Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods) (35 page)

"There was this girl, Rustle Neverdoubt. She told us about it, and said she could do something
else
that might work." Jin's youngest, Aero, spoke up.

"Ah," Dydit nodded. "That explains all the high voices. Yes. A whole lot better. The oldest of the Rip Crossing Goat Boys are getting quite strong. They're twenty-two now." He gathered his thoughts. "Well. Scoone. As you might imagine, it was a rather poisonous place, the back stabbing tended to be magical, and everyone hated the Tyrant Wizard Nihility. So, a whole bunch of the other factions decided to join forces
to take him down. Now sixty-to-one sounds pretty impressive, but in fact the Tyrant took out the leaders of the main factions, the seven strongest wizards, in a single long afternoon of magical battle all over the damn city. I was still an apprentice, at twenty-three I'd regrown all my parts and thought I was hot stuff. Young men who had to get someone else to help them regrow their nads were considered weaklings, failures. Anyhow, I was apprenticed to the leader of the conspiracy, and to keep him from using me and my magical abilities, I got taken out too.

"And the way Tyrant did it was to ensorcel us with a whole constellation of spells, the top one of which was a transformation spell. We were all turned into goats. Big, black, nasty, goats.

"The rest of the conspirators managed to get a chain spell on the Tyrant, and then they wrapped him up in more spells. One of the spells was a doozy. It would turn him into a drooling moron. But it started really slowly, so he could feel his intelligence leaking away, bit by bit. 

"Then they threw him in the dungeon to enjoy watching his brains leak away, and got down to splitting the spoils and fighting with each other.

"Before the 'stupid' spell had time to get a hold on him, the Tyrant escaped. But instead of jumping back into the fight, he quit. He just turned and walked away from it all. And he took his eight black goats with him. The people of Scoone were so enraged by the way the new tyrants ruled that they revolted and killed the rest of the wizards."
And themselves, when the city burned.

That got a fair stir from the kids.

"Now, some time before all that, some of the gods had decided that interfering with people's lives was harmful, not helpful, and they'd withdrawn to a beautiful little valley, the far side of the mountains. The Tyrant Wizard walked all the way there with his goats, to ask the gods to remove the spells from him. But they couldn't. The gods are powerful, but not
much
more powerful than the most powerful wizard. And they tend to study the creation of things, not destruction or magical battle. They could not break the spells put on the Tyrant by sixty of the most powerful wizards in the World.

"So the Tyrant sank down into imbecility, and he and his Black Goats herded sheep
. For. Eight. Centuries." He let them think about that much time for a long moment. "Then, in the last full up war with Auralia, eighty something years ago, the other magic users, the witches and mages, were mostly killed.

"A few refugees, four witches and two mages and their wives, found the gods' valley. They were safe there, and raised families and had very little to do with the outside World.

"Now, the Wizards of Scoone were, umm, dandies. They did things artistically, with fancy flourishes, showing off, you know?" Nods all around. "They didn't realize that deflowering virgins was a useful, but crude and random, method of breaking spells. Until the imbecilic sheep herder who used to be the most powerful wizard in the World fell in love with a young witch, and won her heart and body."
Close enough for a fairy tale.
"The Tyrant breaking his
stupid
spell got them thinking about breaking their own spells. The Tyrant was no longer an imbecile, but he was still chained. The Chain spell contains magic, prevents the power from flowing in, or out, so spells have no force behind them. Fortunately the valley was fresh out of virgins, and the Tyrant was paying attention to what they were doing, so the goat wizards had to wait for their chance." Oh, yeah, he had their attention. "Now, I'd really like to skip a whole bunch of really embarrassing details. But I suppose you deserve the whole tale. Umm, briefly, there was a party.
Everybody
got drunk. Including the Tyrant. So the goats found two young girls, just turned sixteen, and their boyfriends, who were even younger . . . Well, three of the goats freed themselves of the spell controlling them, and the head goat
also
broke the goat spell. They ran off and caused some problems, and next thing you know the Church of Ba'al is organizing a small Army to burn this village to the ground, goats and witches included."

"Now gods . . . gods are
strange
people. They don't think about things the way we do, their memories are full of holes and . . . well, despite anything, they are
people
. Very powerful and dangerous people, when they go bad. And Ba'al was bad. And weird. One thing the worshipers often did was take vows of chastity. So when a hundred of these men showed up to fight, well, there were quite a few virgins among them."

"The vil
lagers, gods, witches, mages, the wizard tyrant, four hundred stampeding sheep, and five goats who stopped to rape every virgin soldier they could find . . . Well, it wasn't your usual battle." Giggles from the audience. "In the end all the goats escaped. Now Maleth—the head goat—stuck around Ash, wanting to take revenge on the Tyrant, and got killed by the Inquisitor General of the bigger army Ba'al sent next.

"The other six wizards ran off, and Captain Genero can tell you more about what they did than I can.
I
ran off the other direction, and the Tyrant tracked me down and said that since Maleth was dead, and couldn't make me do things, I was free and removed all rest of the spells. I wound up going back to Ash with him, and learning proper wizarding. I'm sort-of-married to a witch, we have three children, Rustle is the eldest, and has, as you know, worked out some ways around the castration, for young wizards."

