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"Is he the they that collected the taxes in spring, or the they that made the curse? Never mind. You gang will believe anything. You're falling right into their trap. Do you know what Pahid most wanted from me? He wanted me to stop thinking." Paula began to recount what had happened to her. Clark listened with his head bowed to the glaring sun. When they passed a ditch, the reflection from the puddles struck him full force. "Pahid tried to drive me out of my mind," she concluded. "It's as simple as that."

"And did he--was he succeeding?"

She hesitated before answering, "No."

The wagons had been taken off the road by the time they reached the marshes, and rain had washed away the blood. A few dozen bales of ugewa still lay more or less neatly stacked, their bottoms rotting. Berthe stopped to look, arms folded, at their long shadows on the road. "Will you permit us to send these to our temple?" she asked.

Akiva said, "Yes."

She nudged her horse onward. After a moment she added, "You tried to bring back some of the grain to the villages, and the farmers refused it."

"For fear of Pahid, in gratitude to us, or for lack of understanding," Akiva replied. She was drawing him into argument, but he felt he could let no comment pass. By now they were almost in darkness and could see nothing but one another.

"Fear of Pahid and lack of understanding? That describes you, not us. I know Pahid is nothing, and without the daily intercession of Hath he would vanish. And that without the daily intercession of the Temple our beautiful goddess-world would turn desert and kill us."

That was the Itscriyites' song, he thought. Babyface, babyface, make us cry. Your papa set you free and your mama let you die. Pahid's strength is rooted in the hidden abcesses where his warriors remain children. Since Berthe remained silent, Akiva said, "Gods, not priests, send weather."

"Gods caused the drought at Itscriye, but Pahid himself brought them rain. Or do you think you brought it?"

"No." He looked up at her and she down at him, their faces hard and pale. "I met the Lir Temple priests on the road through Itscriye. They named the day when it would begin to rain."

"They piled skulls around Fea's altar."

The two of them continued to look at one another. There was nothing else for either of them to look at. Neshar hid his face, the others of the group were off in the mist and darkness, and the moons had not yet risen.

"That is not Fea," Akiva said. "Berthe, isn't it better to defy the Temple, and damn ourselves if need be, than to serve such horrible gods?"

Lights bobbed up from the marsh. They were torches. Akiva muttered, "It was like this when the old man died. Do you remember Shurat, the folkpriest before me in Nichayu?"

"He was greater than Pahid. Pahid needs armies and horses to win people," Berthe said. "Shurat needed nothing at all. They said you killed Shurat, but I forgave you. Did you kill him?"

Akiva shook his head. He began to stroke the horse's neck, smoothing its mane and brushing bits of grass out of the hair. "It was a night like this. They came with torches. He ran toward the lights--he liked fire ever after he went out of his mind. I couldn't have it in the house because he tried to play with it. He ran toward the lights. Every morning they came throwing stones. They took everything he had touched and they burned it. I thought they were coming to burn him. He ran toward the lights, I caught him and picked him up and carried him to the water to hide. I was under him, and I lived, but he didn't understand. He breathed water. I know it isn't true, but I thought if I kept him there long enough the water would soak him and he wouldn't burn. I knelt in the stream with him on my back and prayed Hath to save us with his net and knife. They say they were only coming to look for him because they thought he was lost."

"Because when they found you, he was already dead. But they had torches, and if not for you, they would have burned him alive."

He took her hand, looking up at the pale face turned down to him. "Do you think so, Berthe?"

"Yes."

"But they might have relented. When the fire came up and they heard him crying, they might have relented."

"Do you think so? Is this Father Akiva who sees as Verloring, the one who dwells in the heart? No. I have seen it. Pahid--sometimes a group of soldiers drags someone into the square and the fire is built and their eyes turn blank. Only Pahid shows pity, only he can stand to believe the burning thing is a human being."

"What do the others do?"

"They watch, but their eyes are blank, and no one ever relents."

Akiva walked toward the bobbing lights. They seemed low to the ground, well below the roadway. At times they shone through the heavy brush as though they were at the surface of the water. They were in boats, Fuego and Tiyar at the head in a canoe poled by Krup. Lamps set in the gunwhale threw their shadows upward so their hair seemed to stretch out to the stars. Behind Akiva, Clark used his light knife as a beacon. Seeing it, Tiyar and Fuego began to paddle.

Paula ran down to the water. Fuego hugged her and they yelled each other's names. "Still living!" Fuego said in Eyimalian, and she answered, "Still living."

Tiyar waited until they were through before he stepped out of the boat and embraced Paula, saying. "People told me you sang my song as they dragged you away."

"You lent me strength," she said. They pressed close together. It was like a farewell. Tiyar's gaze fell on Clark. His grip tightened and then he let her go.

Eventually everyone bundled into the boats. They rowed through the marsh, torchlight real and reflected glaring in pitch blackness, the two sometimes meeting with a hiss amid stumbling and laughter. Paula could scarcely keep herself awake. When they came to the little cove where three huts stood over the water, she had to be wakened to stagger indoors and fall asleep on a soft mound in one corner.

