Anthē’s head hurt. This was strange, because the rest of her body felt so unusually relaxed and comfortable, as if she was lying in a bed of feathers. Were it not for the throbbing in her temples, she would have been quite contented. What was causing it? She opened her eyes slowly, wincing in the light. She was indeed in a wonderful plush, red feather-bed, in one of the nicest looking rooms she had ever seen. The morning sun was pouring in through tall windows, the curtains of which had just been drawn.

“Morning ma’am,” said a voice cheerily at her side. It belonged to an old woman dressed in a frock and apron, who placed a silver tray on the table next to her bed. Anthē remembered where she was.

“Oh no,” she said, sitting up in bed. Anthē grimaced as a wave of agony shot across her eyes. “What did I do last night?” she asked the maid.

“I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am,” said the maid in an equally cheery tone. She lifted the lid off the tray, revealing a breakfast of bacon, fried eggs, toast and a pot of tea. “I was told to let you lie in. You’re expected in the central lecture theatre in half an hour.”

“What for?” Anthē asked, pulling some bacon towards her. She wondered what was happening in the ‘central lecture theatre’.

“I couldn’t say ma’am, I don’t get involved in the Philosophers’ business, I just serve the food, you see. Ah, here’s the young master.”

Tromo had come in from his little bedroom and was stood by the window. He was wearing a little shirt and waist-coat, with smart trousers.

“Isn’t that better?” said the maid. “He wanted to change back into his dirty old clothes, but I wouldn’t let him. Stubborn little chappy, this one, he don’t say much.”

“He doesn’t say anything at all,” said Anthē. “Come and sit up here with me, Tromo.” She patted the bed. “Do you want some toast?”

“Oh, he’s been fed already,” said the maid. “I’ll be taking my leave now ma’am, if there’s nothing else?”

Anthē looked down. She was still wearing the dress from last night. “What am I supposed to wear?”

“You may choose what you like from the cupboards, ma’am,” said the maid. “I’ll be along in half-an-hour or so to take you down to the lecture theatre.”

Anthē’s eyes widened as the maid left the room. Her excitement nearly blotted out the pain in her head, but not quite. She laid her breakfast to one side and swung herself out of bed. “Tromo, did you hear that?” Yesterday she had been rummaging through the two wardrobes in search of an evening dress and come across literally hundreds of exquisite day-time dresses of every colour, pattern and kind. She flung open the doors and set about the arduous process of selecting just one. Tromo walked over and stood at her side, and she used him as a rack, immediately dumping her ten or so first choices on him. “How am I going to choose in twenty minutes?”

When the maid returned she found Anthē waiting in a dark brown outfit that was pretty but not too ostentatious, matching her hair, and she had added a dark cardigan for good measure. She led the pair down some stairs out over the courtyard to another building before taking her leave of them.

Anthē and Tromo went through the double doors into a large atrium, with a high ceiling and marble floor, full of Philosophers standing around chatting. She spotted Zantheus and Leukos and went over to them.

Leukos noticed her first. “Sleep well?” he asked her as they came over.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, stealing an embarrassed look at Zantheus. She was sure she had misbehaved last night, but she couldn’t quite remember exactly how... Something caught her eye.

“Hey, what’s that?” she asked.

She had taken sight of a large golden statue in the middle of the room, about eight feet tall. It was in the shape of a woman. She was not striking any sort of a pose but merely stood there, her hands folded in front of her, a small smile upturning her lips, as if she knew something the rest of the world did not. The reason Anthē had pointed her out was because she looked exactly like the two insane sisters they had encountered at the end of their time in Choresh.

“Didn’t we meet her in the forest?” she asked.

They wandered over to get a better look. The woman was quite beautiful. She was standing on a sort of block, on which were inscribed some letters in an ancient language:

αληθεια

“I wonder what it means...” Anthē thought out loud.

“Ah, I see you’ve met Alethia.” That was Kathegetes’ voice, coming from behind them. He was dressed extremely smartly, as ever, today sporting a particularly fine tweed jacket.

“Have you met her too? Why do you have a statue of her?” Anthē asked him.

“Pardon me?” said Kathegetes, looking confused.

