Gerin bowed very low. “Lord Baivers,” he said: “You honor me by hearing my summons.”
“You have summoned others before me, not least that wine-bibbing mountebank from Sithonia,” Baivers answered. As with Mavrix, Gerin heard the god’s voice in his mind, not with his ears. The rustic accent came through anyhow.
“Lord Baivers, who comes first is less important than who comes last, for that says where help was truly found,” Gerin said.
“Aye, likely tell,” Baivers said, like a sour old farmer who hadn’t believed anyone’s tales about anything since his wife told him she was going out to gather herbs in the woods and he found her in bed with the village headman. Grudgingly, though, he nodded to the Fox. “Well, I’m here. Say your say.”
“Thank you.” Gerin knew he sounded more sincere than most people giving thanks. Most people, though, didn’t get the chance to thank gods, not in person.
Baivers nodded again. If a god could look like an old farmer, he did. His hair wasn’t hair, but ears of ripe barley, a pale yellow. His craggy face was tired and weathered, as if, like the crop whose lord he was, he spent his whole lifetime in the sun and open air. Only when you looked in his eyes, which were the color of fresh new green barley shoots poking up out of the ground after the first rains of spring, did you get the sense of divine vitality still strong under that unprepossessing semblance.
What he looked like, Gerin thought, was a part of the land. That raised hope in the Fox: not only did it hold echoes of what Mavrix had said to him, but it also made him think Baivers truly belonged in the northlands, that the long Elabonian presence here had made him as much a god of this terrain as he was around the City of Elabon, as much a god here as one longer established like Biton.
With that in mind, Gerin asked, “Do you want the Gradi and their gods seizing this land that has been Elabonian for so long, that has given you so much barley and so many libations—so much reverence, not to put too fine a point on it?”
“Do I want that?” Baivers spoke in mild surprise, as if the question had not occurred to him in such a form. “Do I want it? No, I don’t want it. The Gradi and then-gods feed on blood and oats.” He spoke with somber scorn. “Their land is too poor, too cold, their souls too meager, too cold, for my grain.”
Geroge and Tharma had stopped singing their hymn when Baivers appeared. They’d stared in awe at the god. Now Geroge burst out, “If you don’t want these nasty Gradi around, why haven’t you done anything about them and their gods?”
“Why haven’t I done anything?” Again, the question seemed to startle Baivers. With some bitterness, Germ found that unsurprising: the idea of actually doing anything appeared to be one that was alien to the entire Elabonian pantheon. Baivers turned his green, green gaze on Geroge. “A voice from below the roots,” he murmured, more to himself than to any of the mortals with him. There are powers below the roots.”
“What are you talking about?” Geroge demanded. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Gerin had often heard that complaint from Dagref. When he and Selatre would talk about adult matters, the oldest child they’d had together would listen, following as far as his own experience let him, and would keep on trying to follow past that point, trying to make his parents slow down and let him know what they meant.
Baivers’ murmurs perplexed the Fox, too, but he thought he had some notion of what was in the god’s mind. Groping for words, he asked, “Lord Baivers, are the powers below the roots connected to those who make a habit of living down there?” To show what he meant, he pointed to Geroge and Tharma.
“Of course,” Baivers answered, once more sounding surprised. ‘Where there are no folk there are no powers.”
“Ah,” Gerin said. That answered one question he’d long had: at least in the eyes of the god, the monsters were people. From the day they’d emerged from the caverns below Biton’s shrine, Gerin had wondered. He’d phrased his question carefully, to avoid both saying they were and saying they weren’t. He found another question: “Will that power—?”
“Those powers,” Baivers corrected, sounding finicky and precise.
“Those powers, then. Will they fight for us against the Gradi?”
Still finicky, the god replied, “They will fight. It is why they exist: to fight. Against the Gradi? Who can say for certain. For us?” Those sprout-green eyes swung to Gerin. “Why do you think you and I are ‘we’?”
