Robert Asprin - Wings of Omen

"I hear your challenge," he heard Savankala saying. "Do you not understand that I may not honor it? Destiny has determined that these conflicts among us will be settled by mortals, not by gods. Are you not at all afraid of destiny- of the Power of Many Names that sits in darkness above the houses of all the gods, Rankan and Ilsig and Beysib alike? Will you defy that power?"

"Yes!"

"That is sad. You as a goddess, and supposedly a wise one, should know that you cannot...."

"Wisdom! Wisdom has gotten me nowhere!"

"Yes," Savankala remarked drily, "I can see that...."

Harran was trapped in a terrible serenity, a clarity that refused to admit fear. He knew he would have to sacrifice that clarity shortly. But in the meantime Savankala and Siveni sounded exactly like any two people arguing in the Bazaar, and Harran could tell that Savankala was stalling for time, waiting for Harran to do something. The message had been clear enough. These conflicts among us will be settled by mortals....

His hand, or the loss of it, had taught him well and quickly. No hatred was worth pain-not so much as a cut finger's worth. And certainly no hatred was worth death. Not his hatred... not Siveni's.

"Then, hide in your hole, old god," Siveni said bitterly. "There's no honor in winning this way, but I can put honor aside for winning's sake. Your temple first. Then your precious people."

She raised her spear, and lightnings wreathed the spearhead.

"No," someone said behind her.

She turned in amazement, stared at him. Harran stared back as best he could, equally astonished that he had spoken and that those ferocious gray eyes didn't blast him down where he stood. What is she staring at? he thought, and suspected the answer-while at the same time refusing to think of it. The less memory of his own almost-godhood he carried away with him into either life or death, the better. "Goddess," Harran said, "You are my own good lady, but I tell you that if you move against Sanctuary's people, I'll

stop you."

Siveni swung on him. "With what?" she cried, enraged, and swung the spear at him. Harran had no idea what to do. Against the first blow he raised the maimed arm, and the lightnings went crackling away around him to strike the paving stones. But the second blow and the third came immediately, and then more, a flurry of blows that swiftly beat down Harran's feeble guard. And after them came the bolt that struck him to the street-a blow enough like death to be mistaken for it. Harran's last thought as he went down burned and blinded, was that she would have been something to see with a sword. Then thought departed from him, and his soul fled far away.

Somewhere in Sanctuary, a dog howled.

And an odd dark shape that had skulked along through the shadows behind the man and the goddess leapt shrieking out of those shadows, and full onto Siveni.

The sound of crashing in the street was what woke Harran finally. A hellish sound it was, enough to wake the dead, as he certainly reckoned himself; stones cracking, lightning frying the air, angry cries-and a hoarse voice he knew. In that moment, before he managed to open his eyes, it became perfectly plain who trailed him here from the Stepsons' barracks; what dark form had slipped away from him as he drew the circle around Siveni's temple, and had been trapped within the spell-so that it had worked on her as well.

Harran raised himself up from the stones to see the image that, ever after, would make him turn away from companions or leave crowded rooms when he thought of it.

There was the goddess in her radiant robes-but those robes had dirt on them, from falls she had taken in the street; and four hands were struggling on the haft of her spear. Even as Harran looked up, the wiry shape wrestling with Siveni wrenched the spear out of her grasp and threw it clattering down the Avenue of Temples, spraying random lightning bolts around it. Then Mriga sprang on Siveni again, all skinny arms and legs as always-but with something added: a frightening, quick grace about her movements. Purpose, Harran thought in fascination and shock. She knows what she's doing! And he smiled... seeing another aspect of the spell that he might have suspected if he were an artiste rather than merely competent. The spell infallibly retrieved what was lost... even lost wits.

The goddess and the mortal girl rolled on the ground together, and there was little difference between them. They both shone, blazing lightlessly with rage and godhead. The goddess had more experience fighting, perhaps, but Mriga had the advantage of a strength not only divine but insane. And there might be other advantages to a life's worth of insanity as well. Mriga's absorption of godhead would not be hampered by ideas about gods, or about mortals not being gods. She took what power came to her, and used it, uncaring. She was using it now; she had Siveni pinned. Their struggle brought her around to where she suddenly saw Harran looking at her. That look did strike him like lightning, though he would not have traded the pain of it for anything. Mriga saw him. And in four quick, economical gestures, she stripped Siveni's bright helm off, flung it clanging down the avenue, and then took hold of Siveni's head by the long dark hair and whacked it hard against the stones. Siveni went limp.

He never had needed to show her anything more than once....

The street fell blessedly silent. Harran sat up on the stones-it was the best he could manage at the moment; his night was catching up to him. More than just his night. For there was Mriga, limping over to him, still halt as before-but there was a kind of grace even to that, now. He wanted to hide his face. But he was still enough of a god not to.

"Harran," she said in the soft husky voice that he had never heard do anything but grunt.

Harran was still mortal enough not to be able to think of a thing to say.

"I want to stay like this," she said. "I'll have to go back with her before dawn, if the change is to take."

"But-it was only supposed to be temporary-"

"For an ordinary mortal, I suppose so. But I'm not ordinary. It will take for me." She smiled at him with a merry serenity that made Harran's heart ache; for it was very like what he had expected, dreamed of, from Siveni. "If you approve, that is...."

"Approve?!" He stared at her-at Her, rather; there was no doubt of it anymore. Moment by moment she was growing more divine, and looking at her hurt his eyes as even Siveni had only at the beginning. "What in the worlds do you need my approval for?!"

Mriga looked at him with somber pleasure. "You are my love," she said, "and my good lord."

"Good-" He would have sickened with the irony, had the terrible, growing glory of her presence not made such a response impossible. "I used you-"

"You fed me," Mriga said. "You took care of me. I came to love you. The rest didn't matter then; and it doesn't now. If I loved you as a mortal-how should I stop as a goddess?"

"You're still crazy!" Harran cried, almost in despair.

"It would probably look that way," said Mriga, "to those who didn't know the truth. You know better."

"Mriga, for pity's sake, listen to me! I took advantage of you, again and again! I used a goddess-"

She reached out, very slowly, and touched his face; then took the hand back again. "As for that business," she said, "I alone shall judge the result. I alone am qualified. If you've done evil... then you've also paid. Payment is now, is it not? Would you believe you've spent five years paying for what you were doing during those five years? Or would you put it down to a new goddess's craziness?"

"Time..." Harran whispered.

"It has an inside and an outside," Mriga said. "Outside is when you love. Inside is everything else. Don't ask me more." She looked up at the paling sky. "Help me with poor Siveni."