Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods)

by Pam Uphoff

  The Auld Wulf nodded. Castrated and sold as slaves, mostly to the mines, where they'll be lucky to live a year. "Pax must be on the other side of the gate, influencing the controllers on the far side. They don't usually leave the gate open for so long." He bit his lip. Fourteen centuries ago, I was born on that world, served in the army of a polity that has apparently been rolled into a single world-wide government. They turned on me, on all everyone with genetic engineering. I don't owe them any loyalty. And if I interrupt Pax's control at this stage, it would all end in bloodshed. Perhaps if I leave them alone, they'll pass through in relative peace.

  "Are those the Oners?" Lefty gestured at some new vehicles that rolled into the procession.

  "Yes." The Auld Wulf closed his eyes, the better to use his internal vision more clearly. "They have some complex magnetic equipment . . . I think they have two gate anchors. They must be planning to turn them on, on the other side."

  "So they'll have three gates to push troops through? Not something I'd wish on my worst enemies."

  "Especially since it will help our other worst enemies. I think I can crunch up something inside . . . and then maybe they won't be able to hold an interdimensional war, with us in the middle." Wolf was too far away for details, or subtlety. He just crushed a handful of electrical components inside the two mechanisms. It would either be enough, or not. They disappeared through the gate.

  The last soldiers marched through. A sudden rush, women and children, following their soldier husbands and fathers. Or perhaps customers. Some carts, some livestock . . . the gate swirled shut.

  Lefty heaved a deep breath. "Unfortunately, we have no way to see what's happening on Earth."

  "Poor sods. The Earth and the Empire may deserve each other, but it's the individuals who pay."

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  1375 Late Fall

  Section One, Foothills Province, Kingdom of the West

  Rustle was getting very good at opening gates, out on the empty plains.

  She and Xen lived in the Traveler's wagon, but for the comet fall, Rustle had raised a solid rock dome from a granite outcrop, and shoved steel supports through it. It could, barely, hold the wagon and the four horses.

  "I think it'll survive any blast or quakes." Rustle reached out and hugged Xen. "Even without extra shielding. In case I get so tired trying to shift the comet that I can't raise shielding." The swale between low hills was roughly two hundred miles away from Ash, and nearly another hundred from where she was opening the gates. Sufficient to not worry about a dinosaur eating Xen before she realized the danger. She had a corridor from the dome to Ash, but traveled the rest of the way to her experimental area.

  Xen was very good. A little worried, but the dogs and the horse seemed to reassure him. He had been adamantly against staying with anyone else. "Everyone is busy. So I'll stay with you. You just do gates. Everyone else is running around like crazy."

  She'd opened five gates here, so far. One every second or third day was about her limit. And she hadn't been able to close any. On the far sides, the Worlds varied from several so empty they had few bugs to one that was full of people and hissing, steaming, carts that rolled without obvious motive power. Fascinating . . . but exploring the other worlds was going to have to wait. If they could divert the comet, or most of it, they would have the time to study these fascinating places.

  Right now, she checked them carefully for danger, while she recovered enough to open another one.

  She'd gone back to Ash and opened a gate through to one of the empty Worlds, and worrying about the people to the south, another one at the Wizard's Tower. She'd opened a third in Gemstone. It was infuriatingly hard to open gates back to the same World again, but she was getting the hang of it. But it was a good thing that they were at least a long term if not permanent phenomenon. She understood now why the Earther's had those "anchors." It would be easy to lose a world, and never find it again.

  She sat and studied the bubbles and the dimly seen 'sheets' of Worlds. Why did she seem to see a different one each time? She watched as they came in and out of view as the bubbles surged and streamed past. She grabbed cones and tried again.

  She blinked back into awareness and stepped through the new gate.

  Green rolling hills. Greener than home, which had dried to a golden color months ago. This grass was frost browned but regrowing. She looked up, waning half moon, turned to show a different side than she was used to. The fuzzy spot of the close comet showed that it was rising three hours after the Sun . . .

