That was the problem. Tsue had been a person. And so had the other Cousins, even though she hadn't known their names.

Mirage stood and laid one hand on her shoulder. "I know it's hard. And nothing I can say is going to make it any easier for you. But please, before you beat yourself up over it, remember that it was self-defense. And defense of the other doppelgangers and their witches, whose lives are also at stake."

Then she slipped out the door and left Miryo to her thoughts.

Wisp would eviscerate Mirage if she kept breaking contact protocol, so she had to jump through the usual series of hoops, though a different set from those she'd used the last time she was in Angrim.

At least it gave her something to do. Getting out of the temple and back into it without being identified or trailed by Thornblood people let her feel that she was accomplishing something useful, instead of sitting in her cell, waiting fora"

For what? A miracle?

They were no closer to finding an answer than they had been when they faced off with knives in a hallway here in Angrim. With the Primes pressing them, they had no leisure to think, to experiment. They just kept on having to move, constantly running to stay alive.

Mirage kicked herself mentally. You're not running now. You're sitting in a temple. Complain about having to sit still, or complain about not having time to sit and think, but for the Warrior's sake, don't do both at once. Idiot.

And one task was even more important than figuring out the answer to the doppelganger problem. Not more important in the long term, but more important in the short term, because without it, they weren't going to accomplish a damn thing, whether they were hiding in a temple, racing along a road, or sitting in a library with all the collected knowledge of the world available for their use.

She had to get Miryo back on her feet.

Miryo's sleep that night could barely be called sleep. It was a shallow doze plagued by horrific memories: breaking her neck at the stream, hearing Satomi condemn her, killing Tsue and the other Cousins.

She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, wishing she dared climb up on the temple roof. It had always been her instinct, when she wanted to think something through. Was it some spillover from Mirage's Hunter training? No, because it went back further than that; she'd been climbing roofs since her double was a Temple Dancer.

She went up there because it brought her closer to the stars, the eyes of the Goddess.

And yet, was under the eyes of the Goddess where she really wanted to be right now, with the blood of the Cousins on her hands?

Miryo pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and rolled over in her narrow, hard bed. No. Not the roof. Not with her memories of the last time she'd been on a roof.

Instead, she pulled on her robe and went into the hallway.

She was not the only person awake; the hermits under a vow of silence sometimes walked the corridors or the gardens as a form of moving meditation. She passed by two others, whether men or women she could not tell, making no acknowledgment of their presence, as they did not acknowledge her. They walked in their own minds with the Goddess.

Miryo envied them.

Low came and went, and still she walked. It had been at least an hour, as near as she could judge it, since any other priestesses had gone by. She was alone in the halls of the temple.

Then she turned a corner and found someone else there.

The hooded figure paced forward steadily, but, unlike the others, stopped instead of passing her. "I take it you can't sleep."

Miryo swallowed, trying to slow her pounding heart, and said, "Not really."

Mirage tipped her head up enough to peer out from under the hood. "I figured as much. Nightmares?"

Miryo glanced away, unable to meet her double's gaze.

"Of course nightmares." Mirage held out her hand. "Come with me."

Miryo looked at the hand for a long moment, pale and barely visible in the dim light of the hall. She wondered where her doppelganger wanted to lead her, and almost asked.

Instead she took Mirage's hand, and followed her silently through the corridors of the temple.

Mirage felt Miryo tense the minute they passed through the archway into the pentagonal sanctuary of the temple. Moonlight spilled through the opening in the center of the roof, creating a silver island in the center of the floor. Along the walls, the five figures of the Goddess stood in shadow.

"I know you don't want to be here," Mirage said quietly, before Miryo could speak. "You're not a devotee of the Warrior. You feel like having blood on your hands means you don't belong in a place like this. But that's exactly why you should come." She turned and faced her double, saw the stricken expression on Miryo's face. "We haven't prayed since the ambush. I won't say we need to; this isn't about obligation. But I want to, and I think you do, too. Even though you're telling yourself you don't."

Miryo stood motionless for several heartbeats, looking almost like a statue herself. Then she nodded, slowly, stiffly. "Yes." She hesitated. "Thank you."

