Chapter Seven

"There is a tale indeed to tell, to marvel and to take heed from. Of the sorcerer Belashemoth-Jones, and his lusts for power and yet powers beyond. Of how he cried out one deepest Midnight, pledging his spirit to the Chaos God Tik the Improver: take all that I have, but give me Power beyond all mortal folk ! This thing the god Tik The Improver pledged to do, at the next dark of the moons.
	And then did Tik take the sorcerer's skills from his brain and the power from his being. And he did warp his body into a thing most loathsome to behold, so that all could see the mark of Chaos upon him. And then did Tik take control of his estates, filling them with warped horrors that a legion of Paladins did assault for two hard months of puissant battle, while their owner wandered starving in the wastes.
	Came then the next time of the dark moons, and Belashemoth-Jones did rejoice when Tik manifested before him. "For I have given all, and he has taken it - so shall he give me powers beyond all Mankind."
	Tik did walk forth upon the earth, and look down he did upon his disciple. "And do you still desire what I have to give ?" Questioned the God. And when the disciple bowed down before him, did Tik give him a most grievous kick in the teeth, and departed to the Planes of Chaos laughing loudly."
	From Liber Chaoticae - paperback edition.

	"Told you so. Divinities are bastards like that."
	From Mangana Kohaki, on numerous occasions.


	The sound of clattering buckets and cheerful shouts from the courtyard was muffled in the great hall of Shakarna's Tower, where Suzuko Hoki sat alone looking out of the one-way window onto the Twisted Zone. A faint smile wreathed her muzzle as she looked out at the sunlight pouring through gaps in the clouds - evidently her arriving in five days of torrential rain had been simply bad luck - this was starting to look a fair place in the sunshine. Stretching, she lay flat on the polished wood of the windowseat, her tail twitching as her eyes looked far out into the tumbled, rain-washed landscape.
	"Well, we can just hope they're keeping safe, and get back on time." She turned at the voice, to see Kazuko standing by the doorway. "Mangana and the rest - and with luck, they might solve a few little problems too."
	Suzuko turned and sat upright. For a change Kazuko was wearing a distinctly practical outfit of thick brown woollen cloth, the top cut very short but with trousers that went right up to her ribcage, festooned with cargo pockets. A keen look was in those saucer-sized blue eyes.
	Suzuko's tail twitched. "Three days it's been now," she agreed. "I ... I keep wishing I was out there with them - and then I get reminded why I'm not. It's healing, but it twinges." She gently touched the long wound on her left forearm: it was fine for eating and dressing herself, but the first time she had tried carrying anything heavy, she had been given a painful reminder. 
	Suddenly she looked at Kazuko closely. All the signs of gleeful mischief were there - she needed no Alignment spell to spot something like that. "Well ?" She demanded "Out with it !"
	Kazuko put her arms behind her back, and looked up at the honey-gold ceiling. "I'm sure I don't know WHAT you mean," she said brightly, turning to look down the corridor at something outside Suzuko's view. "Come on in, Riord - do You know ?"
	"Say, no." With a strangely exaggerated loping stride, a familiar figure moved to stand next to Kazuko. "Kaz, eat ? Kaz, yes ?"
	"Here you are," Kazuko fished in one of her capacious pockets for a carrot - and the taller, more muscular woman crunched it contentedly, staring at the foliage end. "Nice, eh ?"
	Suzuko's ears went right down. "It's getting confusing," she complained. "I'm used to thinking of Riord as a horse - not a human. What are we going to call her ? And more importantly, how long's the poor girl going to be stuck like this - the effects are going to wear off sometime, aren't they ?"
	"Walk on," Kazuko instructed, and Riord moved over to the table, eventually managing to sit in a chair. Then Kazuko sat herself on the table, legs folded as she surveyed the vixen critically. There was a long silence, only broken by the contented crunching of carrot.
	"Let me put it like this." Three-inch eyes flashed wildly as their owner locked her gaze on Suzuko. "Meridy tried to kill both of us, pretty unjustly. And given the chance, she'd have slaughtered the rest of the party, then just strolled on with the knowledge of a good deed done for the day. It's not just that my own Goddess protects me - though she does, one way or another - it's that she really HATES seeing good things going to waste." She turned as the body in question rubbed her head affectionately against her, and stroked the long hair.
	"I can see that." Suzuko nodded cautiously. "Nobody died, thanks to Dhoreen - she healed Meridy's body, and put her somewhere she couldn't hurt anyone else. But leaving her swapped that way - ..." her voice trailed away. "Kazuko, you're not saying it's Permanent ?"
