a
quarter-inch long braided into them, all over the lash-ends!"

"Yes. Any punitive action you're thinking about taking on these
priests of Muz-Azin--the natives, I mean--will be ignored on the First
Level. And that reminds me: you'd better work out a line of policy,
pretty soon."

"Well, as for the priests and the torturers, I think I'll tell Yorzuk
to have them sold to the Bhunguns, to the east. They're always in the
market for galley slaves," Stranor Sleth said. He turned to Brannad
Klav. "And I'll want six gold crowns made up, as soon as possible.
Strictly Hulgun design, with Yat-Zar religious symbolism, very rich
and ornate, all slightly different. When I give Kurchuk absolution,
I'll crown him at the altar in the name of Yat-Zar. Then I'll invite
in the other five Hulgun kings, lecture them on their religious
duties, make them confess their secret doubts, forgive them, and crown
them, too. From then on, they can all style themselves as ruling by
the will of Yat-Zar."

"And from then on, you'll have all of them eating out of your hand,"
Verkan Vall concluded. "You know, this will probably go down in Hulgun
history as the Reformation of Ghullam the Holy. I've always wondered
whether the theory of the divine right of kings was invented by the
kings, to establish their authority over the people, or by the
priests, to establish _their_ authority over the kings. It works about
as well one way as the other."

"What I can't understand is this," Brannad Klav said. "It was entirely
because of my respect for the Paratime Code that I kept Stranor Sleth
from using Fourth Level weapons and other techniques to control these
people with a show of apparent miraculous powers. But this Fourth
Level Mineral Products Syndicate was operating in violation of the
Paratime Code by invading our franchise area. Why didn't they fake up
a supernatural reign of terror to intimidate these natives?"

"Ha, exactly because they _were_ operating illegally," Verkan Vall
replied. "Suppose they had started using needlers and blasters and
antigravity and nuclear-energy around here. The natives would have
thought it was the power of Muz-Azin, of course, but what would you
have thought? You'd have known, as soon as they tried it, that First
Level paratimers were working against you, and you'd have laid the
facts before the Commission, and this time-line would have been
flooded with Paratime Police. They had to conceal their operations not
only fro