Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods)

by Pam Uphoff

  "We can, even without power, sort of make a compass . . ." Ras eyed her.

  "Hmm, maybe you guys could rotate in and out, so you didn't get drained? How about the triad in the middle and us irregular types outside of it . . . "

  The power flew.

  The ideas and concepts and sketchy architectural reading . . .

  They overdid it considerably.

  Rustle stretched her stiff back. "Now I understand how the parents felt when they did the ramps and bridge. Remember?"

  "Yeah." Havi looked from the domed roof down to the ornate compass rose 'inlay' on the floor. Two long corridors angled off into the shadows. A large room to the left. To the right, an antique-looking registration desk with a wall of hooks and keys behind it.

  "Whoa!" Ask turned in a slow circle. "How big did we make it? How did we pull that much power and not exhaust ourselves?"

  Verse started grinning. "It's all those wretched drills, channeling power, and using as little of your internal resources as possible. It really works."

  Ras staggered in, "You think the dome is cool, come down here and check this out. It's worth feeling totally wasted."

  One of the pools the hotsprings fed was at the end of that corridor, under another dome—this one glass.

  Half the population was splashing around naked in it.

  "We kept yelling suggestions at Havi and you witches." Zip grinned. "By and large you followed them."

  "The other arm has a smaller pool, and there's this big suite with a pool just right for two people." Amo was grinning too. "Everyone's calling it the honeymoon suite."

  Rustle looked around in disbelief.

  A grinning little Xen, stark naked, galloped up and gave her a wet hug. "You made a good inn. I like the waterfall." He pointed up the length of the greenhouse, where it curved out of sight.

  We made a waterfall?

  "If you're going to do it again, how about a wall and door across between here and the hallway? Keep the noise and humidity down in the rest of the building, you know?" Ech suggested.

  Rustle looked at the wide open doorway. "Good plan. And I'll bet a few air vents, high and low would help in here, as well."

  Geri, one of the Mage girls looked around thoughtfully. "We may be able to do something, too." The others mage girls nodded.

  "A purification rite. Start at midnight and go on till noon." Kenta bobbed happily in the water.

  Whatever they did cleared the sulfur smell and pulled minerals out of the water. By the time they were done with it, it was nearly drinkable. They all floated and relaxed, staring at the comets and the streaks of falling stars.

  Winter was not what one would call harsh, no matter what was happening outside. They had plenty of food, musical instruments almost competently played, and lots of voices to help. Dancing. Story telling. Books were passed around, games played, and magic studied. And always, the hot pools.

  The witches hiked and explored the side canyons to the south, and found a spot to call their own. Rustle helped the Triad raise a pair of houses, complete with picket fences of stone to keep out the lizards, and they practiced magic by their own hot springs whenever the weather was clear. Xen missed his buddy Fermi—the Valasiks has headed south for the winter—but entertained himself singing his lessons to "the grubs."

  The goat boys and the non-mages sought her out in private.

  "Rustle, you talked about throwing spells during that fight with the Oners. You changed their genes into the Dragon genes, didn't you?"

  Ras was darker of hair than the usual red and or blonde mage children. No telling who his father had actually been. "What we want is the Mage gene put on our Y chromosomes. Just that one little change."

  Zip, Bos, Joffe and Ech were typical goat boys, shining black hair and honey gold eyes. "We want the mage gene too. That ought to give us dimensional abilities, like you, Havi, and Cor."

  Ras frowned, exchanged looks with his gang. "I hadn't thought of that. We were all trained to use the mage powers, the mage methods. We know all the chants, all the spells. We just need a power gene."

  "Or two." Siggi put in.

  Kal nodded. "Wouldn't hurt my feelings to go from tossed aside to the best there is."

  Rustle swallowed, trying to settle her stomach. "I can't. I've been forbidden to experiment at all, let alone on a person! Eight people!"

  Zip started grinning. "You can do it. I can see it in your eyes, you know exactly how to do it."

  "Zip . . . Answer kicked me out of the Pyramid, partly because of what I did to those people, when I was a teenager. And partly because of using the hormone lowering spell on you guys."

