Hanse had received coded messages beforetimes, and had devised the meaning. He did so this time. He knew where he was invited. (Invited? Bidden! Summoned!) Away up on the craggy hill now called Eaglebeak was a long untenanted manse. It lay partially in ruins, that magnificent home its long-ago builder and tenant had called Eaglenest. Nearby, beyond scattered fallen columns and tumbled stones, rotted planking marked a well. Down in that well languished two leathern bags. Saddlebags. Hanse knew they were there, for he had put them there, in a way, though it had not been his intent.

He hoped they were there, for they contained a great deal of silver coins, and a few that were gold.

They were the ransom of the Rankan symbol of power, the staff called Savankh, which a thief called Shadowspawn had stolen from the palace of the Prince Governor. The P-G knew they were there, but had agreed that they would remain Hanse's property. Hanse had, after all, uncovered a spy and a plot and saved Prince Kadakithis's face, if not his life.

But for a horse and a dead man named Bourne, Hanse would have had all that gleaming fortune in his possession, rather than "banked" down in the earth, atop a hill, in a narrow well that was like to have been the death of him!

He was to go to Eaglebeak, then. To dine in dark and deserted aerie: Eaglenest! So he quietly told Moonflower. For aye, once again he betook himself to her in quest of information and advice. (Mignureal was not about when he approached, and neither he nor Moonflower was sorry.)

He sat before her now in his nondescript tunic the color of a field mouse, his feet in dusty buskins, knees up. And only three blades showing on him. He sat on the ground and she on her stool. The fact that she overflowed all around was disguised by her voluminous skirts; Moonflower wore red and green and ochre and blue and another shade of green. Across her lap lay his new clothing.

She fondled and sniffed and tasted it, closed her eyes and drew it through her dimple-backed hands. And all the while she was moving her lavender-tinted lips. The vastness of her bosom was almost still as her breathing slowed, her heartbeat slowed, her muttering slowed and she slid away from herself, a great gross kitten at her divining.

No charlatan, this mother of eleven who had raised nine, but one with the Gift, the power. Moonflower Saw.

Now she Saw for Hanse as she had before, and he was not all that happy with it. Nor was she, even in trance.

"I See you, darling boy, all nobly turned out in this finery, and I See a great light hosting y-oh! Oh, oh Hanse ... it is, it is He! Here is Hanse, aye, and here is He, Himself-Us, god of gods! And I See... ah! Hmp. I like not what else I See, for it is Mignue, my Mignue, with you and the Lord of Lords."

He nodded, frowning. That was her pet name for her daughter. He accepted that somehow Mignureal was a part of this... whatever this was.

"Ah! Here is Hanse with a sword, and wielding it well, well ... for a god, Hanse, soldierly Hanse I See... for a god, against a god!"

Against a god. Father Ils, what means this all? What would you make of me? And he had an idea: "Who... who gave me the sword?"

"A bas-no, no, a foster son. Ah-a stepson. Yes. A s-"

"And who gave me the clothing? Is that Mignureal?"

"Mignue? No, oh no, she is a good g-ah. I see her. Eshi! It is Eshi Herself who has given you this clothing, Han-" And she shuddered of a sudden, and sagged, and her eyes came alive to stare into his. "Hanse? Did I See? Was it of value?"

He nodded. He was unable to look other than grim. "You Saw, 0 Passionflower. This time I must owe you, beyond the binding coin." (Which she had already dropped into that warm crevasse she called her Treasure Chest.)

Eshi, Hanse thought. Eshi!

A jealous and passionate god, Ils created all the world, and from his bodily wastes He peopled it. The gods He created from his two extra toes, and the eons passed and the first-created challenged Ils. This was Gunder, and he lost. He was hurled to the earth. His daughter Shipri, though, was thrice-fair, and her the great Lord Ils spared-and couched. By him Shipri became All-mother; of him she bore Shils, and Anen, and Thufir, and the twins Shalpa and Eshi, their first daughter, and another; the god no one spoke of. Now Anen was called firstborn, for jealous, passionate Ils sinned; in rage he slew his firstborn son, Shils.

Eshi. Much spoken of She was, and prayed to as well, but it was little reverence she gained. Everyone knew that she was a sensuous beauty who sought out and had her way with each of her brothers, and indeed sought to bring to couch even her father. In that She failed; even Ils was not that passionate, and one sin for a god was enough.

Eshi was fond of jewellery, and so gemworkers took a manifestation of her as patron. She was known to love love, and thus lovers, of course. Cows were special to her, and so were cats. Her sign was the liver, which any child learned early was the seat of love and its younger sibling, infatuation. Eshi!

Aye, Hanse thought. She loves jewellery and thus the ring; cats are sacred to her and thus the stone: the eye of a cat. Somehow it was pleasant thus to find some small comfort of logic in all this that clearly had naught to do with logic. Gods! He was involved with the very gods!

Mignureal came along just as he was departing. She asked about the handsome clothing he carried! Obviously she had never seen it before, and Hanse blinked. His eyes swerved in her mother's direction. She was staring at her daughter.

"Into the house, Mignue," she said, with uncommon sharpness. "See to the preparation of the leeks and yeni-sprouts your father fetched home for dinner."

Hanse went away thoughtful and shaken while Moonflower sat staring at nothing. She was a mother, and she too was shaken, and passing nervous.

For Hanse the next twenty-six hours rode by on the backs of snails. He slept not well and his dreams were not for the repeating.

Attired in such a way as to arouse the envy of a successful merchant, Hanse completed his ascent to Eaglebeak just after the sun began sliding off the edge of the world. Continuing cautious and too apprehensive to hurry, he picked his way through a jumble of tumbled columns and jagged stones habited only by spiders and serpents, lizards and scorpions, a few snails, and the most insistent of scrubby plants. These owned Eaglebeak now, and Eaglenest. All here had been murdered long and long ago. They were said still to haunt the place, that merchant and his family. And so the hilltop and once-fine estate-house were avoided.

Even so a great portion of the manse stood, and some of it was even under roof. Green-bordered blue cloak fluttering, his emerald-hued tunic with its purfling of yellow gold an unwontedly soft caress on his thighs, Hanse approached a doorless entry. It yawned dark, and still the ancient dark stains splashed the jamb; the blood of murder. He cast many anxious looks this way and that, and he did not hurry. For once he was not pleased to go into shadows.

He was met and greeted. Not by Ils or a beauteous woman, either!

Oh she was female, all right, and indeed shapely in a warm deep pink, a long gown sashed with red and hemmed with silver. The dress was lovely and rich and her figure was lovelier than that but even so the most striking aspect of her was her face. She had none.

Hanse stopped very abruptly and stared. At nothing. It was as if his gaze somehow swerved away from the face of this woman who greeted him, putting forth one lovely smooth hand.