“Ooldra—” said the priest in conclusion. She knew she had been recognized to her central essence. The other words had been each commanding and terrible, and besides all together had formed a pattern from which there was only one way out. She gave a cry, half a scream, and it was the most passionate, desolate sound I’ve ever heard. It was not a sound from a human throat, it was stripped of all memory of humanity. It was harsh with despair, but despair still passionate, as it faced into the total loss. The chill that ran up my spine I welcomed: it told me I was still in the world.

I saw the flames and felt my body.

“I love you, Highest God,” I said aloud from the love that was in me, that had grown from that endless glimpse of the agony of evil.

“And the agony of evil,” said the priest, “is the light of the Highest God seen by those that have rejected him though he is in their selves. He is still in their self, but they are too shrivelled to bear it.”

It seemed a long time later, after we had rested, that we took the one candle and were climbing up the way I had come. I was remembering my own little God, my Cousin in Divinity, as I clung to the swaying ladder, and thanking him for making it that statuette the man had given me instead of anything else in his sack. I was thinking of all sorts of little things—a twisted nail in the wall, the slanting candle flame, a strand of hair in my eyes—Just as I had when I was riding in the carriage with my mother and Ooldra, going to do away with our enemy.

As they bathed my leg in the inn’s back-room, the huge thought lulled me. Just like that he had said, “Warn Atlan” —and that was why I had been spared through so much.

Should I ever see inside of that last memory of the World as it was created, that last stronghold of Divine peace, which had sealed itself anciently and remained sealed while the rest of the World multiplied in mortal turmoil, each petty nastiness contributing to the high mass-meaning evil?—

The battle was over.