Soul of the City

CHILDREN OF ALL AGES by Lynn Abbey

It was spring in the lush forests far to the south of Sanctuary. Trees and shrubs put forth their leaves; delicate flowers swayed on gentle winds and, beneath a swag of ivory blossoms, a mongoose sneezed violently. He sneezed a second time and for a moment he was not a mongoose but something larger, something with huge, flapping ears. Then he was a mongoose again- preening his thick, musteline fur; fluffing out his tail and casting coy glances at the female a leap and a bound away. The female chattered her response and they were off along the branches, across a stream and ever further from the magical trap Randal had laid for her.

The Tysian mage had conjured and cast to exhaustion looking for her. She was the finest mongoose alive: the largest, the fastest, the boldest, and the most intelligent. She had, at least, evaded every snare he'd set from his power-web in distant Sanctuary until, in desperation, he'd transferred his essence to the forest to pursue her in person-or, rather, in mongoose. She was also, as mongooses measured such matters, the most wildly attractive creature in the forest. Giving himself over to mongoose instincts was doing Randal's vow of chastity no good at all. If he didn't lure her into the charmed sphere soon he'd forget himself completely and settle down to the business of begetting.

Forgetting Sanctuary and everything it stood for was not an entirely unattractive notion-especially when her tail flicked across his nose and he was lost enough in mongoose-ness that he didn't sneeze. Roxane was missing; Ischade was irrational and bloated with power; the Stormchildren were moribund with a venom the snake-worshiping Beysib did not understand pooling in their veins; a dead god's high priest had been revealed to be a Nisibisi warlock-and those were only Randal's magic-tainted concerns. The mage had, however, one concern that stood above all the rest; which made him secure against momentary lust and drew him, and her, back to the grove where a circle of stones glowed a faint blue. Nikodemos, the impossible Stepson whom Randal worshiped with a chaste, fervent love, was trapped at the focus of every dangerous incongruity prowling Sanctuary and anything that might help Niko was worth every risk Randal might have to take.

She had caught him when they reached the grove. They were rolling across the grass when they pierced the sphere and hurtled through nothingness back to the palace alcove where the body of Randal slumped over an embossed Nisibisi Globe of Power. The transfer back into himself was all the more uncomfortable for the mongoose teeth digging into his neck and the pottery crags of the Wizardwall mountains pressing against his breastbone. Randal slipped from the world back into nothingness and sheer panic. He had almost regained himself when a weighted net slapped over him.

"The cage, Molin. Damn you, the cage before she eats through my damned neck!"

"Coming up." The erstwhile high priest of Vashanka brandished a wicker-and-wire cage while magician and mongoose thrashed on the table.

Having the cage was not the same as having the unrequited mongoose in the cage. Both men were bloodied and torn before the bolt was thrown.

"You were supposed to have the cage ready."

"And you were supposed to be back before sundown- sundown yesterday, I might add."

"You're my assistant, my apprentice. Apprentices are like children: Children don't make decisions; they do as they're told. And if I tell you to have the cage ready-you have the cage ready no matter when I return," the magician complained, daubing at the wounds on his neck.

The men stared at each other until Randal looked away. Molin Torchholder was too accustomed to power to be any man's apprentice.

"I thought it best to save the globe after you and she knocked it off its pedestal," he explained, nodding toward the table where an unremarkable pottery sphere rested against a half-emptied wine glass.

Randal slumped back against the wall. "You touched an activated Globe of Power," he mused. He possessed the globe and still hesitated before touching it, but the high priest simply picked it up. "You could have been killed-or worse," Randal added as an afterthought. His fingers wove glyphs that made the globe first shimmer, then vanish into that way-station between realities magicians called their "cabinets."

"I've made my way doing what had to be done," Molin said when the process was complete. "You've led me to believe that the destruction of that globe could unbind the planes of existence. I can see that, at its heart, the globe is nothing but a piece of poorly made pottery. Perhaps it was necessary to use magic to destroy it, as you and Ischade did with Roxane's, but, perhaps, simply falling off the pedestal would be as effective a destruction. I could not take the risk of experiment; I moved the globe."

Priesthoods, Randal considered as he met Molin's stare, did a better job of educating their acolytes than the mageguilds did with their apprentices. Askelon, at his most magnificent, could breathe more life into the simplest phrases, making every word a threat and a promise and a truth. But Askelon was hardly mortal anymore. Not that Molin Torchholder was exactly typical ofVashanka's priesthood. Randal had met Brachis, Molin's hierarchical superior, and been singularly unimpressed. The truth was that only Tempus, who broke mercenaries', mages', and priests' rules at his whim, could conceal more raw power in his voice and gestures.

It was a realization to make a cautious mageling look in some other convenient direction. "You might make a mistake one day, Torchholder," he said with a confidence he did not feel.

"I will make many mistakes; I already have. Someday, I expect, I will make a mistake I cannot survive-but I haven't yet."

Randal found himself staring at the unfinished portrait of Niko, Tempus, and Roxane that Molin had nailed to the wall behind his worktable. There was considerable similarity between the witch and the priest even though she had been portrayed transforming herself into her favored black eagle and Molin's facial bones showed some of the refinements ofRankan aristocratic patrimony. It wasn't surprising: the priest had been born to a Nisi witch. He had, thus far, adhered to his promise to learn only enough to defend his soul from his heritage, but if he ever wavered from that determination, now that the destruction of Roxane's globe had every latent magician in Sanctuary on the threshold of Hazard status, he would make the Wizardwall masters look like children.

Molin said, "Not if you help me," as if he'd read the younger man's thoughts. "The price is too high."

The mongoose, who in the transfer from the forest to Sanctuary had experienced being Randal as much as he had experienced being a mongoose, responded to her desired mate's distress with an eruption of motion and noise that bounced the cage onto the floor. She set her teeth into the wooden slats and splintered two of them before Randal reached her. Two were all she needed, however, to squeeze out of her confinement. She was on his shoulder in an instant, her claws finding purchase in his brocaded cloak and her tail ringing his neck.

"I'm ... going ... to ... sneeze!" And he did-with an eruption that sent his defender, and a small portion of his left ear, flying across the room.

Molin dove toward the door to capture the lithe creature before it gained freedom in the endless corridors of the palace. Randal laughed through his sneezes; the sight was worth an earlobe. Nothing remained of Torchholder's intensity or his dignity as he slid along the polished stone on his belly.

Despite these losses the priest kept his reputation: he did what had to be done. Blunt fingers pinched the animal's collarbone and a well-protected arm both supported her and pinned her against his ribcage.

"Chiringee?" Molin crooned, rubbing a free finger under her chin as he got to his feet, his long robe wrinkled, twisted, and revealing the naked, muscular thighs of an experienced soldier and brawler. "So eager, are you?" He squared his shoulders, the weighted hem dropped, and he resumed his perfect lifelong disguise as priest and court functionary. "Well, let us go to the nursery then and let you meet the little ones you'll be guarding."

Randal followed, blotting his wounds with his sleeve.

The nursery was more a chaotic phenomenon of palace society than a physical location. Its denizens were moved from dungeons to rooftops, from the depths of the Beysib enclave to the warmth and abundance of the kitchens as the fears and influence of its overlords shifted. For three days a cavern-ceilinged hall known as the Ilsig Bedchamber had managed to contain it to everyone's satisfaction.