“Why?” Gerin said in some alarm. “You just said you didn’t like the Gradi or their gods. If they take the northlands, you get no more libations here, no more worship. I’m only a mortal, lord Baivers, I know that, but as mortals go, I’m strong. If you can help me fend off the Gradi gods, I think I can beat the Gradi themselves.”
“Could be so,” Baivers said. “Could be nonsense, too. But what I think and what I do, they’re not the same. My power is over growing and brewing—you know that I’m not a god of blood, a god of war.”
“But you can fight—I know you can.” Gerin came up with one of the bits of lore he’d culled from the scrolls up in his library: “When that demon sent the barley blight, you didn’t just fight him and beat him, you made him swallow his own tail and eat himself up.”
Selatre silently clapped her hands.
“Well, of course I did,” Baivers said. “He was causing my crop all kinds of trouble. He had it coming, he did, and I gave it to him.” For a moment, he seemed a formidable deity indeed.
‘The Gradi are the same,” Gerin insisted. “If they win here, there won’t be any barley, because they’ll make the northlands too cold for it to grow. Do you want that to happen?”
“Do I want it to happen? Of course I don’t want it to happen. It would sadden me,” Baivers answered. “But if the grain won’t grow, then it won’t and that’s all there is to it. It’s not the same, it’s not close to the same, as murdering it in the shoot, the way that demon did. He’ll never find his way back to this world, never once.”
The distinction Baivers drew was so fine it meant nothing to the Fox, but it plainly did to the god. Gerin kicked at the dirt floor of the shack. He’d feared that, even if Baivers did appear for him, the god would keep on doing what the gods of the Elabonian pantheon did most of the time: nothing. He’d needed an angry Baivers, a furious Baivers, and what he found was a regretful but resigned Baivers, which did him no good.
How to find a furious Baivers? Even as the question formed in his mind, so did an answer. He tried to find another, because he didn’t like that one. But nothing else occurred to him. And, when he was about to enrage a god, he didn’t think prayer would do him any good.
His laugh was loud and scornful. George and Tharma stared at him. So did Selatre, in dismay: she knew more about gods, or about gods more directly, than Gerin. And so did Baivers. “Don’t like your tone, young fellow,” he said sharply.
“Why should I care?” Gerin retorted. “I’ve spilled a lot of ale to you over the years, and what has it got me? Not bloody much, that’s plain. I should have paid more heed to Mavrix. He has a long memory for foes, but he has a long memory for friends, too, and that’s more than I can say about you. He was right about what he told me—he certainly was.”
“The Sithonian?” Baivers snorted. “The next time he’s right’ll be the first.”
“Oh, no!” Jeering at a god was something of which Gerin would never have dreamt were his needless great. If he overdid it, he was liable to be destroyed by a deity he might have brought to his side. But if he didn’t do it, he was all too sure he would be destroyed by the Gradi and their gods. And so jeer he did: “Mavrix said you were useless, said you’d always been useless, said you’d always be useless, too. And he’s right, looks as if to me.”
“Useless? Mavrix talks about useless?” Baivers threw back his head and laughed; his barley hair rustled. “The Sithonian, who can’t play the pipes, who manures himself whenever he’s in trouble”—that wasn’t fair or true, but Gerin had long since no
ted gods were no more fair and probably less truthful than human beings—“who buggers pretty boys and calls himself a fertility god? He thinks I’m useless? I’ll show him!”
As the Fox knew, buggering pretty boys was not all Mavrix did to amuse himself. He feared Baivers’ tirade would draw the notice of the Sithonian god. He’d wanted Biton and Mavrix together; they’d spurred each other on against the monsters. He didn’t want Baivers and Mavrix together, lest they go after each other instead of the Gradi.
But he had to keep Baivers roused. And so he kept on jeering: “You might as well be from the law courts of the City of Elabon, not the fields where the barley grows. All you care about is the detail of the law”—he was being unfair himself; that charge applied more justly to his son Dagref than to Baivers—“if you’d fight that demon but not the Gradi gods. The barley is gone, whether killed in the shoot or never planted. Yes, Mavrix was right—useless is the word.”
