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Berthe was sitting with her legs curled up. She laid her head on one knee. "He is ascetic, like Pahid. They celebrate all that they can feel by suffering. But Pahid's suffering is for the gods of justice. He gives them gifts of feeling."

"Whereas Akiva?"

"His gods are not just."

Now they were talking like friends. "He told us the taxes shouldn't be taken by force," Clark reasoned.

Berthe twisted a lock of hair. "That may be, but his gods are not always so kind. And they are not just."

"You said the other day that Pahid burned one of your old friends. What kind of justice is that?"

Berthe hissed involuntarily, but she said, "Rain hurts you sometimes."

Clark almost said, "So does being poked in the eye, but that doesn't make it good." He restrained himself, though, thinking, the first time I met her, I had shot her horse and she was trying to kill me with a spear. We can't expect to agree on everything.

She got up and went to read the alphabet banner at the front of the room. Clark watched. She leaned against the wall, looking at him. "Both Pahid and I are devilspawns," she said, wondering as she spoke at this effect of love, that she who was so used to craft and suspicion should suddenly feel so lonely that she confided the lethal secret to someone she barely knew. She was certain that he, a fellow lover, would not betray her.

In fact, he didn't even understand her. She had to explain in embarrassingly clear language about the black urine and what it meant, how her husband had disowned her when he saw it in Neshar, and how her mother concealed it when she, Berthe, was small.

[~*-]

Clark could scarcely believe what she told him. To emerge so calm and so honest--and she must be both, to live here among enemies, her life at stake if they decided not to trust her, and speak as plain as she had just done to him--from a life of such concealment was an astounding triumph. The slightest suspicion would have meant exposure for her, and her red hair would have signalled it like a flag. No one, once suspecting, would have said anything but, "Of course." Only her manner, her honest and relentless calm prevented it. Yet she had never become cynical, solitary, or even especially discreet. "Light from darkness," he quoted after he had thought for a while. "Fruited stone."

Then he was professional, and became excited. He got a urine sample from Berthe and she got him one from Neshar while he collected controls from Paula and Fuego and some Verloringers who were used to his odd requests. Their samples all contained metabolites of Ecclesiam; Berthe's and Neshar's did not. Berthe's and Neshar's contained whole Ecclesiam, un-metabolized. It wasn't really black, only darker than usual, but Berthe told him that in town it turned the color of night.

"Well-water burns us," she explained. "But I think in some way we are like children, and that must be why I learned the church language, and learned to read when the age for learning was past. Some women have children when the time is past. I think what happens in their wombs happens to us also. Devilspawns are famous for being clever."

That was why Neshar had cried and shouted, "Don't give me away!" when Berthe said she could read. Clark stood at the window, watching the rain puddle on earth that could no longer receive it.

He began telling everyone to drink stream water instead of well water, and found an enthusiastic audience in the herbalists who had been wandering into the camp by twos and threes since Berthe's arrival. Women who knew nothing about it seized upon stream water as an answer to everything from earthquake to menstrual cramps. They went around warning each other that there was more to these false blessings than met the eye and other evil practices were soon to be uncovered.

The camp's location was entirely public now, and people came from as far away as the Plains city to see the looms and the big spinning wheels the carpenters had made after Paula's model, to sit by Akiva and hear Tiyar preach about liberty and the growth of a people, and to eat the same food that many of them had refused to accept from the rafting parties that brought the tax offerings unexpectedly back to their villages. Ma Zauber herself showed up and stayed for two days.

Paula knew it was liable to happen. She tried to prepare for it, but she could not overcome the nausea that attacked her when she came into the dining hall on a certain evening and saw Pahid.

He was dressed in a peasant's tunic, the nails of his fingers and toes black from whatever new self-abuse he had devised to gratify his passion. Because of her weakness, Paula had to make two entrances, and each time his gaze met her straight on, though she stood and he sat, and he seemed to fill the whole room. Her Puro appeared in her hand. She put it away.

"Either keep your distance or step close," Tiyar was always saying. She moved in close, and sat down beside Pahid. She could feel the chill of his wet clothing, she was so close.

"They say travelers entering the Middle Plains in spring think they have died in the mounatins and come to Ayekar," he said.

That was his greeting. She tried not to hear it, but her heart was beating fast. Someone nearby used a knife to cut bread. She could have reached out and touched it.

Fuego settled an argument and took a seat beside her. "What's the matter?" he asked in Eyimalian.

Pahid said quietly, "Whether or not I come alone, it can do you no good to name me."

That's obvious, she thought. She had to look at him, however sharply her insides protested, and take a bite of food after answering Fuego, "Nothing." It felt like sand.

"They say it will be ruined now," Pahid went on.

Paula did not try to speak. Clark arrived. Akiva arrived. They sat opposite her. Pahid repeated his last comment. She had to say something.

"What will be ruined?"

Pahid had been looking at Fuego. Now Tiyar joined them, and Pahid studied him. Recognition? Had he seen someone like that? "Some say it will come by drought, others by flood. The divine tribute has been stolen. Some say Pahid will collect again. Hunger must follow. People will starve because of those who are now eating."

Fuego said, "Don't worry about that. Pahid won't collect. He may try, but he can't do it."

Pahid looked him over again, and for the first time put something in his mouth. He swallowed with obvious difficulty, then said, "Perhaps he won't. I hear he says the Plains will be destroyed not by him, but by the Temple's enemies. They will work the retribution for their own crimes, he says."

"What does he mean?" Paula asked.

"He means they have learned to plunder."

Clark and Tiyar looked up from their food. In this camp, plunder was a fighting word, seldom used.

Fuego snorted. "He's pretty good at that himself," he said. Paula could have applauded.

Pahid ignored him. "They say he expects to win their souls. They may be ghosts, may have lived before the days of the Temple, and thier bodies may be magic as people say. But the heart needs no resurrection. When they have become agents of retribution, they will be tortured by pity."~*~

Paula stared at Clark. He was pressing back the cuticles of one hand with the fingers of the other, probably wondering how this unpleasant old man had come to sit with them. She imagined that he looked angry, but then she herself was so irritated that when she noticed Krup in the doorway, watching her as always with such smug enjoyment, she wanted to throw something at him. She actually reached for the water jar. He went out. Berthe came in, passing him, and sat down quietly on the other side of Pahid.

Akiva said, "Pahid lacks understanding. He hardens his body to endure the rigors of paradise."

"And you?" Pahid retorted instantly. "For what do you suffer?"

Akiva smiled. "I want to join earth, which no one can bear doing."

Some of them ate during the little silence that followed. Paula remembered that Clark and Tiyar had once gone to watch Pahid dance at a conjunction of the moons, and she wondered if Clark did not begin to remember this man. But that had been long ago, and he was in costume then.

Pahid was first to speak again. "What is the significance of the red cord?" he asked Berthe.

"It is a sign of our allegiance to one another as healers."

"And the Temple?"

"If the Temple works with us, yes. If not, then not."

This was the decision. They all stared at her.

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

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