Wine of the Gods 08: Dark Lady

by Pam Uphoff

  "Guess she thought I'd calm back down." Charlie smirked, cocking his head to listen to rapidly retreating footsteps.

  "You know, Uncle Charlie, if you want some advice, I'd say sell this land to the Church for a bundle of money, divorce the icicle, and marry some girl with some hot blood in her veins. Maybe come out west and live in this new town and territory I'm going to start if I ever get out of here."

  "Humph. Give up? After a thousand years?"

  "Hot blooded woman. Freedom. And hold them up for a good chunk of change."

  "A million dollars?"

  "Ten million. Maybe settle for five. That would give you an income, even after buying a house."

  "Oh, Nephew! You would charge your old Uncle Charlie?"

  "Not for land, but you're on your own as far as building a house on it."

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Winter Solstice 1377 PE

  Ash, Kingdom of the West

  For the Winter Solstice Ceremony, the Witches of Ash didn't go any further than the hot springs.

  Rustle was, by virtue of Xen's precocious magic, the sole Full Moon. But in her partially recovered condition she was happy to team up with Swish and Jasper to form a Half Moon Triad. She ignored a few smirks. I must have been a bit of a snob, or bragged about being strong, or something.

  But as the familiar songs, power gathering and spell casting rolled over her, she could feel herself relaxing and joining in. By dawn she was both exhausted and exalted, and carried Quail back to the winery in a pleasant blur. Wolf and Xen both joined them for breakfast, then Rustle abandoned all pretense of parenting and crawled into bed.

  Some time in the afternoon she followed the faint thumping and banging and found a staircase had sprouted in the sitting room, and followed it up into an angular attic room. Full of kids and dogs.

  "Hi Mom! Look, I'm going to have my own bedroom here." Xen cheerfully hauled her to the window to admire the view, then to the other half of the attic, which appeared to be having an attack of bubbles.

  The Wolf laughed. "If you can store half a town, surely I can store a very long lifetime of souvenirs. Actually I always have, it's just that I'd never actually inventoried what was here. Some of it's a bit . . . Okay, I can see me not being able to resist the boat. But why the colony of rats?"

  "Umm, perhaps you were experimenting on them? With genetic engineering, you'd want to see several generations, right?"

  "That's more Gisele's game, and yours. Do you remember your purple bunnies? And the men you turned into dragons?"

  "Dragons . . . " She had a vision of men rushing into a group of teenagers. "Why did I do that? They were attacking us, weren't they?"

  "Yes. Killers from the One World, with orders to wipe out the entire village. You only changed their essences, their genes. Physically they were still human. Tromp triggered the end of the spell that kept the dragon girls in human form. They morphed from human back to dragon, and they, umm." He stopped and frowned at Xen. "You are a little young to hear about this."

  Xen blinked. "Great Grand says the dragon girls kissed them and then beat them up. And then they flew away."

  "Yes, something like that."

  Rustle followed her memories and shivered a bit. "Well, that wasn't very nice, not that they deserved better." She heard the wind whistling a bit, up so close to the roof. "I think you're going to need some extra blankets tonight though. It sounds like a storm is blowing in. Maybe we'll finally get some snow."

  "Lion, Blacky and Silky will keep me warm." All three large dogs wagged their tails.

  "Indeed."

  The winery made a snug little retreat all remote from everything else and her family all tucked around her. Quicksilver celebrated her first birthday by pulling up and standing in front of her beaming father. Rustle practiced her more domestic skills by sewing clothing for a rapidly growing pair of children and then thinking about spinning and weaving, and . . .

  "You can buy anything you don't want to do yourself," the Auld Wulf pointed out. "You've got money, I've got money, your horse will be earning money come spring, and you always were very good at finding diamonds."

  "Diamonds?"

  "That's how most of the people in the valley make their serious money. It's easy for a witch or mage to see the dense diamonds in the loose sand. Wizards have a tougher time of it. I'll show you in the spring. Or Never will, or you could use relearning the knack to get together with some of the other witches."

