Chapter 22
Kaz stood on a dam with Protasion.
“So, this is one of a number of pools there to fill with spate water in the wet season and after the snow melts in the north, to be released gradually, rather than have the water potentially flood the lower lying part of the city,” she said.
“That’s it,” said Protasion. “Which is why we have a dry river course below us and another dam to release it back into the river.”
“So, whilst that part is dry, if a number of tunnels were dug in the sides, and tunnelled under the camps of the besiegers, and the water was then let in....”
“We’d have to mend the holes again before spring,” warned Protasion. “But it would be very unpleasant for them to be undermined and fall into mud.”
“We’d better avoid the latrine pits, though. We don’t want that washing back into the river.”
“No, or we’ll be fighting cholera, too, it comes from contaminated water.”
“You are a fount of knowledge, Protasion. Use your engineering to draft the course of a couple of tunnels to cause them maximum misery.”
“It’ll be a pleasure.” He shivered. “It’s got suddenly very cold.”
“Even more miserable for wet men,” said Kaz.
oOoOo
Allenna Dren, one-time high priestess of the temple of Selen in Mesolimnos, now chief chaplain and war council member to the besieging forces, was nonplussed.
“My goddess, I know nothing about children,” she confessed. “I joined the cult to avoid being married off as a tool for my family’s ambitions, though of course I stayed for all the right reasons,” she added, hastily. “It would be an honour to care for your divine child, but I don’t know how...” she regarded the child on her bed with misgivings; the baby appeared to be a few months old.
“Get some peasant woman to see the feeding her and cleaning up after her and teaching her to control bladder and bowel,” said Selen. “As to the rest, you can slap her or pinch her or do as you like, train her to be angry and let loose her powers. My heroine is bringing cold weather supplies and a replacement garrison, and you can hand Chionea over to Thea Drex when she comes.”
“She is no true noble, my lady,” said Allenna.
“Why would I care about the petty divisions you mortals make amongst yourselves?” said Selen. “It is a means of controlling those outside of my priests, and those of my minions who consider themselves to be important for their petty names. I care about real power, and you are one of my powerful priestesses. Bring her up unhappy and angry and snowing on the enemy.”
“Ah, I understand,” said Allenna. “The child is a tool.”
oOoOo
The trógling miners were glad to get underground out of a bitter wind which felt as if it carried spite and anger with it. They used cantrips as props on their journey, and gently undid them as they returned. Kaz, less skilled, watched, and felt a hit of power and sudden burst of prayer from one of the four miners, who had been too close to the prop he had just removed, and was buried. Without thinking, Kaz pulled her body after her spirit into the shade of the tunnel to reach him, her spirit passing through the fallen earth. She exerted her will on the earth to push it away, and picked up her semi-conscious worshiper to carry his body as well as hers to safety, calling for a healer.
oOoOo
“There is a new god, near my daughter!” cried Selen. “I must guard... no, the presence is gone from the confines of my temple.”
“Did you imagine it, or was it the powers of your own daughter?” asked Daze.
“Oh! Yes, that may be it, a spike of power as she grows,” said Selen.
oOoOo
“Eh, Kaz, what did you just do?” asked Protasion, as the trógling, one Zarn, was rushed to the Halls of Healing, protesting that he was fine, now.
“I’m not quite sure,” said Kaz. “Someone who gives me power needed me and I had to be there so I sort of was. I think if I tried to analyse too hard how I did it, I wouldn’t be able to.”
“Happy apotheosis, your goddness,” grinned Protasion.
Kaz poked him.
There was a chime.
“Why not when it happened?” said Kaz, puzzled.
“You had to accept it?” said Protasion. “Oh, there it goes again. Your mother-in-law is an enthusiast.”
“I love her, though, for twisting my curse to let me be with Alethos, even if we do have to wait,” said Kaz.
oOoOo
In the Selenite camp, a priest of Librax named Fordus Arnth went glassy-eyed.
“Behold! A new goddess is born, and it shall mark the beginning of the end!” he intoned, then shook his head. “Did I just say something?”
“You said that a new goddess is born, and that it marks the beginning of the end,” said Allenna. “You meant Chionea, of course?”
“Who?” said Arnth.
“Our goddess’s daughter, you dolt!” said Allenna. “You meant that she has come enough into her powers to make winter come this far south, didn’t you?”
“Oh, if you say so, high priestess,” said Arnth. “I thought it was something to do with shadow, and... but that’s ridiculous, too small and weak.”
“She’s growing all the time,” said Allenna, who found it unnerving. “And she will cast a shadow of snow clouds over the sun.”
In the temple to Solos, Erytheon Sun-Toucher stiffened.
“Behold! A new goddess is born, and it shall mark the beginning of the end!” he intoned. “Did someone write that down?”
“Yes, sir,” said the lay-member assigned as his guide. “‘Behold, a new goddess is born, and it shall mark the beginning of the end’ is what you said.”
“Remarkable,” said Erytheon. “We live in interesting times.”
“What... what does it mean?” asked the youth, one Epiphio.
A smile touched the lips of his tutor.
“It means we have a chance of winning, my boy,” said Erytheon. Erytheon loved his god dearly but he had also started worshipping Fate. And she sometimes gave him more insights even than those he had for himself. And Erytheon could see further with his blind eyes than many keen-sighted people could see. And it may be said, further than his own god, who was bound to his own path. Erytheon blinked rapidly.
“Behold, the child of winter must receive love to melt the snow,” he added.