  Havi snorted. "So . . . what's she going to do? Swap people around and put you with all the worst? Or just happen to never have anyone available to work with you? Oh, wait. I forgot. She already did that."

  Rustle buried her face in her hands. It didn't help. She could see the spell. That simple hunt for the Y chromosome, the placing of the mage power gene . . . The X chromosome and the placing of the wizard gene . . . "I am going to be in so much trouble."

  It only took a moment.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  1374 Winter Solstice

  New Tokyo

  Trump smiled as the first contraction woke her. Ah. The incredible experience of childbirth. Yes. She snuggled down under the covers to enjoy the early part.

  .

  .

  .

  .

  .

  .

  "Hmm, that's a bit extreme even for Just Deserts." Hell shook his head over the four tiny girls. "I mean, your captors deserved to die." He shrugged apologetically. "I can't control it, it just happens all around me."

  Trump gazed at her children in dismay. "This must be the punishment for how much I enjoyed giving them their just deserts."

  The bald girl had a square chin like the Tall Man, one girl had black hair, another red. The last born has hair so fair it was nearly colorless.

  "Well," she said weakly. "Four is better than six."

  ***

  The Auld Wulf wondered what he'd done to deserve being bored to death.

  ". . . Champion sired sheep dogs, the best in the world." Lord Kell leaned back in his chair and smirked as he reached for his goblet.

  With the King's pardon in his pocket, the man had shifted to a valley further south and now raised sheep himself. His lawyers were still working on his inheritance of his father's Land Grant and title of Duke of Ferris Province.

  "Sounds like that will take care of your wolf problems," The Auld Wulf stood up. "If not, see Dydit, the man has a real way with wolves." See if he's got nerve enough to ask me what he does to them.

  The Sun was nearly down, the air chilly. The slanting golden light was more than bright enough to show him his Lordship's two champion bitches, tied to the rail by their leashes.

  And the two big dogs humping them.

  Oh. Shit. He stepped back inside and caught Harry's eye. Jerked his head at the door.

  Harry stepped out, and stopped dead at the sight of the hounds. He met his fellow god's eyes.

  "Michael."

  The Auld Wulf nodded. "Michael."

  They stepped out into the street, gave the dogs a wide berth as they looked up and down the street.

  "Up there." The Auld Wulf pointed. "On White Hill."

  "Down here, in the street." Michael stepped out of the shadows, two black german shepherds at his heels.

  "Ahhh! Get away from my . . . "

  The Auld Wulf moved with blinding speed and snatched Lord Kell back before his boot made contact with the great dane's side. "You don't want to do that, trust me. Just stop bragging about the damn champion bred bitches so it doesn't happen again." He thought it over. "And you may find the puppies are just what you need."

  "But, but . . . "

  The mottled colored great dane, grinned and trotted back to Michael. The big red boxer grinned too, and stayed right where he was.

  "Let me intro
duce you to the God of Just Deserts. Michael, this is Lord Kell, a local landowner. Be Nice. Please."

  The god laughed and stuck out a hand, "Kell, just call me Hell. It started as a linguistic misunderstanding, but it's so fitting, don't you think?"

  "Err," Kell shook his hand carefully, craning his neck. "Old gods! You're taller than him." He jerked his head at the Auld Wulf.

  "Hell?" Harry snorted. "I'm surprised we didn't think of that millennia ago."

  "How did you find us? Where have you been?" the Auld Wulf asked.

  "In the ruins of New Tokyo, all closed up. My little Trump broke through five shields to put me back in touch with the World. She finally decided I was trustworthy enough to trust with the secrets of her home village. You call her Tromp, but I prefer my version. Trumpet the Strumpet, and I'm not planning on giving her back."

  "You've come down to owning slaves now, have you?" Harry folded his arms and stared.

  "Certainly not! We were made for each other." Hell grinned. "And you want to watch that mouth of yours. Insults, leaping to conclusions . . . very dangerous when I'm in town."

  Harry snorted. "It won't work on us, when we're looking for it."

  "Nonsense, it even works on me." He looked up the street as a door slammed open.