Protocol demanded that no one pass the guards without careful inspection. Molin, Randal, and Chiringee waited until Jihan pushed her way through the doors. She accepted the men in an eyeblink but stared hard at the mongoose, drawing on the arcane intuitions she possessed as Froth Daughter to archetypal Stormbringer only temporarily in mortal form.

"So this is the unnatural creature who is supposed to protect the children better than I? It smells of Wizardwall magic."

"Well, she is larger and more intelligent than she should be. It was an unexpected benefit from the transition-"

Randal had more to say, but Molin took command again, leading their way into the nursery.

The hour candle beside Jihan's cross-legged stool was half-burnt-nearly midnight. The chamber was silent except for the rapid, shallow breathing of the Stormchildren who should have been in their hardwood beds but had been in Jihan's arms and were now draped one over the other on the floor. She scooped them up before settling back on the stool.

"They should be in their beds," Randal complained. "How can you protect them with them sleeping in your lap?"

"They were restless with fever."

"They're two steps from death, lady. They haven't moved in a week!"

"I will protect them as I see fit-and I don't need a little mage flaunting his borrowed power and his menagerie...." Her eyes had begun to glow and the air in the bedchamber had gone frosty.

Molin dropped the mongoose and placed his hands against both of them. "Jihan, Chiringee is only another precaution, like the guards outside, to assist you. No one challenges what your father has ordained: you are the Caretaker."

Jihan's eyes cooled and the room began to warm.

In point of fact, Randal was not tremendously impressed by Jihan's caretaking. The woman, if she could be called that, was obsessed with maternal longings; she had clutched the Stormchildren to her breast when Roxane's snake made its attack rather than drawing her sword and attacking like the hellcat fighter she was. Both children had been bitten and she had taken a divine battering, but the worst injuries had fallen on Niko when he had come to her rescue.

Jihan had recovered almost at once and Sanctuary was better off with Arton and Gyskouras deep in envenomed slumber but Niko, despite Tempus's concern and Jihan's healing, looked and felt worse than the White Foal undead. He was also, because of his need for Jihan's healing touch, a permanent resident of the nursery along with the Stonnchildren.

Randal didn't pretend to understand Niko's enthrallment with Roxane or his all consuming interest in the Stonnchildren-he didn't even understand his own affection for the jinxed mercenary who had rejected his friendship more than once. He had touched Chiringee when they mingled in the transfer sphere, inoculating her with his love for Niko and an awareness of Roxane's essence (an essence which, albeit neutralized, pervaded his own Globe of Power whose previous owner had loved and used the beautiful witch countless times). The mongoose might not be able to slay the snakes but she would give Niko a few moments of warning and that, not the safety of the Stormchildren, was all that mattered to Randal.

"We had a cage built for her but, with the influence of the transfer, it wasn't enough to hold her," Molin was explaining to Jihan. "We'll have Arton's father make a stronger one in the morning. In the meantime I'll tell the guards to keep the Beysib women out. She'd go after their vipers."

"Then don't build a cage," the Froth Daughter said with an icy laugh. "They need a few less snakes."

"The vipers are sacred to the Beysib and to Mother Bey. You, most especially, should respect this," Molin said sternly as the temperature continued to drop.

"Mother Bey! Mother Bey, my hind foot. Do you know where she found her first snake? That's all she needs, you know, a silly blood-mouth World Serpent. Not my father. No, she doesn't need him at all!"

When she wasn't doting on the children, Jihan fumed about her father's progressive entanglement with the fish-folk's goddess, Mother Bey. Jihan, who had never had a rival for her father's affection, was developing a dangerous resentment for all things Beysib.

Gods were the priests' problems. Randal had heard the adolescent protests before and was openly relieved to leave them to Molin. He found a fist-sized watch-lamp beside the glowing brazier, lit it, and headed toward the curtained alcove where Niko convalesced. Tempus had forbidden the direct application of magic on his partner's wounds so Jihan worked her healing through vile unguents; the taint of rotting offal drew Randal to the alcove more surely than the flickering lamplight. He swallowed his sneezes as he drew the curtain aside and stood at Niko's feet.

The mercenary thrashed on his pallet in the grip of nightmares or pain.

"Leave me be!" he gasped-and Randal pressed his back against the wall of the alcove.

Chiringee had followed the magician. She stalked across the damp, discarded linens, easily eluding Randal's cautious attempts to restrain her. Her teeth glistened and her tail quivered as it only did when she was closing on her prey. Randal set the lamp carefully on the footboard and moved closer.

"Leave me!" Niko murmured again before his words became incoherent moans and his body stiffened into an arch above the pallet.

Randal froze, horrified not merely because the creature he had enchanted to protect Niko was going to rip through the soft flesh of that Stepson's neck but because he knew, despite his chastity, that Niko was a victim of neither nightmares nor pain. The injured mercenary collapsed flaccidly on the linens; Chiringee's jaws clicked shut harmlessly and Randal watched as Niko's lips moved silently around the word he most feared: "Roxane..."

The mongoose reared up and began a keening that drew Molin and Jihan to the alcove.

"He's had a relapse," Randal said, a tremor in his voice. "I'll go tell Tempus." He ran from the alcove and the nursery hoping he could reach privacy before the deceit and sick fear that had taken root in his bowels overcame him.

"I can see that," Jihan said coldly as she stared first at Molin, then at her patient. She drew the linens up to cover him. "Go now, I'll take care of him alone."

Molin was alone in his sanctum when Illyra arrived at the palace to deliver Chiringee's new cage. She had been instructed to take it directly to the nursery, but she was the natural mother of one of Sanctuary's Stormchildren and when she insisted that she would see Vashanka's priest first no one argued with her. She dumped the iron-wire contraption on the floor and ordered Molin's scrivener, Hoxa, from the room.

"Is something wrong, Illyra? I assure you: Alton receives the same care as Gyskouras." Molin stood up from her table and gestured to take her heavy cloak.

"I have Seen things." She kept the cloak tight at her neck though braziers and windows made the sanctum one of the more comfortable private rooms in the palace. "Torchholder- it's getting worse, not better."

"Sit down, then, and tell me what you've Seen," He dragged his own chair around to the front of the worktable for her. "Hoxa! Get some mulled cyder for the lady!" Propping himself against the table, he addressed her with calculated familiarity. "Since the... accident?"

"That night."

"You said you Saw nothing," he chided her.

"Not about Arton or the other boy; not something I even noticed or understood at the time. But the others have felt it too." She pulled the cloak close around her; Molin understood that once again Illyra was violating some S'danzo taboo with her revelations. "There are stones-spirit stones-from the times before men needed gods. When they were lost that was when the S'danzo were born and when men began to create gods from their hopes and needs....

"If men possessed these stones again there would be no need for gods."

She paused when Hoxa came into the room with two goblets.

"Thank you, Hoxa. I won't be needing you again tonight. Take the rest of the cyder and have a pleasant evening." Molin handed Illyra the goblet himself. "You think that with these stones we could free your son and Gyskouras?" he suggested when it seemed she would say no more but only stare at the twisting plumes of steam.

