Wisdom of the Fox

XII

Red-eyed and yawning, Gerin told the tale over breakfast the next morning to those who had been lucky enough not to sense the coming of Mavrix in the night. Beside him sat Selatre, also yawning. He was glad to have her there, for without her confirmation he doubted whether Aragis or Van, to say nothing of the rest, would have believed him. But at the same time he worried, for she sounded once more like Biton' s Sibyl, not like his woman. He shook his head, bemused. Having lost Elise to a horseleech, would he lose Selatre to a god?

Aragis snapped him out of his reverie. The grand duke might not have been much for the long view, but he had a supremely practical grasp of the moment. "All right, lord prince, Mavrix is here among us, whether we like it or not," he said. "What do we do about it? Can we turn it to our own purposes?"

"I"-Gerin glanced at Selatre-"we, that is, think we may have found a way." One reason he was red-eyed was that he and Selatre had spent the last part of the night talking over that very question. He sighed. He didn't like the answer they'd come up with. "We are going to evoke the god, to bring him fully into the world here and bargain with him."

"Are you daft, Fox?" Van burst out. "Mavrix, he hates you. Bring him fully here and you just make it easier for him to squash you flat."

"This is the course of which you spoke when we met in the southern marches of your holding. A desperate one, if you ask me," Aragis said. But past that, he did not try to dissuade Gerin. Mavrix was not angry at him. And if the Sithonian god of wine did destroy the Fox in some lingering, interesting, and creative way, no one would be better positioned to take advantage of it than the grand duke.

Gerin tried to answer both men at once: "Mavrix will come, whether we want that or not. If we try to stand against it, he'll find more reasons to be angry. If we aid his path, we may satisfy him and still accomplish what we want. If not, we still may be able to control him." He looked at Selatre again.

She nodded. Voice hesitant at first, she said, "At the same time as lord Gerin evokes Mavrix, I-I shall try to bring into the world Biton, my former patron, my former-bridegroom." Even with her swarthiness, her cheeks darkened in embarrassment. But she went on, " Biton the farseeing is a god of order, of forethought, the opposite of most things Mavrix stands for. And Biton is old in the northlands, old. His power is rooted here, not new-come like Mavrix's. It may be that he can keep the lord of the sweet grape from the excesses that can accompany his rite."

"But, lass," Van said gently, "after what befell at Ikos, will the god hearken to your evoking?"

Selatre bit her lip. She'd asked the same question, just as morning twilight began to paint the eastern horizon with gray. "I don' t know," she answered. "The only way to find out is to make the attempt."

"What if Biton won't come when you call him?" Aragis said. "What then?"

"Then we're left with Mavrix-undiluted," Gerin said after a moment seeking the right way to put it. "We'd be no worse off than if we didn't try to evoke Biton at all." No better off, either, his mind jeered, but he resolutely ignored his own gloomy side.

Aragis stuck out his chin. "I insist that you don't seek to bring the gods into the world until you fulfill your half of our agreement. If they wreak havoc on you, I'll also suffer on that account."

"But if we can persuade them to do as we'd like, we might be able to rid the land of monsters without any more fighting," Gerin said. " Have you thought on that, grand duke? Not just driving the creatures back into the woods so they're a lesser nuisance, but actually being rid of them for good and all. We can't make that happen; we're mere mortals. But the gods can do it, if they will. A risk, aye. But if things go as we design…"

"Besides which, thanks to Rihwin, Mavrix is already loose in the land, remember," Van said. "He can make mischief any time he chooses. Sometimes the best way to keep someone from moving on you is to move first your own self."

"Rihwin!" Aragis eyed Gerin. "With your name for being clever, lord prince, I can't believe you sent that sot to me as ambassador. Where is he, anyhow?"

"Still drunk asleep in his bed, I suppose," Gerin answered. "As for the other, there's something in what you say, but less than you think. He's brave and clever enough when he's sober, if short sometimes on common sense. But every now and then, things-happen-with him." He spread his hands, as if to say Rihwin's vagaries baffled him, too.

Aragis' hawk face was not made for indecision. Scowling, he said, "All right, Fox, I don't see how I can stop you short of war here, but this I tell you now: it had better work."

"That I already know," Gerin answered. "For my sake, for your sake, for the northlands' sake, it had better work-which is no guarantee it will."

"All right," Aragis said heavily, as if with his warning he washed his hands of whatever might result from the evocation. "When do you begin your wizard's work?"

"At noon," Gerin said, which made the grand duke gape.

"Noon is Biton's hour," Selatre added, "the time when the sun sees farthest. Mavrix is strongest by night, when his impassioned votaries cry 'Evoii!' Whatever chance his lesser strength by day gives us, we' ll gladly take."

"Besides," Gerin said, "by noon Rihwin will be up-or I'll drag him out of bed, one. We'll need him in this business, too."

"The gods help you," Aragis said, a sentiment with a multitude of possible meanings.

Even by noon, Rihwin the Fox was not a happy man. His face was pasty and his eyes tracked with red; by the way he kept blinking in the sunshine, he found it much too bright to suit him. "I don't see why you're making me carry the jars of wine to your shack," he grumbled petulantly.

"Because if it hadn't been for you, we wouldn't have to be trying this," Gerin answered, his voice hard as stone. "Since the fault is yours, you can bloody well play the beast of burden." He brayed like a donkey. Rihwin flinched.

Selatre had laid an assortment of growing things on a makeshift stone altar in the shack: flowers, fir cones, duck's eggs. "We won't want to summon Mavrix solely as god of wine, but also as the god of increase generally," she said. "That may make him more restrained-or, of course, it may not." Among the flowers, she set the scroll that held a book of the Sithonian national epic by the great poet Lekapenos. "Mavrix also inspires the creation of beauty, as we've noted."

"As you've noted, you mean," Gerin said. "Most of this was your idea; you're the one who's studied Mavrix of late. Till that wine came into the holding, I was happy pretending he didn't exist." He turned to Rihwin. "Set that last jar down over there-carefully! Don't crack it."

Rihwin winced. "When you shout like that, you make my head feel as if it's about to fall off." After a reflective pause, he added, "I rather wish it would."

"Remember that the next time you try to drown yourself in a wine jar, or even one full of ale," Gerin said without much sympathy. He drew his dagger, cut through the pitch that sealed the stopper of one of the wine jars, and then worked in his knife blade and levered out the stopper.

The sweet bouquet of wine wafted from the jar. Gerin sighed with relief. He'd worried that the wine jar, or even both surviving jars, might have gone to vinegar. Had they been bad, he didn't know what he would have done. Drawing some of Rihwin's wine-soaked blood didn't seem like the worst idea in the world.

Gerin dipped up two cups of wine, one for himself, the other for Rihwin. "Don't drink yet," he growled as he handed Rihwin his. He looked over to Selatre and went on, "I still think we might be wiser to call on Biton first. Then his presence will also serve to check Mavrix."

