Wine of the Gods 29: God of the Sun

  God of the Sun

  Pam Uphoff

  Copyright © 2017 Pamela Uphoff

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN

  978-1-939746-27-6

  This is a work of fiction.

  All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional.

  Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design P.A. McWhorter and Cedar Sanderson

  Silhouette by GDJ at openclipart

  Sun courtesy NASA Images

  Contents

  Prelude

  The Mother

  Chapter One

  The House of Wisdom

  Chapter Two

  University of Lundun

  Chapter Three

  Bandits and Magic

  Chapter Four

  Astronomers

  Chapter Five

  The Multiverse

  Chapter Six

  The God of Thieves

  Chapter Seven

  The Maze

  Chapter Eight

  Smugglers

  Chapter Nine

  The God of the Sun

  Chapter Ten

  The Thief Strikes

  Chapter Eleven

  Astronomers

  Chapter Twelve

  Princess Primus

  Chapter Thirteen

  Romance and Murder

  Chapter Fourteen

  The God of Spies

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Leap of Faith

  Chapter Sixteen

  Investigation

  Chapter Seventeen

  Great Balls of Fire!

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Chase

  Chapter Nineteen

  Where the Wild Gods Live

  Chapter Twenty

  Home Again

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The School of Wizardry

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Recipe for a Revolution

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Witches Bearing Gifts

  Chapter Twenty-four

  A Summons to Paree

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Horse Thief

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Amateurs at War

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Aftermath

  Epilog

  Excerpt From An Upcoming Release

  What I'm Reading . . .

  About the Author

  Other Books by Pam Uphoff

  Prelude

  The Mother

  Princess Segundus Juabe Menchuro sat quietly beside her husband during dinner, speaking politely and briefly to the officer beside her and even less to the colonel across the table. She disliked accompanying her husband into the field, but it was a part of the traditional officer's privileges that they have female companionship on long campaigns.

  And she was old enough to not want to send him off with a concubine. He said he loved her, but too much time with a younger, prettier, more fertile woman could change that fast.

  He said he didn't mind her infertility. That it made it easier for her to accompany him, kept her slim and youthful. He even said he didn't want children. She was his Princess Segundus, a mark of his status.

  So she put up with being treated by the other officers as if she were just the General's concubine, not his lawful wife. And later, as the dinner wound down, she'd let her husband paw her publicly, and then whisk her off to their private part of the command tent. Because that was how officers behaved in the field, and for her husband to not do so would weaken him in his subordinates' eyes. She dropped her eyes to the glass of wine she held. Just at the moment she thought she'd rather like her husband to paw at her, and drag her off to be ravished. She drank to cover a blush.

  The men all talked over her head, rehashing the sparse information about what sounded like a major defeat in the West. A village in Arrival called Jeramtown had successfully repelled an attack.

  "Two thousand troops, it should have been simple. They shouldn't have even needed a Priest with a dozen little gods. And summoning a major god? What could possibly have required that?"

  Drew snorted at that. "If the god was actually killed . . . well, I'm not going to speculate until we have more news."

  It was getting very noisy outside the tent. The officers were looking around, and two young lieutenants down toward the foot of the table got up hastily to check. One flew back into the tent and a swarm of half naked men followed. What clothing they wore was the common trooper's uniform. The first one in grabbed a woman and took her to the ground right there. The other men flooded past, grabbing women, hitting men that got in their way.

  Juabe jumped up and headed for the private quarters. She caught her husband's approving nod out of the corner of her eye. Whatever insanity had come over those soldiers, she shouldn't be seen anywhere near it.

  Drew would deal with it. Tomorrow those men would be rotting meat, left for the vultures, probably with their immediate superior staked nearby.

  She winced and cringed at the sounds, and as they came closer, she carefully plumped the bed up with pillows, and crawled underneath, to the back of the tent, and pulled the side canvas out from under the bottom canvas. As strangers invaded her bedroom, she slipped out into the night.

  Where could she hide? She slipped away from the glowing walls of the tent and stumbled on the rough ground. Perhaps in a wagon?

  She backed hastily away from the first one she saw. It was one of the priest's wagons, with the little gods chained to it. A pale albino leered at her and jumped for her. He fell to the ground as he hit the end of his chain, but something came loose and the chain fell to the ground. Horrified, she bolted. A hand grabbed her and spun her around.

  The man was huge. Muscular. She whimpered in terror as her eyes were drawn to the three-inch-long hair standing up on his head. Sparks jumped from hair to hair, between the fingers he was lifting toward her face, like miniature lightning. The God of Storms.

  If I am lucky he will kill me.

  ***

  "My husband will geld you for this."

  The priest looked her up and down. "Why would he want you? He'll have a new young wife before you've done your duty to the church."

  "My husband loves me."

  He laughed, and chained her to a tree out of reach of the horrors—the Little Gods—they'd recaptured.

