d guarantee her spiritual
safety and happiness, though not her bodily survival.

"Perhaps even what?" Blackfeather was confused, a little hurt--though
she could feel his harshness was because he had her welfare at heart.

He bent to her, brushed her forehead with his lips. "Let me
concentrate, beloved. The Enemy has, by this time, undoubtedly given
her a priest or priests to build her a personal staff equivalent to
mine; there may still be a place on that staff for you."

"But . . ." Blackfoot was getting even more confused. "Even if there
is a place, what makes you think they'd accept me? Or that I'd want
it?"

"They would accept you because you know me and are almost sinless--and
you will want it once the compulsions that have held you for over
fifteen years have been dissolved. Now be silent; what I need to do
will be dangerous, even without distractions."

Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he reached out, searching for
mental traces he'd never felt before but didn't think he could mistake.
The Protector's priests should feel both free of sin and erotic, an
unmistakable combination he'd kept from coming together for millennia
. . . yes, there was one . . . another. One male, one female--Sister
Mary Piety and Father Mike Odeon. Piety was no surprise, but he'd have
thought it too early for Odeon's tempering, and he frowned at the
timing. He'd expected perhaps another year; now, it seemed, contact
and final testing would be within months. Part of him regretted that
the speed would cut short his enjoyment of Odeon's suffering--at his
hands, anyway; if Odeon survived the tempering and made the correct
final decision, his foes in the wars to come would insure far more
suffering than Shayan himself could hope to inflict. Well, time to
begin the tempering, with a lesson his "student" would never forget.
*Wake up, Priest!*

20. Lesson

Odeon woke, a scream caught in his throat, pain knifing through his
head. When it eased, he found himself gasping, staring around in the
dark. "Who--"

*Do you always ask foolish questions, priest? You belong to the one
you call Cortin; you should be able to sense who I am. And you need
not speak aloud; survive, and this will be only your first taste of
mental speech.*

*With that clue, I think I do know who you are.* Odeon braced himself,
wondering what Shayan wanted with him.

*A service that will be to both my benefit and Cortin's--and so
indirectly