They made a circuit of the sanctuary. Mirage bowed to each of the five Aspects, while Miryo touched her heart. The moonlight reflecting off the floor of the temple cast the faintest of glows onto each statue, so their faces were just discernible in the darkness.

Then Mirage spoke again. "Do you want to pray to any one of them, or all together?"

She could see Miryo thinking it over. "All five."

Including the Warrior. Mirage nodded, and the two of them together went into the center of the sanctuary, where they knelt, pulled their hoods forward, and began to pray in silence.

Some time passeda"at least a quarter of an hour, by the movement of moonlight across the floora"before Mirage became aware of eyes on her. She glanced up and found Miryo looking in her direction.

"What is it?" she asked.

"When you were a Temple Dancer," Miryo said, "was this how you prayed?"

Her voice was hesitant, yet behind it lay a kind of unconscious conviction. As if she knew the answer before Mirage gave it.

"No," Mirage said. "Sometimes, yes, and sometimes we went to regular services. But other timesa"for me, most of the timea"we prayed as Dancers."

"What does that mean?"

"We prayed with our bodies. Not with our voices or our minds. We Danced. Together, or alone, following the music in our hearts."

The words were a poor description for it; usually only Avannans or other Dancers understood. But Miryo was nodding, and the unconscious conviction had grown visibly stronger. "Witches do something like that. Usually alone. We just sing. No words, ordinary or magical; whatever notes and sounds seem right. It's not a spell. It's prayer."

Mirage cast a glance around the temple. The Aspects of the Goddess gazed back at her in the reflected moonlight. Even the breeze had died; there was no sound from the town outside.

She began to strip down to the Hunter uniform beneath her robe. "Do you want to take turns, or do this together?"

Miryo stood in the center of the room, the moonlight casting her shadow onto the stone, and closed her eyes.

Mirage stood nearby, eyes also closed.

For several heartbeats, the two of them stood, silent and motionless, and composed themselves.

Then they began.

Miryo was tentative at first, her voice hardly more than a whisper. She was not accustomed to an audience. But Mirage was not listening to her, not consciously. Each was in her own place, speaking to the Goddess in the truest way she knew.

Miryo sang with no particular plan. Her voice strengthened as she went along. Mirage, moving in a circle around her, also began hesitantly; her motions became more assured with every step she took.

Goddess, Miryo prayed through her wordless song, forgive me for what I have done. I meant Tsue harm; I wanted to do something that would get her out of my way. I succeeded, but at afar higher price than I had intended. Forgive me for that. And forgive me for the joy I felt when I held that power. I took pleasure in acting, if not in the act. Please, forgive me. I beg you.

Mirage, too, sent up a prayer, writing it in the air with her hands and her arms, the angle of her head. Help us, please. Don't let us lose our momentum. For our own sakes, as well as those who will follow us, we cannot afford to let this go. Too much depends on it. Please, help us keep our course.

And, behind it all, from both of them: Give us the answer. Please. There is another way; show us the path to it.

Miryo's singing took On a sense of direction. It was the progression she had seen in Haira: the Aspects of the Goddess, from youngest to oldest. Four of them she sang, from Maiden to Crone, while Mirage moved around her. The doppelganger made no sound, but her dancing provided a sharp counterpoint to the notes Miryo sang; the kicks and leaps, with their fierce, hard perfection, were sworn to the spirit of the Warrior.

Their separate prayers flowed into each other, creating a single plea, sound and movement, voice and flesh. The styles were different; Miryo sang the four, while Mirage danced the Warrior, but the rhythm that underlay them was the same.

And then they felt the change.

To Mirage, the air became filled with an electric energy. Her tired body took on a sudden drive that lifted her to greater heights, as it sometimes did in battles, in Dances, when words and thought dropped away and there was nothing but the movement. To Miryo, however, it was something more.

Without intending to, she lowered the guards she had placed so carefully on herself, and reached for power.

Panic tried to claw its way up her throat, but faded to nothingness before it could paralyze her. Miryo knew, distantly, that she should be afraid; this was not in her control, and she did not know what it would do. But the strange purity of mind that had overtaken her would not allow her to fear. She watched, with detached immediacy, as she sang onward, and the power took shape around them.

