Earth Gate (Wine of the Gods Book 17) Page 23

  Zuni blushed deeper. "With Nick."

  "Did you ask him about wizards, witches and gates?"

  "Oh yes, we talked and talked." Zuni sat down and started crying. "I don't love him, and I used him so badly."

  Devvy sighed. "Trust me, honey, he enjoyed every second of it."

  "But I don't love him."

  Ah. Trying to convince herself. Devvy walked down the hall and shook Rose, as hard as she dared.

  "Umm, do it again . . . Blackie?" Rose sat up, blinking in disbelief. "Blackie? I got drunk and lost my virginity to someone with the same name as my dog?"

  Devvy boggled a bit. "You mean you never . . . "

  "No! Good grief. I have no use for men." Her complexion went from sickly pale to furiously red. "No doubt that was an educational experience, but it will never happen again. Things like that can absolutely ruin a career, stop it dead in its tracks. Done. First and last time."

  A greenish Andy looked in the door. "Don't you mean first through fifteenth time?"

  Rose's face went very still, and then greenish. She stood up, with a fair amount of dignity, turned to the outside door and upchucked, thoroughly. Of course, leaning over naked, everything was on display.

  Andy looked too tired to even appreciate it. He staggered off. Devvy fetched the bucket, so Rose could wash her face, and any splatters. Rose climbed awkwardly into her shift and overgown, belted it, and walked stiffly out to the privy.

  They all gradually stopped stumbling around, and started moving toward the front doors.

  "Has someone harnessed the horses? I want to leave, right now." Rose was sounding grim.

  Hamza's eyes were bloodshot but otherwise he looked back to normal. "Yep, we're all paid up. Let's go."

  That sounded like an excellent idea, and Devvy could hear stomping hooves, and jingles. She walked past the silent dining room and straight out the door. Their carriage was waiting for them, Andy was up on the driver's bench, Jaime beside him. Jaime had the reins, Andy appeared to have gone back to sleep. Devvy climbed in. Rose sat across from her, facing the rear. Zuni joined them, and then Hamza and Furnace. Zuni glanced at them and blushed scarlet. Rose was ramrod straight and didn't look at either of them.

  Hamza buried his head in his hands. "I'd heard about that stuff, the wine. And I'd heard all the jokes about Rip Crossing Orgies. Why the bloody hell didn't I believe them?"

  "Captain Orobona is going to kill us." Tripp said.

  Captain Furnace shook his head in disbelief. "It just went totally out of control in nothing flat. Those girls!" His eyes slid toward Goodwin, and he flushed.

  Little Zuni Mackay had been blushing constantly. And the sweet little thing had had most of the men. Who knew how many times. Before Nick had led her off to bed for more exclusive pleasures.

  Hamza cleared his throat. "So, we collected a reasonable amount of information. Now let's go find this Crossroads place."

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Late Spring 1395

  King's Own Headquarters, Karista

  ". . . expressed no interest in troop presence or numbers. All they asked about were wizards, witches and gates." Xen concluded his report. He and Dominic were out of the disguises he'd conjured up so hastily when Orion had let him know the Earth spies had arrived. Pretending to be tourists in a place no carriage could reach without carrying hay and grain, and that no one in their right mind wanted to expose their children to anyhow.

  "Old Gods." Janic fixed a beady eye on Xen. "And most likely they ought to have been executed as spies. Sending them back with disinformation is good, but I suspect that was just your excuse for not killing them, not your reason."

  Xen concentrated on looking puzzled. It was hell, having a boss who understood you so well.

  "Both of you stick around for a few days, while I think on this." Janic snorted and pulled out a drawer. "In fact, tonight you can party, so half the unmarried young women in the city will stop asking me why you are never at the various balls and dinners."

  ***

  Xen knew he shouldn't have danced with Heliotrope.

  And definitely should not have allowed her to maneuver him out into a nearly private spot in the garden.

  "We need to talk."

  Oh. Drat.

  "Xen . . ." she sounded both amused and exasperated, and grabbed his jacket to hold him while she kissed him thoroughly and hungrily.

