Wolves of the Gods

gone insane. They are in hap-hap happy land, where the bees don't sting and the wolves graze on grass like the lambs.'

'I noticed,' Safar said, gritting his teeth. 'But that doesn't give-'

Leiria stomped a boot. 'That doesn't give you the right,' she said, 'to come storming in here to dump a camel load of grief on us, after being gone for the gods know how long, and not a word from you, by the way, and we're here with all these crazy people not knowing what to do.'

Safar was rattled by this verbal assault. 'Still,' he said, 'you have to admit-'

'Admit nothing!' Leiria stormed on. 'What if something happened? What if Iraj attacked right now?

Everyone would just stare and giggle while his army cut them down!'

Now it was Safar's turn to be stung by guilt. 'You have a stronger point than you realize about Iraj,' he said. 'But, honest to the gods, couldn't you have waited?'

'I repeat my last question, Safar Timura,' Leiria ground in. 'What if something happened?'

'It really is a good plan, father,' Palimak made bold to say. 'I got the idea when I found the clay.'

He pointed at the gray, dug up pits at the river's edge. 'Leiria and I went fishing right over there. Which is how I found all that fantastic clay.'

Palimak glanced at his father and decided a self-serving aside might be called for here. So he made his eyes rounder and more innocent as he said: 'Grandfather has been teaching me ever so much about clay, father. And I've been doing my very best to learn all I can. And so that's why I noticed the clay right off.

All because of my wonderful, wonderful grandfather, who I love more than anything anyone can mention at all. So you can imagine, father, how bad I felt when I put a spell on him. Again! I mean, that's twice, now. And I knew you'd be mad, because I was mad at myself, but like Leiria said, what were we going to do?

'Nobody would listen to me. They wouldn't even have listened to Leiria. They're all crazy, father! Just like Leiria said. So we had do something! And I figured out what to do soon as I saw that clay. I was looking at how the water comes out of the turtle. You really ought to take a close look at that turtle, father, because it is really, really strange.

'Anyway, I saw right off the clay was not only the kind of stuff grandfather thinks is the absolute, absolute, best, but it also had a little bit of magic in it. And I that's when I got the idea!'

'You should have waited,' Safar said again, but rather glumly, with little force to it. 'I could have talked to my father. And those lads. I could have spoken to them and convinced them with little trouble to help us make those amulets.'

He shook his head. 'I know what you're up to. You were going to supply everyone with an amulet of the jester-and that was clever, Palimak. But perhaps a little too mature.' He looked pointedly at Leiria.

She blushed. 'Guilty,' she said. 'I'm an outsider. Outsiders noticed things. And one of the first things I noticed about Kyrania is that the tots are crazy about anything to do with Harle, the Jester God.'

Leiria gave him a defiant look, tilting up her chin. 'Since adults are only children in not so pretty skin,' she said, 'it only seemed logical that it would be a figure loved by everyone. From children to the gray hairs.'

'And at the proper moment, I presume,' Safar said, 'Palimak was going to cast a spell to wake everyone up to a most unpleasant reality.'

Leiria nodded. 'It was acting for the greater good,' she said. 'We were thinking about saving lives.'

'That's right, father,' Palimak piled on. 'For the … what did Leiria call it … oh, yeah-'The Greater Good.' Sure! That's what we were doing.' He threw his shoulders back, intoning, 'Acting for the greater good.'

'Oh, bullocks' dung!' Safar snorted. 'You've both gone as mad as the others!'

He dropped Khysmet's reins, wheeled about and stalked away, muttering, 'I'm raising a despot!

Befriended another as well! And I'm responsible! By the gods above, if they are awake and listening, please strike me dead on the spot!'

Leiria and Palimak trailed along, shrinking at his mutters. Although they knew they were right, so was he- perhaps even more so.

As Safar stalked up the hill he thought, what a ridiculous, quite human situation this was. It was certainly worthy of Harle, who had a darker sense of humor than most realized. What a joke we all are, he thought. Struggling with silly moral points while the whole world melts about our ears. I'm Palimak's moral mentor, hammering away at rights and wrongs as if they were real. As if they meant a damn. As if the gods were suddenly going to stir in the heavens and take notice that one small person, on one small world, was sticking to his moral principles. Principles supposedly handed down from on high and thereford objects of much heavenly interest.

He recalled a fragment from Asper:

'Why do I weep?' he'd asked.

And Asper's answer, after a few other rhymed musings was:

'I weep because Harle laughs!

So why not laugh instead, my friends …

And make the Jester's tears our revenge?'

So Safar laughed. Laughter poured from him, bursting like a pent-up flood suddenly released after much hammering on humor's gate.

He doubled up, holding his sides, wracked with laugh after laugh. What was he worried about? What did it matter if his son, aided by his best friend and former lover, cast spell nets of enslavement over his father and mother and innocent Kyranian lads? It was well meant, that was all that mattered. We're only trying to save the world, here. So we bend things a bit for the 'greater good.' What's the harm in that?

And wasn't he doing worse?

And wasn't he going to ask even more?

Palimak and Leiria caught up to him. They watched in silent amazement as he choked and gasped laughter.

Then he stood up straight, wiped his eyes and chin, and said, 'I love you both, anyway.'

He continued up the hill, taking the last few steps to the summit with his arms draped over both of them.

He was still laughing, although not so uncontrollably. Just little outbursts, with chuckles building and falling in between. They grinned crazily, not knowing what he was laughing at and if they had they wouldn't have understood. But they grinned anyway. Grinned in empathy, strangely sorry that whatever they had done had made him laugh like this.

When they came to the top of the hill Safar paused to catch his breath. Below them was a broad field decked with many festive banners. And in the center of that field was a huge tent shot with bright, dazzling colors.

A familiar voice thundered from that tent, chanting a joyous, heart-wrenching refrain:

'Come one, come all! Lads and maids of Alllll ag-es! I now present to you-Methydia's Circus of Miracles!

'The Greatest Show In Esmir!'

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

THE GIFT FROM BEYOND

Palimak was circus struck. All his cares, all his troubles, all his toils smashed away by a lightning storm of the senses-color and music and smell and thrilling action crashing here and there and everywhere, all seeming chaos.

His attention, no, his whole being was snatched from one amazement to another, each sight a new experience exploding all that had come before.

But it couldn't be chaos because everything seemed to have a direction, a goal, a point, a moral, a story with heroes and villains and a beginning and middle and end. It was madness-delicious, soul-satisfying madness-but most of all it was orchestrated madness.

Commanding it all was the circus ringmaster, a fantastic, muscular dwarf with a lion's skin tossed over his