Taita took a while to consider these words. The Hitama had echoed what he had been told by Samana.

'Kashyap is dead and a woman has taken his seat before the goddess.

Her name is Samana. She told me there had been others. You are the first I have met.'

'Few of us are granted the gift of the Inner Eye. Even fewer of us remain. Our numbers have been reduced. There is a sinister reason for this, which I will explain to you in due time.' He made space on the mattress beside him. 'Come, sit close to me, Taita. My hearing begins to fail me, and there is much to discuss, but little time is left to us.' The visitor switched from laboured Egyptian into the arcane Tenmass of the adepts, which he spoke flawlessly. 'We must remain discreet.'

'How did you find me?' Taita asked, in the same language, as he settled beside him.

'The star led me.' The ancient seer raised his face to the eastern sky.

In the time that they had been speaking together, night had fallen and the panoply of the heavens shone forth in majesty. The Star of Lostris still hung directly overhead, but it was further altered in shape and substance. It no longer had a solid centre. It had become merely a cloud of glowing gases, blowing away in a long feather on the solar winds.

'I have always been aware of my intimate connection to that star,'

Taita murmured.

'With good reason,' the old man assured him mysteriously. 'Your destiny is linked to it.'

'But it is dying before our eyes.'

The old man looked at him in a way that made Taita's fingertips tingle. 'Nothing dies. What we call death is merely a change of state.

She will remain with you always.'

Taita opened his mouth to say her name, 'Lostris', but the old man stopped him with a gesture.

'Do not speak her name aloud. In doing so you may betray her to those who wish you ill.'

'Is a name, then, so powerful?'

'Without one a being does not exist. Even the gods need a name.

Only the Truth is nameless.'

'And the Lie,' Taita said, but the old man shook his head.

'The Lie is named Ahriman.'

'You know my name,' said Taita, 'but I am ignorant of yours.'

'I am Demeter.'

'Demeter is one of the demigods.' Taita had recognized the name at once. 'Are you that one?'

'As you can see, I am mortal.' He held up his hands and they trembled with palsy. 'I am a Long Liver, as you are, Taita. I have lived an inordinately long time. But soon I will die. Already I am dying. In time you will follow me. Neither of us is a demigod. We are not Benevolent Immortals.'

'Demeter, you cannot leave me so soon. We have just come together,' Faita protested. 'I have searched so long to find you. There is so much I must learn from you. Surely this is why you have come to me. You did not come here to die?'

Demeter inclined his head in acquiescence. 'I shall stay as long as

I am able, but I am wearied by years and sickened by the forces of the Lie.'

'We must waste not an hour of the time we have. Instruct me.' Taita spoke humbly. 'I am as a little child beside you.'

'We have already begun,' Demeter said.

Ti

ime is a river like the one above us.' Demeter lifted his head and pointed with his chin to Oceanus, the endless river of stars that flowed from horizon to horizon across the sky above them. 'It has no beginning and no ending. There was another who came before me, as countless others came before him. He passed on this duty to me. It is a divine baton handed on from one runner to the next. Some carry it further than others. My race is almost run, for I have been shorn of much of my power. I must pass the baton to you.'

'Why to me?'

'It has been ordained. It is not for us to query or contest the decision.

You must open your mind to me, Taita, to receive what I have to give you. I must caution you that it is a poisoned gift. Once you receive it you may never again know lasting peace, for you are about to shoulder all the suffering and pain of the world.'

They fell silent while Taita considered this bleak proposition. At last he sighed. 'I would refuse it if I could. Continue, Demeter, for I cannot stand against the inevitable.'

Demeter nodded. 'I have faith that you will succeed where I have failed so woefully. You are to become gatekeeper of the fortress of the Truth against the onslaughts of the minions of the Lie.'

Demeter's whispers grew bolder and took on a new urgency: 'We have spoken of gods and demigods, of adepts and Benevolent Immortals.

From this I see that you already have a deep understanding of these things. But I can tell you more. Since the beginning time of the Great Chaos, the gods have been lifted up and cast down in succession. They have struggled against each other, and against the minions of the Lie.

The Titans, who were the elder gods, were cast down by the Olympian gods. They, in their turn, will become enfeebled. None will trust and worship them. They will be defeated and replaced by younger deities or, if we fail, they may be superseded by the malign agents of the Lie.' He was silent for a while, but when he continued his voice was firmer: 'This rise and fall of divine dynasties is part of the natural and immutable body

n

of laws that emerged to bring order to the Great Chaos. Those laws govern the cosmos. They order the ebb and flood of the tides. They command the succession of day and night. They order and control the wind and the storm, the volcanoes and the tidal waves, the rise and fall of empires, and the progression of days and nights. The gods are only the servants of the Truth. In the end there remain only the Truth and the Lie.' Demeter turned suddenly and glanced behind him, his expression melancholy, but resigned. 'Do you feel it, Taita? Do you hear it?'

Taita exerted all his powers, and at last he heard a faint rustling in the air around them, like the wings of vultures settling to a carrion feast.

He nodded. He was too moved to speak. The sense of great evil almost overwhelmed him. He had to exert all his strength to fight it back.

'She is here with us already.' Demeter's voice sank lower, became laboured and breathless, as though his lungs were crushed by the weight of a baleful presence. 'Can you smell her?' he asked.

Taita flared his nostrils, and caught the faint reek of corruption and decay, disease and rotting flesh, the effluvium of plague and the contents of ruptured bowels. 'I sense it and smell it,' he answered.

'We are in danger,' said Demeter. He reached towards Taita. 'Join hands!' he ordered. 'We must unite our power to resist her.'

As their fingers touched an intense blue spark flashed between them.

Taita resist the impulse to jerk away his hand and break the contact.

Instead he seized Demeter's hands and held them firmly. Strength flowed back and forth between them. Gradually the malign presence receded, and they could breathe freely again.

'It was inevitable,' said Demeter, with resignation. 'She has been searching for me these past centuries, ever since I escaped from her web of spells and charms. But now that you and I have come together we have created such an upheaval of psychic energy that she has been able to detect it, even at immense distance, just as a great shark can detect a shoal of sardines long before it has sight of them.' He looked sorrowfully at Taita, still holding his hands. 'She knows of you now, Taita, through me, and if not through me, she would have discovered you by some other means. The scent you leave on the wind of the cosmos is strong, and she is the ultimate predator.'

'You say “she”? Who is this female?'

'She calls herself Eos.'

'I have heard that name. A woman named Eos visited the temple of Saraswati more than fifty generations ago.'

'It is the same woman.'

'Eos is the ancient goddess of the dawn, sister of Helius, the sun,'