David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"We'll set her here," Sharina said, wincing as blackberry canes scratched her calves. "Who's the She you say came?"

The night noises were only half-familiar, but the Hunters had probably kept other dangers at a distance. Unless the male of the pack had been off on his own for the night…

"She's God," Franca said. "She came to the world ten years ago. Now She rules everything."

"Everything is better now!" called the axe from the ruined palace above them. "Beard was scarcely alive before She came. Now there's so much more for him to drink!"

"Start covering her," Sharina said, looking around. Most of the roof tiles had poured into the garden when the palace collapsed, and there were manageably larger chunks of rubble as well. She picked up a stone barrel from one of the slim paired columns which had framed the window of her reception room.

"We heard about Her from the people fleeing Carcosa," Franca said. "Horrible monsters tearing down buildings and eating people. We didn't know what to do, so we stayed in Penninvale and for a year everything was all right. Except the winter storms were bad, very bad."

He used a pole, part of a casement, to lever tiles and a decade of windblown dirt over the body. The rotten wood cracked before he'd made much headway.

"The storms will get worse!" the axe called. "The storms will last longer until there's no longer a thaw and the whole world freezes. But until then there'll be plenty of blood for Beard to drink!"

"There was an early storm that Fall," Franca said, lifting handfuls of debris over the corpse. He worked steadily though without enthusiasm. "Out of it came a creature bigger than three houses, all covered with armor, and a pack of Hunters. Mother and I hid in the root cellar and the monster smashed our house down over us. We couldn't see what was happening, but we heard things. And after a week we couldn't hear anything more, so we dug ourselves out. Everyone was gone, except for the bits that the birds and foxes were eating."

Franca squatted. Sharina thought he was about to lift a larger block, but instead he put his face in his hands and resumed crying. She pivoted a length of stone transom without speaking. It was too heavy for her to lift, but when it shifted dirt and broken tile cascaded down to cover the woman's face. It wasn't a real burial, but Sharina hoped it was enough for decency in this hellworld.

She stepped back. "May the Lady cover you with Her mantle," she whispered. "May the Shepherd guard you with His staff."

Franca looked up. "They didn't come back," he said. "There was no one left in Penninvale but mother and me, and the monsters stayed away. But we had to leave because there was no food."

"We'll stay here until dawn," Sharina said crisply. "There were some tapestries in the room where I-came here. Maybe we can dig them out for blankets. In the morning we'll go west toward…"

She didn't say the words, "Barca's Hamlet," from a sudden fear of what she might call down on the place that had been her home. That was superstition, ignorant foolishness; but the night was cold and she was very much alone despite Franca's helpless presence.

"May the Lady help me," she said.

"There's no point in praying to the Lady inthis world, mistress!" trilled the axe. "And you needn't pray to Her either, for She's a God who hates Mankind. But with Beard in your hand, ah, there's an ocean of blood to drink before the ice covers us!"

Moonlight streamed through the windows of Garric's suite as the mild breeze cleared the fumes of the recently-snuffed lamp. He was briefly aware of the linen sheets and the warmth of Liane beside him; then he slept and, sleeping, dreamed.

He stood in the ruins of a garden. Usually Garric was alone in his dreams; this time Carus shared his mind as the king did all Garric's waking hours. Phlox and trillium covered the ground, crowding the fallen statue of a winged female which some architect had placed here for interest.

"No place I've ever seen before," Carus muttered, his sword hand flexing. His image in Garric's mind wore a sword; but that too was only an image, an immaterial phantom like the ancient king himself.

"Nor me," said Garric. In the dream he wore the simple woolen tunic he'd gone to bed in. The air was muggy, but the stones underfoot felt cool.

At the back wall stood an altar; around it knelt a dozen or more figures. Men, Garric thought, but they slunk off toward the colonnades to either side, still hunched over. Apes, then, or perhaps bears.

Garric walked toward the altar. He wasn't sure his own mind guided his motions. Water pooled on worn flagstones and formed a marshy pond in the corner where cattails grew. Frogs trilled from the darkness, their calls punctuated by the coarsely strident shrieks of toads.

The altar was spotted with lichen and miniature forests of blooming moss; no sacrifice had been burned here in a human lifetime or longer, perhaps much longer. On it were heaps of apples, peaches, and a soft, fleshy fruit that looked vaguely like a catalpa pod, unfamiliar to Garric.

"Bananas," Carus said. "They grow them on the south coast of Shengy, but they don't travel."

Garric looked around. An ancient dogwood shaded the altar; its roots had forced apart the sides of the stone planter in which it grew. A stand of elderberries sprouted nearby. Was this Shengy? It seemed much like Haft, though warmer than normal for the season.

The odor of the shambling beasts hung in the air. It was musky; not unpleasant, but strange and therefore disquieting.

"The moon's closer than it ought to be," Carus said. "Or maybe it's just that the air's so thick. I've been in swamps that didn't seem so muggy."

On the altartop was a small ewer, perhaps a scent bottle. Originally it had been clear, but long burial in acid soil gave the glass a frosty rainbow patina. Garric touched it with his fingertip; the surface had the gritty feel he would have expected in the waking world.

Half-concealed behind the ewer was a four-sided prism the size of a man's thumb; Garric picked it up. It was so heavy that he wondered if it were metal rather than crystal, but his fingers were dimly visible through it.

When Garric looked into a flat, it returned a murky reflection of his own face. He rotated the prism slowly. For a moment he stared at an edge as sharp as a swordblade; then his life and his soul scaled off, separating him from Carus and from himself… and yet He was Garric or-Reise, son of the innkeeper of Barca's Hamlet. His sister, Sharina, was a leggy blonde girl who caught the eye of a drover from Ornifal who came to the Sheep Fair; the next year, when Garric and Sharina were eighteen, the drover returned and married her. It was a good match. Sharina wrote once or twice a year, though she never returned to Haft let alone the tiny community in which Garric remained.

When Garric was twenty-three, his father Reise slipped on ice in the inn yard and cracked his head on the pump. He lingered over a month but never recovered his senses. His wife Lora died not long after, apparently pining for her husband. It was a surprise to everybody; Lora was a shrew who'd seemed to dislike Reise even more than she disliked everybody else.

At his parents' death, Garric became master of the inn. It had prospered under his father; it flourished for the stronger, more active, and far more personable Garric. That summer Garric married the daughter of a wealthy farmer on the Carcosa road, and the next spring the first of their twelve children was born.

Garric continued to read the classics. He taught his children to read and write; and if none of them became the scholar he was, they were probably better wives and farmers because they didn't have so many romantic notions confusing them.

When Garric died, full of years and honor, four generations of his descendants attended his funeral. Representatives of the Count of Haft and both priesthoods came from Carcosa, and drovers from distant islands paid their respects at his grave when they arrived for the Sheep Fair in the fall.