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crawled back to the shelter of the woods. Instantly, the pain passed. I stood bent over under one great tree, hands on my thighs as I fought for breath and for control of my galloping heart. A passing breeze rattled the leaves over my head. A whisper seemed to speak my name and to say, "You should not stay here...."
    I was alone but stood in a landscape where any tree might hide a spirit. "I must go on," I said aloud.
    "Fool...."
    Delicately, two branches dipped as though to shelter me. I looked up into the shifting play of light through the golden-green leaves. "What lies beyond those temple doors? What have you seen?"
    "Death..."
    As the dryad whispered to me, I could feel the whole tree shiver with something that was not the breeze. What could frighten a tree-spirit so much?
    Looking about me, I saw that the grass stopped growing right at the point where I'd felt the scourging hatred rip at my body and mind. It was as if a line had been drawn with acid. What could hate even the grass?
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    This time, teeth gritted, I ran straight toward the temple doors, feeling as though I dodged a flight of arrows. I was doing well, head up and lungs working, until I tripped and landed sprawling in the dirt.
    The hatred flattened me at once as if a boulder had tumbled off a cliff, crushing me to the earth. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth and began to swell. The swelling spread to my throat, cutting off my air. I felt a rope tightening, though there was nothing there. I forced my hand down lest I strangle myself.
    I could not go back; my pride would not let me flee a second time. I had either to go on or to die here in the dirt like an exhausted animal. I fought with the part of me that wanted to turn back, ordering it to keep faith as though it were a cowardly soldier deserting in the heat of conflict. I had faced men and monsters; a mere feeling had no power over me. I would not be so constrained.
    I got painfully onto one knee, straightened my legs, and rose up, feeling the implacable hatred burning on my skin as though I passed through an acid-cloud from the heart of a volcano. In a crouch, my breath coming short, tears and sweat mingling, I pressed on slowly, step by dragging step. The malice seemed to increase with each strike of my boot until I felt as though I were pushing a huge rock before me. A moment's inattention and it would roll back to crush me into paste.
    I looked up to find my foot on the first white marble step of the temple entrance. I drew my first full breath since leaving the woods. The horrible malignity that had tortured me had ebbed. I could not tell if it was gone or merely withdrawn for the moment.
    I laid one hand against the temple door and the other on my sword.
    Inside, all was dark and cool. My bursting lungs eased, though a faint scent of rot seemed carried on a chilling breeze over the floors. Tall columns lost their capitals in the darkness of the timbered roof. A lamp burned in the peristyle, its many-paneled red glass sides doing nothing to illuminate the space. A basin of water stood to one side. I staggered to it, wishing to test whether my throat really had grown closed. Perhaps it was just the red light, but it looked as if the basin were filled with blood.
    I decided I wasn’t that thirsty, though a moment before I would have sold my mother for a drink.
    Directly in my ear, a woman laughed softly. I turned, sword out. No one was there, though I had distinctly felt breath tickling my skin.
    Anger strengthened me. No matter how sick I felt, I wasn’t about to let invisible women laugh at me.
    I could see the altar now, the massive statue of the goddess gleaming twenty feet tall, her face far above the reach of mortal hands. Only prayers could reach her. Floating veils of smoke obscured her face, thickening into blankets exactly wherever I wanted to look. There seemed to be something not quite right about the goddess, especially the shape of her head.
    I slashed