  She clung desperately to that thought through the next days. Drew loved her.

  She was chained with a lot of other women. Twenty-one of us. Given the general ungainliness of the gods, they'd had quite a spree. The other women were concubines and prostitutes, possessions of men, or had been before they became possessions of the church.

  There were a couple of compulsive talkers, who told all about their multiple rapes by guards and gods. One girl had apparently been passed around a trio of little gods still chained to the trailer, and they had used their own virgin experience to break the magical chains on themselves. Then they had escaped into the woods, tossing the girl to more gods as they left.

  The God of Storms, a twin, two dwarves . . . three priests . . . She couldn't say it out loud, didn't want to even think about it.

  As the wagon left camp, headed for the temple in Paree, she caught a glimpse of her husband. Staring at her. She ducked her head in shame.

  It was a three month long trip.

  Rough on the women. They weren't mistreated. Were well fed. They were required to get out and walk for an hour every day. But they were still chained to a wagon, in ragged torn clothing.

  Juabe was sunburned by the second day, and a canvas was purchased to shade them. The women were shifted around to minimize the amount of t
ime each spent on the sunny side.

  Tras had finally stopped crying. "They don't even want to know our names. We're nothing to them."

  Juabe nodded. As a Princess Segundus she'd always known she could be called to Serve the Gods at any time. At thirty, and apparently barren, she'd never been called. She could only hope that she would remain barren, and that this horror would be over quickly. But the weeks rolled by. Eating, sleeping, washing and trying to wash her clothing, what was left of it. Walking for an hour. In public, as the towns increased along the Road. Practically undressed.

  The two women who had menstrual periods were simply removed from the wagon and left at the side of the road with the clothes on their backs. Such as it was. Juabe looked back once, at the frightened women staring at the local men closing in on them and shuddered.

  Her period didn't come. Abuse, shock . . . pregnancy?

  It didn't happen the next month, nor the next as they finally rolled into Paree.

  She had only been this far south once, when her father had brought her to be examined by the Priests, and engaged to the man they had chosen for her.

  She had believed in the power of the gods, then. Drew was marvelous.

  The temple was a huge complex on a the hill at the center of the city. Their wagon passed around to an obscure gate on one side of the temple's outer defensive wall.

  Now she believed in the power of the Church.

  The gate closed behind them.

  ***

  Finally a bath. Thank . . . nothing. Just soak as long as was permitted.

  Then an exam by a physician. They congratulated her on her pregnancy. And asked about which gods she had allowed to rape her.

  Allowed.

  She kept her temper, and discretion, and admitted to both the God of Storms and the Twin. She gave her full name and status as Princess Segundus, and demanded that this be counted as her owed Service to the Gods.

  It was good enough to get her a tiny private cubicle, rather than a mat along the wall of the women's common room.

  Most of the women there were obviously pregnant.

  Magda, a hugely swollen one, nodded. "The priests try to have one baby born a day. But in the end, they have about half that in actual live births. They raise most of the babies here, and train them for the battle."

  Juabe sniffed. "All they are is power sources for the priests."

  Tras shook her head. "Not the big gods. I saw the God of Death—he killed everyone who came even slightly close to him, and the way people were running around, they didn't even realize the danger until they were too close."

  Magda shuddered. "I can't imagine how awful that must have been. They drug us, so we sleep through it all. I don't know what fathered this child." she looked down at her belly.

  "Probably a giant?" Tras shivered. "A dwarf got me. At least I'll have a small baby. Unless it was the guards, or the priest that had me later."

  The women regulated themselves, the old Princess Segunduses who were nominally in charge left them to their own devices for most of the day. Their jobs were to assign rooms, maintain peace and monitor the women's pregnancies.

  One of their group had started cramping their second day there. She'd been hustled to a doctor, and never seen again.

  "Turned out." Magda said. "Released at the gate, and how she'll get home, and whether she'll be welcome there . . . no one cares. It will be the same for us, after our babies are born, if they don't have a touch of the divine, or die. And if the baby is divine, it just means it will be put off two years for nursing the baby."

  Juabe shivered. "How many of the babies are touched? How can they tell?"

  "By looks, mainly. About half. And most of them have something bad wrong and die quick. Some are declared Prince or Princess Primus or Segundus, some rite they do with the normal looking babies. But most are just normal and evicted penniless with their mothers. The Princes and Princesses get kicked out with their mothers, and have pretty high status, if their mothers manage to raise them. Coming from so far away, you didn't receive the daily prayers for the first six weeks of pregnancy that we had to go through. That's supposed to be an ill omen."

  Juabe grimaced. "It's hard to think of anything more ill-omened than our current situation. My husband. I'm thirty years old, most likely he'll have found a younger woman by the time I'm thrown out. He may take me in out of a sense of duty. At least for a while." Drew.