  She caught the flicker of worry in his eyes. I've been back for eight months. I can shield, mostly, now. From everyday thoughts zinging around. I don't feel so raw, so, half healed. Maybe I could stand up to an assault. But I'm still not remembering. So I'm not as healed as I think I am. Her eyes strayed to the bookshelves. Or, like that psychology text suggested, do I not want to remember? What wouldn't I want to remember? The rape? Killing or injuring the men? Or could there be something worse, hiding back in my subconscious?

  Is this just duty, and he wants me healed and away?

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Late Winter 1377 PX

  Ash, Kingdom of the West

  A late season storm dumped a picturesque two feet of snow on the village, and kept everyone close to home. Then Rustle spent a chilly night in the barn watching Junk deliver a big angular and very black filly. Phantom's little sister, instantly named Spooky. Rustle found a practical use for a physical shield as she cleared enough ground for the new foal to gambol about in the sunshine.

  Quail Quicksilver tottered about, calling everything "Da!" before branching out with "Mmmm!" and "En!" and finally a very clear and emphatic "Bad Dog!"

  Rustle cleared the path down to the village, so Xen could return to school. And then she and Quicksilver explored the other corridors.

  The Rip Crossing Inn was stuffed with old friends she barely remembered. The three resident witches dragged her off to their houses and private hotsprings.

  "Not that everyone doesn't come and check them out, but we chuck everyone out when we have a ceremony to perform." Verse was a spectacular dark woman, a daughter of Harry's. She looked barely eighteen, but Rustle recalled her being one of the flood of children resulting from that wine intersecting a large party. She's twenty-four, like me. So are Whoop and Ask.

  "We ought to have dragged you out here, on the Solstice." Ask was a petite blonde.

  Technically, Rustle's aunt, Never's half sister . . . oh, that's why she looks so much like Xen. She's one of the Auld Wulf's children from that party, and Whoop's another. Xen's and Quicksilver's half sisters. My family is . . . not standard, at all.

  The triad took her continued memory problems as a challenge. They hauled her out to their hotsprings for a full night of singing songs she remembered, half a beat after they sang them, and then they drilled her on the little charms, and how they built up into complex spells.

  Ask sighed. "You learned half the complex stuff from the wizards, and then came and taught us how they worked, and why they worked. This is so strange."

  They all went to a party at the Inn. It was so loud, mentally, that she fled back to Ash within minutes.

  But in the quiet times, Havi and the witches demonstrated building roads and enlarging barns. Rustle cautiously joined in. And found it easy. I did things sort of like this in Jeramtown, without any problem.

  Rustle bobbed back and forth between Ash and Rip Crossing and the long winter gradually gave way to spring.

  In the high mountain valley of Ash, spring came a bit later than in the New Lands.

  Rustle sat on the new spring grass and watched Quail climb all over Xen's dogs. Big friendly mutts. The smallest of them outweighed both children together, and they all played gently with the toddler. Pyrite galloped and played with the yearlings while Xen climbed the oak tree in the middle of the pasture.

  Dydit and Nil were chatting with the Auld Wulf . . . Wolf? Why . . . oh, right fourteen centuries of linguistic drift, not to mention myths . . .

  Dydit turned h
is back on the horses. "Rip Crossing would be extremely isolated, if not for the corridor. It should be easy enough to set up permanent corridors in between all the places we might need to go in a hurry, and it would be good for commerce as well."

  The Auld Wulf nodded. "We've got corridors to Karista. And Rustle put up one partway to the Crossroads, that I took all the way to Harry's. This end of it is on the side of the grange barn. Oh, Gemstone. That would be handy for the insane horse breeders."

  Dydit grinned. "Insane? Arguably. I'll bet Rufi will want corridors from Karista to Farofo. But until we're sure the gate situation is stable, safe, we'd best just do temporary corridors from Karista to the Crossroads. No need to give an invader a fast trip to the capital."

  Nil was leaning on the fence rail, and frowning just a bit. "That's all well and good, to see you finally being properly paranoid. But those can't actually be the foals we sold that smart-ass god."

