He glowered at the frieze on the entablature above the colonnaded entrance to the temple itself. It showed Ros the Fierce driving back Trokmoi with Biton's aid. Adiatunnus did not approve of anything depicting Elabonians beating Trokmoi. Gerin didn't suppose he could blame his vassal for that.
They went into the temple. Adiatunnus and the two woodsrunners with him exclaimed again, this time at the rich marbles of the columns, the fancy woods that had gone into the pews, and the gold and silver candelabra throwing sheets of light over them.
Ferdulf exclaimed, too, but he was pointing at the cult statue of Biton that stood near the opening into the caverns below the shrine. The statue was not an anthropomorphic representation of the farseeing god, as were the rest of the images in the compound. Instead, it was a column of black basalt utterly plain except for scratches that might have been eyes and a jutting phallus. 'How old is it?' Ferdulf whispered; in this place, even he showed a certain amount of respect for the god who ruled here.
'I wouldn't even try to guess,' Gerin answered. 'It's been a shrine for a long, long time, even if it didn't used to be as pretty as we Elabonians made it after we came up here.'
'Not we Elabonians,' Ferdulf said testily. 'I am no Elabonian, for which I thank all the gods, Biton very much included.'
Gerin made his voice sweet as clover honey: 'On your mother's side, you are.' He cherished the horrible look the demigod gave him. Perhaps he shouldn't have yielded to the temptation; reminding Ferdulf of his background was liable to make him less willing to oppose the Elabonian Empire. Turning aside every temptation, though, made life too dull to stand.
The priest waved the suppliants to the pews. 'Pray to the lord Biton,' he urged. 'Pray that your question will be phrased in such a way as to make his answer, which shall be true, also meaningfully true for you.'
That, Gerin thought, was good advice. The Sibyl's oracular responses were often obscure, clearer after the event than beforehand. He tried to clear his mind of all his worries so he could ask a question that would have as unambiguous an answer as possible.
Just for a moment, he looked up at the cult statue. He'd done that on other visits to Biton's shrine. Those crudely carved eyes would seem to come alive for a heartbeat, to look back into his. He wondered if that would happen again. It did-and then some. For an instant, no more, he saw the god as he had seen him in the little shack back at Fox Keep where he undertook his sorceries. Biton might have been a handsome man, but for the eye in the back of his head that showed when he twisted his neck preternaturally far. And then he was gone, back into the basalt.
'That statue-that is the god,' Ferdulf whispered-had he seen the apparition, too? 'That's not his image-that is the god. It's how he looks when he isn't thinking about how he looks, and when people aren' t thinking about how he looks.'
'Maybe it is,' Gerin said. Philosophers had always wondered whether gods were as they were because people conceived of them as being that way, or if people conceived of gods as they did because the gods essentially were like that. The Fox suspected such arguments would go on forever.
'Have you composed your mind?' the eunuch priest asked. Gerin nodded. The priest smiled. 'Then come with me. We shall go down below the ground, down to the cave of the Sibyl, where Biton shall speak through her.'
He tried to make it sound mysterious and exotic. It was mysterious and exotic, but Gerin had gone many times into the cavern below the temple to see the Sibyl-and for other, darker, purposes. He climbed to his feet, saying, 'Let's get on with it.' The plump eunuch in his fancy robes looked disappointed that the Fox and his comrades were not trembling with awe, but took a torch and led them all to the mouth of the cave.
Elabonian workmen had put steps down from the cave mouth after a prominent visitor years before tripped, fell, and broke his ankle. Soon, though, Gerin's feet trod the natural stone of the cavern. Generations of suppliants seeking guidance from the Sibyl had worn a path in the rock, but it was a path more visible in torchlight than smooth beneath the feet.
Every so often, torches flaming in sconces added their light to that of the burning brand the priest carried. A cool breeze made the flames flicker. 'Isn't that strange, now?' Adiatunnus murmured. 'I always thought the air inside a cave would be still and dead as a corp.'
'It is the power of the god,' the priest said.
'Or else it's something natural that we don't understand,' Gerin put in. The priest glared at him, eyeballs glittering in the torchlight. Gerin looked back steadily. Biton didn't seem inclined to smite him for blasphemy. With a disappointed sniff, the priest resumed the journey down to the Sibyl's cave.
Other paths led off that one; other caverns opened onto it. Biton' s priesthood used some of them to store treasures. The Trokmoi exclaimed at the gleaming precious metals the torches briefly revealed. Of course, they also exclaimed at the beautiful but largely worthless bits of shining rock crystal set here and there in the walls of the cavern.
And some entrances to Sibyl's underground chamber were bricked up and sealed not only with masonry but also with potent magical charms. Some of the bricks, baked with round tops like loaves of bread, were almost immeasurably ancient.
Ferdulf shivered as he came to one such wall. 'Monsters dwell behind these bricks,' he murmured.
'That's so,' Gerin agreed: 'monsters like Geroge and Tharma. They have an understanding of sorts with us now, which is why some of these charms have been set aside here. They could come forth, but they don' t: their gods are in our debt for launching them against the gods of the Gradi.'
'A mad venture,' the priest said. Adiatunnus nodded; the torchlight made the shadow of his bobbing head dip and swirl. Since Gerin was inclined to agree with them, he didn't argue.
Before he was quite ready, they came to the Sibyl's cave. Biton's priestess sat on a throne that looked as if it had been carved from a single black pearl, which glowed nacreously when light fell on it. She herself wore a plain tunic of undyed linen. The eunuch priest went up to her, set a hand on her shoulder, and murmured something too low for Gerin to catch. Had the fellow been a whole man, he would not have been permitted to touch her; not only did Sibyls remain lifelong maidens, they were not allowed even to touch true men.
The Sibyl looked something like Selatre-not close enough to be near kin, but plainly of the same blood. She eyed Gerin with curiosity; perhaps the priest had told her who he was-no reason for her to remember his face, with his last visit five years in the pastand reminded her that he was wed to the woman who'd preceded her on the Sibyl's throne. Was she wondering what that would be like?
If she was, she didn't show it. 'You have your question?' she asked the Fox.
'I do,' he answered. 'Here it is: how may the Empire of Elabon be made to give up its claims to the northlands and withdraw its forces south over the High Kirs?' He'd phrased it carefully, not asking what he could do to make that happen. Perhaps it would happen without him. Perhaps it would not happen at all. He forced himself to shove that thought aside.
He had scarcely uttered the last word when the Sibyl stiffened. She thrashed on the throne, limbs splayed awkwardly. Her eyes rolled up in her head till only the whites showed. When she spoke again, it was not in her own voice, but in Biton's, a deep, virile baritone:
'The foe is strong, up to no good To rout him will take bronze and wood.
You must not find the god you seek:
'Twould make your fate a sour reek.
They snap and float and always trouble,
But without them fortune turns to rubble.'
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IX
As soon as Ferdulf left the temple compound, he hopped into the air and let out a luxurious sigh of relief. 'My feet were getting tired,' he said, and then, to Gerin, 'Well, was that obscure enough to suit you?'
'And to spare,' the Fox answered. 'I've had difficult omens from Biton and the Sibyl before, but never one