	"Oh, no." Kazuko smiled down on Riord, and fished for another carrot. "When Riord here has had a year and a day like this, and has found out if she likes being this way - if she wants to go back to being a war-horse, Dhoreen will oblige her." She shrugged. "Of course, she'll remember everything - just won't be able to DO stuff. It's like loading a program into a computer that hasn't got enough memory -  Meridy's the same, but more so - horses go on their instincts a lot more. That's why Meridy's settling in so well; most everyday stuff's sort of hard-wired." A wicked grin flickered over her furless features. "Just think about it. I didn't actually need to use those - er, restraints, after all. She was in there with a lovely handsome male she'd spent the last few days getting ready for since I took that Geas off, and her nose told her tail exactly what to do." Kazuko gave an exquisite shiver. "Meridy's somewhere inside, feeling her sentience just dissolving in a flood of happy horsey hormones - by the time the foal starts adding to them.."
	"'Ridy safe, yes," Riord nodded. "'stable nice. Mash nice." Her eyes widened, and her nostrils flared. "Foal come along all nice."
	Suzuko winced. She had read that the mind was a natural emanation of brain bioelectric patterns - that in no way could one personality force itself into another. But here she was, in a world where sorcery and Divine magic worked on their own rules. And to do the Impossible, all you had to do was summon someone who had a relevant rulebook.
	"I shouldn't be surprised about the occasional "Deus Ex Machina" happening around here," she commented glumly "We seem to be attracting Gods like an execution attracts home-movie cameramen - and with Gods, that sort of thing is their Job..."

	They took lunch out to the wall that day, taking advantage of a fine hour between the showers. Although it was nearing New Year back on Earth, here it was approaching Spring. 
	"Impressive." Suzuko commented. She stood on the curve of battlement, where it rose four metres above the natural cliff on the Northern side of the rock. "I don't see anyone getting in here in a hurry - not without serious siege gear."
	Kazuko smiled. "Yeah. But you don't go up against high-level sorcery with catapults, anyway. See over there ?" She gestured to a spot some twenty metres along the wall, where a wide patch of rock was fused and half-melted. "Two hundred years ago, one of the Chaos incursions came past here, and one of their Shamans decided to have a go. Seems he took a fancy to my Auntie, or something." She waved in the direction of the Tower that loomed protectively behind them.
	Suzuko winced as she walked down to examine the damaged area more closely. It looked as if a hole the size of a railway tunnel had begun to bite into the stone - until something suddenly stopped it. "What happened ?"
	Kazuko pointed at a wide, shallow lake two hundred metres away on top of the bluff overlooking the little cultivated valley. The lake looked artificial, as if someone had poured it into a shallow bowl of green glass some fifty metres across.
	"Well, I don't know what Happened to him," she murmured, "But by all accounts, that's where he was Standing, when Auntie lost her temper...."
	Just at that moment there was a thunder of wings above them, and Ryko touched down.
	Suzuko looked her up and down with interest. For some reason, this was one member of the family who never visited Earth - possibly her looks were against her. Two metres tall, and extremely skinny, Mangana's sister had a four-metre span of black, leathery wings and a narrow, deep chest - more like a non-sentient dog's ribcage than a regular human. Sharp teeth glittered as she smiled, thrashing her whip-like tail.
	"Suzuko ! Kaz here hath told me ALL about you !" She enthused. "Blessed be the day that brought you here. And our new friend alike." She nodded towards Riord, who was looking on in blank fascination. "But Kaz did not say you had such tastes in clothing."
	Suzuko's ears blushed prettily, almost matching the pink ribbons with which they were tied. "I didn't. When you get drafted, you don't get to choose the uniform."
	"Well, I think it suits you." Kazuko grinned. "Doesn't it, Ryko ? Dontcha think she looks c....." She broke off, and frowned. "Hold on a sec. Something's funny here. "
	"What's up ?" Glad of the interruption, Suzuko looked at the anime-eyed girl. 
	"Hmmm." Kazuko's brow furrowed in concentration. "That's odd. It's like I'm trying to translate, and I don't know the word. I can draw it, though - I know what it LOOKS like." She picked up a stone and scratched a Kanji ideograph on the flat paving. "That's the word I can't say. Hey, Ryko, does the Twisted Zone mess with Language Emulator spells ?"
	Her demon-winged cousin shook her head. "Strength of stone, they have." On arriving on the plane, Mangana had taken several hours to cast an Emulation spell over the party - it was unobtrusive enough that they had soon forgotten it was not Japanese they were currently speaking. 
	"What happens in the Emulator if there's something that doesn't exist over here ? Does it come out like Japlish, full of borrowed words and stuff ?" Kazuko hoisted herself up on the edge of the parapet, heedless of the eight-metre drop below. 
	Suzuko thought for a moment. "Afterburner." She said slowly, looking from one face to the other to check they heard and could understand words that meant nothing in the local culture. "Semiconductor. Higgs Boson. Deoxyribonucleic acid." 
