"A very brief miracle," snorted Michael. Cassian's mouth snapped shut.

Belisarius and Antonina grinned. The bishop's only known vice was that he was perhaps the most talkative man in the world.

But the grins faded soon enough.

"And what were your visions, Anthony?" asked Belisarius.

The bishop waved the question aside. "I will describe them later, Belisarius. But not now."

He stared down at the palm of his hand. The thing resting there coruscated inner fluxes too complex to follow.

"I do not think the—message—is meant for me. Or for Michael. I think it is meant for you. Whatever the thing is, Belisarius, it is an omen of catastrophe. But there is something else, lurking within. I sensed it when I took the thing in my own hand. Sensed it, and sensed it truly. A—a purpose, let us say, which is somehow aimed against that disaster. A purpose which requires you, I think, to speak."

Belisarius, again, examined the thing. No expression showed on his face. But his wife, who knew him best, began to plead.

Her pleas went unheard, for the thing was already in the soldier's hand. Then her pleas ceased, and she fell silent. For, indeed, the thing was like the sun itself, now, if a sun could enter a room and show itself to mortal men. And they, still live.

The spreading facets erupted, not like a volcano, but like the very dawn of creation. They sped, unfolding and doubling, and tripling, and then tripling and tripling and tripling, through the labyrinth that was the mind of Belisarius.

purpose became focus, and focus gave facets form.

identity crystallized. With it, purpose metamorphosed into aim. And, if it had been within the capacity of aim to leap for joy, it would have gamboled like a fawn in the forest.

But for Belisarius, there was nothing; nothing but the fall into the Pit. Nothing but the vision of a future terrible beyond all nightmare.