Eric Flint - This Rough Magic

This man Lozza was no foreigner, they'd decided. This was someone who spoke their language and knew more about olives than any Libri d'Oro they'd ever met. He'd even married one of their own, a peasant woman.

Once they'd called him Loukoumia-fat little sweetmeat. No one did that any more. Not since he'd given a very pointed but nonlethal lesson in swordsmanship to one idiot who had dared put a hand on his wife.

"We beat neither our women nor our olive trees on Corfu," he'd said firmly and finally. It was a local peasant saying, too. That was the final and vital detail. Women asked their menfolk why they hadn't joined.

Giuliano had nearly three thousand men, men with everything from old boar-spears to new and recently acquired Hungarian arquebuses. And torches.

Waiting. Like the great banks of heavy cloud that hung seemingly just off shore. The rain never came. The Corfiotes were going to.

When the Hungarian units had begun pulling back three days ago, Giuliano had known this was to be the big assault. He'd begun sending out word, and the Corfiotes had come.

Giuliano was a master swordsman. He knew he was outnumbered and that the enemy had the edge in professionalism and equipment. But he also knew that it was not the strength of the swordsman that wins the day. It was the timing of the stroke. With the Hungarians sweeping into the outer Citadel, now was the time for the stroke. Loot, or the desire for it, made the Hungarian encampment virtually empty. The artillerymen were sitting around, disgruntled at not being able to join in the spree. The cannon would have to be moved now. All they got out of this was hard work.

And Giuliano Lozza.

"The circle is unbroken. Out of life comes death, and out of death, life."

Maria looked at the point in the rock, engraved with a circle-the symbol of the mother-and surrounded by spirals so old that time was weathering them away. From the middle of that circle the water of the sacred spring had flowed-apparently unceasingly, for millennia. Now, as she watched, a tiny drop slowly formed and dripped down to the clay basin that stood in for the cracked holy pool.

Maria put Alessia down beside the cracked pool. The baby girl was too listless to go anywhere. Too listless to even cry. Maria turned with sad eyes to Renate. "You'll see her safe to Katerina, Holy Mother?"

Tears streaked the older woman's face. She nodded. "This can fix things, Maria. If you are willing."

Maria shrugged. "It is too late for me. Benito's dead. It'll be too late for Alessia soon. So what do I have to do?"

"Drink the water of the holy pool. Take up the almond. Offer yourself as a willing bride. I will do the rest."

Maria stared up at the figure of the Mother, the old, old figure cut out of the living rock. Legs like barrels, fat thighs that stood for the plenty She provided, the cleft of Her mystery, overhung with the great belly of fertility, the huge domes of pendulous breasts, the round ball of a head, featureless except for a hint of carving that might have been hair, a mouth. How old was She? Who had carved Her? Was there still any power in Her at all?

Maria tried to feel something from that figure; all she could feel was her own despair.

Well, even if nothing happened, there would be a few drops of water.

She went to the basin; raised it to her lips, and drank. With the taste of sweet water still on her tongue, she walked the two steps to the altar, and took up the half almond.

Her fingers touched it, with a shock.

Her hand closed involuntarily on it, and she whirled, to stare at the Mother.

Gathering about the shapeless form were tiny, dustlike sparks. Only they weren't dust, they were sparks of golden light, more and more of them with every moment, outlining the figure, then enshrouding it, enveloping it in a blanket, a haze of gold, the color of corn, the color of wheat, the color of life…

A sigh eased from her; she closed her eyes, and let the power lead her where she needed to go.

The yellow dog found the cliff entrance to the temple-cave by nose. There was only woman-scent coming from it. And, for the first time on this accursed island, also the strong, heady smell of powerful magics. Unless the other had sent a woman… he was here first. The only problem was that the cave mouth was up there, and the yellow dog form was not good for climbing trees. He wondered briefly if he should assume his human form, but decided against it. That was by far the most vulnerable.

He hesitated. By the intensity of the magics up there, time was not on his side. He changed into the hagfish form. This body did not like the dry, but it could climb like a snake.

He ignored the screams of people who saw the huge, oily-black monster twining its way up the graveyard poplar, and oozing into the cave mouth. Soon it would not matter.

It was dusty and dry and spiked with stalagmites here, so the shaman assumed the doglike form again. His nose led him, hastening, up the narrow labyrinthine passages, panting and slobbering a little.

Yes. This was what he had been sent to find. To the shaman's senses, the entire place pulsed with power; throbbing like a racing heart. The master's advisor, Mindaug, had said the master needed to be physically present to claim this. The shaman wished he knew how to do so himself.

He ran into the temple chamber yowling in triumph, ready to fight.

There were two humans there. An old woman with long white hair, unconscious and crumpled on the floor. And a baby-dying, by the smell of it.

He could feast later. The shaman's nose told him there had been three. He quested for that third, to rend, to kill, with the magical energies in this place growing around him. To his eyes the place was full of sheets of green light.

She wasn't here-yet she had not left.

The shaman gave a half-vulpine, half-canine sort of shrug and began the ritual to call his master's physical presence here.

It was as if all solid things had become shadows. Maria, with the almond in her hand, her firm chin up and heart hammering, walked down steps of light set into the shadow.

She could not have said how long she walked, but she came at length to a great hall. At the far end were two thrones. A tall man stood up from the left-hand throne and walked toward her, palms out. On his right hand rested the other half of the almond. A tall man, made of shadows, as the Mother had been made of light. Shadows, but not evil-the restful shadows of twilight, the dark before dawn. And yet, she sensed there was a great deal concealed by those shadows, and she willed them away.

"Greetings, bride." He seemed to be looking through to the inside of her. He did not seem to notice that his concealment was melting until he stood before her unveiled. "Your spirit is very beautiful."

He was black-haired and gray-eyed; lean, pale, grim-looking. She set her jaw. Just because she had agreed to this, did not mean she was going into it blindly. Oh, no. All right, the marriage with Umberto, not unlike this one, had worked out-but she'd known Umberto, hadn't she? This-Person-she knew nothing at all about. So before she took the last irrevocable step, she had to know. She would do it, yes, but she still had to know.

"Just exactly who are you?" she demanded. "Husband," she added, as an afterthought.

It took the man aback. In fact, he literally stepped back a pace.

"You are a willing bride?" The pale-visaged man showed both surprise and a hint of doubt.

Maria nodded, feeling completely out of her depth, and brusque with it. "Yes, of course I am. The priestess said that without a bride the Mother could only resist, passively. That without a bride you would not intercede. Look," she continued, in growing irritation, "my baby was dying. My friends are dead or dying. The man I loved, Benito Valdosta, is dead. I was too proud to tell him that I loved him, and now he's dead. The whole island is dying. Somebody had to do something, so I said I would do it. I knew I had to be willing and I had to be fertile, of childbearing age. I didn't know I had to know all about it."