Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods)

by Pam Uphoff

  "The Auld Wulf chased him out of the New Lands about six years ago. And the speeches are . . . strange." The General glanced around the restaurant. The waiter hustled with a check, which the General just signed.

  Tromp made note of the signing thing. She bet anything it had something to do with banks. She really ought to have listened to Mayor Agate while she was around.

  She'd seen the General note every spilled drink, every rude diner who dribbled on his or her clothes, the dogs out in the street . . . Through the windows, they could see all the pratfalls, the peeing, the chasing, the biting—although Tromp noted that the dogs did not threaten any children. Really, she'd like to know what Havi's father did to them after he chased them out of the school in Ash.

  The General had sent and received several notes during lunch, and finally suggested a cruise on the Emperor's yacht, which was absolutely gorgeous. They stopped at all the picturesque islands where the broad river delta met the salt water of Big Bay.

  One island had the most grotesque collection of statues. Hell stared at them for the longest time, before he turned abruptly away from them and stalked back to the yacht.

  One island had a beautiful rocky hill with a view to die for.

  The General offered it to them on the spot.

  Hell chuckled, "So long as I move out here?"

  "Yes. Oh, not that you aren't welcome in the city, but I'd feel so much less apprehensive if the city were out of the range of your influence most of the time. And your dogs could stay home."

  Tromp wiggled up beside Hell, "The girls would love to play here. I love it here."

  "Sold!"

  So they finished their cruise around the delta, and then returned to the city. The happily exhausted dogs were waiting for them in the courtyard of the Palace. They went inside and Trump checked on the children. Azure, the dark haired one, and Beige, the strawberry blonde certainly were attractive little girls. They toddled after the hounds, who let them crawl all over them.

  "What do you think about getting a nanny? Maybe several?" Hell said.

  She beamed at him. "That is an excellent idea, but I don't know where we can find anyone who won't just be horribly afraid of all of this."

  "Well, we can but try. Mind you, I have every intension of fathering all your additional children, but given your impressive fertility, I think I'd best be prepared."

  Trump frowned, "Do you suppose I'll have a baby with every man I have sex with, if I hang around with you?"

  "Tsk! Thinking about other men already? I think you need a spanking."

  Chapter Twenty-two

  1374 Spring Equinox

  New Tokyo

  Rustle looked around the ruined city. "This is incredible."

  Lefty smiled at her. "Isn't it? And we've got, probably, three gods sealed up inside the three intact buildings. We're hoping that those dimensional abilities of yours will help us get them open."

  "And we need more triad practice so we don't get sneered at by the Ash witches. If we ever go back there." Ask put in as she climbed up beside them, still graceful, with her pregnancy five months along. "Old Gods! It goes on for miles!"

  Lefty nodded. "What we can see is about three times the size of Karista, and we have no idea how much of it is underwater."

  Rustle looked over at the modern fort. "Did you have trouble?"

  "A little bit, a year ago. But the Army's motto is be prepared." He smirked. "Despite Lord Andre whimpering every time we moved a stone. We just pointed out that he had, literally, billions more to emote over. Come down and meet our chief archeologist."

  "I've actually met him, oh five years ago now." Rustle smiled a bit. "Yes, on that disastrous trip to Karista." She marched down the hill, and refused to remember the last days of that visit.

  Lord Andre Througus was a professor at the King's University in Karista, when he wasn't in the field. "This all started five years ago when two officers mapping along the coast reported seeing some ruins. They were mages. Fascinating, terrifying, watching what they could do with a small boat."

  "Oscar and Bran." Lefty put in. "They're still here, or in the vicinity, scouting out more ruins, all over the countryside."

  "So you've got five years of work and Tromp, of all people, has been the only one to open a sealed building?" Rustle leaned over the table and surveyed their map of the former city. "New Tokyo?"

  "That's what Harry called these ruins. Said it used to be the third largest city in the world. Easily double the population of Discordia, today."

