Among the Powers (7 page)

“
When all had seated themselves, golden dishes
and silver platters came sailing out of the kitchens, bearing
strange and wondrous foods—square fruits and golden meats and other
things we mortals can’t even imagine. Crystal goblets sprang up out
of the table itself, brimming full of liquor as red as blood, and
soft music played—but still they had not seen their hostess, nor
could they see any musicians.

“
The journey had made them hungry, so they fell
to, and ate heartily, but however much they ate, more would appear,
so that the table was always full. And they drank the red liquor,
thinking it nothing but some concoction of fruit juice. But of
course, it was more than that, and none of them were accustomed to
a brew fit for the Powers, so they quickly became tipsy, and grew
careless.

“
And one man picked up his crystal goblet, and
held it up to the light, and said, ‘This will bring its weight in
gold, I should imagine!’ Then he popped it into a sack.

“
Suddenly the lights all went out, and the
shutters slammed tightly closed on every window, and the room was
plunged into darkness except for a single ray of light that seemed
to come from nowhere, but which shown directly onto the man who had
taken the goblet.

‘“
What did you say?’ the voice demanded. ‘Did you
say you plan to sell my tableware? Is this the way you treat your
hostess? Is this the way you accept my hospitality?’

“
The man shuddered and dared not reply, and then,
lo and behold, with a boom and a bang and a flash that blinded all
the others, a bolt of lightning struck down from the ceiling and
burned the thief to black ash.

“
The others all fell from their chairs and groped
toward the door as their vision slowly returned, and they all fled
screaming into the night.

“
When they had gone a few kilometers, they
slowed, thinking themselves safe, and some even spoke of perhaps
returning again to the house—but then one of them screamed, and
turned black and fell dead at their feet, though they had seen
nothing touch him and could find no mark on him save the
blackening. They saw that they were not safe yet, but still, they
did not yet realize that none of them could ever escape, that the
last would live only long enough to tell the tale—but I get ahead
of my story.

“
After their comrade had fallen dead so
mysteriously, the others took counsel among themselves...”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

“Excuse me, sir, but there’s a message I think might
interest you.”

Startled, Geste looked up from where he lay
on his belly, seemingly adrift in mid-air. “What?” he said. “What
message?”

The floater above him blinked an apologetic
blue, then said, “A termination signal has been received from a
gift disk, coded as Bredon the Hunter, second priority
response.”

“Bredon?” He glanced down through his
platform at the three young women bathing in the river below. He
had intended to do something to startle them, though he had not yet
decided exactly what. He hadn’t sent a bunch of teenagers squealing
in ages.

Well, he could always find more naked women
to embarrass, and he had promised Bredon a favor. “All right,” he
said. “Where is he? His village?”

“No, sir. The disk was broken in the
immediate vicinity of The Meadows.”

“Which meadows?”

“The Meadows, sir. The normal-space location
of the home of Lady Sunlight of the Meadows.”

“Really?” This was suddenly very
interesting; the nubile creatures below him were instantly
forgotten. “He’s been bothering Lady Sunlight?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. The openly available
information from Lady Sunlight’s household intelligences indicates
that a trespasser was recently expelled from The Meadows, but no
identification was made, and no information is available on what
the trespasser was doing or why he was expelled.”

Geste got to his feet, grinning. The
platform turned opaque, first black, then silver. “Oh, this sounds
as if it should be interesting. I wonder what Bredon thinks he’s
doing?”

“I have no idea, sir,” the floater said.

“I didn’t suppose you did. Put up a field,
then, and let’s get over there and see what he wants.”

“Yes, sir.”

The air around him was suddenly dead,
motionless and silent, as the forcefield snapped into place. Geste
felt a very slight tug of acceleration, and when he glanced down
the ground below the platform was moving past in a blur.

He should not have felt the start at all,
though; he frowned, and promised to remind himself to have the
airskiff overhauled at the first opportunity.

Soft music played. He ignored it.

