So far as Ann knew, however, Lantis was not eaten at the festival. "He told me she was mercifully put away after the excitement died down, and another meat slave was sacrificed, made up to look like Lantis--not deception, but ritual substitution; Ed felt he'd achieved quite a step in progress there. It showed, he said, they were beginning to accept ritual for reality under the influence of----Oh, the devil with it.... He moved his capital to Vestoia. The palace was restored--modernized. I lived there--two and a half years. That's where I bore him another son. I'll never know how I came to allow it--a kind of madness, hate close to love--something.... He didn't want me any more, you know. He had some ideas about--ascetic discipline--purity--I don't know what exactly--and he didn't try to explain it to me. I'd hated him with all my mind for years--before the Vestoian wars--but I'm not a good hater. I even still imagined I could influence him a little--until the baby was born and he was in black despair because it wasn't a daughter. I had to escape. I could feel my mind, my self, rotting away--dissolving, as the Vestoian empire was dissolving, for that matter. He couldn't hold them. It began to fall apart right away. They were terrified of him and of his Spearman City bodyguards--weasels.... They simply drifted away into the woods and didn't come back. I doubt if they've organized anywhere else. Lantis must have had a rare sort of skill--the city was all hers: she built it out of Stone Age villagers, and it died with her. Ed tried everything to keep them--bribes, threats, endless spying and public executions by his guard. Bread and circuses, meaningless offices for favorites with fancy clothes and no duties. It didn't work. At the time I escaped, the population was down to--he'd never tell me, but my guess is under ten thousand for the whole city. There was an epidemic--rather like flu. I used that as a reason to take the baby back to Spearman City, knowing Ed would need to stay and go on trying to hold things together. I thought he would let me take the twins--John--David----" "Rest awhile," said Arek. "We're going to bring them home too." Ann could not speak. "How would you like to bathe again in our lake? I'll hold you up. Water's warm with the sun--best part of the day----" "I'd like it. It's so pretty. What do you call it?" "Sears Lake." "Sears.... What am I made of? I haven't thought or asked----" "It was a Vestoian arrow," Wright said. "At the end he enjoyed remembering Earth." 2