But she shook her head, as she had ever since they began planning the evocation. "Biton has little reason now to hear any summons from me. But if I call on him with Mavrix already here, simple jealousy may help to lure him. Whatever the lord of the sweet grape seeks, the farseeing one is likely to want to thwart."

"You served the god; you know him best," Gerin said, yielding yet again. He, and after a moment Rihwin with him, approached the altar and poured a small libation, being careful not to mar the scroll of Lekapenos. "Thank you for your bounty of the sweet grape, lord Mavrix," Gerin declaimed in halting Sithonian, and sipped from his cup of wine.

Rihwin also drank. His eyes widened; he suddenly seemed several years younger, or at least less worn. "Thank you for the sweet grape, lord Mavrix," he said, and then to Gerin, in more ordinary tones, " Nothing like letting a small snake bite you to ease the venom of a big one."

"Rihwin, your trouble is that you don't know how to keep any snakes small," Gerin said. Just to irk Rihwin, he waved the southerner to silence, not giving him a chance for a sharp retort. "Be still. I am going to summon the god."

He walked over to the altar, raised his hands high, and said, "I summon you to my aid, lord Mavrix, I who have drunk your wine, I who have met you in days past, I who am but a mere mortal imploring your assistance, I who am weak-" He humbled himself without shame. Measured against the might of a god, any mortal was weak.

The litany went on and on. Gerin began to wonder if Mavrix would let himself be evoked. The Sithonian god of wine had some of the deviousness of the principal folk that worshiped him. He might appreciate the irony of forcing Gerin to summon him and then refusing to appear. If that happened, the Fox intended to drink as much wine as he could hold and then ride south with Aragis.

But just when he became certain Mavrix had indeed set him up to fail, the god appeared in the crowded little shack, somehow without making it more crowded-gods had their ways. Mavrix's features were regular, exceedingly handsome, and more than a little effeminate. The god wore sandals and a fawnskin robe, and had a leopardskin tunic draped over his shoulders. In his right hand he carried a green, leafy wand tipped with ivory. A faint odor of grapes and of something else, harsher, ranker-perhaps old blood-rose from him.

His eyes were not like a man's eyes. They were two black pits that reflected nothing. When Gerin looked into them, he felt himself falling through infinite space, down and down and down. He needed a great effort of will to pull his senses back from those twin pits and say in a shaken voice, "I thank you for granting me your presence this day, lord Mavrix." He knew he'd just made a hash of the Sithonian grammar, which was likely only to win the god's contempt, but it couldn't be helped, not now.

Mavrix looked at-and through-him. He felt himself pierced by the god's gaze, almost as if by a sword. In a voice in perfect keeping with his appearance, Mavrix said, "Pleased, are you? Pleased? The vengeance I owe you, you should be quaking like an aspen leaf in a gale. I moved Schild Stupidstaff to give you wine in hope it would let me come here and take that revenge. And you are pleased?"

Selatre started her petition to Biton then. Gerin heard her speak of her own unworthiness to summon the god who had abandoned her, and then forgot about her. If he didn't give Mavrix all his attention, he would be ruined past any hope of Biton's redemption.

Gesturing toward the altar and the various gifts it contained, Gerin said, "If you so badly wanted your revenge, lord Mavrix, these would have brought you here. Did you truly need the gift of wine?"

"Aye, for two reasons," the god replied. "First, now that you have summoned me into the world at this place, I can act here more fully than I could otherwise. And second, while first fruits and such are mine, wine is mine, if you take my meaning. When I am called by wine, I am more truly myself than if evoked in any other way."

"By which you mean you can be vicious without regretting the consequences, blaming them instead on the strength of the wine," Rihwin said. "You-"

"Silence, worm," Mavrix said, and, although Rihwin's lips continued to move, no more sound came from them. It was an effect Gerin had often wished he could achieve. To Gerin, the lord of the sweet grape said, quite conversationally, "You'd think he'd learn his lesson, wouldn't you? And yet, having fallen foul of me once, he persists in risking my wrath yet again. As do you, I might add, and you are less a fribbler than he. Why is this?"

Gerin did not directly answer that. Instead, he pointed to the book of Lekapenos he had set on the stone. "You are not god of wine only, lord Mavrix. You are also patron of beauty and cleverness. Is this not so?" He was remembering more Sithonian than he'd thought he had in him.

Mavrix drew himself up to his full height, which was much more than a man's, yet somehow did not break through the ceiling of the shack. "No one would deny it, little man. But you did not answer my question, and not answering a god is yet another capital crime to set against you." He gestured with his wand. It looked innocuous, but in his hands it was a weapon more fell than any spear or sword in the grip of the boldest, fiercest fighter.

Gerin's mouth went dry; he knew the power of that wand. Forcing his voice to steadiness, he replied, "Lord Mavrix, I had to answer in a roundabout way. Truly I know your role in inspiring the folk of Sithonia to the peak of artistic endeavor they once enjoyed. The reason I summoned you, lord, is that ugliness now blights the northlands. If you look about here, if you see it, I pray you to banish it for aesthetic reasons if no others."

"Seldom have I seen a fish wriggle on a hook as you do," the god said petulantly. "Very well, I shall look." His eyes lighted for a moment. Gerin saw in them shifting scenes of the monsters' depredations. Then they became deep pools of blackness once more. He sneered at Gerin. "Ugly they are, but what of it? You savages in these cold, grapeless lands treat each other as vilely as the monsters use you. Why should I care what they do?"

Before Gerin could answer, Selatre let out a gasp of startlement and delight, and Biton manifested himself in the shack. Again, it somehow accommodated him without growing and at the same time without seeming crowded. Gerin had wondered how the farseeing god would appear, whether as the handsome youth of the pediment reliefs on his overthrown shrine or the more primitive image that was mostly eyes and jutting phallus. To him, Biton seemed now the one thing, now the other, depending on which was uppermost in his own mind at any given moment.

Selatre gasped, "Thank you, farseeing one, for hearing the prayer of your former servant who reveres you still."

"Loyalty is rare enough to deserve notice," Biton answered in a voice that held the same slight rustic accent as Selatre's, "the more so when it is retained even after it can no longer be returned."

Mavrix stared at Biton with undisguised loathing. His features shifted with divine celerity to suit his mood. Turning to Gerin, he sneered, "If you think summoning this boring backwoods bumpkin of a deity will somehow save you, I urge you to disabuse yourself of the notion."

"That's not why I called on him," Gerin answered. He bowed to Biton and said, "Farseeing one, the Sibyl begged your presence here for the same reason I evoked Mavrix lord of the sweet grape: to beg you to help rid the land of the monsters now infesting it. As they sprang from the caverns beneath your fallen fane, I dared hope you might consider them in some small measure your responsibility."

"Lord, I beg you to look about," Selatre added, "and see the destruction and disorder these monsters spread wherever they go."