Within minutes he was over the Forbidden
Grove, the trees thick and green below him. The platform came to a
gentle stop over the center of The Meadows and obligingly turned
transparent before he could give the order. The music faded
away.

At least, he thought, the basic programming
still seemed sound, even if the transition-smoothing systems were
weak.

The floater hovered anxiously at his
shoulder as he peered down at the clearing.

“I don’t see him,” Geste said after a
moment.

“Neither do I,” the floater said.

“Did he get into the house somehow?” He made
a gesture to the platform, which promptly extruded a small,
spherical image-field. It floated up to Geste’s eye level like a
bubble rising in a glass of sparkling wine, and transformed itself
into a flawless three-dimensional representation of the main
entrance to the Meadows.

To the unaided human eye, of course, the
entire palace was usually quite invisible, save where sparkles of
light refracted from its turrets and trim.

The image scanned across the
extradimensional facade of Lady Sunlight’s residence, stepping the
available radiation up or down into the visible spectrum for him,
refracting it from bent-space to normal-space where necessary.
Walkways, gardens, terraces, and blank walls slid across the
screen, all bereft of inhabitants.

“The doorguards say no one has gotten past
them,” the floater said. “And the internal systems that will talk
to me all agree. Incidentally, I’ve spotted the remnants of the
signal-disk. It was definitely here when it was broken.”

“Well, I don’t see him. Is Sunlight here?
Maybe she knows what happened to him.”

“Lady Sunlight is not presently at home,
either figuratively or literally. Her messages are being forwarded,
but their destination is shielded.”

“That’s no surprise,” Geste muttered. He and
Lady Sunlight had not gotten along well for the past century or
two; she had never forgiven him for intercepting and altering some
of her transmissions, including party invitations. He had thought
the results were funny and harmless, but she had taken affront, and
had, in his opinion, been acting stuffy and humorless ever since.
Among other things, she was avoiding him, refusing even his most
innocuous calls. He rather hoped that Bredon’s request would be
something that would annoy Sunlight and that was within his
power.

The floater had not finished speaking; it
ignored his interruption and continued, “However, the extended
defense systems report that the trespasser who was expelled several
hours ago returned to The Meadows after the fields were dropped,
and has only very recently departed. He is presently nearing the
western edge of the grove. Recordings of your previous conversation
with the native of Denner’s Wreck who called himself Bredon the
Hunter indicate that you neglected to mention that it would be
advisable to wait in one place after breaking the disk. In keeping
with the local perception of you and the other off-worlders as
supernatural beings, he probably expected you to materialize out of
thin air immediately after the disk was broken, and has now
departed in anger.”

“Ha! Of course! So that must be him to the
west, then!” Geste chortled. “Let’s go find him!”

“Yes, sir.” The platform turned and skimmed
westward, and the floater, in accordance with Geste’s standing
orders regarding contact with the natives, faded from sight.

Bredon neither saw nor heard Geste’s
approach. He had just left the edge of the grove behind and was
marching out into the grass when someone called loudly from behind
him, “Hello, Bredon the Hunter, son of Aredon the Hunter!”

He whirled, startled, half expecting to see
the faceless metal thing pursuing him.

There was nobody there. He saw only the
trees of the grove, the mossy stones, the scattered wildflowers,
and a shadow that did not belong.

He looked up, and there was Geste, standing
on his platform. This time his clothes were green and shimmering,
instead of violet plush, but otherwise he was unchanged. He was
smiling broadly.

Geste, looking down, noticed that Bredon
looked rather battered. A large bruise was spread across his nose,
and a wide variety of cuts and scrapes adorned his limbs.

He hoped that the native hadn’t summoned him
just for a little medical service.

“Oh, it’s you,” Bredon said. “Hello.”

“Hello. I believe you called me,” Geste
replied.

“Oh,” Bredon said again. There was something
about Geste that was curiously unnerving. Perhaps, Bredon thought,
it was the way the little man seemed to accept everything with a
smile, as if he spent every day standing on a platform in mid-air,
mysteriously appearing and disappearing.