"Can you take it off?"

"Yes. I'd recommend you all wait until you're older though. Twenty-two, twenty-three, something like that." Dydit shrugged. "It is your choice. I understand how you feel about it, the other boys are bragging about girlfriends, shaving, got deep voices and all that. But in the next three or four years you can hold power in your hands." He cupped his hands and gathered a ball of light. "Will you be a strong enough wizard for it to be worth a few more years of teasing? I think so, but that's something you need to decide for yourselves.

"I'm going to drop down to Lucky Strike, and help set up a patrol head-quarters for the Army,
make some other deliveries, then most likely I'll be back. Or you can go to Ash, or to Rip Crossing, where our Goat Boys—both male and female, by the way—have moved, along with some other people from Ash, including some witches, if you've any girls in the area that think they might have power." That brought a faint stir from the outskirts of the crowd. "Wizards collect power from Fire. We're fairly powerless at night. Meet me here in the morning, and I'll show you some basic gathering techniques. You'll have about a month to practice, to think it over, then I'll be back."

And then you'll have a bit over a year to get trained up for the End of the World.

1374
Summer Solstice

Ash

"
A mother of twins needs a more civilized venue to recover in." Rustle told the new mother. "Not to mention Verse and Whoop want to be further away from the ruins. We can take the corridors to Ash, and live in the Tavern for awhile."

Ask looked relieved. "I thought I had plenty of time to get back there before . . . " She beamed down at her double armful of babies. "And this way you can get more lessons with gods and wizards.
"

"And Ver
se and Whoop can get some Half Moon training." Rustle stepped out to explain the plan to the others, and found them already packed.

The Rip Crossing witches were
promptly invited to join the Mt. Frost Pyramid's Solstice celebration. Whoop and Verse walked up with the rest of the Half Moon witches. Carrying a light-weight folded metal frame attached to one end of a corridor with them.

Ask, two weeks after delivering twins,
had refused to even think of the almost two week hike. And Rustle stayed behind to experiment with manipulating corridors. It was possible to pull one corridor through another, and another, and another . . . then giving it a good shake to knock it loose and have it snap into the shortest route. All without damaging the original corridors. Harry huffed and hurummed, then helped her set up a direct route, Ash to New Tokyo. "I didn't know you could do things like that with the corridors. The possibilities for setting up new routes . . . " He stomped off, muttering.

The Auld Wulf just
laughed and let Xen and his three pups show him through the new corridor.

Rustle and Ask swapped grins, and they popped through Whoop's corridor to join the witches
just one day's walk from the summit.

"Cheating." Answer
looked at Ask's twins, and softened a bit. "But it's good to have everyone here."

With two triads of Full Moons, Rustle held down a side of the spire by herself. Below her, Ask, Whoop, and Verse were together.
Ask sang the song of the new mother, Happy sang the Grandmother's song . . . it was a lovely night. Rustle stayed a bit remote from the other witches, ignored their whispers and glances. Stopped Whoop when she turned to confront someone who'd whispered something about a Black Widow.

"It doesn't matter
any more. Remember the beauty of the night, and let the rest of it just . . . not touch you."

Ask snorted. "
You
can do that. We're a bit more ordinary, and their stupidity hurts."

"Bah. You guys ought to go off and socialize. Look at
all the kids, let's see. The three year olds are Cost's and Zenith's, and they both look a lot like Havi for some odd reason." They all snickered. "The two year olds are Xanthic's and Ultra's right? Then the toddlers. You two had babies last year, plus Swish . . . Hmm, who else?"

Whoop snickered. "Ultra
, Cost, and Zenith each had another baby. I understand Answer was just about as mad at them as she was with you."

"Not possible."

Verse snickered, and patted her belly. "Fortunately our little bit of vice with Oscar and Bran didn't get broken up too soon. We're both expecting again, in the fall."

The next day the
witches started the hike down. Ask and Rustle slowly dropped back, and slipped quietly through to Ash. Rustle folded her end of the corridor shut, cutting off the thicker air here escaping into the lower pressure air at the far end. It made a fair breeze.
I ought to be able to do something with that . . .

"Old Gods. The twins are a month old. I shouldn't be so tired!" Ask laid the babies back down in their crib and flopped on the bed. "How did you manage to carry Xen all the way up and back?"

"He was eight months old. I was a whole lot more recovered than you are. And . . . I was stubborn and angry."

Ask shook her head. "You do stubborn and angry better than me, too."

Xen had been scooped up by the grandparents, puppies and all. Rumor had it that a certain goat had been seen showing the dogs the ins and outs of sheep herding, and how to deal with wolves. Rustle thought them a bit young for that, yet. But it meant she was free to travel back and forth to New Tokyo. Lefty and Gre were now doing the surveying, and occasionally drawing outside the upside down temple.

A week later, Oscar and Bran yelled for the God of Roads, and returned to Ash, accompanied by ten beautiful women and three former Eunuch former harem guards. They told a wild (and scandalous) tale about their travels with the God of Vice, and his encounter with the God of Peace. "So Edmund disappeared, leaving us holding the bag, and we ran for it," Bran finished up, to an overflowing audience in the Tavern.