He let the boy write it down, without mentioning that he remembered that one, as it came from a direct communication from his new goddess. She was cheating again, even as she had suggested that he make his interpretation of prophecy sound like a prophecy when he had been privileged to meet the Daykaz.
Erytheon had never had so much fun in his long life.
oOoOo
It rarely snowed as far south as Mesolimnos, but the snow clouds piled up and the wind wailed and howled, like the voice of an unhappy child.
“This isn’t natural,” said Harkon. “This is more like the weather I grew up with.”
“Then teach us to handle it, and to live with it, not fight it,” said Pythas.
“The wolves will be invaluable,” said Harkon. “They helped us rescue trógling in the snow. We need to take wheels off carts and put runners on, as sleds, and inscribe warming runes inside those used for people, and to make sure everyone knows how to ritually soak thread in their own blood and sew a warming rune into their clothing. It will last many days, maybe weeks, where a warmth spell lasts an hour, or at best, with the highest level, twelve hours.”
“Movement glyph on the hearth will move the warm air about a room,” said Kaz. “But it really needs to be laid by the priest of a wind cult.”
“We can see to that in the Halls of Healing, and the Warming House which has been set up in the former temple to Selen,” said Pythas. “I am sure the Windies... uh, the Knights of the Clear Starlight... will be happy to further desecrate her temple.”
“What is a problem is that it will now be hard to go and fire the steppe,” said Harkon. “Unless you have any tips for flying in this muck, love?” he appealed to his wife.
“If you’re confident to do it without me, then use the hero path between temples, and go to the temple you set up, dear,” said Thyella.
“Of course,” said Harkon. “You won’t come?”
“Matter of courtesy between gods,” said Thyella. “Because it isn’t an emergency to bargain for.”
“Of course; one cannot break protocol,” nodded Harkon. He shivered. “I swear I can hear a child wailing in that wind.”
“It sounds like kin of mine,” said Thyella, worried. “I don’t know why I feel that, but I do.”
“Erytheon pronounced that the child of winter had to be loved,” said Pythas. “He said something about it being his path to take as he was now expendable.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Kaz.
“I didn’t, either,” said Pythas.
oOoOo
“I need you to write a letter for me, and guide my hand to sign it,” said Erytheon to Epiphio. “Address it to Pythas, Lord and Priest and Commandant of Alethos, and give him formal greeting.”
“Pythas, sir? Not Lord Chrysandion?”
“Pythas. Chrysandion will not know to whom to show it. Now, say that I am of sound mind, and full of years, and it is my will that all my possessions should, in the case of my death, go to Epiphio, my guide and apprentice, and that it is my desire that Epiphio should not seek to be a Sun-Seer; and that it is my orders that Epiphio should not follow me on my path of destiny. Say that I must prepare the child of winter for godparents, and that I will be going at the time Lady Fate deems best to be a diversion for her main tool, the Daykaz. Write, Pythas, old friend, if all goes well, I will aid your young charge, and for my reward will spend an eternity shagging three women in one. And put it like that; he’s a soldier.” He paused as the youth’s pen stopped writing. “Don’t hesitate, you don’t need to understand. Pythas may explain it if he feels like it. But I want this in order, and I need it written out fair, with a lawyer to stand beside you and read it out for me to sign, before the time comes. Write also, Lightning strikes best at the heart of winter.”
There was a gulp from the boy, and the Sun-Seer reached out to cup the lad’s face in his gentle hands, and place a kiss on his forehead.
“Why must it be you?” asked Epiphio, through tears. “You have been a father to me.”
“It must be me, because I only have one prophecy left to give, and it must be given to the right person at the right time, and in the right place,” said Erytheon, gently. “I go willingly to lay aside my earthly flesh to help save us all. I am now no further use to the temple and as such can do my duty one last time.”
“But I do not want to lose you!”
“You will not,” said Erytheon. “You will leave this temple if, or when, it becomes apparent that I am not coming back, and take refuge with Pythas. He will take care of you whilst you learn about Moraia, Fate herself. She will teach you how to unravel prophecies past and present, and you will write a master work about the prophecies of the age of the blood moon and its destruction.”
“I... I do not know enough! Do not leave me!” the boy panicked.
“A part of me will be with you always,” said Erytheon. “You are as a son to me. Go and write it out neatly, and get me a lawyer. Then I will be ready. And in the month or so before I have to leave, I promise, I will spend time with you.” He smiled. “I have always known I have a destiny, but I have never known what. And now I do know, it is as if a great weight has been lifted from me. I am at peace as I have never been.”
“There is an odd light in your face, sir,” ventured Epiphio.
“It is the light of truth,” said Erytheon.
oOoOo
Pythas read the letter brought by the weeping boy, notarised by an attorney at law of Polos, and called in those who were involved.
“It is one of my kindred, then,” said Thyella.
“I do not want anyone to die just to make my task easier,” said Kaz, distressed.
“I fancy he has reason to believe that his sacrifice will make your task possible,” said Pythas. “And then he gets to be your father-in-law.”
“He will leave glyphs for me; I am sure of it,” said Thyella. “A diversion indeed. Harkon, you will accept this child as ours?”
“If any chaos taint can be removed by Alethos,” said Harkon. “Or I fear it will start over again.”
“This, I agree,” said Thyella. “I fear that the ice spirit with whom my brother was so enamoured was tainted; or Selen herself, in disguise.”
“We have time to prepare and plan for this,” said Harkon. “And my first job is to make the relieving force miserable, and delay them, so that we have no heroine of the cult here before the solstice.”
“Timing is everything,” said Pythas.
