CHAPTER FIVE

"A tale is yet told of a book long rumoured lost, the revalations of the Great Prophet Sendigo. Of how his name was favoured by wise sages and devout priests, and long years was he held high in the favour of the Good Gods."
	"Yet upon a day as he arose from sleep, lo, there was the ghastly vision of the Chaos Lord, Tik The Improver, sitting at his bedside. And in manner of dress was the Chaos Lord exceeding strange. His baleful eyes were masked by shields of smooth glass, like to obsidian: his mighty thews were revealed save by a short pair of brightly coloured trews of the ghastliest design, and in his hand reposed a dread tome depicting the sunlit shores of many lands, that he leafed through as one pleasantly distracted."
	"And after long minutes did Sendigo find his voice, for he knew well that before him was one whose whim could transform him into that which looks like an unfortunate mating twixt a crab and the insides of a temple clock. "Why do you appear, Dark Lord ?" Was his uninspired question, for lo, he was near to voiding his attire in dread."
	"And the Chaos Lord, Tik The Improver, did grin most balefully. "Just to annoy you," was his light remark. "Look well, for this is the last chance you're going to get - and if you thought you had troubles with us, just see how you do WITHOUT us." Then did he laugh most cruelly and stride out through the stone wall, with a scent of warm oceans and a barbarous jangling music following him out."
	(Quote from "1001 Facts to your Disadvantage, available under the counter at all good heretical booksellers.)

	A cold wind blew from the North-East, spilling across the edges of snowfields and bare bleak ridges to swirl over the tumbled lands that bordered the Twisted Zone.
	"Owwwww." Kazuko Leclerc stood up in the stirrups of Riord, the great war-mare whose ex-paladin owner was reduced to riding the mule behind, and hating every second of it. "Can't we stop ? This saddle's killing me." She rubbed her tailless rump, wincing. "Four days we've been hammering away, dawn to dusk - it doesn't even look as if we're getting anywhere."
	Suzuko looked around at the grey wind-shrivelled grass, and nodded. "We're moving, all right - but it all looks pretty much the same." Since leaving the last settled valley of Whertondale, they had seen no other travellers - just one far-ranging flock of sheep and goats on a far hillside, that first morning out. The vixen had looked long and hard at the sight, as if she had known it was going to be their last glimpse of friendly folk.
	It was as mixed a party as you could possibly have designed, she told herself, looking round from the jolting perch of her own Issue saddle. At the head rode Mangana, the only one who knew more than approximately where they were headed - and at her side was the broad-shouldered form of Horst, the boar clad in brown buff leather, padded inside by multi-layered silk that could stop a crossbow bolt at point-blank range. The Dimensional Customs Police had let it in, presumably since it could have been manufactured on this world for anyone who could afford to wear the equivalent of twenty silken jackets into battle.
	"Beauvette, Machsan, Gralius," she breathed to herself, as they briefly halted at the top of another bleak crest, looking out for a route to safely take the horses down. "Two barbarians, and an actual priest whose God's always phoning him up collect. I don't know what's behind this mission of theirs, but Someone thinks it's important." The feline priest was looking edgy: his ears were permanently half-dipped, and he scanned the horizon as if expecting a horde of monstrously unrepentant Chaotics to crawl out of the ground, claws and tentacles thrashing. 
	"Hey !" Machsan called back "Looks a good place to rest down there - stream, green grass and all."
	Kazuko cast him a tired grin. "Any place is a good rest spot right now. My goddess Dhoreen protects me from quite a lot - but taking on oversized saddles, aren't really in her line."
	They picked their way down the steep heather to where the stream had widened its valley into a shallow bowl. Tumbled ruins lay half-buried in the mossy ground, legacy of some ruined dream of peace.
	"Feel safe, Mangana ?" Beauvette had her crossbow out and drawn: she looked round at the flat valley floor with a practiced eye, her wide nostrils flaring.
	Mangana slid down off her mount, patting the grey mule as she tied the halter to a thorn tree. "I don't feel any threat, not to us." She briefly concentrated. And frowned. Her huge green eyes widened as she slowly looked around. 
	"Liebchen," Horst Graben seemed to catch her mood; he dismounted and stood beside her, one bristly hand on her shoulder. "There is - Something, ya ?"
	She nodded, her huge eyes wider than ever. "Something happened here. It's - bad. Really bad. And it's nothing to do with these old ruins, either - it's a lot more recent."
	Gralius concentrated, muttering a prayer to Primane. He shrugged. "Nothing Chaotic round here - not for years. Can't be that bad, if.."
	There was a startled yelp from the ruins. All heads turned - Suzuko almost tumbled over the debris towards them, holding her leather breeches up with one paw: she had been about to relieve a full bladder when she had found something more than privacy in that place.
	"Look - behind there," her voice was unsteady. "It's recent, all right."

