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.