries, able to prevent conception if it pleased him. With a flash of horrified intuition, the thought came, to be at once rejected. Oh no, not from that night in the Crypt—the mad invocation—the girdle, even now concealed beneath my nightdress ...

With a desperate effort, she snapped shut her mind on the memory. It never happened, it was a dream ... except for the girdle. But if that's real—no. There must be some explanation ...

Then her mind caught up with the other thing Demira had said, seizing on it almost with relief. "You!"

Demira looked up plaintively at Deoris. "You'll believe me," she said pitifully. "You will not mock me?"

"Oh, no, Demira, no, of course not." Deoris looked down into the pixyish face that now laid itself confidingly on her shoulder. Demira, at least, had not changed much in these three years; she was still the same, strange, suffering, wild little girl who had excited first Deoris's distrust and fear, and later her pity and love. Demira was now fifteen, but she seemed essentially the same, and she looked much as she had at twelve: taller than Deoris but slight, fragile, with the peculiar, deceptive appearance of immaturity and wisdom intermingled.

Demira sat up and began to reckon on her fingers. "It was like an awful dream. It happened, oh, perhaps one change of the moon after you left us."

"Five months ago," Deoris prompted gently.

"One of the little children had told me I was wanted in a sound-chamber. I thought nothing of it. I had been working with one of Nadastor's chelas. But it was empty. I waited there and then—and then a priest came in, but he was—he was masked, and in black, with horns across his face! He didn't say anything, he only—caught at me, and—oh Deoris!" The child collapsed in bitter sobbing.

"Demira, no!"

Demira made an effort to stifle her tears, murmuring, "You do believe me—you will not mock me?"

Deoris rocked her back and forth like a baby. "No, no, darling, no," she soothed. She knew very well what Demira meant. Outside the Grey Temple, Demira and her like were scorned as harlots or worse; but Deoris, who had lived in the Grey Temple, knew that such as Demira were held in high honor and respect, for she and her kind were sacred, indispensable, under protection of the highest Adepts. The thought of a saji being raped by an unknown was unthinkable, fantastic ... Almost unbelieving, Deoris asked, "Have you no idea who he was?"

"No—oh, I should have told Riveda, I should have told, but I couldn't, I just couldn't! After the—the Black-robe went away, I—I just lay there, crying and crying, I couldn't stop myself, I—it was Riveda who heard me, he came and found me there. He was ... for once he was kind, he picked me up and held me, and—and scolded me until I stopped crying. He—he tried to make me tell him what had happened, but I—I was afraid he wouldn't believe me ..."

Deoris let Demira go, remaining as still as if she had been turned to a statue. Scraps of a half-heard conversation had returned to float through her mind; her intuition now turned them to knowledge, and almost automatically she whispered the invocation, "Mother Caratra! Guard her," for the first time in years.

It couldn't be, it simply was not possible, not thinkable ...

She sat motionless, afraid her face would betray her to the child.

At last Deoris said, frozenly, "But you have told Maleina, child? Surely you know she would protect you. I think she would kill with her own hands anyone who harmed you or caused you pain."

Demira shook her head mutely; only after several moments did she whisper, "I am afraid of Maleina. I came to you because—because of Domaris. She has influence with Rajasta ... When last the Black-robes came into our temple, there was much terror and death, and now, if they have returned—the Guardians should know of it. And Domaris is—is so kind, and beautiful—she might have pity, even on me—"

"I will tell Domaris when I can," Deoris promised, her lips stiff; but conflict tore at her. "Demira, you must not expect too much."

"Oh, you are good, Deoris! Deoris, how I love you!" Demira clung to the older girl, her eyes bright with tears. "And Deoris, if Riveda must know—will you tell him? He will allow you anything, but no one else dares approach him now, since you left us no one dares speak to him unless he undresses them, and even then . . . " Demira broke off. "He was kind, when he found me, but I was so afraid."

Deoris stroked the little girl's shoulder gently, and her own face grew stern. Her last shred of doubt vanished. Riveda heard her crying? In a sealed sound-chamber? That I'll believe taken the sun shines at midnight!

"Yes," said Deoris grimly, "I will talk to Riveda."

III

"She did not even guess, Deoris. I did not mean that you should know, either, but since you are so shrewd, yes, I admit it." Riveda's voice was as deep and harsh as winter surf; in the same icy bass he went on, "Should you seek to tell her, I—Deoris, much as you mean to me, I think I would kill you first!"

"Take heed lest you be the one killed," Deoris said coldly. "Suppose Maleina makes the same wise guess I did?"

"Maleina!" Riveda practically spat the woman Adept's name. "She did what she could to ruin the child—nevertheless, I am not a monster, Deoris. What Demira does not know will not torment her. It is—unfortunate that she knows I am her father; fool that I was to let it be guessed even in the Grey Temple. I will bear the responsibility; it is better that Demira know nothing more than she does now."