As Mavrix had, Biton looked. Sometimes Gerin saw his head revolve on his neck in a manner impossible for mere flesh and blood, while at other instants what he perceived was a basalt stele spinning. In either case, though, Biton unquestionably had eyes-or at least an eyein the back of his head.

When his image settled, he said, "This is most distressing. It seems the sort of chaos this foreign mountebank might favor." With an arm or with that phallus, he pointed at Mavrix.

"I?" Mavrix twisted in indignation, so that his leopardskin cape swirled gracefully about him. Gerin could not imagine him doing anything ungraceful. But he'd seen in previous encounters with Mavrix that the god had a temper. Mavrix's smooth voice turned into an angry screech: "Mountebank, is it? I'd think these monsters more your stylebarbarous creatures they, fit only for a barbarous land. And after all, they haunted the caverns under your shrine. If you despise them so, why didn't you get rid of them? I suppose you lacked the power." He sneered dismissively.

Biton suddenly seemed wholly human to Gerin; perhaps the stone pillar that was his other guise could not properly express his wrath. "They are not my creatures!" he bellowed in a voice that reverberated through Gerin's head like the deep tolling of a great bronze bell. "My temple blocked them from coming forth and inflicting themselves on the upper world. In the caverns, they were part of nature, not a blight upon it. But when I saw the shrine would fall-"

"Farseeing one indeed," Mavrix interrupted, sneering still. "If it took you so long to notice that, you aren't much of a god."

"At least my senses aren't blinded by drunkenness, adultery, and incest," Biton retorted primly. "Half the time, you don't even know what you see; the rest of the time, you don't care."

Both gods started screaming. Gerin clapped his hands to his head, but it did no good. He was hearing Mavrix and Biton with his mind, not his ears, and they kept on dinning just as loud as before.

"Father Dyaus protect us," Rihwin mouthed silently.

"Don't invite him, too," Gerin exclaimed. "Aren't two squabbling gods enough to satisfy you?" He wanted to run, but he didn't think that would do any good, either. If Biton and Mavrix went at it with everything they had, the whole of the northlands might not be big enough to hold a safe haven. He'd hoped evoking both of them at once would help keep them under control. Instead, it seemed to be inflaming them.

"I thought this scheme mad from the outset." Rihwin moved his lips exaggeratedly and eked out his words with gestures, so Gerin could not mistake what he meant. "You are sorcerer enough to evoke the gods, but not enough to make them do your bidding once here. Better you should never have tried!" He clapped a hand to his forehead.

At that moment, Gerin would have been hard-pressed to argue with him. Mavrix thrust his ivory-tipped wand at Biton. Faster than thought, the farseeing god was stone again, and knocked the wand aside with his phallus. Mavrix howled in pain. Biton, anthropomorphic once more, laughed in his face. Mavrix stuck out a tongue longer and pinker than a human could have had.

Some philosophers called the gods men writ large. Gerin was reminded of nothing so much as small, squabbling boys writ large-but these small boys had superhuman strength and power.

"I should have listened to Aragis and waited," Gerin groaned.

"You should have listened to someone," Rihwin mouthed. With Mavrix distracted, he was faintly audible. "You're always so splendid at deducing what everyone else should do, but when anyone makes a suggestion to you, do you heed it? Ha!" In case his fellow Fox hadn't caught that, he repeated himself: "Ha!"

That held enough truth to sting. Gerin had always relied on his own judgment because he'd found none consistently better. More often than not, his judgment had served him well. But when he made a mistake, he did not commonly content himself with a small one.

"Oh, shut up," he growled nonetheless. "As if you've proved yourself worth listening to over the years." Rihwin gave back a gesture much used by street urchins in the City of Elabon.

Next to the way the gods were behaving, the argument between the two men seemed downright sedate. Mavrix used the same gesture Rihwin had, and stuck out his tongue again to boot. Still in human guise, Biton lifted his robe and waggled the phallus whose stone version had parried the fertility god's wand.

Mavrix laughed scornfully. "I've seen mice with more than that."

"For one thing, you're a liar. For another, who cares what you've seen?" Biton retorted. "I'd sooner look at things of consequence than the private parts of mice."

"I'd sooner look at things of consequence than your private parts," the lord of the sweet grape said. With another nasty laugh, he went on, "Some seeker after consequences you are, too, if you couldn't even tell your own chief temple was about to be overthrown."

"What is the blink of an eye against the great sweep of time?" Biton said. "The temple at Ikos stands for centuries yet to come; am I to be condemned for failing to notice the brief interval in which it is downfallen?"

Under less harrowing circumstances, Gerin might have found that interesting, or even hopeful. If Biton's temple at Ikos was to be rebuilt, that argued some sort of civilization would survive in the northlands. His own survival, however, seemed too problematic at the moment for him to take the long view he usually favored.

"Now that you mention it, yes," Mavrix answered. "Perhaps your true image should have a patch over that third eye-and one of the other two, as well."

"I'd almost welcome such," Biton snapped, "if it meant I did not have to see all the hideous things your monsters are working and shall work in this land."

"They're not my monsters!" Mavrix screeched. "Are you deaf as well as blind? They're not my monsters! Not! Not! They're hideous and ugly and revolting, and what they do is enough to make anyone with a dram of feeling puke right onto his shoes, thus." What Mavrix spewed forth had a bouquet richer than that of any wine Gerin had ever knownanother area where gods enjoyed an advantage over men.

Not long before, Mavrix hadn't cared what the monsters were doing in-and to-the northlands. Gerin, though, hadn't blamed the god for them. Now that Biton had blamed him, he resented that more than he enjoyed making Gerin squirm. And if Gerin could bend Mavrix's course, even a little…

"Lord Mavrix, if you despise the monsters so, you could easily show lord Biton they have nothing to do with you by driving them out of the northlands," he said.

"Be quiet, little man," Mavrix said absently, and Gerin was quiet, as Rihwin had been before him. He had no choice in the matter. He exchanged a look of despair and alarm with Selatre. It had been worth a try, but not all tried succeeded.

Biton said, "Ah, lord of the sweet vomitus, so you do claim the creatures for your own."

"I do not!" Mavrix screamed in a voice that should have knocked Fox Keep flat. "Here, I shall prove it to you." He sucked in a theatrically deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and turned purpler than any man could: Gerin thought of a divine frog with skin the color of wine. After that tremendous effort, the god exhaled hard enough to make Gerin stagger. "There! They're gone. Look all over the northlands, unseeing one, and you shall find not a single one of the disgusting creatures."

"Coming from you, drunken fool, any assertion requires proof," Biton growled. As it had before, his head began to spin independently of his body-or, alternatively, the stone pillar that was his body turned round and round. Suddenly he stopped and stared contemptuously at Mavrix. "You're as slovenly a workman as I might have guessed. Look there."

