The Gods Return (11 page)

"Nor do I, milord," Tadai said. His softness was entirely physical; he was just as focused and ruthless as Waldron, though they used different weapons. "I rather suggest that the danger is likely to be one whose solution needs a wizard more than it does a soldier. Since Lady Tenoctris isn't present—"
Sharina opened her mouth to speak. Before she could, her brother said, "Lady Tenoctris is looking into the matter already. She'll report to me when there's something
to
report."

"What about the cat, then?" said Waldron, nodding toward Rasile. "Lady Rasile, I mean."

Some of those present had been upset that a Corl was allowed to attend council meetings. Waldron, somewhat to Sharina's surprise, was perfectly willing to accept the Coerli as peers. The catmen were brave warriors, after all, which to him gave them higher status than city merchants like Tadai and Royhas.

All eyes turned to the Corl wizard. A chair, sturdier than most, had been set for Cashel at the end on Sharina's side of the table. Seating protocol at council meetings was a nightmare for the chamberlain and her staff. Fortunately everyone knew that the Prince and Princess didn't care, and that they'd tear a strip off anybody who made trouble about the business. Cashel was on the end because it was a great deal easier for so broad a man to sit down and get up than it would be beside Sharina in the middle.

Today Cashel had entered with the Corl wizard in the crook of his right arm and his quarterstaff upright in his left hand. He placed her in the chair—she crouched on the seat—and stood behind it like a servant.

In a sense Cashel was right: they were all servants, of mankind and of good in the struggle against evil. To the people who really knew him, however, he was the equal of anyone else in the hall.

"Just Rasile, Warrior Waldron," Rasile said."I have been concerned with the Worm which infests Telut, Warrior Cashel informs me."

Liane uncapped her silver pen; it had an ink reservoir in the barrel so that it didn't have to be dipped after each few strokes. She began jotting notes in a notebook made from thin sheets of elm wood, her eyes on the Corl wizard.

Rasile turned and tilted her long face up toward Cashel. He nodded solemnly and said, "She means the thing that attacked Ombis on Telut. It ate through the walls and then the pirates with it took the city."

"Yes," said Rasile. "But I know nothing about Palomir. If the wizard Tenoctris is giving that her attention, I would be a fool to interfere."

Liane, sitting to Garric's right but slightly behind him, leaned forward and whispered. He nodded twice, his eyes unfocused, then said to the gathering, "It appears that it will be necessary to march with the army shortly, since I don't intend to wait here for our enemy or enemies to attack us at their leisure."

Lord Waldron snorted.

"Such being the case," Garric continued, "and given that I expect to be leading the army myself—"

He looked at Waldron. Waldron nodded crisply, "Of course, your highness," he said.

"—I propose to leave Princess Sharina as regent as I've done in the past. Does anyone care to comment on my decision?"

"I don't think anybody in this room is such a fool," Lord Waldron said. He glanced to his right, toward Chancellor Royhas on Garric's other side, and added, "No soldier is, anyway.

"I've had the pleasure of working under the direction of Princess Sharina in the past, your highness," Royhas said mildly. "I couldn't imagine a better deputy in your absence."

He smiled. Though Royhas wasn't a morose man, Sharina had found him generally too reserved to smile in public. His expression seemed chosen as a polite counterpunch to Waldron's verbal sneer.

"Very good," said Garric. "Then all I have in addition is to direct that all bureaus and districts—"

He nodded toward the eastern gallery where stood the representatives of the kingdom's new districts. Most of them were based on the islands which existed before the Change. The representatives didn't have seats at the table, but they were present so that their reports would help outlying regions feel they were parts of the kingdom rather than merely sources of taxes.

"—to be prepared for possible invasion from the south."

Garric quirked a tired smile toward Rasile and Cashel. "And apparently from the east as well. I'll keep you informed as we get additional information, and I'll expect you all to pass on the information you and your subordinates come across."

