
in proportion. His hair and beard were still almost all gold, not silver, though he was within a couple of
years of the Fox's age, one way or the other. But the scars seaming his face and arms and hands gave
proof he was human, not divine.
Yet however impressive the figure he cut, Walamund and Trasamir and all the peasants who'd
accompanied them to Castle Fox stared not at him but at Geroge and Tharma, who rose behind him in
the car. Trasamir's eyes got very big. "Father Dyaus," he muttered, and made an apotropaic sign with his
right hand. "I thought we were rid of those horrible things for good."
Van glared at him. "You watch your mouth," he said, a warning not to be taken lightly. He turned back
to Geroge and Tharma and spoke soothingly: "Don't get angry. He doesn't mean anything by it. He just
hasn't seen any like you for a long time."
"It's all right," Geroge said, and Tharma nodded to show she agreed. He went on, "We know we
surprise people. It's just the way things are."
"How'd the hunting go?" Gerin asked, hoping to distract Geroge and Tharma from the wide eyes of the
serfs. They couldn't help their looks. As far as monsters went, in fact, they were very good people.
Tharma bent down and slung the gutted carcass of a stag out of the chariot. Geroge grinned proudly. "I
caught it," he said. His grin made the peasants draw back in fresh alarm, for his fangs were at least as
impressive as those of Swifty the hound. His face and Tharma's sloped forward, down to the massive
jaws needed to contain such an imposing collection of ivory.
Neither monster was excessively burdened with forehead, but both, under their hairy hides, had thews as
large and strong as Van's, which was saying a great deal. They wore baggy woolen trousers in a checked
pattern of ocher and woad blue: a Trokmê style.
Pretty soon, Gerin realized, he was going to have to put them in tunics, too, for Tharma would start
growing breasts before too much time went by. The Fox didn't know how long monsters took to reach
puberty. He did know Geroge and Tharma were about eleven years old.
Monsters like them had overrun the northlands then, after a fearsome earthquake released them from the
caverns under the temple of the god Biton, where they'd been confined for hundreds, maybe thousands,
of years. The efforts of mere mortals hadn't sufficed to drive the monsters back, either; Gerin had had to
evoke both Biton, who saw past and future, and Mavrix, the Sithonian god of wine, fertility, and beauty,
to rout them from the land.
Before he'd done that, he'd found a pair of monster cubs and had not killed them, though he and his
comrades had slain their mother. When Mavrix banished the monsters from the surface of the world,
Biton had mocked his sloppy work, implying some of the creatures still remained in the northlands. Gerin
had wondered then if they were the pair he'd spared, and wondered again a year later when a shepherd
who'd apparently raised Geroge and Tharma as pets till then brought them to him. He thought it likely,
but had no way to prove it. The shepherd had been maddeningly vague. He did know no other monsters
had ever turned up, not in all these years.
Having two monsters around was interesting, especially since they seemed bright for their kind, which
made them about as smart as stupid people. They'd grown up side by side with his own children, younger
than Duren but older than Dagref, the Fox's older son by Selatre. They were careful with their formidable
strength, and never used their fearsome teeth for anything but eating.
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