Of course, for all Bredon knew, that was
exactly how he
did
spend every day.

No, the unnerving part, Bredon decided, was
that this harmless, rather foolish-looking little person was a
Power. Geste simply did not look the part of a demi-god.

“Uh... I broke the disk,” Bredon said.

“Yes, I know. You want to collect, I
presume. I said I would grant you any favor within my power. What
would you like?”

Now that the moment of truth had arrived,
Bredon found himself horribly nervous. Looking up at Geste in his
glistening clothing, standing blithely unsupported a good four
meters off the ground, Bredon could not help remembering all the
childhood tales of people who had dared too much, and of wishes
gone wrong. One man who had been granted wishes by Brenner of the
Mountains, and had used them for cruel revenge against all who had
ever slighted him, had had everything he owned, including his home
and family, taken by Rawl the Adjuster to balance the scales. A
woman who had demanded unlimited wealth of Hsin of the River had
almost starved to death surrounded by the mountains of gold she had
asked for, piles of coins that had blocked every exit from her
house. A young couple who had intruded on the demesne of Gold the
Delver with some harmless request had never been heard from again;
Bredon’s own maternal grandmother, as a girl, had known that pair
personally.

And that did not even touch any of the
stories about people who offended the Powers directly, as his
request might well offend Lady Sunlight. There were the guests who
insulted Isabelle, and the girl who matched her beauty against the
Nymph, and all the people who ever had any contact at all with
Thaddeus the Black. A large percentage, perhaps a majority, of the
tales about the Powers were cautionary in nature.

But this was exactly the sort of cowardice
he had castigated himself for, and despite his location and attire
Geste looked harmless enough. “Lady Sunlight,” he said, forcing the
answer out without preamble.

Geste stared at him for a moment, his grin
broadening. This was better than he had really expected. He had
guessed that Bredon would simply want to see the inside of
Sunlight’s house, or some other such harmless whim; he had not
dared hope for anything so audacious as asking for Sunlight
herself. “Just how do you mean that?” he said at last.

Flustered, Bredon could only stammer.

“You say you want Lady Sunlight,” Geste said
in his most pompous manner. “Do you mean you want to own her, as if
she were a beast of burden? Or that you want to take her as your
wife? Or that you just want to lie with her once? Or do you merely
want to speak with her?”

Again, Bredon could not answer
coherently.

“I’m afraid that I can’t give her to you
outright,” Geste said. “That’s beyond my power. She’s as free as
you or I. And for that same reason, I can’t compel her to marry
you. As for bedding her, all I can do is to do my best to assist
you; I can make no promises.” He was rejoicing inwardly at the
entire situation. Finding some way to coax Sunlight into this poor
native’s bed would tax his ingenuity to its fullest. Sunlight
wanted nothing to do with
any
native.

“I...I don’t want that,” Bredon said, losing
his nerve. “I just want to speak to her.” That was a lie; he wanted
very much to bed Lady Sunlight, but he did
not
want to
become the subject of some new cautionary tale that would be told
to future generations of children. Geste, after all, was the
Trickster; he had a reputation for doing anything for a laugh,
regardless of the consequences. Looking at Geste’s expression,
Bredon could readily see the comic possibilities in tricking a
Power into bed with a mortal, and could also guess at just how Lady
Sunlight might react. She would probably not see the humor, and
might well take it out on him. She would be unable to harm Geste,
but any number of mortals had been casually killed or maimed by
Powers before this, and with far less cause.

Disappointment was plain on Geste’s face,
and Bredon was suddenly much more certain of his decision.

“All right,” Geste said. “You want to speak
with her. Is that all?”

“Yes,” Bredon said, relieved. “That’s
all.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, I...” Bredon began, amid a swarm of
second thoughts—and urges that, while they did not qualify as
thoughts, still had a strong influence. He drove them away with the
memory of how Lady Sunlight guarded her home. If she could call on
such defenses against a simple trespasser, what might she do to her
seducer?