  Inside the walls, the fort held a tidy collection of small buildings. "We've sent most of the troops home. The only dangers we ever faced were a dozen Auralian sailors who'd hit a rock offshore. The dozen troops we've got live in the first building. That one, the mages have taken over. This one, Lord Andre and I both have quarters at the back, and working rooms up here. Across the way, kitchen and mess. We haven't bothered with a stable, on this leg breaker rubble. You four get the last building. Glad you could join us. Answer's gotten a bit . . . sharp, when we ask for help."

  "Yeah. Well, this looks really interesting, and we need to practice improvising." Rustle looked back down in fascination. "So Lord Hell's palace was way out there? The Auld Wulf said anyone with any sense stayed at least ten miles away from him."

  "Yeah. We concentrated on these three, which are clustered around what we think was the city core."

  Andre snorted. "The mages have been on a god hunt. While the two of us, being sensible fellows, have excavated the accessible buildings. This one we've identified as their city hall." His teeth flashed. "Paper doesn't do well, over a thousand years. Especially since the city apparently burned, at the time of the comet. But, we've found storage cabinets in basements that didn't burn, that protected them."

  He sighed. "Of course, I wouldn't dream of prying into them here. I just pack them up carefully and send them to my colleagues back home."

  Lefty tapped the map. "We've just started in on this block. Big stone buildings, again. Hopefully with less wood in them to sustain the fire. You four can help, once you've gotten tired of beating your heads on the sealed buildings."

  "No progress?"

  "We managed—we have no idea how—to open one door of one building. The next door is sealed solid."

  Lord Andre grinned. "It opened when the Veronian delegation snuck off and celebrated their annual orgy on the patio. Even letting the Veronians' hold their next orgy in the Front Room hasn't budged the second door. The Veronian scientists' suggestion that it was probably because the deflowered virgins had been willing was not well received."

  Rustle wrinkled her nose. "So . . . if it was rape that opened the first door—do we want to open the next? Some of the stories about the Gods of Virtue and Vice are pretty . . . nasty."

  The old Professor nodded. "Indeed. But one hates to give up after a success."

  "And even the other gods can't open them?"

  Lefty shook his head. "When the Auld Wulf set up the corridors, he prowled around a bit, and tried what he called brute force on a couple of them. He seemed to be impressed, something about 'paranoid idiots managed to weave magic into dimensional phenomena' or something like that. I gathered he didn't know this place well, and didn't get along with the other gods."

  Rustle grinned. "You ought to visit Ash and hear all about Lord Hell's visit."

  Lord Andre sniffed. "There's no such thing as a God of Hell."

  "Umm, he's the next best thing, the God of Just Deserts. Instant Karma, delivered by a dog, as like as not. Dad had a run in with them—they're calling them hell hounds now—at the school and they've behaved around children ever since."

  "God of Just Deserts." The old professor wrinkled his nose. "He's in the oldest stories, always thought he had to be an embellishment. His dogs are supposed to eat the worst offenders."

  Lefty nodded. "Scary thought. I hope he stays away from people."

  Verse snickered. "He's moved to an island in Karista Bay. Almost ten mi
les offshore."

  "Great, he'll only deliver Karma while shopping."

  "We named them for their most obvious characteristics. This one is The Temple of the Courtyard." Sergeant Gre led them through the earthquake destroyed corner of the wall and into the Courtyard. He was a badly misnamed young man, brilliantly blonde with deep blue eyes. Bright glow to her inner eye. Rustle vaguely remembered him from her disastrous Karista trip. She hadn't realized he was a mage. He was here to train with Oscar and Bran. "This is where the Veronians held their orgy two years ago. We didn't interfere until they got tired of swapping wives and tried to rape their musicians." His eyes sparked angrily at that.

  "I can see why you call them temples. It's beautiful." Rustle stood and studied the building for a long moment, the turned back to the wall. "That gate, is it locked?"

  "Or possibly jammed closed."

  She walked over to it and ran her hands over it. Stone, formed with magic so long ago she could only tell by the typical recrystallization of the rock. "It's too old. I can't feel whether it once had a spell on it. It might have been the first layer of a spell ball, destroyed by a quake."

