A tangle of scaffolding rose behind him. The temple was undergoing restoration. Again.

Standing over him, unable to remain still, was a beautiful young woman. The old man feared her excitement was sensual, almost sexual. That should not be. She was the Daughter of Night. She did not exist to serve her own senses.

"I feel it, Narayan!" she enthused. "The imminence is there. This is going to reconnect me with my mother."

"Perhaps." The old man was not convinced. There had been no connection with the Goddess for four years. He was troubled. His faith was being tested. Again. And this child had grown up far too headstrong and independent. "Or it may just bring the wrath of the Protector down on our heads." He went no farther. The argument had been running from the moment that she had used some of her raw, completely untrained magical talent to blind their keepers for the moments they had needed to escape the Protector's custody three years ago.

The girl's face hardened. For a moment it took on the dread implacability apparent on the face of the idol. As she always did when the matter of the Protector came up, she said, "She'll regret mistreating us, Narayan. Her punishment won't be forgotten for a thousand years."

Narayan had grown old being persecuted. It was the natural order of his existence. He sought always to make sure that his cult survived the wrath of its enemies. The Daughter of Night was young and powerful and possessed all of youth's impetuosity and disbelief in its own mortality. She was the child of a Goddess! That Goddess's ruling age was about to break upon the world, changing everything. In the new order the Daughter of Night would herself become a Goddess. What reason had she to fear? That madwoman in Taglios was nothing!

Invincibility and caution, they were forever at loggerheads, yet were forever inseparable.