"Deoris, your child will almost certainly be born crippled if you bind the life from him that way," she said. She spoke gently, pityingly, as if to a child. "You know better than that!"

Deoris flung rebelliously away from her hand. "I won't go about shamed so that every slut in the Temple can point her finger at me and reckon up when I am to give birth!"

Domaris covered her face with her hands for a moment, sick with pity. Deoris had, indeed, been mocked and tormented in the days following Riveda's death. But this—this violence to nature! And Deoris, who had been Priestess of Caratra!

"Listen, Deoris," she said, more severely than she had spoken since the disasters, "if you are so sensitive, then stay within our own courts where no one will see you. But you must not injure yourself and your child this way!" She took the tight binding in her hands, gently loosening the fastenings; on the reddened skin beneath were white lateral marks where the bandages had cut deep. "My child, my poor little girl! What drove you to this? How could you?"

Deoris averted her face in bitter silence, and Domaris sighed. The girl must stop this—this idiotic refusal to face the plain facts!

"You must be properly cared for," said Domaris. "If not by me, then by another."

Deoris said a swift, frightened, "No! No, Domaris, you—you won't leave me!"

"I cannot if I would," Domaris answered; then, with one of her rare attempts at humor, she teased, "Your dresses will not fit you now! But are you so fond of these dresses that you come to this?"

Deoris gave the usual listless, apathetic smile.

Domaris, smiling, set about looking through her sister's things. After a few minutes, she straightened in astonishment. "But you have no others that are suitable! You should have provided yourself ..."

Deoris turned away in a hostile silence; and it was evident to the stunned Domaris that the oversight had been deliberate. Without further speech, but feeling as if she had been attacked by a beast that leaped from a dark place, Domaris went and searched here and there among her own possessions, until she found some lengths of cloth, gossamer-fine, gaily colored, from which the loose conventional robes could be draped. I wore these before Micail's birth, she mused, reminiscent. She had been more slender then—they could be made to fit Deoris's smaller slighter body... .

"Come then," she said with laughter, putting aside thoughts of the time she had herself worn this cloth, "I will show you one thing, at least, I know better than you!" As if she were dressing a doll, she drew Deoris to her feet, and with a pantomime of assumed gaiety, attempted to show her sister how to arrange the conventional robe.

She was not prepared for her sister's reaction. Deoris almost at once caught the lengths of cloth from her sister's hands, and with a frantic, furious gesture, rent them across and flung them to the floor. Then, shuddering, Deoris threw herself upon the cold tiles too, and began to weep wildly.

"I won't, I won't, I won't!" Deoris sobbed, over and over again. "Let me alone! I don't want to. I didn't want this! Go away, just go away! Leave me alone!"

II

It was late evening. The room was filled with drifting shadows, and the watery light deepened the vague flames of Domaris's hair, picked out the single streak of white all along its length. Her face was thin and drawn, her body narrowed, with an odd, gaunt limpness that was new. Deoris's face was a white oval of misery. They waited, together, in a hushed dread.

Domaris wore the blue robe and golden fillet of an Initiate of Caratra, and had bidden Deoris robe herself likewise. It was their only hope.

"Domaris," Deoris said faintly, "what is going to happen?"

"I do not know, dear." The older woman clasped her sister's hand tightly between her own thin blue-veined ones. "But they cannot harm you, Deoris. You are—we are, what we are! That they cannot change or gainsay."

But Domaris sighed, for she was not so certain as she wanted to seem. She had taken that course to protect Deoris, and beyond doubt it had served them in that—else Deoris would have shared Riveda's fate! But there was a sacrilege involved that went deep into the heart of the religion, for Deoris's child had been conceived in a hideous rite. Could any child so conceived ever be received into the Priest's Caste?

Although she did not, even now, regret the steps she had taken, Domaris knew she had been rash; and the consequences dismayed her. Her own child was dead, and through the tide of her deep grief, she knew it was only what she should have expected. She accepted her own guilt but she resolved, with a fierce and quiet determination, that Deoris's child should be safe. She had accepted responsibility for Deoris and for the unborn, and would not evade that responsibility by so much as a fraction.

And yet—to what night-haunted monster, working in Riveda, had Deoris been made mother? What hell-spawn awaited birth?

She took Deoris by the hand and they rose, standing together as their judges entered the room: the Vested Five, in their regalia of office; Karahama and attendant Priestesses; Rajasta and Cadamiri, their golden mantles and sacred blazonings making a brilliance in the dim room; and behind Karahama, a grey-shrouded, fleshless form stood, motionless, with long narrow hands folded across meager breasts. Beneath the grey folds a dim color burned blue, and across the blazing hair the starred fillet of sapphires proclaimed the Atlantean rites of Caratra in Maleina's corpse-like presence—and even the Vested Five gave deference to the aged Priestess and Adept.

There was sorrow in Rajasta's eyes, and Domaris thought she detected a glint of sympathy in the impassive face of the woman Adept, but the other faces were stern and expressionless; Karahama's even held a faintly perceptible triumph. Domaris had long regretted her moment of pique, those long years ago; she had made a formidable enemy. This is what Micon would have called karma ... Micon! She tried to hold to his name and image like a talisman, and failed. Would he have censured her actions? He had not acted to protect Reio-ta, even under torture!

Cadamiri's gaze was relentless, and Domaris shrank from it; from Cadamiri, at least, they could expect no mercy, only justice. The ruthless light of the fanatic dwelt in his eyes—something of the same fervor Domaris had sensed and feared in Riveda.

Briefly, Ragamon the Elder rehearsed the situation: Adsartha, once apprentice Priestess of Caratra, saji to the condemned and accursed Riveda, bore a child conceived in unspeakable sacrilege. Knowing this, the Guardian Isarma had taken it upon herself to bind the apostate Priestess Adsartha with herself in the ancient and holy Mystery of the Dark Mother, which put them both forever beyond man's justice ... "Is this true?" he demanded.

"In the main," Domaris said wearily. "There are a few minor distinctions—but you would not recognize them as important."

Rajasta met her eyes. "You may state the case in your own way, daughter, if you wish."

"Thank you." Domaris clasped and unclasped her hands. "Deoris was no saji. To that, I believe, Karahama will bear witness. Is it not true, my sister and more than my sister... ." Her use of the ritual phrase was deliberate, based on a wild guess that was hardly more than a random hope. "Is it not true that no maiden can be made saji after her body is mature?"

Karahama's face had gone white, and her eyes were sick with concealed rage that she, Karahama, should be forced into a position where she was bound by solemn oath to aid Domaris in all things! "That is true," Karahama acknowledged tautly. "Deoris was no saji, but SA#kti SidhA#na and, thus, holy even to the Priest of Light."