Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods) (38 page)

"I hear Pax dragged you into one of his messes, again. I was worried he might have gotten you hurt this time, there are some awfully rough people out there."

"Oh, Bah. I am seriously irritated at the man. What was he thinking?" she shrugged.

"Well, I'm glad you're al
l right. Will you come back to Ash?"

"No. Really, Harry, those arrogant witches." She paced the floor angrily.

"You need someone, Mercy. People to be around, help you, work for you. Actually, you might try Scoone. From what I've heard, you might get a rough welcome, but once they settled down a bit, you could politic all over them." He hesitated. "I . . . I suppose Grace was out somewhere when the comet hit?"

She frowned. "No. I shielded her. Ungrateful child, I should have named her Pity. She yelled at me for not bringing more people inside so I stuck her back
in a bubble."

"Umm." He shrugged. "You should hire some people. Gold is pretty valuable, it's the basis every country's coinage. Yeah, I know the gold standard is . . . well, the World got knocked back so far that it at least provided stability. You could sell some, set yourself up somewhere and hire people to do things."

"Things? What things do you think I need?"

Harry grinned. "Knowing you? You'd start a political party, some think tanks, buy out a newspaper in every major city . . . " he stopped when she laughed.

"Harry, you know me too well. I'll go check out this Scoone place. I recall the location of the first city in the colony."

"
Their main city now is about two hundred miles south of there. Start slowly and build up, they aren't used to the concepts you espouse." He blew her a kiss and traveled home. She was alive. Grace was alive. He hadn't dared ask further. Mercy was fierce in her defense of her possessions. She wasn't about to give up a daughter. He could only wait. If—when—Grace set foot on a road, he could protect her.
  Surely she's old enough now to escape from this woman, live a normal life.

He looked around his old tavern. "
So. If Mercy settles in Scoone, she'll . . ." He sighed. "God knows if she'll even think to protect it. I'll have to prod her a bit, once she's established. Romeau is still in and out of Cadent. But that still leaves most of the large cities of Auralia with no one but Pax to possibly help them. I wonder if he has any plans? Or maybe those Oners the Amma is so tight with, will do something."

***

The reaction of Scoone to the arrival of the Goddess of Mercy more than made up for the lack of reaction in Lucky Strike.

There was panic in the streets. There was the quick appearance of the police, followed shortly by some sort of citizen's militia, with match
ed jackets and ceremonial batons as their only weapons. There were oogling citizens, marching citizens, citizens throwing flaming torches at her shield. And finally, a clearing of the area directly in front of her temple, and the arrival of government officials, with all due pomp and ceremony.

She walked out to meet them.

She'd had time to recover from that horrible little adventure in the Boom Town. Really, Pax had fallen badly in her estimation. She should have known kidnapping teenage
boys
was a recipe for disaster. If Pax wanted some apprentices, he ought to post notices and ask for volunteers. But she was calm now, had meditated, fasted and washed that horrible scene from her mind. All that remained was the simple statement. "Father of one boy tracked us down, killed all the guards, Pax was injured, and traveled. I traveled." So much better than having a memory of the actual thing in one's head. So she was calm now, as she walked out to the shield.

There was a woman in the lead, a mixed group behind her. A quick impression of a majority female group cheered her enormously.

The woman stopped at the edge of her pavement. "By the Decree of the People, Ratified in 645: We do not allow wizards, witches or mages in Scoone. As President of Scoone, I ask you to leave peacefully."

A woman President? Mercy smiled benevolently, and augmented her voice. "I am the Goddess of Mercy. I am not a witch, not a wizard, nor a mage." She glowed at the people. It was a psychological effect, the collective conscious of the People
made
her a goddess, and the collective conscious could not fail to recognize her. Everywhere in sight, she could see people start to kneel. The President was strong, but her eyes widened in astonishment, and she dipped her head. And fumbled uncertainly with papers in her hands. "I, I don't think we have any laws about
goddesses
. But no churches! We don't allow churches. Bunch of money grubbing priests taking bread out of the mouths of children."

"Oh
, I think I'm going to like it here."

The people behind the President murmured, and one pressed forward. "We should have a vote, a Special Election."

137
4 Late Fall

Ash-
New Tokyo

Madder and Navy were beautiful little girls. Rustle felt the tug of maternal yearnings, and stomped on them hard.
Once we've dealt with the comet, I'll devote some time to chasing that man. God. Whatever.

They settled cozily into the Tavern, resisting invitations to move back into various relatives homes.

Rustle found herself swapping around between several triads of witches. And fitting nowhere.

When the cold weather set in, and the Ash witches got irritating, they
packed up all the kids, took the corridor to Rip Crossing, and celebrated the solstice at their own hotsprings.

And, despite Whoop and Verse's doubts,
they all trekked back to New Tokyo. There was a warm ocean current along shore that moderated the winter temperatures. The winter passed pleasantly enough, even without progress on the last sealed building.

