Barreth's outburst and departure scarcely caused a ripple in the table talk of his brothers and sisters. A few looked up, simply taking notice of the fact that it was Barreth who was leaving. Lower on the table, though, silence fell, and conversation was slow to return. Most of Barreth's dependents followed their master out of the room. Many of the remaining demigods and mortals watched as Barreth strode to the door. Then they turned to gaze, briefly or long, at Silvas and Maria, the focus of Barreth's anger, the cause of his abrupt departure. Even servants stopped what they had been doing to watch, and wonder.
As soon as Barreth turned to leave, Silvas casually lifted his goblet and took a leisurely sip of wine. Maria was almost as quick to do the same.
"This is almost a match for that spicy vintage you like so well," she said, showing not the slightest apprehension.
Silvas took another short sip, rolling the wine around in his mouth for a moment before he nodded. "Not far from it," he said, as if nothing more important than the quality of the wine had intruded on the banquet. On the inner level they shared, he projected, That was most beautifully done!
Maria smiled sweetly. But so transparent.
They do not look for such subtlety from us, Silvas assured her. It will annoy them no end.
But I have completely exhausted my ideas now.
Silvas took another bite of fruit. This was some sort of sweet melon, akin to the Persian variety he procured for the Glade. It may be enough, for the moment.
They did not have to worry about initiating a next step. Only a few minutes passed before Mikel stood, bowed formally to the others near him, and left the room. After that, the banquet broke up quickly. The departure of the host signaled its end.
Some of the departing deities looked at Silvas and Maria, or even nodded to them, before they left. Only Gioia bothered to stop and speak.
"You are an interesting pair," she said, looking from Silvas to Maria. "I am certain we shall meet again." She swept by then without waiting for either of them to respond.
"I think we should check on Bay and the others," Silvas said as he and Maria headed for the door themselves. All of Carillia's brothers and sisters had left the banquet hall. Silvas and Maria were given a wide berth by the demigods and mortals who remained. None of the lesser attendees at the banquet wanted to be seen anywhere near the outsiders, even though the two great cats had remained outside the doors to the banquet room.
"Yes, we should make sure they've been properly cared for," Maria said, matching Silvas's easy tones for the benefit of anyone who might be eavesdropping. "Can you find the way to them?"
"I think so."
Maria took his arm, and they strolled through rooms and along corridors. Silvas showed no hesitation, and he felt convinced that he was taking the most direct route possible. His easy familiarity with the layout of the palace was an almost offhand application of new power. Velvet and Satin ranged ahead and behind them, wandering, prowling, looking for any threat in these strange surroundings-and guaranteeing that their master and mistress would not be approached lightly by any mortal servants of the palace.
There seemed to be plenty of light throughout the palace, sometimes without visible source. A god had no real need of torches or candles for light. For that matter, he had no real need of light. When he wanted it, the ancient command, Fiat lux, was sufficient. But there were those in the palace without the faculties of a god. Occasionally, Silvas and Maria passed a servant or minor retainer of their host or one of the other gods and goddesses. Everyone gave the two large cats plenty of room. No one spoke to Silvas and Maria, though most acknowledged their presence with a polite nod.
"I wouldn't have to walk so far if I were going from my father's castle to the church in the village and back," Maria said after they had spent fifteen minutes weaving their way through the ground floor of the palace.
Silvas chuckled. "At least there is no mountain to scale."
By the time they did reach the stables, Silvas reckoned that they had walked a mile from the banquet hall, most of that inside the palace itself. They found Bosc and Braf with Bay. The cats seemed ecstatic over finding familiar faces. They went around to each of their friends, demanding that Bosc and Braf each stroke them, and rubbing against Bay's forelegs while they purred loudly.
"It is over?" Braf asked.
"Carillia is gone," Silvas said. He told them of the heavenly show that had transpired.
"We saw the starburst and the rainbow," Bay said.
"They told us we were not permitted to attend the service," Bosc said. "It troubled us all, Koshka most."
"I did not know," Silvas said. "In truth, though, you wouldn't have felt comfortable among that company."
"You did all eat properly, though, didn't you?" Maria asked.
"Properly, perhaps, but not in comfort," Bosc said.
"I feel not easy, lord," Braf said. "I have the itch of danger close at hand."
"There is always danger here, Braf," Silvas assured him. "They would have excluded Maria and me as well, had they thought of a way."
"The sooner we get back between familiar walls, the better," Braf said. "I wish we had brought all of my lads and not just the handful."
"We can't leave yet, certainly not tonight," Silvas said. "Come the morning, we should know how long we'll be staying. We may even leave in the morning. I suppose that's as like as not."
"It's been an uncommon long day," Bosc said. "More like two days to my thinking."
"Yes, the days are much longer here," Silvas assured him. "Your thinking is accurate."
