"Maybe," said Aeneas,"the Gods do not need reasons for what they do."

She whispered, "That is what I am beginning to fear."

The climate of Troy was considerably warmer than that of Colchis; the serpents she had brought from Imandra's city were more active here, and Kassandra spent much of her time caring for them.

For this reason she did not hear immediately when the council determined that neither Paris nor Menelaus had won the duel, but that a truce would be proclaimed while they considered the matter further. Kassandra knew it would make no particular difference—both sides were resolved to continue fighting—so she paid little heed. She was still concerned with the serpents when the word came that the fighting had been resumed. Later someone told her that the truce had been broken when one of the Argive captains - later claiming that the Maiden Goddess had prompted him - had shot an arrow at Priam, which pierced his best robe and came near to killing him.

A few days later, from the safety of the walls, she and the other palace women watched the gathering of Hector's forces, both chariots and armed foot soldiers.

She heard among the women that Aeneas had accepted a challenge from Diomedes, the Akhaian who had fought with Glaucus.

Creusa did not take it very seriously.

"I have not heard that Diomedes is a fighter to worry about," she said. "This nonsense about exchanging gifts - what was that except an excuse for talking instead of fighting?"

"I would not count on that too much," said Helen. "Granted; that day they were both playing a game; but I have seen Diomedes when he is really set for fighting, and I think perhaps he is stronger than Aeneas."

"Are you trying to frighten me, Helen?" Creusa asked. "Are you jealous?"

"My dear," Helen said, "believe me, I have no interest in anyone's husband but my own."

"Which one?" asked Creusa unkindly. "Two lay claim to you, and no one in Troy talks of any other woman."

"I am not to blame if they have nothing to do but mind the affairs of their betters," Helen said. "Tell me, is there any woman in Troy who claims I have spoken one word to her husband which could not be repeated before my mother and his?"

"I do not say that," Creusa muttered, "but you seem to take pleasure in showing yourself to all men as the Goddess—"

"Then your quarrel is with her and not with me, Creusa; I am not to blame for what she does."

"I suppose not—" Creusa began, but Kassandra interrupted:

"Of course not; don't be silly, Creusa. Is it not bad enough that the men down there are at war? If we women begin to fightwith one another too, there will be no good sense left anywhere in Troy."

"If the Gods and the Goddesses are quarrelling, how are we to remain free of it?" asked Andromache. "I think perhaps the Gods take pleasure in seeing us fight, as they take pleasure in fighting themselves. I know Hector's greatest pleasure is battle; if this war stopped tomorrow, he would weep."

"What troubles me is that he seems to welcome it," Helen said. "One would think he sought to be possessed by Ares. Kassandra, you are a priestess; it is true that men can be possessed by their Gods?"

She thought of Khryse and said, "It's true enough, but I do not know how or why it happens. Not, I think, merely by their wishing for it. Helen, I have seen you overshadowed by the Goddess. How can it be brought on?"

"Why, don't tell me that you wish to show yourself as Aphrodite?" Helen said, laughing. "I thought you were one of her foes."

Kassandra made a pious gesture.

"May it be far from me to be the foe of any Immortal," she said. "I do not serve her, for it seems to me that the Beautiful One is not a Goddess as Earth Mother and Serpent Mother and even the Maiden are Goddesses."

"When is a Goddess not a Goddess?" asked Helen with a droll smile, "I don't think I understand you, Kassandra."

"I mean that the Goddesses of your Akhaian folk are different from the Goddesses of our people," Kassandra began. "Your Maiden Goddess—the warrior, Athene—she is just such a Goddess as a man would invent," Kassandra said, "because they say she was not born of any woman but sprang in full armor from the head and the mind of Zeus; yet, for all her weapons, she is a girl with all the domestic virtues, who would make some God a good wife. She tends to her spinning and weaving and is patron of the vines, both the olive and the grape. Would not a man create a warrior maiden just like this—brave and virtuous, but still obedient to the greatest of Gods? And your Hera—she is like our Earth Goddess, but your people call her only the wife of Zeus Almighty and say she is subject to him in all things, while to us Earth Mother is all-powerful in herself. She brings forth all things, but her sons and her lovers come and go, and she takes whom she will; when the God of Death took her daughter, she brought the very Earth to a standstill, so that it neither bore nor brought forth fruit…'

"But we too have an Earth Lady," said Helen: 'Demeter. When Hades took her daughter, she brought, they say, a winter of fearful cold and dark; and in the end Zeus said that the girl must return to her mother—"

"Exactly," Andromache interrupted. "They say that even Earth Mother is under obedience of this great Zeus. But there's no sense to it. Why should the Earth Goddess, who was before all else and all-powerful, be subject to any man or any God?"

"Well, if you are going to argue as to which of the Gods is most powerful," Helen began, "is it not the forces of love which can disrupt all else in men's lives—and women's too—and make them blind to all else—"

"Create disorder and disruption, you mean," Kassandra said.

"You speak that way only because you have never come under Aphrodite's sway, Kassandra," said Andromache, "and if you defy her, she will make you suffer for it."

Surely this was true; Kassandra remembered the shocking conflict she had felt in Aeneas's arms. You do not know she is already making me suffer. But she could not speak of that, not to any of the women here.

"May that be far from me," Kassandra said, "I defy no one -certainly no Immortal." Yet even as she spoke she remembered that Khryse had called her defiance a defiance of Apollo's self. Was it so, or was he only—like all men—vengeful against a woman who would not serve him and his lust? And she had—if only in a dream—defied Aphrodite's power.

"Even Apollo Sunlord," she said, with a little thrill of dread, as if she flung a challenge even in the Sunlord's face, "is said to have slain Serpent Mother, and taken from her her power. Yet surely of all men, he who slays the woman from whom he sprang is most wicked - and would the Immortals allow in a God what is z most wicked in man? Were this true, Apollo would be no God but the most evil of fiends - which he surely is not."

"And as for Earth Mother creating a year in which no fruit or flowers came forth, and no crops would bear," Helen said, "in the year in which Atlantis sank beneath the ocean, so my mother's father's father said, there were great earthquakes, and great clouds of ash covered the sun; in that year, it might be said, there was no summer, for the very foundations of the earth had been shaken. But whether it was the doing of any God, who can say? It would not be surprising if men thought that Earth Mother had betrayed them, and sought to put an end to her-misbehaviour by giving her an overlord who would make her serve men as she ought."

Creusa interrupted nervously, "I do not think it is well done for us to stand here questioning the ways of the Immortals. They do not look to men to make an accounting of what they do, and if we seek to question them, they may seek to punish us for it."