I sipped from the cup, and as I lowered it, felt the little snake stir in the hand that held the skin. When I poured more wine into the cup, I dropped the snake in with it.

The Milesian drained it at a gulp. "Thanks. I owe you something for that, Latro." He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "I'd initiate you into the mystery of the goddess, but you'd forget, and it can't be written down."

Side by side we walked back to the tents of the Rope Makers. My bed was in Basias's tent; I do not know with whom the Milesian's was. He asked if we might share another cup before we slept. I told him I had drunk all the wine I wanted, but I would gladly give him another. He drank it and wished me a good night.

I tried to wish him the same, but the words stayed in my throat.

"Eurykles," he told me, thinking that I had forgotten his name.

"Yes, Eurykles," I said. "Good luck, Eurykles. I know your goddess is pleased with you."

He smiled and waved before he went into one of the tents.

I lay down, and after a long time I slept. Now the sky grows light, and though I would sooner forget what happened last night, I think it best to write it here.

CHAPTER XXIII-In the Village

I am writing this in the courtyard of the inn. Eutaktos had been so eager to leave Thought that he did not buy provisions for the return to Redface Island. I think perhaps he believed also that he could get them more cheaply away from the city, and in that I suppose he was right. Anyway, we have halted here, and Eutaktos and some others are bargaining for food in the market. I am writing because I have not yet forgotten what took place last night, though I do not remember how I came to be among these Rope Makers.

The Milesian came to me when we halted here and said, "Let's find a wineshop. I'll repay you for what you gave me last night." I pretended to have forgotten, but he pressed me to go anyway, saying, "Basias can come with us. Then they can't say we were trying to get away."

Soon the Milesian, Basias, Io, and I were sitting very comfortably at a table in the shade; there was a jar of old wine and one of cold well water in the center of the table, and each of us had a cup before him. "You will recall that we were discussing the Triple Goddess last evening," the Milesian said to me. "At least, I hope you will. That hasn't gone yet, has it?"

I shook my head. "I can remember our camping outside this village late last night, and everything that came after that."

Io asked, "Where are we, anyway? Is this far from Advent?"

"This is Acharnae," the Milesian told her. "We're about fifty stades from Advent, which will be our next stop. It would have been a little shorter along the Sacred Way, but I suppose Eutaktos felt there was too much danger of incurring a charge of impiety." He looked at Basias for confirmation, but the Rope Maker only shrugged and put his cup to his lips.

"I've been to Advent before," Io told the Milesian. "With Latro and Pindaros and Hilaeira. Latro slept in the temple."

"Really? And did he learn anything?"

"That the goddess would soon restore him to his friends."

I asked Io to tell me about that.

"I don't know much, because you didn't tell me much. I think you told Pindaros more than me, and you probably wrote more than you told Pindaros. All you said to me was that you saw the goddess, and she gave you a flower and promised you'd see your friends soon. We were your friends, Hilaeira and Pindaros and me, but I don't think she meant us. I think she meant the friends you lost when you were hurt."

Basias was looking at me narrowly. "She gave you a flower in a dream?"

I said, "I don't know."

Io told him. "He just said she gave him one."

The Milesian spun an owl on the table as if hoping for an omen. "You can never tell about goddesses. Or gods either. Possibly a dream with a goddess in it is more real than a day without one. The goddess makes it so. That's what I'd like to be."

I was surprised. "A goddess?"

"Or a god. Whatever. Find some little place, impress the people with my powers, and make them build me a temple."

Basias told him, "You'd better put more water in that."

The Milesian smiled. "Perhaps you're right."

"Drinking unmixed wine will drive a man mad-everybody knows that. The Sons of Scoloti do it, and they're all as mad as crabs."

"Yet I've heard there are little villages along your coast where the people worship sea gods who've been forgotten everywhere else in the world."

Basias drank again. "Who cares what slaves do? Or who their slave gods are?"

Io said, "We had four Sons of Scoloti on Hypereides's ship with us, Latro. But then one left the night the sailor died and never came back."

Basias nodded. "What did I tell you?"

The Milesian spun his coin again. "Not all of them are Sons of Scoloti. Some are Neurians; there was a Neurian in the city."

"Who are they? I never heard of them."

"They live east of the Sons of Scoloti and have much the same manners and customs. At least, when we see them."

Basias poured himself more wine. "Then who cares?"

"Except that they can change themselves into wolves. Or anyway they change into wolves. Some people say they can't control it." The Milesian lowered his voice. "Latro, you don't remember how I raised a woman in the city, but one of them had opened her grave. I had planned, you see, just to produce a ghost; but when I saw that broken coffin-well, the opportunity was too good to miss."

The innkeeper, who had been lounging against the wall not far away, sauntered over to join the conversation. "I couldn't help but hear what you said about men who change to wolves. You know, we had somethin' a bit odd happen just last night, right here in Acharnae. Family sleepin' peacefully in their beds, when just like a thunderclap the place was full of I don't know what you call 'em. People talk about Sabaktes and Mormo and all that, kind of like they was a joke. These wasn't, though they didn't write their names on the walls." The Milesian said, "They vanished at dawn, I assume. I wish I might stay here another day, so I might exorcise them for those good people; my fame in that line outreaches the known world, though I hesitate to say it. But I fear the noble Eutaktos means for us to march again after the first meal."

"They're gone already," the innkeeper said. "I haven't talked to the family myself, but I know them that have, and they say a man come to the door just as they was runnin' out. He said to give him a skin of wine and he'd fix things. So they did, and he set up the figure of the three goddesses that had been knocked down and poured out a bit to each goddess. Soon as he did that, they was gone." The innkeeper paused, looking from face to face. "He was a real tall man, they said, with a scar on his head."

The Milesian yawned. "What happened to the wine? I don't suppose he poured it all out."

"Oh, he kept that. Some people are say in' he probably whistled up those whatever-they-weres just to get it. I say that for a man who could do that, he was satisfied awful cheap."

"And so would I," the Milesian drawled when the innkeeper had left. He spun the owl on the table as before. "But then, it all depends on just whom the wonder's worked for, doesn't it? When I raised the dead woman in the city, I had sense enough to take her around to some wealthy patrons before cockcrow. Most of them weren't my patrons before they saw her, to be sure. But they were afterward. Some people despise wealth, however. I do myself."

"You don't talk like it," Basias told him.

"Do you have any money?"

"I thought this was your treat."

"Oh, it is. I just want to know whether you've got any."

"Couple of obols," Basias admitted.