The door latch rasped; Sharina turned to look over her shoulder. A Blood Eagle shoved the door open and sidled in. He and his partner were holding the ends of a spear between them, providing a makeshift sedan chair for Tenoctris. The wizard's face was drawn; she was so weary that she seemed barely able grip the soldiers' forearms to balance herself on the shaft.

Sharina started to get up, but Cashel was already moving. Several aides who'd been in his way bounced to one side or the other with startled squawks. He scooped Tenoctris into the crook of his arm with a practiced motion.

Sharina thought of how alert and healthy Tenoctris had been an hour before. The spell she'd worked after Sharina left her must've been of enormous weight to have drained her so thoroughly.

Rasile hopped down from the chair. Cashel set Tenoctris on it with the delicacy of a cat with her kitten.

"Lady Tenoctris," Garric said. "Do you have information for us?"

"Yes," said the wizard. She was trying to sound bright, but exhaustion made her voice wobble. "I'm afraid that I do, your highness."

* * *

"I'm out of my depth here," Tenoctris said, but despite the words her familiar rueful smile lifted Garric's spirits. She always deprecated her abilities, but they'd always proven adequate to the kingdom's needs.

"I'm a wizard," she continued, "but while there's wizardry involved, there's theology also."

People whispered, one of them a junior officer leaning close to Lord Attaper's right ear. "Silence!" Garric said, pointing his left index finger at the two Blood Eagles. He knew he was taking out his nervous anger on people whose mildly improper actions didn't deserve that level of response, but that was better than Carus' urge to use the flat of his sword to quiet the room.

Carus grinned in his mind. Garric grinned back in response, feeling his mood lighten.

"
The problem with lopping somebody's head off if they screw up
," Carus said, still grinning, "
is that the victim isn't much good to you afterwards. As I learned the hard way a time or two
."

In the silence that followed Garric's shout, a slender man with the white robe and black stole of a senior priest, said, "We of the Temple of the Lady of the Grove would be honored to assist you, Lady Tenoctris."

"I didn't say I needed priestcraft," Tenoctris snapped. She was regaining her animation and apparently her strength, as she was now sitting upright at the edge of the chair.

She cleared her throat against the back of her hand and resumed, "I've discussed my religious beliefs only in private, and even then rarely. To be brief, I
had
no religious beliefs. I'd never seen the Great Gods and I saw no reason to believe they existed."

The babble greeting the wizard's words was momentarily overwhelming. Even to Garric, the statement was disturbing. His family hadn't been particularly religious, but before each meal there'd always been a crumb and a drop for the little shrine on the wall of the dining room.

"Oh, I say!" cried Lord Hauk, shocked out of his normal deference toward born aristocrats. "Being a wizard doesn't justify blasphemy!"

Cashel banged the iron cap of his staff on the terrazzo floor. "That's all right!" he said. It wasn't like him to break in, especially not in a council meeting, but he obviously felt responsible for Tenoctris. "I figure she's wrong, but you leave her alone unless you want to discuss it with me, all right?"

"Continue, Lady Tenoctris," Garric said mildly. Because of the sudden silence, he didn't have to raise his voice. That was good, because shouting both sounded angry and made him
feel
angry when he did it.

"My friend Cashel is quite correct," Tenoctris said, cheerful and apparently herself again. "I was wrong about the Great Gods: They did exist, and there was sufficient evidence to have proved the fact to me if I'd been willing to consider it. Sharing my mind with a demon has—"

There was another chorus of gasps, though it stilled instantly of its own. The
crack!
of Cashel's ferrule on stone wasn't really necessary.

"
I never learned to watch what I said around civilians either
," said Carus wryly. "
At least she doesn't wear a sword
."

"—forced me to become more realistic," Tenoctris said. "Which is something of an embarrassment to someone who thought she
was
a realist."