Something glinted for a moment in Mavrix's fathomless eyes. "Well, so I missed a couple of them. What of it?" He gestured. "Now they are here no more. Do you see? They are not mine!"

Biton continued his surveillance. His whirling head abruptly halted once more. "And again! You must in truth be the god of drunkenness, for you're sloppy as a drunkard. Look over yonder now."

Gerin wondered what sense Biton used to find the monsters, how he indicated to Mavrix where "over yonder" was, and how Mavrix turned his own senses in that direction, whatever it was. He also wondered just how Mavrix was getting rid of the monsters, and where they were going. Were he a god, he supposed he would know. As a man, he had to go on wondering.

"All right, those are gone, too." Mavrix stuck out his froggy tongue at Biton again. "Now do you see any more, lord with the eye in the back of your bum?"

Biton spun and searched. A moment later, he said triumphantly, " Aye, I do, you sozzled ne'er-do-well. What of those?"

Mavrix must have stretched his senses in the direction the farseeing god gave him, for he said, "And they are vanished, too, and so am I. Even with these few drops of wine to ease the path for me here, the northlands are a place I'd sooner leave than come to." He fixed his black, black eyes on Gerin. "Clever man-you were right. There are things uglier than you and your kind. Who would have thought it?" With that, he vanished.

Gerin found he could speak again. Being a politic man, the first thing he said was, "I thank you, lord of the sweet grape, and bless you as well." Then he turned to Biton. "Farseeing one, may I ask a question of you?" When the god did not say no, he went on, "Did Mavrix truly rid the northlands of the creatures that dwelt so long under your temple?"

He waited nervously, lest Mavrix hear him and return in wrath at having his power questioned. But the lord of the sweet grape evidently had been only too glad to leave the northlands for good.

Biton started to nod, then searched once more. When he stopped, he looked annoyed. "That wine-soaked sponge of a Sithonian god is too inept to deserve his divinity," he said.

The Fox took that to mean a monster, or a handful of monsters, still survived somewhere in the northlands. He wondered if Mavrix had left behind the cubs he'd spared-and if he would ever find out. In his humblest tones, he went on, "Lord Biton, would you be generous enough to complete what the lord of the sweet grape began?"

To his dismay, Biton shook his head. "I do not see myself doing that," the farseeing one said. "It is a task for men if they so choose. No, my duty now is to restore Ikos to what it was before the earth trembled beneath my shrine. Everything there shall be as it waseverything. The temple shall stand again without the agency of man, and the Sibyl shall be restored to her rightful place there, to serve as my instrument on earth." He gazed fondly at Selatre.

She looked from the god to Gerin and back again. Her voice trembling, she said, "But lord Biton, I no longer qualify to serve you in that way. In your last prophetic verse, you yourself called me an oracle defiled. Since that day, I have known the embraces of a man"she glanced nervously toward Gerin once more-"and my courses have begun. I am no longer a fit tool for your work."

"Everything shall be as it was-everything," Biton repeated. "If I can rebuild my fane from tumbled stones, do you think I have not the power to restore your maidenhead, to make you a fit vessel for my voice?"

Selatre looked down at the ground. "I am certain you have that power, lord Biton," she murmured.

Gerin wished desperately for some way to attack Biton, but could imagine none. Unlike Mavrix, the farseeing god could not be duped into losing his temper, not by a man; he was far less vulnerable to earthly concerns than the earthy lord of the sweet grape. The Fox stared over at Selatre. Of course she would choose to go back to the god. How could she not? She had been consecrated to him since she became a woman, had served him as Sibyl since her predecessor died. Sibyl was all she'd wanted to be; she'd resented being rescued from her residence by the temple after the earthquake; she hadn't been able to abide even the touch of a man for a long time after she was rescued.

True, she'd come to love him and he her, but what was that brief brightness when measured against the course for which her life had been designed? Now that she had the chance to return to that course, how could he blame her if she chose to take it?

Truth was, he couldn't. Having her go back to Ikos would tear him worse inside than he'd been torn when Elise left him. No matter what he'd felt about Elise, she'd no longer cared for him, else she'd not have gone. But he knew Selatre loved him still, as he'd come to love her. Only being certain she would be happier back at Ikos let him bear up under the thought of losing her. Even with that certainty, it was hard, hard.

Biton turned his farseeing eyes on Selatre. "You say nothing. Are you not honored, are you not pleased, that all shall be restored? Even as I speak to you, the shrine at Ikos returns to its proper state. It awaits your coming."

"Of course I am honored, lord Biton," she answered, very softly. " Whether I am pleased… Lord, have you the power to see what might be as well as what shall be?"

For a moment, Biton seemed a stone pillar to Gerin, and altogether unfathomable. Then he resumed his human appearance. "Even for me, a god, this is difficult," he replied, his voice troubled. "So many paths branch off from the true one, and then from one another, that losing oneself grows quickly easier the farther ahead one seeks to see. Why do you ask?"

"Because I would have you look down the path I would choose for myself," Selatre said. "You are a god; if you wish your will to be done, done it shall be. How can I, who shall live for a little and then die, oppose it? But-" She did not go on. Even thinking of declining an honor a god would confer on her took something special in the way of courage.

It also filled Gerin with hope as wild and desperate as his despair had been a moment before.

Biton's head began its boneless spin. This time it did not just revolve, but also grew misty, so Gerin could see the far wall of the shack through it. The farseeing god searched for what seemed a very long time; now and again, he would almost disappear altogether. Gerin started when Biton fully returned.

"You may live your life as you will," the god told Selatre. "My Sibyl is my bride, not my slave. I shall mark another, one who will be willing to serve me. I shall not tell you what may spring from your choice, but I say this: as with any other, make the best of it. And a word of warning-for mortals, there is no such thing as living happily ever after."

"I know that, lord Biton. Thank you. I will try to make the best of it." Selatre started to prostrate herself to the god, but Biton disappeared before her knees could touch the ground.

She and Gerin and Rihwin stared at one another, dazed. "I think we may have won," Gerin said in a voice that sounded disbelieving even to him. Then he remembered something more important to say than that. He turned to Selatre. "Thank you. I'll try never to make you sorry for choosing me over, over-" For one of the few times in his life, words failed him. She'd known what she was giving up. At last, huskily, he managed, "I love you."

"I've noticed that," she said, and smiled at his startled expression. "It's why I chose to stay with you, after all. You love me, while for Biton I'd just be-oh, not a tool, not quite, maybe something more like a favorite pet. It's not enough, not now that I've known better." Her own voice went soft. "And I love you, which did, mm, enter into my thinking." She smiled again, this time with a touch of mischief.

Rihwin said, "We have two jars of the blood of the sweet grape here, waiting-indeed, all but crying-to be drunk in celebration of our triumph."

