Wine of the Gods 08: Dark Lady (29 page)

"
Oh, you are a dirty old man, Charlie. Just wait till I get you alone."

"I'm definitely a bad influence."
Rustle stood up and grabbed her saddle. "Let's go home."

Fall 1377 PE

Cove Islands

There were coughing woman and crying children. And praying women.
"Lady, save us!" Old men and old women with small packs, all they dared try to save from the all engulfing enemy. Desperate men, weighed down with household goods or children.

Dry flakes drifted
down from the sky like warm snow; the air was caustic. Somewhere, much too close in the rumbling darkness, a volcano was erupting. To the northwest the road disappeared into a yawning crevasse, the edges sharp and new.

Phantom arched his neck and looked like he was willing to jump it.

"No."

The D
ark Lady dismounted and caught a bubble. She twisted it out into a corridor and snapped it across the abyss. She anchored this side, and stepped through. Phantom followed, and she remounted, carrying the corridor further down the steep winding road.
Why would anyone live up here?

The horse jumped
two lesser cracks, and she anchored the corridor so the people could get at least a bit further from the volcano. She could see only smoke through the corridor, but at her summoning gesture, the people carried and led their children through. She rode further and twice she had to catch other bubbles to stretch across gaps, one old, one new. The fourth corridor got them down to the flats, and she let Phantom gallop until she could see the town ahead. Then she anchored the last opening and felt the grip of duty weaken.

Rustle sat up in bed, still smelling the acrid air, feeling gritty and sweaty. She slipped quietly out of bed, not wanting to wake Wolf.
It was just a dream.
But she walked out to the stable. Phantom, unsaddled, but his hair spiky with dried sweat and salt, snorted uneasily and rubbed his head on her.

A soft step behind her.

She looked over her shoulder, not surprised to find the God of War there.

"
They prayed for the Lady to save them. And I . . . was suddenly there."

"
That's the way the gods work, my Dark Lady."

I was born and raised in California, and have lived more than half my life, now, in Texas.

Wonderful place. I caught almost the first bachelor I met here, and we’re just celebrated our thirty-third anniversary.

My degree's in Geology. After working for an oil company for almost ten years as a geophysicist, I
"retired" to raise children. As they grew, I added oil painting, sculpting and throwing clay, breeding horses, volunteering in libraries and for the Boy Scouts, and worked as the treasurer for a friend’s political campaign. Sometime in those busy years, I turned a love of science fiction into a part time job reading slush, unsolicited manuscripts, for Baen Books (Mom? Someone is
paying
you to read??!!)

I've always written, publish
ed a few short stories. But now that the kids have flown the nest, I'm calling writing a full time job.

Other Titles by
Pam Uphoff

Wine of the Gods Series:

Outcasts and Gods

Exiles and Gods (Three Novellas)

The Black Goats

Explorers

Spy Wars

Comet Fall

A Taste of Wine (Seven Tales)

Dark Lady

Growing Up Magic (Three Novellas)

Writing as Zoey Ivers

YA Cyberpunk Adventures

The Barton Street Gym

Chicago (Spring 2013)

Excerpt from an Upcoming Release

Purple
from Growing Up Magic

Winter Solstice 1380

The Comets that had been brilliant as the Fall progressed were now so close they filled the sky with the faint glow of the comas. Thinner than a fog bank, tens of thousands of miles across. Thin enough that the astronomers could detect the cores: spheres and lumps of ice and dust and sand and rocks and boulders, and occasionally something large enough to be dangerous if it hit the World.

Xen sat with his father on the hill behind the winery, on an outcrop of rock.

"I don't see anything that is both large and close." The man's voice was a murmur, almost more to himself than his audience.

Xen nodded, not wanting to disturb his father's meditating study of the sky. He couldn't reach out that far. Couldn't reach the clouds in the sky, let alone past the atmosphere. His parents could reach out to the Moon.

Pyrite nodded. :: I saw Rustle practicing. She was moving rocks on the Moon. :: He looked over at the other horse.

:: He can't do that. :: Jet sounded reluctant to admit there was anything He couldn't do.

:: He could if he wanted! :: Xen was equally unwilling to admit to limitations on his father. He quieted his mind again, and reached upward. Just looking.

"Here comes a little one."
His father's voice was a deep rumble.

Even Xen had to admit that his father couldn't hear Xen's conversation with the horses.

A fireball streaked over head, flashed out of existence, miles up in the atmosphere.

He could feel his father doing something. Some sort of pulling and then pushing. The ground twitched beneath him, a thump sounded from uphill. His father sat up in sudden alarm. The god's eyes went from Xen to the two horses.

"Good. Got that a bit close. I'd hate to have to explain to your mother how I managed to burn down the house." He got up and stared down the hill at the winery.

Xen jumped up and looked the other way. "You grabbed a meteor! That's it up there." He pointed to a spot a mile away. In the diffuse light of the comets a thin column of steam or smoke was rising from the snow.

"Yep. That's it. Good thing we've had early snow this year. I should have thought about how hot it would be, before I grabbed it. The village will be pleased to have the iron, though." He sank down again, and Xen joined him.

The god didn't catch any more meteors that night. The boy counted meteors and fireballs until dawn, when a triad of witches took over from their own hotsprings. As they rode back to the Winery, Xen could hear Jet's smug challenge.

::
He
caught a meteor. ::

Pyrite tossed his head. :: Xen's just a baby god. When he grows up, he'll be able to do anything. ::

Jet snorted. :: He's got a lot to learn. ::