The soldier puffed out his chest. "We know, my comrade Marcus and me, because we two are stationed to guard this place. While the siege is on, our job is to keep this temple and the surrounding grove safe from bandits and looters-though what anybody would take I can't imagine, and you can see for yourself how the Massilians have let the place go to ruin. But once the siege is over, Caesar doesn't want Pompey or anybody else to be able to say he was disrespectful of the local shrines and temples. Caesar honors all the gods-even rocks that fall from the sky."

I peered at the soldier's ugly face. "You're an impious fellow, aren't you?"

He grinned. "I pray when I need to. To Mars before a battle. To Venus when 1 throw the dice. Otherwise, I don't imagine the gods take much notice of me."

I dared to touch the thing on the pedestal. It was made of dark, mottled stone, shiny and impermeable in some places and in other places riddled with fine pores. Riding through the valley, I had seen phantom shapes, illusions of light and shadow, but none had been as strange as this.

"It has a name, that sky rock," offered the soldier. "But you have to be a Greek to be able to pronounce it. Impossible for a Roman-"

"Xoanon." The voice came from somewhere within the temple. The strange word-if word it was, and not a cough or a sneeze-boomed and echoed in the small space. The soldiers were as startled as I was. They clutched their helmets, rolled their eyes, and rattled their swords.

A cowled figure stepped from the shadows. He must have been there when Davus and I entered, but in the dimness we both had failed to see him.

He spoke in a gruff, hoarse whisper. "The skystone is called a xoanon, and xoanon is what the Massilians call the images of Artemis they carve from wood."