Ritual Magic

toward madness, and we looked at those who had not renounced godhead. We watched them, and we saw that they were insane.’”
    “Right,” Mike said. “You’ve got a good memory. So that’s why we don’t worship the Lady. It would be the opposite of serving her because it would harm her.”
    “You need to go left at the intersection,” Cynna told Scott, then glanced at Lily. “Does that help?”
    “Some. Sort of.” There was one hell of a lot of information in those few passages, but most of it didn’t apply to the immediate question, as far as Lily could tell. “It doesn’t tell me what kind of crazy
she
is.”
    “The kind that thinks they have all the answers,” Miles said. “That’s in another one of the First Memories, but it’s still the Lady talking to Aswan. Aswan was the first Rhej,” he added, in case Lily didn’t know that. “The Lady was explaining about submission and how we need to understand it because the crazy gods didn’t. It went something like this: ‘The unsundered gods, in their insanity, forgot surrender; they submit only to what they already know and confuse will with purpose. And so each is certain that her or his aspect encompasses all wisdom, with all others being lesser, or distortions, or lies.’”
    Mike frowned. “Did she say wisdom, or truth? Or maybe I’m thinking about what she said about rainbows.”
    This time it was Scott who quoted quietly. “‘Which color of the rainbow is the most true? Is red more true than green? Is blue the best path to understanding, and should you therefore outlaw yellow cloth and purple vases and the soft blushing sky awakening to day?’”
    “Yeah, that bit. She was talking about how the clans are to respect each other, but it applies to lots of other stuff.” He paused, glancing at Miles sitting beside him. “I guess we haven’t always done a great job at respecting each other.”
    Everyone got quiet. Nokolai and Leidolf were prime examples of clans not respecting each other. Lily decided to return to her question. “So you’re saying that the Great Bitch is the kind of crazy that doesn’t tolerate disagreement. My way or the highway.” This wasn’t exactly news.
    “Pretty much,” Cynna agreed. “The interesting thing is that the other Old Ones considered that insane.”
    Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “It is interesting, isn’t it? In a weird and startling way.” It also didn’t seem to help much. “If the Big B is acting rationally, however screwed up she may be, then she had a purpose for what she did today. Only I don’t see it. Sure, she’d like to wipe out Nokolai, but she didn’t. She didn’t even come close, however tight things seemed at the time. And she used an awful lot of power trying. And how come she can open gates that way all of a sudden? Last year she couldn’t.”
    “Slow down, Scott,” Cynna said suddenly. “It’s just ahead on the right.” She frowned at Lily. “What are you saying?”
    “Drummond thinks we have a second enemy. At least,” she corrected herself, “he thinks I do. He, uh, saw some kind of spiritual attack directed against me while we were fighting the dworg.”
    “Shit. That’s not good.”
    “It’s sort of what my other question was about.” More than one question, really, but with the guards here she wasn’t sure how to bring up the second one.
    “Ask quick. We’re nearly there.”
    “He thought that either the
toltoi
protected me or the mate bond. So I wondered . . . does the bond have some kind of spiritual component that could do that?”
    “Yes.”
    “That was a quick answer.”
    “I should qualify that. The mate bond is a magical construct similar to an artifact, but it’s, ah . . . how do I put this? It’s fashioned around a spiritual component instead of a material one. I don’t know what kind of spiritual attack he saw—”
    “He didn’t tell me, and I haven’t been able to get him to show up again. He’s having trouble manifesting.”
    “Hmm. I think—I don’t know, mind—but I think the bond might be able to protect you from direct attack, like if something tried to take you over. I’m not sure it could help with the kind of spiritual interference that doesn’t rob you of choice, the sort the Church calls temptation.”
    Lily had wanted to kill Santos. She hadn’t done it, but she’d been tempted, and it hadn’t been moral reasons that held her back. He’d been trying to rescue her at the time, however mistakenly.