“About time,” a male voice said.
He overbalanced with shock and almost fell, steadying himself with a hand on the floor. He caught a momentary glimpse of bare feet blazing in splendor, bright as the sun and yet without heat, and then his eyes closed in watery agony. The image of those feet was still there on the insides of his eyelids, and he could still sense the brightness before him.
“You summoned me?” Anger mingled with his fear. “Perhaps. Or you felt repentant. At least you came to give thanks, not demand favors. You came because you were happy, not because you were in need of something. We appreciate that. Be happy while you can, King Rap.”
“Oh, of course!” he snapped. “You can’t bear to see a mortal being happy, can You? Tonight my heart is overflowing, so You have to come and spoil it!”
He heard a sigh and when the voice spoke again above him it was female, sadly tuneful as an old lament. “Time and advancement have not improved your disposition. Can you not give Us the benefit of the doubt just for once?”
He squirmed, unable to think of an answer to that divine rebuke. He looked up, shielding his face with his hand and trying to open his eyes a hairsbreadth. Useless—one glimpse of that stabbing brilliance made them flood with tears. Yet the rest of the chapel was dark, untouched by the glory.
When the Gods spoke again, They were still in Their female aspect. “Why do you not use your powers to help your people, King Rap? Why do you not divert storms from Krasnegar, fill the larders single-handed, stamp out disease? You could make your town a paradise.”
Had the Gods been eavesdropping on his thoughts? “Is that Your command to me?”
“No. But We demand an answer.”
“Because . . . Because I think I would produce a nation of idlers and degenerates! I should end up doing all the work and probably gain small thanks for it in the end, when everyone began taking my blessings for granted.”
After a moment he added, “People value happiness by what it costs. ”
“Would they understand if you explained that to them?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But I think they would not’ be happier, in the long run. I really do have their own good at heart, I think.”
Then he saw that mortals should not argue with Gods.
“And so it is with Us. We also must sometimes act or decline to act, from motives that you may not comprehend.”
“I am sorry,” he muttered.
For a moment the chapel was silent and he wondered if They had gone. He shivered as the cold bit through his garments. The floor was hard and cold on his knees.
“Then try to understand now. We bring a warning. You will have to lose one of the children.”
No! No! No! Something seemed to grip his throat until he thought he would choke. “Which one?”
“It would be even more unkind to tell you that.” A long sigh seemed to drift around the chapel like a lost soul.
“I suppose it would. But why tell me anything at all? Just to torture me? If I wanted to know the future, I could use my powers—foresight or premonition.” At the moment all he could see was the green afterimage inside his eyelids. His eyes still hurt.
“But you do not use those powers! And in spite of your efforts to remain ignorant, you have already sensed the approach of evil.”
“The year. 3000?”
The voice became stem again and male, dark with overtones of power and duty. It thundered, yet it woke no echoes in the little chapel. “That is part of it. The times were vulnerable and you blundered, Rap.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you! You interfered with the order of the world and because the millennia were poised, the consequences will be grave beyond imagining. Already the fabric trembles.”
Rap had a low opinion of the Gods, but did he believe They would lie to him? Yes, he decided, They might if it suited Their purpose. Not all Gods served the Good. Or if they did, the distinction was not always evident to mortal eyes.
“What must I do?” he demanded angrily. He wanted to curse Them and he did not know how to curse Gods.
“Nothing,” They said. “There is nothing you can do. You erred, and the least cost of that error must be one of your children.”
“Take me! Take me instead.”
“That may be necessary, also. The penalty may be much, much greater than We said. We cannot save you from the price of your own folly.”
“Tell me what I must do! Anything! Anything!”
“Nothing. You will have happy days for a while. Cherish them as mortals should. And when the sacrifice is needed, try to understand that good intentions are never an excuse. Godhood is not all joy, Rap. Power brings sorrows as well as joys. You know that.”
“Tell me!” he screamed.
This time there was no reply. The Gods had gone. Rap stayed there until he was almost frozen, begging on his knees or prostrate on the icy flags, but They did not return. The chapel stayed silent except for the echoes of his sobs and the wailing of the wind, and all his happiness had shattered into dust.
5
The year of victories was almost over; Ylo was carrying a white flag.
In three more days the world would celebrate Winterfest with dancing and feasting. He was walking to his death with a madman. This should be a time of peace and merrymaking, but the God of War was still reaping. Many, many men would die before the year did.
Madness! Suicidal madness . . .
The light was failing and the rain had not let up all day; fine, cold, pitiless rain that fell straight down and soaked into everything. The air was gray. Thin mud made the trail treacherous underfoot, slapping up with every step, and Ylo was actually glad of his wolfskin hood, for the first time in . . . how long? . . . ten or eleven months? It must be that long since he had become signifer to this maniac, and this was the first time he’d truly appreciated the furry absurdity as a rain cover. As a sunshade, fine—he’d often been grateful for it as a sunshade. As a girl attractor . . . well, it did help there. And now it made a good waterproof, except that it smelled bad and seemed to weigh as much as it would if it still had a wolf in it.
The hillside was tufted with shrubbery and little copses, sinister, misty patches that might hide a hundred armed warriors and probably did. He held the flag in one hand and a lantern in the other, a yellow eye within a fuzzy corona of rain. Reflections sparkled from puddles as he led the prince imperial deeper and deeper into his own trap.
Ylo was convinced it was a trap. Back at the camp he had actually dared question his orders—an Imperial soldier did not do that very often and live. Madness to go alone to the rendezvous, he had said. The heir to the Opal Throne had no right to risk the future welfare of the Impire by such insane rashness.
A lesser man might have chopped off his head for insolence, but not Shandie. He had just shrugged and said quietly that it would be madness to trust anyone else in such circumstances, but elves spurned treachery once they had given their word. He had also said that Centurion Hardgraa would accompany him if Ylo did not want to. That had settled the matter, of course, as he had known it would.
And so here the two of them were, slithering and sliding down this Evil-spawned path across this doom-haunted hillside, heading for a vague speck of lamplight and a parley.
Somewhere over the ridge behind them the legions shivered in their sodden bivouac—eating cold food, huddling inside wet clothes; and no doubt cursing fluently and vowing that someone was going to pay for this.
Somewhere over the ridge ahead was an elvish army, probably doing all the same things and swearing all the same oaths. Somewhere off to the right but invisible, the Qoble Range reached snowy ramparts to the roof of heaven. Doubtless the peaks would be a spectacular sight when the rain stopped, for those alive to see it.
And somewhere in the neighborhood lay the border between Qoble and IIrane. Every few centuries the boundary moved. Qoble was a fragment of the Impire cut off by the mountains. A winter road around the western end of those mountains had been a priority of the imps since before history. Many times they had spilled a sea of blood to get one, but they had never been able to hold it for long, because the elves prized this miserable little tract of land, also, for aesthetic reasons.