Another, then, and another. The demons flowed to her, through her, faster, but it was an undeniably sloppy process. The next demon was Sordso's, and it was the most complex construct Ista had yet encountered. Layer upon layer of souls and their talents were interpenetrated with the young man's agonized, constricted soul-fire. It was a weirdly loving fabrication. Ista thought she perceived bits of soldiers, scholars, judges, swordsmen, and ascetics. All the Golden General's public virtues, collected and concentrated: the purified pattern of perfect manliness. It was horrifying. How could something made of souls be so coldly soulless?

No poets, though. None at all.

This dark piece of soul here is different, she realized, as one fragment began to flow through her fingers.

Yes, said the god. The man still lives, in the realm of matter.

Where? Is it... ? Should I attempt to... ?

Yes, if you think you can endure it. It will be uncomfortable.

Ista rolled up the patch of darkness and bundled it aside in her mind. It pulsed there, hot and thick. Somewhere off the edge of her material vision, the bronze-skinned Jokonan officer was lifting his sword, beginning to turn. A motion in black was Illvin, beginning to move with—no, after—him. Ista ignored it all and kept on combing. Sordso's mouth was opening on a wordless howl, but not, she thought, of a man bereaved by his dispossession. It might be rage. It might be triumph. It might be madness.

Then the next cord, then... the last.

She glanced upward with both material and inner sight at the ashen Foix in his green tabard, standing among the startled Jokonan officers. The violet shadow within him was no longer bear-shaped, but distributed unevenly throughout his body. It seemed both to cringe from her, and stare in fascination.

She considered the final cord in her spirit hand. Lifted it to her lips. Bit it through.

Good, said the Voice.

Oh. Should I have asked?

You are my Door-ward in the realm of matter. A lord's appointed porter does not run to him to ask if each beggar, whether in rags or silks, should be admitted or turned away, else he might as well stand at his gates himself The porter is expected to use his judgment.

My judgment? She let the end of the cord go. It snapped back into Foix, and he was free. Or ... whatever Foix was now, was free.

Foix's face flickered; his lips parted, firmed. Then, after a bare second, stretched again in that horrible strained smile of perfect assent. False falseness; treachery turning in air. He is much less simple than he looks.

Ista was barely aware of the cries and turmoil erupting throughout the tent. The voices grew faint and far off, diminishing, the figures dimmer and dimmer. She turned to follow the entrancing Voice.

SHE SEEMED TO COME TO THE DOOR OF HERSELF, AND LOOK through. An overwhelming impression of color and beauty, pattern and complexity, music and song, all endlessly elaborated, bewildered her senses. She wondered how confusing the world looked to a newborn infant, who had neither names for what she saw nor even the concept of names. The child began, Ista supposed, with her mother's face and breast, and from there worked outward—and in a lifetime could not come to the end of it all.

This is a world greater and stranger than the one of matter that gave my soul birth, and even the world of matter was beyond my comprehension. How now shall I begin?

Well, Ista, said the Voice. Do you stay or go? You cannot hang forever in My doorway like a cat, you know.

I have not words for this. I would see Your face.

Abruptly, she was standing in an airy room, very like a chamber in Porifors. She quickly glanced down, and was relieved to discover she was granted not only a body, healed and light and free of pain, but clothes as well—much as she had been wearing but cleansed of stains and mended of rips. She looked up, and rocked back.

This time, He wore Illvin's body and face. It was a healthy, full-fleshed version, if still tall and lean. His courtier's garb was silver embroidered on white, his baldric silk, his sword hilt and signet ring gleaming. His hair, pulled back in Roknari braids and a long, thick queue, was pure white. The infinite depths of His eyes destroyed the illusion of humanity, though, even as their darkness recalled the man.

"I should have liked," she admitted faintly, "to see what Illvin looked like with white hair."

"Then you will have to go back and wait a while," the Bastard replied. His voice was scarcely deeper or richer than the original's; it even adopted those northern cadences. "You would take your chances, of course; by the time all his hair is white, will there be any left?"

His body and face shifted through a hundred possible Illvins at a hundred possible ages, straight or bent, thin or fat, bald or not. The laughter on His lips remained the same, though.

"I desire... this." It was unclear even to Ista if her hand gesture indicated the god or the man. "May I come in?"

His smile softened. "The choice is yours, my Ista. As you do not deny Me, I will not deny you. Yet I would still await you, if you chose the long way home."

"I might become lost upon the road." She looked away. A great calm filled her. No pain, no terror, no regret. Their immense absences seemed to leave room for ... something. Something new, something never dreamed of before. If this was what Arhys had experienced, it was no wonder he'd never looked back. "So this is my death. Why did I ever fear it?"

"Speaking as an expert, you never seemed to Me to fear it all that much," He said dryly.

She looked back. "There may be more to paradise than the cessation of pain, but, oh, it seems almost paradise enough. Might a next time... hurt?"

He shrugged. "Once you return to the realm of matter, the protection I can offer you is limited, and its bounds, alas, do not exclude pain. This death is for you to choose. The next may not be."

Her lips curved up despite themselves. "Are you saying I might find myself back at this same gate in another quarter of an hour?"

He sighed. "I do hope not. I should have to train another porter. I quite fancied a royina for a time." The eyes glittered. "So does my great-souled Illvin. He's prayed to Me for you, after all. Consider my reputation."

Ista considered His reputation. "It's dreadful," she observed.

He merely grinned, that familiar, stolen, heart-stopping flash of teeth.

"What training?" she added, feeling suddenly cantankerous. "You never explained anything."

"Instructing you, sweet Ista, would be like teaching a falcon to walk up to its prey. It might with great effort be done, but one would end with a very footsore and cranky bird, and a tedious wait for dinner. With a wingspan like yours, it's ever so much easier just to shake you from my wrist and let you fly."

"Plummet," Ista growled.

"No. Not you. Granted, you tumble and complain halfway down the abyss, but eventually you do spread your wings and soar."

"Not always." Her voice went lower. "Not the first time."

He tilted his head in a sliver of acknowledgment. "But I was not your falconer then. We do suit, you know."

She glanced away, and around the strange, perfect, unreal room. Antechamber, she thought, boundary between the inside and the outside. But which door was which? "My task. Is it done?"

"Done and well-done, my, true, foster, laggard child."

"I have come very late to everything. To forgiveness. To love. To my god. Even to my own life." But she bowed her head in relief. Done was good. It meant one could stop. "Did the Jokonans slay me, as Joen ordered?"

"No. Not yet."

Smiling, He stepped up to her and tilted her chin up. He lowered His mouth to hers as boldly as Illvin had, that afternoon—yesterday?—on the tower. Except that His mouth tasted not of horsemeat but of perfume, and there was no uncertainty in His eyes.