"I've noticed that there aren't any fires in Zelana's grotto. How were you able to cook the fish you were eating?"
I shrugged. "I didn't cook them. It might be a little hard to keep a fire burning if it's under water."
"Are you saying that you ate those fish raw?"
"Of course. That's one of the reasons Meeleamee and the others gave me pieces of raw fish when they were weaning me off a steady diet of dolphin milk. I was so proud when I caught and ate my first fish in the little shallow pool at the mouth of the grotto. The fishing was much better out in deep water, though, so I didn't miss too many meals."
"Are you saying that Zelana approved?"
"The Beloved doesn't eat anything at all—except for light, of course, so she turned the feeding over to the dolphins."
"I've always been curious about just why you always call her 'the Beloved.'"
"That's what the dolphins called her. I picked it up from them, but I used her language instead of theirs. Of course that's fairly recent. I spoke 'dolphin' long before I learned how to speak in 'people.' I didn't care too much for the name they gave me, though. They called me 'Beeweeabee,' which translates into 'Short-Fin-With-No-Tail.' I was much happier when the Beloved named me Eleria. I still swam with the dolphins when I got hungry. And then one day Meeleamee introduced me to an old cow-whale—who probably wasn't a whale at all—and she led me on down to the bottom of the sea where an oyster opened its shell and gave me the pink pearl that started to give me Dreams as soon as I rejoined the Beloved in her pink grotto."
"Zelana mentioned that," Enalla-Lillabeth said. "Did that first Dream you had go all the way back to the beginning of the world?"
"That's what the Beloved told me," I said. "From what I saw in the Dream, the whole world was on fire."
"I wouldn't take it any further back, Little-Me." Balacenia's voice came silently to me. "If Aracia happens to still be listening, we don't want her to know where—and when—your Dream really began."
"How did you know about that?" I demanded.
"Eleria," Balacenia's silent voice came to me again, "we are the same person, you know, so I can remember your Dream as well as you can. I remember that when your Dream began, the universe wasn't there, and neither was time."
"Then you saw Mother and Father too?"
"Of course I did, Little-Me."
I felt just a little pouty about that. I'd always believed that the earliest part of the Dream was mine alone—something on the order of a gift from Mother and Father because I was their favorite child. Big-Me had just filched my gift, and I didn't like that one little bit.
"We'll talk about that some other time, Little-Me," Balacenia said. "We don't want Aracia to find out about it. She'll do something even more stupid if she knows the whole story of the Dream. Let Enalla-Lillabeth talk for a while now. Ask them about life here in this silly temple. That should draw Aracia's attention away from your Dream. Let's stay on the safe side."
"Sometimes it almost made me want to throw up," Lillabeth told me. "Fat Bersla could go on for hours and hours telling Aracia how wonderful she is. It made me sick to my stomach, but Aracia just couldn't get enough of it. She adores being adored, so those speeches were meat and drink. She didn't seem to realize that he was waving what he called his adoration in her face every chance he got for one reason and one only. As long as she hungered for what he called his adoration, he didn't have to do any honest work, and not working has always been Fat Bersla's main goal in life."
Then Big-Me spoke silently to Enalla. "Don't get too specific, dear sister," she said. "Alcevan the bug might be listening, and her purpose right now is persuading Aracia to kill Lillabeth—and you, of course. The bug-people really want Aracia to live—or stay awake—for a while longer, because they can control her. I'm quite sure they know that they won't have that kind of control of you, and that's why they want Aracia to kill you."
"Then they don't know about what will happen to Aracia if she even tries to do that, do they?"
"It's not one of those things we mention very often," Big-Me replied.
"There is one thing that I don't quite understand," Enalla admitted. "So far as I can determine, Alcevan is the only female priest in Aracia's Domain. How did she manage to foist that off on dear old Bersla?"
"Dear old 'Stinky' probably used her gift to pull it off," Big-Me replied.
"Stinky?" Enalla silently asked, trying quite hard to keep from laughing.
"That's what Little-Me calls her," Balacenia replied. "She does use an odor to control people, and that's probably how she pulled Fat Bersla into line." Then she paused. "I'm not entirely positive that she actually stinks terribly, but just that name alone takes her down a peg or two, wouldn't you say?"
"I think I'll keep that name tucked under my arm," Enalla said. "It might be very useful at some time in the not-too-distant future." Then she sighed. "I was fairly sure that Sorgan Hook-Beak's deception had brought Aracia to her senses. You wouldn't believe the look of pure horror on Bersla's face when Aracia ordered him—and all the other priests—to go on down to the south wall of the temple to help construct the stronger defenses. How did Stinky manage to escape and come back here and steal Aracia from us again?"
"She went out over the wall and came back here out on open ground," Big-Me replied. "She'd been trying to send novice priests back here to murder Lillabeth—in much the same way she tried before Aracia ordered her to go down to the south wall."
"Are you saying that there are novices out there so stupid that they'd believe her after she cut the throat of the first assassin she sent here to murder Lillabeth—or me?" Enalla demanded.
"I'd imagine that news of that killing didn't get around very much," Big-Me replied. "It wasn't as if Alcevan had left the body lying in the throne room or anything like that. Anyway, her plan fell apart after that clever little Maag called Rabbit came up with a way to make just about everybody too terrified to even think about coming back here through the corridors."
"Oh?"
"He managed to make everybody believe that there were giant spiders creeping around in the corridors, and that being killed—and eaten—by a spider is the most hideous fate in all the world."
"Even worse than snake-bites?"