me Sibyl held no reproach: indeed, you were on the whole well thought of for trying to hold to the standards of the Empire of Elabon even after Elabon abandoned the northlands.'
'Nice to know someone somewhere had some notion of what I was about,' Gerin said. 'More than my vassals do, I think.' With a deliberate effort of will, he forced his thoughts from that gloomy track and changed the subject: 'How did it happen that Biton chose you through whom to speak?'
'I'd known he might since I became a woman,' Selatre answered. ' For though I was normal in every other way, my courses never began, which is a sign of the farseeing one's notice in the villages round his shrine. But Biton's mouth on earth had served him so long I never dreamt he might one day call her to himself at last-or that his eye would fall on me to take her place.'
'How did you know you were the one he wanted?' Gerin asked.
'He came to me in a dream.' Selatre's eyes went far away, looking through the Fox rather than at him. Slowly, she continued, 'It was the realest dream, the most lifelike, you can imagine. The god-touched me. I may say no more. I've never felt anything like that dream for realness, save, very much the opposite way, with horror rather than delight, the evil dreams I've had of late.'
Gerin nodded. 'I've had those myself. They're worse than any I've known before, that's the truth.' He wondered if she experienced them even more vividly because of her intimate contact with Biton and things of the spirit generally. Not knowing any way to find an answer to that, he chose a different question: 'Did you go and proclaim yourself at the temple, then?'
'No. I would have, but the very next day the priests came to my village instead. Biton had sent some of them dreams of me, and they sought me out.'
'Ah,' the Fox said. Had the dream come to Selatre alone, he might have thought it sprang from her imagination, but if the priests also knew the farseeing god had chosen her to succeed the ancient Sibyl, not much room was left to doubt Biton had sent it.
Endlessly curious, the Fox found a chance to put a question he'd never expected to be able to ask: 'What is it like when Biton speaks through you? What do you feel or think or whatever the word is?'
'It's not-like-anything else I know,' Selatre answered. 'When the mantic fit takes hold of me, of course, I know nothing at all; I always have to ask the priest, if one is there with me, what my response was. But while the god's power is coming over me, before he takes me fully-' She didn't go on, not with words, but she shivered, and her eyes were full of longing. At last she added, 'And now no more, never again. No more.'
Her voice wept. Suddenly Gerin believed in his belly that she would sooner have died than be rescued at the cost of losing that link with Biton; it struck him as almost like losing a lover or a husband. But with the temple cast down and monsters loose on the northlands, the link was surely lost anyhow. Had he not believed that, he would have drowned in guilt.
Maybe Selatre conceded the point, however reluctantly, for she said, 'And now that it is to be no more, what, lord Gerin, do you see life holding for me at Fox Keep? What would you have me do?'
Gerin had his mouth open to reply before he realized he had no idea what to say. What place had he, had the keep, for Biton's former Sibyl? Serving woman, apt to be pawed by his vassals and his guests? Could she return to peasant life after time spent with the god? He doubted it.
And then, just as he was about to confess ignorance, inspiration struck. 'Do you have your letters?' he asked.
'No-Biton spoke to me direct, not through scribblings,' she answered. 'But I always thought I might like to learn.'
'I'd be glad to teach you,' he said. 'One of the things that goes into keeping up the standards of the Empire of Elabon, as you called it, is having a grasp of time and place that goes farther than what you-or I, or anyone-can keep in your head. The more people who read and write, the more who can get that wide knowledge civilization needs. I teach as many folk as I can.'
'As may be,' Selatre said. 'But what has it to do with whatever my life at Castle Fox would become?'
'I have a fair store of books at the keep,' Gerin answered. 'Oh, any bibliophile south of the Kirs would laugh himself silly to hear it called such, but I do have several dozen scrolls and codices, and I get new ones-old ones other folk don't care about, most of the timenow and again. I had in mind for you, if you think it would suit, to take charge of them, learn what's in them and where it can be found, make new copies as they're needed or if someone asks for such: not likely, I admit, in the state the northlands are in, but stranger things have happened. What say you?'
She was silent a long time, so long he began to fear he'd somehow insulted her after all, even if he'd just intended to find her a place where she could be useful and one that might keep her from some of what she would surely see as indignities. Then, at last, she said, 'I am not ashamed to tell you I must apologize, lord Gerin.'
'Why?' he asked, startled. 'For what?'
'In spite of everything you've said, you have to understand I had trouble fully crediting your reasons for snatching me from Ikos,' she answered. 'Once you had me back at Fox Keep, who could guess what you might do with me? In truth, I could guess, and my guesses frightened me.' Her laugh came shaky, but it was a laugh. 'And instead of putting me in your bed, you'd put me in your library. Do you wonder that I needed a moment before I found a way to answer you?'
'Oh,' Gerin said. 'Put that way, no.' He too took a while groping for words before he went on, 'Lady, enough women are willing that forcing one who's not has always struck me as more trouble than it's worth. But folk who have wits and can use them are precious as the tin that hardens copper to bronze. I judge you may be one of that sort. If you are, by Dyaus, I'll use you.'
'Fair and more than fair,' she said, then seemed to surprise herself with a yawn. 'Perhaps I shall sleep more, after all. My heart is easier than I thought it could be.'
'I'm glad of that,' Gerin said as she wrapped herself in his blanket again. She seemed to have forgotten the creatures still issuing from the cave under Biton's temple. He remembered, but forbore to remind her. Let her rest easy while she could.
The free peasant village whose men had hunted Gerin and Van through the night on their way to Ikos was a sorry place when they and Selatre rode up to it at midmorning the next day. Half the houses had fallen down in the earthquake; several bodies lay sprawled and stiff on the grass, awaiting burial.
'If they'd built stronger, they'd have come through better,' Van said, unwilling to waste much sympathy on folk who would have robbed and maybe murdered him.
'Maybe so,' Gerin said, 'but maybe not, too. Stronger houses might still have fallen-look at Biton's temple. And if they did, they'd have crushed whoever was inside them. This way, a lot of people probably managed to crawl out of the wreckage.'
'Mm, something to that, maybe,' Van admitted. 'All the same, I won't be sorry to see this place behind me.' He started to urge the horses up from a walk to a trot.
'No, wait,' Gerin said, which made the outlander grunt in surprise and send him a disbelieving look. He explained: 'The lady there has but the one linen dress, which is all very well for prophesying in but not what you'd want to wear day in and day out. I was thinking we might stop and buy another here, something of sturdy wool that would do until we got back to Castle Fox.'
'Ah. There's sense to you after all. There usually is, but this time I wondered.' Van reined in.
Several of the villagers were in the fields; earthquake or no, tragedies or no, the endless routine of tillage had to go on. The women and children and few men who stayed by the houses swarmed toward the travelers' wagon. 'Noble sirs, spare us such aid in our misfortunes as you can give,' a woman cried. Others said the same thing in different words.
The Fox stared down his nose at them. 'By Dyaus, you're better disposed to us now than you were when you came after us in the night to take our armor and swords.'
'And mace,' Van added, hefting the viciously spiked weapon in question. If the peasants had any thoughts of trying to attack now, the blood-red reflections of the sun off those bronze spikes did a good job of dissuading them.
The older man who'd sold the travelers a hen spoke for his people: 'Lords, we all have to live as best we can,
