And that was because . . . there were no gods. There were forces, like the sea and death, and madness, but they weren’t conscious. They didn’t want things, or plan. That was all witchcraft, and once you know how the witching works, it stops working. He could see it all. What a god really did was marshal people together under a banner, and help them get things done. Build palaces, win wars. Otherwise nobody would ever agree about anything, but if you said the magic words, in the name of Zeus, or in the name of Ra . . . you could make people build things so great that their grandchildren
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