No sooner had Diomedes' charioteer dropped Lila off than Gabrielle and Xena descended upon her.

"Lee, what in the name of all the gods...!" Gabrielle cried, flustered and near bursting with everything from confusion and outrage to joy and relief. "What are you doing here?! You left with Ephiny and the Amazons! You ought to have arrived at home by now!"

Xena remained silent, waiting for Lila to offer some explanation. Xena was less apt than Gabrielle to be amazed by sudden, unforeseen turns of events, but Lila's unheralded arrival even threw Xena for a loop. Particularly coming, as it did, on the night before the battle which would determine whether Ilium might survive or had best prepare itself, in short order, to be trampled forever in the dust of the Glory That Was.

"Forgive me, Gab," Lila said with a soft composure that commanded Gabrielle's attention more forcefully than any loud protest or giddy embrace would have done. "I left Ephiny and the others on Tenedos and went on a mission."

"A mission? By yourself?" Gabrielle shouted. "That brought you back here? On the night before the cookies hit the can? How? Where? Were you on the beach when those foul dogs murdered Velasca?"

"I was and it was terrible," Lila said. "Velasca saved our lives."

"What mission have you gone on, Lila?" Xena asked calmly, fending off her surprise while being captured by a grudging admiration for Lila even as she shared with Gabrielle the feeling Lila's presence would make their difficult job yet a trifle more difficult.

Lila took out the leather pack and removed the belt.

"No, I don't believe it!" Gabrielle sprang back, her hand flying to her mouth, as though Lila had withdrawn a poisonous snake from the puckered opening of the bag in which it lay curled.

Xena's jaw dropped in amazement. Not much in the known world could render Xena speechless, but now she stood, fully armed in her brass and leathers, on the eve of a great battle, dumbstruck.

Xena and Gabrielle exchanged glances. Then they looked at Lila. Possibly for the first time in their joint lives, Xena and Gabrielle were utterly at a loss. If Lila had had a feather, she would only have had to wave it in Xena's and Gabrielle's direction for the two of them to have been blown over.

"Try not to be angry with me," Lila folded the belt in thirds and replaced it in its pack. "It's something I had to do."

"Angry?" Gabrielle stammered, "I'm like... totally disassembled."

"You must have gone to Tiryns, and Admete must have given it to you," Xena said, recovering a jot of composure. "But how, Lila? What about Ephiny and the others?"

"They boarded a freighter bound for home," Lila said. "I acquired the means to book passage to Tiryns. Queen Admete consented to see me and then, as you see, she gave me the belt."

"I won't ask you how you pulled it off...," Gabrielle said, still trying to comprehend it all.

"And when she asked you why she ought to give it to you," Xena said. "You must have told her what she needed to hear."

"I told Admete she should do it for love, and Admete agreed," Lila said. "Then she put me on a warship bound for those beaches out there. She gave instructions for Diomedes to bring me back across the plain."

"But why come back here, though?" Gabrielle said with a frown. "This place is a powderkeg."

"Gab," Lila said, softly, "I’m bringing her the belt."

"Of course," the light went on in Gabrielle’s consciousness. , "And yet you could have been killed or taken prisoner or sold for a slave."

"But at least I would have tried," Lila said.

"Oh, Lee," tears came to Gabrielle's eyes as she reached out to embrace her not-so-little sister. "You're aren't fooling around, are you?"

"No," Lila whispered as she leaned into Gabrielle's warm embrace.

"I ought to be furious with you," Gabrielle said, though she wasn't.

"Wouldn't you have done the same for Xena?" Lila said, still hugging her beloved sister. "How many times have you braved death to be present for Xena when she's needed you? And when you and Hope fell into the lava pit, Xena counted her life as nothing when it came to searching to the ends of the earth for you."

Gabrielle nodded.

"Then don't be surprised if you teach by example, you and Xena," Lila said.

Gabrielle looked at Xena and, for the first time in a very long time, Xena blushed.

"I guess she isn’t your sister for nothing," Xena said to Gabrielle. "You're very brave and foolhardy, Lila. Like someone else I know."

Then Xena came over and gave Lila a hug. "But now you're safely here with us. That's the important thing."

Up on the balcony, overlooking the staging area, a spectral presence dressed in white, with long, black hair and rich, bronze skin, was quietly watching the reunion. Lila looked up and saw her, and her knees went weak. The toll of her week-long journey, both physical and emotional, came rushing in on her, and she nearly collapsed. Xena caught her and held her up.