	A wide circle had been burned there, fully four paces across, in the angle of a broken wall and the small cliff that ran down to meet the stream. Rain-washed ashes were there - ashes and bone.
	"So, someone's had a barbecue," Kazuko yawned. "I could do with one myself. What's the problem ? Those aren't anything like human bones - can't even be a newblood. Take a look."
	"I am." Grimly, Mangana fitted together some fragments of skull. Supporting them on her knee, she assembled the top half of something vaguely equine. "This burning wasn't done with firewood, though - you can see flash-burns and Hiroshima-type shadows on the rocks here. This was a major magical Rite of Purification, meant to consume Unclean things. And these bones - isn't there something that looks familiar ?"
	"It's just an ordinary - " And then Kazuko's own eyes went wide. Almost as wide as the huge orbits on the skull, more than large enough to admit a clenched fist's diameter, on a snouted equine face little larger than a foal's.
	"Those are Manga gened eyes," she said unsteadily, sitting down with a thump on a mossy boulder. "But - there AREN'T any of those around on this world, except you and .... Me." She swallowed nervously. "I know - the folk at Dhoreen's temple are always complementing me on them - unless .... unless it's one I'd given to the Goddess." 
	"What do you mean ?" Suzuko asked curiously. But it was Beauvette who answered: Kazuko seemed frozen in shock.
	"I don't worship any o' the Seven Powers," her voice was a bass rumble. "But some o' them, give out favours, free-like, with no sort of comeback or demands on you. I don't refuse an enchanted blade o' Brazakar the Battle-Lord if I finds one handy, just because I don't pray to him ! And Dhoreen, she's always willing to look after calves or whatever. She hates to see anythin' go to waste."
	"What, you mean like an orphanage ?" Suzuko dipped her ears. "I suppose with all the Chaos Wars and that, someone'd have to look after the poor pups. Especially as so many of the women have to go and fight as well." This had been a land as much under siege as any castle, with nowhere to escape to; generations had passed with the constant threat of a Chaos Incursion eradicating conventional life entirely. With no possibility of retreat or surrender, every hand that could hold a weapon or cast a spell had at times been forced to do so. Possibly, she mused, that explained much about the "relaxed" social structure. No one couple could realistically hope to stay alive through a Chaos Incursion, and so what other places would call standard monogamy could only be a cherished ideal, not a social expectation.
	Beauvette's eyes grew strangely wistful beneath those bristling brows. "Don't reckon I'm cut out for raising a platoon o' rowdy calves. Still - soon as I's got'n on the way, I always gives mine to Dhoreen - this year or a century away, there'll be someone who really wants to bear'em, an' do a better job of it."
	Suzuko's ears fell flat, and a strange knot seemed to form in her stomach. Kazuko had pointed out Sheelana, her Priestess back in Whertondale some four nights ago - and seeing the crowd of children clustered around her skirts, no two of alike species, jokingly remarked she had "just a few short of the full set." Things seemed to fall into place.
	"You mean ..." she said slowly "Kazuko's been - giving her eggs to whoever asks her Goddess for them - all this time she's been coming here, holiday after holiday ? And one of them could have been born years ago, and ..." she nodded towards the circle of ashes.
	Mangana's face was ashen. "It's the accepted thing to do, over here," she whispered "Entire regions have taken hundred percent casualties in the Chaos Wars, everyone eaten or - infected. But Dhoreen keeps their bloodlines intact, and they'll reappear when folk think it's safe. If that was Kazuko's  - I don't know."
	Kazuko shook her blonde mop of hair, as if trying to shake the scene free from her horrified imagination. "I don't know either - but I know someone who will."
	
	While the rest of the party rested and watered their mounts, Kazuko determinedly strode upstream a few score paces, to where a narrow tree-lined gully entered the valley. Suzuko followed as she had been asked, her bow ready and her quiver laden with sharp, "Willow-leaf" arrows. Her native asymmetric bow was held steady, though ears and tail twitched. All around her came the fresh scent of vegetation - only her imagination persisted in tainting it with the odour of burned flesh.
	Kazuko stopped at the cave-like entrance where the little tributary gurgled down amongst rocks and thirsty roots, dense branches leaning over to form a solid green roof. "You stay on watch, please, Suki. I'm going to ask Her. Dhoreen keeps an eye on all her children, however long it's been since she's carried them." She winced, and her massive eyes were bleak. "I know Mangana won't have anything to do with the local Gods - and I don't know who else could have brought those sorts of features over here."