“We met this person in Choresh forest,” Zantheus said, “along with her sister, Apostasia.”

“Do you have another statue of Apostasia?” said Anthē. “How do you tell them apart?”

Kathegetes’ brow furrowed in total incomprehension, a rare thing for him. “My dear woman, what on earth are you talking about? This is not a statue of a real person! ‘Alethia’ means ‘truth’ in one of the old languages. This statue is merely an artistic representation of ‘truth’ in the form of a female human being. A metaphor, if you will.”

“What’s a ‘metaphor’?” asked Anthē.

“A metaphor,” said Leukos, “is when you say one thing in terms of something else. This woman, for example, is, Kathegetes is telling us, a metaphor for truth, with which the Philosophers are allegedly infatuated. Beautiful, elegant, appealing and so on.”

“No, she’s just a woman,” said Anthē. “We’ve met her. You were there Leukos, remember? And her twin sister, Apostasia. Well, that’s if this isn’t actually her,” she said to Kathegetes. “How do you know you’ve got the right one?”

“I’m sorry,” said Kathegetes, “I do not fully grasp your meaning...”

“Well, her twin looks just like her. This might as well be a statue of either of them. They’re nearly impossible to tell apart. You can only tell if you know them personally. How do you know this is Alethia and not Apostasia?”

Kathegetes was rather taken aback. He removed his spectacles and took out a handkerchief to polish them. “Miss Anthē,” he said, getting her name right for once, “do you mean to tell me that on your travels you have come across two women who resemble the likeness of this statue, who went by the names ‘Alethia’ and ‘Apostasia’, and who were twin sisters?” He replaced his spectacles on his nose.

“Yes,” said Anthē.

“Remarkable! Simply remarkable! This statue must be hundreds of years old. What a coincidence. It’s...remarkable. I have to say, I have heard rumours of two insane twin sisters wandering around in Choresh before, but nothing like this…” Before he could say ‘remarkable’ one more time, a bell rang from somewhere, breaking his chain of thought. “Oh! That’s the signal. We’d better move into the theatre.”

The theatre was long and rectangular, with the characteristic high ceiling. It was filled with two blocks of chairs, each about twenty rows deep, with an aisle running in between them. These faced a raised stage at the far end of the room. It was almost identical architecturally to the dining hall, except that here the ceiling came to a dome in the middle, and the room was lit by the sun, which poured in through a series of skylights. The stage, which had two sets of steps leading up to it on either side, was occupied only by a lectern near the front.

The rows of chairs were quickly filling up. Kathegetes immediately made for the front of the room, but Leukos said “Let’s sit back here.” So he, Zantheus, Anthē and Tromo ended up in the back row of the block of chairs on the left.

The chatter continued. Occasionally someone would look round and stare at Zantheus or Anthē, but they quickly turned their head back the other way if they made eye contact.

“I do not understand,” said Zantheus, “why I am so fascinating to these men...”

“They don’t get visits from Aythian knights very often,” said Leukos. “And as for you, Anthē, women aren’t usually allowed inside lecture theatres.”

“That’s a stupid rule,” said Anthē. “Why are all these Philosophers men?”

Leukos might have been about to say something, but all of a sudden everyone in the hall stood up, so they followed suit. Provost Epistaseis had come in. He made his way down the length of the room, just as they had done at dinner. He carried on up the flight of steps on the right and on to the stage, where he stood in front of the lectern. Here Zantheus wondered if he abused his power by waiting just a little longer than was necessary before saying simply “Sit.”

There was the sound of lots of people sitting down at once. When it had subsided, the Provost gripped the lectern and said “Welcome.” He had a dry, stale voice. Not expressionless, but not exactly full of life either. “You find yourselves at a rather impromptu” –his eyes glanced down at Kathegetes for a moment– “symposium, organised by our current Master of Field Studies. He assures me that it will be an exciting affair, on account of our recent special visitor.” Now he glanced at Zantheus. He almost looked angry. “Let us hope he is right. Without wasting any more time, I invite to the stand Professor Kathegetes.”

