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must be wrong.” Hederick sat bolt upright and reached for
     the priest's sleeve. “Is this a trial of my faith? You're testing me, aren't you?”
     Hederick gazed hopefully at Tarscenian. It would be just like the priest to see how angry
     he could make Hederick, to measure his devotion to the Seekers. Hederick waited for
     Tarscenian to grin and slap him on the back. But the priest only drained the rest of his
     mug. “Tarscenian?” “Leave me!” The priest refilled his mug, splashing mead on the rug.
     Tarscenian ignored the stain, although Seeker law clearly declared that one should
     maintain discipline in one's surroundings as strictly as in one's thoughts and emotions.
     “The Praxis advises caution in the use of spirits,” Hederick remonstrated. “That's for
     those of lesser standing,” Tarscenian snapped. “The Praxis also orders us not to wear
     certain types of wool in certain seasons, which strikes me as something the New Gods, if
     they ever existed, shouldn't be wasting their precious time worrying about.” “If the New
     Gods existed?” Hederick's heart pounded until he thought he'd expire on the spot.
     Tarscenian drained the mug nonchalantly. "Take the damned parchment and go elsewhere to
     study
    it, lad. Your yammering is giving me a headache of ogrelike proportions." He limped to a
     chair and slumped into it, his back to Hederick, facing the wall. Feeling betrayed and
     hurt, Hederick blindly did as ordered. He spent the rest of the day behind the paddock,
     huddled over the parchment. He examined each word, seeking holy guidance, wanting any
     error to be his, not Tarscenian's. So deeply was he absorbed in his studies, he even
     ignored the call to supper.
    Hederick found the passage about the wearing of wool, and rejoiced that the New Gods cared
     about each small detail of their devotees' lives. He reviewed the parts about
     glorification of the body over the mind, and concluded that Frideline and Perenand most of
     the occupants of Garlundhad committed far more sins than he'd previously thought. He had
     great work before him.
    Hederick probed the centuries-old, hand-lettered words of the Praxis until they swam
     before his eyes. Finally, just as the setting sun withdrew the last bit of light, he found
     a passage that both inspired and frightened him. Allow not a caster of spells to live, the
     Praxis read. Magic corrupts and infects. Magic derives from the old, betrayer gods. Magic
     defiles even the most faithful, if suffered to continue. Magic, and belief in its use, is
     evil. Those who seek the New Gods have no need for magic.
    Tarscenian had been different since Ancilla had arrived, the boy thought as he remembered
     the priest's heavy drinking and irreverent words. Had Hederick's sister enchanted him from
     the very first? Hadn't she lured the priest, that first day, into using spellcasting, in
     the show of the dragon and human figurines? And didn't the witch hover like a rapacious
     bird within sight of Garlund even now? She'd spent ten years studying the arts of magic,
     ten years that should have been spent caring for him! As though the thought came directly
     from Omalthea, Hederick suddenly knew where Tarscenian was spending his nights. Ancilla
     had tainted the priest. That meant Hederick was now the only true believer in a town of
     sinners. But what to do? Hederick vowed to pray until his gods sent him a sign of what
     course to take next. And they did. A wondrous, holy, terrible sign.
    *****
    It was past midnight in Garlund. For hours Hederick had been secreted in the grass on the
     prairie west of the village, praying to the New Gods and staring at the red moon until he
     could see it with his eyes closed. At first he'd been conscious of every night whisper of
     the greenery around him. Prairie spiders, while only the size of his fist, built webs so
     strong and sticky that creatures as large as a dwarf had little chance of