"Someone's up there waiting for you," Xena looked at the woman who was standing on the balcony, the hands of her long, lithe, bare arms resting on the balustrade.

"Go to her," Gabrielle said.

Partially recovering her poise and balance, Lila took a deep breath, squeezed Xena's hand and reached for Gabrielle's, then walked toward the garth and went inside the palace to mount the staircase to Penthesileia's quarters.

When Lila reached the topmost landing, she stopped dead in her tracks. A dozen footpaces away, Penthesileia turned toward the stairwell. The two women stood motionless, gazing at one another. Seasons and sunmarks passed. The fall rains came, followed by the winter snows. Then Persephone returned to Demeter, and the land awoke and bloomed again. When the summer heat had passed and the crops and fruits were ripe for the harvest, Lila and Penthesileia opened their arms and, with cries of joy mixed with tears, they rushed together and embraced on the open belvedere between the wall torches that had just been lit to mark the transformation of evening into night.

"I had to come," Lila gasped as she found a home in Penthesileia's arms, a touch and a smell and an aura that seemed as familiar to her as the cottage and byre where, eons ago, she'd grown up and had passed her childhood and adolescence. "I had to get here before it was too late."

"Yes, my darling. I know, I know...," came the voice that Lila would have known anywhere, its timbre, cadence and the life-giving warmth of its unconditional acceptance. Lila could pour all the love she had into the cavern of Penthesileia's embrace and its depths would never fill to the point of forcing Lila to cut off the flow. At the same time, Lila felt submerged by Penthesileia's love, felt herself drowning in it, nor need she ever come up for air, able as she was to breathe the deep, drenching draughts of it.

"Don't hate me," Lila looked up into those marvelous magenta eyes, and her heart canyoned a river of love to wear rocks down to pebbles in an instant. "I had to get it. I wanted you to have it. To close the scroll. To come full circle. To be united, at the end, with the one you love."

"Lila, could I ever learn hate from the one who taught me to love?" Penthesileia said as she looked into Lila's eyes so blue, in the flickering glare of the torches, that they shone an emblazoned violet. "Tomorrow, at the full moon, the wheel comes full circle and the scroll will close. But what could you want me to have that could be any more precious than your own precious self?"

Lila opened the pack and took out the belt.

At first, Penthesileia stared at the belt as though she were a bit befuddled; and, for an instant, Lila wondered if she should inform Penthesileia what it was. A curious, critical look came over Penthesileia's face, accompanied by an uncertain frown, as she stared at the belt. Rather than to reach out a hand to lift the belt from Lila's hands and examine it further, Penthesileia, seemingly dazed, took a small step backwards and shook her head slightly as if requiring some further explanation.

Just as Lila was about to intercede and say to Penthesileia, "That's Hippolyte's belt, and that pair of huge, gleaming jewels at the buckle are the twin diamonds that you gave her to commemor...", Penthesileia shrieked and her eyes filled with fear, anguish and pain. Those eyes then flicked to shine a wild, eerie light full force on Lila who stood there stunned, feeling, in the instant, that she was suddenly in the presence of an utter stranger as dread power and fierce will accompanied by murderous passion streamed out from those fiery eyes to encase the belt in the aura of a white hot heat.

Lila's instincts reacted with instantaneous, autonomic knowledge. Here is the Amazon whose fierce essence I've seen only the tiniest glimmerings of, the fire in the blood of Lysippe that I've never seen scorch the lightest petal on the most delicate flower, the will sharper than the honed blade of any sword, the boiling plasma that lusts for the kill, the fountain of darkness that lies closer than the arms of a lover to the springs of light, the light and dark revolving in the mutual salute of a perpetual pas de deux. The gentility and generosity, the compassion and kindness, are they merely a facade? Do pride and lust, boiling in the blood, lie at the heart of this Amazon queen to whom I would entrust my life? Is she a devourer of souls, a feaster on the flesh of the spirit? What else, if not a destroyer, could have tamed Velasca, commanded Ephiny, brought Gabrielle to heel and neutralized Xena? Are you a monster, my love? Have I risked my life for and flung my love at a vile and ugly creature of the night?

