She wondered what it was made of.

She gave him a drug as he lay sleeping, a dream, and she went into it herself with a crown of flowers, for vanity’s sake. She could make a dream as real as flesh. She knew what he was; she had studied all kinds of heresy. She’d had a picture book. And of all heresies, atheism had seemed to her the most fascinating, as fascinating as an empty well—dark and empty, sleep without dreams. As the boy lay sleeping, she gave him a vision, form out of darkness, the beginning of the universe, nothing at first, just mist on a gray background, and then a scattering of stars. She gave him a horizon, and in a little while the sun rose. It burned away the mist, the darkness, and the starlight. It filled the sky with radiance, and yet it didn’t burn the eyes, and it invited staring, because Angkhdt the Interpreter sat on a throne among its rays in his most gorgeous clothes, with fire in his face and the crown of heaven on his brow. In one of his four hands he held an astrolabe, another grasped the collar of the dog of war. Another rested on the head of his familiar, the symbol of his poetry, a crouching dog with the face of a beautiful woman. His fourth hand lay clenched in his lap, a modest metaphor of phallic power.

The sun illuminated all secrets. You could see the earth, rolling insecurely in its enormous orbit, its seas advancing and retreating, its forests and deserts swelling and disappearing, the relentless flow of seasons.

You could see glaciers, and mountains thirty miles high, and places of eternal day, eternal night. And above this chaos, this plunging flux of life and death, Angkhdt the Charioteer held in his hands the symbols of intellect, love, power, art, the four reins of the plunging chariot.

The bishop put her fingers to the head of the sleeping boy. In his dream he was lying on his stomach in the mountain grass, watching the transparent sun, and the world spread out like a map. Below him he could see countries, towns, cities, rivers, the clash of armies, the emperor walking in his garden, stopping to sniff a flower among the cages of famous philosophers. The boy was chewing on a blade of grass, and he didn’t even turn his head when she came into his dream as softly as if she had not wanted to disturb him. She was barefoot, wearing a summer dress. As she walked, the grass bent away under her footsteps, and ripples of dandelions and blue chicory spread out in her wake.

* * *

Far below, in another part of the temple, Chrism Demiurge was eating. His table was spread with silver dishes piled high with vegetables stewed in wine, fruit pasties, custards, obscure salads, far too much for one old man. But he was not alone. Along the floor crawled snakes and little hairless beasts, and he rolled bread into pills to throw for them and watch them fight. Blind to form, he could still distinguish color, motion, light. Around him, the red walls blazed with light, wax tapers set in girandoles.