  She smelled fresh and clean, something floral. Dressed to flatter in a style that managed to be just the respectable side of sexy. Gorgeous. Powerful witch, glowing.

  He stepped back uneasily. "So how is Tunguska doing? What is she, four now?"

  She snorted. "Minus a year spent in a bubble while I was in the Empire."

  "I suppose we shouldn't have recruited you for that mission . . . but we really did need your talents."

  "I learned so much. It was worth it . . . however frustrating. I hate to admit, now, that I mostly went because it meant I'd be around you for a full year. Not that it did me any good." She started to reach for him, dropped her hands. "Why?"

  He sighed in exasperation. "You are very powerful and very smart. You took to those One World computers quickly and went to college there . . . but you don't do anything. You were raised to be a Lady, not a witch. You aren't independent the way a witch is. You think you are mentally independent, but you are financially and physically dependent."

  She straightened indignantly. "What are you talking about?"

  "Look. In Ash, the witches practice their magic by picking the frost heaved rocks out of the fields before plowing. They build their own houses, using magic. They find garnets and diamonds using their magic. They refine metals, manipulate them, make useful things and frivolous toys. They have gardens they grow with their own hands, they herd sheep and milk cows. Hunt. Cut hay. Cook.

  "I could take the Ash witch for whom I have the least amount of respect, drop her naked on an empty World, and inside of a week she'd be snug and cozy in her home, eating rabbit stew cooked in a metal pot, and plotting her revenge.

  "I suspect that if I did the same to you, you'd be lucky to not starve."

  Heliotrope had drawn in tight, arms wrapped around her chest.

  "I learned how to do all of that. I go to school there every year."

  "For a couple of weeks. What have you built, made, grown, sold? Your father supports you, while you just play at being a witch. I like independent women, the Ash witches. I want my daughters to be like that." Not that I'm succeeding at it, mind you . . .

  "Grubbing in the dirt instead of uselessly sewing ball gowns from purchased fabric?"

  "Instead of having all that potential and wasting it. Why aren't you helping the scholars with the One World computers we brought back?"

  Heliotrope looked away.

  "Or making things, growing things, writing things . . . You are so powerful. How can you want nothing but some man to pay for your clothes?"

  Heliotrope turned and walked away, saying nothing, tear tracks shining in the moon light.

  Xen watched her go, and didn't follow.

  ***

  "So . . . Xen." Janic sat back and sighed. "Didn't think to check where your nice little Earth spies went, did you?"

  Xen blinked, his stomach sinking. "They didn't have supplies enough to cross the desert. I concealed the gate to Rip World and the corridor to Ash . . . "

  "Not well enough. I have a report of them showing up at the Crossroads. So you will avoid it. I've sent a sensible and well trained agent to observe them.

  "March, back to the New Lands, see if that older witch is showing up anywhere. Wolfson, back to the border. We'll see if General Soeder is getting any new orders. It would be nice if they wanted to ally with us against the Oners."

  "No joy from the Oners?"

  "Nope. Their politicians are in a free-for-all political cat fight over whether to crush us or send an ambassador. The middle ground varies from isolationism to walling us off and going elsewhere. I think that Preside
nt Orde of yours is the only sane politician over there."

  Xen thought to protest possession of a Oner president, then shrugged. "Surely not the only sane one. Have we got enough Earther intel to find a sane side there?"

  "Nope. If we weren't teetering on the brink of a war here—or if I had more magicians on tap, I'd send you to set up a listening post."

  "Ooo. That could be . . . well, I'd try for boring. This time."

  Skeptical snorts from the others.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Summer Solstice 1395

  Mount Frost, Section 2 Foothills Province, Kingdom of the West.

  The whole hike up to the top of Mount Frost took nearly three weeks.

  This gave Crimson plenty of time to plan and then talk it over with her sisters.

  "The first thing we need is enough money to buy horses. Nil's horses."

  "Yes! Our own horses." Walnut's eyes were bright.

  Crimson bit her lip. "Not any of the really spectacular ones, though. We want the ones that are good, but not eye catchers."

