Prince of the North

by Turtledove, Harry

  “Seldom have I seen a fish wriggle on a hook as you do,” the god said petulantly. “Very well, I shall look.” His eyes lighted for a moment. Gerin saw in them shifting scenes of the monsters’ depredations. Then they became deep pools of blackness once more. He sneered at Gerin. “Ugly they are, but what of it? You savages in these cold, grapeless lands treat each other as vilely as the monsters use you. Why should I care what they do?”

  Before Gerin could answer, Selatre let out a gasp of startlement and delight, and Biton manifested himself in the shack. Again, it somehow accommodated him without growing and at the same time without seeming crowded. Gerin had wondered how the farseeing god would appear, whether as the handsome youth of the pediment reliefs on his overthrown shrine or the more primitive image that was mostly eyes and jutting phallus. To him, Biton seemed now the one thing, now the other, depending on which was uppermost in his own mind at any given moment.

  Selatre gasped, “Thank you, farseeing one, for hearing the prayer of your former servant who reveres you still.”

  “Loyalty is rare enough to deserve notice,” Biton answered in a voice that held the same slight rustic accent as Selatre’s, “the more so when it is retained even after it can no longer be returned.”

  Mavrix stared at Biton with undisguised loathing. His features shifted with divine celerity to suit his mood. Turning to Gerin, he sneered, “If you think summoning this boring backwoods bumpkin of a deity will somehow save you, I urge you to disabuse yourself of the notion.”

  “That’s not why I called on him,” Gerin answered. He bowed to Biton and said, “Farseeing one, the Sibyl begged your presence here for the same reason I evoked Mavrix lord of the sweet grape: to beg you to help rid the land of the monsters now infesting it. As they sprang from the caverns beneath your fallen fane, I dared hope you might consider them in some small measure your responsibility.”

  “Lord, I beg you to look about,” Selatre added, “and see the destruction and disorder these monsters spread wherever they go.”

  As Mavrix had, Biton looked. Sometimes Gerin saw his head revolve on his neck in a manner impossible for mere flesh and blood, while at other instants what he perceived was a basalt stele spinning. In either case, though, Biton unquestionably had eyes—or at least an eye—in the back of his head.

  When his image settled, he said, “This is most distressing. It seems the sort of chaos this foreign mountebank might favor.” With an arm or with that phallus, he pointed at Mavrix.

  “I?” Mavrix twisted in indignation, so that his leopardskin cape swirled gracefully about him. Gerin could not imagine him doing anything ungraceful. But he’d seen in previous encounters with Mavrix that the god had a temper. Mavrix’s smooth voice turned into an angry screech: “Mountebank, is it? I’d think these monsters more your style—barbarous creatures they, fit only for a barbarous land. And after all, they haunted the caverns under your shrine. If you despise them so, why didn’t you get rid of them? I suppose you lacked the power.” He sneered dismissively.

  Biton suddenly seemed wholly human to Gerin; perhaps the stone pillar that was his other guise could not properly express his wrath. “They are not my creatures!” he bellowed in a voice that reverberated through Gerin’s head like the deep tolling of a great bronze bell. “My temple blocked them from coming forth and inflicting themselves on the upper world. In the caverns, they were part of nature, not a blight upon it. But when I saw the shrine would fall—”

  “Farseeing one indeed,” Mavrix interrupted, sneering still. “If it took you so long to notice that, you aren’t much of a god.”

  “At least my senses aren’t blinded by drunkenness, adultery, and incest,” Biton retorted primly. “Half the time, you don’t even know what you see; the rest of the time, you don’t care.”

  Both gods started screaming. Gerin clapped his hands to his head, but it did no good. He was hearing Mavrix and Biton with his mind, not his ears, and they kept on dinning just as loud as before.

  “Father Dyaus protect us,” Rihwin mouthed silently.

  “Don’t invite him, too,” Gerin exclaimed. “Aren’t two squabbling gods enough to satisfy you?” He wanted to run, but he didn’t think that would do any good, either. If Biton and Mavrix went at it with everything they had, the whole of the northlands might not be big enough to hold a safe haven. He’d hoped evoking both of them at once would help keep them under control. Instead, it seemed to be inflaming them.

