The Warslayer(95)

"I . . . I . . . What are you doing here?" she stammered.

"Could ask you that. Ask yourself: what are you doing here?" Vixen said.

Glory set her jaw. If this was going to be another clever symbolic dream in a fancy hat, she might as well go along with it as far as she could, because bugger her if she was going back to the Oracle to spend the night a third time.

"I came to find out about the Dreamer of Worlds. What does she want? Did I pass her test? What happens now?"

Vixen went on peeling the apple in silence for a moment, removing its skin in the narrowest possible unbroken curl.

"The thing about gods, camrado, is that you can never be sure about them. They're always showing up and making pronouncements and wandering off again. Also, they lie. By the time she shows up again, your folk might not need her any more. Or she'll have forgotten you were supposed to be her last candidate. Or maybe the test's still going on. Some tests take a really long time, you know. God's Teeth! But you'll see."

"That's not very helpful," Glory said crossly.

"Sorry," Vixen said, not sounding very sorry at all. "I'm not good at questions. Solving problems, now . . . But seems to me you don't have many of those just now."

"But what am I supposed to do?" Glory wailed.

Vixen smiled, as though that was actually the question she'd been waiting for.

"Well there, camrado, I'd say you've got two choices. Whether you've passed the Dreamer's test or not, you've done pretty good in the hero line, and the Allimir are going to need one. Seems to me you could stick around and do some heroing. Or head on back to where you came from. Your choice."

But I already made my choice, Glory realized. Back at the spring—I could have come up anywhere. That was my chance. She remembered how hard she'd fought—not just to breathe, not just to get out, but to get back to the same place she'd fallen in—to Belegir, and Ivradan, and even Englor and Helevrin, bless their hearts. Back to the Allimir, and Erchanen, and the plains of Serenthodial. Once again magic had snuck up on her when she wasn't looking—but if she'd been truly homesick, she'd have been thinking of home while she was drowning, not Ivradan.

Glory smiled reluctantly. She'd been given a fair chance, even if a sneaky one.

"But they don't need me. They need you. I'm not you," she protested.

" 'Course you are," Vixen asserted inarguably. "If not you, who? God's teeth, gel, who d'you think you're looking at? Someone has to take the dream and make it real. What were you doing in front of those cameras all those months? Or up on Grey Arlinn? Knitting?"

Glory stared at her, slack-jawed. It can't be that easy. But it could. She knew it could. Just that easy—and that hard. Embrace an ideal, and be willing to die for it. Live the legend, because people needed dreams as much as bread. And don't look back.

"But you'd better get yourself a proper sword. None of that tawdry magic. I hate magic. And nothing that breaks." Vixen's amber gaze roved over Glory's showgirl costume at length, and her lip curled eloquently. "And cover yourself up. You'll die of sunstroke and give your troops heart-failure if you don't."

"I . . . all right. I will." Glory squared her shoulders.

"Good girl. Do us proud." The last of the apple peel dropped to the ground in an unbroken coil. Vixen took a step away from the tree. With one smooth gesture she tossed Glory the peeled fruit.

Glory caught it, neatly, in both hands. She looked down at it, and it seemed as if by looking away from Vixen, she'd unmade whatever dream-world Vixen existed in. Suddenly it was dark, and Glory was awake enough to know she'd been asleep, or . . . something.

Darkness. She smelled wet wool and wet rock and burning candle, and realized she'd been asleep for a long time.

There was something in her hand.

She squeezed it, her head still fuzzy with dreams, and smelled apples. Suddenly she was entirely awake, rolling onto her stomach to slide the shutter on the little lantern down to expose the candle. In the abrupt brightness, she could see what she held.

An apple.

A freshly peeled apple, its white flesh only now starting to darken with exposure to the air.

And there was only one place it could have come from.

Magic.

True magic, real magic, miracle enough to hang a lifetime on. She sat up in her bed, grinning to herself. No fear she was going to forget what she'd dreamed this time! She'd remember it for the rest of her life.

But she wouldn't tell. Not even Belegir. No one needed to know, as long as she knew.

"Do us proud."

"Damn right I will," Glory said aloud. She bit into the apple. She'd better get moving. She had a lot to do today, and all the days to follow.

There's always work in the land of Erchanen for Vixen the Slayer.