"You came to me in the night with my sister's blood still dripping from the radiant jewels and knotted cords of that foul thing," Penthesileia spoke in an unearthly voice to a presence that Lila couldn't detect. "'Give me a child,' you begged, your pitiful manhood in tatters, 'as did your mother and her mother and her mother before her.'

"'My sister's dead,' I wept, 'because of you and your filthy, incestuous lust, and all you want, now that she's spurned you and has paid the price of it with her life, is to defile my body with your horrid, hateful seed. Perhaps I'll bear you a child and then, when you come to claim it, I'll reap the joy of ripping open its bowels before your eyes and tearing out its heart and flinging it, while still it beats, on the dung heap.' That's the issue you'll get out of me.

"And my cowardly father never returned to trouble me more but abandoned his child as he's abandoned all his children, even my mother, when he no longer has any use for her. He chose instead to torment Xena whom he's always believed would be a softer touch. And he's right. Xena is too good to take the edge of the blade to her own child for the sake of making its father suffer. Yet how quickly he'll abandon her once he's had her. And he'll leave her with... a jeweled belt for her troubles. Oh, vile thing! I curse the day you were forged in the swill bucket of the gods!"

Lila recoiled and the tears streamed down her cheeks. The gift she'd borne in love had brought only hate. Would that the frenzied mob had slaughtered me -- slaughtered us all -- on the beach when we'd escaped their murderous taunts or that Queen Admete had laughed at love as a foolish, worthless, easily deceived thing, the trick that hope ever seeks, without success, to play on fate, and that she might have scoffed at my request. My love has brought only grief and wretchedness to the one I love. Let me live loveless in recompense.

"Lila?" a familiar voice recalled Lila to herself. Lila looked into eyes that were soft and loving again. "When you left with Ephiny, Velasca and the others, you were intent upon going after the belt, am I right?"

"Yes," Lila said.

"And Admete gave it to you because your request touched her heart, yes?" Penthesileia said.

"I believe so," Lila said.

"And you did this for me," Penthesileia said.

"Yes," Lila nodded.

"Out of love," Penthesileia said. "Out of a need to break through to a love that was selfless and giving, to atone for your disappointment and bitterness because I appeared to be choosing a suicidal fate over you..., over us."

"Yes," Lila whispered.

"Tell me," Penthesileia said, "when your sister left home to follow Xena, would you say that she had stars in her eyes?"

"A little bit," Lila said.

"And when do you think those stars began to fade?" Penthesileia said.

"At no particular time," Lila said. "Id say gradually, during the course of their time together."

"And what came to replace those stars?" Penthesileia said.

"Hard, solid earth," Lila said.

"With what effect?" Penthesileia said.

"With the effect that what had begun as infatuation..."

The arrow with its poison had embedded itself in Gabrielle's flesh, and Xena had had to break off the feathered end and push the pointed end through as Gabrielle lay near death in the dispensary where civilians under attack were dropping like flies even as Ephiny went into labor with Xenon. But all of Xena's many healing skills were proving useless, and Gabrielle was slipping away until, with one final, sighing breath, the light that had come to shine on Xena's life and to give her life joy and meaning, was gone. Xena grew desperate. Gabrielle wasn't supposed to have ventured out of the temple. Nor was she supposed to have gotten hit by a poisoned arrow. Xena, who'd saved so many lives in the past from this very injury, wasn't supposed to have failed now that it was her dearest friend who lay stricken on the pallet. Xena grew frantic, covering Gabrielle's mouth with her own and expelling one desperate breath after another into Gabrielle's expired lungs.

But the effort, no matter how forced, was to no avail. 'Give it up, Xena,' a friendly voice echoed behind her and a helpful hand touched her shoulder, 'She's gone. She’s passed on.' But Xena wouldn't give up, not even in the face of the incontrovertible fact of death itself. Furiously, in a blind rage at the universe and all the gods, Xena began to pound with her fists on Gabrielle's chest, hitting Gabrielle's sternum with impact enough to kill, as she cried, through her burgeoning tears, 'Don't leave me! Don't you leave me!' And then, by the sheer power of a manic will that refused to accept the facts that stood ranged in front of its face, Gabrielle's eyes popped open, a retching breath raced from the void into her lungs, her neck jerked, her heart beat and, an instant later, she regained consciousness.

"Deepened to love."