Illyra shook her head. Tears or the fragrant vapor of the cyder had smeared the kohl under her eyes. "It's been too long. One of the lost stones was invoked and destroyed that night- some of its magic was directed against the children, some went into a woman who came to me with death in her eyes, some of it is still falling to the ground like rain, but all of it was evil, Torchholder. It had been damaged when the demons hid it in the fires of creation. Our legends have played us false. Men can no longer live without gods.

"The other women have felt the falling but I've felt something else in the shadows. Torchholder-there's another stone in Sanctuary and it is worse than the first one."

Molin took the goblet from her trembling fingers and held her hands between his own. "What you call spirit stones are, in fact, the Nisibisi Globes of Power, the talismans of their witches and wizards. The one that was destroyed was the source of most, if not all, of the witch Roxane's power. She was evil, it is true, and the demons will have their sport with her, I'm sure. But the globes themselves are only pottery artifacts. The S'danzo needn't worry about the second one, whatever its previous owners might have been." He stopped short of telling her that Randal's globe still rested, enveloped by nothingness, on the table behind him.

Illyra shook her head until her hood fell back and her dark, curling hair fell freely around her shoulders. "It is a spirit stone and the demons have tampered with it," she insisted. "It is not safe for men to possess it."

"It could be destroyed, like the other one."

"No." She shrank back as if he had struck her. "Not destroyed-Sanctuary, the world, wouldn't survive. Send it back to the fires of creation-or to the bottom of the sea."

"It is safe, Illyra. It will hurt no one and no one will hurt it."

She stared distractedly at the table; Molin wondered what her S'danzo sight could actually reveal. "Its evil cries out in the night, Torchholder, and no one is immune." She lifted her hood and moved toward the door. "No one," she reminded him as she left.

The priest finished his cyder, then opened the parchment window. Time always passed strangely when he was with Illyra-it had seemed no later than early afternoon when she arrived, but now the sun had set and a fog bank was moving across the harbor to the town. He should have arranged an escort for her back to the Bazaar. Despite her prejudices Illyra was one of his most prized informants.

"Isn't it rather early to be sending them home. Torch?" a familiar voice inquired from behind.

Molin turned as Tempus settled himself into the chair which creaked and was dwarfed by his size.

"She is the mother of the other child. Sometimes she brings me information. I don't mix business with pleasure, Riddler."

They used mercenaries' names when they met; their personalities always created the aura of a battlefield between them.

"What was her information?"

"She is worried about the globes and their owners."

"Globes, owners: plural? Aren't we left with globe, singular, and owner, singular?"

Molin smiled and shrugged as he dragged Hoxa's stool across the room to sit beside his guest. "I suppose you'd have to ask an owner."

"Why haven't you? You're supposed to be Randal's apprentice."

"Haven't seen our long-eared Hazard since he left to find you sometime after last midnight. It seemed young Niko had some sort of relapse."

Tempus put a mild edge on his voice: "I haven't seen Randal in days and I saw Niko just before I came here. He was up and complaining about Jinan. No one mentioned any 'relapse'."

"Well, our little mage is a bit naive about these things, chaste and virgin-pure as he is. He saw something he didn't want to see, though, something he called a 'relapse', and went running from the room like he'd seen a ghost. You put it together, Riddler."

The edge, and some of the confidence, faded from Tempus's voice: "Roxane. Death doesn't stop Death's Queen. She reaches me where I cannot defend myself. Hasn't Niko suffered enough?" he asked a god who no longer listened.

"We never did find Roxane's body, you know. And by your own reports she could steal a body as easily as a soul. She pacted with demons that night; she had the power to slip inside his skull like a whisper-and we'd never know!"

"But Jihan would. She says there's not one iota of Niko that isn't pure. Pure pain. I tried to make him hate me once, and he suffered more."

"Damn you, man! He wasn't suffering when I saw him last night," Molin shouted, slamming his fist on the table to get the mercenary's attention. "If Roxane hasn't possessed Niko, then he's calling her back himself with these dreams. We could have a serious problem on our hands."

"I'd go to hell itself to set him free of her," Tempus resolved, starting to rise from his chair.

"Roxane's not in hell-she's in Niko. In his memories. In his lusts. He's bringing her back, Riddler. I don't know how but I know what I saw."

"The curse won't have him."

"Which curse? Yours, hers, or his? Or hasn't it occurred to you that Niko loves the witch-bitch far better than he loves you?"

"It is enough that he loves me at all."

"Very convenient, Riddler. This Bandaran adept, reeking of moat, brings the world's own chaos in his wake and it's all because he has the misfortune to admire you. I suppose you'll tell me Vashanka's gone because he loved you, too after his fashion."

"All right," Tempus roared, but he sat down again. "My curse-all mine-on the people I love. Does that satisfy you?"

"Well, at least I should be safe from it," Torchholder replied with a smile.

"Don't play games with me, priest. You're not in my league."

"I'm not playing with you; I'm trying to set you free. How many years have you been dragging that around with you? You think the universe spins in your navel? The only curse you've got is the arrogance of believing yourself responsible for everything." It was sudden death to provoke Tempus's wrath- everyone in the Rankan Empire knew that-so the priest's audacity left the immortal mercenary flat-footed and muttering • about magicians, love, and other things that passed the understanding of ordinary, uncursed, men.

"Let me tell you what I do understand, Riddler. I understand that a curse is only a threat-a potential. No wizard-no, more than that: no god-can curse a disbelieving man. No acceptance-no curse: it's as simple as that, Tempus Thales. You made some backwater mage's curse a prophecy. You rejected love in all its forms."

The shock was beginning to wear off; Tempus stiffened, his lips a taut line of displeasure across his face. Molin rocked back on the stool until its front legs were off the floor and his shoulders rested against the worktable: a posture so vulnerable it was insolent. "In fact," the priest said amiably, "a mutual acquaintance of ours-the highest authority in these matters, as it were-assures me that your curse is, shall we say, all in your mind. A bad habit. He says you could sleep like a babe-in-arms if you wanted to."

"Who?"

"Jinan's father: Stormbringer," Molin concluded with a smile.

"You? Stormbringer?"

"Don't look so surprised." The stool thumped back to its normal alignment with the floor. "We were both, in a sense, orphans. I..." Molin groped for the appropriate description, "-experience him quite regularly. Now that is a curse. Our paternal ancestor is head-over-heels in lust with the Beysib's Mother Goddess-except they don't have a matching set of heads, heels or whatever."

"Torch, you push me too far," Tempus warned, but the power wasn't there. "The Empire's coming back. Vashanka's coming back." His voice was more hopeful than commanding.

Molin shook his head, tsk-tsk'ing as if he spoke to a child. "Open your eyes, Riddler. Unbelievable as it might seem, the future is here in Sanctuary. There's an empire coming, and a war-god as well, but it won't be Rankan and it won't be Va-shanka. You came here, I imagine, to tell me to toe the line when the imperial ship arrives. Let me make a counter-proposal: Make your commitment to your son-keep Brachis, Theron, and all Ranke alive only until Sanctuary is ready to conquer it."

"You'll see your guts spinning on a windlass for that, priest," Tempus hissed as he stood up and headed for the door.

"Think it over, Riddler. Sleep on it. You look like you need some sleep."

The big man said nothing as he disappeared into the darkness beyond Molin's apartments. If he could be brought into line, or so Stormbringer said, the ultimate triumph of the Storm-children would be ensured. There were things even the primal war-god didn't know, Molin mused as he closed the window, but he might be right about Tempus.