	"Hmmm." Horst Graben looked down on what he had reconstructed, carefully and reverendly assembling the calcined fragments. His class speciality on Earth was as an Arcaneologist, and strangely constructed skeletons were a common find on the "digs" he had made around the planet. "Four of them. They're quadrupeds, look like deer: not equine as I'd thought. And two of them are definitely adult cervines, despite the skull shape. Skull sutures closed, and heavy muscle attachment scars on the limb bones. Here " He picked something gleaming out of the ash, and his triangular snout-front wrinkled. "What's this ? Doesn't look like Silver - if I didn't know better, I'd say this was a stainless steel arrowhead. " He tested the edge: despite the inferno it had gone through, it was still sharp as newly broken glass. "Excellent work, too."
	"Drop that !" Meridy was suddenly there, her face blazing. "That's enchanted - a consecrated piece the profane have no right to touch."
	Gralius stepped forward placatingly, and muttered a short prayer. The sharp point in the boar's hand briefly glowed with a clear blue-white light: when he looked again it was clean and unmarked as new.
	"Yes, it is," he agreed. "By the aura, it's definitely consecrated to Staravol. If you could sell these, they'd be worth far more than their weight in gold."
	Meridy strode forward tight-lipped, extending her open hand. "That's not yours. I don't know how it escaped recovery - we can detect such treasures. But give it back."
	Horst's steel-grey fur bristled. He looked around - and suddenly stooped, and picked up another one from the ash. "Do you make a HABIT of going around killing defenceless families ?" His voice was quiet, but laden with echoes of iron power. "Look at these bones - two adults and two young ones. If those are any sort of Enterope I've ever heard of, you can call me one as well." He knew that Chaotics would never have wasted flesh by burning, as Paladins did to purify the site: they would have gleefully digested the carrion and transformed it into their own flesh, one way or another. These ruins had probably seen it happen centuries ago - the defenders overwhelmed, their flesh transformed in Enterope bellies. What had been the flesh and bone of natural men and beasts, was gloatingly used to fuel their conqueror's unnatural fecundity, as the female livestock and any sentients regretting being taken alive, discovered.
	The ex-paladin gestured to the laid-out skeletons. "Look at those skulls - did you not hear me, when I told you what I had been hunting - those with the Eyes of Evil ? And many of my bretheren are joining in the hunt - I didn't do this, but I would have. Since last the Chaotics invaded openly, our God has left us to seek His works on our own - and we have done so. These are  - things - that were not in the Laws written at the beginning - and there is only one source of New features that the Gods did not give to our first ancestors by design. It may hide from detection, but it is Chaos."
	Gralius felt an unpleasant ripping sensation in the air around him, as if he was standing on a ship breaking apart at the seams. A passive detection spell revealed energy gathering around the boar, still silent yet potent like the lambent glow on a mountain peak that precedes a lightning strike. Off to one side, Mangana dropped the half-unpacked foodbag and turned to face them, her flat face set in an unreadable mask. In her own huge eyes were glittering highlights hard as a sword edge.
	"Hold it !" The feline held out both paws. "Meridy - please, remember what happened last time. I tell you definitely, you do NOT want to fight us - and before you tell us hopeless odds make no difference to you, please recall whose side you fight on. "
	The paladin ground one of the dainty bones beneath her heel, and faced Horst squarely. "I recall it very well. And so should you - helping sorcerers and their kind. And THIS one - " she gave a jerk of her head towards Mangana "this one, whose flesh mutates to swine's-meat by the day. What sort of God gives THAT sort of power, tell me ?"
	Gralius felt like a man in a room full of open Greek Fire vats, watching helplessly as rivals tossed burning torches at each other. Very soon now, things were liable to get very uncomfortable all round.
	"Meridy," Mangana's voice held an edge like the uranium carbide katana that was held a thumb's breadth out of its sheath "You might not like us - sorcerers manage to live perfectly well without invoking any Gods whatsoever - we aren't Given laws, we discover them. But I've told you before - we don't want your God - or ANY of them. What we do is OUR responsibility - not yours. And if you come on with that "whose side are you on" crap just ONE more time - I don't care how deceived you were last time, this time Beauvette's going to have to take her turn in the line to have fun with your sorry carcass !"
	Gralius cast a brief prayer up for guidance. He could see Meridy visibly trembling - Paladins never drew their steel or fought except to the death, with no possibility of surrender. If that doctrinal switch was pressed, with or without Staravol's aid she had a good chance of taking several of the party with her.
	Horst Graben gave a grim smile - and suddenly Gralius felt a heavy pulse of power washing over him like the opening of a furnace door. Meridy gave a cry of rage - and then stopped.
	"I think THAT should calm things down around here." The grey boar said quietly, and folded his arms. A heavy eyebrow raised, and a smile played around his tusks.
	The ground beneath the paladin's feet had turned for an instant into quicksand: she had fallen into it up to the waist before Horst had released his Vrill field and allowed it to return to hard-packed mountain soil and rubble. Evidently the pure power that he had learned to derive from the Mystic Strength Of The Volk, was working fine from this world's power supply.
	Mangana slowly walked over to his side and looked up at her mate, her eyes sparkling gleefully as she squeezed one of his muscle-corded arms. "Nice one, Horst. " She turned to the furiously struggling ex-paladin, who was rooted like a centuried oak in the soil. "Right, then. I think that solves THAT little problem. Remember, Horst could have dropped you over your head - and he can still do it, any time he wants to. "
	Beauvette and Machsan had been watching with some amusement. "Eh, I hope you don't want us to be digging you out," was Beauvette's only comment. She ran a finger along the finely honed edge of her battleaxe. "These take ages to sharpen." Turning round, she gestured towards the luckless baboon who was keeping lookout on a high rock shelf above them. "Oi ! Vazeeq ! Nip down and see where we packed the shovel. NOW." 
	