"In that instant, she was very mortal, wasn't she?" Penthesileia said. "Very frightened, very lonely, very needy."

"Gabrielle?" Lila said.

"Xena," Penthesileia said.

"I guess," Lila said. "No, I don't guess. Yes, she was. I'm sure of it."

"And what did Xena want more than anything?" Penthesileia said. "Though it may only have consciously dawned on her in that stark, agonizing instant?"

"For Gabrielle to love her and to want her as Xena had grown to love and want Gabrielle," Lila said.

"To love her in spite of her dark side?" Penthesileia said.

"In spite of Xena's dark side? I suppose. Yes," Lila said.

"Could Xena -- or could Gabrielle, for that matter -- ever be sure of Gabrielle's love for Xena if Gabrielle didn't know -- and love -- Xena's dark, vulnerable, selfish side?" Penthesileia said.

"No," Lila shook her head.

"Gabrielle's love would have all the protestations of good and sincere intentions until the instant of truth had come," Penthesileia said. "And that instant of truth can't be pre-arranged. It can only be affirmed or rejected spontaneously when it bursts upon one suddenly, without warning."

"Of course," Lila said.

"You risked you life for me," Penthesileia looked lovingly at Lila, "and, in the process, you accomplished, without a sword or a shield, what Xena and Gabrielle couldn't accomplish for all their skill at arms and knowledge of a hundred tricks of the warrior's trade. And how have I just now repaid your gift of inestimable worth and kindness? By revealing to you something of the core of darkness that lives like a ghostly presence at the center of me. I'm an Amazon, Lila, and a daughter of Ares. It’s part of the package. I can't change that no matter how much I might want to."

"When Xena was lying in her coffin mere turns of the sandglass from being burnt on the pyre and then having her ashes brought home to Cyrene in Amphipolis," Lila said, "and all that Gab had to go on, in those last agonizing instants, when the blaze had been kindled and Ephiny and all the Amazons were chanting and waiting, was Autolycus' goofy jumping around, she looked into his distraught eyes and, in spite of everything, believed. If you imagine that I would do any less, you don't know me."

"How can you be sure until the instant comes and you're put to the test?" Penthesileia said.

"Because I believe!" Lila cried. "I believe in you! I believe in us! And I won't stop believing after tomorrow when they've laid you on the pyre and set those horrid sticks ablaze!"

Penthesileia put her arms around Lila who now sobbed in Penthesileia's arms even more forcefully than she'd sobbed in Queen Admete's arms.

"You're leaving me and I can't stop you," Lila wept, "but I can rail and rant against your going. And if bringing you Hippolyte's belt can make your going easier and less painful, then let this belt envelop me in its darkness and suck the life from me and cast me as a desiccated shell onto the rocks of that heavily armored beach. I wish you only peace and joy when you get to the other side of Claw Mountain and reunite with Hippolyte and Cyane and Melosa and Velasca and all your Amazon sisters who've passed over."

"And for you, Lila," Penthesileia said tenderly as she gently stroked Lila's long, flowing hair, "I wish joy and happiness and a long life and many loved ones with whom to share it. And a memory of me wishing all those things for you now that the prophesy has been fulfilled."

"The prophesy?" Lila snuffled and looked up into Penthesileia's ochre eyes.

"When I resolved to confront Achilles and lay down my life for my Amazons so that the blood of Lysippe might be transfigured into the passion and devotion that would sustain the Amazons through their long, upcoming period of darkness and hibernation, I sought out the Fates, knowing that Ares would do everything he could to oppose my resolve. And it was foretold to me that if Hippolyte's belt were to be returned to the Amazons before the full moon of the day on which the sacrifice was to be made, the sacrifice would be effective for all Amazons, now and forever. If not, the sacrifice would nonetheless redeem Hippolyte's blood and Melanippe's and Antiope's, a debt that's mine to pay on their behalf as the youngest sister and sole survivor.

"And it was further prophesied that if the belt were to be returned, it would be borne by an adept of Demeter, of pure issue of blood, with the power to shrive those who came to her as suppliants."

"An archegos of the enaretes kores," Lila said.

"That's correct," Penthesileia said.

"Why someone like that?" Lila said.

"Because of her purity, devotion and selflessness," Penthesileia said. "Because she has no stake in the outcome other than those which dwell in the promptings of her heart."