"I tell you-she's gone mad. She's lost control. She's gathering her dead-but she can't find them all."

The young man wrung his hands together as he talked; his words slurred and broke in a constant agitation of pain and chronic drunkenness. The fog of his breath in the cold, damp air was enough to intoxicate a sober, living man. Both witches raised better looking corpses, better smelling ones for that matter, but Mor-am wasn't dead-yet.

"S-She's l-l-lost c-control. S-she's l-l-looking for s-someone to k-k-k-k-" he gasped and coughed his way into incoherence.

Walegrin sighed, poured two-fingers of cheap wine, and slid it across the barrel head. In a backwater town renowned for its depravity and despair, this one-time hawkmask had drifted beyond the pale. Mor-am needed both white-knuckled hands to get the mug to his lips; even then a dirty stream oozed out the comer of his ruined mouth. The garrison captain looked away and tried not to notice.

"You mean Ischade?" he asked when the wine was gone.

"Seh!" Mor-am's back straightened and his eyes cleared as he uttered the Nisi curse. "Not Her name. Not aloud. S-She's l-l-looking for s-someone to k-k-kill someone p-powerful. I c-could find out h-his name."

Walegrin said nothing.

"I s-saw Her w-with T-T-Tempus-at m-m-my s-sister's h-h-house. S-She w-w-was angry."

Walegrin studied the stars overhead.

Mor-am gripped the cup again, throwing his head back, sucking loudly, futilely on the rim. He made a supreme effort to control his wayward tongue. "I know other things. She's looking for the witch. Got to have power-have her focus back. I can follow Her-She trusts me."

A flock of the white Beyarl made their way to the palace. A falcon's cry echoed across the rooftops. The white birds swooped back toward the harbor. Walegrin watched their slow-circling patterns and Mor-am lurched forward across the barrel head to grip his wrist with moist, sticky hands.

The young man began to speak in a rapid, malodorous whisper: "M-Moria's changed. G-G-Got f-friends w-w-who aren't Her f-friends. D-Deads at the P-Peres h-house w-w-who s-should b-b-be in h-hell. T-Taken a 1-1-lover. M-Moria's a th-thief-1 1-like H-Her. H-He's a m-mage-m-maybe b-b-better th-than H-Her. S-She'll t-t tell you w-w-what e's-"

The captain wrenched his arm away and whistled sharply. A burly soldier emerged from the inky doorway where he had been posted.

"Take him to the palace," Walegrin commanded, taking a cloth from a sack at his feet and carefully cleaning his hands.

"S-s-she'll know. When I d-d-don't come back. She'll look for me." The ex hawkmask's voice was shrill with desperation as he was hoisted to his feet. "You said gold-you said: 'gold for information'."

"It doesn't pay to sell out your family-pud, I thought you'd've learned that by now," Walegrin replied coldly. "Take him to the palace." He nodded and another soldier stepped forward to see that the command was carried out quietly.

Walegrin threw Mor-am's mug into the garbage that lay everywhere in the burned out, sky-roofed warehouse. It had come this low: Rankan soldiers holding forth in ruins; listening to the ramblings of the city's scum; talking to the dead and the undead. A delegation was coming from the capital. His orders were to keep Sanctuary quiet, to keep it free of surprises and, above all, to keep an ear out for rumors about the Nisi witch. He rested his hand on his sword hilt and waited for the next one.

"He might be right, you know," a voice called from the darkness.

A man separated from the shadows-mounted and armed. He came through a gap in the walls-the man's head wreathed in shifting moisture, the horse as cool and shiny as a marble statue. Walegrin stood up, his hand remaining on the sword.

"Slow up there," the stranger ordered, swinging his leg over the saddle. "Word's out you're talking to anybody-even other Rankan soldiers." His words emerged in a plume but the bay horse, though it snorted and shied from the lingering scent of the fire, made no mark on the night air.

"Strat?" Walegrin inquired and received a confirming nod. "Didn't think you came uptown much these days."

The hawk cried again. Both men glanced up past the charred, skeletal roof-beams, but the sky was empty.

"I was up here the other night at Moria's dinner party." Straton kicked the broken barrel Mor-am had used for a seat aside and selected another one from the rubble. "This place secure?" He glanced around at the gaping walls.

"It's mine."

"He might be worth listening to," Strat said, shrugging a shoulder toward Mor am's path.

Walegrin shook his head. "He's drunk, scared, and ready to sell the only ones who've stood by him. I'm not looking to buy what he's selling."

"Especially scared-especially scared. I'd say he knows something no cheap wine can hide. I've seen the new face Moria's wearing these days; Ischade didn't put it there. I'd talk to him about that-get his confidence. Ease the burden on his mind."

Strat was known to live within the necromancer's curse- and without it, if current rumor were true. He knew Ischade's household as no other living man knew it. Likewise, he was the Stepson's interrogator-a superb judge of a man's willingness to talk and the worth of what he said.

"I'll talk to him, then," Walegrin agreed, wishing he had a larger fraction of Molin's canniness. The Stepson had gotten the upper hand in their conversation. He was sitting, silent and smiling, while Walegrin was sweating. The younger man pondered possibilities and motivations, listened to the lonely hawk, and abandoned all attempts at subtlety. "Strat, you didn't come here to help me do my job with that wrecked hawkmask and it's not safe for a Stepson to be east of the processional-so why're you here?"

"Oh, it's about a hawkmask: Jubal." Strat paused, bit an offending fingernail, and spat into the darkness for effect. "He made an agreement with me and I want you and yours to honor it."

Walegrin snorted. "Commander-this had better be good. Jubal made an agreement with the Stepsons?"

"With me," the Stepson said through taut lips. "For peace and quiet. For no confrontations while Sanctuary has imperial visitors. For business as usual as it used to be. He's pulling back; I'm pulling back. The PFLS will be exposed and we'll take care of them-permanently. Consider yourself honored that I think we need your voluntary cooperation."

"What cooperation?" Walegrin snapped. "Are we the ones rampaging through the streets? Are we running rackets? Strong-arming merchants? Did we turn the town on its ear, then run off to war leaving the locals masquerading in our places? You want to take care of the PFLS-there wouldn't be any PFLS without the high and-bloody-mighty Third Commando and there wouldn't be any Commando without you and yours. Dammit, Commander, I haven't got a headache you didn't cause one way or another."

Straton sat in stony silence. There'd never been any love lost between the regular army soldiers, enlisted to the service of the Empire, and the elite bands like the Stepsons or the Hell-Hounds, bound only to the interest of the gold that paid them. For Straton and Walegrin, whose orders-keep the peace in Sanctuary-were identical and whose positions-military commander-were untenably identical, the antagonism was especially acute.

Walegrin, having spent the better part of his life in blind admiration of the likes of Straton, Critias, or even Tempus, expected the Stepson to blast them out of their conversational impasse. He felt no relief when, after long moments of staring, enlightenment overcame him: Strat was out of his depth and sinking faster than he, himself, was.

"All right," Walegrin began, leaning across the makeshift table, forcing the anger from his voice the way Molin did. "You've got the garrison's voluntary cooperation. What else?"

"We're changing the rules-some of the players won't like it. The PFLS is going to push-"

Walegrin raised a finger for silence; the hawk's cry rose and fell in a new pattern. "Keep talking," he told the Stepson. "Don't look around-we're being watched. Thrush?" he asked the darkness.