It was straw, and the smell made her dream of Pahid. He spoke in an ominous gurgle. All she could make out was, "Sevit." At that, she woke. Unable to get back to sleep, she sat in the doorway.

Akiva stood shoulder-deep in the water, arms raised, with big Middle Plains fireflies in the palms of both hands. All looked peaceful. His cupped hands did not stir when the fireflies stopped shining and flew away. One of the students had told her, "The secret of standing with him is not to wait." No one stood with him tonight, waiting or unwaiting. She watched for a long time, then went back in.

Hammering and splitting and things splashing into the water woke her the next morning. People shouted, "Let 'er rip!" and "Make way!" Carts went creaking by, were called back, loaded and unloaded and sometimes bumped into each other. It was like the disaster sites she had visited with her father when the rebuilding got into full swing and people who had done next to nothing all their lives suddenly found themselves treasured as survivors.

The Itscriyites were making a city. Tiyar had told them to form groups of about nine, and now the committees were building their houses, some in the marsh and some on the hillsides. There was an infirmary, where some teenagers who had hurt themselves in the construction glumly weaved mats under the supervision of an aged Verloringer. There was a schoolhouse down in the swamp, built on a raft and moored to some trees. Each team of nine was to have a reader, a weaver, a carpenter, and a healer, all able to fight, but so far weavers and fighters abounded, and only children could read. An herbalist found among the Verloringers and a few Itscriyites who used to be handy with wood composed the school's faculty. Berthe had presented Clark with an alphabet scroll, which now hung at the front of the room like a flag.

Up in the hills, Paula and Berthe walked along rows being cleared for interplanting vegetables, potatoes and, to their surprise, flax. The Itscriyites had gotten wind of the new way to spin.

The plan was for people to travel by boat as far as the rivers would take them, selling linen and tools, and somehow or other they would settle in villages everywhere to teach and heal and weave and build as they had learned, and to undermine the Temple. Villages would not revolt but secede. This meant they would stay out of the temples, to which most people didn't go anyway, and they would stop paying taxes. It would become unnecessary to devote fields to ugewa, the flower crop the Lir Temple demanded but that had no use except to make Love's Arrow and Ecclesiam purpuream. Those lands would immediately become common, and village councils would decide how to use them. Instead of tribute grain, they would grow potatoes and flax or cotton or graze animals, so when the tax collectors came there would be noghing to collect. The cities would of course remain as centers of learning and trade, for the villages would soon begin to specialize in whatever grew there best, and artisans must naturally arise--

"But how long will they remember this nice plan when they're dispersed among hostile people like so many puffs of smoke?" Paula interrupted. Berthe looked at her in surprise; she must have used another picked-up expression. "Don't say too much," Paula added, in Eyimalian.

Tiyar did not answer her warning, but he turned off the path that would have led them to the granaries and they went instead to a clearing by the water where boats were being constructed.

No one on Paffir Haretz used boats except fishermen, the people who somehow ended up without any land to farm. People ate fish only when there was nothing else, and blamed it, in various regions, for causing impotence and excessive sex drive. Rivers were the realm of ghosts. Nobody could swim. Berthe looked around the little boatyard with acute interest and asked many questions, but she did not believe for a minute that these people were making boats. When she wrote to Pahid, she said nothing of the plan.

Fuego showed them the wreck that had begun as the Verloringers' dwelling. Though many Verloringers came from Itscriye and even knew some of the refugees, they kept separate. They had left off calling the Itscriyites "rat-eaters," but substituted "loonies." When members of the two groups met, they stared into one another's eyes, afraid to look away. Each day the Verloringers became more religious and more afraid. They had decided to build themselves a big hall for sleeping and prayer so they could stay together, but when its roof collapsed Fuego persuaded them to settle for a cluster of huts.

The Verloringers' main job was to take care of the food. Itscriyites couldn't be trusted with it. They took huge servings, gorged to nausea, refused to share, stole food and hid it in the marsh where it rotted. Tiyar and Fuego had moved to stores to semi-secret locations and established what they called a dining committee to prepare and serve meals in the floating schoolhouse. Their cooking was poor, but the allocation of food was perfect. Everyone got exactly the same sized piece of bread, dollop of wheat or corn, mug of broth and handful of greens, all carefully weighed by officious youngsters from both camps. Tiyar made a speech at each meal, while Fuego quietly and persistently kept the peace. His main problem was that the water jars had to be shared among groups of ten. Red-faced Itscriyites tried to gulp it all down, while excited men and women hissed abuse, elbowed them and threw pebbles. Fuego was ever on his feet, stopping punches, catching missiles, shushing indignation, saying over and over again, "It's only water." Scarcely had Tiyar finished lecturing about harmony and discipline when a black-eyed Itscriyite named Pimel, or primrose, cried "Seconds!" and all the Itscriyites ran to be served. Again each got a measured dollop, and there was more quarreling, bartering and cramming of food into pockets and bags. Fuego sat down beside Berthe. After they had exchanged compliments to the tasteless mash, he said, "Thank you for returning Paula to us."

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CONTINUE.....................

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