The Gods Return coti-3

by David Drake

  Lord Tadai, clapping with his usual polite languor, leaned closer and said, "Yes, they are good, aren't they? Though I suppose it's impolite of me to say so about the entertainers I hired." The pair juggling were a youth of seventeen and a girl-his sister judging from her features-a year or two younger. At the open end of the U of tables, their parents played lutes while a ten-year-old boy piped on a treble recorder. The family wore matching blue pantaloons and tight-fitting white jerkins-as did the rat. That a rat would wear a costume instead of ripping it off instantly was even more amazing than the way it danced and tumbled with the human performers. "Everyone else agrees with you," Sharina said, looking around the cheering enthusiasm of the other guests. "And Icertainly agree!" Attending a banquet given by the city prefect was one of the duties expected of the regent, but Sharina was having a good time as well. She was probably as relaxed as she could be at any affair that required her to wear formal robes. Not only was Tadai a cultured, intelligent man, he had what he claimed was the finest kitchen staff in the kingdom. The dishes seemed overly exotic to Sharina, but they tasted marvelous. She particularly liked the pike that'd been skinned, boned, and then molded back into its skin with a filling of rabbit sausage. The jugglers bowed and somersaulted to where the musicians played. The rat pranced off with them, turning high cartwheels while holding its tail out straight behind it. How in goodness could you train a rat to do that? This hall was perhaps the largest single room in Pandah, and its coffered ceiling was thirty feet high. One might've expected it to be part of the royal residence, though it wasn't unreasonable that it should be given to the city prefect who needed a courtroom at least as much as the prince needed a hall of audience. Besides, Tadai cared-which neither Garric nor Sharina did. And Tadai gavemuch better banquets than anybody raised in Barca's Hamlet could've imagined. The older woman began dancing, balancing a bottle on her head with a lighted candle stuck in the neck of it. Her feet darted a quick rhythm as she rotated, facing each of the three long tables in turn, while the flame remained remarkably steady. Her husband accompanied her on his lute.

  Beside him, the rat played a miniature xylophone with six bars, syncopating the plucked strings in a plangent descant. "There's a new religion appearing in the city, your highness," Tadai said, his voice covered by the music and his attention ostensibly on the dancer. "I didn't think it was worth mentioning to you at first, but it seems to be growing." "People are worshiping the Gods of Palomir?" Sharina said, jerking her eyes onto the prefect. She wasn't nearly as good at dissembling as Tadai. He was not only older, he'd been a financier before becoming a member of Garric's council. Bankers had more occasion to lie than peasants did, except perhaps peasants who made much of their income in buying and selling cattle. "No, your highness, or I would've said something immediately," Tadai said in a tone of mild reproof. "That would be high treason. This was something so absurd that I thought it must be a joke. It appears to be real, though." "Go on," Sharina said, turning her eyes toward the dancer again. She already felt uneasy, but perhaps her fear wouldn't come true if she didn't say it out loud. Thinking logically about her superstition made her grin at how silly she was being. That didn't make the fear itself false, of course. "There are gatherings at night all over the city," Tadai said. "We've had reports of nearly a score of different locations. Well, seventeen. Some of them may be the same congregation moving to avoid patrols, but regardless it's a widespread business." The dancer trotted out of the performance area, still balancing the bottle. The guests, council members with their spouses and so many more of the Great and Good as there were places available, stamped their feet and cheered in applause. "Is it confined to Pandah?" Sharina asked. "Master Dysart hasn't said anything about it to me." "I haven't discussed the matter yet with him," Tadai said,

  "because I couldn't bring myself to believe that it was real. I will of course, now that I've spoken to you." He coughed slightly and added, "I regret that Lady Liane is absent, though I'm sure she's left her duties in capable hands." "Yes," said Sharina. And I regret that Cashel is absent, for better reasons yet. The mother and daughter entertainers picked up lutes; the older boy sat cross-legged holding a drum between his insteps. He beat a quick rhythm with his fingertips as his father did a series of back-flips that brought him into the center of the hall. The tumbler flipped again, stood on his right hand alone, then his left, and finally bounced to his feet as his ten-year-old son back-flipped out to join him. "At least one of the leaders of the new cult is a priest of the Shepherd," Tadai said.

