A Taste of Wine (Wine of the Gods Book 7)

by Pam Uphoff

  The four compasses were spread out, taking up the whole barn. As the compasses parted, the mage wives came in with wine and glasses. Oscar felt so alert, so awake, yet he couldn't really see them, just glowing auras, one of which rubbed up against him, getting an instant response. He drank wine and drifted, among glowing columns that he knew were magewives and other brighter columns that were probably mages but he also knew he'd never be able to identify who was who in this marvelous glowing dance. One of the magewives pulled him down with her and he gave her his best, power flowing and flashing, blinding him. Then there were others, glowing and sparkling, high on power and sex. They were mages. And the most powerful mage, who was the most powerful? Now that was an odd idea, indeed, because he could see that there were three kinds of mages, Blood, Storm and Sea. There was more movement, now, compasses joining up and separating again, different mixes of people, power building up higher and higher. And as he came and went between compasses, Oscar noticed the mages who could use the others, who lifted the Compass as a whole then drew the power for themselves. Several balanced, lifting the compass, adding incredible amounts of power, and keeping a lot, but also elevating the other members of that compass. And those strongest mages were being given positions in a central compass as they switched around.

  Until there was the Central Compass and the rest of the Mages in a larger circuit around them.

  The inner circle held a breathtaking amount of power in glittering motion. Oscar worked to perfect the circle of power, and felt another opposite him doing the same. Four mages worked to raise the power, and two vied to take the power for themselves. They destabilized the circle as they fought, and the outer ring both supported them and absorbed wild energy as it leapt and sparkled. The balancers kept the circle whole and they all added power.

  And as the power concentrated on the inner Compass, Oscar's vision cleared. He started to see flashes of faces in the glow. There was Bran as southwest, pulling the power levels higher. Lew and Hemet. There was Selano in the West with Aiden to the northwest. Beck was South, the position he'd held while Coo was alive. North? The other mage who was pulling power into himself was Conor. Half Beck's age, the strong and experienced North of the Second Compass.

  The amount of power North and South were pulling in for themselves was insane, and still climbing as power roared around the circle. Oscar balanced it, ecstatic in the shear joy of being part of something so powerful.

  The Central Compass was a thing of beauty, powerful and smooth and for just a moment it embodied a terrifying perfection of power.

  Then it failed.

  The power blew outward in a wash of heat and wind, shattering every window in the barn, blowing off boards and roof shingles. Oscar was knocked flat, and curled into a protective ball, picturing the barn crashing down on them . . . after a moment he took a peek. Most of the wood had blown outward with enough energy to fall clear of them. The rest was held in mid air by three people. Selano, Bran and Beck. The old beams creaked as they settled into place, cracks smoothed and disappeared. Oscar climbed shakily to his feet. His face felt tender and stiff, like a bad sunburn. Four other men in the center stood back up. They all bowed to the South Mage. Oscar joined them. The mages of the outer circle bowed as well.

  The new archmage nodded back. Then he threw an arm around the shaky looking Conor. "Good try. Next time you'll take me."

  Selano looked them over and smiled in satisfaction. "Good. Coo said you were outstanding, and he was right."

  "You weren't trying very hard." Beck narrowed his eyes at the older mage.

  Selano snorted. "With so few supporters? I hadn't a chance—and a good thing, because I'm not here, a part of the Compass, all the time."

  "And yet you were the largest part of the Center."

  "And no part at all of the Rim. The Great Compass is yours, Archmage." Selano switched an amused glance at Bran. "And some of my followers were divided in mind."

  Beck eyed Bran, and then Oscar. "You surprised me. You're a strong mage, and trained well enough. You are welcome to stay with us, make this your home, and all of us your family."

  Oscar froze. Home. Family.

  Ash. Harry, who took me in, when I was most desperate.

  He took a long, deep breath. Riding the road as an Army courier. Working in the engineering Brigade. Hunting down the wizards. Sailing. Exploring.