	Kazuko nodded comprehension. "Seems to work. So why can't I say how (    ) I think you're looking ? See ? Done it again - it just doesn't come out."
	Ryko's wings hiked up in interest. "Aye in deed ! In word and deed. I do know various folk of - as others would call, decided alignment. There are Words that they cannot say, for to do so would be to admit that things exist, which are mutually ... Incompatible."
	Suzuko looked at her with slightly narrowed eyes. There were a very few beings on her Earth that looked like Ryko - more had been around at one time, and had staged a minor invasion at the time of the Millenium. But very few were now alive and mortal on Earth - the twin deities that had fought it out at the Millenium had dragged all their respective worshippers off with them. Possibly a score of their descendants were alive, having been (technically) conceived a few minutes after that fateful Midnight, to women of Shinto or Animist religions who had simply gone in for exotic mates without any binding commitment to their alignments.
	"Maybe your mother has some ideas," Suzuko suggested. Shakarna had certainly shown what a few centuries of experience could enable you to do. She looked out at the crater lake, reminding herself of how she had come to trust Mangana's mother. Shivering, she realised that she had literally entrusted the sorceress with her life - that is, of the direction she could see her life taking. She brushed a stray loop of pretty pink ribbon from her eyes, and sighed. For what was meant to be a Holiday, she had ended up with making more commitments than ever before.
	"Cheer up, Suki !" Kazuko slid down from the parapet, and slapped her on the back ringingly. "Plenty of time for that later. We've mysteries to solve, lots to talk about - lots to do." She ran her fingers through Riord's long hair, and grinned. "I did say she ought to wear her hair long, didn't I ? But I didn't think how soon she'd get it that way - or how she'd get it."
	"Kaz pretty." Riord snuggled closer, sniffing the manga-eyed girl's hair. "Smell nice. Taste nice." 
	Ryko looked on, her wings shrugged up and a strange expression on her face. "Certes, I do think that in a year, less now two days - I do doubt that Riord shall want to return to grass lunches and saddlesores."
	"Yeah." Kazuko's eyes crossed slightly as she recalled the past few nights. "Not surprised, after all this time she likes to ride on top."
	Suzuko's ears fell as she watched Riord nuzzling in Kazuko's pockets, eventually remembering to use her hands to pull out the apple she had smelled in there and crunched it, core and all. It was unfair, she reminded herself, Not to let Riord loose on the potentials of what was now, through no wish of her own, her new body. But as she remembered the position that form's original spirit was in - she winced. And realised, as if for the first time - why it was such a good idea, on this world, to have at least one deity firmly on your side.

	Lunch was a quiet meal, eaten in the fresh air of the high wall top. From behind them was the constant background sound of a village at work - perhaps two hundred people were squeezed in here, in this tiny pocket of Civilisation buried in the wilds. Very few of them were humans - Suzuko remembered what she had heard of the increasing dislike Newbloods faced in the Civilised lands outside.
	"Ryko," she suddenly said, putting down the roast chicken leg she had been nibbling "Why don't you come to Earth, along with Mangana ? I mean, you couldn't get into Japan, not with your - er, looks - but there's all sorts of other places you could go. I mean, we've folk who aren't - Conventional, at Toho. There's some who look a bit like you, even."
	The bat-winged girl extended her great sweep of wings, almost blocking out the light. "These are why," she said sadly. "In your world they would be - useless."
	One vixen ear dipped quizzically. "How ?" She asked. "I mean, I haven't noticed the air being any thinner, or anything like that."
	Ryko looked down at her. "Watch." she said quietly. Climbing to the top of the parapet, ten metres above the sheer rocks, she stood still for an instant. And then, eyes closed, she slowly began to lean backwards.....
	"Ryko !" Suzuko howled, springing to her feet and leaping towards her. But it was too late. The tall, deep-chested girl toppled back into the empty air - and stopped.
	Suzuko brought herself to a halt at the lip of the parapet. Ryko was lying flat out on empty air, as relaxed as if she was lying on a soft mattress. Slowly, the winged girl opened one eye, and winked at her.
	"Don't try this one at home, kids," Kazuko commented to Riord, who was looking on as wide-eyed as her non-Manga features would allow. "Those wings won't blast her off the ground in Earth-Normal gravity, or anything like it. They're fine for speed and manoevre here - but if her innate Levitation won't work - she's just carrying around a big set of fashion accessories on her back. She'd need four times the muscle mass she's got to fly by main strength, and that'd mean bigger lungs, bigger heart, heavier bones to stick the muscles on - it just gets heavier and heavier, in a vicious spiral."