"There is much you're not saying," Bay observed. "You're troubled, and not hiding it as well as you normally do."
"There is hostility toward us here, more than I might have anticipated," Silvas said. "Even from those who benefited most from our help."
"You are a deicide," Bay said. "That might pass except that you are not one of the family. Worse, you were a mere mortal when you slew four of their brethren. That must be intolerable for many of them, even those whose lives you may have saved."
"The lack of gratitude grates hard, Bay," Maria said. "Even Mikel shows no appreciation for the centuries that Silvas gave him."
"You know better now, though," Bay said.
"Yes, I know better now," Silvas admitted. "Be on guard through the night. I doubt that anyone will take action so soon, but be on guard just the same."
"Aye, lord," Braf said. "I've already put my lads on watches, two at the time."
"A good idea," Silvas said. "Call on me at need. I will hear." Even before receiving Carillia's divinity, Silvas would have heard the call of one of his servants in danger. His concern for them was constant.
– |The way to their rooms was shorter than the way out from the banquet hall. A stairway in a corner tower took them to the second floor, and their suite was nearer the rear of the palace than the front. The cats made a hurried tour of the three rooms to assure themselves that no threat lurked in ambush within. Then they took up positions across the doorway to the corridor. Anyone coming in would have to go past Satin and Velvet to get at Silvas and Maria. It had been ages since the great cats had actually had to come to the defense of their master or mistress, but they remained ready to stand to once again.
"Do you really think it unlikely that we'll be attacked here?" Maria asked.
"Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No." Silvas paced around the room, working out the tension he had felt compelled to hide before.
"We could leave now," Maria said. "If the night here is as long as the day, we might be back at the Glade before any of the gods knew we were gone."
Silvas stopped pacing for a moment. "No. If any of them has an interest in knowing where we are, he-or she-would know the instant we started to leave, even if no servants have been ordered to watch and report. In any case, we dare not let them see us run from the drunken threats of Barreth. That would be dangerous, perhaps fatal."
"How could we lose support we don't have?"
"As it stands now, perhaps most of them would stand aside in any quarrel. We might not be welcome, but I doubt that many of the others are as ready to return to bloodshed as Barreth shows himself. They will want time as badly as we do, time to forge new alliances or repair old ones, time to arm against whatever they may eventually decide to do. But if we run, they may see us as game for the hunting."
"Gioia?" Maria asked, cocking her head to the side.
"Any of them."
"Have you any feeling yet for which gods seem likely to stand aside, and which are likely to side with Barreth?"
Silvas shook his head. "I can't read their minds as I can yours." He smiled. "Or as you can read mine. The others are separate, not united as we are. They've had eons to perfect the gifts of secrecy."
"So what do we do?"
"We go to bed, get what sleep we may, and think through the morning when it comes. I think it will be proper for us to leave then, with as much show as we arrived. We will depart in broad daylight, with poise and dignity, as if we care not a whit for Barreth and his drunken threats."
"How will we respond to those threats?" Maria asked.
"This isn't the time to think on that. We will respond, somehow, in due course. That too seems essential. But unless there's action against us here, those thoughts can wait until we're home, where we're strongest. The Seven Towers offers safeguards that even a god might find difficult to overcome."
"But we take precautions, as you advised the others?"
Another smile. Silvas took Maria in his arms. "Precautions always. I have centuries of being cautious to draw on."
There was nothing lacking for their comfort in the suite. On a sideboard in the sitting room, there were carafes of several different wines as well as a platter of cheese and fruit, with a long loaf of fresh bread. And the bathroom was appointed better even than the one in their apartments in the Glade. There was even hot and cold running water.
Silvas and Maria took considerable time preparing themselves for bed. Neither was particularly sleepy, despite the unaccustomed length of the day. That was more than merely a reflection of their new divinity. The habit of sleep and sleepiness remained. But each had thoughts to keep a mind active as they moved about the suite. At times, their thoughts touched. When that happened, they would smile at each other, explore the question that had brought their minds together, and then each went on to whatever else came to mind.
"It will take some getting used to," Silvas said after the third or fourth such occurrence. "We remain separate, but still joined."
"The way Brother Paul used to explain the Trinity," Maria said. "Three separate beings, yet one God."
That gave Silvas pause. He had been apart from the open teachings of the Church for so long that the analogy had not occurred to him.
"Then perhaps this has happened before," he mused softly. "I had assumed that we were unique. Perhaps not."
Maria smiled. "Something else we may want to investigate when we have time. Think how much more confusing it would be if there were three of us."
"In a way, perhaps we are three," he suggested. "Something of Carillia does remain."
It's not the same, though, Maria thought, careful to shield that from Silvas. Not all of their thoughts were instantly shared.