"There was one following him-" a voice explained from the shadows behind Walegrin's back. "He's up on the roof over your right shoulder-with a bow that'll put an arrow through you both. There was another-no weapons that we could see- came up a bit later. Now the second's seen the first an' he's circling around."

"Friends of yours?"

"No, I came alone," Strat replied without confidence as a hiss that might have been an arrow crossed the open sky above them.

"Let's go," Walegrin ordered, pushing away from the barrel head.

The gods alone might know who had followed Straton, Walegrin thought as he crouched and ducked into the shadows where Thrusher was waiting for him. Every Stepson had enemies in this part of town and Strat had more than most. He might even have enemies who'd kill each other for the privilege of killing him.

Walegrin couldn't indulge in expectant curiosities, though- not with Thrusher picking a cat's path through the garbage ahead of them. His squads had patroled these warrens and knew where safe footing lay. He could only follow and hope Strat had the good sense to do the same. Thrush led them onto the nearby rooftops in time to see their bow-carying quarry land on the muddy cobblestones below.

"Recognize him?" Walegrin demanded, pointing at the receding silhouette.

"Crit."

Stepsons hunting Stepsons, was it? "After the other one," Walegrin barked at whichever of his men could hear. There were better ways to get information from Critias than risking a rooftop confrontation. He turned to follow Thrusher and realized that Strat hadn't moved since identifying his erstwhile partner.

"It's no time to be asking yourself questions, Straton."

"He came to kill me," Strat whispered, then stumbled on a loose roof tile and lurched toward the eaves.

Walegrin caught a fistful of shoulder. "He hasn't-yet. Now move it before we lose the other one, too."

Strat glowered and thrust Walegrin's arm aside.

The second interloper knew the backways of Sanctuary and was hugging darkness back toward the Maze and safety. Moonlight caught a youthful outline arching from one rooftop to the next and Thrusher's crablike scuttle as he followed.

"Not for the likes of us," Walegrin decided, judging the weight of the leather armor he and Strat wore. "We go below. It's our only chance."

He led the way, crashing through the rubble and needing Strat's help more than once to shoulder through a crumbling door or wall that threatened to block their way.

"Lost 'em," Strat muttered when they burst through a flimsy gate to find Lizard's Way deserted.

Walegrin cupped his palms around his lips and emitted a passable imitation of a hawk. "Gave it a good try, though," he added between gasps. "Worth a jug between us."

Strat was nodding when a hawk cried and a face appeared in the gutters above them.

"Round the alleys and back. Captain. We caught her."

"Her?" both men said to themselves.

Kama glared at the night from the calf-deep stench of a Maze rooftop rain cistern. Stupidity and bad luck. Another fifteen steps and she would have been so deep in the Maze they would never have found her, but not this time. This time the damn shingle had to give way and take her sliding down a rain trough. That was the bad luck. Stupidity was not knowing the trough ended in a cistern when she had taken this exact route a dozen other nights. She would have ignored the makeshift rope Thrusher dangled above her if survival weren't more important than pride or if her ankle weren't already swollen from the fall and her hands abraded by her efforts to free herself on her own.

She bore the indignity of being hauled up like a sack of dead fish, knowing that the worst was yet to come.

"0 gods, no-" a familiar voice breathed softly. "Not you-"

Kama refused to look in that direction but stared instead at the young-ish officer in charge of the garrison troops who had pursued, then rescued, her.

"Well," she demanded, "are you satisfied or are you going to drag me up to the palace?"

Walegrin felt his throat tighten. Not that he wasn't accustomed to seeing a woman in men's clothing-in a thief's night-dark clothing at that. This was Sanctuary, after all. The garrison soldier guarding their flank was a woman he'd hired himself and as nasty a fighter as was ever bred in the Maze. But the young woman standing in front of him, her wet clothes plastered to her and her long hair snapping like whips when she tossed her head, was the backbone and brains behind the 3rd Commando, and probably the PFLS, for that matter. Worse-she was Tempus Thales's daughter.

"Who sent you?" he stammered, and had the god's good luck to find the one question that would leave her as uncomfortable as he was.

"Did your... did Tempus send you?" Strat asked, stepping into the light of a freshly kindled torch.

Kama tossed her head, barely acknowledging Strat's question, and stood silent until Thrusher stepped forward and grabbed her weapon hand.

"Lady, you want to use this again?"

"Yes-let go of me-"

"Thrush." Walegrin moved to restrain his lieutenant who had already unstoppered his wineskin. "I'm sure the lady has her own... resources."

Thrush turned around, exposing the wound to the torchlight. Everyone in the courtyard who carried a sword felt a twinge. The skin on Kama's palm lay in twisted spikes cross-hatched with black splinters from the cistern walls; not a wound that killed but one that stole reflexes and precision, which was just as bad. Kama shed a fraction of her composure.

"Lady," Thrush stared up into Kama's eyes, "you got a good doctor in there?" He shrugged a shoulder Mazeward and pointed the wineskin at her palm.

"Are you any better?"

Thrusher bared all his teeth.

"He's not bad," Walegrin confirmed, "but the demon's piss he keeps in that sack of his is guaranteed." , "Given to me by my one-eyed grandmother...." Thrusher explained as a stream of colorless liquid spurted toward Kama's hand.

"It'll hurt like hell," a faceless voice warned from beyond the torchlight.

But Kama already knew that. Her face went white and rigid and stayed that way until Thrusher put the cork back in the wineskin. Strat offered a strip of his tunic as a bandage as her own clothing was as filthy as the wound had been. She seemed relieved when Strat put his hand under her arm.

"Why?" Strat asked in a voice Walegrin saw rather than heard.

"Go on back to the barracks," Walegrin ordered quickly but made no move to leave the courtyard himself. "We'll see the lady to her lodgings." He met Strat's glower and outlasted it. "You and I have a jug of wine to split," he explained when his men had vanished.

"Why, Kama?" Strat repeated. "Didn't he think Crit would carry out his orders?"

They began moving slowly toward the warehouse where Strat had left his bay horse.

"I've been following Crit," Kama admitted. "When I saw him with the bow-I don't know if he's got orders or not." She paused to tuck a hank of hair behind her ear. Whatever pain remained in her face had nothing to do with her injuries. "Nobody in the palace understands any more. They haven't set foot in the streets. They don't understand what's happening. ..."

Like everyone else who had spent the winter in Sanctuary- rather than in the palace, or Ranke or some relatively secure war zone-Kama had lived through hell. Walegrin guessed she would have more faith and friendship for anyone who had also endured those long, dead-cold nights on the barricades, regardless of the color on their armband, than she could feel for any outsider-even her father.

"It takes someone who's been out here to understand," he agreed, sliding his arm under Kama's other arm so she didn't need to put any weight on her twisted ankle. "There's one I trust. I'd trust him at my back on the streets and I trust him in the palace...."

Molin Torchholder slouched back against the outstretched wings of a gargoyle. He would have preferred to be somewhere well beyond the city walls but winter was finally yielding to Sanctuary's fifth season: the mud, and he wasn't desperate enough to brave the quagmires masquerading as streets and courtyards. The palace rooftop was deserted except for workmen and laundresses who could still be counted on to leave him alone. He closed his eyes and savored the gentle warmth of the sun.

