Why does it have to be this way? Why does the thought of loving Taliesin fill me with such dread? Why am I so afraid?

She thought about Taliesin-but more as an abstract presence, a force to be faced, or an argument to be reconciled than as a flesh-and-bone human being who loved and desired her. He was a cipher that had no face, a symbol of something she could not reckon.

Why, she would ask herself, does the thought of him bring no happiness?

Time and again she asked the question, and time and again stumbled over the same awkward conclusion: “I do not love him.”

That must be it, she decided. As painful as it is, that must be the answer. I do not love him. Maybe I have never loved anyone…

No, I did; I loved my mother, she thought. But that was a long time ago and she has been dead many years. Perhaps when Briseis was killed all love inside me died too. Strange to just find out now. It has been so long since I have loved anyone or anything except myself-no, not even myself. What the High Queen told me that day long ago was true: I wished myself dead, which is why I danced the bulls.

Love…

Why should love be so important? Save for a few brief years as a child, I have lived my life without it. Why should this lack make any difference now? Why now?

And what had happened to that calm, agreeable feeling she had experienced only a few days ago-that sense of security and the rightness of things, the feeling of being part of a hidden plan meticulously working itself out… Where had that gone?

It was true, she reminded herself. Only a few days ago you were certain you were in love with Taliesin. Only a few days ago you felt as if life had recovered its purpose and meaning for you. Only a few days ago… And now?

Had things changed so much? Or had those feelings been but fleeting sensations, more dream than reality? There was certainly something very dreamlike about the last few days. It was as if she had slept and awakened from a pleasant dream to the soulless austerity of reality.

Was it a dream? Had she, out of loneliness and melancholy, imagined it?

Taliesin was real enough. Charis could still hear her name on his lips, could feel his touch on her skin, the warmth of his arms around her. That was real, but was it love?

If it was, it was not enough.

Her words at their parting came back to her, stinging her with their hopelessness. It was not enough! Not enough! Love had never been enough. It had not kept her mother from dying; it had not prevented the hideous war that had taken Eoinn and Guistan; it had not saved Atlantis from destruction. So far as she knew, love had never saved anyone from the agony of life, even for an instant.

And now here was the Christian priest Dafyd insisting that the ruling power of the world-indeed, of all worlds past, present, and yet to come-was love. This same feeble, inconstant emotion. Impotent and by its very nature vulnerable. More a thing to be despised than exalted, more to be pitied than embraced.

Who was this god that demanded love of his servants, called himself love, and insisted that he be worshiped in love? This god who made love the highest expression of his power and insisted that he alone stood above all other gods, that he alone had created the heavens and earth, that he alone was worthy of honor, reverence, and glory?

A strange and perverse god, this god of love, thought Charis. Not at all like any of the other gods I have known. So unlike Bel, whose dual aspects of constancy and change demanded nothing but simple reverence and ritual-and not even that if one was not inclined. If he did not greatly heed or help his people, at least he made no pretense of caring for them either. He ignored all men equally, Mage and beggar alike.

But this Most High God insisted that he cared for his followers and asked-no, demanded-that men acknowledge him as sole supreme guardian, authority, and judge over all. Yet, he could be as silent and cold and distant and fickle as Cybel ever was.

Even so, Charis had promised to follow him, had been baptized into the Christian faith. Why?

Was it because she was restless, and tired of her restlessness, tired of searching, tired of the lonely, empty feeling that there was no longer any significance to her life? Was that it?

Like a bird trapped in a cow byre, throwing herself against dumb, unfeeling walls, Charis struggled to understand the unhappy welter of her thoughts and emotions, only to be met time and again with silence and indifference. Her questions went unanswered.

Very well, she had been attracted to this new god through his son, Jesu, who had lived as a man among men, teaching the ways of love, and pointing the way to a kingdom of peace and joy without end. That, at least, was worth Believing. But to what end?

Bel offered nothing so impossible, made no barren promises. Life and death were all the same to him. But not to this Jesu. If Charis understood Dafyd right, Jesu, who was himself truly God, sacrificed himself so that all might be reborn to live in his kingdom-a kingdom as remote and insubstantial as the love he promised to share with those who Believed and followed him.

“Only Believe,” Dafyd had told her. “He does not ask us to understand him, only to Believe in him. As it is written: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever Believes in him will never die, but will have everlasting life.’ “

Only Believe! Only raise Atlantis from the depths-that would be easier, thought Charis in despair. How can I Believe in a god who has no image, yet claims all of creation for his province; who demands total and unstinging devotion, yet will not speak; who calls himself Father, yet refused to spare his only true Son.

Better to Believe in Bel or Lieu or Oester or the Mother Goddess or any of the multitude of gods and goddesses that men have worshiped through the ages. Better to Believe in nothing and no one at all… That conclusion had all the comfort of the tomb.

“God!” she cried in despair, her voice lost in the wind and rain that beat down upon the Tor. “God!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The cold rain squalls of the last days passed in the night and spring returned. Charis lay some moments in her bed, feeling light in body and spirit, and remembered that she had not eaten a bite the day before, nor the day before that. She was hungry but also felt unburdened, as if the weight of misery had dissolved in the night and melted away like the storm clouds. Although nothing had changed at all.

She was still unsure of her love for Taliesin, still unsure of her Belief in the new god, still very much alone, and still very restless. Her first thought was to rise, saddle her horse at once, and ride out into the hills-to ride and never stop riding, to lose herself in the brooding glory of green earth and deep sky.

Pausing for bread and cheese and a mouthful of wine on her way to the stables, she hurried through the courtyard and met Morgian, sulky and bristling with inarticulate menace. “I have no quarrel with you, Morgian,” Charis told her. “But let us have an understanding.”

“An understanding? How so, sister?” she asked slyly.

“About Taliesin. He has declared his love for me, and it is his wish that we should be married. Now I tell you in all honesty, I do not know if I love hire or not. I do not think that I do. Very likely we will never be married”

Morgian’s smile had much in it of the cat whose claws have just closed around the mouse. “So, you adm-”

“But,” Charis cut her off, “whether we are married or not I forbid you to interfere in our affairs.”

“If you do not love him, why do you care?” inquired Morgian.

The question went by Charis at the time. But later, as she let her gray horse have its head to plod along the brome-edged hilltrack, she found herself pondering the same question: Why do I care?