Selatre had laid an assortment of growing things on a makeshift stone altar in the shack: flowers, fir cones, duck's eggs. 'We won't want to summon Mavrix solely as god of wine, but also as the god of increase generally,' she said. 'That may make him more restrained-or, of course, it may not.' Among the flowers, she set the scroll that held a book of the Sithonian national epic by the great poet Lekapenos. 'Mavrix also inspires the creation of beauty, as we've noted.'
'As you've noted, you mean,' Gerin said. 'Most of this was your idea; you're the one who's studied Mavrix of late. Till that wine came into the holding, I was happy pretending he didn't exist.' He turned to Rihwin. 'Set that last jar down over there-carefully! Don't crack it.'
Rihwin winced. 'When you shout like that, you make my head feel as if it's about to fall off.' After a reflective pause, he added, 'I rather wish it would.'
'Remember that the next time you try to drown yourself in a wine jar, or even one full of ale,' Gerin said without much sympathy. He drew his dagger, cut through the pitch that sealed the stopper of one of the wine jars, and then worked in his knife blade and levered out the stopper.
The sweet bouquet of wine wafted from the jar. Gerin sighed with relief. He'd worried that the wine jar, or even both surviving jars, might have gone to vinegar. Had they been bad, he didn't know what he would have done. Drawing some of Rihwin's wine-soaked blood didn't seem like the worst idea in the world.
Gerin dipped up two cups of wine, one for himself, the other for Rihwin. 'Don't drink yet,' he growled as he handed Rihwin his. He looked over to Selatre and went on, 'I still think we might be wiser to call on Biton first. Then his presence will also serve to check Mavrix.'
But she shook her head, as she had ever since they began planning the evocation. 'Biton has little reason now to hear any summons from me. But if I call on him with Mavrix already here, simple jealousy may help to lure him. Whatever the lord of the sweet grape seeks, the farseeing one is likely to want to thwart.'
'You served the god; you know him best,' Gerin said, yielding yet again. He, and after a moment Rihwin with him, approached the altar and poured a small libation, being careful not to mar the scroll of Lekapenos. 'Thank you for your bounty of the sweet grape, lord Mavrix,' Gerin declaimed in halting Sithonian, and sipped from his cup of wine.
Rihwin also drank. His eyes widened; he suddenly seemed several years younger, or at least less worn. 'Thank you for the sweet grape, lord Mavrix,' he said, and then to Gerin, in more ordinary tones, ' Nothing like letting a small snake bite you to ease the venom of a big one.'
'Rihwin, your trouble is that you don't know how to keep any snakes small,' Gerin said. Just to irk Rihwin, he waved the southerner to silence, not giving him a chance for a sharp retort. 'Be still. I am going to summon the god.'
He walked over to the altar, raised his hands high, and said, 'I summon you to my aid, lord Mavrix, I who have drunk your wine, I who have met you in days past, I who am but a mere mortal imploring your assistance, I who am weak-' He humbled himself without shame. Measured against the might of a god, any mortal was weak.
The litany went on and on. Gerin began to wonder if Mavrix would let himself be evoked. The Sithonian god of wine had some of the deviousness of the principal folk that worshiped him. He might appreciate the irony of forcing Gerin to summon him and then refusing to appear. If that happened, the Fox intended to drink as much wine as he could hold and then ride south with Aragis.
But just when he became certain Mavrix had indeed set him up to fail, the god appeared in the crowded little shack, somehow without making it more crowded-gods had their ways. Mavrix's features were regular, exceedingly handsome, and more than a little effeminate. The god wore sandals and a fawnskin robe, and had a leopardskin tunic draped over his shoulders. In his right hand he carried a green, leafy wand tipped with ivory. A faint odor of grapes and of something else, harsher, ranker-perhaps old blood-rose from him.
His eyes were not like a man's eyes. They were two black pits that reflected nothing. When Gerin looked into them, he felt himself falling through infinite space, down and down and down. He needed a great effort of will to pull his senses back from those twin pits and say in a shaken voice, 'I thank you for granting me your presence this day, lord Mavrix.' He knew he'd just made a hash of the Sithonian grammar, which was likely only to win the god's contempt, but it couldn't be helped, not now.
