LITMIR.BIZ

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Prince Ptosphes with a son-in-law, name of Calvin Morrison . . . or just Kalvan. He made up his mind to give the gods some help on that.

      There was another priest in to see him occasionally: a red-nosed, gray-bearded character named Tharses, who had a slight limp and a scarred face. One look was enough to tell which god he served; he wore a light shirt of finely linked mail and a dagger and a spiked mace on his belt, and a wolfskin hood topped with a jewel-eyed wolf head. As soon as he came in, he would toss that aside, and as soon as he sat down somebody would provide him with a drink. He almost always had a cat or a dog trailing him. Everybody called him Uncle Wolf.

      Chartiphon showed him a map, elaborately illuminated on parchment. Hostigos was all Centre County, the southern corner of Clinton, and all Lycoming south of the Bald Eagles. Hostigos Town was exactly on the site of otherwhen Bellefonte; they were at Tarr-Hostigos, or Hostigos Castle, overlooking it from the end of the mountain east of the gap. To the south, the valley of the Juniata, the Besh, was the Princedom of Beshta, ruled by a Prince Valthar. Nostor was Lycoming County north of the Bald Eagles, Tioga County to the north, and parts of Northumberland and Montour Counties, to the forks of the Susquehanna. Nostor Town would be about Hughesville. Potter and McKean Counties were Nyklos, ruled by a Prince Armanes. Blair and parts of Clearfield, Huntington and Bedford Counties made up Sask, whose prince was called Sarrask.

      Prince Gormoth of Nostor was a deadly enemy. Armanes was a friendly neutral. Sarrask of Sask was no friend of Hostigos; Balthar of Beshta was no friend of anybody’s.

      On a bigger map, he saw that all this was part of the Great Kingdom of Hos-Harphax—all of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey—ruled by a King Kaiphranos at Harphax City, at the mouth of the Susquehanna, the Harph. No, he substituted—just reigned over lightly. To judge from what he’d seen on the night of his arrival, King Kaiphranos’ authority would be enforced for about a day’s infantry march around his capital and ignored elsewhere.

      He had a suspicion that Hostigos was in a bad squeeze between Nostor and Sask. He could hear the sounds of drilling soldiers every day, and something was worrying these people. Too often, while Rylla was laughing with him—she was teaching him to read, now, and that was fun—she would remember something she wanted to forget, and then her laughter would be strained. Chartiphon seemed always preoccupied; at times he’d forget, for a moment, what he’d been talking about. And he never saw Ptosphes smile.

      Xentos showed him a map of the world. The world, it seemed, was round, but flat like a pancake. Hudson’s Bay was in the exact center, North America was shaped rather like India, Florida ran almost due east, and Cuba north and south. Asia was attached to North America, but it was all blankly unknown. An illimitable ocean surrounded everything. Europe, Africa and South America simply weren’t.

      Xentos wanted him to show the country from whence he had come. He’d been expecting that to come up, sooner or later, and it had worried him. He couldn’t risk lying, since he didn’t know on what point he might be tripped up, so he had decided to tell the truth, tailored to local beliefs and preconceptions. Fortunately, he and the old priest were alone at the time.

      He put his finger down on central Pennsylvania. Xentos thought he misunderstood.

      “No, Kalvan. This is your home now, and we want you to stay with us always. But from what place did you come?”

      “Here,” he insisted. “But from another time, a thousand years in the future. I had an enemy, an evil sorcerer, of great power. Another sorcerer, who was not my friend but was my enemy’s enemy, put a protection about me, so that I might not be sorcerously slain. So my enemy twisted time for me, and hurled me far back into the past, before my first known ancestor had been born, and now here I am and here I must stay.”

      Xentos’ hand described a quick circle around the white star on his breast, and he muttered rapidly. Another universal constant.

      “How terrible! Why, you have been banished as no man ever was!”

      “Yes. I do not like to speak, or even think of it, but it is right that you should know. Tell Prince Ptosphes, and Princess Rylla, and Chartiphon, pledging them to secrecy, and beg them not to speak of it to me. I must forget my old life, and make a new one here and now. For all others, it may be said that I am from a far country. From here.” He indicated what ought to be the location of Korea on the blankness of Asia. “I was there, once, fighting in a great war.”

      “Ah! I knew you had been a warrior.” Xentos hesitated, then asked: “Do you also know sorcery?”

      “No. My father was a priest, as you are, and our priests hated sorcery.” Xentos nodded in agreement with that. “He wished me also to become a priest, but I knew that I would not be a good one, so when this war came, I left my studies and joined the army of my Great King, Truman, and went away to fight. After the war, I was a warrior to keep the peace in my own country.”

      Xentos nodded again. “If one cannot be a good priest, one should not be a priest at all, and to be a good warrior is the next best thing. What gods did your people worship?”

      “Oh, my people had many gods. There was Conformity, and Authority, and Expense Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose symbols were many, and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost a god itself. And there was Atombomb, the dread destroyer, who would some day come to end the world. None were very good gods, and I worshipped none of them. Tell me about your gods, Xentos.”

      Then he filled his pipe and lit it with the tinderbox that replaced his now fuelless Zippo. He didn’t need to talk any more; Xentos was telling him about his gods. There was Dralm, to whom all men and all other gods bowed; he was a priest of Dralm himself. Yirtta Allmother, the source of all life. Galzar the Wargod, all of whose priests were called Uncle Wolf; lame Tranth, the craftsman-god; fickle Lytris, the Weather-Goddess; all the others.

      “And Styphon,” he added grudgingly. “Styphon is an evil god, and evil men serve him, but to them he gives wealth and great power.”

      Five

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      After that, he began noticing a subtle change in manner toward him. Occasionally he caught Rylla regarding him in awe tinged with compassion. Chartiphon merely clasped his hand and said, “You’ll like it here, Lord Kalvan.” It amused him that he had accepted the title as though born to it. Prince Ptosphes said casually, “Xentos tells me there are things you don’t want to talk about. Nobody will speak of them to you. We’re all happy that you’re with us; we’d like you to make this your home always.”

      The others treated him with profound respect; the story for public consumption was that he was a Prince from a distant country, beyond the Western Ocean and around the Cold Lands, driven from his throne by treason. That was the ancient and forgotten land of wonder; that was the Home of the Gods. And Xentos had told Mytron, and Mytron told everybody else, that the Lord Kalvan had been sent to Hostigos by Dralm.

      As soon as he was on his feet again, they moved him to a suite of larger rooms, and gave him personal servants. There were clothes for him, more than he had ever owned at one time in his life, and fine weapons. Rylla contributed a pair of her own pistols, all of two feet long but no heavier than his Colt .38-special, the barrels tapering to almost paper thinness at the muzzles. The locks worked like the tinderboxes, flint held rightly against moving striker, like wheellocks but with simpler and more efficient mechanism.

      “I shot you with one of them,” she said.

      “If you hadn’t,” he said, “I’d have ridden on, after the fight, and never come to Tarr-Hostigos.”

      “Maybe it would have been better for you if you had.”

      “No, Rylla. This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.”

      She blushed slightly, and said nothing. He decided to let it go at that for now.

      As soon as he could

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