"How right you are, my fellow Fox." Gerin picked up the jar they'd opened to summon Mavrix-and poured it out over Rihwin's head. The redpurple wine splashed him and Selatre, too, but it drenched Rihwin, which was what he'd had in mind. The southerner spluttered and squawked and flapped his arms-which just splattered the wine more widely-and rubbed at his eyes. Gerin didn't doubt they stung fiercelyand didn't regret what he'd done, either.

"A waste, a criminal waste," Rihwin said, sucking at his mustache so as to swallow every precious drop he could. "Had it not been for my wine-bibbing, we would not have seen the northlands freed from the vicious and horrible curse of the monsters."

"Had it not been for your wine-bibbing," Gerin said grimly, "we wouldn't have had to put our fate in the hands of two gods, one of whom was already angry at me and the other ready to get angry because I'd taken his voice on earth as my woman. Aye, it turned out well. That's not why I gave you the one jar of wine as I did-it was for forcing us to take such a dreadful chance." He picked up the other, unopened jar. "Because we succeeded, this one is yours to do with as you will."

Rihwin bowed, dripping still. "You are a lord among lords, my fellow Fox."

"What I am is bloody tired of having to worry every moment of every day," Gerin said. "The gods willing"-a phrase that took on new and urgent meaning after the evocation-"I'll have maybe three days of peace now before the next thing, whatever it is, goes horribly wrong. Come on, let's tell Aragis and the rest what we've done here today."

Along with Van and Fand and Drago and Marlanz and Faburs, Aragis the Archer stood at what Gerin thought of as a "safe" distance from the shack. The word was a misnomer, of course. Had the gods truly released their wrath, nowhere in the northlands would have been far enough from Fox Keep to escape-as the monsters had discovered.

Everyone pointed and exclaimed when they came forth. Fand's voice pierced through the rest: "Did the sot spill the wine and wreck your magic, now?"

"Not a bit of it," Gerin answered. "We summoned the gods, and the monsters are no more."

That raised the hubbub quite a bit higher than it had been. Van said, "But how can it be, Captain? You only just went in there."

"What? Are you witstruck?" Gerin demanded. "We were in the shack an hour at least, more likely two." He looked to Selatre and Rihwin for confirmation. They both nodded.

Without a word, Aragis pointed up into the sky. Gerin's eyes followed the track of the grand duke's finger toward the sun. He had to look away, blinking, but not before his jaw dropped in astonishment. By the sun's place in the sky, a couple of minutes might have passed, but no more.

"I don't understand it," he said, "but I was telling the truth, too. I suppose the bigger truth is, when you treat with gods, you can' t expect the world they know to be the ordinary one we usually live in."

Aragis said, "I think you had better tell me in detail all that came to pass in there. I warn you, I am not satisfied with what you have said so far. It strikes me as likely to be a ploy to keep from having to honor your share of our terms of alliance. Are you saying the monsters are simply gone, thus?" He snapped his fingers.

"Let's go into the great hall and broach some ale, and I'll tell you everything I remember," Gerin said.

Rihwin held out the jar of wine Gerin had given him. "No, let's share this," he said. "As Mavrix is part of the tale, so should he also be part of the explanation." That made sense, but hearing it from Rihwin surprised Gerin. For his fellow Fox to share wine he could have kept for himself was not far from a revolution in human nature, and confirmed that something extraordinary had indeed happened inside the hut.

Divided among so many-and with a libation to the lord of the sweet grape-the one jar of wine did not go far, but Gerin savored every sweet drop; when he'd evoked Mavrix, he'd hardly tasted what he'd drunk. Aided by Selatre and the wine-soaked Rihwin, he explained everything that had passed in the hut.

When he was done, Van said, "Some of the yarns I've told are wild, but I hand it to you, Captain: that beats 'em all."

"Thank you-I think." Gerin could rely on his friend to believe him. Aragis the Archer was something else again. Gerin eyed the grand duke with some concern, wondering how he would react.

Aragis' jaw worked, as if he were chewing over the tale Gerin had told. At last he said, "It fits together well enough; I give you so much. But how am I to know whether it's the truth or just a clever tale to get me out of your hair?"

"Send a team down to Ikos," Selatre suggested. "If they find no monsters on the way and discover Biton's shrine restored, you'll know we have not lied. It's not a long journey; four days, five at the most, will get your men to the temple and back. Then you won't have to guess-you will know."

Aragis' jaw went up and down again. After a moment, he dipped his head to Selatre. "My lady, that is a fine thought. We would not have left here much before my men could return from Ikos in any case. I'll do as you say, though I'll send more than one team south, on the off chance you're… mistaken." He was too courteous to suggest straight out that she was lying, but left the implication in place.

Once his mind was made up, he was not a man to waste time. Four chariots fared south toward Ikos that afternoon. Gerin gladly gave them supplies for the journey; he was confident about what they'd find there. He went to sleep that night wondering where the last of the monsters, the ones Mavrix had missed, still lurked in the northlands. Were they the cubs he'd spared? Solve that riddle and you'd deserve undying praise. The world being what it was, you probably wouldn't get it, but you'd deserve it.

Two days later, the lookout in the watchtower blew a long blast on his horn and shouted, "Lord prince, chariots approach out of the southwest." Gerin frowned; it was too soon for Aragis' men to be coming back, and the southwest… The sentry's voice cracked in excitement as he added, "Lord prince, they're Trokmoi!"

The Fox cupped his hands and called up to the sentry, "How many chariots? Are we invaded?" That would be a mad thing for Adiatunnus to try, but just because a thing was mad didn't mean it couldn't happen.

"No invasion, lord prince," the sentry answered, much to his relief. "There's just a handful of them, and they're showing the striped shield of truce."

To the gate crew and the men on the palisade, Gerin called, "We'll let one crew into the courtyard; the rest can wait outside. If they try to follow, they'll never go home again."

The Trokmoi uttered not a word of protest when Gerin's troopers passed them those conditions. At the Fox's nod, the gate crew let down the drawbridge, then grabbed for bows and spears. A single chariot rattled and rumbled over the bridge into Fox Keep. Gerin recognized one of the woodsrunners in it. "I greet you, Diviciacus son of Dumnorix," he said.

"And I'm after greeting you as well, lord Gerin, though I met some of your men closer than I cared for, these few days past," the Trokme answered. A long, ugly cut furrowed his left arm and showed what he meant. He got down from the car and bowed low to Gerin. "Lord prince, in the name of Adiatunnus my chieftain, I'm come here to do you honor. Adiatunnus bids me tell you he'll be your loyal vassal for as long as you're pleased to have him so. Forbye, there're tribute wains waiting to come hither so soon as your lordship is kind enough to tell me you accept his fealty, indeed and there are."

Gerin stared at Van. They both stared at Aragis. All three men seemed bewildered. Gerin knew he was. He turned back to Diviciacus. " What accounts for Adiatunnus'… change of mind?" he asked carefully. "A few days past, as you said, we were all doing our best to kill one another."

