Ghostdog

  Pan’s face, a bearded human’s with the features of a goat, including two curled horns, reflected his shock. “What in the name of all things holy are you doing here?”

  Ghostdog seemed to consider the question. “Well, let’s see. I’ve just had my servants kill your sacrificial priestess, the one you regularly carve the mana node out of to make your holy blood-oats, stolen her replacement and two other priestesses, and to make sure you can’t replace the replacement, took both of the scales your priests use to mutate a fetus in the womb.”

  Pan staggered back against the doorway as if he’d just received a blow. “No, you cannot do that. I need that mana to survive.”

  “You and every other Celestial, now that the unnatural sources are drying up.”

  “But what am I supposed to do now?”

  “Make common cause with the barbarian clans to the north.”

  Pan snarled, “Those savages? I would rather make common cause with an ice bear.”

  “Those savages, as you call them, have natural mana sources they’ll be willing to share with you.”

  Pan’s eyes widened. “Wait, did you just say natural sources?”

  “The Pictish clans in the northern mountains have two sacred springs used by their druids, where the water that bubbles up glows a deep blue from each mana node below the ground. It’s too strong for them to use its energy without extracting it from the fluid first, and the druid high priestess herself told me they’ll gladly share it with you.”

  Pan’s bushy eyebrows formed a solid line across his face as he frowned. “In exchange for what? The sacred oats enchanted by the mana node that I carve out from my virgin priestess? Never!”

  Ghostdog snorted. “Considering you’ve stored so many sacks of blood-oats for so long, that there’s rats infesting at least one of your granaries, I think it’s a fair trade.”

  Pan reared back. “Rats in my granaries? That is impossible; the granaries have protection spells against vermin, regularly reinforced by my priests.”

  “Human rats. While I was in the Grey, I checked the three granaries I knew about and in the one near the southern coast, saw a man happily helping himself to your blood-oats while a priest kept watch.” Ghostdog chuckled. “After I took the man’s head from behind and dropped it at the priest’s feet, he squealed like a pig and told me the man was actually a Gaul, who paid the priest a tidy sum of gold in exchange for the sack.”

  “But—”

  “Pan,” Ghostdog said, a note of exasperation in his voice, “because you’re one of the few Celestials I actually like, I’m leaving you no other way out. You need to ally with the Picts, sharing your blood-oats so they can strengthen their people, who in return will not only share the water from their spring, but will fight alongside your warriors when the Gauls invade.”

  “Invade?” Pan shook his shaggy head. “The Gauls will never invade us. Their king is married to the queen’s sister.”

  “King Callisto’s not going to be running the kingdom for much longer, now that Balor One-eye’s decided to take the throne.”

  Pan went still as the weathered stones behind him. “No, he wouldn’t do that. The Covenant forbids it.”

  “Pan,” Ghostdog said, the exasperation back in his voice, “this agreement you Celestials had with each other is in tatters worse than Etrusca herself. The war’s over, my friend, long over, and the earth’s finally beginning to heal. Your people are becoming desperate.”

  “How can you know what Balor’s planning to do?”

  “Because he was the one who originally hired me. I was supposed to capture all the priestesses whose bodies produce mana, kill everyone else, and leave you so badly injured that you wouldn’t be able to assume the greater form you are wearing now, for years to come.”

  “Britannia would fall back into warring clans,” Pan whispered.

  Ghostdog nodded. “Once Balor has control over the Gaulish kingdom and purged it of all Etrusca loyalists, he will set his sights on your lands, thinking it to be an easy conquest. Instead, he will be dealing with two peoples united by alliance, and hopefully by blood, if you can convince both sides that marriage between them is a good idea.”

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  “I see.” Pan went silent for a time, Ghostdog giving him a chance to weigh in his mind the choices he now faced. When Pan spoke again he sounded tired. “What will you do with the priestesses you did take captive?”

  “They’re not going anywhere near Balor, I can promise you that. No, once I rejoin my servants, we’re heading south and east to the border where the Sasnayam Empire and Aegyptus meet. The emperor’s son has taken up with a group of Celestials your people exiled after the war.”

  “What?” The tiredness left Pan’s voice, replaced with an edge it hadn’t had before. “They were exiled only because Celestials never slay their own kind. If you only knew the crimes they had committed in those days, the horrors they unleashed—”

  “Yes, yes, I know all that. Now, one of them has returned with his children with him, and from what I understand, his offspring’s bodies are still producing some mana, though the amount’s decreasing every year. One of them seems much more stable than their father, so I’m giving your three priestesses to that young Celestial to keep hidden until the human emperor’s son takes the crown from his father. Once that happens, he will use the priestess’s abilities to establish his own religion among the Sasnayam Empire’s humans. With luck, that will give General Konstan some breathing room to get the Empire of the East in order.”

