Wings of Omen

"We've had some hard times," Harran said, feeling a little defensive. "Wars, invasions..."

"We'll mend that soon enough," said Siveni. "Starting with invasions." They came to a stop in front of the great temple of Savankala. Siveni glared at it, drew herself up to her full height-which somehow managed to be both about three cubits, and about fifty-and shouted in a voice loud enough to rival the thunderstroke, "Savankala, come out!"

The echoes repeated the challenge all over the city. Siveni's brows knitted as long moments passed and there was no response. "Come forth, Savankala!" she shouted again. "Or I will tear this ill-built pile of stone down around your ears and reduce your statue to cobbles and stick my spear into an interesting place in the statue of your darling wife!"

There was a long, long silence-followed by a soft rumble of thunder that was more contemplative than threatening. "Siveni," the great voice came from the temple before them - or seemed to, "what do you want?"

"Best two falls out of three with you, Sungod," Siveni shouted triumphantly, as if she had already won the match. "And then you and yours get out of my father's city!"

"Your father. Yes. And where is your father, Siveni?"

Harran held quite still, trying to understand what was going on inside him. He hated the Rankan gods, he knew he did. But the sheer slow weight of power stirring around Savankala's voice somehow terrified him much less than the slightly ragged defiance of Siveni's. And there, too, was a problem. How am I hearing anything but perfection in a goddess's voice? Five minutes ago, ten, she was all beauty, all power, unsurpassable. Now-

"My father!" Siveni cried. "You leave him out of this! I don't need his permission to use the thunderbolt! I can handle you by myself. I can handle the whole lot of you! For Vashanka Loudmouth is without a grown avatar. You're short a wargod. Father of the Rankans. I shall ruin your temples one by one, if you don't come out and face me, and meet the defeat you've got coming to you!"

The silence might have been long, but Harran was past noticing. What has happened to my lady? In eternity she should be as she always has been-a calm power, not this cocksure violence. And anyway-why did I call her up, after all? Anger at Ranke and the Beysib? Really? Or something else?

Love? I-

He dared take that thought no further. Yet, if what she had said to him was true, then he was himself in the process of becoming a god. The thought gave him a moment's wild jubilation. If he could dissuade her from this silliness and get her to do the spell the second time, it would be forever. The very thought of eternity spent in company with this blasting beauty, this wild, daring power-

The memory of soft laughter and of Ischade's voice gently mocking a man who did not know his own heart brought Harran back to his senses, hard. Impulse, impetuousness- that had brought him to this spot, this night, just as it had brought him to the Stepsons long ago. And impulse was blind. Though his body was screaming at its transformation at being dragged into godhead, his mind was now seeing more clearly. He had described the situation to Ischade even better than he knew. Siveni the impetuous, the lightning-swift, had accepted time and its bitterness more thoroughly than any of the other gods. Here in the mortal world, where time was at its strongest, so was her bitterness and rage. She would have no wisdom, no time, no love for him here. And elsewhere-

Siveni was a maiden-goddess. Elsewhere would not work either.

"Come out!" Siveni was shouting into Savankala's silence. "Coward god, come out and fight me, or I will smite your temple to rubble, and kill every Rankan in this city! Does that mean nothing; are your worshippers so little to you?"

"I hear your challenge," he heard Savankala saying. "Do you not understand that I may not honor it? Destiny has determined that these conflicts among us will be settled by mortals, not by gods. Are you not at all afraid of destiny- of the Power of Many Names that sits in darkness above the houses of all the gods, Rankan and Ilsig and Beysib alike? Will you defy that power?"

"Yes!"

"That is sad. You as a goddess, and supposedly a wise one, should know that you ca

"Wisdom! Wisdom has gotten me nowhere!"

"Yes," Savankala remarked drily, "I can see that...."

Harran was trapped in a terrible serenity, a clarity that refused to admit fear. He knew he would have to sacrifice that clarity shortly. But in the meantime Savankala and Siveni sounded exactly like any two people arguing in the Bazaar, and Harran could tell that Savankala was stalling for time, waiting for Harran to do something. The message had been clear enough. These conflicts among us will be settled by mortals....

His hand, or the loss of it, had taught him well and quickly. No hatred was worth pain-not so much as a cut finger's worth. And certainly no hatred was worth death. Not his hatred... not Siveni's.

"Then, hide in your hole, old god," Siveni said bitterly. "There's no honor in wi

She raised her spear, and lightnings wreathed the spearhead.

"No," someone said behind her.

She turned in amazement, stared at him. Harran stared back as best he could, equally astonished that he had spoken and that those ferocious gray eyes didn't blast him down where he stood. What is she staring at? he thought, and suspected the answer-while at the same time refusing to think of it. The less memory of his own almost-godhood he carried away with him into either life or death, the better. "Goddess," Harran said, "You are my own good lady, but I tell you that if you move against Sanctuary's people, I'll

stop you."

Siveni swung on him. "With what?" she cried, enraged, and swung the spear at him. Harran had no idea what to do. Against the first blow he raised the maimed arm, and the lightnings went crackling away around him to strike the paving stones. But the second blow and the third came immediately, and then more, a flurry of blows that swiftly beat down Harran's feeble guard. And after them came the bolt that struck him to the street-a blow enough like death to be mistaken for it. Harran's last thought as he went down burned and blinded, was that she would have been something to see with a sword. Then thought departed from him, and his soul fled far away.

Somewhere in Sanctuary, a dog howled.

And an odd dark shape that had skulked along through the shadows behind the man and the goddess leapt shrieking out of those shadows, and full onto Siveni.

The sound of crashing in the street was what woke Harran finally. A hellish sound it was, enough to wake the dead, as he certainly reckoned himself; stones cracking, lightning frying the air, angry cries-and a hoarse voice he knew. In that moment, before he managed to open his eyes, it became perfectly plain who trailed him here from the Stepsons' barracks; what dark form had slipped away from him as he drew the circle around Siveni's temple, and had been trapped within the spell-so that it had worked on her as well.

Harran raised himself up from the stones to see the image that, ever after, would make him turn away from companions or leave crowded rooms when he thought of it.

There was the goddess in her radiant robes-but those robes had dirt on them, from falls she had taken in the street; and four hands were struggling on the haft of her spear. Even as Harran looked up, the wiry shape wrestling with Siveni wrenched the spear out of her grasp and threw it clattering down the Avenue of Temples, spraying random lightning bolts around it. Then Mriga sprang on Siveni again, all ski