Polyhommes threw out his chest. "My uncle is an elderly man, and it would seem that the goddess has made her wishes regarding his successor quite clear. There was, after all, only one priest present at the time of the miracle."

Io asked, "But what does she want?"

"Eh?" He turned to look at her. "The goddess. Why's she pointing at the floor?"

"I'm not sure." The fat priest hesitated. "When such a gesture is used by one in authority, it generally means that something or someone is to be brought to him."

Pindaros cleared his throat. "An oracle in our shining city directed that Latro be brought to the goddess."

"Ah. And he was the giver of the sacrifice-officially, at least." Polyhommes turned to me. "Young man, you must remain in this Royal House overnight, sleeping on the floor or upon one of these benches. Perhaps the goddess herself will appear in your dreams. If not, I think it likely she'll favor you with some message."

Thus I am here, sitting with my back against a column and writing these words by the light of the declining sun. I have had a good deal of time to think this afternoon; and it seems to me that more than once I have felt the spirit of a house when I, a stranger, went into that house-though I cannot retrieve from the mist those times or those houses. A temple is the house of the god who dwells there, and so I open myself to this house of the Grain Goddess, hoping to know whether it is friendly to me.

There is nothing-or rather, there is only the sense of age. It is as if I sit with a woman so old she neither knows nor cares whether I am real or only some figment of her disordered mind, a shadow or a ghost. A fly may light upon a rock; but what does the rock, which has seen whole ages since the morning when gods strode from hill to hill, care for a fly, the creature of a summer? CHAPTER XIX-In the Presence of the Goddess

I ate the beef, bread, and fruit Io had brought me from the inn, and drank the wine. When I was finished, I spread the pallet Hilaeira had carried and lay down; but I was not in the least ready for sleep, and when the town grew quiet, I sat up again.

For a time I read this scroll (which I must try always to keep with me) by the light of the sacred fire, learning of the many gods and goddesses who have shown themselves to me; and once or twice I took up the stylus to add some conclusion to the account of today's events I had written earlier. But how can a man draw conclusions from what he does not comprehend? I knew I did not understand what occurred, and it seemed to me that it would be better to wait until the goddess had spoken. Now I sit in the same place to write this record.

An acolyte entered without taking the least notice of me and, mumbling a prayer, cast an armload of cedar into the fire. It fell with a deep booming, as though the sacred hearth were a drum and not a stone. When I dozed, that booming echoed through my dreams and woke me.

I could see the statue plainly in the firelight. The hand pointing to the floor was nearest the flames and flushed with their light, so that it seemed to glow like iron in a forge. I felt it demanded something of me, and I threw off my cloak, hoping that when I was nearer I would understand. The goddess's hand was hot to my touch, but it was only after I had drawn my own away that I looked at last and saw the thing to which she pointed.

There was a small section of floor between the coping around the sacred fire and the pedestal upon which the goddess stood. It was dirtier than the floor in other places, I think because those who cleaned it were fearful to approach her too closely, or were not permitted to do so. I knelt and brushed its surface with the tips of my fingers. Just at the place she indicated, there was a ring of bronze set in the stone, though the depression that held it was so packed with dirt I could scarcely see it.

I wished then for Falcata, but I could not have worn her in the temple, and I had left her at our inn. There had been ribs among the meat, however, and when I had worked the point of the sharpest under the ring, it came up easily enough. I cast the rib into the fire as an additional offering and pulled at the ring with both hands.

The slab rose more readily than I had expected. Beneath it was a narrow stair and close beside it a pillar of flame; for the sacred hearth was not, as I had assumed, at the level of the temple floor, but here below it. I descended the stair, keeping away from the flames as well as I could.

"Your hair is singed." The voice was that of a woman. "I smell it, Latro."

I looked through the fire and saw her seated upon a dais at the end of the low room. Young she was, and lovely, wreathed in leaves and flowers; and flowers and leaves had been woven to make a chiton and a himation for her. And yet for all her youth and beauty, and the colors and perfumes of so many blossoms, there was something terrifying about her. When I reached the floor, I circled the sacred hearth, bowed low to her, and asked whether she was the Great Mother.

"No," she said. "I am her daughter. Because you are no friend of my mother's it would be best for you to call me the Maiden."

She rose from her seat as she spoke and came to stand before me. Slender and fragile though she looked, her eyes were higher than mine. "My mother cannot be everywhere, though she is in many places together. And so, because you have meddled in my realm, I offered to speak with you for her." She touched my hair, brushing away the scorched ends. "My mother does not wish to meet you again in any case. Would you not rather treat with me instead?"

"But I must meet with her," I said. I had read in this scroll what the Shining God had said and what the prophetess had chanted, and I told the Maiden of them.

"You are mistaken," the Maiden told me. "The Wolf-Killer said only that you must go to a shrine of my mother's, not that you need speak with her. As for the sibyl, her words were but a muddle of the Wolf-Killer's, cast in bad verse. Here is the hearth. You stand in the room below, though it was not always thus. You wished to speak with my mother, but I am before you in her place, more beautiful than she and a greater goddess."

"In that case, goddess, may I beg you to heal me and return me to my friends and my own city?"

She smiled. "You wish to remember, as the others do? If you remember, you will never forget me."

"I don't want to," I told her, but I knew even as I spoke that I lied.

"Many do," she said. "Or at least many believe they do. Do you know who I am?"

I shook my head.

"You have met my husband, but even he is lost now among the vapors that cloud your mind. I am the Queen of the Dead."

"Then surely I must not forget you. If men and women only knew how lovely you are, they wouldn't dread you as they do."

"They know," the Maiden told me, and plucked a lupine from her chiton. "Here is the wolf-flower for you, who bear the wolf's tooth. Do you know where it was born?"

I understood and said, "Beneath the soil."

The Maiden nodded. "If ten thousand others had not perished, this flower could never have been. It is the dead-trees and grasses, animals and men-who send you all you have of men, animals, trees, and grasses."

"Goddess, you say I've meddled in your realm. I don't remember; but restore my memory, and I'll do whatever you want of me to make amends."

"And what of the injury you did my mother?"

"I don't recall that, either," I told her. "But I am sorry from the bottom of my heart."

"Ah, you are no longer so stiff-necked as once you were. If this were my affair and not hers, I would do something for you now, perhaps. But it is hers, not mine." She smiled the infinitely kind smile of a woman who will not do what you ask. "I will convey your apology to her and plead your case most eloquently."