Glen Cook - Surrender to the will of the night

With all that talent and genius he had no need to be mature.

Cloven Februaren and Ferris Renfrow went away. The Aelen Kofer followed, leaving only a skeleton crew. In time, Heris had only the ascendant and three sour, elderly dwarf women for company. And, occasionally, a young mer who called herself Philleas Pescadore. The mer thought that was funny but never explained. She shifted shape and left the water, stark naked and achingly beautiful, only when Asgrimmur was around.

Heris knew she was imagining actions and motives because the fact was, Philleas needed Asgrimmur to translate in order to communicate.

Philleas was both intensely curious and deeply naive about the world above the waterline. For her that world was more mythical than was hers to humanity. Only a few mer in any generation, most female and young, could change and pass for human, briefly. Naked young women who dared not venture far from the sea would not see the best of land dwellers.

Philleas was doubly ignorant. Her entire world had been the harbor. The dangers she knew were shark and kraken.

Heris found the girl more irritating than interesting. She never stopped asking questions.

Out of the blue, a few days after the old men left, Asgrimmur announced, “I’m not interested in Philleas the way you think. She isn’t interested in me that way, either.”

“What?” Taken completely off guard.

They were on the quay. The ascendant wore his most manly man form. He stared through the portal at the brilliance of the middle world.

The gateway was open so Heris could go if she must.

“Her people have found the survivors of another pod out in the Andorayan Sea. They mean to merge pods by uniting Philleas and Kurlas, a mer her age in the other pod. That should be interesting. Philleas has picked up a lot of romantic notions from us. Especially from the old man. Meanwhile, the sea pod has spent a century hugging the warm water round a slow power leak. They’ll have turned quite strange.”

Heris grunted, not much interested. She just did not want to see the mer in human form and have to compare herself.

It was not fair. Not even a little. The girl was not even human.

The ascendant said, “I believe Februaren thought he was playing a clever practical joke.”

“He would. Sometimes he’s an idiot. I’m surprised he didn’t exploit her naivet?.”

“Who knows? He may have. It wouldn’t matter. What Philleas does in human form is separate from what she does as a mer. I couldn’t guess the old man’s proclivities-if he has any at his age-but his sense of humor would be intrigued by the fact that Philleas starts out a virgin every time she takes human form.”

“Oh, now that’s just!.. All right. I don’t know how he’d think about that. You don’t go sneaking around, trying to find out if your oldest living ancestor is some kind of pervert. Asgrimmur, let’s stop. This stuff makes me uncomfortable.”

“So let’s go climb the mountain instead.”

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s pack some food and go explore the Great Sky Fortress. You are curious about it, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. The same way I’m curious about seeing what happens when a ship founders and everybody drowns.”

“An odd way to think of it.”

Heris shrugged. “I’m an odd woman. I’ve survived an odd life. I see the world through skewed eyes.”

“I thought it might be useful to walk the field before the battle. Save us time once the others get back. Winter will come. When it does it will serve Kharoulke far better than it will us.”

“I can’t say you’re not right about that.”

The rainbow bridge remained brilliant and thrummingly potent. Heris had no difficulty crossing. The Construct had no direct potency inside the Realm of the Gods but using it outside had built up her self-confidence.

The ascendant followed, fearless himself. And had no reason to fear. Should he fall he need but change… A random gust did push him off his footing. In an instant he developed tentacles that snagged hold of the rainbow. He dragged himself back onto the bridge, where he turned into a huge bird that hopped the last few yards on one foot. He had his trousers clutched in the other.

“That was impressive,” Heris said, noting that one wing seemed stunted. “Those stories about people changing into animals always made me wonder what they did about their clothes.”

“You lose them if you get in a hurry. Otherwise, you make arrangements.” He remained generically bipedal till he finished wriggling into the trousers. He became fully human, then, but only momentarily. His exposed feet and upper body changed again. He developed lionlike feet and a heavy pelt above the waist.

It was cold up there.

Heris observed, “You’re going to be an adventure for some demigoddess.”

“I dropped the sack. There’s water up here but nothing to eat.”

“It’ll be a short adventure, then. I have a question.”

“I may have an answer.”

For reasons uncertain Heris turned toward the dead apple orchard once they passed through the gateway. “Your missing… whatever. That comes and goes. You always have the right number of hands and feet when you’re human. When you’re something else you always have a crippled limb. Which is why you lost your shirt and the food.”

“And other valuables as well.”

“And? So?”

“The hand is also missing when I’m human. But when I’m a man I don’t need to invest much effort holding the form. I can create the illusion of a hand.”

“Illusion? I’ve seen you use it.”

“Have you? For sure?”

“Uh… No, actually. What happened?”

“I attacked somebody when I was the mad monster of the high Jagos. He didn’t panic like the others. He chopped it off. That was not pleasant. But it was useful. The pain eventually wakened what little sanity I had left. That and a savage ambush later that almost killed me.”

Asgrimmur extended his right hand. It began to shrivel. “Kind of creepy, isn’t it?”

“You might say.” Heris stepped through a gap in the dry stone fence surrounding the orchard.

For an instant the gray went away. The garden offered a vision of itself in olden times. A gorgeous blond goddess plucked a golden apple. She placed it under a small flagstone, made a sign Heris assumed was a blessing. She looked in Heris’s direction as though thinking she had heard something coming. She saw nothing, evidently. Distress warped her beauty. Then the vision ended.

“What just happened?” the ascendant asked. “I felt something when you stepped through the fence.”

“I’m not sure. A flash from the past? I might have seen what the orchard looked like, back when.” The tree from which the goddess had picked the apple lay at Heris’s feet, rotted. Without a termite.

Like the power, insects were not returning to the Realm of the Gods, if only because the gateway was in the middle of a freezing sea. Though all the recent comings and goings probably meant that fleas and lice had become reestablished.

Heris said, “It’s sad, all this having to go. It was magnificent.”

“Have you forgotten what lived here?”

“No. But I bet they weren’t worse than any other Instrumentalities from their era. Were they big on human sacrifices?”

“They demanded it. But not often. The victims were usually condemned men, cripples, or people about to die from disease anyway. Or, after the Chaldarean cult reached the northern world, missionaries. But when times were extreme the gods sometimes demanded a real sacrifice.”

“Did you enjoy your time with Cloven Februaren?” Heris stepped back out of the orchard, strolled toward the entrance to the “keep” of the Great Sky Fortress. Keep was appropriate based on design but a deep understatement by the standards of middle-world fortifications. The structure sprawled to left and right and rose up and up and up.