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withered lids. A third time Promeneia said, “The Mother and the Son. Her destiny is with them.”
    Nikandra laid her hand on Promeneia’s brow. It was cool; not quite as cold as death, but life was ebbing from it. “I have to sleep,” Nikandra said—not an answer exactly; more of an explanation.
    Promeneia lay silent, breathing shallowly. Nikandra laid a blessing on her and murmured a scrap of a charm.
    Maybe it was useless; maybe not. The powers of earth were listening. They might choose to honor the invocation.
    Nikandra had forsworn hedge-magic and the workings of common witches when she swore herself to the temple. There was darkness in that path, and loss of will and discipline—all things she had abjured to follow the Mother’s path. She was no wild-eyed witch of Thessaly, all filthy rags and matted hair, flying like a bat against the moon.
    But she had the magic. The power was in her, if she chose to acknowledge it.
    It was remarkably easy to find that way of thinking again, to remember the words and the rituals, the herbs and the smokes and the bones that rattled as if in mockery of the oracle in the Mother’s tree.
    None of them had anything to do with a dying priestess or a child with more power than any mortal should have had, and no useful awareness of that power.
    Nikandra had meant to protect them all, and Polyxena not least. She should have known that such protection was never a wise thing.
    Too late now to undo what she had done. At best she could hope to remedy it, and pray the remedy did not simply make matters worse.
    Exhaustion dulled her wits and clouded her judgment. She shook from her head the memory of love charms and petty curses, and invoked the Mother’s grace on Promeneia.
    The air seemed a little lighter for it. The rattle of breath was the slightest bit steadier. Nikandra did not dare to hope for a miracle—miracles were for men’s gods, gaudy things that they were. But her despair was somewhat less than it had been before.
    *   *   *
    The Mother and the Son. The words followed Nikandra from sleep into waking. They were persistently, preternaturally obscure. It was not that she knew too little; she knew too much. There were half a hundred places and things to which one could attach that meaning, and she could not choose among them.
    Nikandra was not one to wallow in remorse for doing what had to be done. She could force her way past this confusion of the spirit.
    Here in Dodona, the Mother ruled with Her consort, whom the men did their best to transform into the king of gods. In other parts of the world, She shared the mysteries with Her son, the first and most beloved of Her creation.
    Those rites were wilder than the ones Nikandra celebrated. They struck closer to the body’s passions. Nikandra would not say she disapproved of them, but they were not the rite she was born for.
    Polyxena had that bent of spirit, the wildness that these gentler observances could not satisfy. There was real danger in this: that in the wine and the singing and the ecstatic dances, not only she might find the way to her power; others would find it as well.
    That was the danger. That was the reason Nikandra had hidden her for so long, even from herself. Nikandra had to pray that when Polyxena’s body awakened, it buried the magic deeper, until there was nothing left to find.
    Nikandra left the priestesses’ house in the full light of morning, passing by the pilgrims who had waited in vain for four days while the priestesses tended their eldest sister. They reached out, calling after her. Their hands plucked at her skirts.
    They called down prayers on Promeneia, offering blessings and wishing her well. Nikandra would not have paused for beggars, but for blessings she would be less than gracious if she pushed on past. She had to stop, answer their crowding questions and reassure them as best she could.
    That was not very well, but they were