  He took another breath for courage. "Thank you, sir. But I'm an Officer of the King."

  "Humph." Beck turned to Bran. Who shook his head, slowly, and perhaps with a sheen of moisture in his eyes. "Well, stay for the celebration. Selano?"

  "I too am where I need to be, in Karista."

  "Then keep an eye on these two for me. Keep them on the right path. I'll try to send a fourth to you several times a year."

  Selano bowed, and retreated, as the rest of the mages surrounded their new, undisputed, leader.

  Oscar edged out after him.

  "Well. You've had a better lesson on how a Compass raises and uses power than I had planned." Selano stretched his back. "My word. I think I need an early dinner, and bed. You should go back in, meet everyone properly. They are nearly all the mages in the world."

  The old man walked off, and Oscar hesitated. He seemed much too full of mages to dive back in. Too . . . aware of who he'd grown into.

  He walked instead toward the new school. It was quiet and empty, of course. But still a symbol of how much Ash had grown. But it is still too small for me.

  "Left early?" Juli walked up. "Everyone figured they'd be spending all night working out the new Compasses."

  "Probably. And I won't be in any of them. I'm not sure about Bran."

  She sighed, and linked her arm in his. "Come and have dinner with us, then. I think, sometimes, about what might happen if he came back. To stay. Or what Fava and I might do."

  Oscar grinned down at her. "Afraid he'd break you up? Knowing Bran, he'd more likely decide to try to keep both of you."

  "Oh?" She led him in the door. The house was quiet.

  Fava waved a spoon from the kitchen, and reached for another plate. "The kids are already asleep. I'm afraid that Bran will do whatever his father tells him to do. As a mage, he'll certainly be assigned a wife by the Archmage."

  "Bran will return to the army. As will I."

  Juli bit her lip. "Yes, I suppose so. But tell us about the grand Compass."

  "The Archmage. Grandfather Beck, isn't it?" Fava started filling plates.

  "Yes. Conor made him work for it, though." Oscar sat at the head of the table where Juli steered him.

  "Conor?" Fava set out the plates and sat down close enough to bump his knee. "Tell! What did Uncle Conor do?"

  Juli sat on the other side and bumped his other knee.

  Hmm, both of them? But not to keep.

  Selano had brought orders for them. With no sign of the Earther's military moving toward the Pass, Lefty, Oscar and Bran were ordered to Asia, to familiarize themselves with the situation, and practice their new skills in the field. And pick up information, so long as they could avoid discovery. Lefty was in command, and his orders emphasized that they were an independent unit, reporting directly to Rufi, not a part of the routine monitoring of the Earthers.

  Lefty raised his eyes to the sky. "Thank you, oh mighty general, for putting these two . . . interesting people . . . under my command."

  Oscar just grinned. "Don't worry, we may both be accepted as mages, here, but we've both chosen to be soldiers." Again. And for better reasons than we had when we ran away nine years ago.

  Comet Horse

  The first, small, comet is about to hit . . .

  "We ought to have done this last summer, Damien."

  Damien stepped back and admired the big barn. "But think of all the business we would have lost! Instead of thinking that we're too late this year, consider that perhaps we're simply early for next."

  "And the hay's all in." Code persisted. "This barn will just be empty space, all winte
r long." He turned his collar up as the freezing wind gusted around the building.

  No snow, yet this year, but they'd had several runs of three or four days where it never got above freezing. The comet cluster’s gas and dust, filtering out a bit of sunlight. It's going to be a dangerously cold winter.

  Vani joined the argument. "And it was silly to drag Max and Jeinah out here with the baby. What were you thinking?"