"Queen Admete asked me twice if I was enareti kori," Lila said. "I thought that was very strange. I told her that I had been enareti kori but that I no longer was, having given my body and blood to the one for whom I was seeking the belt. Is that why she let me have it?"

"Not entirely," Penthesileia said. "That was a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. You still had to respond to her question from the heart."

"And when we met, that day, in the alcove, the day you were praying at the statue of Demeter," Lila said, "and I knelt down to shrive you, did you know that I would be the one to restore the belt? I couldn't understand why you were seeking Demeter's counsel and absolution. You're an Amazon who'd ordinarily be taking your concerns to Artemis and, as you aren't Greek, to Cybele."

"When Achilles slew Hector, I knew the time of confrontation was near," Penthesileia said. "So I offered up my prayer to Demeter that if the belt were to be returned, it might transpire between that turn of the sandglass and tomorrow's full moon."

"Did you think that Demeter sent me to you while you were kneeling at her shrine, for the purpose of fulfilling the prophesy?" Lila said.

"I was struck by the coincidence," Penthesileia said. "Beyond that, no. I beheld, in that instant, a warm, generous, loving spirit that reached out effortlessly and touched my heart. I'd hoped, then and there, that you might pursue an acquaintance with me and, when you did, my heart beat very fast as I found myself strongly attracted to you from the instant that our eyes met. And once you seemed to respond to my attraction, all thoughts of belts and prophesies flew out the casement. From that turn of the sandglass, it was your heart and soul and your great beauty that lifted me on supermortal wings and made my heart sing like a lyre's song. You are so beautiful, Lila. I could gaze at you 'til night turns to day and never say a word."

"You had no notion that I'd be going after the belt," Lila blushed at the compliment.

"None," Penthesileia said. "I had thought -- I had truly hoped -- that you were safely on your way home to your parents under Ephiny's protection. At sunrise tomorrow, my dear, no one within these walls or outside them will know whether they'll live to see the sun go down. Including Xena and your sister."

Lila nodded. So I've been an agent of the Fates, she thought. Little, insignificant me. No, the Amazons won't die even if, in moonmarks and sunmarks to come, they take a very different form and live in very different ways and think very different thoughts and find and connect with one another in strange and unforeseen ways. And I will have had a hand in making their continued existence possible. For the sake of the one I love.

"Tomorrow I meet my fate, my love," Penthesileia folded a loving, willing Lila into her arms. "So will a dozen of my finest Amazons. And so will many an Argive hoplite and Achaean mercenary, including no small number of their champions. Cassandra has prophesied that if and when Ilium and the House of Priam should fall, the House of Atreus will fall soon afterwards. But the very agent of Cassandra's fate, Agammemnon himself, will, within a turn of the sandglass after he's put her to death, suffer death himself. A very gruesome death at the hands of the one who bore his children, assisted by her lover. Yet he has neither ears to hear nor eyes to see and so seals his fate with the very stroke by which he metes out a deadly fate to others."

"I will claim you body," Lila said, "and see that you receive a proper Amazon burial."

"Not if it means placing yourself in deadly peril, my dear," Penthesileia said.

"If it means my life," Lila said in a tone that would not be gainsaid. "Your heart to my heart," Lila placed the palm of her right hand on Penthesileia's breast and the palm of her left hand on her own breast, "your soul to mine. In this life and, if the gods are willing, in the life to come."

Penthesileia felt a jolt of serene light passing through her on three levels: the earth of heart, the sea of soul and the sky of spirit. And in that transfigured instant, with Lila as her medium, Penthesileia stopped desiring, stopped hating, stopped willing.

"I'm going to the arbor to begin my vigil," Penthesileia said. "I'm hoping that if I might conquer myself this night, I might greet the dawn, knowing the way."

"I'll be with you," Lila said. "Tonight in body, tomorrow when you ride out, and forever after, in spirit."

Together, they went, Penthesileia's arm around Lila's shoulders and Lila's arm around Penthesileia's waist, to Penthesileia's chamber for the last of her gardenia scent and the blue scarf which Lila had given her and which Penthesileia now gave back to Lila to have for a keepsake. When that was done, they went out to walk under the stars among the lovely shrubs and flower gardens of Ilium, and the clear sky that formed a circular blanket around the moon as it shone on the verge of being as full as Lila's heart, was the same color violet, where it touched Selene's golden circle, as Lila's eyes.