He let himself enjoy the drink in peace, relaxing his mind as Carle had suggested. If she was right, and he had no reason to think otherwise, he'd know everything soon. He sat crosslegged on the grass, thinking. Now he knew what the First Speaker had meant when she called him "child of two worlds"--and he remembered that before his adoption, Arjen had accepted that Daria's telling Yarra about him had been no breach of security. The Lords, as Traiti clearly knew, told their Speakers far more than the Speakers passed on. But it seemed odd-- "No," Kranath interrupted the forming thought, "neither bodies nor refreshment are truly necessary. They are pleasant, though, and we often create them." He smiled again, and Tarlac could feel his amusement. "Those who went before left us Godhome, which gave us awesome power, but we remain, if you will excuse the expression, human. We see no reason to deny ourselves such things. Since mind is the architect of reality, we construct what pleases us." "Mind is the architect of reality." Tarlac took another sip of his julep, then thought about it becoming a mug of coffee. It responded to his will, and he drank; it was the best coffee he'd ever tasted. "You see?" Sepol said gently. "You are one of us, Lord Esteban, and that fact no longer disturbs you." Tarlac started to contradict him, then he realized Sepol was right. He did accept what he was--and what he was to become. He still wished they'd explain a few things, though. Why they'd taught him Language, why he'd really had to take the Ordeal, why he'd been rushed through it, and most importantly, why he had been called to the Circle. "To complete it," Kranath said, sitting beside him and materializing a mug of chovas. "I ended the clan wars, to begin the current cycle of history; a human must end this war, with our help, to begin the next." The rest of the Lords, except for Sepol and Carle, vanished. "It all ties together, Steve," Carle said. "I taught you Language so you could complete the Ordeal quickly, and so you could communicate easily with your n'ruhar. We did not teach you forestcraft, because there was something you had to learn for yourself while Hovan taught you that." Tarlac nodded almost immediately. "How to open up," he said. "Even . . . that I could open up, to love a whole clan and not be ashamed of it." Kranath nodded. "Yes, and you learned it quickly, despite your human conditioning. I had to learn to be alone, you to be close--even the most minor of gods must know both. "Someone subject to external limitations, as a Ranger or ruler is, should have no bias. We are limited only by our own feelings, though; everything we do must be tempered by love for our charges." "External limitations?" Tarlac chuckled. "I'd say I didn't have many!" "You had the ultimate limitation, Steve. Mortality." "Huh?" Tarlac found that his coffee had remained at the perfect drinking temperature, and took another swallow.