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away, and there were tears in his eyes. “Do you know how many years we have wasted? How long we have needlessly hidden?”
    “Yes.” I swallowed. “Hanoch ...”
    Hanoch shook his head. “Adonai’s mercy is revealed to us, yet I ... I have set myself against His will because of you,” he said. “I do not understand.”
    To that, I had no answer, or none he would hear. “I am sorry.”
    After a moment he rose, issuing a rigid bow. His bronze armor gleamed softly in Yevuneh’s lamplit kitchen. “May your journey be swift and your gods protect you,” he said tonelessly. “You spoke the truth, lady. I will be glad to see you go.”
    “Name of Elua!” Joscelin muttered when he had left. “If that was an apology, it was sorely lacking.”
    “No.” Remembering the pattern I had seen in the temple, I knew of a surety that if Hanoch had not sought to prevent us, if I had not been so filled with fear on Imriel’s behalf, that I would never have found the place within myself where the self was not. Even in their mercy, gods can be cruel. Hanoch had done what he believed right; no more, no less. “Ah, poor man! He has cause to be bitter.”
    “I’d spare him more sympathy if I’d not seen his sword at your throat,” Joscelin said dryly, taking a seat at the table. “But he’s right about one thing. It’s time we were gone.”
    Thus passed our final days in Tisaar, the city beside the Lake of Tears in fabled Saba. On the morrow, the Council of Women gathered at the gates of the city to bid us farewell. Gifts of parting were exchanged on both sides and Yevuneh gathered Imriel in one last embrace, weeping openly. He returned her embrace without fear, pressing his cheek against hers, and despite the sorrow of parting, I was gladdened to see it.
    Then it was done, and we turned our faces toward home. We passed through the gate, and in a short time, the city of Tisaar lay behind us. If not for the incessant thunder in my head, our departure was little changed from our arrival, save that it was Eshkol ben Avidan and a company of men who escorted us to the Great Falls, and they were as pleasant as Hanoch had been surly. It seemed a miracle that we were all together, and no lives had been lost.
    For my part, I was struggling still to learn to live with the Name of God. Betimes it was quiescent, a slumbering seed lodged in my brain, and I could nearly forget I carried it. And then something would set it off-the fecund odor of soil, a bird on the wing, or the Falls; Blessed Elua, the Falls. And then it would fill me like the sound of trumpets and I would be lost in reverie, staring, witnessing life as if it were created anew on the instant, over and over. When we reached the Great Falls, I stood on the verge of the opposite cliff gazing down into the roaring, mist-wreathed abyss for ages, watching tons of water moving without cease, seeing the Name written in patterns on the boiling foam.
    “Phèdre.”
    It was Imriel who drew me back, and I saw in his twilight-blue eyes that he was afraid. And then I tried harder to keep the Name from filling me wholly, but it was not easy.
    A half-day’s ride past the Falls, we said farewell to Eshkol and his men. He wept upon leaving us, too. I watched the tears fill his eyes and overflow his lower lids, trickling like drops of rain on his mahogany cheeks, whispering the Name of God in the path they traced. “You have given me a dream,” he said. “I am not sure of what, but it is a dream . I never had one before.”
    “You will know,” I said, certain. It was written in the geometry of his bones, the sharp jut of his cheeks and his eloquent hands. It sounded in his voice, and the passion that threaded it. “Whatever Saba is to become, you will help shape it with courage and wisdom.”
    “I pray it is so,” he said, bowing. “Adonai guide you.”
    “And you,” I said, watching them go. “And you.”
    Mile by slow mile, we began retracing our steps.
    It took me sometimes in the highlands, atop the vast mountain peaks where the green carpet of forest spread below us. I watched hawks and buzzards circling over the valleys and grew dizzy at their grace, the gyres etched by their sharp-tilting wings. If the Jebeans had thought I was god-touched before, they were sure of it now; half-mad and blessed with it, but apt to endanger myself. I wasn’t, I don’t think. I cannot be sure. Semira had spoken truly; it was a mighty thing to bear.
    The Yeshuite mystic Eleazar