	"That would be a problem," Suzuko admitted. In her own year was Amhraa, a NightPlump. The faceless, bat-winged being had started off as an ordinary NightGaunt, until a poorly controlled liking for Mortal cuisine had done unfavourable things to his thrust/weight ratio. Still, she mused, it was hardly crippling: Amhraa was often to be seen zooming around the roads of the island frantically pedalling his Cthulu Mythos Cycle, trying to lose weight.......  oddly enough, even NightGaunts hated to Lose Face amongst their peers.
	"Had my Mother come to Earth at the right time, things would mayhap be different." Ryko unfolded her wings, and with a few powerful beats flew back to land beside them. "Innate magicks translate, at an early enough stage - a Power that works on one world, may be turned to the like Power on another."
	"Yeah." Kazuko nodded. "Like, if you've psionics back on Earth, and your dam had brought you over early, you'd get Sorcerous skills. And the same the other way - I hope." There was a strange look on her face. "At least, a Lot of folk are in for a disappointment if they don't."
	Suzuko looked up at the distant, cloud-crowded skies as she crunched through a bone. For a few seconds, she felt at peace. This was a rare moment of calm and healing, her stomach full and the firm snapping of bone and the richness of marrow in her jaws. There was nothing urgent to be done - and though there was enough to worry about, none of it was her responsibility right now.
	Then the playful breeze swatted the overlarge, pretty ribbon over her eyes, and she realised her mistake. Some things, she DID have to get sorted out.

	"You sure you'll be all right out here ?" Kazuko's snub nose was wrinkled in worry, as Suzuko sat down in the grassy valley a kilometre away from the Tower "I mean - we were lucky coming here. Nothing attacked us, but we were a pretty well-hard looking party."
	Suzuko cast her a bleak look. "Thanks. I think I'll be all right - this shouldn't take too long. Besides, I think I'll be able to hold anything off with these, till somebody notices. They're not the sort of thing you ignore going off." She gestured to a heavily padded satchel with half a dozen large glass bottles, filled with what looked like soft cheese floating in oil. "I thought nobody could use gunpowder and stuff over here ?"
	Ryko grinned, spreading her black wings. "Explosives, nay. But white phosphorus is just onlye one Transmute spell away from Sulphur - and it works in deed Finely." She gestured at the flasks. "Folk'd use it more, but sorcerie does work both ways. Certes, 'tis a potent spell to fashion these - and a very minor cantrip to crack the bottle at a hundred paces, when someone's about to throw it. " A quizzical look settled on her face. "Of course, you could put a Preserving enchantment on't, to wear off say, three seconds after throwing .... but that'd shamefully waste power. A sorcerer with those enchantments, could do a good Lightning strike of twice the puissance, that wouldn't miss."
	Kazuko tapped the bottles meaningfully. "Ryko carries these, to save having to cast spells and fly at the same time. It's a special case, with her - don't think Auntie's going to turn these out on a production line, 'cos she's NOT."
	They left Suzuko sitting there in the dappled sunlight, trying to clean her thoughts. This was not a world that seemed to have much place for the Goddess she wanted to contact - this was a raw and brutal planet, of sternly vengeful Law versus the howling madness of Chaos Gods, down all the long red centuries.
	HIDY. That's the point, rather.
	Suzuko jumped, her tail fluffed out in alarm. Then she relaxed - evidently her Patron had been doing the divine equivalent of waiting for the phone to ring. But then again, she mused in one private portion of her mind, If I'm the only Priestess she's got going, she's not got much else to do......
	Oh, no. There came a sigh that could have blown out stars. I've been looking around here for years. But everyone's so - Committed, already. That's why I wanted to ask you - you've seen me already, back where you call Earth. 
	Suzuko looked up at the smiling face. This time, the Goddess had taken feline form, with a softly rounded kittenish face and whiskers the length of bridge chains.
	"I've never seen you identified as a Goddess over there," she said cautiously. "I've never heard of any Temples to you .... but looking at you, maybe.... you ARE sort of familiar." She stopped, having discovered that a deity could giggle happily.
	I don't go in for that. So Serious ! All those folk doing rituals and such. My friends don't have to Pray to me - they just have to BE. You know. Your part of the world's been under my protection since the middle of your last century.
	"What do you..." Suzuko suddenly stopped, as a Divine Revelation suddenly hit her. She had often wondered why some things in her culture seemed to fit some great underlying Scheme Of Things. Even the very uniforms they wore at Toho Academy, were almost unchanged for a century for no reason she had ever heard explained - and though many things in Japan were living traditions, these seemed to fit with something Other.
	"You mean.... about the time the first of the Manga Eyed species started appearing, you arrived on the scene ?"
	A divinely proportioned head nodded happily.