For a moment, he glanced over to Selatre. Her face was white as milk; she knew, probably better than he, all the different risks he was running. If I get through this, I’ll never traffic with gods again, he told himself, though he knew that was a lie. If he got through this, he’d have to try to find some way to enlist whatever gods the monsters had against the Gradi. That was likely to make dealing with Baivers seem a stroll on the meadow by comparison.
Then Tharma spoke to the god of barley and brewing: “Please don’t let the barley go away from here. We like your ale.”
“Call me useless?” Baivers said to Gerin. “Mavrix said it and so you believe it? I’ll show you useless, I will. Powers of the earth, powers under the earth, we’re stronger than you think, little man. Loose us against the invaders and—” The Fox had hoped he’d prophesy victory. He didn’t, instead finishing, “—and we’ll give ’em all the fight in us.”
Gerin wished he knew how much that was. Relieved he hadn’t been turned into an insect pest or something else small and obnoxious, he dared one more question, no longer mocking: “Lord Baivers, can you bring Father Dyaus into the fight, too?”
Baivers looked astonished, then sad. “I wish I could,” he said. “We’d win certain sure then. But Dyaus, he’s—gone round to the far side of the hill, you might say, and I don’t know what it’d take to call him back.”
“You know, lord Baivers—or maybe you don’t know, if I don’t say it—we Elabonians have the feeling sometimes that all our gods have gone round to the far side of the hill,” Gerin said.
“We’re pleased enough with the way things are here, or we have been, anyhow,” Baivers answered. “When a thing is to your liking, you don’t need to meddle with it, and you don’t want to, either, for fear you’ll make it worse.” Gerin nodded at that, for he thought the same way himself. Baivers suddenly grunted, a most ungodlike sound. “Could be that’s why Elabonians latch onto Sithonian gods sometimes, I suppose. They’re born meddlers, every one of them. And Mavrix worse than the others,” he added with a growl.
He was angry, all right. Now Gerin could but hope he would stay angry till the monsters’ gods joined the cause—if they joined it. The Fox asked, “Once I go down under Ikos, how will I summon you back to the world?”
“You found a way once,” Baivers said. “Likely tell you can find a way twice.” And with that, he vanished as abruptly as Mavrix had, but without—Gerin devoutly hoped—leaving any progeny behind.
As they did whenever a god departed, the walls of the shack seemed to close in around Gerin. He sighed, long and deep, then turned to Geroge and Tharma. “I thank you both. You did very well there.”
“You’re going down to Ikos,” Selatre said: statement, not question. Gerin nodded to her in the same sort of agreement he’d given Baivers not long before. His wife went on, “And you’re going to take Geroge and Tharma with you.”
After a good many years together with Selatre, the Fox knew how well she thought along with him. “Aye, I am,” he said. “I see no other choice. If I’m going to treat with the powers under the ground, I can’t think of better intermediaries than the two of them. Can you?”
“No,” Selatre answered. “And you’re going to take someone else along, too.”
“Duren, do you mean?” Gerin said. ‘That’s a good notion. We’ll pass through the holding that was Ricolfs and will be his. Might as well let the barons there have another look at him.”
“Take Duren if you like, but I didn’t mean him,” Selatre said. “I meant me.”
Dagref and Clotild had at last given up their nightly struggle against sleep. Blestar had drifted off some time before; he fought sleep, too, but had fewer resources than his older sister and brother. Gerin and Selatre generally relished the time when their children were asleep, for it gave them their best chance to make love. Now it gave them the chance to argue without having to explain everything to Dagref as they went along.
Gerin’s argument was simple: “I need you here,” he said.
“You’ll need me more there,” Selatre said, almost as if she were still the Sibyl at Ikos. “How will you manage to get down to the underground passage that leads to the monsters’ caves? You won’t be going down there to ask farseeing Biton any question, which is the only reason for those who aren’t priests—or the Sibyl—to enter that passage.”
“Carlun hasn’t told me the whole treasury is empty,” Gerin answered, “so I expect I can bribe my way down there if I can’t talk the priests into letting me go. Eunuchs love gold. Why shouldn’t they? It’s all they can love.”