  ". . . not going to stay in this poky little village. We're going to Karista." Tromp had a two year old on each hip.

  "Not with my grand-daughters, you aren't!" Idea's voice was rising fast.

  "A mother-in-law? My, my, you've been a very bad boy, haven't you, Hell?" the Auld Wulf murmured.

  "We could teach you how to shed curses like that," Harry added.

  "Nah, makes me feel really strange when I do." He stepped forward, grabbed Idea's hand and kissed it. "I am so honored to meet you. And, please, you must come up and meet your other granddaughters."

  "What?" Idea whipped around to glare at Tromp. "You didn't! Twins again?"

  Tromp cleared her throat, "Umm, no Mother. Not twins. Do come up, they're little darlings, two months old. We named them Scarlet, Inky, Sandy and Heliotrope."

  "But, but, those names aren't on the list! I mean, we are still doing Hues, but those aren't . . . !" Idea stopped suddenly. "Four? You've only been gone for a bit more than a year, that's not enough time to . . . Four?"

  "Four." Hell slipped his arm around Idea's shoulders and steered her toward the alley. "Quite the surprise," He looked back as they walked off. "There are three other shielded centers across the ocean in the ruins of New Tokyo. Your buddies are trying to open them."

  "With luck, they'll figure out how to trigger them, and we can lock you back up." The Auld Wulf called after him.

  The red hound had started after them, but turned, lifted a leg and pissed on the Auld Wulf's boot. The boot made contact and the hound yelped indignantly before he trotted off into the twilight.

  "Why didn't you let me kick that creature?" Kell fumbled angrily with the leashes.

  "Because I don't have any sheep for it to eat, and my horse will squash it flat if it tries anything."

  "Err . . . " Kell hadn't grown up locally, and still hadn't quite grasped that the gods were something well beyond eccentric local gentry. But he shrugged as the boys brought around his surrey, and with a glare in the hounds' direction he urged his champion purebred sheepdog bitches up into it, to share the seat with him.

  Harry shook his head. "Probably big litters, too. I'm not at all sure about breeding the lab animals we rescued."

  "Sun Gold's foals have been really nice. I may bring Jet out. That colt of Rustle's is a beauty." The Auld Wulf rubbed his head. "I wish we could remember more."

  "I wish we could remember less, sometimes. Those horses are chimeras, you know. Lots of human genes. Because it was the interaction with the human genes they were studying."

  "But they cross with normal horses."

  "Do they? There's so much of that wine around . . . "

  "I . . . think Jet sired some foals shortly after we arrived . . . didn't he?"

  "The first couple of years . . . " They exchanged baffled glances.

  "We should warn Giselle and Romeau that Michael's back." Harry scowled up at the mansion on the hill.

  "And figure out how to use his talents to do something about the comet. We need all the gods we can find." The Auld Wulf turned and walked down the street. One boot squished slightly.

  ***

  Tromp was so glad to get to Karista. Their two week visit to Ash had probably been one week too long. Her mother had been tedious, her sister Opinion obnoxious, and Havi's goat father had done something to the dogs. They now fled at the sight of him.

  They also got out, first thing, and ran off.

  "They'll be busy for awhile," Hell said. "Big backlog."

  Karista fairly glittered in the spring sunshine. The Palace had settled down in a park and they strolled arm in arm down the street. The really neat thing about Hell's home was that time didn't exist inside, if he didn't want it to.

  So the girls would be just fine. Frozen, so to speak.

  And it produced clothing to order.

  And food.

  It was the most wonderfully magical thing imaginable, except perhaps Hell himself.

  They passed the red dog humping a poodle, and a minute later the two black bitches digging up a beautifully landscaped front lawn.

  A carriage rattle up to them and stopped. A man in uniform hopped out. Tromp recognized him, and poked Hell. "That's General Rufi Negue. He's Happy's pet."

  The General flushed a bit. Oops! Oh well. Tromp sailed on blithely. "General, this is My Kel Hell, the God of Just Deserts."

  "Welcome to Karista. Might I inquire as to what part of that was name, and what part title?"