– |"There may be a lot that these gods don't know about us, or don't reckon on in their appraisal of us," Silvas said when they were finally ready to climb into bed. The lights were out in the other rooms of the suite. Only a single candle remained burning in the bedroom. For comfort rather than need.
"They may not know how to deal with our… dual nature," Maria said.
"That's one of the things. Even we aren't sure how to deal with that yet," Silvas noted. "But I was thinking more of the fact that they may not know how to reckon my mastery of wizardry in the balance. When they needed a wizard, they had to look for a wizard. Mikel found Auroreus first, and then me. The gods of the Blue Rose also found a mortal wizard of their own. There is something of the craft of the Trimagister that must remain a mystery to these gods. There is also the way that Mikel infused me with so much of his knowledge before the final battle at Mecq. Here, knowledge is power, ultimate power, more real and deadly than sword or mace."
Maria chuckled. "Perhaps Barreth and the others should all be quaking with fear of us then," she said lightly.
Silvas gave her a pained look. He did not think it was a proper topic for levity. "Perhaps they at least realize that there are important unknowns. It may stay their hand a time."
"Or rush them so they strike before we learn how to use those advantages?"
They got into the huge bed from opposite sides and met in the middle, nestling against each other, molding themselves comfortably together. They kissed, but without immediate passion.
"Lock your mind to mine," Silvas whispered. "There's no time to give you a decade's apprenticeship in the craft. You'll have to take a more direct route to the skills of the Trimagister. Stay with me."
As soon as Silvas felt Maria's mind lock to his, he went into his routine spells of defense, the nightly safeguards he had been taking before sleep for centuries. They were somewhat different than they would have been if they had been home in the Seven Towers. In all his centuries as a wizard, there had been very few nights that Silvas had spent away from that castle. The magic of the Unseen Lord that had kept him no more than a spell away from the Glade had made nights in other beds quite rare, indeed.
Silvas completed the essential spells of defense first and went on to show Maria other defenses, other spells, such things as seemed appropriate at the moment. No one tour could convey every iota of the lore of the Trimagister, or the experience of so many hundreds of years spent applying, and improving, that lore. But Silvas led Maria to as much as he could, and she absorbed. The rest was there, ready for her to tap it, even if something should happen to Silvas and he were no longer present to complete her education.
This excursion was not a matter of teach and learn, not in any traditional sense. Maria experienced what Silvas did, and it became part of her, as thoroughly as if she herself had lived all of those centuries of wizardry. Deep lore and lucid memory, linked in Silvas's mind from one point to the next, was transferred intact to her own mind, creating new passageways through her brain, new associations. She became the wizard that Silvas had long been.
Together, their minds traveled along interior pathways. On the bed in Mikel's palace, their bodies remained nestled together, motionless. They scarcely breathed. Their hearts beat more slowly.
Don't try to hold it all in conscious memory, Silvas cautioned. Merely let it settle in so it can surface at need.
I understand, she replied.
This is somewhat like what MikeI did to me, Silvas's mind said. But then it was much faster, overwhelming, a rushing waterfall rather than a gentle stream.
After a time, the pace of their interior tour flagged, and both started to be distracted by distant voices and fleeting visions. Those seemed to lead them off into a darkness. They moved that way, the corridors of mind gradually becoming different sorts of paths, more ethereal than the musty depths of memory. There was no obvious hint of danger in this, though.
Maria did not bother asking Silvas what was going on, because she realized that he had no more idea than she did. This was something new to both of them, something to explore together.
Suddenly, one vision became as vivid as reality. A peasant woman was on her knees on the dirt floor of her hut, praying over the motionless body of a little girl. Praying.
The girl is almost dead, Silvas observed.
A terrible fever, Maria said in her mind.
Silvas reached out to touch the child's forehead. He felt the fever, the burning skin. He saw his hand on the forehead, but the mother did not.
Can we help? Maria asked.
If we can't no one can, Silvas replied grimly. He used a spell of healing from his wizard's lore, and willed its speedy success with the new store of power that Carillia had passed to him and to Maria. The little girl's fever moved into his hand and raced up his arm, dissipating slowly.
Then the mother started to recite a "Hail, Mary," and Maria felt herself suddenly begin to tingle.
She's talking to me! was almost a cry of desperation.
Together, Silvas and Maria experienced a memory of Carillia appearing to people as Mary. "It was my place," Carillia's voice said in their minds.
Maria reached out her hands and placed them over the hands of the praying mother. The woman looked up, apparently directly at Maria. Her eyes opened wide, and she gasped, clearly seeing the vision.
"Your little girl will recover," Maria said. She felt as if her body were shaking violently, but there was also an incredible exhilaration to the experience. Blood coursed madly through Maria's body, and the rush of that was repeated in the body of her spirit. The sensation was almost sexual in its intensity. Maria had to pause to control herself, to keep her voice calm when she spoke to the mother again. "The fever is leaving her. Be at peace."