"Och, but that was then and this is now," Diviciacus answered. He sounded bewildered, too, as if he'd expected the Fox to know exactly what he was talking about. When he saw Gerin didn't, he went on, " Himself was chewing things over with one of the monsters-one o' the smart ones, y'ken-the other day when lo! All of a sudden the creature turns to smoke before the very eyes of him, and then it's gone! All the others gone with it, too; not a one left, far as we can tell. Will you say that's none o' your doing, lord prince?"

The Fox didn't say anything for a moment. Now Aragis bowed to him, almost as low as Diviciacus had. "Lord prince, I think in your own way you have met the terms of the alliance to which we agreed, which is to say, I doubt the monsters now threaten my holding."

"Thank you, grand duke," Gerin said vaguely. He'd known what Mavrix had said he'd done, of course, but knowing in the abstract and being confronted with actual results were two different things. Pulling himself together, he told Diviciacus, "Aye, the god worked that at my urging." In fact, the gods had worked that because they'd been quarreling with each other, but some things the Trokme didn't need to know. "And so?"

"And so, lord prince," Diviciacus answered, "Adiatun-nus has the thought in him that he'd have to be a raving madman to set himself against your honor, you being such a fine wizard and all. ' Diviciacus,' he tells me, 'not even Balamung could have magicked the creatures so,' and I'm after thinking he's right. If he canna stand against you, he'll stand wi' you, says he."

"So he'll stand with me, will he?" Gerin said. "I mean him no disrespect, but he's shown he's not to be trusted, that chieftain of yours. When he says he'll stand with me, he's more likely to mean he' ll stand behind me, that being the best place from which to slide a dagger between my ribs."

Diviciacus sighed. "Himself feared you'd say as much, there being bad blood betwixt the two of you and all. He gave me leave to say this if you didna trust him: he'll give you his eldest son, a boy of twelve, to live with you here at this keep as hostage for his good behavior. The lad'll leave with the load of tribute I spoke of earlier."

"Will he?" Gerin pondered that. Adiatunnus could hardly offer more to show his sincerity. The Fox added, "Did your chieftain give you leave to take the oath of homage and fealty in his place?"

"He did that, lord prince, and I know the way you southrons do it, too." Diviciacus went to one knee before Gerin and held out his hands, palms together. Gerin set his hands to either side of the Trokme's. Diviciacus said, "Adiatunnus my chieftain owns himself to be your vassal, Gerin the Fox, Prince of the North, and gives you the whole of his faith against all men who might live or die."

"I, Gerin, Prince of the North, accept the homage of Adiatunnus through you, Diviciacus son of Dumnorix, and pledge in my turn always to use him justly. In token of which, I raise you up now." The Fox did just that, and kissed Diviciacus on his bristly cheek.

The Trokme beamed. "By Taranis, Teutates, and Esus I swear my chieftain Adiatunnus' fealty to you, lord prince."

Any oath less than the strongest one the Trokmoi used would have made Gerin suspicious of the chieftain. With it, he bowed in return, satisfied. "By Dyaus the father of all, Biton the farseeing one, and Mavrix lord of the sweet grape, I accept his oath and swear in turn to reward his loyalty with my own."

Diviciacus eyed him keenly; Adiatunnus had not dispatched a fool as his ambassador. "You Elabonians are always after swearing by Dyaus, but the other two aren't usually the gods you name in your frickfullest aiths. They'd be the ones who did your bidding for you, I'm thinking."

"That's my affair," Gerin said. The Trokme was right and wrong at the same time: Gerin had indeed summoned Mavrix and Biton, but the gods did their own bidding, no one else's. If you were clever enoughand lucky enough-you might make them see that what you wanted was also in their interest. That once, the Fox had been clever and lucky enough. He never wanted to gamble on such bad odds again.

Aragis' chariot crews returned with word of Ikos miraculously restored and not a sign of monsters anywhere, and seemed miffed when everyone took their report as a matter of course. The day after they got back to Fox Keep, Aragis and his whole host set out for his holding in the south.

"Perhaps we'll find ourselves on the same side again one day," Aragis said.

"May it be so," Gerin agreed. He didn't quite care for the grand duke's tone. Had he been in Aragis' sandals, he would have worried about himself, too: with Adiatunnus as his vassal, his power and prestige in the northlands would soar… maybe to the point where Aragis would go looking for allies now, hoping to knock him down before he got too powerful to be knocked down. In Aragis' sandals, Gerin would have tried that. To forestall it, he said, "I almost wish I didn't have the Trokme as my ally. He'd be easier to watch as an enemy than as someone who claimed to be my friend."

"There is that." Aragis rubbed his chin. "Well, we'll see how you do with him." With that ambiguous farewell, the Archer turned and went back among his own men. Gerin knew he would bear watching, too, no less than Adiatunnus. This once, his interests and the Fox's had coincided. Next time, who could say?

Gerin sighed. If he spent all the time he should watching his neighbors, where would he find time for anything else?

Not long after Aragis and his warriors left for the grand duke's lands, Duren came up to Gerin and asked, "Papa, are you angry at Fand?"

"Angry at Fand?" The Fox frowned. He often thought Fand counted any day where she didn't make someone angry at her a day wasted, but he didn't say that to his son. Duren liked Fand, and she'd never been anything but gentle with him. "No. I'm not angry at her. Why did you think I was?"

"Because you never go to her chamber anymore. It's always Van."

"Oh." Gerin scratched his head. How was he supposed to explain that to his son? Duren awaited a reply with the intense seriousness only a four-year-old can show. Slowly, Gerin said, "Fand has decided she likes Van better than she likes me. You remember how she and I would quarrel sometimes, don't you?"

Duren nodded. "But she quarrels with Van, too."

"That's true," the Fox said, "but it's-usually-a happy sort of quarreling. She doesn't treat you any differently now that she's just with Van instead of with him and me, does she?"

"No," Duren said.

"That's good." Gerin meant it; he would have quarreled with Fand, and in no happy way, had the boy said yes. He went on, "Now that Fand is with Van, Selatre is my special friend. Do you like her, too?" He waited anxiously for Duren's answer.

"Oh, yes," Duren said. "She's nice to me. She doesn't treat me like a baby, the way some people do just because I'm not big yet. And do you know what else?" His voice dropped to the conspiratorial whisper reserved for secrets. "She taught me what some of the letters sound like."

"Did she?" Gerin said. "I'll bet I know which ones, too."

"How can you know that?" Duren demanded in the tone children use when, as frequently, they assume their parents can't possibly know anything.

"Were they the ones that spell your name?" Gerin asked.

Duren stared at him. Every once in a while-not often enough-a parent will redeem himself by proving he does know what he's talking about after all. "How did you know?" the boy said, his eyes enormous. "Did you use magic?" Now that his father had got away with summoning two gods, he assumed Gerin was a mighty mage. The Fox, who knew how lucky he'd been, wished that were so but made a point of bearing firmly in mind that it wasn't.

