Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods) (25 page)

"That's only to be expected, with you so young. Relax for a moment, while I monitor the others." Delight turned away.

"Goodie two shoes," Opinion hissed. "Can't do your job, messed up us learning ours. You were trying to show off. I can't believe we're stuck with you."

They tried again, after an hour. Rustle concentrated on the triad, and found it more resistant than ever. But she held it, kept with them, built up and balanced power and  felt them drain it again and again.

When Delight finally called a halt to their attempts, she was weak and shaky, her head pounding. Opinion and Particular didn't look any better.

The whole pyramid trickled down to the Tavern and tucked into a hearty dinner. They were all too tired to talk much.
Ask sat with Havi in a corner, an intent, hunting attitude in her stance.
Someone has decided to advance!
Rustle was too tired to even smirk.

The near silence was snapped as the door flew open. Mica, incandescent grin on her face. "Mother! Look!" She held up her hands and sparks danced from finger to finger.

Mostly burst into tears and snatched the girl up in a bear hug.

The witches cheered. Harry produced ice cream, from his private domain under the stairs.
He must keep stuff frozen in bubbles.
The two mage girls in the kitchen threw together a cake . . . The party settled down as the teenagers argued about who ought to be in which Crescent Moon triad. Rustle looked at Mostly, pulled into the circle of the other Full Moons and knew who was going to be the odd witch out. She sighed.
I knew it wouldn't be easy. Hadn't realized it would be impossible to fit back in.

Answer gave her a beady-eyed look. "This leaves me with a hole in the Half Moons. I do hope it isn't beneath your dignity to work with girls your own age."

"Wherever you want me, Senior Sister."

Which, of course, was not with Verse and Whoop.

Swish and Ultra managed the impossible. They were even worse than Opinion and Particular. Fortunately their babies used up a lot of time. Swish doted on her baby, a three month old beauty. Somehow admiration of little Emerald seemed to always twist into something about Swish's superb mothering, and no doubt excellent genetics. Their triad managed a few brief moments of coordination. Swish blamed all their problems on Rustle, while Ultra waddled off to hunt for her escape artist toddler. The reprieve from triad exercises when she went into labor was wonderful. Then with the first winter storm, the four witches from Rip Crossing excused themselves and fled home.

So to speak.

"Oh. I'd forgotten what winter was like down here." Ask led the way into one of the block houses.

"Yeah, the horrible winter
last year left me scared for life." Verse scowled around the dim interior. Every family had staked out territory with piles of  . . . stuff. Crates,  racks of clothes, sacks of lumpy things. "Can we do something about this?"

Havi maneuvered through the cramped camps. "I hope so. I'm glad you're back! I thought something like the Tavern would be good, only rock, of course. Kenta thought more people would want separate houses. What do you think?"

Calls for a tavern—but with more rooms—were the loudest, so Havi and Rustle made that their first priority
. "Let's see what a triad of witches can add to the whole mix." Rustle looked over her shoulder. "Cor? Get the goat boys over here. We may need everyone." The powerless mage-boys edged up, looking wistful.

"We can, even without power, sort of make a compass . . ." Ras eyed her.

"Hmm, maybe you guys could rotate in and out, so you didn't get drained? How about the triad in the middle and us irregular types outside of it . . . "

The power flew.

The ideas and concepts and sketchy architectural reading . . .

T
hey overdid it considerably.

Rustle stretched her stiff back.
"Now I understand how the parents felt when they did the ramps and bridge. Remember?"

"Yeah
." Havi looked from the domed roof down to the ornate compass rose 'inlay' on the floor. Two long corridors angled off into the shadows.  A large room to the left. To the right, an antique-looking registration desk with a wall of hooks and keys behind it.

"Whoa!" Ask turned in a slow circle. "How big did we make it? How did we pull that much power and not exhaust ourselves?"

Verse started grinning. "It's all those wretched drills, channeling power, and using as little of your internal resources as possible. It really works."

Ras
staggered in, "You think the dome is cool, come down here and check this out. It's worth feeling totally wasted."

One of the pools the hots
prings fed was at the end of that corridor, under another dome—this one glass.

Half the population was splashing around naked in it.

"We kept yelling suggestions at Havi and you witches." Zip grinned. "By and large you followed them."

"The other arm has a smaller pool, and there's this big suite with a pool just right for two people." Amo was grinning too. "Everyone's calling it the honeymoon suite."

Rustle looked around in disbelief.

A grinning little Xen, s
tark naked, galloped up and gave her a wet hug. "You made a
good
inn. I like the waterfall." He pointed up the length of the greenhouse, where it curved out of sight.

We made a waterfall?

"If you're going to do it again, how about a wall and door across between here and the hallway? Keep the noise and humidity down in the rest of the building, you know?" Ech suggested.

Rustle looked at the wide open doorway. "Good plan. And I'll bet a few air vents, high and low would help in here, as well."