  She walked through the courtyard, and between the pillars to the open door. They had it wedged open, in case it would seal itself again. Rustle ran her fingers over it, and the door frame, inside and out. "Faded fast, didn't it?"

  Gre maintained a baffled silence as the witch continued to run her fingers over first the outside of the building, and then the inside of the front room. The other three witches watched, looked as baffled, and tried their own running of fingers, before they exchanged mutual shrugs and gave up.

  Rustle walked back outside and felt the door frame again. And sighed. "Can't feel the old spell at all. And I think the spells that are still working are tangled up with something I'm learning to do. Plus some really, really impressive power."

  Gre led them to the other two buildings.

  "The Temple of the Tower. Not a very big tower, but it did seem to be the distinguishing characteristic."

  The witches felt the building for awhile, and then he led them to the last one. "Upside Down Temple."

  They burst into laughter and explored under the protruding upper floors and circled the narrow base.

  "I'm surprised it stood up in the quakes," Rustle commented. "It's got to be inherently less stable than a building that gets smaller as it gets higher."

  "Yes, Ma'am." Gre shuffled his feet, "Actually we dug a lot of rubble out from under it. We've been arguing about whether we're looking at cellar walls, or if the . . . people had enough warning of the disaster to fill in under the building."

  "An interesting thought. If they had warning, and why didn't they think the gods could do something about the comet? Maybe because they themselves couldn't. It would have been very far away. I wonder how many people are in these buildings. How many they tried to save."

  Gre shifted uncertainly. "Comet? One of the Visitors? They say another is going to hit."

  "Yes. They are spectacularly pretty, but very dangerous. A thousand years ago one hit this continent and killed everyone. Unless someone is alive in these sealed buildings. There weren't many people in the New World; they were able to shield some of the towns, but even so far away from where the comet hit, many people died. Our histories don't go back that far. Only the few bits and pieces the old gods remember, and frankly they don't remember things all that clearly, and sometimes they don't think and reason very well. I've wondered if they were bespelled, a time or two."

  "The, the gods don't . . . "

  She smiled at him. "I know, an uncomfortable thought, isn't it?"

  He led them back to the camp, and they unpacked—so to speak. Everything was in bubbles, invisible and unaging until they pulled it out.

  Gre had paled as they pulled clothes out, then boggled as they produced the kids. Grape and Hazel were over a year old now, toddling at a high rate of speed.

  Xen was small for his age, but his speech had caught up. "Are we there already? I don't like it in the black like that."

  "You each have a baby?" He eyed Ask's growing girth.

  "These are our first. No doubt we'll have others, later." Verse winked at him.

  He swallowed. "Well, I've heard all the stories, so I shouldn't be surprised." A bell rang. "Umm, dinner?"

  He escorted them, all three kids looking around wide eyed.

  "Do you have pirates?" Xen was looking up at the wall. "Can I fight them too?"

  Lefty laughed from inside. "Takes after someone I know. Hey Xen, look at the size of you!"

  The mess hall was unexpectedly full; everyone had come in from the field.

  Rustle recognized the other Mages. Bran looked like a younger version of his father Beck Butcher, and Oscar was one of Harry's orphans.

  Lefty waved them over. "Come and hear about what they've found."

  "A road, or what's left of it. Well made, wide. Obviously a major trade route, we've traced it two hundred miles down the coast. Then we hit a river too wide to cross and probably too wide too far upstream to make going around an option." Oscar leaned out of the way as a soldier brought plates around. Apparently the remaining troops weren't just guards. Quartermaster, cook, servers and probably cleanup, poor sods.

  "So we're back for a boat." Bran took over. "We figured we'd head upstream, see what we could find, then get back to tracing the road."

  "Pictures?" Lord Andre looked over his shoulder.

  A rather skinny trooper nodded. "I'll mix up the chemicals and get everything developed and printed tonight. Wait till you see the bridge abutment! I can't believe they actually had a bridge across that river."

  Oscar looked back at the witches. "So, you're taking up archeology?"

  "Or, um, need a name for it. Dimensionology? Those shields are using dimensional bubbles, somehow."

