The Realms of the Gods (10 page)

“The
four
of us,” the badger told him. “I will come as well. I haven't put so much time into looking after this young one to stop now.”

“Lord Weiryn, will you and Sarra come with us?” Numair asked.

Daine's mother smiled wistfully. “As a new goddess, I'm bound to Weiryn's lands for a century.”

“As am I, for requesting her admittance here,” added Weiryn. “You will do well with the badger and Broad Foot.”

“If we're to leave today, I'd best get a little extra hunting done,” commented the duckmole, and vanished.

“I will join you tomorrow morning,” the badger said. “There are a few things to deal with at my sett before I go.” He, too, vanished.

“Ma, Da,” the girl said thoughtfully, “are there horses we might trade for, or buy? We'd go faster than afoot.”

“No, dear one,” Sarra replied. “Every horse in the Divine Realms belongs to itself, or its herd. They do not serve anyone.” She rose. “I'd best pack your things—no, Daine, I don't need help. You'd only be in my way.”

“Besides,” added Weiryn, also getting to his feet, “I need you both to come with me.” He led Daine and Numair inside.

“What about making horses?” Numair asked. “Could you—”

“No,” Weiryn said flatly. “Any being created in the Divine Realms belongs to itself and serves no one else. You would be lucky if such a horse only dumped you in the dirt. It
might
take you for a ride that would last a century of mortal time.”

In the main room, he opened a door that the girl was positive hadn't been there the day before. It gave onto a small, dark chamber that was more like a shed than a room. Here, to her surprise and delight, she saw a wood-carver's tools, staffs, boxes of feathers, boxes of arrowheads, coiled strings, and completed bows.

Weiryn ran long brown fingers over the finished weapons, checking the feel, rejecting this one and that. “These are my gifts to those I favor.” He selected an ebony-colored bow with startlingly pale horn nocks over both tips. “And if my own daughter isn't one I favor, who is?” He laid the stave across his palms, and offered it to Daine.

It was air-light in her grip at first, but it got heavier, until it reached the exact weight she looked for in a bow.
Weiryn offered a string. Fitting the loop over the lower nock, she braced that end against her instep. She drew the upper nock down and slipped the other loop over it in a flash. “She's sweet, Da,” she told him, smiling.

The god offered her a quiver full of arrows. “I should have given you a proper bow long before this,” he told her, wrapping extra strings in a square of oiled cloth.

Handing that to Daine, he went to the staffs in the corner. “Here, mage.” Weiryn selected one that was six feet of thick, knotted wood. About to hand it over, he frowned. “A moment.” He looked at Numair, then cupped the top of the staff in one hand. White fire shone from his palm; when he drew it away, a fist-sized crystal knob sat on top of the staff, embedded in the wood. He gave the staff to Numair.

The mage took it and stood for a moment, one hand wrapped around the wood, the other around the crystal. Daine saw no magical fire but knew he examined the staff with his Gift, looking for its secrets. When he looked up again, his eyes were filled with respect. “Thank you. I've never had something that was so—attuned—to me.”

Weiryn scowled, and went to a wooden counter along one wall. “Come here, both of you.” An ink pot and brush appeared on the surface next to him. The god wet the brush, and began to paint symbols directly onto the wood. “Here we are,” he said, tapping the brush against a painted square. “Here's the stream, and the pond where Broad Foot stays. And this is the path you must follow.”

Daine, following the brush, thought for a moment she saw trees and streams along the dotted line of ink. When she blinked, she saw only glossy black dots sinking into the stained wood.

“If you walk steadily, you will spend the night beside Temptation Lake,” Weiryn informed them, drawing that
body of water close to the trail. “Do
not
drink from it—unless you desire to be tempted, of course.”

A vision of Numair reclining among three naked, lovely women who fed him grapes, or rubbed his feet, or finger-combed his hair, filled the air over the counter. From Numair's deep blush, Daine could tell that he saw it, too.

“Not funny, Da,” she told her father, her voice very dry.

“Neither of us is in the mood for temptation, Lord Weiryn,” the mage added quietly.

“Hmpf,” snorted the god. “Well, just don't drink the water there. It's a good place to stop—no dweller of the Divine Realms may harm another within a league of Temptation Lake.” He rewet his brush and continued to draw. “The trail will carry you to Long Drop Gorge, which you will cross on the First Bridge.” Briefly Daine glimpsed a wood-and-rope bridge in the air over the counter, like the bridges that filled the mountains of Tortall and Galla.

Weiryn continued the line of the path for an inch or two, then stopped to create a blurred area around it. “This is Mauler's Swamp.” The vision in the air over the map showed a pair of yellow, slit-pupilled eyes sticking out of murky water. They moved. A ripple of passing square ridges like those on a crocodile's back cut through the image of water, followed by the snakelike curving of a long tail. “Give no offense to Mauler, if you can avoid it.

“Here is the Stonemaze.” The vision was one of rocky canyons and a distant, small river, as seen from high overhead. “Watch your footing, never leave the path in the maze, and harm no stones.”

“Lord Weiryn,” said Numair, “it would help if you were to explain what will happen if we make a mistake in these places.”

Weiryn looked at him, leaf-colored eyes glinting. “Who can tell?” he asked. “The gods in most places never punish a trespass in the same manner twice. Mauler once ate the mortals who disturbed his afternoon nap, but that was a while ago. He may not choose to eat the next intruder. Of course, he may have young to share his swamp, and they always need a meal. Just use caution. Cut no green wood. Take no fruits without asking the bush or tree. If you don't, you might spend a century with wild pigs trying to dig you up by the roots. Blackberries in particular have a very nasty streak.”

“Wonderful,” Daine whispered.