  "Very likely several are. I'm making inquiries, but discreetly of course. It's no proper business of the kingdom to tell people how to worship." He coughed again. "Within reason." The young entertainer gripped his father's outstretched hands. Acting in concert, they front-flipped him onto the older man's shoulders, facing the opposite direction. The audience shouted and stamped its delight. Sharina touched her dry lips with her tongue. "You haven't said what they were worshipping," she said. "That's the absurd thing," said Tadai. His mouth scrunched as though the words he was preparing were sour. "It's a scorpion. They claim their god is a scorpion!" Sharina's mind was cold, as cold as the Ice Capes. She'd known what he was going to say.

  She'd known as soon as he mentioned a new religion. The rat bounded out to join the human tumblers. It jumped to the father's right shoulder, then to the son's left. With a final delicate hop it reached the boy's head and perched there, standing on its hind legs. "To be honest," Tadai said, "I washoping that all this was a joke. It seems utterly insane." "Men of Pandah, honor calls us!" the rat piped, throwing its little right foreleg out as though it were an orator declaiming. "No proud foe can e'er appall us!" "By the Lady!" Tadai blurted. "Why, the rat's singing. They didn't tell me he could do that. Why, thisis marvelous!" "On we march, whate'er befall us," the rat sang. "Never shall we fly!" "Bravo! Bravo!" bellowed Lord Quernan, who commanded the city garrison. He lurched to his feet. Foot, rather, because he'd lost his right leg at mid-thigh during the capture of Donelle a year earlier. The whole audience began to stand in irregular waves. Lord Tadai started to rise, but he subsided when he saw Sharina remained frozen in her seat. "I must admit that I find this new cult disturbing," he said. "How could anyone worship something as disgusting as a scorpion?" "How indeed?" Sharina whispered. The dream of the night before filled her mind with blackness and horror.

  Chapter 7 Later- Sharina drifted toward the dream temple like a leaf nearing a mill flume. She didn't move swiftly, but she was locked into a certain course no matter what she wanted. She was locked into certain doom. "Sharina!" called the figure waiting for her on the black granite plaza. "It is time for you to bow to Lord Scorpion. Come and worship the greatest of gods, the only God!" She tried to shout,

  "I will not!" but only a whisper came out. "Worship!" the figure demanded. "Bow to Lord Scorpion willingly; but willing or not, youwill bow. Worship!" The force that gripped Sharina spun her lower, closer to the waiting figure. The Scorpion didn't lower from the clouds this time, but Its presence permeated the world; it was immanent in all things. "You have no power over me!" she said. Her voice was a whine of desperation. The figure laughed triumphantly. "Lord Scorpion has power over all things, princess," it said. "Worship Lord Scorpion and rule this world at my side!" "Who are you!" she shouted. She tried to reach the Pewle knife, but her arms didn't move. Perhaps she wasn't even wearing weapon; this was adream. But she knew it wasn't only a dream. "You may call me Black," the laughing figure said. When she'd completed another full circle, he would be able to raise a hand and touch her. "You will be my consort. Together we will rule this world in the name of Lord Scorpion, Who rules all!" Sharina remembered tearing the dream apart to escape the night before, but her fingers wouldn't close now. "Cashel," she said, but the name was so faint a whisper that even she couldn't be sure that she'd spoken. "Cashel is dead!" said Black. "Cashel will never return, hecan never return!"

  "Lady, protect Thy servant!" Sharina prayed with frozen lips. "The Lady is dea
d!" said Black. "Lord Scorpion rules all. Worship Lord Scorpion!" He was reaching toward her. He would grasp her wrist and pull her to him. She felt the grip of long fingers, tugging her from this world into- Sharina jerked bolt upright in her own bed. The moon shone through the slats of the jalousies. By its light she saw a rat wearing pantaloons and a white vest, sitting upright on her pillow.

  "Ordinarily I would have waited for you to awaken normally," the rat said in a conversational voice. "From the way you were thrashing about, though, I didn't think you'd mind. My name is Burne, princess." *** Gaur had cobblestone streets, which Ilna disliked intensely.