  She muttered under her breath. "The comet has missed and the Moon rotates." However much she failed to understand why, if the comet was past, then a corridor from Karista to here would save a lot of people. "Or maybe the comets are in slightly different orbits, so there's no danger, here, at all."

  She sat and started writing up her notes and observations, moving back and forth through the gate as she looked for references and made as many observations as possible, as the days ticked away, and in her own sky, the comet outshown the Moon and dominated the sky all evening and well into the night.

  It's bigger every night. Three weeks . . .

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  1375 Late Fall

  Karista

  ". . . utter chaos on the Auralian border. I finally just went over and got a few officers drunk. The problem is that the Amma just picked up and left, with his harem, children and the core of their home army. Most of his local nobles, but not the regional Solti's. And those "Oners" that were there, their embassy building is vacant, abandoned.

  "The rest of the Army? Not knowing about gates, they don't understand how very gone he is. The new Amma, a grandson of the old one, is trying to hold things together, and has sent out commands for them to all move to hard rock and build shelters, store supplies, and help the local villages and towns do the same. No money, no directions, no other orders. So the troops decided the End of the World was coming and maybe a quarter of them have just gone wild. Rape, loot and pillage, in their own territories, as well as ours." The officer ran down and ended with a shrug. "If I hadn't served in Asia, and seen those Earthers coming and going, I wouldn't believe it either."

  Marshal Treham took over. "So we're slapping them down as we encounter them, and we've braced and fortified everything imaginable. Farofo, I think three quarters of the population has moved north. Havwee is stuffed, and I think most of the refugees kept going."

  Rufi nodded. "Yes. Karista's stuffed as well. Well. You've got those corridors now. Use your judgment about sending the troops north. Two weeks and it'll all be over, and hopefully we'll just be carrying on dealing with the same old problems." he glanced back at his only remaining magic worker. "Lefty, go to Ash, do whatever you can to help. Report back whenever you can. I'm going to be busy talking to all the rest of the troops, as well as the Council and the King until after. So, good luck."

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  1376 Winter Solstice

  Mount Frost

  Rustle sighed in satisfaction as she rocked the tiny girl. She'd concealed being in labor. The witches had to be formed up in Triads and working on saving the world, within hours. Not worrying about a daughter or granddaughter abandoned to labor alone. And it had been a quick and easy labor.

  Now she needed to help save the World. She stood up and walked out of the dome. Xen was keeping an eye on Phantom, Pyrite and the dogs. He jumped up when he spotted her and ran over to see his sister.

  "Wow. She's little."

  "Yep. Can you sit down and hold her for a minute?"

  Her stomach muscles quivered weakly when she tried to hoist the saddle up to Phantom's back. He knelt and she managed to heave it that far. She checked the saddle bags nervously. They contained bubbles and held ridiculous amounts of everything she could think of. Rustle picked up Quicksilver and fed her, burped her, whispered endearments, and tucked her into a saddle bag and closed it. She led the horse inside, Xen, Pyrite and the dogs following, all looking
solemn and worried.

  "All right. Quicksilver is all tucked into Phantom's saddle bag, poor sweetie. And they are all wrapped up." Rustle wrapped the dimensional bubble down over them and they shimmered into a metallic statue, a tall muscular stallion standing alert, as if waiting his rider's return. The Terrible Twins and the wagon—fully loaded with everything they could conceivably need—were already wrapped. "Dogs, come." They jumped readily into the wagon, and she bubbled them. She hugged Xen and boosted him up onto Pyrite. "Are you two ready? I'm putting in an inside scratch spot too, so when you get tired of waiting, scratch that spot just a little bit, and see if it's nice outside. If you come out, and can't find anyone, leave Phantom and Quicksilver wrapped up. You can use the wagon, and all the food and stuff in there. Your dogs are all wrapped up and safe in there. They're in a separate bubble, so you can get them out, if you need them. The food is in a bunch of separate bubbles, so you can open one at a time."

