And when she gained the upper hand for the time being, the Fox felt Mavrix's nature changing into something harder and colder than seemed fitting for the Sithonian god. Voldar, he realized, was trying to bend Mavrix to her will no less than he her to his. Those stretches came more and more often as the battle progressed. Gerin wondered if Mavrix realized as much himself, and if he should warn the god.

Suddenly Mavrix gave a great cry-not of pain but of rejection-and broke away from Voldar. The disengagement was not like that between two struggling humans. One instant, he was locked in the fight with the Gradi goddess, the next he stood at the edge of the clearing in which she had awaited him.

"No," he said hoarsely. "You shall not make me into something you can rule." He understood the stakes, then. "I will not allow it. I do not allow it."

"If you stay here, I shall," Voldar said. "This is Gradihome, and Gradihome is mine." She strode toward the Sithonian fertility god, implacable purpose on her face and in every line of her body.

Mavrix broke and fled. Voldar's harsh, mocking laughter rang in his ears as he dashed away, snow flying up under his sandal-clad feet. "Be careful," Gerin shouted in his metaphysical ear. "Don't fall into Nothing's lair again."

Mavrix swerved aside, off the path. The fierce wolves of the home of the Gradi gods came coursing after him, but fawned like friendly pups once more when they drew near: so much of his power, at least, he still retained. And then he was on the path again, and running faster than ever. "I thank you for reminding me of the trap," he said, "though I do not thank you for involving me in this misadventure in the first place."

"I was trying to save what was mine," Gerin answered. And I've failed, he thought, wondering if he could keep that from Mavrix. That means I have to try something else, and I don't know what.

"I am not rooted in your northern land well enough to be as effective as I might have been fighting for Sithonia if the Gradi gods were coming there, which the power above all deities prevent," Mavrix said. "You would do better seeking out the powers in and under your own soil, those who have most to lose if enslaved or expelled by Voldar and her vicious crew."

He had been vicious himself; neither Stribog nor Lavtrig cared to try conclusions with him a second time. Soon he was out of the realm of the Gradi gods. Gerin, meanwhile, wondered which Elabonian deities Mavrix meant. Biton, perhaps, but anyone else? He put the question to the god who carried his spirit.

"No, not that wretched farseeing twit," Mavrix said scornfully. "He'll be useless to you here, I guarantee it. Voldar would chew him up and spit him out while he was still looking every which way. He and Nothing might get on well, though; with luck, they'd bore each other out of existence."

He sounded very sure of himself, which alarmed Gerin. If Biton was not the answer against the Gradi gods, who was? "Who in the northlands can hope to stand against them?" the Fox persisted.

"I've told you everything I know, and more than you deserve," Mavrix answered, petulant now. "This is not my country. I keep saying as much: this is not my land. I don't keep track of every fribbling, stodgy godlet infesting it, nor would I want to. Since you were foolish enough to choose to be born here, I leave all that up to you."

"But-" Gerin began.

"Oh, be still till you have flesh to make noise with," Mavrix said, and Gerin perforce was still. The god went on, "Here we are, returned to this dank, chilly, unpleasant hovel you inhabit. If only you knew the sunshine of Sithonia, the wine, the sea (not all gray and frigid like the nasty ocean splashing your soil, but blue and bright and beautiful), the gleam of polished marble and sandstone yellow as butter, as gold- But you do not, poor deprived thing, and maybe for the best, for you might slay yourself in despair at your lack. Since you are trapped here, I return you now to the really quite ordinary body from which I abstracted you."

All at once, Gerin was seeing with his own eyes, hearing with his own ears, moving his head, his hands, his legs. There before him stood Mavrix. There too stood Selatre and Rihwin and Fulda, who remained lushly nude. "How long were we gone?" the Fox asked. As Mavrix had said, in his own flesh he could speak again.

"Gone?" Selatre and Rihwin spoke the word together. "You've been here all along," Gerin's wife went on. "Where did you go? What did you do?" She turned to Mavrix. "Lord of the sweet grape, are the Gradi gods vanquished?"

"No," Mavrix said. The simple denial brought a gasp of dismay from Rihwin. Mavrix continued, "I did what I could. It was not enough. I can do no more, and so I depart this unpleasant clime." Like mist under the sun, he began to fade.

Gerin had been with him, and knew he had been beaten. Selatre and Rihwin recognized he meant what he said. But Fulda, like so many people Gerin knew, had unquestioned and unquestioning faith in those above her. Hearing a god admit failure was more than she could bear. She cried, "Do you leave us with nothing, then?"

Mavrix resolidified. You could not tell which way his uniformly dark eyes were turned, but, by the direction in which his head pointed, he was probably looking at her. "So you want me to leave you with something, do you?" he said, and laughed. "Very well. I shall."

Fulda gasped. At first Gerin thought it was surprise, but after a moment he realized it was something else entirely. Fulda's eyes closed. Her back arched. Her nipples went stiff and erect. She gasped again, and shuddered all over.

"There," Mavrix said, sounding smug and self-satisfied, or possibly just satisfied: despite what he'd done on the plane of the gods, he hadn't disdained Fulda after all. On the contrary, for he continued, "I've left you something. In three fourths of a year, you'll find out exactly what, and that, I have no doubt, will prove interesting for all concerned. But now…" He faded again, this time till he disappeared. The shack in which Gerin attempted to perpetrate magic abruptly seemed to resume its normal cramped dimensions, which convinced the Fox Mavrix was truly gone.

Fulda opened her eyes, but she wasn't looking at the inside of the shack. "Oh," she said, shivering once more. Then she too realized Mavrix had vanished. "Oh," she repeated, this time in disappointment. She reached for her tunic and put it back on. Selatre being there, Gerin made a point of not watching her.

He looked instead to his wife and to Rihwin. They plainly shared his thought. "The god didn't-" Rihwin said.

"The god wouldn't-" Selatre echoed.

"Didn't what?" Fulda asked. "Wouldn't what?"

"Unless we're all daft, you're going to have a baby," Gerin told her. "Quite a baby." She yelped. No, she hadn't understood. The Fox sighed. "One more thing to worry about," he said.