Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

True, she'd come to love him and he her, but what was that brief brightness when measured against the course for which her life had been designed? Now that she had the chance to return to that course, how could he blame her if she chose to take it?

Truth was, he couldn't. Having her go back to Ikos would tear him worse inside than he'd been torn when Elise left him. No matter what he'd felt about Elise, she'd no longer cared for him, else she'd not have gone. But he knew Selatre loved him still, as he'd come to love her. Only being certain she would be happier back at Ikos let him bear up under the thought of losing her. Even with that certainty, it was hard, hard.

Biton turned his farseeing eyes on Selatre. "You say nothing. Are you not honored, are you not pleased, that all shall be restored? Even as I speak to you, the shrine at Ikos returns to its proper state. It awaits your coming."

"Of course I am honored, lord Biton," she answered, very softly. "Whether I am pleased . . . Lord, have you the power to see what might be as well as what shall be?"

For a moment, Biton seemed a stone pillar to Gerin, and altogether unfathomable. Then he resumed his human appearance. "Even for me, a god, this is difficult," he replied, his voice troubled. "So many paths branch off from the true one, and then from one another, that losing oneself grows quickly easier the farther ahead one seeks to see. Why do you ask?"

"Because I would have you look down the path I would choose for myself," Selatre said. "You are a god; if you wish your will to be done, done it shall be. How can I, who shall live for a little and then die, oppose it? But—" She did not go on. Even thinking of declining an honor a god would confer on her took something special in the way of courage.

It also filled Gerin with hope as wild and desperate as his despair had been a moment before.

Biton's head began its boneless spin. This time it did not just revolve, but also grew misty, so Gerin could see the far wall of the shack through it. The farseeing god searched for what seemed a very long time; now and again, he would almost disappear altogether. Gerin started when Biton fully returned.

"You may live your life as you will," the god told Selatre. "My Sibyl is my bride, not my slave. I shall mark another, one who will be willing to serve me. I shall not tell you what may spring from your choice, but I say this: as with any other, make the best of it. And a word of warning—for mortals, there is no such thing as living happily ever after."

"I know that, lord Biton. Thank you. I will try to make the best of it." Selatre started to prostrate herself to the god, but Biton disappeared before her knees could touch the ground.

She and Gerin and Rihwin stared at one another, dazed. "I think we may have won," Gerin said in a voice that sounded disbelieving even to him. Then he remembered something more important to say than that. He turned to Selatre. "Thank you. I'll try never to make you sorry for choosing me over, over—" For one of the few times in his life, words failed him. She'd known what she was giving up. At last, huskily, he managed, "I love you."

"I've noticed that," she said, and smiled at his startled expression. "It's why I chose to stay with you, after all. You love me, while for Biton I'd just be—oh, not a tool, not quite, maybe something more like a favorite pet. It's not enough, not now that I've known better." Her own voice went soft. "And I love you, which did, mm, enter into my thinking." She smiled again, this time with a touch of mischief.

Rihwin said, "We have two jars of the blood of the sweet grape here, waiting—indeed, all but crying—to be drunk in celebration of our triumph."

"How right you are, my fellow Fox." Gerin picked up the jar they'd opened to summon Mavrix—and poured it out over Rihwin's head. The red-purple wine splashed him and Selatre, too, but it drenched Rihwin, which was what he'd had in mind. The southerner spluttered and squawked and flapped his arms—which just splattered the wine more widely—and rubbed at his eyes. Gerin didn't doubt they stung fiercely—and didn't regret what he'd done, either.

"A waste, a criminal waste," Rihwin said, sucking at his mustache so as to swallow every precious drop he could. "Had it not been for my wine-bibbing, we would not have seen the northlands freed from the vicious and horrible curse of the monsters."

"Had it not been for your wine-bibbing," Gerin said grimly, "we wouldn't have had to put our fate in the hands of two gods, one of whom was already angry at me and the other ready to get angry because I'd taken his voice on earth as my woman. Aye, it turned out well. That's not why I gave you the one jar of wine as I did—it was for forcing us to take such a dreadful chance." He picked up the other, unopened jar. "Because we succeeded, this one is yours to do with as you will."

Rihwin bowed, dripping still. "You are a lord among lords, my fellow Fox."

"What I am is bloody tired of having to worry every moment of every day," Gerin said. "The gods willing"—a phrase that took on new and urgent meaning after the evocation—"I'll have maybe three days of peace now before the next thing, whatever it is, goes horribly wrong. Come on, let's tell Aragis and the rest what we've done here today."

Along with Van and Fand and Drago and Marlanz and Faburs, Aragis the Archer stood at what Gerin thought of as a "safe" distance from the shack. The word was a misnomer, of course. Had the gods truly released their wrath, nowhere in the northlands would have been far enough from Fox Keep to escape—as the monsters had discovered.

Everyone pointed and exclaimed when they came forth. Fand's voice pierced through the rest: "Did the sot spill the wine and wreck your magic, now?"

"Not a bit of it," Gerin answered. "We summoned the gods, and the monsters are no more."

That raised the hubbub quite a bit higher than it had been. Van said, "But how can it be, Captain? You only just went in there."

"What? Are you witstruck?" Gerin demanded. "We were in the shack an hour at least, more likely two." He looked to Selatre and Rihwin for confirmation. They both nodded.

Without a word, Aragis pointed up into the sky. Gerin's eyes followed the track of the grand duke's finger toward the sun. He had to look away, blinking, but not before his jaw dropped in astonishment. By the sun's place in the sky, a couple of minutes might have passed, but no more.

"I don't understand it," he said, "but I was telling the truth, too. I suppose the bigger truth is, when you treat with gods, you can't expect the world they know to be the ordinary one we usually live in."

Aragis said, "I think you had better tell me in detail all that came to pass in there. I warn you, I am not satisfied with what you have said so far. It strikes me as likely to be a ploy to keep from having to honor your share of our terms of alliance. Are you saying the monsters are simply gone, thus?" He snapped his fingers.

"Let's go into the great hall and broach some ale, and I'll tell you everything I remember," Gerin said.

Rihwin held out the jar of wine Gerin had given him. "No, let's share this," he said. "As Mavrix is part of the tale, so should he also be part of the explanation." That made sense, but hearing it from Rihwin surprised Gerin. For his fellow Fox to share wine he could have kept for himself was not far from a revolution in human nature, and confirmed that something extraordinary had indeed happened inside the hut.

Divided among so many—and with a libation to the lord of the sweet grape—the one jar of wine did not go far, but Gerin savored every sweet drop; when he'd evoked Mavrix, he'd hardly tasted what he'd drunk. Aided by Selatre and the wine-soaked Rihwin, he explained everything that had passed in the hut.