  Whoop rolled her eyes. "We had to drag her, kicking and screaming, away from the Earther's gate, when we passed through there on the way."

  Rustle elevated her nose. "I didn't scream."

  "So, what are you going to try on the temples? We've run out of options . . . " Bran broke off and eyed Ask's bulge. "Giving birth on the threshold?"

  The witch grinned. "I hope it doesn't come to that. But . . . "

  Rustle snickered. "We'll try a few other things first, try to find the key to the spell part of the shields."

  ***

  Verse and Whoop pleasuring each other didn't open any doors.

  "Maybe we're the wrong kind of Vice." Whoop looked perfectly cheerful. "Or maybe this is where Virtue hangs out."

  So the witches camped out there, with every single man in the encampment coming by to proposition them, and getting turned down. It was horribly embarrassing, until it got tedious and dumb.

  The men's advances ran from witty and clever to rude, demanding, crude and then back to horrified, embarrassed, shy and stammering.

  The last was Gre's contribution, of course.

  Not that it mattered. At dawn the door was just as solidly sealed as ever.

  "Hmph." Rustle frowned. "There are other kind of virtues, although none sound like anything that could have been triggered by the Veronians."

  "No ma'am." Gre wandered around the room, tapped the unresponsive door.

  Ask joined him. "Do you suppose the Veronians are right, that it was the actual rape that did it?" She blushed. "I expect you're too virtuous to try it, aren't you?"

  He flushed and looked away. "I'm not virtuous at all."

  Verse snickered. "How many men have you murdered, how many women have you raped?"

  "I've killed bandits." He told them stiffly. "But that's not murder. I was furious when those Veronians tried . . . I nearly did murder one of them."

  Whoop blinked. "Wow. But you didn't. And I'll bet you never raped anyone, either, did you?"

  The silence strung out a bit. The witches boggled.

  "Two," he said stiffly. Stared holes in the floor. "There was this wine, I umm, I was,
umm."

  Rustle shook her head. "Oh. That wine. We know all about that wine, and the problems it has caused. Have you ever been seriously tempted to rape, otherwise?"

  "It was unforgivable."

  "If there is such a thing as truly unforgivable, then we are all damned. Without forgiveness and mercy, life would be a cold hard place." Rustle winced. I haven't ever forgiven. "I think you need to be a bit merciful and forgive yourself."

  Gre blinked away tears. He took a deep breath and leaned back against the door. It fell open and dumped him on the floor.

  It was a small library, Rustle realized as she stepped around Gre. Book shelves lined the room, but her eyes were drawn to the table in the center. A scatter of open books surrounded a women, fallen asleep, her head resting on her arms. She stirred, and raised her head. Rubbed her eyes. Exotic dark eyes in a spectacular face. She looked young . . . but she'd been trapped in here for a thousand years . . .

  "Whoooarrr yaaah?" she stood abruptly, "Haow baaad hisss hit?" she pushed past them and out the door, out to the Courtyard. She started around the bleak ruins, and slowly slumped.

  Rustle took her elbow, and steered her to a bench. The woman sat and stared at Rustle, wide brown eyes looking shocky and wild. "Haow lungh haaas it bean?"

  "One thousand years." She enunciated carefully.

  The woman's eyes sought the ruins again. Tears leaked down her beautiful face. "Oone thousant . . . Oone. . . " She took some half sobbing breaths. "Dhay arrrr haaaall daid, arrnt dhay?" She clutched at her short curly brown hair.

  Oscar and Bran galloped in from the rubble, slowing as they approached.

  Oscar tried slow clean enunciation. "Two other sealed buildings."

  Bran whispered, "You know what she is, don't you?" And louder, "Lady Gisele. The Auld Wulf. Harry. Alive."

  Her head jerked around and tears flowed. "Harry? Where?" She stood up as if she'd dash off that second.

  "Across the ocean." Rustle pointed east.

  The woman stood slowly, looked deeply into Rustle's eyes, then she nodded. "I see it." The quality of the light changed, somehow. Instead of the stark desert light, something softer, greener . . .