	"But ..." The vixen thought hard. "I thought they'd worked that one out ! The nuclear tests in the Pacific brought lots of Elder beings up to see what was going on - and Manga folk have that internal hoop of bone, the Sclerotic Ring, supporting inside their eyeballs. Everybody knows it's not a mammalian feature - you see it on fossil plesiosaurs." She paused. "But, they got it from folk like my friend Ctuline, as soon as their males had .... rebuilt themselves, to suit us mammals." Ctuline was one of her Oldest friends, having been born sometime in the Shogunate period - and like some others of her breed, had deliberately re-sculpted her body to take advantage of some new-fangled land-dweller fashions, like internal fertilisation. Laying a batch of eggs in the open ocean every second  precession of the equinox was an old-established family custom  but exposure to mammalian customs had replaced it with up-to-date biology that they found more Fun to use.
	Oh no. All that did happen. But I liked the change so much, I made sure it'd stick.
	Suzuko swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She had read long-secret diaries from three generations earlier, of how island life had been subtly changed in the 1950's, unknown to the outside world. So many of the menfolk had been killed in the Greater East Asian War, that entire communities had been threatened with extinction. Kazuko and Mangana proudly traced their ancestry to unhallowed midnight matings on the seaweed-strewn shores, between their great-grandmothers and nameless slippery things that had crawled up from ooze-choked Palaeogean cities lost in illimitable midnight depths: she hated to have to tell them that the real explanation might be a sinister one.
	Oh. Well. Yes, it all happened that way. I made things stable - and look how happy folk are with the idea. At least, on Earth.
	"Those - quadrupeds, we found a few days ago." Suzuko recalled with a shudder the pitiful pile of scorched bones. "They'd been killed by Paladins, who naturally assumed they were Chaos - Kazuko was worried they might somehow be hers. Were they .." she trailed off "Were they Yours - with the same Manga eyes as Kazuko's got ?"
	Yes. A diamond-sparkling tear the size of a swimming pool appeared in those great eyes, the template for much that was recognisable in Japan. Those were my first children here. I'd like you to try and look after them. I'd have asked Kazuko, but she's - already spoken for, over here.
	Suzuko sat down heavily, scarcely noticing the pain as her tail folded badly beneath. "I can't fight every Paladin in the country - the first one almost did for me." Her ears drooped. "So - there has to be another way. To make sure I don't have to try - persuade them you're not Chaotic."
	A mile-high head nodded cheerfully. That's my girl. You've got the idea. With that, the vision faded, and Suzuko was left lying dazed and drained, flat out on the grass, looking up at the smiling blue skies.
	"So that's why Gralius goes round looking so worried all the time," she murmured to herself, unheard in the green valley. "Divinities don't Give you power - they make sure you Earn it."

	Three days later, Kazuko was walking with Riord along the topmost ring of the Tower. At its upper level there was a broad walkway between the parapet and the dome that lit the workroom below.
	Riord was a blur of excitement: having found out the best way to keep her balance on two legs was to stop thinking about it and simply walk, she was poking into every corridor and examining everything with her new, colour binocular vision. 
	"Whoa, girl," Kazuko laughed. "You'll get a stiff neck, carrying on like that." Her new friend had been tossing her head from side to side all day - the one thing she missed about her old body was its excellent peripheral view.
	"Riord feels like always something want see behind." She reached up and rubbed her ears. "Ears Don't move."
	Kazuko grinned, pulling out a comb and running it through the tousled hair. "You won't need mobile ears. We get along, you'll see."
	"Riord see. All in .... Different." She stood and looked out at the endlessly rolling lands, stretching out to the distant peaks of the Southwall Mountains. Somewhere in that immense land, Mangana, Horst and the Newbloods were struggling on, tiny figures crawling over an immense crumpled sheet of landscape.
	"Ahem." They turned to see Suzuko standing behind them, Shakarna and Ryko emerging from the turret holding the spiral staircase leading up from the inside. "Your Aunt's got some ideas we'd like to try. She wants some help."
	"Hidy, Auntie." Kazuko waved cheerfully. "More neat spell stuff ?"
	Shakarna smiled tolerantly. "Quite so, Kazuko. And we'll need both your friend Riord, and her .... ex-rider for this."
	Kazuko pulled a face. "I don't think Meridy's going to be very co-operative. She was an awfully stubborn Paladin, and she's an awfully stubborn brood-mare." Just then, an idea struck her. "No problem ! I've a few - Fashion accessories, she never Did get to try out."
	Suzuko winced, something she was increasingly doing when Kazuko was around. Her friend's moods seemed to be changing, becoming more extreme all the time. "I don't like the idea of you using harnesses and things on her," she said flatly. "One day, she'll be restored, and I don't think she'll ... appreciate it."