In a methodical fashion he reviewed the conversations and rumors that had passed his way. The garrison commander, Walegrin, was finally showing promise; acting on his own initiative, he had established friendly relations with Straton and Tempus Thales's daughter, Kama. That was a good sign. Of course, the fact that Straton was on the streets, cut off from both Ischade and the Stepsons and dealing with Jubal, was a bad sign. And confirmation that Kama was the intelligence behind the PFLS was the worst information he'd had in months- even if it wasn't a surprise. Tempus, never an easy man to predict under the best of circumstances, would be chaos incarnate if any of his real or imagined family turned on one another.

The whining hawkmask the garrison had interrogated had told them everything he knew, and a good deal he did not, about Ischade. Like Straton, the priest found it interesting that Ischade had rivals within her own household-rivals who could transform an Ilsig harridan into a Rankan lady. Molin knew the necromancer had been detaching herself from her magic since her raven had appeared on his bedpost with no message and less desire to return to the White Foal. If Ischade found her focus again, the bird would let him know by its departure. If she didn't, well: Jihan could protect the children, Randal would protect his globe, and the rest of magic could destroy itself for all he cared.

On the balance, then, the thoughts percolating through his mind were satisfying. The street powers-the Stepsons, Jubal, the 3rd Commando, and the garrison-were reining in their prejudices and rivalries without overt interference from the palace. Sanctuary-flesh-and-blood Sanctuary-would be quiet when the imperial delegation made its appearance. The disorganization of magic and the broodings of Tempus Thales seemed soluble problems by comparison.

"My Lord Torchholder-there you are!"

Prince Kadakithis's relentlessly cheerful voice dragged the priest from his reverie.

"You're a devilish hard man to find sometimes. Lord Torch-holder. No, don't stand-I'll sit beside you."

"I was just enjoying the sunshine-and the quiet."

"I can imagine. That's why I followed you-to get you while you were alone. My Lord Torchholder-I'm confused."

Molin cast a final glance at the glimmering harbor and gave his whole attention to the golden-haired aristocrat squatting in front of him. "I'm at your service, my prince."

"Is Roxane dead or alive?"

The young man wasn't asking easy questions today. "Neither. That is, we would know if she were dead-a soul such as hers makes quite a splash when it surfaces in hell. And we would know if she were alive-in any ordinary sense. She has, in effect, vanished which we think, on the whole, is more likely to mean that she is alive, rather than dead, but safely hidden somewhere where even Jihan can't find her-though such a place is beyond all imagining. She might, I suppose, have become Niko herself-though Jihan assures us she would know if such a thing had happened."

"Ah," the prince said with an indecisive nod. "And the Stormchildren-nothing will change with them one way or another until she's either fully dead or alive?"

"That's a rather inelegant way of summing up a week's worth of argument-but I think that you're fairly close to the heart of the matter."

"And we don't want our visitors from the capital to know about her or the Stormchildren?"

"I think it would be safe to say that whatever chaos the witch could cause on her own it would be made immeasurably worse were it witnessed by someone, as you say, 'from the capital'."

"And because we don't know where she is, or what she's going to do, or when she's going to do it; we're trying to guard against everything and starting to distrust each other. More than usual, that is-though not you and I, of course."

Molin smiled despite himself-beneath that affable dense-ness the prince concealed a certain degree of intelligence, leadership, and common sense. "Of course," he agreed.

"I think, then, we're making a mistake. I mean, we couldn't be making it easier for her-assuming she actually is planning something."

"You would suggest we do something different?"

"No," the youth chuckled, "I don't make suggestions like that-but, if I were you I'd suggest that, rather than guarding against her, we put some sort of irresistible temptation in front of her-an ambush."

"And what sort of temptation would / suggest?"

"The children."

. "No," the priest chided, only half in jest now; the prince's suggestion had him thinking of intriguing ways to deal with both Tempus and magic. "Jihan wouldn't stand for that."

"Oh." The prince sighed and got to his feet. "I hadn't thought about her. But it was a good idea, wasn't it-as far as it went?"

Molin nodded generously. "A very good idea."

"You'll think about it then? Almost as if I had inspired you? My father said once that his job wasn't finding the solutions to all the Empire's problems but inspiring other men to find the solutions." Molin watched the prince make his way back to the stairway, greeting each group of laborers. Kadakithis had been raised among the servants and was always more confident, and more popular, among them than his aristocratic relations suspected. He might astound them all and become the leader Sanctuary, and the Empire, needed.

The priest waited until the young man had reentered the palace before quietly making his way toward a different stairway and the Ilsig Bedchamber where he would promote the prince's notions and his own inspirations to those most able to implement them.

Jihan was bathing Gyskouras when the Beysib guard announced him. She handed the inert toddler to a nursemaid with evident reluctance and headed for the door with the long, rangy stride of a woman who had never worn anything more confining than a scale-armor tunic. Water was her element; she glowed where it had splashed against her.

For a moment Molin forgot she was a Froth Daughter, remembering only that it had been well over a month since his wife had left him and that he had always been attracted to a more predatory sort of woman than was socially acceptable. Then an involuntary shiver raced down his spine as Jihan passed judgment on him; the flash of desire vanished without a trace.

"I was expecting you," she said, stepping to the side of the doorway and allowing him into the nursery.

"I didn't know I was coming here myself until a few moments ago." He lifted her hand to his lips, as if she were any other Rankan noblewoman.

Jihan shrugged. "I can tell, that's all. The rabble," she gestured toward the doorway and the city beyond it, "aren't really alive at all. But you, and the others-you're alive enough to be interesting." She took the Stormchild, Gyskouras, from the Beysib woman's arms and went back to the obviously pleasurable task of bathing him. "I like interesting..."

The Froth Daughter paused. Torchholder followed her stare to its target. Seylalha, the lithe temple-dancer and mother of the motionless toddler in Jihan's arms, was doing a very attentive job of wiping the sweat from Niko's still-fevered forehead.

"Don't touch that bandage!"

Seylalha turned to meet Jihan's glower. Before becoming the mother of Vashanka's presumed heir, the young woman had only known the stifling world of a slave dancer, trained and controlled by the bitter, mute women whom Vashanka had rejected; she seldom needed words to express her feelings. She made a properly humble obeisance, cast a longing glance at the child, her own son, Gyskouras, cradled in Jihan's arms, and went back to stroking Niko's forehead. Jihan began to tremble.

"You were saying?" Molin inquired, daring to interrupt the fuming creature who was both primal deity and spoiled adolescent.

"Saying?" Jihan looked around, her eyes shimmering.

If Jihan had not had the power to freeze his soul to the bedchamber floor, Molin would have laughed aloud. She couldn't bear to see something she wanted in the possession of anyone else and she always wanted more than even a goddess could comfortably possess.

"I wanted your advice," he began, lying and flattering her. "I'm beginning to think that we should seize the initiative with Roxane, or her ghost or whatever she's become, before our visitors from Ranke arrive. Do you think that we could bait a trap for her and-with your assistance, of course-catch her when she came to investigate?"

"Not the children," she replied, clutching the dripping child to her breast.

"No, I think we could find something even more tempting: a Globe of Power-if it looked sufficiently, but believably, unattended."