Mirage leapt into the air, a spinning, kicking leap, and did not land again. The power that filled the air around them lifted her up. She danced on, with nothing beneath her feet but air, and also found she could not fear.

The energy pulsed into visibility. Miryo, singing full-voiced to the four Aspects she had invoked, was also lifted from her feet; around her she could see the shining strands of power. Earth, Water, Air, and Fire; they wove a dizzying, exhilarating web around her and Mirage, and together they wept at the beauty.

And then, through those strands, something else.

Void, Mirage whispered in her mind, and Miryo recognized it as well.

The four concrete Elements and the one that was not pulsed in counterpoint to each other, a pulse that fit the rhythm they had created. And still Miryo sang, and still Mirage danced. The tornado of energy around them was not even remotely in their control, but they had created it, and it continued to draw on them, feeding its own growing power. The strands of the Elements spun them around each other in a dizzying circle, and the air grew to an incandescent white glow.

Goddessa"

Show usa"

Show MEa"

The white fire tore through them, a blinding rush of pure energy, and all thought disappeared into the flames.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

Mirei

A crash brought Eclipse to his feet, sword in hand.

He dropped the blade an instant later, wondering how in the Warrior's name Mirage had suddenly appeared in his room in the middle of the night.

"Sen?" he asked, baffled.

From where she knelt on the floor in the dim light, she lifted her head, one inch at a time, and as she did so something around her neck fell down to dangle freely, drawing Eclipse's eyes.

A triskele pendant.

"Miryo?" he said uncertainly.

The pendant was all she was wearing. She knelt there, half lit by the moonlight through the window, and he grew more confused the more he looked at her. There was no way Miryo could have picked up those muscles, but the woman's hair was long, not cropped. And why would Mirage be wearing that pendant?

And what was it in her face that made him so unsure?

Eclipse voiced a question he had never expected to have to ask. "Whoa which one are you?"

She stood, slowly, and looked down at her hands and arms with a completely unreadable expression. "Either." she said, and her voice had the well-trained tones of a witch. "Or neither." She laughed faintly; it had a disbelieving sound. "Does it matter?"

"What?" he whispered.

She looked straight at him. "She gave me the answer, Kerestel. I prayed for an answer, and the Goddess showed it to me."

Then she fainted.

"I don't understand," Eclipse said.

She raised one eyebrow at him. "Yes, you do. You're just having trouble admitting it."

"You'rea"

"One person. As I used to be. I was prayinga"both of me werea"wasa"whatever." A grin bloomed involuntarily on her face. "I don't think grammar can cope with this. I was praying to the Goddess, and it occurred to mea"to the Miryo part of mea"that I wasn't praying the way I really wanted to. Ought to. So as Miryo, I sang, and as Mirage, I danced, and I listened to the Goddess with all of my heart. And she made me whole again."

The wonder of it had still not faded from her mind. She slipped one arm free of the blanket Eclipse had given her and stared at it in the light of the candle. A part of her calmly identified it as her own, while another part marveled at the smooth, hard lines of her muscles.

"And you remember both," Eclipse said.

"Of course."

He bit his lip and looked at her, perplexed. "What am I supposed to call you?"

The answer was there when she reached for it; the name had come to her during the ritual, but she had not looked for it until now. "Mirei." She smiled involuntarily. "The Goddess gave me the name. As she renamed Misetsu, back when this all began."

He swallowed. "Ita works. I guess. It's kind of both of you."

"In more ways than you know." She held her hands out to him, palms down. "Try me." He placed his hands under hers, and then tried to slap them; he missed, but only barely. "I'm going to have to watch out for that. It's possible that I'll improve again, when the Miryo bit of me stops interfering with the reflexes Mirage had, but I don't know. I may be permanently watered down."

He managed to dredge up a smile from somewhere. "At least it'll be more fair for the rest of us." The smile faded. He hesitated for a moment, then looked at her directly. "So what happens now?"

She hadn't thought about it yet. "I thinka I still need you to go to Silverfire. I could send the message to Jaguar magically, but I don't think that would go over well."