Adelie grinned. "I thought of that. But if you win, he dies. And if you die...?" "You will have had your glory anyway? You will have engineered the battle of the gods, and dabbled in other pleasures, too?" Greaves was still smiling, but Adelie's eyes grew wider. "Maybe it'll be that simple, Adelie. But who can tell the minds of gods, hmm?" And so David Greaves strode into the city of Shadows, followed by a fearful multitude and two badly shaken people. He walked down a broad avenue at whose end something black bulked and glimmered, while things with black-filled eyes stood watching thin-lipped. And as he walked he showed none of his fear. * * * * * He stopped at the end of the avenue, with the tall towers looming over him, and stood facing the Temple of Shadows. There was no sign of life in the square black opening that served as a door for the featureless stone block, dark but not as dark as a Shadow. He threw back his head and called: "Mayron!" The worshippers huddled around him. Vigil, like them, was throwing anxious looks over his shoulders as the city's Shadows crowded closer. Adelie murmured: "There he is." And he was, trotting lightly down the steps, smiling. He wore his human skin as naturally as if it were more than a cloak, and Greaves had to look hard to see that when he smiled his lips stretched but no teeth showed. "Well, Man in all your pride. Are you ready?" "Ready as any man. How do you propose to go about this?" "Adelie didn't tell you?" "She told me as much as I asked. I didn't ask much. Could you suggest any way I could have refused the conditions, no matter what they are? That loses the fight right there. Wasn't I supposed to understand that? Do you think politics is a recent invention?" "Fierce, fierce," Mayron murmured. "Well spoken." He chuckled. "When I was a man, I would have liked you." "Get to the business, Mayron." The Shadow held up his hand. "Not so fast. Perhaps we can arrive at some--" "Arrive at nothing. Put up or shut up. Vigil no longer has that monstrous gun and there's no point in this for you today. But there is for _me_, and you don't have much time to realize that." He glowered at the Shadow, feeling the rage, feeling the onrush of the bright white exaltation when the body moves too fast for the brain to speak, when what directs the body is the reflex founded on the silent knowledge of the brain's deep layers, where the learning has no words. Mayron frowned. His head was cocked to one side. If he had had eyes, he would have been peering at Greaves' face. But he said nothing; he had lost the moment, and now Greaves used it. "You scum," Greaves said, his voice booming through the Temple square for all the Shadows to hear. "A weapon that drains the power of this continuum! You leech--you would have had that doddering old man put all my stars out!"