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listen, to emulate. To lead folk to cast off the world's cares, it was needful to have the strength to be respected, to be obeyed. Then, and only then, could the purblind folk be led back to the Old Great Gods.
    But there was no strength, no certainty, in the divinities of the earth and waters, and by their example they kept folk fixed to the petty worries of field and trade, the squalling of babes and the pains of old age. They kept human folk from understanding that their true home was not this world, but the land of the Great Gods; they kept them weak, their minds clouded, so that all of human life was passed as one waking in the morning afraid and doubting and wondering.
    Luli had been full of fear and doubt and wondering herself, until that last trip to Marakand, twenty years before, when she had been newly appointed Old Lady. It was her scholarship, her curiosity about the world, that led to that appointment, voted on by the sisters, approved by the goddess. Blind. They did not see that she had found a new truth, found the truth, that she knew all the temple a sham, a dead-end trail that trapped them all. The Westrons wrote that the dead, even the purest in heart, could no longer reach the land of the Old Great Gods, never know the great and overwhelming peace they had earned through their sufferings in life. They waited on the road, thousands upon thousands, for the way to open, and that could not happen till the Great Gods returned to the purified earth.
    That Attalissa approved Luli's appointment showed her, beyond any doubt, that the strength of the goddess was a lie, that she knew nothing of the hearts of her folk.
    That was when Luli had sinned against her vows in body as well as spirit. And again, Attalissa had never rebuked her. Perhaps had never even known. The final proof Old Lady needed: Attalissa was nothing.
    He had agreed with her, in so many things. He was a wizard, a scholar, for all he looked a Great Grass barbarian with nothing more on his mind than horses and women and brawling. He was only a little younger than her, and beautiful, lean and strong and vital like a tawny cat, no dull-witted mountain farmer but a man, truly a man a woman could lean on. She had found herself, astonished and amazed, listening to herself while they talked of more than gods and philosophies and the blindness of human folk who trudged cattlelike through empty lives and never lifted their eyes to the sky. She had found herself on fire, willing, wanting to give him anything, to keep the teasing smile and the knowing, cool eyes hers, to keep the deep voice whispering her name, Luli , against her ear, hoarse with passion she could not have imagined when she chose the temple over marriage to any of the dull, demanding young men of her village.
    It was wrong, of course. Not a wrong against Attalissa. A sin against herself, against the Old Great Gods they both sought, to feel this passion, to fix such value to another mortal being, to tie oneself into the world so. But oh, those few days, they had been worth a lifetime…
    She had told him of mortal Attalissa and the stultifying empty days, of the temple, all its secrets. Of the old woman her goddess had become, surely soon to die, and the dreary years she could see ahead of herself, the years of her prime, to be wasted rearing a child, like any fat-hipped peasant mother, surrounded by the clamouring needs of the temple that was no place of contemplation, no place to refine the soul, but a training ground for soldiers to safeguard men's greed for the soulless treasures of the earth. He had said, a man's, a wizard's will, wedded to divine power, could start to change the world, could begin the reform, begin to lead the folk towards the true path they could not see for themselves, but that the time and the stars must be right.
    She had never, truly, believed that he would come. A lover's idle speculation, games they played, planning an impossible future. But now, finally, he had come,