"It will be, but there's a lot more to fighting a platoon of soldiers than armor and a sword, my optimistic young savage."
"That the metal be of proof is all I ask, Lord," the smith insisted, stubbornly. "The rest of it lies in my care."
"So be it. And then?"
"Sarpedion's image, as you must already know, is made of stone, wood, copper, and gold—besides the jewels, of course. I take his brain, liver, and heart; flood them with oil, and sacrifice them ..."
"Just a minute! Sarpedion is not alive and never has been; does not, as a matter of fact, exist. You just said, yourself, that his image was made of stone and copper and ..."
"Don't be silly, Lord. Or art testing me? Gods are spirits; bound to their images, and in a weaker way to their priests, by linkages of spirit force. Life force, it could be called. When those links are broken, by fire and sacrifice, the god may not exactly die, but he can do no more of harm until his priests have made a new image and spent much time and effort in building up new linkages. One point now settled was bothering me; what god to sacrifice him to. I'll make an image for you to inhabit, Lord, and sacrifice him to you, my strange new god. You will be my only god as long as I live. What is your name, Lord? I can't keep on calling you 'strange god' forever."
"My name is Skandos."
"S ... Sek ... That word rides ill on the tongue. With your permission, Lord, I will call you Llosir."
"Call me anything you like, except a god. I am not a god."
"You are being ridiculous, Lord Llosir," Tedric chided. "What a man sees with his eyes, hears with his ears—especially what a man hears without ears, as I hear now—he knows with certain knowledge to be the truth. No mere man could possibly do what you have done, to say naught of what you are about to do."