  The Auld Wolf looked around innocently. "What's this? Didn't you look at them before you sold them? Or did you only see a bony old draft horse when you looked at his foals?" He chuckled wickedly. "Cast your mind back eight hundred years, Tyrant. You weren't in very good shape when you got here, but do you remember the old horse that pulled Harry's cart then?"

  Nil narrowed his eyes and looked thoughtful. "Big old dun, just like . . . Son-of-a-dog. Harry's always had an old dun gelding, and I never thought about it."

  Dydit chewed a knuckle. Rustle had a sudden suspicion he was trying to not laugh.

  "Yep. I figure he's another of the original god horses. He wandered in here nearly a century before you came. I'm delighted to see that the longevity genes were used on them. The thought of magic genes worries me a bit, though. Rustle says she used to read her lessons aloud to him."

  "I really don't think he could have understood them." Dydit protested. "He is a horse, after all."

  "A magically trained horse?" Nil snorted. "Don't scare me. I'm having enough trouble with the human wizards. Half of them went off to explore other worlds, and Vala's busy with twins and trying to make a living."

  Dydit looked around with a grin. "And Xen scares him. He seems to think a wizard ought to be older before he's taught how to destroy the world."

  Rustle sat up indignantly. "He's much too nice to do that, even if he could."

  The Auld Wulf strolled out to the fence. "It's teenagers with all the tempers and, well, not hormones, with wizards, but . . . What are you teaching a seven year old, anyway? Should I worry?"

  Nil raised an eyebrow and glanced her direction. "Just trying to get him past all the witch rhymes he's learned and into thinking of magic scientifically. His grasp of the basic spells is strong enough to be dangerous, but his touch is very delicate and . . . nuanced . . . for a seven year old."

  Dydit beamed proudly. "The Tyrant Wizard of Scoone doesn't want to admit that my grandson is doing things most twenty-seven year olds make clumsy hashes out of."

  They all glanced at the little boy in the tree.

  Nil shrugged. "You can laugh now. But if anyone makes that nice boy really and genuinely hate, the results aren't going to be pretty. Your family is just too damned strong."

  Rustle swallowed, a bit uncertain. Strong? I wasn't strong compared to Arbolian priests and gods. Was that just because I wasn't recovered from the comet? More likely "strong" is not actually that much stronger than "average" or even "weak" here, with all these . . . interesting people. There's tons of stuff I can do. It's my shields, or lack thereof, that makes me look weak.

  Quail Quicksilver giggled as a dog nosed her and knocked her over.

  And neither of my children are scary.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Wednesday, April 7, 3494

  East Heights, Arrival

  East Heights came to terms with the loss of the their Baroness rather easily. Rumors of Liz's wedding plans and far distant territory helped.

  The paperwork surrounding a royal wedding had arrived with the Grants of Legitimacy. Three of them. His disinheriting official, Raulph got into rather a lot of fights, and if he started getting more careful about who he fought with, he also learned to take an insult with a better show of humor, and by spring was almost capable of swaggering when called a bastard.

  Felix had had an easier time of it. Once bullied by Raulph and friends, he was now the only legitimate son and the consequences of hitting him were suddenly worse. He got a lot of attention around town. Automatic respect from the city watch. He basked in it, but didn't seem inclined to follow in his brother's footsteps.

  Last year having been the fourth year, crop yields had been smaller than most years, but not dangerously so. There was plenty of wheat to last to the next harvest, and the early fruits were blooming and setting with no late frosts.

  Liz, remembering Jeram, talked to merchants and craftsman about pest proof grain storage. Some concrete bunkers were discussed, with charcoal smoke blown in before they were sealed to kill rodents and bugs.

  Then they packed up and returned to Arrival.

  "Ordinarily, I'd stay and mind the state while Millicent brought the children to town for The Season."

  Liz balked a bit. "The social season? Balls and expensive dresses?"

  "Exactly." He smiled down at her. "Liz, I have enjoyed getting to know you. And I am going to enjoy showing you off this one year."

  Liz braced herself. "In that case, I'd better see a seamstress about some gowns."