  "That they needed a vacation away from Aunt Andrai?" Damien tried hard to look innocent. Andrai had insisted that the communications bunker be manned all through the comet impact. 'We need to know if the Oners have something planned, during the confusion,' she'd said. And she was right, too. But the solid granite of the knob they had built the barn on would be much more stable than the sediments that underlay the city of Karista. If the comet core hit, it was big enough to cause major damage. Probably not big enough to trigger earthquakes world-wide. Probably. In three hundred years of exploring the multiverse, and all the so-called parallel earths, they, the people of his Earth, had never witnessed an actual major strike. And this is the small one. Going to be scary in eight years.

  Code snickered. "And you weren't about to bring Aunt Andrai out here, were you?"

  "Hell no. I need a vacation too."

  "You could have sent her someplace." Vani wrinkled her nose. "All right, maybe that wouldn't work. She's pretty stubborn."

  They were probably over-reacting. But the barn was sturdy, with lots of diagonal bracing to withstand shaking. Making two of the three Earth spies safe. Or, theoretically safer than Andrai.

  "Nah, this is about the only excuse we'll have for an outing for years. I had to seize it while I could." And of course Max's wife had to be kept safe, or fat chance he'd have come. And Damien had practically adopted Vani and Code. And Code wouldn't come without the horses . . .

  Six year old Solstice, his sister's experimental genetically engineered horse that ought to have been terminated five years ago, had teamed with a plain bay gelding named Teddy to pull the open wagon. It had been loaded with mass manufactured nails and the tools they'd needed. They'd traded off which of the old mares had pulled the Bear wagon. They'd brought one of their closed wagon, with all the electronics an infiltration team could possibly need. And Max and family, and food for the long stay. They had planning on staying six weeks. That would be a week past the solstice, when the comet was due. Nine days, now.

  "Outing?" Code snorted. "It was all hard work, and you know it."

  "Ah! The fresh, crisp fall air! A nice straightforward job, with plenty of visual evidence of our progress. It's just like a city businessman's vacation." Damien walked around the barn, the two youngsters trailing.

  Code shook his head. "Oh, we're in trouble now! Damien thinks he's a city businessman . . . oh, wait. He is a city businessman."

  Vani started giggling. "Maybe he'll run for the City Council. The Docks District deserves better than Coulter Magraw representing them in Council."

  "Absolutely not! No politics. Besides, I'm from Verona. You've probably got to be a citizen to sit on the Council. Ha! Safe!" Damien sat back smugly. The horses in the corral swiveled ears toward his exclamation. "Sorry. Nothing's going on, just ignore me."

  Bleaker’s Knob was a small town located on one of the granite knobs that were this world's equivalent of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Here, extension faulting had widened the distance between the Rockies and the Pacific Ocean. The coastal mountains were a bit wider, a bit taller. Not enough for a proper rain shadow effect, but enough that the inland areas ranged from dry grasslands to brushy semi-desert. But the coastal mountains themselves were heavily forested, and had provided all the wood he needed for his barn. It had taken all three teams to haul the wood the two hundred miles from the nearest sawmill.

  He walked through the small door and admired the inside of the barn. Six stalls up one side, four large stalls up the other, with room in the middle for brushing and harnessing horses. Or for hay that couldn't be fit in the spacious loft.

  The four almost-three year olds meant he barely had stalls for all the horses he already owned. But he'd be selling horses as soon as they were trained. Or maybe sell the old horses and keep this collection of pretty creatures. Solstice's three fillies had inherited his pinto spots. Midnight, on the other hand, was a handsome blue roan. Black on his head and legs, with increasing amounts of white sprinkled in, until his flanks looked a slaty blue-grey in the sun. Damien shook his head. "What I'm doing with two stallions is beyond me."

  Code looked around in surprise. "I figured you'd retire the old mares and breed them."

  "I hardly need two stallions for that. I still can't believe that horse regrew his testicles. Yes, I've heard all the stories and jokes, but still . . . "

  Jeinah walked in and looked around. "It's a beautiful barn, Damien. Now tell me why we can't go back to town right now, before the second round of winter storms traps us here for the winter? Those comets are giving me the willies, and I'd druther be safe and sound at home." She patted her daughter's back, while four year old Jeff ran circles around the pair of them. "And Max asked if you could come out to the wagon."

