Pokey said, "What happens when he's done and all of a sudden we don't have a war for the first time since before any of us were born?"

The Dead Man had an answer. I didn't think it would go over with Pokey. I changed the subject. "What's the latest on the temple scandals?" Playmate had tried to give me the scoop but his heart hadn't been in it. The scandals weren't the circus for him they were for me. His religious side was embarrassed by the antics of our self-anointed spiritual shepherds.

"Nothing new. Plenty of finger-pointing. Lot of 'I was framed.' On the retail level it's still at the swinging-drunks-in the-tavern stage."

For now. It would turn grim if Prester Legate War­den Agire and his Terrell Relics didn't turn up.

Agire was one of the top ten priests of the squab­bling family of sects we lump together as Orthodox. His title Prester indicated his standing in the hierar­chy, at about the level of a duke. Legate was an im­perial appointment, supposedly plenipotentiary, in reality powerless. The imperial court persists and pos­tures at Costain but has had no power for two hundred years. It survives as a useful political fiction. Warden is the title that matters. It means he's the one man in the world entrusted with guardianship of the Terrell Relics.

Agire and the Relics had disappeared.

I don't know what the Relics are. Maybe nobody but the Warden does anymore. He's the only one who ever sees them. Whatever, they're holy and precious not only to the Orthodox factions but to the Church, the Eremitics, the Scottites, the Canonics, the Cynics, the Ascetics, the Renunciates, and several Hanite creeds for whom Terrell is only a minor prophet or even an emissary of the archenemy. The bottom line is that they're important to almost all the thousand and one cults with followings in TunFaire.