The mother's effusive thanks were cut off suddenly by another plea for help. Silvas and Maria started to move toward this new voice, off in a dark distance.
I can see now why the gods have so often been tempted to interfere, Maria projected to Silvas, who had experienced the event just as she had. There are responsibilities to this gift.
Responsibilities too often ignored by…
Silvas's reply was bit off. The two of them found themselves suddenly caught up in a storm of light. A whirlwind of bright white light rushed around with all of the noise of a cyclone. There was no wind for them to feel, but the commotion was so intense that for a time they were unable to communicate with each other. The bodies of their spirits held hands and stood shoulder to shoulder against the rush of light, waiting for it to end… or to reveal whatever threat it held.
The threat was there, pressing against them, its menace apparent but undefined.
The light storm collapsed as suddenly as it had risen, somehow parting Silvas and Maria as it disappeared. They were standing in an open field under a clear sunlit sky. Maria was more than twenty yards from Silvas. And they were not alone.
Silvas was facing the anonymous figure of a knight clad in plate armor so black that it seemed to be a hole in reality. There were only narrow slits for eyes in the helmet's visor. Nothing of the warrior beneath could be seen. The black knight was taller than Silvas, and heavier by far, judging from the expanse of armor that covered him. The gauntlets made the knight's hands seem easily twice the size of Silvas's hands. And the black-bladed sword he drew appeared to Maria to be almost the size of a lance.
Silvas was dressed only in the loose silks that he customarily wore, without weapon or armor.
The knight kept his eyes aimed directly at Silvas, giving Maria not the briefest glance, as far as she could discern. He raised the black sword above his head and took one slow step forward. Silvas took one step back, raised his right hand, and spoke a word of command.
A sword appeared in his right hand, as gleaming bright as the other's sword was dark, but more in keeping with Silvas's size. A large shield affixed itself to Silvas's left arm. The black knight stepped to his left. Silvas matched the move. The two circled for a moment. Silvas stopped that dance eventually by taking a step back in the other direction, then stopping. He held his sword out in challenge. Those movements put the black knight directly between Silvas and Maria. She nodded, uncertain that Silvas even saw her gesture. He did not speak in her mind, and she did not try to speak to him. If the black knight were truly unaware of her-or unaware of the depth of their communion-that was a secret to hold until it would do the most good.
Tired of waiting, Silvas took a step toward the black knight. He had prepared all of the spells he thought might help. The knight came to meet him. Their swords clashed, high, and rebounded. Several times their blades met in that position as they hacked at each other. Silvas put all of his strength into meeting each blow, and it was scarcely sufficient. The black blade came closer to his head each time, and pressed forward, as if the black knight were not yet exerting his full strength.
After those initial probes, the black knight pressed his attack more vigorously, wielding his sword with as much ease as a child might wave a straw. Silvas met each blow, with increasing difficulty. He spoke his spells and watched them come to naught, serving only to keep the black knight from fully pressing the advantages of strength and reach. There was power in Silvas's spells, more power than he could have managed when he was merely a wizard, but still, they were not sufficient to penetrate the defenses of this phantom assailant.
Maria found herself watching the duel from two vantages at the same time, through her own eyes and through Silvas's. She felt his struggle as if her muscles were fighting, heard the spells he wove. She even felt the shock of swords clashing with great violence behind each blade.
Carefully now, Silvas said. At my word.
No answer was necessary. An idea formed in Maria's mind, as well as the spells to use to try to complete it.
Now! Silvas's voice in Maria's mind was a shout. Without the slightest delay, she spoke a short spell and a single word of power, clamping the black knight's arms to his sides with hoops of the strongest steel a divine mind could imagine-strong enough to hold even a god for a time.
For all of the strength he had displayed, the black knight could not break the bonds that held him. Silvas raised his sword for a sweeping cut aimed to slice the knight from the left side of his neck down to his right hip. Silvas added words of power to the edge of his sword, and to the muscles in his arms. As if released by the springs of a catapult, the sword flashed down, moving so rapidly that it appeared to become a large disc of steel. As the blade cut into the black knight, the suit of armor exploded, hurling pieces of itself in every direction.
There was no body within the armor. No blood showed that any wound had been inflicted.
The black sword bounced across the field and came to rest-but only momentarily. Then the sword came up off of the ground and advanced toward Silvas. No visible hand held the blade.
The duel resumed, with the sword moving more rapidly on its own than it had when the black armor had wielded it. No magic, no words of power, seemed to slow the blade. Silvas's sword was dashed from his hand, and the black blade raised up for the final blow.
Silvas could do nothing to avoid the stroke, but just as the blade started toward him, an explosion of light caught Silvas and Maria again. They could see nothing at all in the glare.
Then they awoke, back in their bed in Mikel's palace, in their bodies again, and alone.