  The alleys to either side were so narrow that the three-story stone buildings overhung most of the pavement. Even here on the High Street, Ilna felt like she was walking up a canyon toward the gray limestone bluff lowering above the town. She smiled slightly. Shehad walked up canyons, and into caves, when necessary. She didn't like stone, true, but there was very little she did like. She'd deal with Gaur the way she dealt with everything else. "Lady Brincisa," said an ironmonger standing in his doorway. He extended his little bow to Ilna as well.

  The shopkeepers they'd met were deferential, though they also seemed rather cautious. People going the other way in the street mostly bowed to Brincisa, but a few turned their heads toward the wall till she was past. "How do the people here support themselves?" asked Ingens, walking a pace behind the two women. "Gaur seems prosperous." Did it?

  The townsfolk were well enough dressed, so Ilna supposed that was true. She shouldn't let her dislike of a place color the facts. "Rice farming and trade on the river," Brincisa said, apparently unconcerned by the question. "There was a special tax to pay for digging a canal after the river shifted its course during the Change." She smiled with a kind of humor. "The town elders didn't assess us," she went on, "but my husband and I chose to make a payment without being asked. The money was of no significance, and we prefer to be on good terms with our neighbors-so long as they remain respectful." "Is your husband expecting our arrival?" Ilna said. She was knotting patterns as she walked, but out of courtesy she didn't look at them. She too preferred to be on good-well, neutral, in her case-terms with those she had to deal with. "My husband Hutton died three days ago, mistress," Brincisa said with a smile of cool amusement. "That's part of why I need your help. But our discussion can wait till we're at leisure in my workroom." She paused and gestured to the house on her right. A servant in the familiar dark livery held open one panel of an ornate double door. It occurred to Ilna that she'd never heard Brincisa's servants speak, though they were perfectly ordinary to look at.

  Perhaps they were just well trained. She entered and started up the stairs of dark wood. The staircase beside this one led down from the door's other panel toward a basement. Behind her Ingens said,

  "Mistress Brincisa? This house-how were you able to build it?" Ilna looked over her shoulder. Brincisa, also looking back, was following Ilna up the stairs, but Ingens was still in the street staring at the building's front. "All the other houses are stone," he said, shifting his eyes to Brincisa on the staircase. "But yours is brick." "My husband and I preferred brick," Brincisa said. "And not that it's any of your business, we didn't have it built here: we moved it from another place." She paused. If her voice had been cool before, it was as stark as a winter storm when she continued, "Now-you may either come in or stay where you are, Master Ingens. What you maynot do is trouble me again with your questions. Do you understand?" "Mistress,"

  Ingens murmured, lowering his head and keeping it down as he entered the house. Brincisa turned to meet Ilna's gaze. In the same cold tone she said, "Do you have anything to add, mistress?" Ilna smiled faintly. "I prefer brick also," she said. "Not that that's anyone else's business." Brincisa waited for a heartbeat, then chuckled.

  "Yes, mistress," she said. "We can help one another. My workroom is on the top level, so go on there if you will." Ilna counted the floors absently with quick knots in her fabric, one and one and one and finally one more; the fingers of one hand, four. Not only was Brincisa's house made of different material from the rest of Gaur, it was taller. The molded plaques set into the brickwork over windows were too ornate for Ilna's taste, but she had to admit that theywere tasteful. Each floor had a central hall with doors set around it.

  There was only one door on the uppermost hallway, closed like the others. Ilna stopped beside it and waited for the others to join her.

  Brincisa touched the panel; an unseen latch clicked and the door swung open. "Enter, mistress," she said. "And you may enter as well, Master Ingens; but remember your place." The secretary nodded. His face was tight, but he successfully hid whichever emotions were affecting him.