	Kazuko's eyes brimmed with mischief. "I see YOU wouldn't appreciate a bounce-through of one of the Southern Harems," she commented dreamily. "Of course, knowing you're liable to get Teleported out whenever you want," she nodded gratefully to her Aunt, "that sort of makes it easier to relax and enjoy yourself. And it's perfectly Fair, over here - it's not just for girls . The Witch-Queen's got this lovely great harem all to herself, she goes in for major warriors and young mages herself. And of course, anyone who takes her fancy if they're (     ) enough." She frowned. "It's that word again. I can't say it - I can THINK it, but there's just ... no symbol."
	Suzuko's tail drooped. She had heard quite enough about the Southern lands, and was going to try and steer well clear. The Queendom of Amenharl operated on ancient theocratic lines - and its ruler's harem had a definitely high turnover rate. Though this was a world where the Gods played around with Evolution, the Witch-Queen was a clear believer in Survival Of The Fittest - a harem of proud fighters and jealous high-level magic-users was not a happy or stable place for new arrivals to vie for her favour.
	Shakarna coughed. "Quite. But we DO need the two of you present. While one of the mysteries is out of our hands, we have another to tackle - just who has been for these last three weeks, setting homing curses on your trail."
	Suzuko followed the anime-eyed girl and Riord down the wall stairs to the courtyard, and into the stables. She sniffed the air cautiously.
	Kazuko watched her, her own tiny stub nose twitching ineffectually. "What's up, Suki ? "
	Suzuko's gaze wandered among the stalls. There were no other pure horses here, only half a dozen mules and asses. Meridy's stall was open to let her wander as she pleased, but the mare was standing in it, munching placidly. From the scent of the evidence, she had been busy indeed that morning - she had wandered from one stall to the others, and she seemed overflowingly pleased.
	"I ... I think you're right about her hormones taking over," she said unsteadily. "We'd better try and get her back Now, and I don't mean in a year and a day."
	Kazuko's eyes widened, a feat Suzuko would have thought impossible. She cast a glance around the stables, and then at the mare. She grinned as her eyes drank in the details her nose never could.
	"What's wrong with that, Suki ? Just imagine it - after she almost killed you when you told her about Pathwan being a mix'n'match. I think it's nice, she's got over her Species purity thing." Casting an appreciative eye at the four asses in the neighbouring stalls, she patted the furred rump of what had been a proud paladin. "On the off-chance that Pomegranate didn't hit the mark, she's used her own initiative - or something like that." She reached for the bucket and cleaning sponge, and went happily to work. "Her own foal - eleven months of looking forward to seeing if it turns out purebred or not..." 
	"Erk." Suzuko's tail trailed on the ground as Riord looked on fascinated at an unfamiliar view of her own equine tail - or at least, the one she was used to having. "I can't believe Meridy really wanted to do that - even if she did." She turned away, embarrassed, and looked up at the clear skies through the stable windows. This was why she was on season suppressants herself - otherwise she would have just got more and more desperate, till saving herself for Pathwan no longer seemed relevant. At least, unlike Riord's equine frame, she had only missed one season, not several years worth. Just thinking what it must have been like for the mare when that geas-forged dam ruptured, sent a strange shiver down her spine. She would have been happy for Riord in her own shape, but this.....
	"Cheer up, Suki," Kazuko finished her task, and gently led the great mare out of the stable. She turned and read the look on her friend's face, and stopped. "Oh. Right. You're worried for her. Well, she didn't ask this mount if Riord volunteered to serve as a war-mare - anyway, Dhoreen made her mind up about swapping them, not you."
	"You're not going to even ask Dhoreen to fix things ?" Suzuko's ears drooped. "You're just going to stand there while she turns into a plain horse - while her intelligence just leaks out of that brain like a sieve ?" 
	"'Ridy leak." Riord nodded happily.
	Kazuko's snub nose wrinkled thoughtfully as she led the mare in question across the courtyard. "Depends what you mean by "intelligence", Suki. Anybody'd think we were testing brain-eater plagues on her - we're not. Horses are - Different, not less, not where it counts." She waved vaguely towards the outer wall. "She's got the brains to survive out there. If it wasn't for the Chaos Wars, there'd be herds of horses and stuff around here. I haven't got what it takes to dodge predators, find grazing and water, all that. She has. " Her eyes were far away. "Like, back home, in the Liechtenstein Reich. They've got crossbreeds with both sorts of brains - sentient and non-sentient - you remember, Leucra and her "little brothers" ? There's nothing wrong with them. They're not what you're thinking, handicapped sentients - they're bright, for what they are. They're RIGHT for what they are, and they're happy to be that way. You ought to try it some time - it's a major spell, but when I get to be Priestess, Dhoreen gives me the temporary version to use any time folk want it."
	Suzuko's ears twitched, as she looked across to Riord, and her arm twinged in sharp reminder as she recalled the last time Meridy had been in that body. Try as she might, one corner of the vixen's brain kept agreeing that things had turned out for the best - she wondered if Kazuko had been telling the truth when having boasted about having her morals surgically removed.