Tenoctris looked around the table, touching everyone seated with her smile. Garric didn't understand where she was going with the discussion, and he was very doubtful that anyone else did either. He wanted to take Liane's hand, but that wasn't proper behavior for a council meeting.

"The problem, you see . . . ," Tenoctris said. Her voice became minutely thinner; the brightness remained, but it'd become a false gloss over her concern. "Is that the Great Gods of the Isles do
not
exist in this world which the Change brought. The Gods of Palomir-that-was are trying to climb the empty plinth, and they have power of a sort that I don't completely understand."

She shook her head, smiling. "In fact I don't understand it at all," she said. "It's working through principles that are nothing like those I do understand. But I can help deal with it. And Wizard Rasile can help, and everyone in the kingdom will help according to their skills. There will be enough work for men with swords to satisfy even a warrior like your ancient ancestor, Prince Garric."

The ghost in Garric's mind clapped his hands in glee. "
By the Lady!
" Carus said. "
If I was still in the flesh, I'd manage to forget that she's a wizard, I swear I would!
"

"Obviously we need to deal with whatever upstarts challenge the rule of Prince Garric," said Tadai. "But—"

He pursed his lips, his fingers extended before him. He was apparently studying his perfect manicure.

"—need we really be concerned about which statue is up in which temple?"

"What?" cried the priest of the Lady. "This is quite improper! I protest!"

"Lord Tilsit," Liane whispered.

"Lord Tilsit, be silent!" said Garric. He glared at the west where those outside the royal bureaucracy, then the east gallery for low-ranking palace personnel. "I remind you that those who aren't seated at the council table speak only when requested to."

The priest raised his hands and genuflected. His face had gone blank.

"Lady Tenoctris?" Garric continued mildly, grinning in his mind. "Does that suggestion ease our problems?"

He'd been using that tone since he was a tall thirteen-year-old and men in the common room started bothering the inn's pretty waitress—Sharina. Nowadays Garric didn't have to knock people down himself if they didn't take the hint, but there were times he wouldn't mind the chance.

"Lady Tenoctris the atheist," Tenoctris said, adding a self-deprecating laugh, "would be perfectly happy with no Gods or Gods she could ignore as she's done all her life till now. Unfortunately, while the Great Gods of your—our, I apologize—former world watched, the Gods of Palomir would rule. Their rule in former times was the rule of men over beasts."

"'Boys throw stones at frogs in sport,'" whispered Liane, quoting the ancient poet Bion, "'but the frogs die not in sport but in earnest.'"

Garric squeezed her hand. Propriety could hang for the moment.

"Franca the All Father, Fallin of the Waves," Tenoctris said, "and Hili, Queen of the Underworld. They're immanent now. If Palomir's rat armies succeed, widespread belief will make Them all powerful and perhaps eternal."

"The solution appears to be to defeat the rats and anything else that allies with Palomir, then," said Garric. King Carus had come to that conclusion long since. While marching instantly with an army wasn't always the best choice—

"
It got me and my army killed in the end, lad
," the ghost agreed.

—acting fast was
almost
always a better choice than dithering.

"Lord Waldron," Garric continued, "prepare the army to move as soon as possible. We'll determine which troops to take based on the supply situation, which you'll coordinate with the proper bureaus."

"Done," said Waldron and nodded. The young officer standing behind him started for the door at as fast a walk as the crowd permitted. Hauk, Tadai, and Royhas were muttering to aides also.

"Your highness?" Liane said. She spoke in a polite undertone to indicate she wanted to address the council instead of informing Garric in a private whisper.

"Go ahead, Lady Liane," Garric said, silencing the room again without really shouting. Well, not shouting as he'd have thought of it in the borough, calling to his friend Cashel on the crest of the next hill.

"Your highness," Liane said, "we know that our enemies have been capturing humans on Cordin. They probably believed that because of Palomir's location, it would be some time before we in Pandah learned about the raids. On the other hand, they must know that their grace period will be over shortly."