	Some ten minutes later, Kazuko and Suzuko reappeared from behind the ruins, Kazuko's flat face looking greatly relieved.
	"Panic over." She announced. "Dhoreen says they're nothing to do with me, or her. Which is a bit odd, really - that's just the kind of thing she might like. There's two Leclercs around already, you might say, but they're clear across the planet from here."
	Suzuko looked at her, and said nothing. She had never felt entirely comfortable with Kazuko's attitudes, and being on a world where they were more than a personal foible, was becoming stressful. Though she could see the advantages of having effectively a divinely organised gene bank on a world where nations and continents were regularly smashed into total extinction, it was nothing she wanted to emulate. When she managed to bear Pathwan a cub, she would bear it, and not pre-emptively adopt it no matter HOW much someone else asked for an exotic cub....
	"What's up ? Or Down, should I say ?" Kazuko squatted down by Meridy. She grinned, realisation dawning. "Oh my - you've been picking fights with Horst, haven't you ? I recognise his style: last year he melded someone's sandals with the wooden floor, for chasing our pal Broohilda." She tilted her pumpkin head to one side. "And while they were running full-tilt, as well. Both ankles broken. Broohilda, she..."
	Suzuko tailswiped her. "Don't tell HER, of all people, about Broohilda." 
	"Why ever not ?" Kazuko demanded. "We've this friend of ours, back home - she's a healer, gentlest little goatling you ever met, so tenderhearted she only eats free-range vegetables and then only if they've been humanely killed. Funny thing, she really IS an En...." she broke off, clapping a hand over her mouth. "Oops. See what you mean, Suki. Anyway, that just goes to show - you can't judge people on general principles. There's lots of humans, of as noble a bloodline as you could wish, who're absolute stinkers, so there."
	Mangana frowned, casting her great green eyes at the charred circle that still lay like an acid-burned scar before them. "If it's nothing to do with us, where did these come from ? This IS pretty near the Twisted Zone, I suppose - they might have just wandered in from some other plane. Did Dhoreen know anything about them ?"
	Kazuko considered briefly. Unlike Suzuko, she had no compulsion against leaving her genes scattered all over the landscape. It was an old Family tradition - her Father's side was Norman French, whose ancestors had literally been "Northmen" on first arrival in their Viking longships. Her own blonde hair had come down from adventurous folk whose descendants were recognisable all over her native Earth: given the relevant spells or technologies, she saw no reason why the Males should still hold the monopoly on that. She was proud of her features, and always asked Dhoreen to make them dominant, however strange a mix that would result in. One of the Leclercs already born on this world had Kazuko's hair colour and eyes, but the remainder of her makeup was strangely like a taller version of the Obsidian Dwarves of Ptah, whose fascinating social customs Kazuko had studied in her Religious Studies field trips...
	"Well - she DID say she's been having a few strange little arrivals," Kazuko mused. "Some of us make a sort of specialisation, going out into the Wastes, to see what finds us. Sort of the ultimate test of faith in the Goddess - you've got to be skilled, to make sure you provoke the right sort of "appetite" in whatever hunky monsters you meet - some of us get eaten, even so. But these manga-gened quads aren't her idea, that's certain."
	Horst looked round the ruins, and gently took the shovel from Vazeeq's paw. 
	"Excuse ?" The baboon offered "It's my duty to do the menial tasks, like digging out the knight."
	Horst's tusks gleamed, as he cast the primate a bleak smile.
	"I'm not digging her out. These -" he gestured at the scorched remains "We couldn't save them. But we're not going to leave them out in the rain unburied."

	Two hours later, the party was re-united, at least outwardly. Vazeeq and Gralius had taken over the shovel while the rest rode on, prepared to leave Meridy to scoop her own way out with her helmet.
	"You got yourself into this," Beauvette had grinned "have fun getting out." At Gralius's objection to abandoning a party member, she had graciously commanded Vazeeq to help the ex-paladin emerge: it was definitely Fun to finally look down on one of the unflappable figures, after so many long years wading after them in battles with the rest of the Newblood infantry taking the mundane parts.
	"Here they come," Suzuko turned in her saddle to see the three figures hurrying after them. "You know, I don't think that was a nice thing to do, leaving her."
	Mangana gave a bored shrug. "Maybe not. Trouble with her is, not only does she see things in black and white - she's got a whole pantheon telling her it's True. That's what's going wrong round here - the Chaos Gods have probably gone off somewhere sunny on their holidays, and the rest don't interfere - the laws run themselves if nobody messes around with them. The regular folk, they've never had to work out things for themselves - not surprising they get things wrong. Like they're morally colourblind."
	Beauvette scratched between her horns. "Is it that better, where you come from ?" She demanded. She had picked up hints of the world, Dirt or something, that her new friends lived on. Though sorcery seemed not to work, she had heard of the Strong, Weak and Market Forces that seemed to bind it equally tightly.
	Suzuko winced. ""Better" isn't the right word. Let's say, when we get things wrong - we KNOW it's our own fault."

