Wine of the Gods 26: Embassy (2 page)

"Yep. What happened? You're not doing the God thing for hot dates, are you?" Easterly looked amiably curious. Old Gods only knew what he was really thinking behind his farmboy façade.

"Afraid not. Two spies, one from Earth and one from One World. Both middle-aged males. They were getting into trouble in Hastu, which I believe is a small city in Discordia."

"Oh. Drat. I was hoping we'd seen the last of them." Easterly grimaced. "Earth got their gate repaired fast."

"Yeah. And the Collective was firmly in control. The King may skin me alive. I'd better write up what I just told those twits and drop it in Mister Dalan's in-box."

"And I'd appreciate a copy." Easterly said. "I talked Colonel Janic and General Hinton into keeping Peter Michaelson. It'll be interesting, with two of you getting yanked away at odd hours."

"Interesting. Right." Xen shrugged. "Now if only we could find those witches . . . "

"The only thing worse than a spell to turn a woman into a man, is the difficulty in tracking down the magical people in this damned city."

Rior Withione had once been a spectacular young women. Trained in the arts of controlling men. Not always by pleasuring them.

She . . . He, One Damn it! . . . had taken a potion to change the color of her hair. It had done a hell of a lot more than that. Sh . . . He was six inches taller, black haired and entirely masculine.

I need to track down those two bitches and their potions and get this reversed. Then kill them.

Sh . . . He had been lying low while the One bedamned changes finished, and spotted these witches. Glowing and powerful. And tracked them down to this alley. Multiple times. Neither spells nor physical markers on the various gates that accessed the alley had shown any sign that the witches had used any of them.

"Dammit. They walked in here ten minutes ago." Sh . . . He scowled down at the ground . . . the dirty pavement had been dampened by the morning fog. Dried now, but a deposit of dark grit shaped like a narrow feminine footprint, aimed down the alley, another cleaner print going the other direction was superimposed on it. And a smear of dark grit there, and a footprint . . . aimed at a blank brick wall . . .

Rior looked from the multiple tracks on the road, to the wall. Squinted at the wall. A very strong illusion. "A corridor? How interesting."

He stepped forward. Onto a tropical beach. Black sand. White surf over sparkling turquoise water. The bright sunshine cast impenetrable shadows under the brilliant green crowns of tall palms.

Those women had a secret corridor to a beautiful tropical beach just stuck on the wall of an alley.
It was mind boggling. And irresistible. She stripped and ran down to the surf to plunge into the waves.

Rior'd been frolicking in pure uninhibited bliss for half an hour when she saw the woman. Quite young. Naked. She was spreading a blanket in the shade of some palm trees and appeared to have brought a picnic basket. When she saw Rior looking, she smiled and waved.

Rior walked up the beach, and didn't remember her embarrassing male body until she . . . he . . . was right in front of the girl. Naked.

"Hi, I'm Falchion. Would you like some wine?"

It turned into an orgy, with two of Falchion's pals joining them, and then their three servants had come looking for them. Rior had had second thoughts about the woman who looked liked someone had tried to turn her into a toad and stopped halfway, but by then he was drunk enough to give it a try. Then the girls had decided "he" was badly outnumbered and fetched some damn fine looking men that Rior would have been interested in just a few months ago, and then four more women showed up, one of them the boss of this whole outfit, and madder than hell.

"Enough of this! I forbade you to advance until you were old enough." She made a dismissive gesture toward Rior. "And to bring a complete stranger here?"

Falchion jumped up and glared back. "You have no authority over me, Teri! I'm advancing myself, just as you did. You stuck us in that fast house for years. 'Until you grasped magic' you said. Well, we have. And we're going to advance."

If looks could kill . . . Teri turned to Rior and looked him up and down, cold.

A gorgeous blonde. And beside her, probably the ugliest woman he'd ever seen. Purplish dark hair, skin tones worthy of a corpse. Painfully thin except for the soft pulpy swellings here and there.
She looks like a spider.