  “I thought this scheme mad from the outset.” Rihwin moved his lips exaggeratedly and eked out his words with gestures, so Gerin could not mistake what he meant. “You are sorcerer enough to evoke the gods, but not enough to make them do your bidding once here. Better you should never have tried!” He clapped a hand to his forehead.

  At that moment, Gerin would have been hard-pressed to argue with him. Mavrix thrust his ivory-tipped wand at Biton. Faster than thought the farseeing god was stone again, and knocked the wand aside with his phallus. Mavrix howled in pain. Biton, anthropomorphic once more, laughed in his face. Mavrix stuck out a tongue longer and pinker than a human could have had.

  Some philosophers called the gods men writ large. Gerin was reminded of nothing so much as small, squabbling boys writ large—but these small boys had superhuman strength and power.

  “I should have listened to Aragis and waited,” Gerin groaned.

  “You should have listened to someone,” Rihwin mouthed. With Mavrix distracted, he was faintly audible. “You’re always so splendid at deducing what everyone else should do, but when anyone makes a suggestion to you, do you heed it? Ha!” In case his fellow Fox hadn’t caught that, he repeated himself: “Ha!”

  That held enough truth to sting. Gerin had always relied on his own judgment because he’d found none consistently better. More often than not, his judgment had served him well. But when he made a mistake, he did not commonly content himself with a small one.

  “Oh, shut up,” he growled nonetheless. “As if you’ve proved yourself worth listening to over the years.” Rihwin gave back a gesture much used by street urchins in the City of Elabon.

  Next to the way the gods were behaving, the argument between the two men seemed downright sedate. Mavrix used the same gesture Rihwin had, and stuck out his tongue again to boot. Still in human guise, Biton lifted his robe and waggled the phallus whose stone version had parried the fertility god’s wand.

  Mavrix laughed scornfully. “I’ve seen mice with more than that.”

  “For one thing, you’re a liar. For another, who cares what you’ve seen?” Biton retorted. “I’d sooner look at things of consequence than the private parts of mice.”

  “I’d sooner look at things of consequence than your private parts,” the lord of the sweet grape said. With another nasty laugh, he went on, “Some seeker after consequences you are, too, if you couldn’t even tell your own chief temple was about to be overthrown.”

  “What is the blink of an eye against the great sweep of time?” Biton said. “The temple at Ikos stands for centuries yet to come; am I to be condemned for failing to notice the brief interval in which it is downfallen?”

  Under less harrowing circumstances, Gerin might have found that interesting, or even hopeful. If Biton’s temple at Ikos was to be rebuilt, that argued some sort of civilization would survive in the northlands. His own survival, however, seemed too problematic at the moment for him to take the long view he usually favored.

  “Now that you mention it, yes,” Mavrix answered. “Perhaps your true image should have a patch over that third eye—and one of the other two, as well.”

  “I’d almost welcome such,” Biton snapped, “if it meant I did not have to see all the hideous things your monsters are working and shall work in this land.”

  “They’re not my monsters!” Mavrix screeched. “Are you deaf as well as blind? They’re not my monsters! Not! Not! They’re hideous and ugly and revolting, and what they do is enough to make anyone with a dram of feeling puke right o
nto his shoes, thus.” What Mavrix spewed forth had a bouquet richer than that of any wine Gerin had ever known—another area where gods enjoyed an advantage over men.

  Not long before, Mavrix hadn’t cared what the monsters were doing in—and to—the northlands. Gerin, though, hadn’t blamed the god for them. Now that Biton had blamed him, he resented that more than he enjoyed making Gerin squirm. And if Gerin could bend Mavrix’s course, even a little …

  “Lord Mavrix, if you despise the monsters so, you could easily show lord Biton they have nothing to do with you by driving them out of the northlands,” he said.

  “Be quiet, little man,” Mavrix said absently and Gerin was quiet, as Rihwin had been before him. He had no choice in the matter. He exchanged a look of despair and alarm with Selatre. It had been worth a try, but not all tried succeeded.