He said, "No, I didn't need any magic for that. The letters of a person's name are almost always the ones he learns first, because those are the ones that are most important to him. Do you know what else?"

"No, what?" Duren breathed. He liked secrets, too, and was good at keeping them for a boy of his years.

"When Selatre came to Fox Keep-that was just a few days after Tassilo stole you-she didn't know her letters, either," Gerin said. "I taught them to her myself. So she should know how to teach you, because she just learned."

"Really?" Duren said. Then he looked doubtful. "But she reads so well. I can only read the letters in my name, and find them in other words sometimes. But I don't know what the other words say."

"It's all right. It's nothing to worry about," Gerin assured him. "You're still very little to know any letters at all. Even most grown people don't, you know. Selatre learned hers quickly partly because she's smart-just like you-and partly because she's a woman grown, and so when she reads something she understands what it's talking about. You can't always do that, because a lot of things that are in the words on the parchment haven't happened to you yet. Do you understand?"

"No." Duren's face clouded over. "I want to be able to do it now."

Gerin picked him up, tossed him in the air, and caught him as he came down. Duren squealed. Gerin spun him around and around and around. He squealed again. When Gerin set him down, he took a couple of staggering steps and fell on his bottom. Gerin was dizzy, too, but tried not to show it. He said, "Could you throw me up in the air and spin me around and around like that?"

"Don't be silly, Papa." Duren tried to get up, but seemed to have as much trouble walking as Rihwin had the night he broached the wine.

"Why not?" Gerin persisted. "Why can't you do that?"

"You're too big."

"That's right, and you're too little. When you're bigger, you'll be able to do things like that, and you'll be able to read easier, too."

Duren considered that, then said, "Spin me again!" Gerin happily obeyed, and enjoyed listening to the happy sounds his son made. This time, Duren didn't even try to stand up when Gerin put him on the ground. He lay there staring up at the sky; Gerin would have bet he saw it going round and round. Finally he made it back to his feet. " Again!" he demanded.

"No," the Fox said. "If you do too much of that, you can make yourself sick."

"Really?" Gerin watched his son think that over; the process was very visible. Duren obviously decided that was an interesting idea, and one worth exploring further. He spun away, laughing out loud.

Gerin laughed, too, but only for a moment. Duren could afford to live for the present-indeed, at his age, he could hardly do anything else. Gerin did not enjoy that luxury. His son was the only good thing he had left from his shattered marriage with Elise, and he loved the boy without reservation. But what would happen to Duren when he wed Selatre and had children by her? Minstrels sang songs about stepmothers, but how would he blame Selatre for wanting her own blood to advance? Who would end up whose vassal, and after how much hatred and strife?

With such unpleasant thoughts in his mind, he was almost embarrassed when Selatre came out of the great hall and walked over to him. "Why so grim-faced?" she asked. "The monsters are-wherever Mavrix sent them. They're not here, anyway. Ikos is risen again, I suppose with a new Sibyl. Adiatunnus is lying low, at least for now. You should be happy."

"Oh, I am," he said, "but not for any of those reasons."

She frowned, looking for the meaning behind his words. When she found it, she looked down at the ground for a moment; sometimes a compliment could make her as nervous as being touched once had. Then she said, "If you are so happy, why haven't you told your face about it?"

He clicked his tongue between his teeth. "I was trying to look into the future, and I don't have a god to guide my sight."

"Biton didn't guide me," Selatre said. "He just spoke through me, and I had no memory of what he would say. What did you see that troubled you so?"

Gerin wondered if he should have kept his mouth shut. But no: Selatre prized truth, partly from her own nature and perhaps partly also because so much raw truth had washed through her as the god's conduit. So, hesitantly, he explained.

"Yes, those are troubling thoughts," she said when he was done. " Much will depend on what sort of man Duren becomes, and on any other children who may appear." She glanced over to him, her head cocked to one side. "So you aim to wed me, do you? This is the first I've heard of it."

He coughed and sputtered; his ears got hot. "I did intend to ask you formally," he said; hearing how lame his voice sounded only made his ears hotter. "But yes, it has been in my mind, and it just-slipped out now. What say you to that?"

"Oh, I say yes, without a doubt," Selatre answered. He hugged her, glad past words that he hadn't been too clumsy for her to bear. But she still had that-measuring-look on her face. She said, "As long as you are looking into the future, what makes you bold enough to think I won't want to run off with a horseleech someday, as Elise did?"

"Oof!" he said, the air rushing out of him; she couldn't have deflated him any more thoroughly if she'd kicked him in the belly. " And we men like to think we're the cool and calculating sex." But he saw she wanted a serious answer, and did his best to give her one: "I' ve learned some things since I wed her, or I hope I have, anyhow. I know better than to take a wife for granted just because we've given each other pledges. Marriage is like, hmm, the palisade around this keep: if I don't keep checking to make sure the timber stays sound, it'll fall to pieces one day. That's most important. The other thing is, you suit me better than she did in a lot of different ways. I don' t think the two of us will rub each other raw. And if we start to, I hope I'm wise enough now to try to make sure that doesn't get too bad. And I hope you are, too." He waited to see what she'd say to that.

Once more to his vast relief, she nodded. "Those are good reasons," she said. "If you'd given me something like, 'Because I think you're lovelier than the stars in the sky,' then I'd have worried."

"I do," Gerin said. "Think you're lovelier than the stars in the sky, I mean."

Selatre glanced away. "I'm glad you do," she answered quietly. " But while that's a fine reason to want to bed someone, it really isn't reason enough to wed. One fine day, you'd likely see someone else you think is lovelier than the stars in the sky-and then, what point in having married?"

"The one and only good thing about growing older that I've found is that I don't think with my crotch as much as I used to," he said.

"As much, eh?" Selatre stuck out her tongue at him. "I will put up with a certain amount of that, I suppose… depending on whom you' re thinking about."

He slipped an arm around her waist, drew her to him. Not very long before, even trying that would have got him killed by the temple guards at Ikos. Even more recently, she'd have pulled away in horror, still thinking a man's touch a defilement. Now she molded herself to him.

As if to prove he hadn't been thinking entirely with his crotch, he said, "Duren tells me you're starting to teach him his letters."

"Do you mind?" Her voice was anxious. "I didn't think I had to tell you; you've always been one to want people to be able to read. And he's a good boy, your son. I like him. If he has an early start on his letters, they'll come easier for him. Learning them once I was all grown up, I sometimes thought my head would burst."

"Did you?" Gerin said. "If you did, you hid it very well. And you learned them very well, too-better than most of the people I've taught when they were younger. No, I don't mind. You're right-I'm glad he has a start on them. And I'm glad you like him."

Maybe he gave that some slight extra emphasis, or maybe Selatre was getting better at fathoming the way his mind worked. She said, " Aye, I can see how you might be."