	Night fell quickly, the sun vanishing behind a looming wall of cloud sweeping up from the South. In the clear air between grey curtains of distant rain, they could see white peaks and tumbled grey rocky foothills, just on the edge of vision.
	"Southwall Mountains," Gralius stretched, extending his tail. "Our Empire never passed that point, even in the great days of Ereward The Screaming Mad - beyond it, there's the warmer lands whose ways are strange to us. The immortal Witch-Queen rules them."
	Kazuko's great eyes gleamed. "I've been there ! Massive high-energy Magic-users, no wonder they didn't keep getting stomped flat like the folks round here." She gestured to the empty lands: every so often they had stumbled across frost-worn rocks that had been raised by hands millenia dead. "I suppose that's why they kept on with slaves and such in the Queendom - round here, you just can't afford it. It's always been "all pull together" - "all hands to the Pump", and "Remember the ... " I forget, that place in Mexico, it's a saying some of our foreigners used to have."
	The feline priest looked at her, intrigued. His chance companions were hard to understand at times - though what truly amazed him, was that they had any common ground at all. Enterope shamans were reputed to tear rifts into the voids Beyond, and call up whatever lurked at the threshold to see if it was willing to serve them - and the resulting casualty rates they were said to suffer from cosmic beings enraged at being called out of the bath or wherever, discouraged any less prolific races from attempting to emulate them. But not all beings from Beyond were malevolent, he reminded himself as he looked around the campsite.
	"Tell me more about your world," he suggested. "I shall hold a Truth spell on, so Meridy can believe it when you tell of your good deeds wrought there."
	Kazuko grinned. "Good deeds ? It's a family tradition. My Father's retired, but all his life he used to be a sort of healer - now he runs a Charity."
	"Charity ?" Gralius prompted.
	Kazuko frowned. Her Father's latest project was going to be rather hard to explain to someone on this planet. Still, "Artificial Intelligences For The Naturally Silly" had a nice ring to it, however you said it....

	Suzuko took the first Evening watch along with Horst, while the rest brewed up hot drinks on Horst's alcohol stoves. This was another thing they had been forced to build on this side of the Dimensional Customs barrier - riveted from sheet brass rather than spun aluminium, still they were far handier than the iron charcoal braziers travellers carried for wet and woodless nights such as this. Plus, it was a public service to remove from circulation several pints of cheap but somewhat toxic Sweet Potato brandy bought from the Dystope spirit-sellers.
	The vixen shuddered, tucking her tail under the waxed linen overskirt as another soaking gust sheeted in over the low ridge of what might once have been a quarry. Around them, sheer walls twelve or fifteen metres high provided protection from any sudden attack: ahead there was a clear view out over the bare and darkening landscape.
	"What price an inn now." Horst raised a heavy eyebrow, pulling his hood down. This was more of a layered helmet than the plain drawstring model humans used: overlapping layers left his snout covered but his hearing unimpeded. As he had pointed out, a wet sentry may be uncomfortable by morning, but a half-deafened one was liable to be Dead.
	Suzuko sneezed. "What, three more nights you reckon, to Mangana's family tower ?" Her voice was hopeful. They had made good time, the horses having no problems finding grazing or clear trails that the rarely-seen wild animals had graven into the untenanted landscape over the lonely centuries.
	He nodded slowly. "All being well, three nights. And then - we shall see. There, Mangana and I meet her family - and there are things we have to say. "
	Suzuko drew close to him. "She's a lucky girl." Briefly, she pressed her hand in his, remembering. Horst was her friend, not her mate - she had never been one to take advantage of her Season to lure already committed males to her. (Unlike Kazuko, whose only platonic friendship on record had been with a Network penpal living at the other end of a radio-psionic link - and if [ªªªªª!] had been other than a kilometre-long hydrogen-blooded entity from the thousand bar pressure depths of Jupiter's atmosphere, she would have found a way to get physical with him as well.)
	Horst stirred. "She is also right. About this world -" he gestured out into the shadows, rain glistening on his green waxed jacket. "It's as much trouble as it's worth, having Immortals to mend and ruin the place as they feel like it. Ya, very fine for some things - but instead of physical pollution, you get theological poison just as bad. There's no war so bad as a Holy War."
	"Hmmmm." Suzuko looked off to their Left, to where a dim blue glow flickered, like a huge version of one of the alcohol burners, in the very heart of the Twisted Zone. "Can't say much for Sorcery, either - I remember Mangana telling me, this place got the way it did after someone transmuted ten kilos of lead into plutonium, while it was plugged into a sorcerous vortex - that was centuries ago, and the land STILL hasn't recovered. Blew a permanent hole in Reality."
	Tusks gleamed as he grinned. "Can't have everything ! Without this weak spot, we wouldn't BE here - Mangana's parents couldn't ever have met. Kazuko'd probably have had a horrible time on Earth, and ended up in a reformatory - she wouldn't have got into Toho with that sort of record." There was a long silence, broken only by the hissing of rain on the faded grass. "And I - I would probably have gone back to my people, still thinking the same about furless ones."
	Horst had been surprised to see humans at Toho, Suzuko remembered - for some reason, there did not seem to be any left alive on his native timeline, in the hundred and tenth year of the Furred Reich.