  Tras turned her face to the wall, breathing slowly and deeply. "I was a concubine. Like my mother. My father's wife sold me when I was old enough. No one will want me after this."

  "Did you have a husband, Magda?"

  "Me? No. My father owed taxes, and paid with my services." She grimaced. "He said he'd take me back. And I was starting to learn to read, until Leesa went into labor."

  "Read?" Juabe perked up. "Is there something to read? It would make the time go so much faster."

  "The Princesses will bring books from the library, if you ask." Magda looked at her hopefully. "Will you show me how? I know the letters, and some of the words."

  "Of course. Can you read, Tras? Do you want to learn?"

  She wound up with a dozen students, and not much time to read on her own, but it made the time pass.

  They weren't allowed paper or pen, but she composed, and Magda memorized a brief message for her husband. And directions. First to her father-in-law's house here, and then to her . . . to Drew's house a thousand miles to the north west.

  If Magda's father accepted her, she promised to write it down and mail it. If her father had turned away from her, she would have to try to get Juabe's father-in-law to help her either write it and mail it, or send Magda to Drew herself. It sounded a pretty bleak future.

  Magda assured her, doubled over in pain, that she would remember. Juabe and Tras supported her to the door and passed her to the physicians.

  They worried all night, and in the morning received the news. Stillborn twins. Magda had already been released.

  That was the only news they would receive, and they returned to their routine. Teaching and reading, eating, sleeping, an hour of walking in the garden every day.

  Several more of their ill-fated riot victims miscarried and disappeared. Women came and went, and the months passed. It was a chilly day, the first storm of winter when the first contraction hit Juabe. She was walking in the garden, pacing the outer perimeter under the overhanging balcony and she kept walking. She might as well enjoy the cold whipping wind and icy rain for a few minutes more. Another contraction hit before her hour was up, and she walked in to talk to the Princess Segunduses.

  They took her silently to the physicians, who treated her like a slab of meat, talking over her head about the likelihood of needing to remove the baby surgically. She stifled all complaints and acted like she was feeling no pain. They put her to walking and she worked to stay out of their way as another woman was brought in. Poor little Bridgett, who'd been raped by multiple little gods and when she escaped, by multiple guards. She was frightened, and crying, and even more frightened by the physicians. But she gave birth to an albino boy, and half an hour later to a tiny boy. The physicians preened as if the birth of twin little gods was their own accomplishment, and Bridgett was whisked away to the family quarters as Juabe caught their attention barely in time to deliver on their preferred table.

  The physicians shrugged and lost interest quickly. "Normal. Pfaw." They handed her the wailing baby boy while they tied and cut the cord. Left her alone to deal with the afterbirth, hustled her out of the room as another woman was ushered in. All of us will be delivering soon. She snatched her clothes in passing, trying to dress as she was escorted through several more doors and suddenly found herself before a small altar. An irritated looking priest hustled in. "I don't know why you can't let the women stay for a few hours, let me get a good night's sleep . . . " He raised his voice. "Put the child on the altar."

  She gulped and did so. Poor baby, not even a blanket to wrap him in. She finish
ed pulling on her baggy shift. Stained and dirty, it was all she had. She raised her chin regally and refused to be intimidated.

  The priest eyed her. "You are a Princess Segundus?"

  "I am."

  "Humph." But the man shook himself awake and started making gestures over the altar.

  The baby peed on the priest, getting only a resigned mutter. The priest laid his hands on the baby's chest. He frowned. "Humph. God of Storms. Prince Primus. Haven't had one of those for awhile."

  Juabe swallowed. What have I just done?

  "Damn it. More paperwork. Sit over there, and get that baby something . . . " He turned and stuck his head through the door he'd entered. "You! Go fetch a diaper and blanket for a Prince Primus before he poops in my sanctuary."

  Half an hour later she was outside. Blinking in the sunlight. At the street.

  Released immediately.

  Indeed.

  Now all she had to do was find her father-in-law's home . . .

  "Juabe." Drew. It was Drew, getting out of a coach across the street. Putting his arms around her.

  She managed to not cry until the servants in her Father-in-law's home had finished bathing and dressing her and left her alone with Drew.

  "Your Magda came here. I was here, trying to get news of you from the Temple. I was in a terror that you might have been dumped along the road somewhere. She seemed a sensible sort so I hired her. She and I have been trading off sitting outside that door for the last five months. My father's grooms think I'm insane. So does my father, for that matter. And she's back there waiting and hoping for someone named Tras."

  She could only cling to him, a rock she'd nearly forgotten, hadn't dared hope for.

  "I've sort of endowed a service, for the women shoved through that door. Half of them had less clothing than you did. And yours was the first baby with a blanket I've seen. The weather, I suppose. No?"

  She swallowed. "He's a Prince Primus. The priest that declared him got the diaper and blanket. I had some papers . . . "