I happened to be listening, during this time, to a course on ancient Egypt from the Great Courses series. When I heard the description of Thoth as being very much like Hermes and Mercury, including healing, I realized that I could benefit greatly by adapting a version of Egyptian lore to my literalizing of Indo-european gods. Ka and ba corresponded—or could be made to correspond—with the way I was already using “inself” and “outself” in the Mithermages series. That allowed me to name the Belgod I had taken from Semitic and biblical tradition. Set made a lovely, dangerous enemy. And as I invented more and more of the lore surrounding him, tying him to the dragon in the book of Revelation, the workings of manmagic became something rich and fascinating, and very close to what I had already developed for gatemagic. In other words, they made a consistent whole, and one that I believe corresponds with the real world in significant metaphorical ways.

Having invented the world I needed, I then had to find a way to make it clear to readers. What made it especially difficult was my determination that all the communication between ka and ba had to be on a pre- or sub-verbal level. We don’t talk to our own minds and bodies in language, and so when I had Wad-Loki’s ba trying to share his memories with Danny North’s ka, I had to put it on a nonverbal level. Yet books are written in words. Finding a means of representing non-speech in speech was daunting. I hope that for most readers, I succeeded.

As I learned more about manmages, the character of Anonoei began to grow. I began this novel with no idea that Anonoei would be important in it; she insisted on growing into something important, she and her sons, and so they will be major figures in the third and final volume.

Another problem was to keep from getting so caught up in the lore of magery that I lost track of the real world—our world, and Danny’s place in it. It was very important to me that his friends become memorable individuals, and that Danny fall in love in a serious way. These high school students should not be merely Danny’s foils, people he can talk to in order for us to learn what he is thinking. In this novel, they represent us, the drowthers, ordinary people who are in awe of the gods, if we believe in them; and I have met few people who didn’t have some conception of a god, whether they would apply that title to it or not. How would these teenagers respond to having the new kid turn out to be the equivalent of Hermes and Mercury and Loki and Thoth?