  Biton said, “Ah, lord of the sweet vomitus, so you do claim the creatures for your own.”

  “I do not!” Mavrix screamed in a voice that should have knocked Fox Keep flat. “Here, I shall prove it to you.” He sucked in a theatrically deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and turned purpler than any man could: Gerin thought of a divine frog with skin the color of wine. After that tremendous effort, the god exhaled hard enough to make Gerin stagger. “There! They’re gone. Look all over the northlands, unseeing one, and you shall find not a single one of the disgusting creatures.”

  “Coming from you, drunken fool, any assertion requires proof,” Biton growled. As it had before, his head began to spin independently of his body—or, alternatively, the stone pillar that was his body turned round and round. Suddenly he stopped and stared contemptuously at Mavrix. “You’re as slovenly a workman as I might have guessed. Look there.”

  Something glinted for a moment in Mavrix’s fathomless eyes. “Well, so I missed a couple of them. What of it?” He gestured. “Now they are here no more. Do you see? They are not mine!”

  Biton continued his surveillance. His whirling head abruptly halted once more. “And again! You must in truth be the god of drunkenness, for you’re sloppy as a drunkard. Look over yonder now.”

  Gerin wondered what sense Biton used to find the monsters, how he indicated to Mavrix where “over yonder” was, and how Mavrix turned his own senses in that direction, whatever it was. He also wondered just how Mavrix was getting rid of the monsters, and where they were going. Were he a god, he supposed he would know. As a man, he had to go on wondering.

  “All right, those are gone, too.” Mavrix stuck out his froggy tongue at Biton again. “Now do you see any more, lord with the eye in the back of your burn?”

  Biton spun and searched. A moment later, he said triumphantly, “Aye, I do, you sozzled ne’er-do-well. What of those?”

  Mavrix must have stretched his senses in the direction the farseeing god gave him, for he said, “And they are vanished, too, and so am I. Even with these few drops of wine to ease the path for me here, the northlands are a place I’d sooner leave than come to.” He fixed his black, black eyes on Gerin. “Clever man—you were right. There are things uglier than you and your kind. Who would have thought it?” With that, he vanished.

  Gerin found he could speak again. Being a politic man, the first thing he said was, “I thank you, lord of the sweet grape, and bless you as well.” Then he turned to Biton. “Farseeing one, may I ask a question of you?” When the god did not say no, he went on, “Did Mavrix truly rid the northlands of the creatures that dwelt so long under your temple?”

  He waited nervously, lest Mavrix hear him and return in wrath at having his power questioned. But the lord of the sweet grape evidently had been only too glad to leave the northlands for good.

  Biton started to nod, then searched once more. When he stopped, he looked annoyed. “That wine-soaked sponge of a Sithonian god is too inept to deserve his divinity,” he said.

  The Fox took that to mean a monster, or a handful of monsters, still survived somewhere in the northlands. He wondered if Mavrix had left behind the cubs he’d spared—and if he would ever find out. In his humblest tones, he went on, “Lord Biton, would you be generous enough to complete what the lord of the sweet grape began?”

  To his dismay, Biton shook his head. “I do not see myself doing that,” the farseeing one said. “It is a task for men if they so choose. No, my duty now is to restore Ikos to what it was before the earth trembled beneath my shrine. Everything there shall be as it was—everything. The temple shall stand again without the agency of man, and the Sibyl shall be restored to her rightful place there, to serve as my instrument on earth.” He gazed fondly at Selatre.

  She looked from the god to Gerin and back again. Her voice trembling, she said, “But lord Biton, I no longer qualify to serve you in that way. In your last prophetic verse, you yourself called me an oracle defiled Since that day, I have known the embraces of a man” —she glanced nervously toward Gerin once more— “and my courses have begun. I am no longer a fit tool for your work.”

  “Everything shall be as it was—everything,” Biton repeated. “If I can rebuild my fane from tumbled stones, do you think I have not the power to restore your maidenhead to make you a fit vessel for my voice?”

  Selatre looked down at the ground. “I am certain you have that power, lord Biton,” she murmured.