	They negotiated the broad steps that led from the courtyard up to the base of the tower. The great hall they had feasted in on their arrival took up one half of that level: in the other half was a less cosy but more practical workshop and laboratory, presumably there to handle bulkier and heavier items than the dome-roofed lab in the tower's upper storey.
	"Ah, there you are." Shakarna had changed into a jet-black boilersuit, having by all accounts lost too many flowing robes to the turbulent storms of dimensional vortices. "And just in time - eleven ten's a propitious time for this test."
	Suzuko's gaze was drawn to three large pieces of equipment in the centre of the semi-circular chamber. One was a large graduated circle, such as she had seen in the upper chamber - another was a wide shimmering mirror. But the third - the third was a whirring clockwork mechanism nearly a metre across, by far the most complex piece of machinery she had seen on that world.
	The sorceress followed Suzuko's gaze, and smiled. "Computers don't work properly over here - you MIGHT be able to get an electronic one built, if you knew exactly what the local laws of physics were down to the quantum level." She shrugged. "I'm into my fourth century, but life's Still too short for some projects. Anyway, this works just fine: it's a mechanical orrery and calculating engine. I had my husband run it off the fabricator in Tokyo in a couple of days."
	"Neat, eh ?" Kazuko nodded. "It's just metal cogs and gears - Dimensional Customs let it straight through. Nothing you couldn't build over here, if you took every jeweller and blacksmith in the kingdom, and they spent a couple of years on the job. The gears are plain high-carbon steel and the bearings natural ruby, but the accuracies are all computer-guided and laser-cut. Tells you Exactly what the sorcerous flux is going to do next."
	"Such as tracking what's been pointed at you." Shakarna addressed the vixen. "Suzuko, listen. The deities here have their own stories of how the world "works" - you don't get anyone except Sorcerers actually doing research projects to find out. It takes years - and most people just don't have the patience, when they can just dedicate themselves to a local Goddess and have all the Metaphysically Correct answers spoon-fed them. "
	"And if they're not sure about those answers, it's a bit late to start checking," Kazuko put in. "You don't "go shopping" for alternative answers when you've an immortal patron - they do tend to get upset."
	Suzuko's ears drooped, and her ribbons seemed to turn to lead on her. "Oh dear."
	"Cheer up !" Kazuko gave her most fiendish grin, the one that made Elder Gods look nervously behind them. "Auntie's just going to see what's been happening in the aether round here - by the amount of direct Divine Intervention that's been going on around here, the place'll look like the contrails after an air battle."
	"Exactly." Shakarna nodded. "Every use of their Power disturbs the Aether. Law Gods try and avoid too much interference: they have well-chosen Rules long-made, and know that disturbing the world throws them off." She paused. "It's easier to harm a growing plant than to help it; given sun, soil and rain the plant has its own agenda. But with Chaos and such, amputating the diseased parts may be the only way for the whole to survive."
	She turned to the quietly whirring orrery, and looked intently at its dials and graduated circles. "Ah. Sit down" - she gestured to a bench just outside the circle "We begin."
	Suzuko sat, watching with ears sharply pricked in fascination as the sorceress began to work. Pale, half-seen auras began to shiver around her black-overalled form, as she concentrated her energies on the oddly glowing mirror.
	Slowly, a shape began to form. Streaks of light began to form, like jet contrails at dawn above a still-shadowed city. In the background was a slowly changing pattern of dots, each of a slightly different hue - and somehow, Suzuko knew that the sorceress was reading far more than the simple specks of luminescence showed the outside world.
	"Ah." She straightened up. "Here ! " Pointing at a small cluster of lights, some brighter and some dimmer, Shakarna turned to her audience. "That's you - the night you left Dystope, and the first time you were assaulted. I'll make things clearer." Concentrating, she brought the mirror's view zooming in. Another cluster of dim, brown dots converged on them: they had the sickly pale glow of leaves at the end of Autumn, shot through with greens and reds born not of life but of decay.
	Suzuko shuddered, recalling the spell-crazed knights that had been set on them, their minds blasted beyond repair, leaving only tortured husks that had greeted the release of death with smiling faces. "That's them - but who sent them ?"
	"Wait," Shakarna said commandingly. "This is - trickier." Drawing herself up to her full height, she cast a gesture at the screen. The image faded, the aura glows of mortals fading into the background as she changed the object of her quest. Now the contrails were very few and very bright - some of them were mere razor-cuts on the edge of vision, like the distant birth and death of stars cast across the aeons of cold space. For a minute there was silence.
