By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Nineteen "A Dare, A Bet, A Debt"
The North Country, as it was known in Traeshurstaene, had an entirely different character than either the bustling town with its busy harbor or the sleepy approaches to it, with the whispering Mickleswift and the farms full of lazy livestock. This was austere territory cutting into the sides of hills and then the razorlike backs of the cliffs and small mountains that cut the shore community off from the rest of the country. This helped to explain the reclusive, or distinctive as the natives liked to say, nature of the people who lived there. Things changed slowly there--if at all--because it was a difficult place either to get into, or to leave. And the Thornback Hills were the reason that this was so.
The moonlight that painted soft blobs of non-color on the easy reaches on the pebble beaches back in the town, here dropped precipitous shadows that made judging distances difficult. The sides of the hills were cut all up and down with a myriad limestone caves. The whiteness of the earth here contributed to a ghostly effect. And it was more than once that summertime moonlight picnickers had erroneously reported seeing the Ancient One of the Hills moving whitely among the massive outcroppings. This was a landscape ripe for ghosts.
The distorted, swift figures of the Gods of Autumn turned from the the sky at the entrance to an abandoned quarry that had long been worked here. The Romans had first put men into the earth here to dig out valuable minerals, and every generation of inhabitants had followed suit. Adasagona whirled in on her light feet, disturbing not even a clover leaf of the valley. She was stung with opalescent pearls, and curiously carved shells hung heavily from her ears. Her feet were encased in woven sandals of a unique style. In her hair, ribbon dance with ribbon to create a finery of netting unlike anything else seen on the world. Her eyes, if you could stand to look so strange a creature in the eye, swirled with a rush of banners unfurling in some hidden wind. It was like staring into the depths of beautiful marbles in the afternoon light. No matter how long you stared, there was more to see within her glance.
Following Adasagona was Aerfen, as mixed in her fashion as the eyes of Adasagona herself. Aerfen flowed as she followed, wistful as a waterbug twirling on the wave. There was a quickness and swiftness about her that let her push by Adasagona's nets, and she followed the spell-weaver by running circles around her as they progressed. Anyone who has seen a puppy and its mother on the grass knows what this is like, but Aerfen was more graceful, and more playful, than any pup, just as Adasagona was more decorous and wise than any mother.
Following these were gods of a more august and dangerous character. Aeron, with eyes shining to see slaughter, came to the Thornback Hills as naked and deadly as a scimitar. Agrona right behind came whipping a knotted cord over her head to incapacitate the death cries of her enemies. Her step was stealthy, and she was like a shadow of Aeron, watching all around her for vulnerabilities, any open throat that might be begging to be strangled. These took up positions on either side of the deep quarry's entryway and stood like an assassin's guard to greet the final God of Autumn. Their stillness was not that of some ceremonial guard, stiff at attention, but much more like a pair of great cats that wait to pounce, their tails switching dangerously.
All the Gods of Autumn began then a most horrible--song, you might call it. But it was more sort of a roaring hallooing in the wilderness. Aeron first took up the cry, leaning back and tilting his head up toward the sky. A long weary sigh came out, a sigh weary with waiting, full of the pain of patience that has found no reward for too many eons. Then Agrona, spitting unhesitating vile like a kicked cat, put a charge into the roar of viciousness unabated by the ravages of time. Tonight was as the first night her eyes looked with contempt upon the mortal world, long ago in the chaos of creation. Then Adasagona wailed, mixing in a pattern, pulling the wild notes of the others together into statement, weaving a song. Aerfen followed, as a piccolo does a bassoon, trippingly repeating the phrases Adadsagona fashioned. Now the whole quarry reverberated to the rising tune, providing its own basso profundo to the proceedings until every wall of the stone place boomed: BAAA-tum, BAAA-tum.
All eyes turned to the quarry entryway. Night owls shivered in their pine trees, squirrels were shaken from their slumber, the voracious vole dropped its nibbled nut, and every mouse turned stiff as stone with fear on the frosted moss. Only the bats, blind and oblivious, flapped as they ever had in the dark, a large one settling unnoticed upon a half-hidden perch at the upper rim of the quarry, its head nodding down as if to sniff out the proceedings below. Now a shadow passed over the moon, entirely obscuring its pale light. When the cloud had moved on, a gigantic figure was passing into the quarry. With a shield blacker than the memory of sleep slung across his mighty back, and a sword that dragged the earth like a plowshare, overturning a loose rabble of rocks, came a figure of silence, a moving void, one whose shoulders held only contempt for restriction and purpose. This was an energy unslung from cause, and indifferent to its effect. This was Afagddu, Master of the Utter Darkness.