There was a light applause as Epistaseis and Kathegetes swapped places. Anthē noticed how it mainly came from one side of the room, the one on which they were sat. The Professor assumed a completely different manner at the lectern. He plonked down an enormous bundle of notes onto it and stood with his hands pressed together in front of his chest, smiling at the audience.

“Good morning fellows!” he said. “Thank you Provost for that mercifully brief introduction! Let us attend to the order of the day. My proposed title for today’s symposium is ‘Enlightenment upon Awmeer: An Investigative Study of the Dogma and Praxis of the Aythian Order.’”

A ripple of conversation went through the audience. Kathegetes held up a hand. “Yes, yes, I know this is very exciting, but please will the congregation observe silence so that we may proceed as swiftly as possible. I believe this will be a historic day in the history of our institution. Let the record show that the time is...” He took out his pocket watch. “Precisely ten past eleven, and that the date is—”

Here, Leukos leaned over to Zantheus and spoke to him so that he could no longer hear Kathgetes. “Zantheus, are you ready?” he whispered.

“What do you mean?” Zantheus did not know why he was whispering too.

“The Philosophers going to ask you some quite difficult questions, as is their way. Don’t feel you have to tell them everything. Some things they are not yet ready to hear. But be honest about what you do mention.”

Zantheus was just about to say that of course he would be honest, that he was incapable of lying, but someone else had said his name. It was Kathegetes. The room had gone silent. A few faces looked round at him.

“It’s you, get up there Zantheus!” whispered Anthē.

Zantheus stood up and made his way onto the stage. It was just like at dinner, he could feel the Philosophers all looking at him. He joined Kathegetes and looked out on the assembly as the two of them stood either side of the lectern. Their expressions were inquisitive, but also, with a few exceptions, hostile. Kathegetes, unperturbed, began interviewing the knight. Starting with “Now, ‘Zantheus’, is that your full title?” he asked him a series of questions, and to each one Zantheus would reply in a loud, clear voice so that the whole room could hear. They covered lots of what they had spoken about at dinner, going over Zantheus’s childhood, his upbringing in the Sanctuary, his training regime, the Articles, the hierarchy of the Order, and so on. He told them about the different fitness exercises, slope-climbing, cold-water plunging, strength training, all of it. The Philosophers listened in critical silence, as Kathegetes had requested, up until once crucial juncture. When the word “Enlightenment” was mentioned, they sat up. When he began to speak about climbing Awmeer, they began to fidget on their seats. Some looked excited, like Kathegetes, others nervous, others angry.

“And what happened when you got to the top of the mountain?” asked Kathegetes. Even he had not dared to probe this far at dinner.

Zantheus spoke very cautiously, remembering he was in a room full of very esteemed, ‘intelligent’ men. “A mirror,” he said.

Instantly a hubbub of whispered comment broke out. He thought he caught the words “What nonsense,” and “He must be joking,” from somewhere.

Kathegetes was enraptured. “Tell us, Sir Zantheus, tell us about the mirror.”

“I cannot describe it in detail. It was quite hard to see on top of the mountain in the snowstorm” –this prompted more murmured commentary– “but it was very very big. Enormous, in fact. So big that I could not find my way around it. I tried to push it over, but it took my weight. I even struck it with my sword, but it shattered the blade.”

“Do you still have the weapon, Zantheus?”

“Yes,” said Zantheus. “I carry it always.” He drew it and held it aloft for the Philosophers to see. It still surprised him, even here, now, after all this time, to see a series of jagged spikes instead of a single, smooth point.

Another ripple of conversation.

“That proves nothing.”

“Glass cannot shatter steel.”

“What a fool.”

Kathegetes continued, tremendously excited. “And what happened after that, Sir Zantheus?”

Zantheus thought about what to say. He remembered Leukos’s advice. He looked at the cold, rational, skeptical men.

“Then I left the mountain,” he said.

Silence.

“Oh,” said Kathegetes, slightly disappointed by the anti-climax. “Well,” he recovered himself, “Sir Zantheus, having undertaken this little expedition...do you feel, as it were...Enlightened?”

Zantheus could sense the tension in the room as he gathered his answer. All murmuring had stopped. After a while, very slowly, he spoke.

“No.”