  "Oh, it's all name, but please, call me Hell." Hell smiled charmingly and shook the General's hand.

  "Would you like a tour of the City? Perhaps lunch?"

  "Oh, certainly," Hell's smile widened. "That should remove all your doubts."

  The carriage pulled out and the General pointed out landmarks. He broke off abruptly at the sight of a very fat man up a tree. The gray and black dog leapt and almost reached the man's butt. They could hear the dog's teeth snap as he leaped again.

  Hell gave a loud theatrical sigh. "I'm afraid that many of my subconscious delivery of just deserts are through the actions of my dogs."

  The General leaned back and eyed Hell. "I . . . see."

  He probably didn't, but he was polite about it.

  They stopped at the Museum of Art, which was actually not the bore she'd thought it would be. The ancient fashions were incredible. The sculpture gardens beautiful, although some of the statues were a bit weird, even for her. A man strolled along behind them and slipped in some fresh dog poop. The General looked around, grinned, and muttered something about "reporters."

  As they left the grounds a man approached Hell, whispered something. Tromp caught something about ". . . naked . . . " Hell gave him the cold shoulder, and Tromp wasn't surprised to hear indignant yells rise behind them. She didn't look. The General did. He frowned as he handed her back into his carriage. They lunched at a restaurant at the top of a hill, with an incredible view.

  The man who escorted them to their table raised a supercilious eyebrow at her. A few minutes later the red dog somehow got in long enough to pee on him. The General nearly choked on his wine at that. "So, may I take it from your association with Lady Tromp that you've been to Ash?"

  "Oh, we met in New Tokyo, or what used to be the city of New Tokyo, across the ocean. Trump very cleverly managed to figure out the keys to the seals on my home."

  "You'd been trapped there?"

  "Trapped myself, perhaps. Saved myself? More likely. A dimensional bubble only experiences time to the degree that it is congruent with the World. Five layers down, I wasn't even aware of time. And being a god is hell on the memory, I don't even remember why I did it. I suppose I'd have come out myself, eventually. Who knows how long that would have take
n?"

  "I've had reports of sealed buildings from there. Yours was one of the three?"

  "No, they hadn't found mine. The other three are still sealed," he shrugged. "I know who they belonged to, but not if their owners are inside."

  "Do they belong to gods, or just strong wizards, mages and witches?"

  Hell pondered that as he ate lobster. Swallowed. "There is, ordinarily, not much difference between a god and a witch or mage. And wizards have apparently gotten stronger while I was, umm, away. We stopped briefly in Ash, so Trump could visit her mother. There were two wizards there that I would not want to challenge. But they cannot do . . . damn. In case you hadn't noticed, we so called gods got our collective asses kicked a long time ago and our minds, especially our memories, have a lot in common with swiss cheese. We can do a class of magic that other Telies cannot. The shields around those buildings, what they really are is of that class. I don't know what or who is in them, but they were made by gods."

  The General nodded. "Thank you. I think you must be a bit less holey than most of the other gods I've met. You are succinct and clear."

  Hell snorted wine. "Less Holy?" He coughed and cleared his throat. "I think I just figured out why you have such a fine reputation in Ash. Ahem. Well, I'm not sure which gods might be there, but the choice is limited. Peace is the only one truly dangerous to you. Vice is excessive on a personal basis. Fat sadist. Virtue is the same, but he'll beg someone to stop him before he rape-murders a child again. Twin brothers by the way. Not a national threat. Logic, likewise. Mercy, pain in the ass, big mouth that could cause trouble in the long run. Chance just observes. Art. Eternal Youth." He shrugged. "The rest you know. Unless you think the Old Wolf is against you, Peace is all I'd truly bother to worry about."

  Tromp frowned. "But, I thought the God of Peace was, like, down in Auralia? Giving those stupid speeches?"

  Hell blinked at her. "I really do have talk with you, now that you've decided I'm trustworthy. You are a font of information." He looked back at the General. "Does he still spout nonsense about a single Government and equality bringing Peace? Have any of my colleagues actually seen him?"