  Walnut scowled. "I suppose. They do need to be fast, so good legs and general confirmation. Maybe we can get a good deal on horses with ugly heads."

  They looked around as Likely walked up. "Girls, you need to be with your triads. Macaw, the new Moons are doing exercises. You're fifteen, so you could grasp power this year. You need to be ready for it."

  Macaw started to hold her left hand out, to show her . . . but Likely had already walked off.

  Crimson rolled her eyes. The senior sisters don't even really look at us Crescents. Or is it that they don't notice the three of us, specifically? It's getting a little weird.

  She walked over to Sanda and Nighthawk.

  Sanda held out her hand. "C'mon. We're trying to locate metal in the dirt and rocks."

  "Locate metal in this? Well, we camp here every year, so I suppose there's things that have gotten lost. Personally, I'd rather figure out how to be invisible." Ha! Let's see if Miss Smarty Snot can teach me something practical.

  "I don't know about invisible, but unnoticeable is easy." Nighthawk held up a glowing vision of charms, a patterned net of all the loose charms Crimson had been throwing around randomly.

  "Oh. That's much more efficient than what I've been doing!" She copied it and held it up. "Wow, and to cover, say, yourself and a horse you'd, umm, double it? Or could you make a talisman for every animal?"

  The younger witch giggled. "Invisible horses! Let's find enough metal to make some."

  Sanda thought it was amusing too, and it turned into a much more enjoyable hike than Crimson had expected. I shouldn't pick on people. Bad habit. If my family would either leave me alone or notice me, maybe I wouldn't snap at people.

  Walnut and her triad pals, Demoiselle and Egret, spent most of their time together giggling about boys, and Crimson thought she saw the spell ring being shown around. The three of them were amazingly boy crazy. I'm surprised Walnut's the only one who's pregnant.

  Macaw didn't like her practice triad, and kept up the constant whining. Their cousin Lapwing was the same age and they quarreled constantly. Ibis was a year older and argued non-stop with her own mother and sisters. Ignored her triad. The girls older than her had all grasped power; and some of the younger girls as well. Crimson remembered her own fifteenth birthday passing, with no grasp of power, and sympathized. I wasn't very nice then, either. At least she doesn't have a little sister advancing ahead of her!

  Opinion, in charge of arranging the youngest witches, opted to keep the good triads together and work on the rough ones.

  Mother looked as slumped and weary as always, running from helping the older witches to trying to cheer up Macaw, to carrying her three year old grandson when he tired. Wollastonite came in for her share of helping, when her nine year old daughter wasn't demanding attention.

  "I will never, ever, let anyone or anything run me down into a slump like that." Crimson hefted the three year old. Poor little orphan. Undersized. And unloved. An embarrassment. She gave him a hug of sympathy. Pretty red hair, though. I wonder who Jade seduced and killed? The boy turned in her arms and reached for Quicksilver.

  “Hey little nephew, how you been?” Quicksilver cuddled the little boy, slowing down and dropping behind.

  Not completely unloved. Mother really should have left him with Quicksilver. It'd be pretty funny if miss bright-and-shiny worked herself into a slump like mother.

  Walnut eyed them. "Children are a lot of work. Maybe I shouldn’t have . . . I told Macaw it really didn't matter who she was trained with, because the three of us will be the real Triad, and we'll do stuff we want to do, not their stuff. But she's still whining."

  Crimson nodded. "I was wondering about the other gates, and all those worlds. We really ought to be able to trade in even more worlds. No point in stopping with just one. I'm working on some unnoticeable talismans, so we can smuggle loads of stuff through any of the gates."

  "Yeah. Surely we can find one world that will trade with us."

  The twelfth day they reached the summit of Mount Frost. The final spire rose from the south side of the crater rim, and they climbed up to their places. The top tier, the Dark Crescents, was crowded. There'd been much talk of splitting the Pyramid again. The last try hadn't been all that successful, with the Ash World Pyramid folding and returning, the Rip Crossing Pyramid becoming the home of licentiousness, and Tromp's ill trained family in Karista barely counted as witches.