She made a face. "I don't intend to act like a wicked stepmother in a tale, I promise you that." She paused for a moment, her expression thoughtful. "I wonder what the stepmothers in those tales intended. Is anyone ever wicked in her own eyes?"

"Do you know," Gerin said slowly, "there's a question that would keep the sages down in the City of Elabon arguing for days. When I first opened my mouth, I would have said of course some people seem wicked, even to themselves. But when I try to see through their eyes, I wonder. Balamung the Trokme wizard set the northlands on their ear a few years ago, but he thought he was taking just revenge for slights he'd got. And Wolfar of the Axe-" He broke off and scowled; remembering Wolfar made him remember Elise, too. "Wolfar was out for his own gain, and didn't see one bloody thing wrong with that. You may be right."

"They probably saw you as wicked for trying to stop them," Selatre said.

"So they did," Gerin said. "Which didn't mean I didn't judge them wicked, or that they didn't need stopping."

"And you stopped them," Selatre said, nodding. "Did I rightly hear that you slew Wolfar in the library?" She gave him a different sort of sidelong look this time, as if to say that was not the proper use to which to put a chamber dedicated to preserving books.

"If I hadn't killed him there, he certainly would have killed me," Gerin answered. "That he didn't wasn't for lack of trying." His neck throbbed at the memory; Wolfar had come within an eyelash of strangling him. But he had strangled Wolfar, and in so doing won what passed for Schild's loyalty.

Selatre said, "If you hadn't slain him then, I probably wouldn't be alive today-the monsters would have caught me the day of the earthquake." Her laugh came shaky. "Strange to think your own being depends on something that had happened years ago to someone you didn't know then."

"Aye, that is a curious thought," Gerin agreed. "Some Trokme-or maybe more than one of the woodsrunners; I've never known for certaintwisted my life out of the path I'd planned for it when he-they-killed my father and my brother and left me baron of Fox Keep. If you dwell on the might-have-beens, it's like wandering through a maze."

"Might-have-beens strain even the powers of the gods," Selatre said. "Remember how Biton had to strain to see what might come from my going back to Ikos and my staying here with you?"

"I'm not likely to forget it," Gerin said with feeling. "I thought I'd lost you forever."

"Biton was kindly, perhaps in memory of how I'd served him before," Selatre answered. "But even if he hadn't been, how could you hope to set your will against a god's?"

"I couldn't," Gerin said, and let it go at that. The god's will had not been his principal concern; Selatre's had. With a lifetime devoted to Biton and bare days to him, she was only too likely to have chosen to return to what she'd always known. That she hadn't left made him grateful every time he looked at her. Most seriously, he said, "I' ll do my best to make sure you're never sorry about your choice."

"You needn't worry about that," Selatre said. "The farseeing one will have made his own selection by now; with the temple at Ikos restored, he would not leave it without a Sibyl. I'm here because I wanted to be, and not because I have no other choice open to me."

Again Gerin kept part of his thoughts to himself. There was always another choice: the one Elise had taken. What he had to do now-what he had to do forever-was to make sure Selatre was too content at Fox Keep ever to want to leave it.

He hugged her again, but didn't think, as he had a little while before, of taking her up to his chamber and barring the door. Simple affection had its place, too. Maybe after all he could say some of what he'd thought: "If we work at it, it will turn out all right."

"Are you making prophecies now?" Selatre asked. "Perhaps I should have worried about whether Biton would take you back to Ikos and set you on the throne of pearl."

"Thank you, no," Gerin said. "I'm right where I belong, not doing what I'd hoped to be doing, maybe, but doing something that needs doing-and I'm just happy you think you belong here, too."

"That I do," Selatre agreed. "And now, if you're not going to drag me upstairs, I'll go up by myself and wade through that scroll on Kizzuwatnan hepatomancy I was trying to make sense of the other day."

"That one doesn't make much sense to me, either," Gerin said. "My guess is that it either didn't make much sense to the Sithonian who wrote it in the first place or to the Elabonian who put it into our language. I've tried foretelling a few times from livers of cows or sheep we've slaughtered, but what I divined had nothing to do with what ended up happening. Something's been lost somewhere, I think."

"Maybe it will come clear if I keep studying it," Selatre said, and headed back into the great hall.

Gerin smiled as he watched her go. Though she didn't put it the way he had, she also believed in working at something till you got it right. Even without hepatomancy, he knew a good omen when he saw one.

The way she'd teased him about dragging her upstairs he took for a good omen, too. With Elise, anything involving the bedchamber had been a deadly serious business. With Fand, he'd never known whether he was in for a grand time or a fight. Making love with someone neither earnest nor inflammatory was new to him, but he liked it.

Drifting after Selatre, he walked into the great hall himself. Van sat at one of the tables there, a roast chicken-mostly bones now-in front of him, a pitcher of ale within easy reach. He nodded to the Fox and said, "Grab yourself a jack, Captain, and help me get to the bottom of this."

"I don't mind if I do." Gerin sat down across from the outlander, who poured him a full jack.

Van raised his own and said, "To the Prince of the North-maybe one day to the King of the North!" He poured the ale down his throat, then stared sharply at Gerin. "You'd better drink to that."

"So I should," Gerin said, and obediently drank. He smacked his lips, partly tasting the ale, partly Van's words. King of the North? " If I'm lucky, my grandson may wear that title."

Van plucked at his beard. "I don't know, Fox. All's topsy-turvy here, and you're a young man yet. If you live, you may do it."

Gerin shifted uncomfortably on the bench, as if he'd got a splinter in his backside. "I don't know that I want to do it. A title like that… It'd be an open invitation to all the other lords in the northlands to gang together and pull me down."

"I don't know," Van repeated. "Me, I don't think Aragis would lift a finger against you, for fear you'd call down the gods and turn him into a lump of cheese, or some such. Same with Adiatunnus. And without them, who'd raise a proper fight?"

"They're wary of me now, aye," Gerin said, "but that'll fade by the time the first snow falls. I can't make myself king before then; I'm too weak. And taking the title when I haven't the strength to back it up-" He shook his head. "Aragis wants to be king. I think he'd fight for pride's sake if I went and put on a crown."

"Have it your way-you generally do," Van said. "From where I sit, looks like you could bring it off." He poured the last of the ale into his jack, drained it, got up, and headed for the stairs.

He'd left one of the wings on the roast fowl uneaten. Gerin pulled it off the carcass, gnawed on it thoughtfully. He shook his head after a little while, still convinced he was right. All the same, he sent a resentful look toward the stairway: Van had kindled his ambition, and he'd known just what he was doing, too.

"Not yet," Gerin said. His lands had suffered too much from the monsters, and from the fights with Adiatunnus. He wanted time to wed Selatre and to enjoy life with her (though the calculating part of his mind said being married to the former Sibyl of an Ikos now miraculously restored would also foster his prestige among his neighbors). No, not yet.

But who could say? The time might come.

Maps