And I'm fool enough to think you know that. Despite being stone, it was a very attractive building. The porch extended on all four sides, supported on fluted columns. The temple proper had solid sidewalls but only two more columns at the front. Ilna walked between them and into the main room. There were hints of intricate carvings just under the roof, but the only light came through the entrance behind her. At the far end were two statues on square stone bases: an inhumanly serene woman and a female Corl. The round base between them was empty; the statue, a nude man, had fallen forward onto the floor. "Hey, why're they praying to a catman?" said Karpos.

His voice startled her; her attention had been so focused on the statues that she hadn't heard the whisper of his deerskin-clad feet entering the temple behind her. "It's probably the Sister," Ilna said.

"The Lady and the Sister, the Queen of Heaven and the Queen of the Dead." She looked at the image of the Corl again. "Or perhaps a demon.

If there're any of these people left alive, we can ask them." "Not a soul," Karpos said. "Asion's looking around more, but we'd've heard something by now besides the goats if there was anybody." He didn't sound concerned. The hunters weren't cruel men, but they were hard and even in life the folk of this community had meant nothing to them.

"Why'd they make the Sister a Corl?" Karpos added, scratching his left eyebrow with the tip of his bow. "I never seen that." "Do I look like a priest?" Ilna snapped. "Anyway, I said it might be a demon." She knelt, peering at the base supporting the Lady's statue. Her eyes had adapted to the dimness well enough to see carved on it was an image of the Shepherd, the Lady's consort. He held his staff ready to repel the hulking, long-armed ogres attacking from both sides. The base beneath the female Corl had a similar scene, a Corl chieftain with a flaring mane who raised his knob-headed cudgel as winged, serpent-bodied creatures threatened him.