  The Waning Half tier—the Grandmothers—had a triad on each side, with no extras. Justice had stayed home to keep an eye on the very pregnant Dusty. The Full Moon tier held just five witches. Xanthic would be advancing to the Grandmothers as soon as Dusty gave birth, so that level was going to be pretty thin for years.

  The Half Moon's lacked a single witch to have four triads. Next year, I'll be up there, and Walnut and Macaw with me. The Crescent Moon level was crowded. Six triads, including hers. The New Moons—girls showing the signs of puberty, but not yet grasping power arced around the two approachable sides of the spire. The little girls camped further down, in a pocket out of the wind. And the one little boy with them. The littlest one were in bubbles, for safety, and so their mothers wouldn't worry.

  As the waxing gibbous moon cleared the horizon in the blue twilight sky they started the song of Joy. The newly advanced sang their songs in turn, and as firefly lights gathered among the New Moons, two girls moved up to their new positions. Macaw raised her hands, grinning fit to burst as Mother finally noticed, and from down the mountain, ten year old Verry climbed first the slope and then the spire. Wollastonite, sounding surprised, fumbled the words to the Mother's verse as she climbed up to the Full Moon tier.

  Crimson reached down to welcome her sister, and three of them exchanged grins. A triad of Crescents, for a bit. Then Half Moons. Watch out, World!

  They sang the moon down in the early dawn, and then they all headed down to the camp. Crimson was exhausted, and crawled straight into bed.

  "Fat and lazy." Madder looked over at her. "You might at least help, when you take up so much space on the tier."

  "I'm not fat, I'm pregnant. Not that anyone gives a damn."

  "What!" Her mother. Great. "You don't have permission to advance."

  Crimson pulled up her blankets and tried to shut out her voice, concentrate on her upset stomach, her head ache.

  "Don't ignore me, young lady!"

  "Why not? You ignore me all the time." Her stomach won, and she retched up what little remained of yesterday's lunch.

  "Is that morning sickness?" Happy sounded distinctly unhappy.

  Then Answer. "No. It's altitude sickness. I am shamed that I haven't noticed your condition. Get up girl, we have to get you down to a lower elevation right now."

  She was hauled to her feet and hustled down the trail. So much for resting.

  She started feeling better after the first couple of hours of the steep descent. Answer let her stop to rest and eat, brie
fly.

  "I should have noticed."

  Crimson sighed. "Nobody ever notices, never listens. Too many people, either too selfish or too beaten down to be able to be alert to anyone else's problems."

  Her grandmother glared. "No one is beaten down."

  Too sick to care, Crimson just shook her head. "Then what do you call my mother?" She pushed off the rock she was sitting on and headed downward.

  The old witch was quiet for a long time.

  "There are only nine of us, now."

  "But somehow my mother had to mind four children and meet the demands of two old women. And then keep control over a very large problem, and her baby. And now she's raising her grandson, but still helping the old women. When has she had a breather? When did she have time to recover enough to pay attention to her other daughters?"

  “It was her choice, against our wishes.”

  “And twenty-three years later you’re still rubbing her nose in it, and being part of the burden, instead of helping with us, like when Jade needed watching.”

  "You've been well supervised by the pyramid, as we train you. I shouldn't have sent such young witches to relay messages for the Army."

  "Walnut and Macaw are both pregnant, too. And they didn’t go anywhere."

  That shut the old witch up again.

  "Everyone calls us whiners. They're right. But we're growing up, and getting to where we can return the indifference. I don't care any more. I don't want your attention. It's too late to fix. Concentrate on Mother, she's the one who really needs help."

  On the third day they camped and let everyone catch up to them. The Dark Crescents huddled and argued. It was another five days to the village. The contractions were coming a few minutes apart by the time she walked into Lady Gisele's hut.

  Ocelot was a beautiful little girl, blinking around the new world in perplexity.

  Crimson imagined she looked a bit like Inre.

  Answer tried to keep her busy, sticking her into a triad with Obsidian as an older guide and Eden as an equal. Actually a hopelessly floundering newcomer. But nice.