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phrase,” Father Thanom continued. “‘If you say your soul is alone and apart.’ Does that mean the sorcerer’s soul is not a single thing as we have been taught? That we are as divided in spirit as those who cannot call the magics?”
    “I do not know, Father.”
    “Nor do I.” He sighed. “But I believe had that sorcerer gone to Anidita and asked his question but a little differently, we would not be isolated here.”
    Although the night around them was warm and heavy, Sitara felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickling and her hands growing cold.
    The abbot glimpsed the fear in her and shook his head. “Fear not, Great Queen. I was born to feel the magic of the world inside myself and outside, and to have the ability to weave that power to affect the world. I accept the law that those like me should have a cloistered life, where we can steep ourselves in study and prayer and act only when we may do so with compassion and right understanding. That is the purpose of the mandala, as is the purpose of all we do here. Right understanding of Sindhu.”
    “It is an enormous task to understand the whole of Sindhu.”
    A smile flitted across Father Thanom’s face. “Which is one of the reasons we so seldom act, and why when we act, we do so little. It is difficult, Great Queen.” His voice grew so soft she could scarcely hear it beneath the myriad of other night noises. “Not all cloistered here have patience. Their power is restless within them despite all we do. They wish for the power and the patronage they see open to those who follow other ways.”
    Sitara swallowed. She felt the chant behind her. She felt it in her bones. Its power crawled across her skin. What would that power do if left to itself? “No one here is prisoner,” she said, because it was the proper thing to say and her frightened mind could think of nothing else.
    “They are if they wish to remain in Sindhu.”
    Enough of fear
, Sitara told herself sternly. “There is nothing I can do,” she said. “The law is clear.”
    Father Thanom nodded as if this was not only expected, but welcome. “Know this, Great Queen: If Hastinapura begins to make … demands against Sindhu, there are those here who will not oppose them, and as you know, it is a difficult thing to stop sorcerers from speaking to each other should they so choose.”
    The monks’ song, the sorcerers’ song, still droned at her back, and the power of it still touched her, feather-light but constant. The queen thought of the woman in white who sat so silently beside Prince Samudra at the tables and the councils. Sitara wondered what she did in her silence and what woven power she might have borne with her. A sorcerer’s workings could be secured in a ribbon, or a lump of clay. She thought of the sorceress leaving a spell behind, a curse or some thing that would break her home, break the royal line if it did not yield. She thought of her children and bit her tongue hard so as not to speak her fear.
    “What do you advise then, Father?” Sitara said.
Be cold. Be stone. You cannot be weak. Not now, not ever again
.
    “This is the understanding the mandala brings me. This is a time of change. That violence will come. Indeed, it must come.” Father Thanom frowned, seeing she knew not what before him. Perhaps he was reading the mandala from memory. “It is the smallest act and the greatest love that will turn the wheel to peace again.”
    Sitara closed her eyes, her heart both weary and hard. “What good does this knowledge do, Father?”
    The abbot faced her squarely. “It tells us, daughter, that it is time to act, and you have not come here to refrain from action, but to take it. I also wish to see a future for Sindhu, as she is, as an Awakened land. I ask you to permit me to help you act.” He moved closer to her. “Tell me what you plan, my queen. Let me and mine help you.”
    “When you tell me there may be spies in your own house? I need help, Father, but how can I