"I suspect the problem is lack of artistic ability." Rustle said. Looking at things dimensionally had been easy to learn. Looking at things in the ordinary way, and transferring that to paper had, so far, failed to open the sealed building.

The mages
were back, Oscar and Bran, with Gre in tow, and getting training regularly from Selano. The old mage had apparently decided that traveling via corridor had none of the drawbacks of long sea voyages. The goat boys started cycling through for training in the mage specific methods, while the formerly powerless mage sons were studying with Nil to add wizard's training to their previously futile mage training.

They were getting quite impressive, and when all twenty joined Selano, Oscar, Bran and Gre, they made three full Compasses.

With their example as a challenge, Rustle worked the witches regularly. Swish, Xanthic and Ultra visited regularly. Possibly because of the nice weather, but more likely they were hoping to meet up with their old boyfriends.

Oscar and Bran
had eyed the young witches and kept their distance. The rest of the young men spent all their free time as close to them as they could manage. And often wound up baby sitting.

Gre
settled a sleeping baby against his shoulder and walked over to look at Rustle's latest sketch.

"Umm, if that is supposed to be
a horse and not some entirely theoretical creature, the neck is too long, the legs don't move in that pattern unless he's about to fall down and . . . " he fumbled one handed as she handed him the pad. "I didn't say I could do any better!"

"I know, but damn it, I can feel it start to catch, and then it slides off. I've got to think about how to approach it differently. And I need to do my distance exercises."
She was getting good at moving things miles away . . .
Because you can't affect a comet tens of thousands of miles away if you can't do things a hundred miles away
. She could move dust and even an occasional pebble on the Moon.
And I'm the best. We just need time and practice. But we have less than a year, now. At least there's plenty of gravity out there. A lack of power won't be the problem.

Gre
nodded, and bent to spread a small blanket and set the baby down. Kohl, one of Ask's twins. She was going to be a beauty, black hair already curling on her four month old head. In the steamy warmth of late winter in the subtropics, she was wore nothing at all. Gre sat down beside the baby and turned to a blank page. Rustle left him to it, and walked down the hill a bit to where they'd strung up a tarp to create some shade.

Havi was sound asleep
in a patch of sunlight, beside the three babies. Cor and Xen were intent over something at the table. Rustle walked to the edge of a steeper drop off, to check on everyone else's locations.

Swimming, or playing in the water, at any rate.
The Inlet itself wasn't safe, and only a few spots along the coast had cliffs low enough or crunched enough for egress. But a bit of magical engineering had formed a smallish pool for the adults, and a wading pool for the older kids, periodically refreshed by the waves at high tide. Ech and Zip, in the bigger pool, oogled the scantily clad witches who watched the kids as they splashed in their pool.

Cor and Xen were playing a game with some of Harry's dim
ensional training tools, Cor huffed slightly as the five year old beat him, again.

"It's not fair that little kids can pick this up so easily!" he complained. "Grape and Hazel beat me too."

"Ha! I'll show you how to beat a kid." Rustle sat down and was half way to  utterly humiliated when Gre yelped.

The door he'd been leaning on had opened and dumped him. He
grabbed the baby and retreated.

Rustle walked forward and peeked inside. "Looks like an art museum." She edged in carefully.

The pictures on the walls showed scenes from alien worlds, strange places.
The sort of place Wolf grew up in, lived in, before the comet
. Bright street scenes, full of people in odd clothing. Amazingly short dresses for the women, suits of matching pants and jackets with white shirts and colorful thin neck scarves for the men.
Maybe even before the Exile.

B
ronze statues stood around as if they were patrons enjoying the art. She studied them warily.

"Are those statues or people in those bubble things
you told us about?" Havi touched one carefully. Retreated. "They're alive."

Rustle eyed the bronze wolf howling at the Moon, the young horses running. A magnificent bull, horns lowered to charge, muscles rippl
ed . . .

"Let's take a quick look around, and see if we can find anything else before we try to open these bubbles." Rustle turned to the stairs. The second level was a larger version of the same, the third had even more room, and had a crowd of people there,
staring, all in the same direction. One wall was all windows—despite the appearance of solid stone from the outside. It looked out over the ruined city, unmoving and peaceful now, but the peoples expressions were shocked, frightened.
They must have been bubbled at the last minute. I wonder what they saw?

At the very front, a tall man, broad shouldered, good looking. A
few still heads were turned toward him.

"Art, I presume?" S
he touched the man. A hasty shield, covering himself at the last minute, as if the disaster was so awful he had lost faith in the ability of the outer shields to handle the wave of destruction the comet must have thrown out. A bubble held tight with determination and desperation.

"Spooky." Cor circled the statues. "Look at their expressions. I guess they saw the end of their world. And they're frozen, remembering."

How had the Auld Wulf gotten Logic free?

She dropped her hands. "I don't think I want to be the one to wake th
e god up. The last one was nasty."