Mavrix looked at-and through-him. He felt himself pierced by the god's gaze, almost as if by a sword. In a voice in perfect keeping with his appearance, Mavrix said, 'Pleased, are you? Pleased? The vengeance I owe you, you should be quaking like an aspen leaf in a gale. I moved Schild Stupidstaff to give you wine in hope it would let me come here and take that revenge. And you are pleased?'
Selatre started her petition to Biton then. Gerin heard her speak of her own unworthiness to summon the god who had abandoned her, and then forgot about her. If he didn't give Mavrix all his attention, he would be ruined past any hope of Biton's redemption.
Gesturing toward the altar and the various gifts it contained, Gerin said, 'If you so badly wanted your revenge, lord Mavrix, these would have brought you here. Did you truly need the gift of wine?'
'Aye, for two reasons,' the god replied. 'First, now that you have summoned me into the world at this place, I can act here more fully than I could otherwise. And second, while first fruits and such are mine, wine is mine, if you take my meaning. When I am called by wine, I am more truly myself than if evoked in any other way.'
'By which you mean you can be vicious without regretting the consequences, blaming them instead on the strength of the wine,' Rihwin said. 'You-'
'Silence, worm,' Mavrix said, and, although Rihwin's lips continued to move, no more sound came from them. It was an effect Gerin had often wished he could achieve. To Gerin, the lord of the sweet grape said, quite conversationally, 'You'd think he'd learn his lesson, wouldn't you? And yet, having fallen foul of me once, he persists in risking my wrath yet again. As do you, I might add, and you are less a fribbler than he. Why is this?'
Gerin did not directly answer that. Instead, he pointed to the book of Lekapenos he had set on the stone. 'You are not god of wine only, lord Mavrix. You are also patron of beauty and cleverness. Is this not so?' He was remembering more Sithonian than he'd thought he had in him.
Mavrix drew himself up to his full height, which was much more than a man's, yet somehow did not break through the ceiling of the shack. 'No one would deny it, little man. But you did not answer my question, and not answering a god is yet another capital crime to set against you.' He gestured with his wand. It looked innocuous, but in his hands it was a weapon more fell than any spear or sword in the grip of the boldest, fiercest fighter.
Gerin's mouth went dry; he knew the power of that wand. Forcing his voice to steadiness, he replied, 'Lord Mavrix, I had to answer in a roundabout way. Truly I know your role in inspiring the folk of Sithonia to the peak of artistic endeavor they once enjoyed. The reason I summoned you, lord, is that ugliness now blights the northlands. If you look about here, if you see it, I pray you to banish it for aesthetic reasons if no others.'
'Seldom have I seen a fish wriggle on a hook as you do,' the god said petulantly. 'Very well, I shall look.' His eyes lighted for a moment. Gerin saw in them shifting scenes of the monsters' depredations. Then they became deep pools of blackness once more. He sneered at Gerin. 'Ugly they are, but what of it? You savages in these cold, grapeless lands treat each other as vilely as the monsters use you. Why should I care what they do?'
Before Gerin could answer, Selatre let out a gasp of startlement and delight, and Biton manifested himself in the shack. Again, it somehow accommodated him without growing and at the same time without seeming crowded. Gerin had wondered how the farseeing god would appear, whether as the handsome youth of the pediment reliefs on his overthrown shrine or the more primitive image that was mostly eyes and jutting phallus. To him, Biton seemed now the one thing, now the other, depending on which was uppermost in his own mind at any given moment.
Selatre gasped, 'Thank you, farseeing one, for hearing the prayer of your former servant who reveres you still.'
'Loyalty is rare enough to deserve notice,' Biton answered in a voice that held the same slight rustic accent as Selatre's, 'the more so when it is retained even after it can no longer be returned.'
Mavrix stared at Biton with undisguised loathing. His features shifted with divine celerity to suit his mood. Turning to Gerin, he sneered, 'If you think summoning this boring backwoods bumpkin of a deity will somehow save you, I urge you to disabuse yourself of the notion.'
'That's not why I called on him,' Gerin answered. He bowed to Biton and said, 'Farseeing one, the Sibyl begged your presence here for the same reason I evoked Mavrix lord of the sweet grape: to beg you to help rid the land of the monsters now infesting it. As they sprang from the caverns beneath your fallen fane, I dared hope
