He got up, still very confused. "Madam," he managed to croak, and then tried itagain, rather embarrassed at making such a poor showing. "Lady, I amfinished...."

"Of course you're not," she said, reaching out with that blazing spear and usingits point to flick the book-roll up into her free hand. "Don't go lackwitted onme, Harran. It says right here: 'the hand of a brave and living man, the same tobe offered up at the spell's end by the celebrant.'" She turned the scrolltoward him, showing him the words.

Harran glanced down at the middle of the circle, where in the skeletal hand themandrake still burned dully bright as a coal. But Siveni's voice brought hisglance up again. "Not that hand, Harran!" She said, sounding annoyed now. "Thatone!"

And she pointed at the knife, which he had forgotten he was clutching-and at hisleft hand, which clutched it.

Harran went as cold all over as he had in the graveyard. "Oh my G-"

"Goddess?" she said, as Harran caught himself as usual. "Sorry. That is theprice written here. If the gateway you seek to open is to be fully opened-andeven as I am not fully here yet, neither would the others be-the price must bepaid." She looked at him coolly for several moments, then said with lessasperity and some sadness, "I would have expected my priests to read better thanthat, Harran.... You do read?"

He gave her no answer for a moment. He thought of Sanctuary, and the Rankans,and the Beysib, and briefly, irrationally, of Shal. Then he stepped over to thecenter of the circle, and the hand. The bones of it were charred. The ring ofbase metal was a brass-scummed silver puddle on the floor. The mandrake glowedunder his glance like a coal that had been breathed on.

He knelt down again and lifted his eyes briefly to the unmerciful lovelinessbefore him; then squeezed his left hand until the blood flowed fresh, and withit pried the mandrake away from the hand's blackened bones.

In the hours that intervened until Harran got up again- a few minutes later-hecame belatedly to understand a great deal; to understand Shal, and many of theother Stepsons, and some of the poor and sick he'd treated while still in thetemple. There was no describing the pain of a maiming. It was a thing as withoutoutward color as the burning of the mandrake; and even worse, more blinding, wasthe horror that came after. When Harran stood again, he had no left handanymore. The stump's scorching pain throbbed and died away; Siveni's doing,probably. But the horror, he knew, would never go away. It would be fed anew,every day, by those who refused to look at the place where a hand had once been.Harran abruptly understood that payment is not later, is never later, but isalways now. It would be now all his life.

He got to his feet and found Siveni, as she had said, even more there than shehad been before. He wasn't sure this was a good thing. None of this was workingout as it should have. And there were other things peculiar as well. Where wasthe light coming from that filled the temple suddenly? Not from Siveni; she wasstriding around the place with the dissatisfied air of a housewife who comeshome and has to deal with her husband's housekeeping- poking her spear intocomers, frowning at the broken glass. "All this will be put to rights soonenough," she said. "After business. Harran, what are you scowling at?"

"Lady, the light-"

"Think, man," she said, not unkindly, as she stepped over to the circle,examining it, gently kicking a bit of her statue's rubble aside with onesandaled foot. "The spell retrieves timelessness as well as time. The light ofyesterday, and tomorrow, is available to us both."

"But I-"

"You included the whole temple inside the outer circle, Harran, and you were inthe temple. The spell worked on you too. How not? It retrieved my physicalityand your godhead...."

Harran stared at her. Siveni caught the look, and smiled.

Harran's heart came near to melting. She might be a hoyden, but she was awinning one.

'Wow what are you-oh, godhead? Harran, my little priest, it's in your blood.This world isn't old enough for anyone to be removed by more than six degrees ofblood from anyone else. Gods included. Haven't you people got far enough inmathematics to have realized that yet? I must do something about that." Shereached up with her spear, and somehow, without getting any taller, or her speargetting any longer, knocked down a huge cobweb from a ceiling comer. "So you seeas a god sees, for this short while. And permanently, after we do the spellagain-"

"Again?" Harran said in shock, staring at his other hand.

"Of course. To open the way for the other Ilsig gods. It's only partially opennow, for merely physical manifestation, as I said, and I doubt they've noticed.They're all off feasting beyond the Isles of the North again, getting plasteredon Anen's latest batch, I shouldn't wonder." Siv-eni actually sniffed. "Not anhonest day's work in the lot of them. But once I do the spell again, it'll openthe gate wholly-and this place will be fit for gods to live in, as it never waseven in the old days. Meanwhile"-she glanced around her-"meanwhile, before we dothat, we have a few calls to pay. It would be abysmal tactics to give up theadvantage of the ground, now we've got it...."

Harran said nothing. This entire encounter was misfiring. "We'll go down toSavankala's high-and-mighty temple," Siveni said, "and have a word with him. Atemple bigger than my father's-!" She was indignant, but in a pleased way-likesomeone looking forward to a good fight. "And after that, we'll stop intoVashanka's place and just kill off that godchild he's got squirreled away inthere. Then, af-terward-this much talked-about Bey. Two pantheons in one nightsave ourselves a lot of trouble later. Come on, Harran! The night's a-wasting,and we need to do the second Opening before dawn." And she swept across thebarren inner precinct of the temple and smote the great brazen doors with herspear.

They promptly fell outward and down the steps with a sound that Harran reckonedwould wake all Sanctuary- though he much doubted that anyone would be crazyenough to stir out of doors and see what made it. Down the stairs and down theAvenue of Temples they went, the immortal goddess and the mortal man, thegoddess leading, peering about her with some interest, and the one-handed manbehind, suffering more and more from terrible misgivings. No question thatSiveni was all Harran had imagined, and more. It was the "more" that wasbothering him. Siveni's wisdom was usually tempered by compassion. Where wasthat tonight? Had he done something'wrong in the spell? Certainly Siveni was animpetuous goddess, resolute, swift when she decided to act. But somehow I didn'texpect this kind of action....

Harran shivered. There was something wrong with him too. He was seeing much moreclearly than he should have been able to at this time of night. And he feltentirely too fit for a man who had gone digging in a graveyard, screwed himselfblind, worked a sorcery, and lost a hand, all in one night. Was this more ofwhat Siveni had mentioned as side effects of the sorcery, the uprising of hisgodhead in him? It was a distressing thought. Men should not be gods. That waswhat gods were for....

Harran glanced over at the goddess and found her aspect somewhat easier to bearthan it had been before. She was looking over toward the Maze and Downwind in away that suggested she had no trouble seeing through things. "This place is amess," she said, turning as she went to look at Harran in reproof.