“Where was I?” asked her father. He rewet his brush, and sketched another blurred area on the wood. “Oh, yes. At last you will come to the Sea of Sand.” The vision revealed dunes; for a moment Daine's face was hot and painfully dry. “If the Stormwing can't find help, the winds will strip your body of moisture in the time it takes your mother's pan bread to bake. Don't you see what folly this is?” he demanded, eyes on Daine. “The Divine Realms are too dangerous for a pair of mortals!”

“We will have Broad Foot, and the badger,” Numair said. “And we have protected ourselves, from time to time. Mortals have survived in the Divine Realms before.”

Weiryn sighed. “That's what I thought you would say.” His brush and ink pot disappeared. Palms down, he tapped the inked surface of the wood. “At least I can tell Sarra that I tried.” Like bark that was barely attached to its parent tree, the surface with the map cracked away from the wood, thinned until it could have been heavy parchment, and rolled itself up. Weiryn gave it to Numair. “You need not fear that it will go to pieces, or that water will smear the marks,” he said grumpily.

Daine leaned over and kissed the god's forehead. “Thanks, Da.”

When the three returned to the main room of the cabin, Broad Foot, dripping, was on the table. “Are we ready?”

Sarra offered them cloaks—a blue one for Daine, a black one for Numair. Once the two mortals had donned them, she handed over their packs.

“How do you want to do this?” Numair asked Broad Foot. “You can't use your power to move us, and—forgive me, but—I doubt that you can walk at our pace.”

Broad Foot looked at the mage; Numair jumped. Visible through the opening of his cloak, his cream-colored shirt twisted. When it stilled, a deep pouch had formed in the cloth over Numair's belly. The duckmole vanished, then reappeared in shimmering fire, tucked into the pouch. He looked back and up at Numair. “The view from here should be very nice,” he said as Daine and her mother giggled. “Mind you don't bump me.”

Sarra hugged Daine. “You'll come to stay a bit when your war is settled?” she asked. “Please?”

“I will, Ma—I just don't know when that will be.”

“We'll know. We'll come for you on the holiday that's closest.” The woman scanned her face intently. “You'll visit for a season, or two?”

“I'll come, Ma.”

“Promise?”

Daine hugged her mother hard, tears in her eyes. “I promise. We—we'll catch up on the time them bandits took from us.”

Sarra gave her a last squeeze, then turned to Numair. Daine slung her pack and quiver over her shoulders, then looked at her father.

Weiryn leaned down and kissed her gravely, first on one cheek, then the other. “We shall see you again, so what's the point of good-byes?”

“None at all,” she said, and brushed a hand along his horned crown.

Weiryn opened the door; they filed outside. “Straight
down the path,” instructed Broad Foot. “We've a couple of hours of light still.”

Daine let Numair take the lead. She glanced back only once, to see her mother crying in the circle of Weiryn's arm. They both waved. She waved, too, and didn't look again as the path led her into the woods and out of sight.

They walked quietly, descending into a mountain forest on a much-used track. Listening for the voices of the People, as she did in walks at home, Daine once more had that odd sense of being deaf. Her physical ears picked up the rustle of small creatures moving on the forest floor and the many calls of local birds. Magically she heard nothing. She had no way to know what was said in the conversation between a squirrel and a jay—though she could guess from the rage in the squirrel's voice and the mockery in the bird's. Far in the distance, her sense for immortals registered a small herd of killer centaurs on the move. About to warn her companions, she realized that the centaurs were traveling in the opposite direction. Soon afterward, they faded from her awareness.

“Goddess bless,” Numair said, coming to a halt. They were in a dark hollow where only slivers of light touched the ground. The cause of the early twilight grew beside the path: a white oak tree, or what Daine thought
might
be an oak, except that it was the largest that she had ever seen. If she and Numair stretched out their arms, together they still could not reach all the way around the bole.

“She is a First Tree,” Broad Foot explained. “From her acorns, the first mortal white oaks were born.”

“Her?”
asked Numair, looking down at his passenger.

“She is a god,” the duckmole said. “She is aware. All of the First Trees are.”

Daine snatched her hand from the bark.

Stepping back, with Broad Foot held away from him, Numair bowed deeply, sweeping an arm before him
as if the tree were a queen. Straightening, he frowned. “What's that noise?”

“What noise?” chorused Daine and Broad Foot.

Numair approached the girl, hand cupped around one ear, and bent. “Easy, there,” the animal god cautioned. Giving Daine a half turn, Numair put his ear close to her pack. Now Daine heard a thin, high shrilling.

Numair opened one of the pack's side pockets and reached inside. When he drew it out again, he brought a small clay pot with a wax seal, and a darking.

“Now where did
you
come from?” he asked, holding the blot up to eye level.

“Is it the one that's been following me about Da's?” inquired Daine.

Shaping a head for itself, the darking nodded.

“Were you in my pack by accident?”

The inky creature shook its head.

“You
wanted
to come?”

The darking nodded.

Daine shrugged and held open the breast pocket of her shirt. “Pop it in here, then.” Numair hesitated, then dropped the creature into its new residence. “Now we've each got a passenger.” She smiled into his face, so close to her own just then. Briefly, his eyes changed; a strange, burning excitement filled them, and made her catch her breath.

He straightened abruptly. “We shouldn't dawdle,” he said, striding off down the path. “We've a lot of ground to cover.”

Puzzled, confused—feeling as if she'd glimpsed something important, only to have it vanish—Daine trotted to catch up.

They walked long after dark, stopping only to eat a brief supper. As night drew down, Numair called light
from the crystal on his staff to illumine the way. At last the path emerged from under the trees. They had come to the rim of a stretch of water—a large pond, or a lake.