	The two hours passed, as they stared out through the low cloud, their eyes wide and noses twitching. 
	Suzuko stretched, carefully keeping her arms low so the water in the fur of her soaked paws stayed out of her sleeves: elastic storm-sleeves were not a feature they had so far managed to reproduce over here. And then she, too, grinned. 
	"It's turning out to be some sort of holiday. Fresh air, exotic food, healthy riding, and even archery practice. And what you learn out here, you DON'T forget."
	Horst composed himself, cross-legged on the boulder from where he sat like a guardian statue. "I heard, and forgot. I saw, and remembered. I did, and Understood." He nodded slowly. "Confucius said that. I think we'll all understand a few things by the time we leave here - those of us that do."
	Suzuko fell silent. Of course, she told herself, Beauvette and the rest would be staying on this plane. But then - she shivered, looking out on the dark sky. Mangana's danger sense had triggered three times since coming here: in alternate world-lines she was dead three times over. As the infinite possibilities of Time blossomed out, the anime-eyed girl kept in touch with her other selves, dimly looking forwards and slantways into Time - when they died, she felt it. Executed as a criminal in the jails of Dystope, slain by spell-crazed knights they would have probably lost against without the Newbloods' aid - and killed unjustly but thoroughly by Meridy. It came home to her why Mangana had been willing to leave Meridy in the ground - in other branchings of history, the Paladin had literally done it to her.
	Behind them, she could hear Vazeeq and Gralius moving up to take their place on watch, the baboon's shuffling gait instantly recognisable, as was the stiff rustling of the Priest's soaked robes.
	Gralius nodded, as they passed in the narrow throat of the abandoned quarry where centuries of rockfalls had piled up a rampart that the horses had only climbed with difficulty. Nobody was going to be charging through there in a hurry in the blind darkness.
	A chill wind from the open lands followed them back to the rest of the party.
	"Come on in," Mangana waved them in towards the glimmer of light where she had rigged up a green tent from the strange pieces of historical equipment she called 'shelter-halves'. "We've kept you some supper."
	"Ah." Suzuko wriggled in, to a crowded jumble of bodies and piled kit, saddlebags opened up to provide dry sitting space under the pressing green roof. "Great work - it's COLD out there." She gratefully received the steaming bowl that Mangana handed her, and blessed Horst silently for thinking to build a smokeless, windproof alcohol stove. "Sausage stew - I've had wurst."
	The native members of the party looked on in puzzlement as Horst and the anime-eyed girls groaned.
	Machsan shrugged. "Alien Humour."
	Kazuko looked up at the great icebear from her cosy position on his lap. "Come on, let's hear some tales or stuff. All we get to hear round here is theology - very important, maybe, but not much fun."
	Machsan stroked her hair like a kitten. Suddenly he grinned, his long white teeth in their black gums shining oddly in the eldritch light of the spirit stove. "Picked this one up in Dystope," he nodded "heard it off Redhorn the Bard - real genuine type, don't mince words around, tells you it straight. Fact is, it got 'im "bard" from half the taverns in the place." Closing his eyes, the bear began to chant, in a deep and surprisingly melodious voice:

	

"When first the Gods had planned the world, It was all fine and dandy
With humans and the Dragon folk To Worship them, t'was handy
Our beast-parents lived wild in woods, Where humankind'd slay-us !
But skinfolk set to quarrelling, And some they turned to Chaos
The rebel Gods looked down at us, And thought to make improvement
They blended us with speaking folk, gave us two-legged movement

Though witless were our ancestors, Still deep they felt betrayal
For Enteropes never can find peace, they see the world as stale
A hunger never satisfied, So pleased dark Gods who'd made us
They bade us force it into all That could not swift evade us !
Then gentle Dhoreen saw and wept, Not only for her Firstborn
But Entropes too, whose loveless ways had left her sad and heart-torn

"Why should", she said "such waste there be, of handsome fur and feather
That Entropy should mix to spoil Such features fine together ?"
"For though our first Plan held no place for hooves, horns and beast sinew
Now they have wits as keen as Man, I'd wish them to continue."
'Tis said the Goddess silent kept, Her plan shared with no other
For Law Gods would destroy what she was thinking to recover

To her Priestess in dream she came, and gave Divine Protection
That Chaos never could take root, She'd guard from its infection
"I put my trust in Dhoreen now", That Priestess said in writing
"Indeed, bar risk of lasting taint, Enteropes could be exciting."
'Tis said that all the Gods were vexed, when Newbloods pure were first born
Though Chaos had released its hold, the Law Gods rued that morn !

"We planned this not", to Dhoreen they cast forth divine displeasure
"You brought them forth, so you it is, must nurture them forever."
The Goddess grinned."They need it not.I think they will endure
The strength they had, I left them with, and yet their breeds are pure."
"When first the world brand new we made, We saw not all conditions
Or that our Firstborn speaking folk would defy Our decisions."

"For some have turned to Chaos, so, They'd leave our world a-burning
My children I have saved this way, from Sorrow they're returning."
And so the Gods, our place they made, in new Plans they were making
They found our strength a tool indeed, to save the world from breaking.
From that day since, have Firstborn folk, of Newblood strength been wary
They cheer us on the battlefield, but think us brutes and hairy

No skin as fine as silk have we, no faces smooth as china
But for our strength and hardihood, no speaking folk are finer
Yet Dhoreen chose our every shape: she could have chosen other
Than forms to give which pleasured best, the Goddess of all lovers !
So, soft in fur or hard horn-crowned, Our varied shapes they please us
But not the jealous softskin folk, Whose daughters oft receive us !


