"A war is coming," Emmanuel said. "We will choose our ground. It will be for us, the two of us, Belial and me, a table, on which we play. Over which we wager the universe, the being of being as such. I initiate this final part of the ages of war; I have advanced into Belial's territory, his home. I have moved forward to meet him, not the other way around. Time will tell if it was a wise idea."

"Can't you foresee the results?" Herb said.

Emmanuel regarded him. Silently.

"You can," Herb said. You know what the outcome will be, he realized. You know now; you knew when you entered Rybys's womb. You knew from the beginning of creation-before crea- tion, in fact; before a universe existed.

"They will play by rules," Zina said. "Rules agreed on."

"Then," Herb said, "that's why Belial has not attacked you. That's why you've been able to live here and grow up-for ten years. He knows you're here-"

"Does he know?" Emmanuel said.

Silence.

"I haven't told him," Emmanuel said. "It is not my burden. He must find out for himself. I do not mean the government. I mean the power that truly rules, in comparison to which the government, all governments, are shadows."

"He'll tell him when he's ready," Zina said. "Good and ready."

Herb said, "Are you good and ready, Emmanuel?"

The boy smiled. A child's smile, a shift away from the stern countenance of a moment before. He said nothing. A game, Herb Asher realized. A child's game!

Seeing this he trembled.

Zina said:

Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child's is the king- dom.

" What is that?" Elias said.

It is not from Judaism," Zina said obscurely. She did not

amplify.

The part of him that derives from his mother, Herb Asher realized, is ten years old. And the part of him that is Yah has no age: it is infinity itself. A compound of the very young and the timeless: precisely what Zina in her arcane quote had stated.