Geri, one of the Mage girls looked around thoughtfully. "We may be able to do something, too." The others mage girls nodded.

"A purification rite. Start at midnight and go on till noon." Kenta bobbed happily in the water.

Whatever they did cleared the sulfur smell and pulled minerals out of the water. By the time they were done with it, it was nearly drinkable. They all floated and relaxed, staring at the comets and the streaks of falling stars.

Winter was not
what one would call harsh, no matter what was happening outside. They had plenty of food, musical instruments almost competently played, and lots of voices to help. Dancing. Story telling. Books were passed around, games played, and magic studied. And always, the hot pools.

The witches hiked and explored the side canyons to the south, and found a spot to call their own. Rustle
helped the Triad raise a pair of houses, complete with picket fences of stone to keep out the lizards, and they practiced magic by their own hot springs whenever the weather was clear. Xen missed his buddy Fermi—the Valasiks has headed south for the winter—but entertained himself singing his lessons to "the grubs."

The goat boys and the non-mages sought her out in private.

"Rustle, you talked about throwing spells during that fight with the Oners. You changed their genes into the Dragon genes, didn't you?"

Ras was
darker of hair than the usual red and or blonde mage children. No telling who his father had actually been. "What we want is the Mage gene put on our Y chromosomes. Just that one little change."

Zip, Bos, Joffe and Ech were typical goat boys, shining black hair and honey gold eyes. "We want the mage gene too. That ought to give us dimensional abilities, like you
, Havi, and Cor."

Ras frowned, exchanged looks with his gang. "I hadn't thought of that. We
were all trained to use the mage powers, the mage methods. We know all the chants, all the spells. We just need a power gene."

"Or two." Siggi put in.

Kal nodded. "Wouldn't hurt my feelings to go from tossed aside to the best there is."

Rustle swallowed, trying to settle her stomach. "I can't. I've been forbidden to experiment at all, let alone on a person! Eight people!"

Zip started grinning. "You can do it. I can see it in your eyes, you know exactly how to do it."

"Zip . . . Answer kicked me out of the Pyramid, partly because of what I did to those people
, when I was a teenager. And partly because of using the hormone lowering spell on you guys."

Havi snorted.
"So . . . what's she going to do? Swap people around and put you with all the worst? Or just happen to never have anyone available to work with you? Oh, wait. I forgot. She already did that."

Rustle buried her face in her hands.
It didn't help. She could
see
the spell. That simple hunt for the Y chromosome, the placing of the mage power gene . . . The X chromosome and the placing of the wizard gene . . . "I am going to be in so much trouble."

It only took a moment.

1374
Winter Solstice

New Tokyo

Trump smiled as the first contraction woke her. Ah. The incredible experience of childbirth. Yes. She snuggled down under the covers to enjoy the early part.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"Hmm, that's a bit extreme even for Just Deserts." Hell shook his head over the four tiny girls. "I mean, your captors deserved to die." He shrugged apologetically. "I can't control it, it just happens all around me."

Trump gazed at her children in dismay. "This must be the pun
ishment for how much I
enjoyed
giving them their just deserts."

The bald girl had a square chin like the Tall Man, one girl had black hair, another red. The last born has hair so fair it was nearly colorless.

"Well," she said weakly. "Four is better than six."

***

The Auld Wulf wondered what he'd done to deserve being bored to death.

". . . Champion sired sheep dogs, the best in the world." Lord Kell leaned back in his chair and smirked as he reached for his goblet.

With the King's pardon in his pocket, the man had shifted to a valley further south and now raised sheep himself. His lawyers were still working on his inheritance of his father's Land Grant and title of Duke of Ferris Province.

"Sounds like that will take care of your wolf problems," The Auld Wulf  stood up. "If not, see Dydit, the ma
n has a real way with wolves."
See if he's got nerve enough to ask me what he does to them.

The Sun was nearly down,
the air chilly. The slanting golden light was more than bright enough to show him his Lordship's two champion bitches, tied to the rail by their leashes.

And the two
big dogs humping them.

Oh. Shit.
He stepped back inside and caught Harry's eye. Jerked his head at the door.

Harry stepped out, and stopped dead at the sight of the hounds. He met his fellow god's eyes.

"Michael."

The Auld Wulf nodded. "Michael."

They stepped out into the street, gave the dogs a wide berth as they looked up and down the street.

"Up there." The Auld Wulf pointed. "On White Hill."

"Down here, in the street." Michael stepped out of the shadows, two black german shepherds at his heels.

"Ahhh! Get away from my . . . "

The Auld Wulf moved with blinding speed and snatched Lord Kell back before his boot made contact with the great dane's side. "You don't want to do that, trust me. Just stop
bragging
about the damn champion bred bitches so it doesn't happen again." He thought it over. "And you may find the puppies are just what you need."