She slipped softly up beside her master, put her nose under one of his hands,and nudged him for attention.

Without really noticing her, he began scratching her behind the ears. Harranwasn't even seeing the walls of the hut. It was both yesterday and tomorrow forhim, and the present was suddenly charged with frightful possibility....

Yesterday looked as little like today as could be imagined. Yesterday was whiteand gold, a marble and chryselephantine glory-the colors of Siveni's littleSanctuary temple, in the days before the Rankans. Why do I look back on it withsuch longing? he wondered. / was even less successful there than I am here. Butall the same, it had been his home. The faces had been familiar, and if he was aminor priest, he was also a competent one.

Competent-. The word had a sting to it yet. Not that it was anything to beashamed of. But they'd told him often enough, in the temple, that there wereonly two ways to do the priestly magics. One was offhand, by instinct, as agreat cook does; a whispered word here, an ingredient there, all done byknowledge and experience and whim-an effortless manipulation by the natural andsupernatural senses of the materials at hand. The other way was like that of thebeginning cook, one not expert enough to know what spices went with what, whatspells would make space curdle. The merely competent simply did magic by thebook, checking the measurements and being careful not to substitute, in case ademon should rise or a loaf should fail to.

Siveni's priests had looked down on the second method; it produced results, butlacked elegance. Harran could have cared less about elegance. He'd never gottenfurther than the strict reading and following of "recipes"-in fact, he had justabout decided that maybe it would be wiser for him to stick to Siveni's strictlyphysical arts of apothecary and surgery and healing. At that point in his careerthe Rankans had arrived, and many temples fell, and priestcraft in all but themightiest liturgies became politically unsafe. That was when Harran, for thefirst time since his parents had sold him into Siveni's temple at the age ofnine, had gone looking for work. He had frantically taken the first job hefound, as the Stepsons' leech and barber.

The memory of finding his new job brought back too clearly that of how he hadlost the old one. He had been there to see the writ delivered into the shakinghands of the old Master-Priest by the hard-faced Molin Torchholder, while theImperial guards looked on with bored hostility; the hurried packing of thesacred vessels, the hiding of other, less valuable materials in the crypts underthe temple; the flight •of the priesthood into exile....

Harran stared at the poor, blood-congested hand in its dish on the table whilebeside him Tyr slurped his fingers and poked him for more attention. Why didthey do it? Siveni is only secondarily a war-goddess. More ever than that, Shewas-is-Lady of Wisdom and Enlightenment-a healer more than a killer.

Not that She couldn't kill if the fancy took Her....

Harran doubted that the priests of Vashanka and the rest were seriouslyworried about that. But for safety's sake they had exiled Siveni'spriesthood and those of many "lesser" gods-leaving the Ilsigs only Ils andShipri and the great names of the pantheon, whom even the Rankans dared notdisplace for fear of rebellion.

Harran stared at the hand. He could do it. He had never considered doing itbefore-at least, not seriously. For a long time he had held down this job bybeing valuable-a competent barber and surgeon-and by otherwise attracting noundue attention, discouraging questions about his past. He burned no incenseopenly, frequented no fane, swore by no god either Rankan or Ilsigi, and rolledhis eyes when his customers did. "Idiots," he growled at the god-worshippers,and mocked them mercilessly. He drank and whored with the Stepsons. His oldbitterness made it easy to seem cruel. Sometimes it was no seeming; sometimes heenjoyed it. He had in fact gotten something of a reputation among the Stepsonsfor callousness. That suited him.

And then, some time ago, there had been a change in the Stepson barracks. Allthe old faces had suddenly vanished; new ones, hastily recruited, had replacedthem. In the wake of this change, Harran had abruptly become indispensable-for(first of all) he was familiar with the Stepsons' wonted ways as the newcomerswere not; and (second) the newcomers were incredibly clumsy, and got themselveschopped up with abysmal regularity. Harran looked forward to the day when thereal Stepsons should come back and set their house in order. It would be funnyas hell.

Meanwhile, there was still the hand in its dish on the table. Hands might haveno eyes, but this one stared at him.

"Piffles," Lafen had said.

That was one of the kinder of the various nasty names for the PFLS, the PopularFront for the Liberation of Sanctuary. At first there had only been rumors ofthe Front- shadowy mentions of a murder here, a robbery there, all in aid ofthrowing out Sanctuary's conquerors, the whole lot of them. Then the Front hadbecome more active, striking out at every military or religious body its leadersconsidered an oppressor. The pseudo-Stepsons had come to hate the Frontbitterly-not only because they had been ambushing Stepsons with frighteningsuccess, but for the rational (though unpublishable) reason that most of thepresent "Stepsons" were native Sanctuarites, and hardly felt themselves to beoppressors. Indeed, there was some supportive sentiment for the Front amongthem. Or there had been, until the Front had started putting acid in theirwinepots, and snipers on neighboring rooftops, and had started teaching gutterchildren to smash stones down on hands resting innocently on walls at lunchhour....

Harran himself had agreed fiercely with the aims of the Front, though thatwasn't a sentiment he ever allowed anyone to suspect. Damn Rankans, he thoughtnow, with their snotnosed new gods. Appearing and disappearing temples,lightning bolts in the streets. And then the damned Fish-Eyes with their snakes.Miserable wetback mother-goddesses, manifesting as birds and flowers. Oh,Siveni-! For just a moment his fists clenched, he shook, his eyes stung. Theimage of Her filled him.. .bright-eyed Siveni, the spear-bearer, the defendergoddess, lady of midnight wisdoms and truths that kill. Ils's crazy daughter, towhom He could never say no: the flashing-glanced hoyden, fierce and fair andwise-and lost. 0 my own lady, come! Come and put things to rights! Take backwhat's yours again-

The moment passed, and the old hopelessness reasserted itself. Harran let outhis breath, looking down at Tyr, whose head had suddenly moved under his hand tolook up at the nearer window.

A raven perched in it. Harran stared, and his hand closed on the scruff of Tyr'sneck to keep her from chasing it. For the raven was Siveni's bird: Her messengerof old, silver-white once, but once upon a time caught lying to Her, and in abrief fit of rage, cursed black. The black bird looked down at them sidelong,out of a bright black eye. Then it glanced at the table, where the hand lay inits dish; and the raven spoke.

"Now," it said.

Tyr growled.

"No," he said in a whisper. The raven turned, lifted its wings, and flew away ina storm of whistling flapping noises. Tyr got loose from Harran's grip, spunaround once in a tight circle for sheer excitement, and then hurtled out thedoor across the stableyard, barking at the vanished bird.