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"My mother tells me that I shall be seventeen soon after midsummer," Kassandra answered as they went inside. She remembered the waiting room where many years ago she had eaten a piece of sweet melon while her mother awaited the oracle, and found it hard to believe that it had changed so little in so many years. She wondered about the serpents she had seen and caressed at that time; they had been a short-lived species, probably they were long dead. The thought saddened her.

The priestess gestured to her to sit.

"Now tell me about yourself; everything which makes you think you have been called to our Temple."

When Kassandra had finished the priestess spoke. "Well, Kassandra, if you wish to be one of us, you must live for a year here within the Temple, to learn to interpret the oracles and the omens and to speak for the God."

Kassandra said, feeling a surge of upswelling happiness, "I shall be happy to live in the House of the God."

"Then you must send one of the Temple servants to fetch your belongings; only a few changes of clothing and perhaps a warm cloak, for you must wear the common dress of a priestess; we are all as sisters here, and you may not wear jewels and ornaments while you dwell in the shrine."

"I do not care for jewels," Kassandra said, "and indeed I have very few. But why is it not permitted?"

The old woman smiled. "It is a rule of the Temple," she said, "and I do not know why it is so. Perhaps it is because many of the folk who come here to consult us are poor, and if we were hung with jewels they might feel that we were enriching ourselves upon their offerings. My name is Charis," she said, "which is one of the names of Earth Lady. I have dwelt in the house of the Sunlord since I was nine winters old, and now I am seven-and-forty. We are long-lived here, unless we are chosen to bear a child to the God and it should chance that we die in childbirth; but that does not happen often, and many of our brothers and sisters are healer-priests. Have you your mother's or your father's leave to dwell in the House of the God?"

Kassandra said, "I do not think my mother will object; I have spoken with her of this. As for my father, he has so many sons and daughters, I do not think he will know or care whether I am in the God's house or his. I have never been one of his favourites." 'But tell me," she asked the priestess, "may I have my serpent to live with me in the Temple? She was a gift from Imandra, Queen and priestess of Colchis, and no one else in Troy loves her; I fear she will be neglected if I am not there to care for her."

"She will be welcome," Charis said. "You may have her brought here."

The old priestess now summoned a servant, and Kassandra instructed her as to which of her possessions she wanted fetched from the palace. "And go to my mother Queen Hecuba," she said, "and tell her that I beg for her blessing."

The servant bowed and went away. "And now, if you wish," Charis said, "I will show you the dormitory where the virgins of Apollo sleep."

So began the time that Kassandra remembered later as the happiest and most peaceful of her entire life. She learned to consult the oracles, to read the omens, and to serve the shrine with the appointed offerings. She cared for the sacred serpents, and learned to interpret the meanings of their movements and behaviour.

As she had foreseen, her mother made no difficulties; she sent by the servant the requested belongings, and a message: 'Say to my daughter Kassandra that I bless her and approve what she has done; tell her I send her many kisses and embraces."

Very soon she found many friends at the shrine, and after only a few months there were many clients and supplicants who came to deal with her and preferred that she should accept their offerings and give them advice.

Once she asked an older priest: 'I do not understand; why do they come to the God to ask these foolish questions for which they do not need a God's advice, but only the common wits they were born with?"

"Because so many of them are born fools or worse," said the old priest bluntly,"they think the Gods have nothing better to do than to trouble themselves with human affairs. Myself, I believe the Gods have enough concerns of their own, in the land of the Immortals, to worry themselves very much with the business of ordinary men. Perhaps with the doings of Kings and the great ones; but—" and he lowered his eyes and spoke almost in a whisper, "I have seen little evidence even of that, daughter of Priam."

Kassandra was a little shocked by this blasphemy, but felt that if the priest had little faith in the God, it was more his loss than anyone else's. As for herself, while she dwelt in the shrine she had a great and often overpowering sense of the presence of her God, as in the moment when first he had called her.

This was not to say that her time in the Temple was entirely carefree. Some of the maidens in the shrine were openly jealous of her because she was a favourite with the older priests and priestesses, and spoke to her, or of her, with unkindness or spite; but she had never been popular with girls of her own age, not even with her sister and half-sisters, except among the Amazons and had become resigned to that before she was out of childhood.

Mostly she felt she was surrounded with loving attention; what else could it be when she dwelt in the house of her God? There were many women in the shrine who spoke of the Sunlord as other maidens spoke of a husband or lover; in fact one of the common names of the priestesses was 'brides of the God'. One of the women, Phyllida, was regarded as having been the bride of the God in truth; she had borne a child who was accepted as a son of Apollo.

When Kassandra first heard this she was annoyed and disgusted with what seemed obvious nonsense.

Is the girl simply a fool, deceived by some quite ordinary seducer? Or was she telling a tale to make up for some forbidden adventure of her own? Kassandra wondered, for the virgins of the God were forbidden to have anything to do with men; they were carefully watched and not allowed to receive visits or gifts or to meet even with their own brothers or fathers except in the presence of one or two of the older governesses. If I wished to be the bride of any mortal man, my father would be all too happy to arrange a marriage for me, she thought.

Sometimes Kassandra would half awaken at night, hearing the unmistakable voice of the God when he had called to her, a shining Immortal who was something more than mere man." More than once she dreamed that she lay fainting within the arms of her God, an ecstasy more than human sweeping through all her senses; from listening to the other girls talk (though out of shyness she took little part in this gossip), she learned that she was not the only girl so favoured with such dreams.

Once when one of the young maidens was telling her latest dream, filled with erotic detail which Kassandra thought only romantic imagining, she said: 'If you dream so much of lying with a man, Esiria, why not send for your father and ask him to find you a husband? Otherwise, cannot you find something else to occupy your thoughts and something more useful to talk about?"

"You are only jealous because he does not visit you even in a dream," Esiria retorted. "And if he did, would you then refuse him?"

A curious chill went over Kassandra.

"If he should visit me," she declared, "I should try to be very certain that it was in truth the God, and not some lecherous man bent on deceiving a foolish and credulous woman, or romantic girl who mistakes a mere lecher for a God's deputy. I know there are men in this temple who would not be above taking advantage of a silly girl that way; or do you think priests are eunuchs because they have taken a vow of chastity?"

Esiria would say no more; and Kassandra held her peace; but the next day when the women went to draw water at the well she sought out Phyllida and asked to see her child. Like all mothers, the young woman (for she was not yet Kassandra's age) was eager to show her little boy.