Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

The woman purred at him and snuggled up, her dress leaving for another quick-change. It was quite boring, really. “We were discussing how amusing these little get-togethers can be,” I said.

“Right you are!” Phlinn said, loudly enough to make a few nearby heads turn. “Not only these group meetings, the whole damn communication system. One of the best things Byron ever came up with, after the whole genesis thing itself, of course.”

“Baby!” the woman said, her purr changing to growl. She looked ready to slap him. “Why bring him up, and in a place like this?”

‘‘I’m getting drunk,” Phlinn said reasonably. “But whether I’m soused or not, I’ll talk about anyone I choose.”

“Keep your voice down, then, will you do that much?” She pulled back a step, crossed her arms while carefully balancing her drink, and glared.

“Of course, love, of course.” I had to admire his control of his voice; now he’d slid his tone smoothly into sheer raw persuasiveness. Maybe he’d gone to acting school, and maybe his voice effects were augmented for this kind of environment, too. “I’m probably the last one around who’ll admit to being a friend of Byron’s, you know,” he told me, now using a just-you-and-me note of confidence-sharing. “He was the trickiest of us all, that Byron, but not always the most prudent, it’s true.” He took aim at me again with those eyes of his. I had to admit, he sure did look like a god. “It is true, you know.”

“What is?” I asked him.

“I was sure you knew. Jardin cast the curse himself, but by then Byron had disappeared, of course, and he’d changed his aural signature, too. I don’t know if the curse ever found him or not, but he’s almost certainly dead now any way you cut it. He hasn’t been heard from in centuries.”

I’d heard the rest of what he’d said in a vague sort of way, but my mind had locked around the first word, the first name. Jardin. Where had I heard that name before? “Zhardann?” I said.

“Oh, is that how he’s pronouncing it again? He goes through phases, you know, not that there’s much difference between them. These old multilingual names, always trying to decide how they should be pronounced. Always some dispute about the consonants. But you came in with him; you must know better than I how he’s saying his own name now. Do you think we’re up for another of those curses today?”

“We’ll have to wait and see,” I said. “We’ll all have to wait and see.”

“Hmm-um, yes. I suppose so.”

“Yes, we will,” said Soaf Pasook. He was standing on my left. “Arol. I’m surprised you’re here, feeling the way you do.”

“If you know the way I feel, it shouldn’t be a surprise at all. I never like to miss one.”

Pasook gave him one of those thin grins that said many things, good humor not being among them; the kind of expression these folks all seemed very good at. Maybe they had a particular exercise regimen that included helpful facial muscle calisthenics. “So you’ve given up your subversive ways? You’re willing to join shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of us in exercising our power?”

“Absolutely,” said Phlinn Arol. “Especially when it’s aimed against one of our own, for exceeding his franchise and using mortals as his pawns. Among others,” he added, flashing Pasook a pleasant smile of his own. “Aren’t you pleased to see us all here to help you redress your own grievances?”

“Of course. Glad you could spare the time. If you’ll excuse me?”

“Have you done something that needs to be excused?” Phlinn said in mock surprise.

“Hah,” Pasook said to Phlinn. Then, to me, “We’re almost ready to get started,” he went on, resting his hand on my arm and leading me away. He stopped after a short distance, though, just out of earshot. “He’s quite the radical these days, Phlinn is. I know you’ve been away from things and haven’t been keeping up, so I thought perhaps I should tell you. A bit of good will between us for you to remember, and all that.”

“Really?” I said. My mind felt as abstruse as my remark.

“Perhaps it’s not totally his fault,” Pasook said thoughtfully. “As the Adventurer’s God, he has an outlook that stresses the pitting of man against the forces of man and nature, but not against a totally stacked deck, which is what a world under our thumb often amounts to, to be frank; we all know that. Conflicts with his damnable notion of fair play, I suppose. Steadfast ideals and all that. Or perhaps it comes from a misplaced sense of obligation to his late friend Byron.” The name came out in a glob of scorn. I thought he might spit on the cloud-top.

I hadn’t asked a direct question of any substance in days. Maybe I could get away with one here, with Pasook in as abstracted a mood as he appeared to be. Maybe he’d think I’d just been drinking too much. “Byron?”

“Yes, damn him, him and his Abdicationism. If he’d’ve been dealt with properly, no one would ever have heard of the idea again. Just too damn inventive, Byron was. At least it played a useful role until he turned to politics.”

We weren’t really alone, but this might be the best chance I’d get to talk with him. “Look, Pasook -”

“May I have your attention, please. Attention, please.” The voice was the voice of Zhardann, or Jardin, but it boomed along the cloud as though he had acquired a giant speaking trumpet, squashing all other conversation flat beneath it. I looked around. The cloud had slowed and beached itself against the mountain peak I had observed when the four of us had entered the scene, and Zhardann was perched ten feet up on a clean-swept crag. No amplifier of sounds was in sight. He had called the gathering, though, so this was probably his chosen meeting-ground as well; he must know the rules here at least as completely as anyone. Maybe he’d even designed and decorated the place, although that seemed a bit less likely to me. If you could create your own appearance for one of these simulated environments, it stood to reason that you could create your own environment, too. Whether anyone else would be willing to set foot in it was another matter. These gods were a mutually suspicious lot, for good and valid reasons, so I couldn’t see them putting themselves into someone else’s custom habitat without a very good reason and a whole lot of preparation behind them. No, it stood to reason that this place was a community neutral ground. They might not have many rules, but I was willing to bet that one of them concerned violations of the public meeting-hall.

“Thank you all for coming,” Zhardann continued, after the remaining conversations had quickly died out. “The subject of this assembly is Sapriel. Is he in attendance?”

Several seconds of silence passed. No one answered. “Sapriel has been informed of this assembly and has clearly elected not to be at hand. His presence is not required at this stage. However, I will now contact Sapriel and ask again, in the sight of this assembly. Sapriel! Sapriel! Sapriel!”

An area of air at Zhardann’s altitude but out in front of him, over the front of the beached cloud, spun together in a ball, imparting a crystalline shine and a refractive warp to the clear sky behind it. Then the color of the sky in the ball darkened, becoming cobalt, and the ball began to vibrate. I began to hear echoes of Zhardann’s voice, still saying “saprielsaprielsapriel,” the sound growing and overlapping as the ball’s shimmering increased, until all the syllables and component phonemes of the name were ringing together as a clear pure tone.

Suddenly the ball was black. A deep voice spoke from it, a deep voice with an aggravated tone. “Go away,” it said. “Don’t bother me. I’m busy.”