  Save for the hall and staircase, the upper floor was a single high room lighted through a ceiling covered with slats of mica; it cast a faintly bluish shimmer over everything. The walls were frescoed with a base color of fresh cream. Roundels of green and gold framed the doorway and alcoves-there were no windows-and sea creatures swam in the upper registers. Ilna stopped just inside the door when she felt sand scrunch under the soles of her bare feet. She looked down. What she'd thought was a gray pavement was instead a thin layer of ground pumice, brushed over tightly fitting slabs of pale marble. She looked at Brincisa. "For my art, mistress," Brincisa said. "So that the incantations don't leave residues to interfere with later work. Don't worry-the grit won't follow you out of the room." Ilna sniffed.

  "You're wrong that they don't leave traces," she said. "But it's no matter to me." Ingens followed the women inside; the door closed behind him, though it hadn't been touched by anything Ilna saw. The secretary clasped his hands before him; he turned his head slowly to look around, but his body was as stiff and straight as if he'd been tied to a stake. Brincisa's earlier spellsdid leave signs despite the care with which the sand had been raked, but the fact Ilna could see a pattern remaining didn't mean it was of significance even to the powers on which the universe turned. She'd really been slapping back at Brincisa for her assumption that Ilna was afraid to get her feet dirty. Brincisa obviously insulated herself from the realities of life even in this considerable town; she couldn't possibly imagine the muck of a farming hamlet. Which raised another question… "Mistress?"

  Ilna said. "You came here from another place, did you not?" "I will not discuss the place we came from!" Brincisa said. She was noticeably angry, but Ilna thought she also heard fear. "That has nothing to do with anyone but me and Hutton, and now with me alone!" "Yes," said Ilna, silently pleased to have gotten through the other woman's reserve. "But the reason you came here concerns me, since I'm here as well. And-" She smiled faintly to keep the next words from being a direct accusation. "-I came here in a way that concerns me a great deal." Brincisa made a sour face and nodded in apology. "Yes, of course," she said. "As I'm sure you've guessed, Ortran is a nexus of great power now, but the island of fisherman that existed in your former universe was just the reverse. It repelled the use of the arts.

  At the Change that, thatvacuum so to speak, drew Gaur and its immediate surroundings into this present." Ilna thought over what she'd just been told. She hadn't noticed any difficulty in seeing off the troublesome fishermen, but she hadn't knotted a very complicated pattern either. Regardless, Brincisa had answered her question in a direct, perfectly believable fashion. "All right," she said. "What is it that you want from me?" For the first time since she'd entered the room, Ilna took the time to look at its furnishings. A stuffed sea wolf hung from the ceiling, a young female no longer than an outstretched arm. Some of the beasts stretched as much as three double-paces from jaws filled with conical teeth to the tip of the flat, oar-like tail. Not far from the lizard was a series of silver rings around a common center, each with a gold bead somewhere on the circle. Ilna must've frowned in question, for Brincisa said, "An orrery. You can adjust it to show the relative positions of all the bodies in the firmament." Ilna didn't know what "the firmament" was, let alone what "the bodies" were. She sup
posed it didn't matter. Brick pillars projecting into the room to support the roof. On the lower floors the alcoves were probably pierced for windows, but in this workroom the walls were solid; the spaces were filled with bookshelves and racks for scrolls. On one end of the long room was an earthenware sarcophagus molded in the shape of a plump woman who smiled in painted idiocy. On the other was a skeleton upright in a wooden cabinet-Ilna couldn't tell how it was fastened; it seemed to be standing normally-and a soapstone tub holding a corpse whose flesh lay brown and waxy over the bones. The items were more impressive examples of the trappings of the charlatans who came through the borough periodically, their paraphernalia carried on the backs of wasted mules. Brincisa, whatever else she might be, was not a charlatan. "My husband Hutton and I came to Gaur seventeen years ago," Brincisa said.

  "The town was very suitable for our researches, as you might expect.

  There's a peculiarity in the laws of the community, however, which has created a difficulty for me." As she spoke, she toyed with a silver athame. The reflections on the flats of its blade didn't seem to show the room in which Ilna stood. "As I told you, my husband died three days ago." Ilna nodded curtly. She expected there would be a point, and she'd learned that they wouldn't reach that point any more quickly if she said, "Why do you imagine I care about the death of someone I'd never met?" or even some more polite form of words to the same effect.