Ajela's wholesome relationship with Tam reverses - and thereby redeems - the harmful one between Kantele and Walt in Necromancer. Kantele became the ancestress of the Exotics that are; Ajela will be the ancestress of the Exotics yet to come. Though unmated, Ajela mothers Tam, her staff, and eventually all Earth's children. Thus she is a doublet for the Encyclopedia itself, just as a priestess shares the identity of the goddess she serves.
Immovable as the roots of the mountains, Rukh has none of Ajela's softness. She is the Lord's terrible swift sword tempered in her own blood. Zeal is in her very bones because she is descended from the same North African stock that earlier had produced Jamethon Black in Soldier, Ask Not. Their Berber ancestors' ferocity blazed brightest under Islam. Not only did this folk breed fanatical fighters (they were the Almoravid foes of that proto-Dorsai El Cid) but they also revered "living saints" like the Elect of Harmony among whom Rukh is numbered.
Pain seals this quintessential Woman of Faith into the vocation she was born to follow, for she is a female version of Isaiah's Suffering Servant. She "can speak to the weary a word that will rouse them" for she has been called "for the victory of justice… a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness." Nevertheless, she is also merciful, unwilling to quench a smoking wick. (Her name means "bright" but in Persian mysticism signifies the Gracious Attributes of God.) Her mercy toward her tormentor Barbage has unexpected consequences - and incidentally prevents Hal from committing the "sin of the warrior" that blemishes Donal. In her prophetic function, she foreshadows the eventual transmutation of denial to affirmation in the Friendly spirit. Rukh is a torch to light candles in the darkness and those she enkindles with her inner fire are her virgin-born children.
In Amanda, "the shadows of the stars have mingled with the sea." Like a Celtic goddess, she is linked with horses, birds, and water as well as being a triplet of her other selves, the First and Second Amandas. From a broader view, the three Amandas comprise a Great Goddess - Maid, Mistress/Wife, Crone - bracketing each of Hal's three lives. Moreover, Amanda III traces the whole circle herself. She was a virgin warrior, is a lover, and will be a mother to a new kind of human. In Hindu terms, she plays Mahadevi to Hal's Mahadeva.
Fal Morgan, the house built with its foundress's "heart for the hall's foundation stone" is an extension of the Amanda-persona herself. She made it, not it her as in the case of Ajela and the Final Encyclopedia. As the pattern repeats itself through time, she extends the scope of her embrace - from family to planet to species. Her breadth of experience prepares her for fulfillment. Amanda I had three husbands and Amanda II none but Amanda III is joined to a perfect soulmate. By adding her ancestresses' traits to her own she is a full-spectrum Woman of Faith, Philosophy, and War and thus a properly royal consort for Hal.
Not only do Ajela (Mother), Rukh (Maid) and Amanda (Mistress) themselves constitute a Great Goddess, they fit like tabs of differing shape into corresponding slots in Hal. Their special loves help him grow beyond the limitations of his solely masculine upbringing. In contrast, Tonina's aid is merely practical. She is the crippled counterpart of the other three, since, despite a few good intentions, she fails in her successive feminine roles. This barren woman stands for a dead-end universe badly in need of opening. Like the counterfeit gardens of Coby, she stirs a hunger for genuine beauty others will satisfy.
Once Hal has settled into his carrel at the Encyclopedia, his three women colleagues actualize what he inspires. This division of labor is efficient since each of them is more skilled in some area than he. But it is also symbolically significant that the women take conventionally "masculine" leadership roles on Earth, in low heaven, and in deep space - the three domains of Indo-European sky gods.
Meanwhile, Hal stays englobed within an artificial moon spinning webs of past, present, and future fate from the Encyclopedia's threads of data just like a lunar goddess. By his three seashell-marked births from the maternal waters of possibility, he has developed conventionally "feminine" traits of intuition, empathy, and creativity.
Thus Hal, Ajela, Rukh, and Amanda are complementary within as well as among themselves. By crossing the traditional boundaries between the sexes, they expand the scope of their being so that each encompasses the full circle of yang and yin. Thus when Hal and Amanda come together "each is both" and their union is all the closer for it.
But Bleys in his terrible angelic neuterness cannot experience this. He is both a null sum within himself and uncompleted by anything outside himself. As Arthur Machen observes, "Evil in its essence is a lonely thing, a passion of the solitary, individual soul." Devoid of family or friends or helpmate, Bleys could not help but envy Hal and Amanda "imparadis'd in one another's arms." Although he senses kindship with Hal, he will not open himself the slightest crack to claim it. The Other's imprisoned ego cannot be an "I" unless it allows another to be a "Thou."
While Bleys remains a bleak monad, alone in his unsatisfying excellence, Hal makes his way into full membership in the human family. Hal's broken-hearted compassion for everyone mystifies unbreakable Bleys who cannot conceive of suffering on anyone's behalf save his own. These differences determine their styles of leadership: Bleys is a cattle-drover herding his beasts into a pen but Hal is the soaring point of a hurled spear.
Learning how to love and be loved is Hal's particular triumph - he yields to overcome. As Donal he tries to push and pull persons around like building blocks, arranging his subordinates below him like the supporting pillars of an arch. But Hal instead persuades his comrades to form an encircling wall of linked arms around him. The lonely godling has become human so that other humans can become godlike.
The kinds of associates Hal draws to him make interesting contrasts to Donal's contemporaries. Because the Splinter Cultures are eroding, the men are lower peaks in the same mountain ranges their predecessors dominated: Jason is a lesser Jamethon, Amid a lesser Padma, Simon a lesser Ian. But women like Athalia (Friendly/Exotic), Nonne (Exotic/Dorsai), and Miriam (Dorsai/Friendly) are subliminally crosscultural for the tectonic plates that uphold established mountains are shifting.
The company is shaped by the struggle it agrees to undertake at Hal's side. His apocalyptic message poses cruel choices that divide single homes and whole societies. Yet once made, these decisions also open unexpected avenues to reconciliation between cultures sundered from birth. The process affects both groups and individuals. Hostile sects on Harmony join hands against the common foe. Ajela, Rukh, and Amanda each resolve previous conflicts between their public roles and private selves. Above all, it touches the racial animal. What Paul divides into conscious and unconscious halves, Hal labors to rejoin. Only prior separation makes reunion possible.
But before the peace, the war. Hal and his companions form a whole constellation of light to confront a prince of darkness. This tension between Light and Darkness is a recurring thematic marker to characterize persons or situation - or even both at once. Rukh and Child radiate like glowing coals; Bleys bedims like a gloomy cloud. Hal's will to live is a blinding lamp but the shades of his tutors are burnt-out candles. Coby's lighting is cruelly steady and the Encyclopedia's responsively fluid just as Bleys is a Tyrant Holdfast and Hal a champion of change.