After a moment she focused on the still figure on the ' couch, and then on Illyra again. "How has Latilla been?" she asked.

The S'danzo's eyes were bright with tears. "She has passed the restless stage of the fever. The sleep she's in now is deeper than yours was. I've tried to cool her, but the cloths dry from the heat of her body as soon as I put them on her. I've tried, Gilla, I've tried!" She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

"I know you have, Illyra," said Gilla gently. "And now I must ask you to try just a little longer while I do something harder. I must try to make the goddess beautiful."

Lalo pulled away and sat looking at her in wonder as Gilla went over to the bed and kissed her daughter gently on the brow. Then she moved majestically to the door and called for Myrtis.

The madam's eyes widened as she listened to Gilla's requests, but after a moment she nodded, and her eyes began to glow. "Yes, it is true, though there's hardly a respectable woman in Sanctuary who would understand what you mean. Certainly I never expected that you..." Myrtis left that comment unfinished as Gilla glared at her, smiled, and turned away to give orders to her girls.

I never expected to do anything like this either, thought Gilla, smoothing her hands over the massive swell of her bosom and along the mighty curve of her thigh. But by the breasts of the goddess I am going to try!

Sitting in the bath with giggling slave-girls fussing over her, Gilla knew the idea had been ridiculous. She had grown-up children, her blood had ceased to answer the call of the moon two years ago, and Lalo was rarely more than a companionable body in her bed anymore. When she had gotten into the marble bathing pool, her bulk had sent scented water slopping over the side in a tidal wave.

She tried to imagine Lalo's balding head and skinny legs being scrubbed by the girls in the other pool, and thought that he must look even stranger in the midst of all this splendor than she did. She wondered why in the name of the gods he had agreed to it. But of course that was why-because of the gods, or one of them, anyway, and because of a picture that he had once sworn she had been his model for.

And then she had a marvelous billowing garment of diaphanous sea-green silk on her back and a garland of sweet-smelling garden herbs on her damp hair, and singing girls were lighting her way to a chamber where the scent of burning sandalwood covered the reek of smoke from distant fires.

The room was paneled in cedar, and behind gauze curtains the windows were screened by marble filigree. What part of it was not taken up by the bed was covered by thick carpet and silken cushions, and there was a rosewood table with a flagon and two goblets of gold. But of course the bed was the point of it all, and Lalo was already waiting beside it, carrying off with more presence than she would have believed possible, a long caftan of jade green brocaded in gold.

He seemed to be memorizing the pattern of the carpet. Gilla thought. If he laughs at me I will murder him!

And then he lifted his head, and in his worn face, his eyes were glowing as they had when he looked on her in the Other-world. Behind her, Gilla could hear the rustle of silk and a giggle cut short as the slave girls backed out of the room. The door clicked shut.

"Health to you, my lord and husband." Gilla's voice shook only a little as she said the words.

Lalo licked dry lips, then stepped carefully to the table and poured wine. He offered her one of the goblets. "Health to you," he said, lifting the other, "my wife and my queen."

The goblets rang as they touched. Gilla felt the sweet fire of the wine burning down her throat to her belly, and another kind of fire kindling in her flesh as she met his eyes.

"Health to all the land," she whispered, "and the healing fire of love...."

Torches painted the rubble of Dyareela's temple with their lurid glare, dyeing with an even deeper crimson the blood-splattered robes of the priests and the severed head of the sacrifice. The sweet stink of blood hung heavy in the air, and the line of soldiers watched with wary eyes the chanting, murmuring masses of humanity who had crowded into the ruins to see it. The priests were praying now, straining grotesquely toward a darkness of cloud or smoke that blotted out the stars.

"Whatever they're expecting, they'd better get on with it," said a man of the Third Commando. "That kind of babbling won't hold this lot long. They've seen blood, and they'll want more of it soon!"

The man on his right nodded. "Stupid of Kittycat to allow it-anyone could see what would hap-" His words faded to a mumble as Sync's stony eye passed along the line, but his companion heard him add, with a faith that in the circumstances was touching, "This wouldn't of happened if Tempus was here."

"Dyareela, Dyareela, hear, oh, hear!" chanted the crowd. Hear, hear, or maybe it was fear, fear, echoed from shattered pillars and walls. "Have mercy-" came the drawn out cry. A shiver of eagerness ran through the crowd and the soldiers stiffened, knowing what was coming now.

Torches flickered wildly in a great gust of wind, a damp wind that came from the sea. The wind gusted again, and the scene grew perceptibly less lurid as several of the torches were blown out. A priest grabbed helplessly as his headdress went sailing away, and the crowd was abruptly distracted from its bloodlust by the struggle for gold thread and jewels. Then somewhere out to sea, thunder rumbled, and the remaining torches were doused by the first splatterings of rain.

Rain hissed in the embers of burned buildings and rinsed the ashes from the roofs of those houses which had survived. It scoured the streets and ran clear in the gutters, filled the sewers and flushed their festering contents down the river out to sea. It washed the reek of blood from the air, and left behind it the clean scent of rain. Men who moments before had growled like beasts stood with faces upturned to the suddenly beneficent heavens, and found the water that ran down their faces mingled inexplicably with tears.

Grumbling, the priests scrambled to get their finery under cover, while the crowd dispersed like drops from a fountain, and presently the bemused soldiery were allowed to break ranks and seek the shelter of their barracks at last.

All that night the clean rain pattered on the roofs of the town. Illyra opened her window to let the cool air in and, returning to Latilla, felt the moisture of sudden perspiration on the child's tight skin. Her own eyes blurring, she heaped blankets around her, then went fearfully to Lalo's worktable. The cards fluttered like live things in the damp wind. With beating heart, the S'danzo began to lay out the Pattern again.

In the morning, the sun rose on a town washed clean.

And there was a new bud on Gilla's peach tree.