Still, the sound of the stream was lovely, its soft, musical chiming echoing up from the smooth stones as if the noise were skipping from one to another.

Not wanting to keep Cormia waiting, he planted his soles on the riverbed and lifted his upper body out of the rush. The water sluiced off his chest and down his stomach, like soothing hands, and, lifting his arms up, he felt it drop from his fingers and his elbows.

Running down… pouring down… easing down…

The wizard’s voice tried to rise up and take over. Phury heard it in his head, fighting for airtime, fighting to find purchase in his inner ear.

But the chiming of water was louder.

Phury drew in a great breath, smelling the evergreen and feeling a freedom that had nothing to do with where his body was, and everything to do with where his head was at.

For the first time, the wizard was not bigger than he was.

Cormia paced around the Primale temple. Not ill. In withdrawal.

Not ill.

She stopped at the foot of the bedding platform.

She remembered being strapped down and hearing a male enter and being utterly terrified. Unable to see, unable to move, and not permitted to say no, she’d lain there at the mercy of tradition.

Each virgin female, after she went through her transition, was presented to the Primale like that.

Surely others must have felt the fear she had. And more would, in the future.

God… this place was dirty, she thought, looking around at the white walls. Dirty with lies both spoken and left to lie intrinsic in the hearts of the females who breathed the still air.

There was an old saying among the Chosen, the sort of ancient stanza that one never knew when one had first heard it. Rightful is the cause of our faith, serene be our countenance of duty, nothing shall harm we the believers, for purity is our strength and our virtue, the parent to guide our child.

There was a wild roar from the bath.

Phury screaming.

Cormia wheeled around and raced into the other room.

She found him naked in the stream, rearing back, his fists clenched, his chest craning upward, his spine straining. Except he wasn’t screaming. He was laughing.

His head came around, and when he saw her he dropped his arms, but didn’t stop his laughter. “Sorry…” As more of the wild joy bubbled up out of him, he tried to keep it in, but he couldn’t. “You must think I’m crazy.”

“No…” She thought he was beautiful, his golden skin slick from the water, his hair falling in thick ringlets down his back. “What’s funny?”

“Pass me a towel?”

She handed him a bolt of cloth, and didn’t look away as he emerged from the stream.

“You ever hear of The Wizard of Oz?” he said.

“Is it a story?”

“Guess not.” He secured the wrap by tucking it into itself. “Maybe someday I’ll show you the movie. But that’s what I was laughing at. I got it wrong. It wasn’t an all-powerful Ring-wraith in my head. It was the Wizard from Oz, nothing but a frail old man. I only thought he was terrifying and stronger than I am.”

“Wizard?”

He tapped his temple. “Voice in my head. Bad one. The one I smoked to get away from. I thought he was this huge, overwhelming Ring-wraith. He wasn’t. He isn’t.”

It was impossible not to join in Phury’s happiness, and as she smiled at him, a sudden warmth suffused her from heart to soul.

“Yeah, it was a big, loud voice that is nothing special.” His palm went to his upper arm, and he rubbed at his skin as if it had a rash-except there was nothing that she could see marring its smooth perfection. “Big… loud…”

Phury’s stare abruptly changed as he looked at her. And she knew the cause. Heat flared in his eyes as his sex thickened at his hips.

“Sorry,” he said, reaching down for another long cloth and holding it in front of himself.

“Did you lay with her?” Cormia blurted.

“Layla? No. I got as far as the vestibule when I decided I couldn’t go through with it.” He shook his head. “It’s just not going to happen. I can’t be with anyone but you. The question is what to do now-and for better or worse I think I know the answer. I believe that all this”-he motioned his hand around, as if encompassing everything in and about the Sanctuary-“this can’t go on any longer. This system, this way of life, it’s not working. You’re right, it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone. It’s not working for anyone.”

As his words sank in, she thought of the place in the race she had been born into. Thought of the white rolling lawns and the white buildings and the white robes.

Phury shook his head. “There used to be two hundred Chosen, right? Back when there were thirty or forty Brothers, right?” When she nodded, he stared down into the rushing water of the stream. “And now how many are left? You know, it’s not just the Lessening Society that’s killing us. It’s these damn rules we live under. I mean, come on. The Chosen aren’t protected here, they’re imprisoned. And they’re mistreated. If you hadn’t been attracted to me, it wouldn’t have mattered. You still would have had to have sex with me, and that’s cruel. You and the sisters are trapped here, serving a tradition I wonder how many of you actually believe in. Life as a Chosen… it’s not about choice. None of you have any. Take your own case-you don’t want to be here. You came back because you had no options, didn’t you?”

Three words came out of her mouth, three impossible words that changed everything: “Yes, I did.”

Cormia lifted up her robing and let it fall back into place, thinking of that scroll that was on the floor back at the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes, the one with her sketches of buildings on it, the one she had nowhere to go with.

Now she was the one shaking her head. “I never knew how much I didn’t know about myself until I went over to the far side. And I have to believe the others are the same. They must be… it can’t just be me who has talents undiscovered or interests unrevealed.” She paced around the bath. “And I don’t think any one of us doesn’t feel like a failure-if only because the pressures are so great that everything elevates to a level of supreme and total importance. One small error, either in a word written incorrectly or a note off-pitch in a chant or a stitch done wrong in a bolt of cloth, and you feel like the whole of the race is disappointed in you.”

Suddenly, she couldn’t stop the words falling from her lips. “You are so right. This is not working. The purpose of us is to serve the Scribe Virgin, but there’s got to be a way of doing that while honoring ourselves.” Cormia looked across at Phury. “If we are her Chosen children, doesn’t that mean that she wants the best for us? Isn’t that what parents want for their young? How is this…” She looked around at the all-pervasive, stifling white of the bath. “How is this the best? For most of us, it’s more like a deep freeze than a life. We’re in suspended animation even though we move. How… is this best for us?”

Phury’s brows went down. “It’s not. It’s fucking not.”

He wadded up the long cloth in his hands and slammed it to the marble floor. Then he grabbed the Primale medallion and tore it off his neck.

He was going to step down, she thought, both elated and disappointed for the future. He was going to step down-

Phury lifted up the heavy weight of gold, the medallion swinging on its length of leather, and she lost her breath completely. The expression on his face was one of purpose and power, not of irresponsibility. The light in his eyes was about ownership and leadership, not ducking or shirking. Standing before her, he was the whole landscape of the Sanctuary, all the buildings and the land and the air and the water: He was not of this world, but the world here itself.

After a lifetime of watching history unfold in a bowl of water, Cormia realized as she measured the medallion being held aloft that for the first time she was seeing history made right in front of her, in live time.