Every voice was stilled, and the roaring wind was dismissed to a whisper in the quelled quarry. The walls were little more than stony shadows with a roof of stars.
"We come to claim our right of the Ancient One!" Afagddu's voice was as a passing train. The trees in the abandoned square shook, and an old owl tumbled from his perch, dead from fright.
Nothing replied to Afagddu. No sound, no noise beyond the soft fall of the old owl. The Gods of Autumn waited as if this night were to last for years, and not hours. A few of summer's last fireflies flitted in the crevices, one eaten now and again by a bat.
And then, the fireflies all started to move to the far end of the quarry as if being pulled down a drain. This was the opposite side from where Afagddu stood in his timeless indifference. They swirled into a face like a slow tornado, the outline of a bearded man's head. The great whiskers drifted off into frayed darkness, and there was a slightly blurry halo to the lines at the edges where the fireflies were being attacked by the bats. But the brow, deeply lined, with two bushy eyebrows, was clear and solid as a billboard. At at the eyes, two whirling masses of fireflies glowed as if giving the final measure of their illumination. These eyes were old beyond telling, and seemed to see both the past and the future as plainly as they could pick out every creature in the quarry.
Up above this scene, pinned against a crag on the rocks, hunched Eva, her Draggonnath's magical wings folded around her like a velvet cloak. So, this is the Ancient One, Eva thought. If he grants the Gods of Autumn their boon, they will be with us always, free to wreak their havoc every autumn, and not simply by prompting mischief in the dreams of men. The calling out of the Gods of Autumn in this one year by Sarah will become a reign of terror repeated every year, every autumn. That is how the Gods of Autumn roamed in the old days. That is more of Chaos than I or Plimsoul have bargained for, she thought desperately. Eva had not thought that the Gods of Autumn would gather themselves together to come to this old place. She had bet that they would be content to roam more freely for a season than they had in a hundred years, and then return to their world under the well. Obviously, she had miscalculated.
Afagddu had not spent his years pent away from the mortal world idly. He remembered his old grievance against the Ancient One and was determined, now his who troop was in corporeal form all together for the first time since the old curse, to take his chance. It was Afagddu who had made all the Gods of Autumn come to the quarry--the very place of their humiliation. But even Afagddu did not realize that this prompting came from the speaking spell of Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie, bit of whom counted on the Ancient One ignoring the whatever summons the Gods of Autumn could manage. Obviously, they, too, unbeknownst to either Afagddu or Eva, had miscalculated.
"Have you come to dice your fate with me again, Afagddu?" asked the Ancient One, his voice as firm and sharp as steel. "You have nothing left to lose."
"We come to claim our right!" repeated Afagddu. "We have come all together, as you see. Adsagsona, Aerfen, Aeron, Agrona, and I, Afagddu."
The Ancient One knew well who petitioned him. The fiery eyes moved from face to face of the Gods of Autumn, and not a few of them thought twice about being convinced by Afagddu to come to this cursed place.
"Who has loosened your bonds?" asked the Ancient One, his curiosity roused by the sight of those condemned to eternal half-lives standing before him again, as in the old days when the world was young.
"A female child," said Afagddu.
"Her voice has wakened the well." The Ancient One sounded mildly curious about such a child.
"It is as it is," agreed Afagddu. "We come to claim our right of redress."
"When all have come to the Ancient One What had been done, must be undone."
The Ancient One's voice gave the words to the air, but kept their meaning for himself. Afagddu completed the rhyme.
"The Gods of Autumn, kept under for a reason, Each turning year may return for their season."
"You have come and made your claim. Do all here so claim?"
The other Gods of Autumn replied each with an "Ay."
"What is rightly claimed, must be rightly granted. Even the Ancient One must obey this law."
Eva shivered in her soft wings. Something must be done to stop this. If the Gods of Autumn return to their old freedom each year... She had to do something. This moment was as desperate as when she was exiled from the old country, carrying only her household goods in the dead of night, her loyal dwarf, and the painting of her and the clever princeling who had turned the tables on her. But that is a story for another day. Eva shivered again, this time with determination. With a fell swoop, she unfurled her wings and plunged down into the center of the quarry before any of the gods could stop her.
