Robert Asprin - Storm Season

Now she Saw for Hanse as she had before, and he was not all that happy with it. Nor was she, even in trance.

"I See you, darling boy, all nobly turned out in this finery, and I See a great light hosting y-oh! Oh, oh Hanse ... it is, it is He! Here is Hanse, aye, and here is He, Himself-Us, god of gods! And I See... ah! Hmp. I like not what else I See, for it is Mignue, my Mignue, with you and the Lord of Lords."

He nodded, frowning. That was her pet name for her daughter. He accepted that somehow Mignureal was a part of this... whatever this was.

"Ah! Here is Hanse with a sword, and wielding it well, well ... for a god, Hanse, soldierly Hanse I See... for a god, against a god!"

Against a god. Father Ils, what means this all? What would you make of me? And he had an idea: "Who... who gave me the sword?"

"A bas-no, no, a foster son. Ah-a stepson. Yes. A s-"

"And who gave me the clothing? Is that Mignureal?"

"Mignue? No, oh no, she is a good g-ah. I see her. Eshi! It is Eshi Herself who has given you this clothing, Han-" And she shuddered of a sudden, and sagged, and her eyes came alive to stare into his. "Hanse? Did I See? Was it of value?"

He nodded. He was unable to look other than grim. "You Saw, 0 Passionflower. This time I must owe you, beyond the binding coin." (Which she had already dropped into that warm crevasse she called her Treasure Chest.)

Eshi, Hanse thought. Eshi!

A jealous and passionate god, Ils created all the world, and from his bodily wastes He peopled it. The gods He created from his two extra toes, and the eons passed and the first-created challenged Ils. This was Gunder, and he lost. He was hurled to the earth. His daughter Shipri, though, was thrice-fair, and her the great Lord Ils spared-and couched. By him Shipri became All-mother; of him she bore Shils, and Anen, and Thufir, and the twins Shalpa and Eshi, their first daughter, and another; the god no one spoke of. Now Anen was called firstborn, for jealous, passionate Ils sinned; in rage he slew his firstborn son, Shils.

Eshi. Much spoken of She was, and prayed to as well, but it was little reverence she gained. Everyone knew that she was a sensuous beauty who sought out and had her way with each of her brothers, and indeed sought to bring to couch even her father. In that She failed; even Ils was not that passionate, and one sin for a god was enough.

Eshi was fond of jewellery, and so gemworkers took a manifestation of her as patron. She was known to love love, and thus lovers, of course. Cows were special to her, and so were cats. Her sign was the liver, which any child learned early was the seat of love and its younger sibling, infatuation. Eshi!

Aye, Hanse thought. She loves jewellery and thus the ring; cats are sacred to her and thus the stone: the eye of a cat. Somehow it was pleasant thus to find some small comfort of logic in all this that clearly had naught to do with logic. Gods! He was involved with the very gods!

Mignureal came along just as he was departing. She asked about the handsome clothing he carried! Obviously she had never seen it before, and Hanse blinked. His eyes swerved in her mother's direction. She was staring at her daughter.

"Into the house, Mignue," she said, with uncommon sharpness. "See to the preparation of the leeks and yeni-sprouts your father fetched home for dinner."

Hanse went away thoughtful and shaken while Moonflower sat staring at nothing. She was a mother, and she too was shaken, and passing nervous.

For Hanse the next twenty-six hours rode by on the backs of snails. He slept not well and his dreams were not for the repeating.

Attired in such a way as to arouse the envy of a successful merchant, Hanse completed his ascent to Eaglebeak just after the sun began sliding off the edge of the world. Continuing cautious and too apprehensive to hurry, he picked his way through a jumble of tumbled columns and jagged stones habited only by spiders and serpents, lizards and scorpions, a few snails, and the most insistent of scrubby plants. These owned Eaglebeak now, and Eaglenest. All here had been murdered long and long ago. They were said still to haunt the place, that merchant and his family. And so the hilltop and once-fine estate-house were avoided.

Even so a great portion of the manse stood, and some of it was even under roof. Green-bordered blue cloak fluttering, his emerald-hued tunic with its purfling of yellow gold an unwontedly soft caress on his thighs, Hanse approached a doorless entry. It yawned dark, and still the ancient dark stains splashed the jamb; the blood of murder. He cast many anxious looks this way and that, and he did not hurry. For once he was not pleased to go into shadows.

He was met and greeted. Not by Ils or a beauteous woman, either!

Oh she was female, all right, and indeed shapely in a warm deep pink, a long gown sashed with red and hemmed with silver. The dress was lovely and rich and her figure was lovelier than that but even so the most striking aspect of her was her face. She had none.

Hanse stopped very abruptly and stared. At nothing. It was as if his gaze somehow swerved away from the face of this woman who greeted him, putting forth one lovely smooth hand.

The hand was adorned with a single ring. Hanse recognized it. He had seen it yesterday, in the sky-aspiring temple of Ilshipri.

"Don't be fearful, Hanse of the Shadows, Chosen of Ilsig, Son of Shadows." It was a very nice voice, and unconditionally female.

"Of one who has no face on her? Oh, of course not!"

Her laughter was a stream of bright quicksilver in sunshine. "Choose a face then," she bade him, and proceeded to give him a choice.

The air shimmered above her shoulders and a head formed, and a face. It was not comforting. Hanse was looking at Lirain. Lirain, who had conspired with another against Kadakithis, and sought to use Hanse (and succeeded), and who was dead for her crime, and her pretty face gone with her. It disappeared now, to become the piquant features of the royal concubine who had been unlucky enough to be present the night he stole the Savankh from the Prince-Governor's own bedchamber. When last Hanse had seen this one she was bound as he'd left her. He could not even remember her na-oh. Taya. No matter. She was becoming someone else.

"Uh!"

That gasp was elicited by Taya's vanishing to be replaced by ... Moonflower! Aye, Moonflower, earrings, chins and all!

"No thank you," Hanse was able to say, and felt better for it.

Far more shocking was the next visage, one he recognized after a few moments of gaping. The woman he had seen murdered for her terror rod out by Fanner's Market, less than two months ago! Before he could protest, she had flickered away after the others, and Hanse swallowed. Now he gazed close upon a face he knew and had always wished could be closer. She was the smiling and truly beautiful daughter of Venerable Shafralain. Esaria her name, a girl of seventeen or eighteen-the Lady Esaria! A beauty he had watched and about whom he had entertained phantasies rather more than once or thrice.

"You know," Hanse blurted, with more breath than voice. "You bring out these faces from my own memory!"

Already Esaria was becoming Mignureal, sweet-faced Mignureal, who gazed serenely at him-and spoke.

"You are invited to dinner tomorrow night. You will be in no danger. Wear this clothing. The place is known to you. It is long unpeopled, and its water is a silver pool. The silver is your own, Son of the Shadow, Chosen of Ilsig."

And of course now he knew who his greeter was. It was not possible, but then none of it was.

"Whom shall I be to your eyes tonight, Son of Shadow?"

Hanse replied with surely a great stroke of genius, and made the most brilliantly diplomatic utterance of his life.

"The thrice-beauteous face of the Lady Eshi from the statue in the temple of Eshi Radiant," he said-