	There was a brief silence. Then Kazuko clapped loudly. "Yay ! Major poetry ! Accurate stuff, too."
	Suzuko found herself applauding - as did Mangana, Horst and Beauvette. Meridy looked on in silence, glowering.
	"Ah. Thirsty work, that." Machsan grunted, reaching for the wineskin. "Want some, anyone ?" He offered it to Kazuko, who to everyone's surprise, shook her head.
	"No thanks - I really shouldn't be drinking alcohol from now on. I'll watch you, though." She grinned up at him, putting as much of her slim arm round his waist as would reach as slim fingers kneaded through the stiff guard-hairs to the softness of his pelt. "Let's see if Passive Drinking works."
	Horst declined, but Mangana and Beauvette held out their mess tins to be filled. Suzuko shook her head.
	"I tried that the first night out, remember ?" She grimaced, licking her muzzle as if to clear the memory. "It was pretty undrinkable then - and I shouldn't think it's improved, in those skin containers."
	Mangana looked hard at her cousin. "And since when did you give it up ?" She demanded, taking a sip of the raw red wine. Having no effective nose and a severely curtailed sense of taste sometimes had its advantages, she reflected. The Anime species of human were lacking sinuses and were somewhat disadvantaged when it came to forebrains - in a "Dungeons and Kittens" game, their INtelligence would average far higher than their Wisdom. "It doesn't taste that bad - you've brewed a lot worse yourself, AND drank the lot." 
	Kazuko's home-made absinthe was justly famous, and had earned its very own footnote in the National Register of Hazardous Chemicals.
	Her cousin shrugged. "So maybe I'm looking after myself a bit more. Vitamin pill, anyone ?" She pulled a small glass bottle out of the old canvas respirator case she carried: both had somehow passed through the unguessable loopholes in the Dimensional Customs regulations to get here.
	Mangana gave a dismissive huff, and turned to Horst. "See anything out there ? Looks pretty empty to me - didn't get a single hint there's anything even alive out there, let alone dangerous."
	The boar shook his head. "Cold, empty land. Left to itself, it could take generations to get anything like a natural population back. And with the Twisted Zone so near, I wouldn't bet on it being left much longer."
	"Very likely, what with sorcerers like your family messing with it." Beauvette commented lazily, unpacking her Grooming Kit. "Not that the Seven Gods are going to leave it alone, either."
	"Seven," Kazuko mused. "Seven Lawful ones, plus various casualties and absentees. Hey - how many Chaos ones were they ?"
	Beauvette shrugged, lazily drawing a steel comb through her wiry fur. "Dunno."
	From the corner, Meridy stirred. Hunched down to clear the wet canvas roof, she moved over to the stoves, her face a pale mask, expressionless as a poorly carved temple statue.
	"You don't ask. You don't want to find out. You don't even start to think about the idea - and shall I tell you why ? Because it's STUPID !" Her voice was suddenly hard and hissing. "It says in the Book Of No Returning: "Let not those look, who stand upon the edge of that void. The deeper they look into the abyss, the deeper the abyss doth look into them." There was enough in the world at its creation, for us to be satisfied for all time - but folk had to go on pushing, always wanting more. And the first laws are beautiful - pure, unfleshed shining things, as the sages display in the perfect harmony of angles and numbers."
	Suzuko's keen ears picked up Kazuko's mutter about "Better not tell them about Fractals and Chaos Theory..." Her own muzzle she kept sensibly shut.
	Mangana's own eyes flashed. "When I hear someone telling me what not to think, I reach for my Kugelblitz spell", she quoted. "Yes, I know all about the Power Of Names. It works where we come from, too - all the old books are full of exhortations "not to call out to the hills, lest ye be answered". Just because a book's half a millenia old, doesn't mean it's right - we know they hadn't got chemistry and biology right, so why trust them on magic ?"
	"Yay !" Kazuko nodded cheerfully. "The world's a much better place since our rightful Gods came back. And millions of people go out on mountainsides all over the place and ululate to the earth and skies - yodelling is THE big entertainment thing, back home. You'll be amazed at what ends up joining in the chorus, if you get the tones just right." Her eyes grew wide and misty, even as Machsan stroked her. A happy memory of endless nights of starlit altars, tentacles and slime brought a wistful smile.
	"I DON'T think that's what Paladins really want to hear," Suzuko pointed out mildly. "We've a lot of parallels with magic and science around here - and the equivalent to what turns up on hilltops to party, I really don't think she'd approve of."
	Mangana cast her a glance. "It's true enough. Sorcery's got the same kind of rules as Quantum Mechanics, even - the more improbable the thing you want to do is, the shorter it'll hold together. Like electron-positron pairs just boil out of nowhere in empty space - and almost anything heavier COULD, but it wouldn't stay around long enough to notice."
	"Hey !" Kazuko's eyes were bright in the firelight. "How's about this one, then. Put a good time-delay on a spell, triggered to bring the nuclear ignition temperature of plain water down to room heat - and cast it in a swimming pool. It'd only have to hold it down for a fraction of a second..."
	"Eeep !" Her cousin shivered, and turned slowly towards Meridy. "OK - there ARE a few things it's best not to think about. But the difference between s is..." she trailed off.
	"Yes ?" Meridy's eyebrow was raised.
	Mangana gave a wry smile. "I can think about that one as much as I like. You've only got faith and divine hearsay about what's a bad thing to try - I KNOW."

