Robert Asprin - Blood Ties

Harran's heart turned over in him. Not jealousy-of course not-but concern. Through the bond among them she could feel, too often, a clear cool regard turned on Molin Torchholder, a sense of vast amusement, vast satisfaction. And Siveni held a grudge better than anyone else alive. "Eh," Grian said, nudging him again. "You be careful, huh? Life's hard enough."

"Grian," Harran said, surprising himself-perhaps it was the wine-"have you ever been in a situation where you got everything you wanted, everything-and then you found out it's no good?"

Grian looked in mild perplexity at Harran and scratched his head. "Been so long since I got anything I wanted," he said softly, "I couldn't say, I'm sure. You got trouble at home?"

"Sort of," said Harran, and held himself quiet by main force for several minutes, letting Grian drink. He had started this whole thing. The thought of bringing an Ilsig goddess back into the world to set things to rights, that had been his idea. And the later, crazier idea of serving that goddess personally the stuff of fantasies-had been his idea, too. His idea it had been to bring a little knife-whetting idiot-stray home from the Bazaar as servant and casual bedwarmer. Now the idiot was sane, and not very happy; and the goddess was here, and mortal, and even less happy; and his dog was in hell, and though she was fairly happy, she missed him-and he missed her fiercely. And Harran himself was not completely mortal any more, and was also the cause of all of them having the promise of heaven snatched out from under their noses. His fault, all his fault. In this world where death wins all the fights and things run down, his fantasies had accomplished themselves and then promptly turned into muck.

Something had to be done.

Something would be done. He would do it.

"I have to go," he said. "Keep the wine."

"Hey, hey, what about these cord-twins here I been saving in pickle for you? Fastened together in the funniest place, now you come look a moment-"

But Harran was already gone.

"Here now," Grian shouted after him, rather hopelessly, "you forgot your chicken!"

Grian sighed, finished the wine, and picked up his paunch-ing knife again.

"Oh, well. Soup tonight. Eh, chickie?"

The three did not meet at lunchtime, and dinner turned out to be very late. It was midnight when Siveni came in, all over dust and grime, and sat down at the table with one short leg and stared at it moodily. Mriga and Harran were in bed. She ignored them.

"Eat something, for pity's sake," Harran said from under the covers. "It's on the kettlehook."

"I am not hungry," Siveni said.

"Then do come to bed," said Mriga.

"I don't want that either."

Harran and Mriga looked at one another in mild astonishment. "That's a first."

Siveni shrugged off her goatskin and threw it over a chair. "What's the use of losing my virginity," she said, "if I keep getting it back every morning?"

"Some people would kill for that," said Mriga.

"Not me. It hurts, and it's getting to be a bore. If I'd known what being a virgin goddess was going to mean down here, I would have gone out for being a fertility deity instead."

Mriga sat up in bed, wrapped a sheet around her, and swung her legs over the edge. "Siveni," she said, very quietly, "has it occurred to you that maybe we're not really goddesses anymore?"

Siveni looked up, not at Mriga, but at the poor mouldering mural, where Eshi danced in her gauze, and Us was godly-splendid, and everything was youth and luxury and divine merriment. The look was deadly. "Then why," Siveni said, just as quietly, "do we share this wretched heartbond, like good trinities do, so that all day I can hear you both thinking how unhappy you are, and how sorry for me you are, and how you miss the dog, and how we're trapped here forever?"

Harran sat up, too, tossing the other end of the sheet across his lap. "We're something new, I think," he said. "A mixture. Divine without being in heaven, mortal without-"

"I want to go back."

The words fell into silence.

"After this job," she said. "Harran, I'm sony. I'm not one of those dying-and rebom gods who makes the corn come up, and shuttles back and forth between being mortal and divine; I'm just not! It's not working for me! I've been fighting it, but the truth is that I was made for a place where my thought becomes fact in a second, where I shine, where I'm worth praying to. I was made to have power. And now I don't have it, and you're all suffering for my lack." She sat down against the table. It shifted under her weight, and the broken bit of dish propping the short leg crunched and broke with a sound that made them all start.

"I've got to go back," she said; Mriga looked unhappily at her. "How?" she said. "Nothing's working. You can't make so much as heat lightning these days."

"No," Siveni said. "But have we tried anything really large?"

"After what happened to Ischade..."

Siveni shrugged, a cold gesture. "She has her own problems. They don't necessarily apply to us."

"And Stormbringer..." Harran said.

Siveni cursed. The dust on the table began to smoke slightly with the vehemence of it. Siveni noticed it and smiled, approving. "Come on, Harran," she said. "The situation was no different when you called me out of heaven, and Savankala and the wretched Rankene gods were running things. You brought me out in their despite. This new god is too busy chasing Mother Bey to care a whit about us hedge-gods." The smile took on a bitter cast. "And why should He care what we're doing? We'd be leaving his silly city, not meddling with it further. I think He'll be glad to see the back of us."

"We," Harran said, and looked sober all of a sudden.

Both Mriga and Siveni looked at him in shock. "Surely you'd be coming with us," Mriga said.

Harran said nothing for a moment.

"Harran!"

"There is nothing here for you," Siveni said. "You've thought it a hundred times, you've cried about it when you thought we don't notice. You've seen hell, you've glimpsed heaven through us; how can mortal things possibly satisfy you anymore? Any more than they satisfy me? Or you," she said, looking at Mriga.

Mriga stared at the floor.

"Come on!" Siveni said, sounding a touch desperate. "You were bom a clubfooted idiot, you went through a whole life being used as a slave or a pincushion, living like a beast-and what do you do that's better now? You grind knives in the Bazaar as you always did, and take a little copper for it, but where's the joy in that? Where's the life you were going to lead with him in the Fields Beyond? All the peace, the joy? You expect that in Sanctuary?"

Harran and Mriga looked at each other. "There's something to be said for life," Harran said, as if doubting the words as they came out. "In heaven everything bends to suit you. Here, you bend-but you come back stronger sometimes-"

"Or you break," said Siveni.

Silence. The firelight and candlelight wavered on the mural; Eshi seemed to sway a little.

"I'm going back," Siveni said. "I know the spells. I wrote them. And you two-are you going to sit here and be miserable for all your short lives, on the off chance that it'll make you stronger?"

Mriga let out a long breath. "Harran?"

His eyes were for Siveni, as they had been so many times before, in statuary or the flesh. "I wanted you," he said.

They waited.

"It does seem selfish to want it all my way," he said. "All right. We'll try it."

Mriga sat back down on the bed. Siveni shifted her weight again, and again the table crunched and sagged.

"When will the Wall be done?" Harran said.

"Weeks yet," Siveni said, looking thoughtful. "It must be done before the frost sets in, or the mortar won't set. But they have the plans. They hardly need me to complete them." And she began to laugh softly, so that the table creaked.