"Don't be silly, Lord. Or art testing me? Gods are spirits; bound to their images, and in a weaker way to their priests, by linkages of spirit force. Life force, it could be called. When those links are broken, by fire and sacrifice, the god may not exactly die, but he can do no more of harm until his priests have made a new image and spent much time and effort in building up new linkages. One point now settled was bothering me; what god to sacrifice him to. I'll make an image for you to inhabit, Lord, and sacrifice him to you, my strange new god. You will be my only god as long as I live. What is your name, Lord? I can't keep on calling you 'strange god' forever." "My name is Skandos." "S ... Sek ... That word rides ill on the tongue. With your permission, Lord, I will call you Llosir." "Call me anything you like, except a god. I am _not_ a god." "You are being ridiculous, Lord Llosir," Tedric chided. "What a man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears--especially what a man hears _without_ ears, as I hear now--he knows with certain knowledge to be the truth. No mere man could possibly do what you have done, to say naught of what you are about to do." "Perhaps not an ordinary man of your ..." Skandos almost said "time," but caught himself "... of your culture, but I am ordinary enough and mortal enough in my own." "Well, that could be said of all gods, everywhere." The smith's mien was quiet and unperturbed; his thought was loaded to saturation with unshakable conviction. Skandos gave up. He could argue for a week, he knew, without making any impression whatever upon what the stubborn, hard-headed Tedric knew so unalterably to be the truth. "But just one thing, Lord," Tedric went on with scarcely a break. "Have I made it clear that I intend to stop human sacrifice? That there is to be no more of it, even to you? We will offer you anything else--_anything_ else--but not even your refusal to give me the god-metal will change my stand on that." "Good! See to it that nothing ever does change it. As to offerings or sacrifices, there are to be none, of any kind. I do not need, I do not want, _I will not have_ any such. That is final. Act accordingly." "Yes, Lord. Sarpedion is a great and powerful god, but art _sure_ that his sacrifice alone will establish linkages strong enough to last for all time?" Skandos almost started to argue again, but checked himself. After all, the proposed sacrifice was necessary for Tedric and his race, and it would do no harm. "Sarpedion will be enough. And as for the image, that isn't necessary, either." "Art wrong, Lord. Without image and temple, everyone would think you a small, weak god, which thought can never be. Besides, the image might make it easier for me to call on you in time of need."