  Chapter Fifty

  Late Spring 1377 PE

  Rip Crossing, Kingdom of the West

  Rustle returned to Rip Crossing to find the Inn empty, no more parties. There was a gate to another world on the canyon wall. The track to it veered from the road up to the eastern plains, just past the Inn. It clearly got a lot more traffic than the main road.

  "So, Quail Quicksilver, are you ready to explore yet another world?"

  Quicksilver pointed at the gate.

  "Hmm, I wonder what you see? Or if you know what that is? I don't know if all this gating and corridoring is good for a baby."

  "Big Girl!"

  "Oops, sorry, I don't know if this is good for a big girl." But she leaned that direction and Phantom trotted through.

  On the far side of the gate, it was after noon, instead of early morning. And warmer. Spring grass had matured into lush pastures in the deep rich soil.

  Quicksilver kicked happily and reached out like she was trying to capture the sunshine.

  "Wow, no wonder everyone moved here. It's a lot different than the New Lands. I think." she trailed off. "Isn't it? I don't remember it very well."

  A snort behind her. Havi, standing in a half mown hayfield. "That's because you were in a hurry. I doubt you ever spent more than an hour at a time here."

  He sounded so much like Dydit . . . Rustle tucked a smile away.

  "Who cut the hay? Or . . . " a faint something nudged her memory.

  Havi waved a hand and the tall grass fell over. "Slice. It's not just for woodworking and desperate battles."

  "Oh. Right." She swung down and waved a careful hand. Grass flew every which way. "Oops."

  Havi laughed. "For once, I'm better at something than you are." He thumped her shoulder, familiarly, then jumped and caught Quicksilver as she dived off Phantom at him. "Hey Q. You went away and got bigger, again. What's your Mom feeding you?"

  "Doduts!"

  "Ooo! Yeah, she makes good ones. Tell her to teach Ask." Havi pointed behind Rustle. "So I get donuts more often, too."

  "Ha!" Ask trudged through the thick grass to hug Rustle and snatch Quicksilver. "Tell your Uncle Havi that he's in big trouble, and isn't going to get any more donuts until he apologizes. Because I taught your mom how to make donuts."

  Rustle laughed with the others, trying to keep her doubts silent. She knew how to tell the Wolf's kitchen "reformulator" to make donuts. Perhaps I ought to relearn how to make them myself. Then she shrugged off her worries and let the witch lead her off to "their sections."


  They had one house and one barn near the common corner. Whoop waved from a window, then Verse herded two three-year olds out ahead of her.

  "We've got these four big square 'claims.' It hardly matters." Ask chattered away. "Since the whole world has a population of about eighty. Half of them kids. Anyway, as a pyramid, we've got four miles by four miles. You own the southwest claim."

  "I do?"

  Whoop walked out, her daughter over her shoulder. "You do. You bought a share of the original land grant company. Since you were missing, we grabbed that area for you, and no one dared argue."

  Verse nodded. "You can change it, if you want. Personally, I was thinking about moving south. You know, a tropical beach or some such." Her dimples deepened. "And traveling back and forth would be so easy, if someone could be persuaded to make a corridor all the way down to the tropics."

  Rustle snickered, and remembered carrying a corridor while scouting out the Arbolian army. "Let me show you the easy way to travel." She reached and grabbed a handy bubble. "If I stick one end down here, and the other end to these four rocks . . . You can carry this end with you, and in the evening, set the rocks up, ride through and sleep in your own bed. You can even make other people help. Switch horses. Take a day off."

  Whoop fumbled with the rocks, got them to stick on the side of the house in the right order, and stepped through—and out of the same side of the house a few feet away. The three year olds . . . Madder and Navy, if she remembered right . . . started running through the sides of the house, giggling madly.

  Whoop shook her head. "That is weird, even for you, Rustle. So . . . what are you going to be doing while I'm taking these rocks for a nice long trip?"

  "I . . ." She looked around at the clatter of hooves.

  Xen on his big gelding. "Dad says, can you come look at something at Harry's?" His eyes were bright, alarmed but curious. "Some witches killed some people. Maybe from the world you visited."