Harry Turtledove - Fox and Empire

The Sibyl looked something like Selatre-not close enough to be near kin, but plainly of the same blood. She eyed Gerin with curiosity; perhaps the priest had told her who he was-no reason for her to remember his face, with his last visit five years in the pastand reminded her that he was wed to the woman who'd preceded her on the Sibyl's throne. Was she wondering what that would be like?

If she was, she didn't show it. "You have your question?" she asked the Fox.

"I do," he answered. "Here it is: how may the Empire of Elabon be made to give up its claims to the northlands and withdraw its forces south over the High Kirs?" He'd phrased it carefully, not asking what he could do to make that happen. Perhaps it would happen without him. Perhaps it would not happen at all. He forced himself to shove that thought aside.

He had scarcely uttered the last word when the Sibyl stiffened. She thrashed on the throne, limbs splayed awkwardly. Her eyes rolled up in her head till only the whites showed. When she spoke again, it was not in her own voice, but in Biton's, a deep, virile baritone:

"The foe is strong, up to no good To rout him will take bronze and wood.

You must not find the god you seek:

'Twould make your fate a sour reek.

They snap and float and always trouble,

But without them fortune turns to rubble."

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As soon as Ferdulf left the temple compound, he hopped into the air and let out a luxurious sigh of relief. "My feet were getting tired," he said, and then, to Gerin, "Well, was that obscure enough to suit you?"

"And to spare," the Fox answered. "I've had difficult omens from Biton and the Sibyl before, but never one close to that."

"As best I could see, it was meaningless, not difficult," Dagref said.

"But can you see as far as the farseeing god?" Gerin asked.

Dagref only shrugged. Adiatunnus said, "I'm with the colt, lord king. When you hear summat without plain sense in it, more often the reason is that it's senseless than too clever for words, I'm thinking."

More often than not, Gerin would have made the same argument. Here, he said, "I've seen Biton be right a good many times when everyone would have thought he was wrong. I'm not going to say he's wrong here, not now."

"Why do we hope we don't find a god?" Van demanded. "If we're seeking one, shouldn't we hope we do find him?"

"And which god would you be seeking?" Adiatunnus added. " ' Twouldn't be Biton his own self, or we're ruined or ever we start. But he wouldna say who it was, did you see?"

"Obscure. Ferdulf had the right word for it," Gerin said. "Sooner or later, we will have the meaning laid out before us."

"Aye, likely when it's too late to do us any good," Van said.

"That is the way of oracles sometimes," the Fox agreed. "But you never know till you try."

"And now that we have gone and tried and got nothing to speak of for it, what are we to be doing next?" Adiatunnus asked. "Shall we bring our army through the valley of Ikos?-on the promise we willna linger, mind."

"I don't want to do that," Gerin said. "I don't think the god wants us to do that. If it's that or stay out and be destroyed, then I might, but not before. I still have a fighting chance of beating the imperials, and no one who opposes a god straight up will do anything but lose."

"You say that," Dagref said, "you who have probably outdone more gods in more different ways than anyone else alive."

"But never straight up," Gerin said. "The way to deal with gods is to trick them, or else to make them do what you want by showing them it gives them some advantage, too, even if that's just that it lets them score off a rival; or else to use a rival either to beat the god who's angry at you or to distract the other god so he doesn't care about you any more."

"That's what you did with the Gradi gods," Dagref said, and Gerin nodded.

"So it is," he answered. "The brawl I got them into has worked out better-which is to say, it's lasted longer-than I ever dared hope."

"Puts me in mind of something that happened to me a good many years ago, back in my wandering days," Van said as they waited for the attendants to bring back their chariots.

"Probably something that didn't happen," Ferdulf said, "if it's anything like most of your stories."

Van glared at him. "I ought to pop you like the blown-up pig's bladder you are," he growled.

Ferdulf rose into the air. "I am the son of a god, and you would be wise to remember it, lest we discover who pops whom." He was not much more than half as tall as the outlander, and couldn't possibly have weighed a quarter as much, but that little body held power of a different sort from Van's brute strength.

Glaring still, Van said, "I don't care whose son you are, you bigmouthed little weed-I'd like to see you show that even one of my stories, even one, mind you, has the smallest bit of falsehood in it."

Ferdulf fell a few inches, a sign of dismay or chagrin. "How am I supposed to show that?" he demanded. "I wasn't born yet when you were having these adventures you tell lies about, and I haven't been to the preposterous places where you had them."

"Then why don't you shut up?" Van asked sweetly. "Why don't you shut up before you open your mouth so wide, you fall right in?"

Now Ferdulf glared. Before he could say anything, Adiatunnus said, "I'm fain to hear the outlander's tale. He's never dull, say what else you will of him." His comrades nodded; Van's stories had long been popular along the border.

"Shall I go on, then?" Van asked. When even Ferdulf did not say no, go on he did: "This was out in the Weshapar country, east of Kizzuwatna and north of Mabalal. The Weshapar have the most jealous god in the world. He's so crazy, he won't even let them call him by his name, and he has the nerve to claim he's the only real god in the whole wide world."

"Foosh, what a fool of a god he is," Adiatunnus than. "What does he think of the gods of the folk who are lucky enough not to be after worshiping him?"

"He thinks they aren't real at all-that the people around the Weshapar country are imagining them," Van answered.

"Well! I like that!" Ferdulf said indignantly. "I'd like to fly over his temple and piss on it from on high. Maybe he would think that was his imagination, too. Or else I could-"

"Do you want to say what you would do, or do you want to hear what this god and I did do?" Van gave Mavrix's son a dirty look. The attendants fetched the chariots then; everyone but Ferdulf got into them. He floated along beside the one Dagref drove.

"Oh, go on." Now Ferdulf sounded very much like his father, which is to say, petulant.

"Thank you, most gracious demigod." From living with Gerin, Van had learned to be sardonic when it suited him. It didn't suit him very often, which made him more dangerous when it did. While Ferdulf sputtered and fumed, the outlander went on, "This god of the Weshapar put me in mind of a jealous husband. He was always sneaking around keeping an eye on his people to make sure they didn't worship anyone but him, and-"

"Wait," Dagref said. "If this strange god said none of the other gods around him was real, how could people worship them? They wouldn't be worshiping anything at all. Logic."

"I don't think this god ever heard of logic, and I'm starting to wish I'd never heard of you," Van said. "Between you and Ferdulf, we' ll be all the way back with the rest of the army before I'm through. Anyhow, there I was, on the way through the Weshapar country-it's hills and rocks and valleys, hot in the summer and cold as all get-out in the winter-trading this for that, doing a little fighting on the side to help keep myself in food and trinkets, when one of the Weshapar chieftains got on the wrong side of this god."