of romantic notions from us. Especially from the old man. Meanwhile, the sea pod has spent a century hugging the warm water round a slow power leak. They’ll have turned quite strange.”
Heris grunted, not much interested. She just did not want to see the mer in human form and have to compare herself.
It was not fair. Not even a little. The girl was not even human.
The ascendant said, “I believe Februaren thought he was playing a clever practical joke.”
“He would. Sometimes he’s an idiot. I’m surprised he didn’t exploit her naivet?.”
“Who knows? He may have. It wouldn’t matter. What Philleas does in human form is separate from what she does as a mer. I couldn’t guess the old man’s proclivities-if he has any at his age-but his sense of humor would be intrigued by the fact that Philleas starts out a virgin every time she takes human form.”
“Oh, now that’s just!.. All right. I don’t know how he’d think about that. You don’t go sneaking around, trying to find out if your oldest living ancestor is some kind of pervert. Asgrimmur, let’s stop. This stuff makes me uncomfortable.”
“So let’s go climb the mountain instead.”
“Excuse me?”
“Let’s pack some food and go explore the Great Sky Fortress. You are curious about it, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. The same way I’m curious about seeing what happens when a ship founders and everybody drowns.”
“An odd way to think of it.”
Heris shrugged. “I’m an odd woman. I’ve survived an odd life. I see the world through skewed eyes.”
“I thought it might be useful to walk the field before the battle. Save us time once the others get back. Winter will come. When it does it will serve Kharoulke far better than it will us.”
“I can’t say you’re not right about that.”
The rainbow bridge remained brilliant and thrummingly potent. Heris had no difficulty crossing. The Construct had no direct potency inside the Realm of the Gods but using it outside had built up her self-confidence.
The ascendant followed, fearless himself. And had no reason to fear. Should he fall he need but change… A random gust did push him off his footing. In an instant he developed tentacles that snagged hold of the rainbow. He dragged himself back onto the bridge, where he turned into a huge bird that hopped the last few yards on one foot. He had his trousers clutched in the other.
“That was impressive,” Heris said, noting that one wing seemed stunted. “Those stories about people changing into animals always made me wonder what they did about their clothes.”
“You lose them if you get in a hurry. Otherwise, you make arrangements.” He remained generically bipedal till he finished wriggling into the trousers. He became fully human, then, but only momentarily. His exposed feet and upper body changed again. He developed lionlike feet and a heavy pelt above the waist.
It was cold up there.
Heris observed, “You’re going to be an adventure for some demigoddess.”
“I dropped the sack. There’s water up here but nothing to eat.”
“It’ll be a short adventure, then. I have a question.”
“I may have an answer.”
For reasons uncertain Heris turned toward the dead apple orchard once they passed through the gateway. “Your missing… whatever. That comes and goes. You always have the right number of hands and feet when you’re human. When you’re something else you always have a crippled limb. Which is why you lost your shirt and the food.”
“And other valuables as well.”
“And? So?”
“The hand is also missing when I’m human. But when I’m a man I don’t need to invest much effort holding the form. I can create the illusion of a hand.”
“Illusion? I’ve seen you use it.”
“Have you? For sure?”
“Uh… No, actually. What happened?”
“I attacked somebody when I was the mad monster of the high Jagos. He didn’t panic like the others. He chopped it off. That was not pleasant. But it was useful. The pain eventually wakened what little sanity I had left. That and a savage ambush later that almost killed me.”
Asgrimmur extended his right hand. It began to shrivel. “Kind of creepy, isn’t it?”
“You might say.” Heris stepped through a gap in the dry stone fence surrounding the orchard.
For an instant the gray went away. The garden offered a vision of itself in olden times. A gorgeous blond goddess plucked a golden apple. She placed it under a small flagstone, made a sign Heris assumed was a blessing. She looked in Heris’s direction as though thinking she had heard something coming. She saw nothing, evidently. Distress warped her beauty. Then the vision ended.
“What just happened?” the ascendant asked. “I felt something when you stepped through the fence.”
“I’m not sure. A flash from the past? I might have seen what the orchard looked like, back when.” The tree from which the goddess had picked the apple lay at Heris’s feet, rotted. Without a termite.
Like the power, insects were not returning to the Realm of the Gods, if only because the gateway was in the middle of a freezing sea. Though all the recent comings and goings probably meant that fleas and lice had become reestablished.
Heris said, “It’s sad, all this having to go. It was magnificent.”
“Have you forgotten what lived here?”
“No. But I bet they weren’t worse than any other Instrumentalities from their era. Were they big on human sacrifices?”
“They demanded it. But not often. The victims were usually condemned men, cripples, or people about to die from disease anyway. Or, after the Chaldarean cult reached the northern world, missionaries. But when times were extreme the gods sometimes demanded a real sacrifice.”
“Did you enjoy your time with Cloven Februaren?” Heris stepped back out of the orchard, strolled toward the entrance to the “keep” of the Great Sky Fortress. Keep was appropriate based on design but a deep understatement by the standards of middle-world fortifications. The structure sprawled to left and right and rose up and up and up.
“I did. The man has a unique mind. Most of what you’re looking at is an illusion. The real fortress goes more back into the flesh of the mountain than it goes up.”
“Not the answer I was looking for.”
The ascendant frowned. He took a moment, as though trying to craft a response that would be approved. “I’m sorry you were disappointed. I’m never sure how things are done. Nor why I do what I do. The Walker and the Banished were powerful personalities. Even as ghosts they sometimes work some wicked magic.”
Heris started to say that that was not what she was looking for, either, but stopped herself.
Asgrimmur continued, “I do enjoy time spent with the old man. My stay at Fea was a pleasant interlude. I enjoyed him even more, here, while you were away. He has an insatiable curiosity. But he likes to start arguments. He squabbled with the Bastard constantly.”
“I’d say he has an infinite capacity for making mischief. What did he get up to when I wasn’t watching?”
Asgrimmur gave her a blank look. Again, she had trouble connecting him with the brute raiders who had come out of Andoray centuries ago. Then she recalled the Ninth Unknown suggesting that he might have absorbed knowledge from the people he had killed during his mad seasons.
She asked, “So what do we do now?” Trying to distract herself.
That old man with the insatiable curiosity would have been up here countless times while she was away. Maybe she could get Asgrimmur to let her in on what they had learned. Maybe she could get him to explain how he had become such a changed man.
“Come.”
She followed.
He showed her a place she refused to visit again.
“This is where my brother and I and our boyhood friends were kept while the Instrumentalities waited to turn