	"So !" Shakarna muttered, unheard except by Suzuko's sharp ears. "There it is .... no Wonder I missed it. Not Divine level at all...." She moved aside, and tapped the screen. Almost invisible in the darkness was a fine thread, glowing like a hot wire radiating on the very edge of optical wavelengths. "Sorcery. It's a mortal you're facing - but a definitely Strange one."
	"I'm not amazed," Suzuko said flatly. "Where is he, or she - or whatever."
	"Trickier yet, that." Shakarna sat cross-legged before the screen. "This is risky, too. I'll have to go on to the next encounter - that first one's faded too badly to read. And whoever it is, may have left - countermeasures - behind, just to stop what I'm trying."
	She closed her eyes, and the picture blurred. Suddenly, Meridy gave a startled whinney, her ears up defensively.
	"Feel MOVE inside head." Riord confirmed. "See picture - night, sudden go, ride hard spurs on."
	"Which is when the next contact was made," Kazuko guessed, stroking Riord's hair reassuringly. "We've never been hit directly - someone who'd seen us, passed it onto you, with a few little Instructions to follow. It's either someone who's very economical with their powers -"
	"Or who cannot risk being followed back by them." Shakarna's face flushed. "He - yes, I can spot it's a He, now - could tell my daughter's got some skill in sorcery, and my son-in-law too. But this mage made a Mistake - he tried to kill My daughter. And then he made another - he failed." There was a long, echoing silence, which somehow took on a metallic emptiness, as if the room was growing into some great brass-walled cavern, its boundaries stretching out like an extending aerial to channel the tiniest reflections of the long-ago spell that had come so near its mark. "This isn't just Personal - it's Professional, too." Her voice hardened, and Suzuko winced as she realised where the demon-winged Ryko had inherited her looks from. "Three mistakes ! He didn't do his research - or he'd have been prepared to deal with ME."
	Shakarna stood before the mirror, hands gripping its frame at each side as if she was about to pick it up. Eyes stared glacially into the dim depths, as she focussed all her powers on that dim thread - and prepared to follow wherever it might take her.
	Suzuko felt her fur standing on end, as the room began to crackle with static electricity. The circle in front of her hummed and pulsed like a vast transformer, and above them the radiance in the golden timbers faded perceptibly as its builder drew on the very fabric of the ensorcelled building to drive her probe hammering home. For a few minutes the tension built, until Meridy and Riord turned and bolted for the door wide-eyed in terror. Even Kazuko was looking ashen at the horrendous expenditure of energy that was ripping its way through a myriad blocking spells and redirections - for the trail was mined and camouflaged with defences only the highest sorcery could build - or could break.
	"Auntie.. I .." Kazuko stirred forward, worry etched on her moon-face. But then, before she could stand - it was Over.
	"AYSHALAH !" Shakarna shouted, her voice an inhuman roar of rage. For an instant, the screen showed a room much like the tower-top above them, packed with arcane equipment and shelves of parchments. And staring at them was the aghast face of a tall, grey-haired human in sorcerers robes - that were blasted back in a maelstrom of fury, the room silhouetted in crisp lightning-shadows as it began to smoulder.
	The mirror cracked. Shakarna fell forward, slumping amongst the darkened lines of her protective circles. Kazuko rushed forward to help her, Suzuko barely a step behind.
	"Auntie !" Kazuko caught her as she fell. But Shakarna smiled, shaking her head as her niece and the vixen helped her to her feet again.
	"Well." She brushed sweat-soaked black hair out of her eyes, her breath still coming in ragged gasps. "I haven't done THAT for quite some time." Hands on her hips, she critically stared at the broken mirror, before turning to the younger women with a rigid smile.
	"The bad news is, he now knows exactly who did that. He knows we're coming, and he won't have to pussyfoot around any more." Her eyes flashed, and some of her daughter's sparkle was in them. "But I made rather a mess of his laboratory - probably blew him halfway across the room, and he'll spend awhile putting the fires out before trying anything fancy." She went over to a cabinet, and unrolled a map that looked strikingly like a aerial photograph.
	"Ryko took this one of Dystope, last year." Shakarna nodded. "We know his Name - it's Ayshalah. He's in the top tower of the Mage's guild, and he happens to be Duke Elbreeze's personal mage. And we know something that could make him Very unpopular in Dystope."
	Suzuko's ears dipped speechlessly. She had seen what had happened in the final instant before the overloaded probing spell short-circuited the sorcerous channel - mages could fear for their lives like anyone else, and Ayshalah had dropped a normally permanent Illusion spell, caring only to save himself. What they had seen, was what lay behind that illusion. For a minute there was silence.
	Slowly, Suzuko found herself grinning. "I still don't know why he doesn't like us," she looked round the room to where Kazuko and her aunt were beginning to pick up the debris. "But if he knows what we are, we know what HE is. I've only seen pictures, but ... He's an actual Enterope, isn't he ?"