  “Are you playing god now, Ghostdog?”

  “Someone’s got to,” Ghostdog retorted, “since your people mucked things up so badly. Asena the Wolf Mother gave me a son named Greywolf, and since he’s a stronger source of mana than any bubbling spring, I want him to find a home here in Britannia once his mother dies, a safe place where he can live his life the same way she does now. Free.”

  At the mention of the word ‘son’, Pan had gone stone still once more. “Ghostdog, I was there the last time you fathered a child on one of us. I saw what she became.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, she won the war for you.”

  “Yes, but the cost! Anyway, in case you’ve forgotten, you were forbidden from ever repeating what you did.”

  Ghostdog gave him a sardonic smile. “The one who forbade me has given me his blessing, though just this once.”

  “Gave you…” Pan’s voice trailed off as he stared at Ghostdog in confusion. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. “This is more than your trying to create a stable place for your son. Ghostdog, what is truly going on?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” Ghostdog replied cryptically. “For now, return to your lesser form here in the Shadowlands, so you may preserve your mana, then persuade your people to move north and ally with the Picts. If you will begin that process, then when my other business is finished, I will return and help you.” He raised his free hand in warning. “However, if you ignore my advice, I will leave you to your fate. The choice is yours.” For a long moment, Pan stared at him.

  Then he closed his eyes. Steam rose off him, vanishing immediately as Pan shrank to Ghostdog’s size while his features became that of a naked human male with a bald head. Ghostdog nodded and sheathed his sword. “Ghostdog,” Pan said, “please tell this young Celestial to take good care of my priestesses. I am quite fond of them, especially the youngest.”

  “He will, if only to insure they help him eventually displace his father from being top dog.” All at once, Ghostdog grinned. “Be of good cheer, my friend. If my son’s anything like me, when the red haired one gets older, he’s going to lose his heart to her the first time she looks into his eyes… like I did once,” he added, his smile growing sad.

  “I remember,” Pan said quietly. He sighed. “I’m going to need all the help I can get, persuading my people to change.”

  “I’ll return as quickly as I can,” Ghostdog said, bounding past Pan to the doorway, where he stopped and turned around. “I’ve also got some ideas about how you can extend your alliances to others beyond just the Picts.”

  “Of course you do,” Pan replied. Ghostdog gave him another grin, waved, and disappeared behind the stones. Pan leaned back against the weathered stone and closed his eyes as he began to think.

  He knew the real world had returned when the cold rain hit his naked body. He shivered, opening his eyes as he walked barefoot through the grass towards the doorway, hearing his name being yelled by several voices. He called back a response, remaining where he was within the inner circle as an acolyte came pelting through the opening. The young man slid on the slick grass, almost knocking them both over. “High Priest, you’re alive! You went into the inner sanctum to summon the god, but when we looked for you later, you had vanished.”

  “The god needed me with him tonight,” the High Priest answered. “Brother, lend me your cloak until we get back inside.”

  The young man shed his cloak and draped it over the High Priest as several older priests ran up. One panted, “Holiness, the sacrificial priestess—”

  “I know,” the High Priest replied, cutting him off. “We have been attacked by the Gauls this night.”

  All of the others gasped. “Holiness, are you sure? The alliance—”

  “Is broken by their actions. The god and I fought the Shadow-walker together, and before we drove him off he admitted the truth. The Gauls seek to destroy us.”

  “We must tell the queen,” one of the older priests growled. “She will send raiders to their coasts, and they will feel the bite of our iron blades in their own priestesses.”

  “No,” the High Priest said as the others chimed in their agreement, “that is the response the Gauls are expecting, the path they want us to take. The path that will lead us to our doom.” He shook his head. “This time we need to take a new path, a route unexpected, and I will need all of your help to make sure this happens, for many will not be willing to change.”

  “We are with you, holiness,” the older priest said, “and we’ll follow you down this new path wherever it leads.”

  “You comfort me,” the High Priest replied, stretching out his arms to encompass all of them for a moment. He sighed. “The kidnapped priestesses are gone from us, but not to the Gauls, and though we were not strong enough to rescue them, it may be that one or all of them will return to us someday. In any event,” his gaze taking them all in as he let the priests go, “we will lick our wounds and gird ourselves for the battles to come. For war is upon us.”

  As they strode together towards the rest of the temple, there was a light in his Celestial eyes that hadn’t been there for a long, long time as Pan in his human form marched onward.