"Can you care for me?" he asked passionately. "Or does the past hold you still too close?"
Mutely Deoris laid her hand in his, warmed by a sudden confidence and hope, and knew, without analyzing it, that it was of this that she had waited all her life. She would never feel for Reio-ta the mad adoration she had known for Riveda; she had loved—no, worshipped Riveda—as a suppliant to a God. Arvath had taken her as a woman, and there had been friendship between them and the bond of the child she had given him in her sister's place—but Arvath had never touched her emotions. Now, in full maturity, Deoris found herself able and willing to take the next step into the world of experience. Smiling, she freed herself from his arms.
He accepted it, returning her smile. "We are not young," he said. "We can wait."
"All time belongs to us," she answered gently. She took his hand again, and together they walked down into the gardens.
II
The sun was low on the horizon when Rajasta called them all together on a terrace near Deoris's apartments. "I did not speak of this to Domaris," he told them soberly, "but I wished to say to you tonight what I mean to tell the Priests of this Temple tomorrow. The Temple in our homeland—the Great Temple—is to be destroyed."
"Ah, no!" Deoris cried out.
"Aye," said Rajasta, with solemn face. "Six months ago it was discovered that the great pyramid was sinking lower and lower into the Earth; and the shoreline has been breached in many places. There have been earthquakes. The sea had begun to seep beneath the land, and some of the underground chambers are collapsing. Ere long—ere long the Great Temple will be drowned by the waves of the sea."
There was a flurry of dismayed, confused questions, which he checked with a gesture. "You know that the pyramid stands above the Crypt of the Unrevealed God?"
"Would we did not!" Reio-ta whispered, very low.
"That Crypt is the nadir of the Earth's magnetic forces—the reason the Grey-robes sought to guard it so carefully from desecration. But ten years and more ago . . ." Involuntarily Rajasta glanced at Tiriki, who sat wide-eyed and trembling. "Great sacrilege was done there, and Words of Power spoken. Reio-ta, it seems, was all too correct in his estimation, for we still had not rooted out the worms at our base!" For a moment Rajasta's eyes were stark and haunted, as if seeing again some horror the others could not even guess at. "Later, spells even more powerful than theirs were pronounced, and the worst evils contained, but—the Unrevealed God has had his death-wound. His dying agonies will submerge more than the Temple!"
Deoris covered her face with her hands.
Rajasta went on, in a low, toneless voice, "The Words of Power have vibrated rock asunder, disrupted matter to the very elements of its making; and once begun at so basic a level the vibrations cannot be stilled until they die out of their own. Daily about the Crypt, the Earth trembles—and the tremors are spreading! Within seven years, at the most, the entire Temple—perhaps the whole shoreline, the city and the lands about for many and many a mile—will sink beneath the sea—"
Deoris made a muffled, choking sound of horror.
Reio-ta bowed his head in terrible self-abasement. "Gods!" he whispered, "I—I am not guiltless in this."
"If we must speak of guilt," Rajasta said, more gently than was his habit, "I am no less guilty than any other, that my Guardianship allowed Riveda to entangle himself in black sorceries. Micon shirked the begetting of a son in his youth, and so dared not die under torture. Nor can we omit the Priest who taught him, the parents and servants who raised him, the great-great-grandsire of the ship's captain who brought Riveda's grandmother and mine from Zaiadan ... no man can justly apportion cause and effect, least of all upon a scale such as this! It is karma. Set your heart free, my son."
There was a long pause. Tiriki and Micail were wide-eyed, their hands clasped in the stillness, listening without full understanding. Reio-ta's head remained bowed upon his clasped hands, while Deoris stood as rigid as a statue, her throat clasped shut by invisible hands.
Finally, dry-eyed, pale as chalk, she ran her tongue over dry lips and croaked, "That—is not all, is it?"
Rajasta sadly nodded agreement. "It is not," he said. "Perhaps, ten years from now, the edges of the catastrophe will touch Atlantis as well. These earthquakes will expand outwards, perhaps to gird the world; this very spot where we now stand may be broken and lie beneath the waters some day—and it may be, also, there is nowhere that will be left untouched. But I cannot believe it will come to that! Men's lives are a small enough thing—those whose destiny decrees that they should live, will live, if they must grow gills like fishes and spend their days swimming unimaginable deeps, or grow wings and soar as birds till the waters recede. And those who have sown the seeds of their own death will die, be they ever so clever and determined ... but lest worse karma be engendered, the secrets of Truth within the Temple must not die."
"But—if what you say is so, how can they be preserved?" Reio-ta muttered.
Rajasta looked at him and then at Micail. "Some parts of the earth will be safe, I think," he replied at last, "and new Temples will rise there, where the knowledge may be taken and kept. The wisdom of our world may be scattered to the four winds and vanish for many an age—but it will not die forever. One such Temple, Micail, shall lie beneath your hand."
Micail started. "Mine? But I am only a boy!"
"Son of Ahtarrath," Rajasta said sternly, "usually it is forbidden that any should know his own destiny, lest he lean upon the Gods and, knowing, forbear to use all his own powers ... yet it is necessary that you know, and prepare yourself! Reio-ta will aid you in this; though he is denied high achievement in his own person, the sons of his flesh will inherit Ahtarrath's powers."
Micail looked down at his now slight, strong hands—and Deoris suddenly remembered a pair of tanned, gaunt, twisted hands lying upon a tabletop. Then Micail flung back his head and met Rajasta's eyes. "Then, my father," he said, and put out his hand to Tiriki, "we would marry as soon as might be!"
Rajasta gazed gravely at Riveda's daughter, reflecting. "So be it," he said at last. "There was a prophecy, long ago when I was still young—A child will be born, of a line first risen, then fallen; a child who will sire a new line, to break the father's evils forever. You are young ..." He glanced again into Tiriki's child-face; but what he saw there made him incline his head and add, "But the new world will be mostly young! It is well; this, too, is karma."
Shivering, Tiriki asked, "Will only the Priests be saved?"
"Of course not," Rajasta chided gently. "Not even the Priests can judge who is to die and who is to live. Those outside the Priesthood shall be warned of danger and told where to seek shelter, and assisted in every way—but we cannot lay compulsion on them as on the Priesthood. Many will disbelieve, and mock us; even those who do not may refuse to leave their homes and possessions. There will be those who will trust to caves, high mountains, or boats—and who can say, they may do well, or better than we. Those who will suffer and die are those who have sown the seeds of their own end."
"I think I understand," said Deoris quietly, "why did you not tell Domaris of this?"
"But I think she knows," Rajasta replied. "She stands very close to an open door which views beyond the framework of one life and one time." He stretched out his hands to them. "In other Times," he said, in the low voice of prophecy, "I see us scattered, but coming together again. Bonds have been forged in this life which can never separate us—any of us. Micon, Domaris—Talkannon, Riveda—even you, Tiriki, and that sister you never knew, Demira—they have only withdrawn from a single scene of an ending drama. They will change—and remain the same. But there is a web—a web of darkness bound around us all; and while time endures, it can never be loosed or freed. It is karma."