“Yes, I suppose you may be able to talk your way or pay your way down there—if you go by yourself,” Selatre said. “But you’re going with Geroge and Tharma. Do you think the priests and temple guards will be glad to see monsters after it took a miracle from the god to restore his shrine?”
“All right, the bribe will have to be bigger,” Gerin said. He had seldom been wrong in counting on the greed of his fellow man.
But Selatre shook her head. “That won’t work,” she said positively. “Oh, you may be able to spread enough gold around to let you take the monsters down under the temple. If anyone else were trying, I’d say no, but you’ve shown you have a gift for such things.” She set a hand on his arm to let him know she didn’t disapprove. But then she went on, “All right, now you have Geroge and Tharma under the temple. You want to meet the rest of the monsters and their gods. What do you do then?”
“What I have to do,” the Fox replied. “I break through the wall—”
“You break through the charms and spells that keep the monsters from breaking through in the other direction,” Selatre interrupted.
“Well, yes, I would have to, because …” Gerin’s voice trailed away. He saw, all too clearly, the point Selatre was making.
She drove it home anyhow: “There isn’t enough gold in all the northlands—there isn’t enough gold in all the world—to pay the bribes you’d need for the priests to let you do that. You know it as well as I do.” Her voice brooked no denial; she understood him too well to believe for an instant that he didn’t know it as well as she did.
He used the only weapon he had left: “Why would your being there make the priests see things any different?”
“Because Biton spoke through me,” she said. “I’m Sibyl no more, and by my own choice, and glad of it”—she shifted in the bed, getting up on one elbow so she could look at their sleeping children—“but the god has spoken through me, and the priests cannot help but know it. If I tell them this must be done, they are far more likely to listen to me than they are to you.”
Gerin mulled that over. “You’re very annoying when you make good sense,” he said at last.
“Oh? Why is that?” Selatre asked.
“Because it means you’re right and I’m wrong, and I’m going to have to change my plans,” he told her. “I don’t usually have to do that, but I will this time.”
“A lot of people won’t change their plans even when they’re wrong,” Selatre said. “I’m
glad you’re not one of them.”
“A lot of people are fools,” Gerin said. “If they weren’t, how do you think I’d have done as well as I have for as long as I have? Of course”—he took Selatre in his arms—“it doesn’t hurt to find other people who aren’t fools.”
“Who, me?” she said, just before he kissed her.
Gerin looked back over his shoulder as Fox Keep disappeared when the road jogged behind a stand of trees. “I haven’t felt so nervous about leaving the place behind since I went south to the City of Elabon,” he said. That’s a long time ago now.”
Beside him on the seat in the wagon, Selatre nodded. “I didn’t think then that I would be the one to replace Biton’s Sibyl when at last the god called her to himself. And I certainly never imagined everything that would happen afterward.” For a moment, fondly, she let the palm of her hand rest on his leg, a little above the knee.
The wagon was not the only unusual part of the procession of chariots making the journey south along the Elabon Way. In the chariot Duren drove stood Geroge and Tharma, exclaiming at every new thing they saw. Their travels hadn’t taken them far from Fox Keep till now. They would be going a good ways now—farther from home than most serfs traveled in all their lives. But for them, this was in a way a return to the very root of their race.
With Gerin driving the wagon and Duren sharing a chariot with the monsters who had been his friends since childhood, Van rode with Raffo Redblade as his driver and Drungo Drago’s son his companion in the car. The three of them probably made a fighting team more to be feared than Van, Gerin, and Duren: Raffo was in the prime of life, and Drungo the only warrior among the Fox’s followers who came close to Van for strength.
Another dozen chariots rode with those two. That gave Gerin enough of a fighting tail to overawe bandits and make petty barons think twice about trying to end his career prematurely. If Ricolfs former vassals joined together and fell on him, his force would not be enough to withstand them, but he thought Ratkis Bronzecaster would be an ally there. In any case, he had to go through the holding that had belonged to Ricolf, for the path to Ikos branched off the Elabon Way not far south of it.
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