Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (17 page)

Bill held his glass and looking at it like it had become a spider.

“Wow,” she said.

Lupus nodded.
“Good, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Melissa said.

Shela looked at Melissa and said, “You got bebe?”

“I’m sorry?” she asked.

“Are you pregnant?” Lupus asked her. “She is concerned about you drinking.”

Melissa looked at Shela.
“Um, no, but thank you.”

“You sure?” she said.
“I can tell you, if you want to know.”

“You can?”

Shela closed her eyes, held a hand out toward Melissa, and hummed. Melissa felt a tickle go through her, like someone ran a feather down her spine.

“It you time, but you not pregnant,” she said.
“I think you not want to get pregnant for a little while.”

“So try and control yourself,” Lupus said to Bill, who finally grinned and took a sip of the brandy.
“They don’t do a lot of telesales here, with the not having any phones and all. You might want to see what the future holds before you go adding people to it.”

“What kind of society is this?” Bill asked him.
Melissa felt thankful he steered the conversation away from her prospective motherhood.

She found herself oddly relieved to know she wasn’t pregnant.
She didn’t have a regular cycle. No matter how she felt about Bill, the fact remained he had more than twenty years on her and he already had kids. He might not be looking for more. She would ease into that conversation very gently, and with no one else around.

Lupus took another sip and nodded.
“Think of King Arthur, except Merlin is real, and there is more than one of him.”

“You did ok
ay for yourself, then” Bill said.

Lupus nodded.
“I had a lot of help, mostly from Shela here.”

“You not listen when he say dat,” Shela warned them.
“He good and smart, does a lot of tings. He know dey erck-nomics, he know dey mil’tary. His Wolf Soldiers, the toughest killers dey is.”

Bill smiled.
“You brought them gun powder, didn’t you,” he said.

Lupus frowned, leaned forward, and said, “Do you know how to make gun powder?” His scar twitched again.

“I do,” Melissa said. It wasn’t rocket science.

Bill grinned.
“I saw it on Star Trek,” he said. “The episode—”

“With the Gorn,” Lupus said, sat back and laughed.
“Oh, that was the best show
ever
.”

“You miss TV?” Bill asked him.

“I miss coffee,” Lupus said. Still leaning back, he looked at them. “I drink strong tea here, it is
not
the same.”

“No, I agree,” Bill said. “We used to smoke.
I don’t suppose-“

Lupus shook his head.
Melissa sighed.

Lupus leaned forward again.
“You don’t want to tell anyone here about gun powder,” he told them.

That put Melissa right on her toes.
The one octave drop in his voice, the slight narrowing of his eyes.

Not advice, a warning.

“You didn’t develop it?” Bill asked.

Lupus shook his head.

“Why?” he asked. “Your armies would be—”

“What?” Lupus demanded, and his eyebrows dropped in anger.
“Invincible? They already are.”

“But with gunpowder…”

Lupus shook his head. “You think that if I had that, then I would roll over all resistance and sweep all before me,” he said.

“Well
—yeah.”

“And who on Earth did that?” Lupus asked him, and Melissa clearly saw the anger now.
Suddenly he seemed to be speaking to a stupid child who refused to admit that one and one made two.

“Well, Napolean
—”

“Defeated.”

“Okay, Hitler—”

“Defeated.”

“England overran a good part of France—”

“France took it back.”

“Okay—America,” Bill said. “We kicked Indian ass from coast to coast.”

“And what did the Indians do about that?” Lupus pressed him.

Bill thought for a moment, opened his mouth, closed it, then leaned back and took a sip of brandy and admitted, “They got guns.”

“Exactly,” Lupus said, and he leaned back again.
“All of them, in the end, get guns. Why? Because when you base your military on superior technology, the first battle you lose, you lose the technology, too. The Chinese developed gunpowder—they didn’t conquer the world with it. Kublai Khan had it, and he didn’t conquer the world, because he gave the secret to people like Marco Polo. Then the Europeans all had it, then it was irrelevant.

“The conquerors, like Genghis Khan, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Attila
—they didn’t have gunpowder and, once conquerors did, they stopped being able to
be
conquerors.”

“So, no gunpowder,” Bill said.

Lupus looked skeptical, “You didn’t already tell them?”

“Why would we?” Bill asked.

“No, we didn’t,” Melissa reassured him. Bill might have been missing this, but she didn’t.

This man wanted to conquer.
He knew it, and apparently the Uman-Chi did, too, and if she could judge people at all, she knew that the Uman-Chi had decided they couldn’t stop him, so instead they tried to suck up to him by giving him…them.

Why?

“Why do you want us?” she blurted out. Even Bill looked shocked. Shela grinned this really scary grin, and Lupus smiled to himself and leaned back again.

“Why do you think?” Lupus asked.
Not good.

“Well, she sang that song in English
—but Angron speaks English, so they know what it says,” she began.

“Dat song was in Andaran,” Shela said.

“I heard it in English,” Lupus said. “But I happen to know that they heard it in Uman-Chi, and the Uman and the Men among the Wolf Soldiers didn’t hear it at all.”

“No?” Bill asked.

Lupus shook his head.

“So…magic?”

“Yep,” Lupus said. He just watched them now, his blue eyes hopping from one to the other, waiting to see what they said.

“Well,” Melissa said.
“The prophecy calls together six heroes and a champion to fight this ‘One’. It sounds like they came too late.”