Jihan's grip on Gyskouras relaxed, a faint smile grew on her lips; clearly she was tempted. "What do I do?" she asked, no longer thinking of children, or even men, but of the chance to do battle with Roxane again.

"At first, convince Tempus that it's a good idea to give the appearance of doing something very foolish with the Globe of Power. Suggest to him that he could solve the problems within the Stepsons by letting them prove to themselves and everyone else that Roxane is dead and powerless."

"Tempus? He spends more time with his horses than he does here with me or the Stepsons. I'd like to do more than talk to Tempus." Her smile grew broader when she mentioned the man who was, by Stormbringer's command, her lover, companion, and escort during her mortality. "The two of us alone could take the globe and the witch...."

Molin felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. Jihan had taken the bait, embroidering his notions with her own, mortally incomprehensible, imagination. If he could not lure her back to plans he could shape and control, the exercise would become a disaster of monumental proportions.

"Think of the Stormchildren, dear lady," he said in what was both his most unctuous and commanding voice. "Think of your father. You can't leave them behind-not even to travel with Tempus or to destroy the Nisibisi witch."

Jihan wilted. "I couldn't leave them." She patted Gy-skouras's golden curls apologetically. "I must put those thoughts behind me." With her eyes closed, the Froth Daughter focused divine determination against mortal free will until her shoulders slumped in defeat. "I have so much to leam," she admitted. "Even the children know more than I do."

"When the Stormchildren are well again, then you will travel with them to Bandara; you will leam everything that they learn. For now, though, only you can sense Roxane through her deceits and disguises. Tempus can devise a trap for her-but only you will know if she falls into it."

She brightened and Molin almost felt sorry for Tempus. The mercenary would have no choice now but to close ranks within the Stepsons and concoct the tactics necessary to lure Roxane out of her hiding .place; no one, not even a regenerating immortal, could stand for long against Jihan's enthusiasm. The priest relaxed, then caught a flicker of movement at the comer of his eye. Niko had pushed away from Seylalha's tenderness and was staring, with his one unbandaged eye, off into nothingness. Perhaps he had heard them mention Bandara? Perhaps-? Molin shook his head, preferring not to think at all about any other possibility.

The hand that reached out of the darkness to grab Molin's shoulder had the strength of an iron trap. It was only by yielding to its force, collapsing and rolling through the mud, that the priest avoided becoming a prisoner of his assailant. He scrabbled for balance, tearing a small knife free from the hem of his priest-robe's sleeve as he scanned the courtyard for some detectable sound or movement. Then he saw the silhouette and threw the knife aside; no four finger blade would deter Tempus for long.

"I've taken all I'm going to take of your schemes. Torch." The mud squished as the big mercenary took a step forward. He leaned down and hoisted Molin to his feet by the front of his robe, then pressed him against the damp brick of the palace wall. "I warned you once-that's more than you deserve."

"Warned me of what? Warned me that you're in over your eyes with capital politics that have no meaning in this town? You want Sanctuary quiet when your high-and-mighty usurping friends get here-well, what are you doing about it? You started off well: you got Roxane's Nisi globe; drove her into hiding- but you haven't done anything since." Molin's voice was cracking from the pressure Tempus put against his breastbone but it could not be said that his courage had failed him as well.

"The streets will be quiet-I've seen to that."

"Straton saw to that. You can't take credit for the acts of a man who thinks you've issued orders to have him killed by his partner, Riddler."

Tempus gave the priest one last, vicious shake, then released him to slide down the wall to his proper height.

"But this scheme of Jihan's-of yours. Torch, it's beneath you, using her against me like that. We've got all our vulner-ables in one place and the strength to guard them. It's no time to be traipsing through the countryside splitting our forces."

"I'm a siege engineer, Riddler. I build walls and I tear them down. It took our golden-haired light-weight, Kadakithis, to point out how predictable our tactics have become. I've got one idea for luring the bitch into the open-but I don't want to try it. I was counting on Jihan's provoking you into coming up with something better."

"And if she doesn't?"

"I'll bum the portrait that little Ilsigi painter made of you, Roxane, and Niko."

"Vashanka's balls. Torch-you aren't afraid of anything, are you? We better talk this through. Where've you got that painting now? Still here in the palace?" Tempus took Molin's arm, more gently this time, and led him toward the West Gate of the palace.

"It's where it's always seemed to be, Riddler," Molin said as he shook free of the other man's assistance. "But don't think that because you can see it you can reach it. Randal's taught me a bit about hiding things in plain sight."

They went through the gate in silence, not because of the tension between them though it was as thick as the perennial fog-but because they were both aware that the walls were the most porous part of the palace and that nothing private should be said in their shadow. They continued in silence, Tempus leading, through the better pans of town into the Maze and toward the Vulgar Unicom where, improbably enough, privacy was sacred.

"I'd leave that picture wherever you've hidden it if I were you, priest," Tempus warned after he'd bellowed their orders toward the bar,

"Certainly it would be cleaner if the little ginger-man had painted a simpler picture. I gather he's had more problems with things coming to life. He claims not to know at all what happens when his paintings cease to exist."

Molin looked at a recently replastered section of the wall, still noticeably less grimy than the rest and completely unmarked by grafitti or knife gouges. Lalo had painted the soul of the tavern there once and a score of people had died before it had been laid to rest again. Both men were thinking about the painter's unpredictable art when a warty, gray arm thrust between them.

"Good beer. Special beer for the gentlemen^" the wall-eyed bouncer with the garish orange hair said with a smile that revealed corroded, and not quite human, teeth.

Tempus froze and Molin, whose aplomb was sturdier, took the mugs.

"A fiend, I should think. Not quite what Brachis and his entourage will be expecting when they order a drink. If we're lucky they'll blame it on the beer," Molin commented as the acid, lifeless brew crossed his lips.

"Hers," Tempus said and hid his face behind his hands. After a moment he raised his eyes. "And nobody notices. Roxane's fiend is ladling the Unicorn's swill and no one bloody notices'"

"A living fiend, my friend. You've been away too long. In this part of town being alive, in your own life, is all that really matters."

Tempus sighed. He drained the crudely made mug and motioned for another round. Now that he had adjusted to the smoky light, Molin could see that the Riddler's eyes were bloodshot and the skin around them was bruised from exhaustion.

"I should kill you for that, too," Tempus said, rubbing his eyes, making them redder. "A bad habit, you said. There's a magician-The Dream Lord, Askelon; my brother-in-law- he overstepped himself at the Festival of Man, as you may have heard. Been exiled to Meridian by greater powers than his own. Usually I don't have to worry about him but now, thanks to you, he's always right there at the comer of my mind, waiting to get into my dreams."

"He gets into everyone else's dreams and they're none the worse for it, Riddler."

"Not into my dreams, damn you!" He took the second mug from the fiend without a flinch, downing it as he had the first.

"More beer? Good beer for the gentleman?" the fiend inquired. "Snapper Jo gets good beer for the gentleman. Snapper Jo remembers this gentleman, this soldier. Mistress made sure Snapper always remember... Tempus."

Tempus's hands were on Snapper Jo's throat; Molin's were on a long, wickedly efficient knife but the fiend only smiled. He knotted the muscles in his warty neck and belched his way to freedom.

"Just where is your Mistress?" Tempus demanded, rubbing his knuckles.

The creature shrugged and crossed its eyes. "Don't know," he admitted. "Snapper went looking for her. Nice dark lady asked Snapper to look for the Mistress."