  Xen nodded seriously, but Pyrite tossed his head and raised one foreleg dramatically. Rustle swooped the bubble around them just as Xen started to laugh. They made a marvelous bit of art. She swallowed. Hoped she'd be back in a few days. She was a day away from Ash, which was nearly deserted, with everyone possible through a gate, wrapped, or simply gone back home to be with relatives. But she wanted to save all her energy for the comet. Xen would be fine here. Safe as if he was through a gate. Safer. What if the gates dissolved over a time span of weeks or months? He'd be here, safe and sound for anyone exploring the woods to find, and anyone magically inclined, to release.

  Logic was going to shield Karista, Mercy would shield Scoone; Romeau, Cadent. The three largest cities in the north.

  The Auld Wulf, Harry, Gisele, and Hell were all in Southern Auralia, to help, to try anything.

  The witches were down there. Even the Rip Crossing Triad of Half Moons.

  The wizards.

  The Rip Crossing mage-wizards.

  The Earth Astronomers were there, to measure progress.

  The Ash mages had walked through the Ash gate, vowing to never return.

  And she was supposed to be getting bed rest. Fat. Chance.

  She picked up the supplies she'd left out of the bubbles. First, the wine. Strictly speaking, the flux following childbirth wasn't any sort of illness or fertility problem, but if it would clean up quickly . . .

  She took a sip, and recorked the bottle, put it back in the bag and slung the bag over her shoulder.

  She walked the corridor to Ash, then the corridor they'd sailed down to an inlet on the southern Auralian coast. She didn't have any geographical reference points in Auralia, but she knew the Auld Wulf, and her parents . . . They were out on a broad high plateau. That corridor. She stepped through. The evening was further advanced than in Ash, and the sky to the east was strange, a fuzzy brightness that was the sunlight reflected off the huge cloud of gas and dust evaporating off the comet core, somewhere in that glowing fog bank. Wolf, Gisele and Harry. Hell, Chance and Richie were here too. Havi and the Goat Boys. All the witches and wizards in the entire World, old and young together.

  She reached down for the Earth, and upward for the tenuous link to the comet. It was weak, and she realized the sedimentary rock they were standing on only weakly echoed the pull of the entire planet. We're in the wrong place.

  "Rustle." The Auld Wulf grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little. "You shouldn't do this."

  "You can't enter a Triad," Answer had her arms around the shoulders of Curious and Furious. "You'd be a weak point."

  "We're in the wrong place! We need igneous rock . . . "

  "Go home, girl. Go through the Ash gate and keep the children safe." Answer looked like she was losing her contact with the triad.

  Rustle nodded. Right or wrong, she needed to leave. She pulled the Auld Wulf's head down for a quick kiss. "The kids are on the old granite a few days west of Ash." She felt for home . . . no. The Mountain.

  Mount Frost. The home of her Pyramid, the place where she'd first grasped power. The place she would always know in her heart. She stepped through corridors, the last one up into the snow. The corridor they'd put up for Ask and the twins. She reached for the feel of the mountain . . . Traveled the last ten miles, and waded through deeper snow to the spire on the apex and climbed to the top, to the tier of the Dark Crescent, and sat facing south-east. She sank into the pull of Earth, her element, threaded through heart and soul. The power was strong here. There was the pull of the Sun, and there was the pull of the Moon. And faint but growing, the pull of the comet. A tiny thing, however showy the thin, huge fogbank it created. She reached far, far out, and could see the gravitational attraction like a stream of hairs, threads coming together in a rope to tie the heavenly bodies.

  She couldn't seem to touch the comet itself, but the gravity . . . She swept imaginary fingers through the envisioned threads of gravitation attraction, spread it out, disbursed the pull. But the attraction of Earth wasn't the problem, the orbit itself was the problem. Push it south. That way. She reached for the comet's core. The comet only needed to move a few thousand miles south to miss altogether.

  She still couldn't touch the comet. It was still too far away, two hours before it crossed the lunar orbit. She'd touched the Moon, but hadn't been able to apply much energy. How close could the comet get before it was too late? But if she couldn't touch anything solid, she could still work on the insubstantial.