"Hail, Ancient One!" Eva began. She kept her back to Afagddu, a gesture of disrespect that would have had her lying disemboweled on the ground before her final prayer at any other time. "It was I who caused the child to wake the well, and summon the Gods of Autumn. If their right is granted, I may claim a boon."
The Ancient One showed no surprise. He had seen her perching above, and thought nothing of it. The Gods of Autumn shuffled when the Ancient One began to address the mortal. Their business had nothing to do with those who die.
"You may claim a boon of those you freed, and not of myself," the Ancient One said.
"I will not grant her boon, whatever it may be." Afagddu had already gotten the Ancient One's agreement, in principle, that they could return in corporeal form each year as they had done for ages past, what more was necessary?
"What is rightly claimed, must be rightly granted."
"But she is mortal," protested Afagddu.
"But the law is not," noted the Ancient One.
Eva watched the argument go back a forth for a while. This was incredible! She didn't even know what boon she would ask, but it looked like the Ancient One wasn't about to make the Gods of Autumn do anything they didn't want to do directly. They were going into an almost esoteric discussion of bond rights and mortal limitations, faith and fealty and concepts so old and unmodern as to sound downright strange to any who live today. And half of their argument was conducted in poetry--snatches of prophecy or unrhymed snippets in some antique tongue.
"Fair Gods of Autumn," Eva interrupted, turning to face Afagddu. She looked down at his feet, not daring to meet his burning eyes. "Ancient One. The boon I would ask is not one to bind the Gods of Autumn, but merely to allow a bet to be placed on a contest. If I lose, then all that I am may go to the Gods."
"And if you win?" said the Ancient One. Afagddu still could not bring himself to speak with a mortal on equal terms.
"If I win," said Eva, "then the Gods of Autumn withdraw their claim on the Ancient One." To withdraw their claim would condemn them back beneath the well, living only in the dreams of men when the leaves begin to fall and the world begins to think long thoughts of winter.
Afagddu didn't like it, but was intrigued by the idea of a wager. And, of course, a wager gained its interest from the amount of its bet. Despite he inclinations, Afagddu found himself responding to the impudent mortal.
"Your side of the wager is not enough. What more have you to bet?"
Eva turned around again, surprised. She had not expected Afagddu to address her at all. This time, however, she looked upon his convenance directly. This almost turned out to be a deadly mistake, however. For, by looking up, she fell in awe of the august god, and came perilously close to simply throwing her soul over to him and confessing all she knew. Only her years of wily dissimulation saved her. She found her brain scrabbling madly to come up with something else to lay on the table. But what did she have to sweeten the pot that Afagddu and the others would care a whit about? These were gods, after all. What had she been thinking when she had followed the Gods of Autumn through the night sky? Was she moon-mad? Draggonnath had fallen victim to moon-madness in the past, but it was very rare. Eva almost began to doubt her sanity.
"The Casket of Augersaal is mine to command," she said. Now, this was not strictly true, since she and Mr. Plimsoul had been unable to open the casket when they had given it their all earlier in the evening. Eva was daring all on a most hazardous course.
"The Magathesthene," gasped lithe Aerfen. That was the ancient name for what had been enclosed in the Casket of Augersaal.
The other Gods of Autumn found themselves smiling slyly. A bet with a mortal was almost a sure thing. The liveliness that had returned to them with their stirring from beneath the well was giving them a daring they had lost, or rather, that had slept, as they lay beneath the well, with only the dreams of men to manage.
"The terms of the wager, then," said Afagddu, almost impatiently. The greedy lust of betting had begun to seize him. "Or shall we bet blind, agreeing to the costs, and then revealing the actual wager only after it is accepted?" This idea had a strange fascination for Afagddu and the other Gods of Autumn. Here was a real risk perhaps, thrown in to spice the wager with the hapless Draggonnath.
"Ay, ay, ay, ay," came the affirmations of the other gods around the quarry. Their eyes were shining with anticipation. This was just the sort of excitement that they had missed for the last century.
Eva couldn't believe her ears! What daring creatures these were. How they lived! She did not think that her own daring had lead her thus far herself. From an outcast born on the straw to counselor to a king, to regent and ruler in all but name. And now, so close to achieving all of her plans laid so carefully since her expulsion from the old country. She had flown after her fate, and now she was about to put it all down on a bet. Perhaps she had more in common with the gods that she had thought at first. Perhaps the Draggonnath might one day have the immortality they craved, and have a place before the court of the Ancient One. A star in the sky that shone just for them. She gathered her wits, and spoke as carefully as she ever had her next few sentences.
END OF CHAPTER NINETEEN