Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

The ground wasn't shaking now, though he wouldn't have bet Rihwin could have told whether that was so. Nevertheless, the feeling of awe and dread built inside Gerin till he wanted to run or scream or smash something just to get relief. He did none of those things. Forcing himself to stillness, he waited for Rihwin's staggering progress to bring his fellow Fox to him.

Rihwin was so intent on walking, he didn't notice Gerin till he almost ran into him. "Lord pr-prince!" he said thickly, and gave such a melodramatic start that he nearly tumbled over backwards. "Mercy, lord prince!" he gasped, and then hiccuped.

Now Gerin drew back a pace, his nose wrinkling. "Feh!" he said. "Your breath stinks like a vineyard in pressing season."

"Mercy!" Rihwin repeated. He swayed as he stared owlishly at his overlord; standing in one place seemed about as hard for him as walking. His face was slack with drink, but alarm glittered in his eyes.

Then Gerin looked through him instead of at him, really hearing for the first time what he himself had said. "You've been at the wine Schild brought us, haven't you, my fellow Fox?" he asked softly. He'd let his sword trail to the ground. Now it came up again, as if to let the wine out of Rihwin.

"Mercy!" Rihwin squeaked for the third time. "I found it buried in the hay when we brought our— hic! —horses to the stables. I broached but two jars. Mer— hic! —cy!"

"That is it." Selatre's voice was firm and certain. "That is what we felt: the power of Mavrix loosed in this holding."

Gerin wanted to scream at Rihwin. Even in his fury, though, he remembered the hour, remembered the warriors and women and cooks and servants asleep inside Castle Fox. But although he hissed instead of shrieking, his fury came through unabated: "You stupid, piggish dolt. Thanks to your greed, thanks to the wine you're going to piss away over the course of the next day, you've made Mavrix notice us and given him a channel through which he can enter this land—and he hates me. What shall I do to you for that? How could Adiatunnus serve me worse than you just did?"

Tears ran down Rihwin's cheeks; they glistened in Nothos' pale light. "Lord prince, you're right," he mumbled. "I don't know what came over me. I shaw— saw —the jars there in the straw, and it as as conshu—con su ming fire blazed all through me. I had to drink, or die." Even sozzled, he spoke with elaborate southern phrasings.

"That's the fanciest way to call yourself a no-account, worthless drunkard I ever heard," Gerin said in disgust.

Selatre set a hand on his arm. She still used that gesture seldom enough to command attention when she did. "Wait," she said. "There may be more truth in what he says than you hear. Perhaps Mavrix inflamed his soul, as he put it, to open the way for the god to make his presence felt in the northlands once more."

"It could be so, lord prince," Rihwin exclaimed eagerly. "Though the lord of the sweet grape expunged all sorcerous ability from my spirit, he left intact my knowledge."

"Not that you haven't tried to drown it in ale—and now wine," Gerin snarled, still anything but appeased.

"I deserve that." Rihwin's voice was full of drunken earnestness. "But it is as your gracious lady said. Were Mavrix to seek entry to your holding, I am just the sort of insht—insh—in stru ment he would employ." He smiled in triumph at finally forcing out the difficult word.

"All right, it could be so," Gerin said grudgingly. "Shall I thank you for it? Great Dyaus above, I'm still trying to figure out whether we can survive it. As I said, as you know, the god loves me not, nor you either."

Rihwin hung his head. "That is true."

"The god has his purposes, and we have ours," Selatre said. "He will accomplish his come what may. We can't say the same, worse luck. What we have to seek is a way in which the god's purposes are met, and ours as well, and, having found it, coax him into accepting it."

Gerin looked at her gratefully. "Put that way, it might almost be done." But in the back of his mind, he heard, or thought he heard, the god laughing, laughing.

XII

Red-eyed and yawning, Gerin told the tale over breakfast the next morning to those who had been lucky enough not to sense the coming of Mavrix in the night. Beside him sat Selatre, also yawning. He was glad to have her there, for without her confirmation he doubted whether Aragis or Van, to say nothing of the rest, would have believed him. But at the same time he worried, for she sounded once more like Biton's Sibyl, not like his woman. He shook his head, bemused. Having lost Elise to a horseleech, would he lose Selatre to a god?

Aragis snapped him out of his reverie. The grand duke might not have been much for the long view, but he had a supremely practical grasp of the moment. "All right, lord prince, Mavrix is here among us, whether we like it or not," he said. "What do we do about it? Can we turn it to our own purposes?"

"I"—Gerin glanced at Selatre—"we, that is, think we may have found a way." One reason he was red-eyed was that he and Selatre had spent the last part of the night talking over that very question. He sighed. He didn't like the answer they'd come up with. "We are going to evoke the god, to bring him fully into the world here and bargain with him."

"Are you daft, Fox?" Van burst out. "Mavrix, he hates you. Bring him fully here and you just make it easier for him to squash you flat."

"This is the course of which you spoke when we met in the southern marches of your holding. A desperate one, if you ask me," Aragis said. But past that, he did not try to dissuade Gerin. Mavrix was not angry at him . And if the Sithonian god of wine did destroy the Fox in some lingering, interesting, and creative way, no one would be better positioned to take advantage of it than the grand duke.

Gerin tried to answer both men at once: "Mavrix will come, whether we want that or not. If we try to stand against it, he'll find more reasons to be angry. If we aid his path, we may satisfy him and still accomplish what we want. If not, we still may be able to control him." He looked at Selatre again.

She nodded. Voice hesitant at first, she said, "At the same time as lord Gerin evokes Mavrix, I—I shall try to bring into the world Biton, my former patron, my former—bridegroom." Even with her swarthiness, her cheeks darkened in embarrassment. But she went on, "Biton the farseeing is a god of order, of forethought, the opposite of most things Mavrix stands for. And Biton is old in the northlands, old. His power is rooted here, not new-come like Mavrix's. It may be that he can keep the lord of the sweet grape from the excesses that can accompany his rite."

"But, lass," Van said gently, "after what befell at Ikos, will the god hearken to your evoking?"

Selatre bit her lip. She'd asked the same question, just as morning twilight began to paint the eastern horizon with gray. "I don't know," she answered. "The only way to find out is to make the attempt."

"What if Biton won't come when you call him?" Aragis said. "What then?"

"Then we're left with Mavrix—undiluted," Gerin said after a moment seeking the right way to put it. "We'd be no worse off than if we didn't try to evoke Biton at all." No better off, either , his mind jeered, but he resolutely ignored his own gloomy side.

Aragis stuck out his chin. "I insist that you don't seek to bring the gods into the world until you fulfill your half of our agreement. If they wreak havoc on you, I'll also suffer on that account."

"But if we can persuade them to do as we'd like, we might be able to rid the land of monsters without any more fighting," Gerin said. "Have you thought on that, grand duke? Not just driving the creatures back into the woods so they're a lesser nuisance, but actually being rid of them for good and all. We can't make that happen; we're mere mortals. But the gods can do it, if they will. A risk, aye. But if things go as we design . . ."