  Damien blinked in surprise. Max knew why . . . "If that comet does hit, like the King says it might, we're much safer in a sturdy barn on solid rock than an old house just a few blocks from the bay."

  Jeinah sniffed skepticism as he walked by.

  Vani scowled thoughtfully. "Do you suppose that's why he dragged us out here?"

  Damien didn't stay to hear any replies.

  Max was waiting in the Bear wagon. He glanced behind Damien and opened the concealed cupboard "It's Andrai."

  "Damn, the One must be doing something."

  Their routine was to aim the antennae out the back, where no one in the barn could spot it, at ten hundred hours. Passive reception only, so the wagon couldn't be traced. If they needed to reply, he'd have to move the wagon well away from the farm. Max ran the message through the decompression program, then the decoder.

  Andrai's voice rang out, full of irritation. "Usse received a message late last night, and he's already gone. He's been ordered to try and observe what happens in that magic village of yours, when the comet hits. He's taken the stage, and just might get there by comet fall. From where you are I doubt you can catch him, but try. Or at least find out what those people do about a comet."

  Max wrinkled his nose. "They run the stage twice a week. No way to catch it."

  Damien considered the horses. "I'll take Solstice. He can do five hundred miles in six days. I'll buy a fresh horse in Wallenton, another three days ride, two if I really push it." He nodded and jumped down. "You can tell everyone I've had a mental break down, and they have to wait here for me to come back."

  "Oh thanks." Max climbed down behind him, and grabbed a sack of oats. "Take this on, hmm, Macy. Leave her when you run out."

  "No, she can't keep up. I've ridden Solstice, he's something special." But he took the sack and split half of it into two sacks to sling behind his saddle with his bedroll. He loaded up on cash and was gone in minutes.

  Solstice was delighted to get out. Damien made him walk and then trot to warm up as they cut across country to the Wallenton road a few miles away. Once on the road, well built and drained, turf over gravel, he let the young stallion gallop. He'd always known the horse had a good turn of speed, never managed to wear him out in a day's hauling. Now he tried to find the horse's limits, and it left him in awe of the unknown engineers who'd tinkered with the local horses. His sister had taken a bunch of his samples and added them all together. And created something incredible. A hundred miles up the road he gave into his body's demands and stopped for the night.

  "Gunga Din, you're a better horse than I." He forced himself to feed, water and brush the horse before collapsing into his bedroll. In the morning he was so stiff he led the horse while he munched granola to loosen up. A hundred miles on they stopped at a tavern with a stable for Solstice and a straw tick on th
e floor for Damien. The next two nights on the ground had him feeling double his thirty-nine years. Late the next day they reached Wallenton. Damien paid for a good inn, laundry services, and a hot soak. He took an extra day to rest Solstice. No point in buying a fresher horse; none such existed.

  A day and a half later he rode into Ash.

  The small town was seriously under populated. No witches in sight. Two women were running the Inn. He dropped his saddle bags off in the room they gave him, and led Solstice around to the stable yard. A boy, perhaps fifteen years old, was mucking out stalls.

  He looked surprised. "Huh. We go weeks in the winter without anyone coming around. Now we've got two guests." The barn aisle was taken up by a raggedy old dun draft horse and the muck cart. The boy clucked to the horse and the decrepit creature leaned into the breast strap and hauled the cart out. He was a good foot taller than Solstice, and half again his weight. The boy didn't seem to have any means of control over the old horse, and obviously didn't need any.

  "Put your fellow in the third stall, and I'll be back in a few minutes to brush him out."

  The third stall was clean, and deep with straw. Damien unsaddled and bushed Solstice himself before the dun horse, now stripped of his harness clomped into the first stall. The boy fetched hay and grain for him, for the bay in the second stall and Solstice. He didn't bother closing the dun's stall door.

  "Gets the run of the place, does he?"