“Ok
ay,” Lupus said. “And what does that tell you?”

“Well,” she continued, “both of us are from outside.”

“You dey one from outside,” Shela said. “He dey guardian—he can’t be dey one.”

She didn’t mention the champion was also a ‘She.’

“Something will bring them together,” Lupus said. “Do you have any feeling as to where they are?”

Melissa looked at Bill, who looked at her, then at Lupus.
She shook her head.

“Maybe if I saw a map?” she said.

“So, Glynn doesn’t spark anything in you?” Lupus said.

Melissa thought for a moment.
“No, not at all.”

Lupus
turned to Shela, who looked at him.

“Well, they seem to think she’
s the noble, young and old,” Lupus said.

She shrugged.
It didn’t make her feel anything. She thought about Glynn—she was Glynn, nothing more.

“Sorry,” she said.

Shela said something to him in another language, he responded in it, then turned back to them.

“I am going to be honest with you,” he said, “although I think you are smart people and you know what is going on already.

“It is pretty clear that I am the ‘One who is of War,’ and that the prophecy is a warning against me.”

He
regarded them both, leaned forward again, and took a sip of his brandy, then said, “The Uman-Chi have been called upon by the goddess Eveave to stop me, however, Eveave warns that they are already too late.”

“Das tricky, doh,” Shela said.
“Eveave dey Taker and dey Giver. Eveave gwon give you tom’ting, she gwon take tom’ting. So, she tell you what gwon happen, she gwon take back you advantage.”

“But not necessarily leave you behind,” Lupus said.
“I think we are, right now, neck-and-neck with the forces that will oppose us, when we move on the Fovean nations. And I think, as well, the Uman-Chi believe they can’t win by opposing me, so they are picking our side.”

“And you are taking us to make sure those forces don’t oppose you?” Bill asked him.

Somehow, Melissa didn’t think that would do it.

* * *

Shela watched them all, following the conversation in the difficult ang-lesh, which her
Yonega Waya
had taught her over the last few years.

She could see how he enjoyed them, speaking in their language, sharing perspective that only people of the same tribe felt.

The Yonega Waya, her White Wolf, came from a vast tribe. Now she knew he didn’t come from the north, or even from this planet. Now she knew how he understood things differently.

He hadn’t even confided this to her.
That hurt, but she understood, too. Men had their secrets, just as women had theirs. It was part of the way of things.

This new comer had her more concerned.
Yonega Waya never wanted more than one wife, but this girl could be her sister. She had a young, strong body, not changed by childbirth. If any had a chance to be a concubine, it would be her.

When Shela felt sure this girl had no power to detect the other members of the prophecy, she offered to bring them out to the stables and do away with them.
Lupus had forbidden her. They had agreed that any threat to him must be extinguished, but he felt certain, as well, that they needed more time to know what that threat may be.

She couldn’t help but
believe he simply felt lonely for them. He shouldn’t be. He had a new life now. Anyone would be fulfilled by it. He had three strong children. It should be enough for him.

She should be enough for him.

Shela had indulged these feelings before.
In leaving her life as his slave girl and becoming his Empress, she’d forced him to push the way people thought here, not just in one country but in three. Rather than let him take a wife and she herself become a concubine, she’d almost touched off a war that would have shaken Fovea.

She doubt
ed her own jealousy. She knew what she was capable of to protect and to keep her man. What she hadn’t expected is what she’d turn that man into to please her.

Yonega Waya had killed thousands for her.
He’d risked everything he’d accomplished, he’d even jeopardized their children, born and unborn, to please her.

“You are wondering if we are your enemies,” Bill said.
The question roused Shela from her musings and she considered him.

He was old, Shela thought.
He should be a gaffer with grandchildren at his feet, learning from him. Avek had told them he’d seen fifty summers—and yet he moved easily and had all of his teeth. This spoke well for Yonega Waya, much older than she. She felt reassured she would enjoy him for a long time.

“Frankly, it appears you are, no matter what I wonder,” White Wolf said. “I don’t hold it against you
; I know what it is to be wrapped up in a god’s plans.”

“You do?” Bill asked him.

“Somewhat,” Yonega Waya said, waving off the question. “It doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t mean I necessarily have to fear you. Do you know why they bring in people from another world, yet?”

“No,” Bill said.

“Think about it,” Yonega Waya said, cryptically. “But, if you stay close and stay good, and help me, we can defeat this thing. It doesn’t say you will actually beat me, you know. It says you will find people who will be weapons. I would like to find a way to keep you, like the Uman-Chi, on my side. The longer you are here, the more advantages you will see that we have over these people.”

The two of them nodded.
What choice did they have?

As she had done repeatedly throughout the evening, she released her energy into the air around her, and sensed the presences of the Uman-Chi wizards.
They occupied the rooms below her, outside in the courtyard, and surrounding their King, of course. Glynn’s special presence could be felt in the next suite of rooms. That one she could touch without thinking.

She raised her head, and her man immediately became attentive to her.
His hand went from her hair to her shoulder; she gripped his shin and focused. Shela knew of many who criticized her husband for the way he treated her but his arms held her all night long, and she knew the rhythm of his heartbeat better than she knew her own name.

The second she alerted, he knew it, his connection to her working faster than words or thoughts.
His scar wrinkled on his beautiful face, his blue eyes told her that he would do anything to protect her. She knew there were soul mates, and she’d found hers.