Rior felt the power gather and shielded barely in time to deflect the fireball from the blonde, and returned it with interest. He caught a slice, had to absorb a flash of light, whipped sand up in a whirlwind that bounced off her shield, returned and bounced again, while Rior went deep and low with a compulsion spell. That one got through. She was spitting mad and clawing her way free of the compulsion when he sent the rest of the magicians away so he could talk to her, one-on-one.

More or less. The spider woman hadn't gone very far. He could follow her by the gloating glee she was leaking.

"We can try to make this a good working relationship, or we can be enemies. You are strong, but I can see that you can only do one thing at a time. You need training, and I can give it to you." He took a slow prowl through her mind, enjoying how much she hated it. "So, your comrades want to free these two women in prison? What about these four trained wizards, eh? We could be quite the criminal gang."

He pushed back a curl of her hair, grinning as she managed to get a growl past his control. "I've been in outlaw gangs before, and the main problem is hiding. But with this many powerful magicians, we won't have that problem, will we? We can take whatever we want, and disappear. Think about it." He got up, collected his clothes, and walked through the corridor.

The alley was empty, but he moved away from the corridor before he dressed and walked away.

He cast a spell of, well, not true invisibility, but a shifting illusion of all the things around him, like a cloud of mirrors. In the rare instances it caught the eye of an observer, it tended to make people rub their eyes and worry about eye strain. Generally though, it was hard to focus on.

No point in letting that woman track him to his temporary home. He dropped the spell as he walked into the warehouse. Once the base for the Post Head and any teams on this world, it had been only occasionally used since the Empire had established a new gate in Discordia. A few mental suggestions, when the Post Head dropped by, and she'd been living there rent free while she changed. Adapted to the changes in her body. Practiced fighting, practiced magic.

Hell, I had to train myself to walk and stand like a man. Different speech patterns, gestures, much, much less deference.

I should move now though. Soon. I'm able to travel now. I could get back to one of my caches, get money. Buy or rent a place of my own, while I . . . negotiate with those witches. The infamous Hors de Combat. Incredibly talented amateurs, no wonder they keep getting caught.

I thought once about taking some of the Veronian children from their pathetic excuse of a magical academy. But grown women, partially trained . . . It'll be more dangerous but a whole lot faster.

The experience of male sex had been powerful, and combined with a magical battle, somewhere between exhausting and mind blowing. He felt like a god, and needed desperately to calm down and start planning.
And I'll still kill the bitches with the potions . . . but I'm beginning to think being male might work out very well. I always had to have a front man . . . now I can be the leader in all ways.

Seven witches, powerful, but needing training, and drill in acting in concert. If even a single one of them had stood up with the leader he'd have been in trouble. All of them, and he'd have been toast. The five fellows had magic as well, but almost completely untapped, untrained. Two more witches and four trained wizards in prison.

"By the One." Rior paced, grinning fiercely. "Eighteen of them, just waiting for someone to gather them up and put them to work. This could be more fun than Auchel Ibrah, the first and original."

Two days later Xen was explaining it all to the King, and Rufi. They were quite taken with the idea of avoiding a war with either or both the Earth and the Empire of the One.

"But somewhere off the maze, please, until we see if those people will be sensible." Rufi frowned. "And take Garit with you. He needs a dose of your common sense."

King Leano nodded. "We'll talk to King Mark of Arrival. It would be handy to have an allied world . . . especially since they are also an Exile World."

Garit was out in the barn, scowling at horses. "I need a mount while Acrobat is healing. Clowny's going to need to get out to pasture in a couple more months. These others . . . "

"That's the problem with having smart horses. Most of the rest are disappointments. But why don't you saddle up Clowny today and come for a ride. Rufi said I ought to show you what I'm up to."

Garit nodded. "I need to talk to you. Xen . . . I don't know why I'm having these headaches. And nightmares."

