Next to the way the gods were behaving, the argument between the two men seemed downright sedate. Mavrix used the same gesture Rihwin had, and stuck out his tongue again to boot. Still in human guise, Biton lifted his robe and waggled the phallus whose stone version had parried the fertility god's wand.
Mavrix laughed scornfully. "I've seen mice with more than that."
"For one thing, you're a liar. For another, who cares what you've seen?" Biton retorted. "I'd sooner look at things of consequence than the private parts of mice."
"I'd sooner look at things of consequence than your private parts," the lord of the sweet grape said. With another nasty laugh, he went on, "Some seeker after consequences you are, too, if you couldn't even tell your own chief temple was about to be overthrown."
"What is the blink of an eye against the great sweep of time?" Biton said. "The temple at Ikos stands for centuries yet to come; am I to be condemned for failing to notice the brief interval in which it is downfallen?"
Under less harrowing circumstances, Gerin might have found that interesting, or even hopeful. If Biton's temple at Ikos was to be rebuilt, that argued some sort of civilization would survive in the northlands. His own survival, however, seemed too problematic at the moment for him to take the long view he usually favored.
"Now that you mention it, yes," Mavrix answered. "Perhaps your true image should have a patch over that third eye-and one of the other two, as well."
"I'd almost welcome such," Biton snapped, "if it meant I did not have to see all the hideous things your monsters are working and shall work in this land."
"They're not my monsters!" Mavrix screeched. "Are you deaf as well as blind? They're not my monsters! Not! Not! They're hideous and ugly and revolting, and what they do is enough to make anyone with a dram of feeling puke right onto his shoes, thus." What Mavrix spewed forth had a bouquet richer than that of any wine Gerin had ever knownanother area where gods enjoyed an advantage over men.
Not long before, Mavrix hadn't cared what the monsters were doing in-and to-the northlands. Gerin, though, hadn't blamed the god for them. Now that Biton had blamed him, he resented that more than he enjoyed making Gerin squirm. And if Gerin could bend Mavrix's course, even a little…
"Lord Mavrix, if you despise the monsters so, you could easily show lord Biton they have nothing to do with you by driving them out of the northlands," he said.
"Be quiet, little man," Mavrix said absently, and Gerin was quiet, as Rihwin had been before him. He had no choice in the matter. He exchanged a look of despair and alarm with Selatre. It had been worth a try, but not all tried succeeded.
Biton said, "Ah, lord of the sweet vomitus, so you do claim the creatures for your own."
"I do not!" Mavrix screamed in a voice that should have knocked Fox Keep flat. "Here, I shall prove it to you." He sucked in a theatrically deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and turned purpler than any man could: Gerin thought of a divine frog with skin the color of wine. After that tremendous effort, the god exhaled hard enough to make Gerin stagger. "There! They're gone. Look all over the northlands, unseeing one, and you shall find not a single one of the disgusting creatures."
"Coming from you, drunken fool, any assertion requires proof," Biton growled. As it had before, his head began to spin independently of his body-or, alternatively, the stone pillar that was his body turned round and round. Suddenly he stopped and stared contemptuously at Mavrix. "You're as slovenly a workman as I might have guessed. Look there."
Something glinted for a moment in Mavrix's fathomless eyes. "Well, so I missed a couple of them. What of it?" He gestured. "Now they are here no more. Do you see? They are not mine!"
Biton continued his surveillance. His whirling head abruptly halted once more. "And again! You must in truth be the god of drunkenness, for you're sloppy as a drunkard. Look over yonder now."
Gerin wondered what sense Biton used to find the monsters, how he indicated to Mavrix where "over yonder" was, and how Mavrix turned his own senses in that direction, whatever it was. He also wondered just how Mavrix was getting rid of the monsters, and where they were going. Were he a god, he supposed he would know. As a man, he had to go on wondering.
"All right, those are gone, too." Mavrix stuck out his froggy tongue at Biton again. "Now do you see any more, lord with the eye in the back of your bum?"
Biton spun and searched. A moment later, he said triumphantly, " Aye, I do, you sozzled ne'er-do-well. What of those?"
Mavrix must have stretched his senses in the direction the farseeing god gave him, for he said, "And they are vanished, too, and so am I. Even with these few drops of wine to ease the path for me here, the northlands are a place I'd sooner leave than come to." He fixed his black, black eyes on Gerin. "Clever man-you were right. There are things uglier than you and your kind. Who would have thought it?" With that, he vanished.
Gerin found he could speak again. Being a politic man, the first thing he said was, "I thank you, lord of the sweet grape, and bless you as well." Then he turned to Biton. "Farseeing one, may I ask a question of you?" When the god did not say no, he went on, "Did Mavrix truly rid the northlands of the creatures that dwelt so long under your temple?"
He waited nervously, lest Mavrix hear him and return in wrath at having his power questioned. But the lord of the sweet grape evidently had been only too glad to leave the northlands for good.
Biton started to nod, then searched once more. When he stopped, he looked annoyed. "That wine-soaked sponge of a Sithonian god is too inept to deserve his divinity," he said.
The Fox took that to mean a monster, or a handful of monsters, still survived somewhere in the northlands. He wondered if Mavrix had left behind the cubs he'd spared-and if he would ever find out. In his humblest tones, he went on, "Lord Biton, would you be generous enough to complete what the lord of the sweet grape began?"
To his dismay, Biton shook his head. "I do not see myself doing that," the farseeing one said. "It is a task for men if they so choose. No, my duty now is to restore Ikos to what it was before the earth trembled beneath my shrine. Everything there shall be as it waseverything. The temple shall stand again without the agency of man, and the Sibyl shall be restored to her rightful place there, to serve as my instrument on earth." He gazed fondly at Selatre.
She looked from the god to Gerin and back again. Her voice trembling, she said, "But lord Biton, I no longer qualify to serve you in that way. In your last prophetic verse, you yourself called me an oracle defiled. Since that day, I have known the embraces of a man"she glanced nervously toward Gerin once more-"and my courses have begun. I am no longer a fit tool for your work."
"Everything shall be as it was-everything," Biton repeated. "If I can rebuild my fane from tumbled stones, do you think I have not the power to restore your maidenhead, to make you a fit vessel for my voice?"
Selatre looked down at the ground. "I am certain you have that power, lord Biton," she murmured.
Gerin wished desperately for some way to attack Biton, but could imagine none. Unlike Mavrix, the farseeing god could not be duped into losing his temper, not by a man; he was far less vulnerable to earthly concerns than the earthy lord of the sweet grape. The Fox stared over at Selatre. Of course she would choose to go back to the god. How could she not? She had been consecrated to him since she became a woman, had served him as Sibyl since her predecessor died. Sibyl was all she'd wanted to be; she'd resented being rescued from her residence by the temple after the earthquake; she hadn't been able to abide even the touch of a man for a long time after she was rescued.
True, she'd come to love him and he her, but what was that brief brightness when measured against the course for which her life had been designed? Now that she had the chance to return to that course, how could he blame her if she chose to take it?