	The twin moons slowly climbed into the skies, as the party settled down to sleep. It was hardly the most comfortable of pitches, Suzuko noticed - you had a choice of lying out on the edge, where the wind and spray drifted in below the billowing hem of the canvas - or nestling in amongst warm bodies, where a sharp hoof or elbow was liable to dig into you through the sleeping bags. The night being cold, all save Meridy chose the latter, friendlier option.
	"Night, all," Suzuko yawned, pulling the sheepskin hood up around her ears. The oiled wool felt comforting against her fur: again she blessed Mangana's good sense. The vixen knew that she herself would probably have eventually given up trying to get high-tech bags through Dimensional Customs, and settled for whatever was available locally - instead of resolutely hectoring local leatherworkers to assemble the unheard-of designs over here. She grinned to herself. When Mangana set out to do all that was "humanly" possible, nobody used the term as an insult.
	Resting her muzzle on Kazuko's distinctive Y-shaped bag, Suzuko gave herself up to sleep. All around was the wet hissing of rain on leaf and stone, and in her nostrils was the heavy scent of frost-cracked rock and decaying roots from all around. She felt the twinging ache of her muscles fading into a warm, almost comforting background sensation as her body adapted to its new low-tech surroundings, where day followed strenuous day of wilderness travel. They had all lost weight, even allowing for the weight of trim muscle she could feel develop as her pains turned to growing confidence in the saddle.
	"It's nine hours of darkness, this time of year", she murmured soundlessly to herself "but out here, I want every minute's sleep I can get."
	
	Lying safe and warm in her Galton Bag, Suzuko dreamed. All around them, she seemed to see the broken lands as if soaring on a jet-pack: higher into a sky that was neither dark or filled with light as she knew light behaved. Looking down, she saw the raw crater of the quarry - and a glowing cluster of lights, like a campfire's red embers. Two more lights were nearby, and on the far side, eight others, of a quite different "colour" from the rest. She had seen something not unlike it before, when she had been taken into a mental sharing with her friend Mae The Psychic Kitten: these were the aura glows of her friends and their beasts of burden.
	I'm not dreaming this, Suzuko marvelled. At least - not in the usual way. This is the sort of thing psykers can do, so they tell us .... but, there's not one spark of that in me ! She had tested herself repeatedly, both with the official tests and informally with Mae. A chunk of granite held more psionic potential than she did, she had glumly concluded.
	If it's not Me who's doing this.. it must be someone else who Can.I just hope they're friendly ... because there's not a thing I can DO about it...
	She found herself hovering, at a point about three kilometres above the plain where her friends and her body slept. Without any obvious transition, the surrounding unlight became a wide plain, as if a flock of softly stuffed clouds had hurried to place themselves between her astral paws and the distant landscape.
	Suzuko suddenly realised the true meaning of a word she had used a thousand times - and would never thoughtlessly utter again.
	Awe. She would have prostrated herself, if she could have moved. For in that place, hovering between the earth and skies, she realised that she stood before a Presence that shone before her like the bursting flare of a fluffy supernova.
	Fluffy ? She found time to think. And then there was no choice but to gaze on what came through, incarnate in all her Entirety. Somehow Suzuko sensed that the Being was as much a stranger here as she was herself - one who had learned a little about the place, and decided to come and see for Herself. 
	HIDY ! The voice was soft in her ears: the softness of gentle waves that could swell to a tsunami and wash worlds away. My ! You're NICE !
	Suzuko stood tall, as best she was able. Here, in this world, suddenly she Understood. She was in the presence of a Goddess - a being as far above her as she was above a crawling ant - a being who had chosen to take a personal interest in her.
	Why me ? Suzuko asked plainitively I don't even Believe in most deities - apart from those ones with tentacles, I've actually seen Kazuko with...
	A divinely proportioned head nodded cheerfully. Right ! That's exactly it. All the rest of you are already committed, one way or another - I wanted a, like, neutral party, to be my first Priestess. Huge - overly huge, in fact - eyes gleamed brightly. This world could be SO much better. OK, I'll leave you now, and come back when you've thought things over. It's not a lot I'd really ASK of you ....
	Suzuko felt herself gently lowered, back to the warmly slumbering furred body she had left. Despite what the ancient texts of this world might say, there was suddenly a new Goddess around that owed nothing to what had come before. And  - those huge eyes, that unthinkable sweetness , the fact that someone from Japan had been chosen as a point of contact, as if she was already familiar with the ideas ..... 
	Suzuko had a sneaking suspicion, that she had seen her somewhere before.