she whispered, 'the side of the Truth.' She spread the lids wide. 'Hold hard, Meren!'

Meren grunted in acknowledgement and tightened his grip until it was as unyielding as a ring of bronze about his master. Samana slipped the point of the spoon under his upper eyelid and, with a firm, sure movement, eased it down behind the eyeball. Then, gently, she scooped the eye out of its socket. She let it dangle, like an egg, on to Taita's cheek, suspended on the rope of the optic nerve. The empty socket was a deep pink cave, glistening with tears. Samana handed the silver spoon to Tansid, who laid it aside and selected one of the bamboo needles. She held the point in the flame of the brazier until it scorched and hardened.

It was still smoking as she handed it to Samana. With the needle in her right hand Samana lowered her head until she was staring into Taita's empty eye socket. She judged the position and angle of the optic pathway as it entered the skull.

Taita's eyelids twitched and shuddered under her fingers, blinking uncontrollably. Samana ignored them. Slowly she introduced the needle into the eye cavity until the point touched the opening of the pathway.

She increased the pressure until suddenly the needle pierced the membrane and slid in alongside the nerve cord without damaging it.

There was almost no resistance to its passage. Deeper and deeper it glided. When it was almost a finger's length into the frontal lobe of the brain Samana sensed rather than felt the light check as the point touched the bundle of nerve fibres from both eyes where they crossed at the optic chiasm. The bamboo point was at the portal. The next move had to be precisely executed. Although her expression remained serene, a light film of perspiration shone on Samana's unblemished skin, and her eyes narrowed. She tensed and made the final thrust. There was no reaction from Taita. She knew she had missed the minute target. She drew back the needle a fraction, realigned it, then drove it in again to the same depth, but this time she aimed a little higher.

Taita shuddered and sighed softly. Then he relaxed as he fell into oblivion. Meren had been warned to expect this, and he cupped one strong hand under Taita's chin to prevent the beloved silver head from dropping forward. Samana withdrew the needle from the eye socket as carefully as she had driven it deep. She leaned forward to examine the puncture in the lining at the back of the eye. There was no weep of blood. Before her eyes the mouth of the tiny wound closed spontaneously. Samana made a humming sound of approbation. Then she used the spoon to ease the dangling eye back into the socket. Taita's eyelids blinked rapidly as it reseated itself. Samana reached for the linen bandage, which Tansid had soaked in a healing salve and laid ready on the marble table, then bound it around Taita's head, covering both of his eyes, and knotted it securely.

'As quickly as you are able, Meren, carry him back to his own chamber before he comes to his senses.'

Meren lifted him as though he were a sleeping infant and held his head against his sturdy shoulder. He ran with Taita back to the temple and carried him up to his room. Samana and Tansid followed them.

When the two women arrived, Tansid went to the hearth, where she had left a kettle warming. She poured a bowl of the herbal infusion and brought it to Samana.

'Lift his head!' Samana ordered, and held the bowl to Taita's lips, dribbling the liquid into his mouth and massaging his throat to induce him to swallow. She made him take the contents of the bowl.

They did not have to wait long. Taita stiffened and reached up to feel the bandage that blindfolded him. His hand began to shake as though pulsied. His teeth chattered, then he ground them together. The muscle in the point of his jaws bulged and Meren was terrified that he might hire off his tongue. With his thumbs he tried to prise the magus's jaws

apart, but suddenly Taita's mouth flew open of its own accord and he shrieked, every muscle in his body knotted hard as cured teak. Spasm after spasm racked him. He screamed in terror and moaned with despair, then burst into gales of maniacal laughter. Just as suddenly he began to weep as though his heart was breaking. Then he screamed again and his back arched until his head touched his heels. Even Meren could not hold the frail, ancient body, which was now endowed with demonic strength.

'What possesses him?' Meren pleaded with Samana. 'Make him stop before he kills himself.'

'His Inner Eye is wide open. He has not yet learnt to control it. Images so terrible as to drive any ordinary man insane are flooding through it and overwhelming his mind. He is enduring all the suffering of mankind.'

Samana, too, was panting as she tried to make Taita swallow another mouthful of the bitter drug. Taita spewed it at the ceiling of the chamber.

'This was the frenzy that killed Wotad, the northman,' Samana told Tansid. 'The images swelled his brain like an overfilled bladder of boiling oil until it could contain no more and burst asunder.' She held Taita's hands to stop him clawing at the bandage over his eyes. 'The magus is experiencing the grief of every widow and of every bereaved mother who has ever watched her firstborn die. He shares the suffering of every man or woman who was ever maimed, tortured or ravaged by disease. His soul is sickened by the cruelty of every tyrant, by the wickedness of the Lie.

He is burning in the flames of sacked cities, and dying on a thousand battlefields with the vanquished. He feels the despair of every lost soul who ever lived. He is looking into the depths of hell.'

'It will kill him!' Meren was in anguish almost as intense as Taita's.

'Unless he learns to control the Inner Eye, yes, it may indeed kill him.

Hold him, do not let him harm himself.' Taita's head was rolling so violently from side to side that his skull thumped against the stone wall beside his bed.

Samana began to chant an invocation, in a high quavering voice that was not her own, in a language that Meren had never heard before. But the chanting had little effect.

Meren cradled Taita's head in his arms. Samana and Tansid wedged themselves on each side of him, cushioning him with their bodies, to prevent him harming himself in his wild struggles. Tansid blew perfumed breath into his gaping mouth. 'Taita!' she called. 'Come back! Come back to us!'

'He cannot hear you,' Samana told her. She leant closer and cupped her hands round Taita's right ear: the ear of Truth. She whispered to him soothingly in the language of her chant. Meren recognized its inflections: although he could not understand the meaning, he had heard Taita use it when he conversed with other magi. It was their secret language, which they called the Tenmass.

Taita quietened and cocked his head to one side as though he was listening to Samana. Her voice sank lower but became more urgent.

Taita murmured a reply. Meren realized that she was giving him instructions, helping him to shutter the Inner Eye, to filter out the destructive images and sounds, to understand what he was experiencing and to ride the torrents of emotion that were battering him.

They all stayed with him for the rest of that day and through the long night that followed. By dawn Meren was exhausted, and collapsed into sleep. The women did not attempt to rouse him, but let him rest. His body had been tempered by combat and hard physical endeavour, but he could not match their spiritual stamina. Beside them, he was a child.

Samana and Tansid stayed close to Taita. Sometimes he seemed to sleep. At others he was restless, drifting in and out of delirium. Behind the blindfold he seemed unable to separate fantasy from reality. Once he sat up and hugged Tansid to him with savage strength. 'Lostris!' he cried.

'You have returned as you promised you would. Oh, Isis and Horus, I have waited for you. I have hungered and thirsted for you all these long years. Do not leave me again.'