Xen eyed Garit. "I suspect it's because you're fighting the collective subconscious. The stuff you drank last year gave you the power genes, and it had enough paranoia, ambition and aggression that you probably came close to fitting the Black Prince Archetype. Why don't we go off and explore the world I think would be a good Embassy planet. You can stay away for awhile, and let the collective get over their expectations of you, or something."

Garit nodded. "The collective subconscious. I think you're right. It's not voices, but a pressure. It's like holding back a boulder that wants to roll downhill."

Xen lowered his eyebrows.

Garit snorted, then clutched his temples. "It never pushed you in any direction but the one you were already moving in. It just made you the best at what you were already good at."

Xen winced. "No, it makes me do stupid things that the collective thinks a heroic spy ought to do."

Garit grinned. "Oh, nasty. But not as nasty as what's in my head. Come on, if that's what it is I want out of here. I need to dodge this thing soon."

Xen sent a groom off to saddle Clowney, and dispatched a page with a note to Easterly to join them and bring food.

The world he wanted to use was off the path to One World, close to the fracture between the Hygiea Worlds and the multiple Earths.

On the other side of the first gate, Garit straightened and rubbed his temples. "Old Gods! Xen—I was thinking about killing my father."

"No, the collective thought that was what you should be thinking. You were fighting them, hence the headache. However, may I point out that the office of King of the Universe is open?"

"Xen, I might—if you don't remove the power genes—sometime be able to do something dimensional. But let's face it, you are the King of the Dimensions."

"Umm, how about we explore the dimensions, and police them? Keep peace as needed? Forget the king thing."

"Ah, now there's a good idea." Garit nodded, and relaxed in the saddle. He looked like he was enjoying the sudden changes of scene, following him through corridors and gates to the World he had in mind. "This is it?" He looked around and nodded approval, peeling off his jacket. "Sensible to choose a nice climate. Is that the ocean?"

"Yep. A nice ten mile ride or walk from this nice big mostly flat area. I suppose I could put in a corridor for the more sedentary."

Garit chuckled. "Can you picture those Earthers with their gyps walking?"

"It is a bit of a reach. I suppose they'll bring the gyps along, though. How are we going to pay for this? What will we actually do, for that matter." Xen bit his lip. "We have to have limits, we really aren't gods."

"The, umm Department of Interdimensional Security can own the planet, hand out plots for embassies from all the various Worlds, run courts to hear disputes between planets, stuff like that."

"Maybe we should sell the plots, finance ourselves that way." Xen considered the sloped plain. "Or lease them, I suppose."

Garit shook his head. "The Embassies should count as the sovereign territories of those Worlds. Sell them. Maybe charge a road fee or some such to run city services."

"Hmm. Sewage systems. Water. Electricity. Maybe they can each bring their own power generators? We can magic the rest of it."

"We'd better get Q in on this . . . " Garit trailed off, flushing.

Xen bit his lip. "Dare I ask?"

"I, err, at my most ambitious realized how useful she would be, and at my most paranoid decided she should be personally loyal to me."

"You're alive, so she must have enjoyed it." Xen smothered a grin and tried to look severe. "Are you going to break my little sister's heart?"

"Stop laughing. I haven't a clue how I feel about her. She's going to kill me. I was very manipulative. Or maybe Tashi will kill me. If she ever speaks to me again. Maybe she'll take pity on the ragged scraps Q leaves behind."

"You've got a problem. Maybe you should worry less about broken hearts and try to avoid broken bones."

"Yeah. Hey. A hospital with all your weird potions."

"A library. Every World contributes their histories and philosophies. As much science as they are comfortable letting out." Xen grinned. "Should be fun watching One World and Earth copying each other's contributions."

By the time Deena and Easterly caught up with them they were laying out a street grid and wondering about electricity.

"There's got to be some way to generate electricity magically." Xen said.

"Old Gods. What next?" Deena rolled her eyes.

"I resign and become Master of the Dimensions." Xen tried to keep a straight face. Failed. Faltered. "You are not supposed to take me seriously."