'Not chicken,' he and Van said, much as they had at Ricolf's.
'You've traveled some way, then, and spent nights in the open.' The innkeeper pursed his lips to show he sympathized. 'I killed a young pig this afternoon. I was going to smoke and salt down the flesh, but I do some lovely chops flavored with basil and thyme and wild mushrooms. It's a splendid dish, if I say so myself, and one I don't have the chance to prepare as often as I'd like these days. True, the cooking of it takes a while, but where have you gentlemen to go in the meantime?'
Gerin and Van looked at each other. They nodded. The Fox said, ' Your trade has fallen off since the Trokmoi swarmed over the Niffet and the Empire shut the last passage up from the south.'
'Good my sir, you have no idea.' The innkeeper rolled his eyes. ' Sometimes I think all of us left here make our living by taking in one another's washing. The shrine has fallen on hard times, that it has, and every one of us with it.'
'Does the old Sibyl still live?' Gerin asked. 'I'd not expected to find her breathing when I was last here five years ago. Now nothing would surprise me.'
'No, Biton took her for his own last year,' the innkeeper answered. 'The god speaks through a younger woman now. 'Tis not that the quality of oracle has suffered that's cost us trade'-he made haste to reassure the Fox-'only that fewer folk now find their way hither.'
'I understand.' Gerin drained his jack dry. The innkeeper hastened to refill it. Gerin drank again, sighed with something close to contentment. 'Good to relax here, away from the ghosts, away from robbers in the night, with only the worries that brought me here to carry on my shoulders.'
'That my humble establishment is able to ease your burdens does my heart good,' the innkeeper declared.
'To say nothing of your coin hoard,' Gerin said dryly.
The innkeeper turned his head to one side and coughed, as if mention of money embarrassed him. Then he paused, plainly listening over again to what Gerin had said a moment before. 'Robbers in the night, good my sir? So men begin to hold the ghosts at bay and the gods in contempt?'
'Men on the very road that leads here,' the Fox said, and told of the free peasants who'd looked to arm themselves at his and Van's expense. 'They didn't come on us, for which Dyaus be praised-and Biton, too, for watching over us-but they weren't out there in the darkness just for the journey. I heard them speak; I know what I'm talking about.'
'Sometimes I think the whole world is guttering down toward darkness, like a candle on the last of its tallow,' the innkeeper said sadly. 'Even my dreams these days are full of monsters and pallid things from the underground darkness. At night in my bed I see them spreading over the land, and poor feeble men powerless to do aught against them.'
Gerin started to nod: here was another man who shared his gloomy view of the world. Then he gave the innkeeper a sharp look. 'I too have had dreams like that,' he said.
'And I,' Van put in. 'I tell you the truth-I mislike the omen.'
'Maybe the Sibyl will shed light on it.' Gerin did his best to sound hopeful, but feared his best was none too good.
IV
The horses were curried till their coats gleamed and hitched to the wagon waiting when Gerin went out to the stables to reclaim them. He tipped the groom who'd cared for them, saying, 'You did more here than was required of you.'
'Lord, you're generous beyond my deserts,' the fellow answered, but Gerin noticed he did not decline the proffered coin.
Every other time Gerin had visited the Sibyl's shrine, the area around the fenced forecourt had been packed with wagons, chariots, and men afoot, and with all the visitors passionately eager to put their questions to Biton's oracle as soon as possible. The only way to get in quickly-sometimes the only way to get in at all-was to pay off one of the god's eunuch priests.
The Fox had prepared himself for that eventuality. At his belt swung two medium-heavy pouches, one an offering for the temple, the other (though the word would not be used in public) a bribe for the priest who would conduct him to the shrine.
He soon discovered he was going to save himself some money. When he and Van came to the gate in the marble outwall, only three or four parties waited ahead of them. Just a few more rolled up behind the wagon. Instead of shouting, cursing chaos, the oracle-seekers formed a single neat line.
Van recognized what that meant, too. 'Let's see the priests try to squeeze anything past their due out of us today,' he said, laughing.
To their credit, the priests did not try. They took the suppliants one group at a time, leading away their animals to be seen to while they consulted the Sibyl. Everything ran as smoothly as the turning spokes of a chariot wheel. Gerin wished all his visits had gone so well. He also wished this particular visit hadn't been necessary.
A plump, beardless fellow in a robe of glittering cloth of gold approached the wagon. Bowing to Gerin and Van, he said, 'Gentles, you may call me Kinifor. I shall conduct you to the Sibyl and escort you from her chamber once the god has spoken through her.' His voice was pleasant, almost sweet, not a man's voice but not a woman's, either.
Thinking of the mutilation eunuchs suffered, Gerin always felt edgy around them. Because the mutilation was not their fault, he always did his best to conceal those feelings. He swung a plump leather sack into Kinifor's equally plump hand. 'This is to help defray the cost of maintaining your holy shrine.'
The eunuch priest hefted the bag, not only to gauge its weight but to listen for the sweet jingle of silver. 'You are generous,' he said, and seemed well enough pleased even without any special payment straight to him; Gerin wondered if the temple would see all the money in the leather sack. The priest went on, 'Descend, if you will, and accompany me to the temple.'
As Gerin and Van got down from the wagon, another priest, this one in a plainer robe, came over and led the horses away. The travelers followed Kinifor through the gate and into the fenced-off temenos surrounding the shrine. The first thing the Fox saw was a naked corpse prominently displayed just inside the gateway; hideous lesions covered the body. Gerin jerked a thumb at it. 'Another would-be temple robber?'
'Just so.' Kinifor gave him a curious look. 'Am I to infer from your lack of surprise that you have seen others Biton smote for their evil presumption?'
'Another, anyhow,' Gerin answered. 'With the chaos that's fallen on the northlands since the last time I was here, though, I wondered if your god was up to the job of protecting the treasures here from everyone who'd like to get his hands on them.'
'This is Biton's precinct on earth,' Kinifor said in shocked tones. 'If he is not potent here, where will his strength be made manifest?'
Perhaps nowhere, Gerin thought. When the Elabonians conquered the northlands, they'd taken Biton into their own pantheon, styling him a son of Dyaus. But the Trokmoi brought their own gods with them, and seemed to care little for those already native to the land. If they prevailed, Biton might fail for lack of worshipers.
Van cast an appraising eye on the treasures lavishly displayed in the courtyard before the temple: the statues of gold and ivory, others of marble painted into the semblance of life or of greening bronze, the cauldrons and mixing bowls set on golden tripods, the piled ingots that reflected the sun's rays in buttery brilliance.
The outlander whistled softly. 'I wondered if I misremembered from last time I was here, but no: there's a great pile of stuff about for your god to watch over, priest.'
'The farseeing one has protected it well thus far.' One of Kinifor's hands shaped a gesture of blessing. 'Long may he continue to do so.'
The white marble temple that housed the entrance to the Sibyl's cave was in a mixed Sithonian-Elabonian style, a gift of Oren the Builder to win the favor of Biton's priesthood-and the god himself-not long after the northlands came under Elabonian sway. The splendid fane, elegantly plain outside and richly decorated within, was surely magnificent enough to have succeeded in its purpose.