  Gerin wished desperately for some way to attack Biton, but could imagine none. Unlike Mavrix, the farseeing god could not be duped into losing his temper, not by a man; he was far less vulnerable to earthly concerns than the earthy lord of the sweet grape. The Fox stared over at Selatre. Of course she would choose to go back to the god. How could she not? She had been consecrated to him since she became a woman, had served him as Sibyl since her predecessor died. Sibyl was all she’d wanted to be; she’d resented being rescued from her residence by the temple after the earthquake; she hadn’t been able to abide even the touch of a man for a long time after she was rescued.

  True, she’d come to love him and he her, but what was that brief brightness when measured against the course for which her life had been designed? Now that she had the chance to return to that course, how could he blame her if she chose to take it?

  Truth was, he couldn’t Having her go back to Ikos would tear him worse inside than he’d been torn when Elise left him. No matter what he’d felt about Elise, she’d no longer cared for him, else she’d not have gone. But he knew Selatre loved him still, as he’d come to love her. Only being certain she would be happier back at Ikos let him bear up under the thought of losing her. Even with that certainty, it was hard, hard.

  Biton turned his farseeing eyes on Selatre. “You say nothing. Are you not honored, are you not pleased, that all shall be restored? Even as I speak to you, the shrine at Ikos returns to its proper state. It awaits your coming.”

  “Of course I am honored, lord Biton,” she answered, very softly. “Whether I am pleased … Lord, have you the power to see what might be as well as what shall be?”

  For a moment, Biton seemed a stone pillar to Gerin, and altogether unfathomable. Then he resumed his human appearance. “Even for me, a god, this is difficult,” he replied, his voice troubled. “So many paths branch off from the true one, and then from one another, that losing oneself grows quickly easier the farther ahead one seeks to see. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I would have you look down the path I would choose for myself,” Selatre said. “You are a god; if you wish your will to be done, done it shall be. How can I, who shall live for a little and then die, oppose it? But—” She did not go on. Even thinking of declining an honor a god would confer on her took something special in the way of courage.

  It also filled Gerin with hope as wild and desperate as his despair had been a moment before.

  Biton’s head began its boneless spin. This time it did not just revolve, but also grew misty, so Gerin could see the far wall of the shack through it. The farseeing god searched for what seemed a very long time; now and again, he would almost disappear altogether. Gerin started whe
n Biton fully returned.

  “You may live your life as you will,” the god told Selatre. “My Sibyl is my bride, not my slave. I shall mark another, one who will be willing to serve me. I shall not tell you what may spring from your choice, but I say this: as with any other, make the best of it. And a word of warning—for mortals, there is no such thing as living happily ever after.”

  “I know that, lord Biton. Thank you. I will try to make the best of it.” Selatre started to prostrate herself to the god, but Biton disappeared before her knees could touch the ground.

  She and Gerin and Rihwin stared at one another, dazed. “I think we may have won,” Gerin said in a voice that sounded disbelieving even to him. Then he remembered something more important to say than that. He turned to Selatre. “Thank you. I’ll try never to make you sorry for choosing me over, over—” For one of the few times in his life, words failed him. She’d known what she was giving up. At last, huskily, he managed, “I love you.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” she said, and smiled at his startled expression. “It’s why I chose to stay with you, after all You love me, while for Biton I’d just be—oh, not a tool, not quite, maybe something more like a favorite pet. It’s not enough, not now that I’ve known better.” Her own voice went soft. “And I love you, which did, mm, enter into my thinking.” She smiled again, this time with a touch of mischief.

  Rihwin said, “We have two jars of the blood of the sweet grape here, waiting—indeed, all but crying—to be drunk in celebration of our triumph.”

  “How right you are, my fellow Fox.” Gerin picked up the jar they’d opened to summon Mavrix—and poured it out over Rihwin’s head. The red-purple wine splashed him and Selatre, too, but it drenched Rihwin, which was what he’d had in mind. The southerner spluttered and squawked and flapped his arms—which just splattered the wine more widely—and rubbed at his eyes. Gerin didn’t doubt they stung fiercely—and didn’t regret what he’d done, either.