  So she leaned on gravity and relaxed, breathed slowly and deeply, felt the Earth, the whole World, the warm rocky attraction of it, reaching out for the entire Universe. It blurred a bit, and she could see the so called parallel Worlds, all piled up and overlapped, each with a slightly different response to the comet, all with Rustle Neverdaut sitting so still and quiet on a tall mountain. That was what made her World, all those Rustles working together, focused. The Worlds further away . . .for a moment she seemed to see a pattern, a crystal structure to the dimensional Universe, but then randomness often did seem patterned, and only these Worlds here, this tiny slice of the immensity needed her attention.

  She reached through the fog of the coma and found the rocky little core of the comet. Rocks bound by ice, ice wrapping a rocky core, dust throughout. She leaned on the gravitational link to Earth, but it was so weak. The link from the icy asteroid to the sun, weak as well. It was all speed and momentum now, hurling through space for sixteen thousand years to find itself here, with a planet in the way.

  She pressed against the Earth's attraction, deformed the shape of the gravity field, made it seem to come from the south.

  Time seemed to creep by, but it was an illusion caused by the immensity of space. The comet was coming closer, fast. She leaned on the gravity, felt the pull of the Moon swing slowly around as the comet passed inside the lunar orbit, well ahead of the Moon itself. Closer. Now she was starting to feel the speed of the stubborn ball of ice, sand and pebbles. Deep breathing. Lean on the gravity.

  She could feel her Sisters of the Moon working at it, now. Pushing, breaking, melting. It was close enough, now that she slipped behind the comet, gathered up the Gravity and squeezed. Followed the hurling behemoth as it screamed closer. She felt pieces break off, their paths bent by her gravity compaction. A huge piece, a jagged mile across, drifted away, barely affected, but she could see that it was enough. She gathered in more gravity, squeezed it tight, right behind the comet. More chunks, the Witches were pulling it apart, and she could feel the gods now, with their mixed affinities for Earth, Wind and Water pushing, melting, pushing it south. As chunks broke off they were shoving them.

  She wrapped herself around the gravity concentration and tried to stay close to the rock at the core. Metal, not rock, she realized. It was iron with some nickel, platinum too, some rare elements. She felt light headed, dreaming and faint.

  :: Rustle, let it go, it is slow enough now. :: The Auld Wulf spoke softly in her mind. He'd been speaking for some time, hadn't he?

  She slowly loosened her g
rip on the threads of gravity, let the spray of hair fan out again. She pulled herself out of the meditation, out of the fuzzy look of the dimensions, out of unawareness of her weariness. Cold. She was so cold now. She blinked up at the midnight sky, and streaking meteors crossed the southern half of the sky. All the little pieces of the comet, and probably some that weren't so small. Some were still going to hit.

  :: Save us, save us! :: Terrified voices rang in her head.

  She grabbed her head. Shield! She couldn't. There was no mental energy left.

  :: Lady! Protect us! ::

  "I can't. I can't do any more." Tears froze on her face.

  A fireball roared across the sky, west to east low on the horizon. Thousands of voices screamed in her head, not just terror, pain now, and the horrible crunching impact of dark static that was death. She couldn't shut them out and she screamed with them.

  "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

  I didn't do enough. Pieces are still going to hit. I didn't do enough, I can't do any more. I've used it all.

  She rolled off the shelf of rock where she lay, and thumped down two more to the sloped crest of a giant mountain, soaring above the surrounding lesser peaks. She had to get down. If she couldn't see the meteors, maybe she wouldn't hear the voices.

  She ran, staggered, tripped and slid on the snow until she could catch a rock with cold fingers. She tried to not watch the fireballs, hundreds of burning bits of dust and rock, a few explosions from superheated ice or ice laden porous rock, or the rock itself.

  There was a path. Somewhere under the snow. She'd walked this path nearly every year of her life. She couldn't remember her life. She fled the screaming, dying people in her head, fell and slid, scrambled to get lower. The snow was illuminated by the meteors that still streaked across the southern sky. The terror of a world continued, with flashing glimpses of roaring forest fires that rolled over villages and towns. There was a corridor, she was in a village. But now the voices were close, not many, but loud and frightened.