"Did Snapper Jo find his Mistress?" Molin asked.

"No, not find. Look everywhere-look in hell itself. Not find. No Mistress! Snapper Jo free!"

The notion overwhelmed Snapper Jo. He hugged himself, trembling with joy, and went back to the bar without another thought for the two men watching him.

"If we believe him, then she's not dead," Tempus admitted. "If I'd believe a fiend," he corrected himself. "Torch, I talked to Niko about all of this. He says he's free of her-free like he hasn't been in years. I believe Niko, Torch. There's nothing left of Roxane except memories-and bad habits."

It was Molin's turn to bury his head in his hands. "Niko and the fiend: both free of Roxane. Thank you, Riddler-I'll believe the fiend. He says he looked in hell and didn't find her; Ischade sent him to hell looking for Roxane and he didn't find her there. Now, Niko, I'll wager he not only told you that he was free of Roxane but that all our precautions were unnecessary. I'll wager he told you that he could take care of the Stormchildren all by himself."

"All right. Torch. We'll tell Niko we're moving the globe and the kids-and then we'll watch him. We'll even send a little procession out past the walls to one of the estates. But by Enlil, Vashanka, Stormbringer, and every other soldier's god-you're wrong. Torch. Niko's free of her-she's nothing but nightmares to him. Maybe there's something still after the Stormchildren-or the globe-but not Roxane and not through Niko."

Tempus set his ambush for the night of the next full moon. Walegrin muttered a number of choice, unreproducible words when half of the garrison was pulled off duty to shovel dirt, patch roofs, and in other ways make a tumble-down estate north of the city walls look like the prospective home for what Tempus called his "vulnerables." His muted protests erupted into a full-scale tirade when, by noon of the appointed day, it was clear that any advantage to having the charade on the night of the full moon would be offset by one of Sanctuary's three-day torrents.

The palace parade ground was an oozing morass which had already foundered three good horses-and it was clear sailing compared to any other street, road, or courtyard. It would be well nigh impossible to get the carriage from the stables to the gate much less up the slopes to the estate. Walegrin pointed this out to Critias as they huddled down under oiled-leather cloaks and slogged across the parade ground on foot.

"He says, use oxen," Crit replied impassively.

"Where am I supposed to get a team of oxen before sundown?"

"They're being provided."

"And who's going to drive them? Has he thought of that? Oxen aren't horses, you know."

"You are."

"The bloody hell I am, Critias."

They had reached the comparative shelter of the stable doorway, where the water gushed off the eaves in streams that could, with care, be avoided. Critias removed his dripping rain helmet and wrung it out.

"Look, pud," he said, tucking the hat into his belt, "I don't make up the orders. Orders come from the Riddler and your man, Torchholder. Now when those oxen get here, you hitch them to the carriage and drive them out to the estate. If they're," he pointed a thumb back toward the palace, "sitting tight with their gods, everything will go according to plan-somehow. And if they're not then you could be the best bloody drover in the world and it wouldn't make a whore's heart's bit of difference."

Thus, some hours after nightfall, Walegrin found himself still in his oiled leathers standing beside the ungainly rumps of a pair of oxen. Randal was slowly making his way down the rain-slicked stairs clutching the skull-sized package containing his Nisibisi Globe of Power. The mage wore a ludicrously old fashioned panoply which hindered his already over-cautious progress. Tempus looked uncomfortable as he waited under the stone awning with a child tucked under each arm.

"Almost there," Randal assured them, glancing back toward the torchlight and, as luck would have it, overbalancing himself just enough to slip down the last three steps.

There wasn't a person, living or dead, within Sanctuary who hadn't heard a rumor or two about the witch-globes. Walegrin dropped his torch and lunged for the package. His efforts were, however, unnecessary as the package hung politely in mid-air until Randal stumbled to his feet and reclaimed it. The effect was not lost on Walegrin or any of the dozen or so others detailed to escort the oxen-or on Tempus who came down the stairs behind Randal to deposit his silent, unmoving bundles within the ox-cart.

The mage and the mercenary commander exchanged whispers which Walegrin couldn't hear above the sound of the rain. Then Tempus shut the door and came up beside Walegrin.

"You know the route?" he inquired.

Walegrin nodded.

"Then don't move off it. Randal can-take care of the magic regardless but if you want protection from anything else you stay in sight of the spotters."

With a noncommittal grunt Walegrin loosened the long whip from the bench beside him and tickled the oxen's noses. Tempus stepped quickly to one side as the cart lurched into motion. The beasts had no halters or reins, responding only to the whip and the voice of their drover. Walegrin figured he'd try to keep everything moving from the driver's bench but he imagined, accurately as it turned out, that he'd be in the mud beside the oxen before they cleared the old Headman's Gate and lumbered onto the nearly deserted Street of Red Lanterns.

"It'll be dawn before we get there," Walegrin cursed when the rightside ox paused to add its own wastes to the sludge in the street.

But the man-high solid wheels of the cart kept turning and the oxen were as strong as they were slow and stupid. Straton and a pair of Stepsons joined the procession where it cleared the last of the huge, stone-walled brothels. Strat, a lantern dangling from the pike he carried in his right hand, brought his bay horse alongside the ox-cart. Walegrin gripped at a dangling saddle-strap for some security in the treacherous footing.

It was nearly impossible to keep the torches lit. The men on horseback were having a harder time of it than Walegrin and his team. Walegrin watched the mud directly in front of them and lost track of how many checkpoints or spotters they had passed. They halted once, when the undergrowth cracked louder than the rain, but it was only a family of half-wild pigs. Everyone laughed nervously and Walegrin touched the oxen with his whip again. Another time Strat spotted shadows moving above them on the ridge, but it was only their own men breaking cover.

They had reached the stony trail leading to the estate when the oxen bellowed once in unison, then sank to their knees. Walegrin dropped the saddle-strap and went racing back to the cart where his sword was stashed. The horses panicked, rearing up and collapsing as much from the bad footing as from the metallic drone every man and beast was hearing, feeling, between his ears.

"Do something!" Walegrin yelled to his passenger as he tugged his sword free of its scabbard. The first touch of En-librite steel against his skin made a shower of green sparks, but it dulled the pain in his head as well. "Stop her, Randal!"

"There's no one out there," the mage replied, poking his head and shoulders through the cart's open window. His archaic armor, like Walegrin's sword, had a faintly green presence to it.

"There's damn sure someone out here!"

Walegrin stood on the drover's bench. Save for Strat all of the escort had been thrown into the mud; save for Strat's bay all the horses were either on their sides screaming or plunging into the morass of the fallow fields surrounding the estate. One horse, he couldn't tell which, shrieked louder than the rest- a broken leg most likely. Walegrin felt a rising tide of panic only marginally related to the dull roar in his skull.

Strat heeled the bay horse around as if it were a sunny day on the parade ground, then launched it at the only stand of trees in sight. Walegrin watched the bobbing lantern for a few moments before it disappeared.

"Move in. We haven't been hit yet," he yelled to the garrison men who, like himself, held the strange green-cast steel of Enlibar in their fists and were somewhat insulated from whatever assaulted them. "Well, do something, Randal!" he added for the benefit of the mage who had vanished back into the darkness. "Use that bloody ball of yours!"

As abruptly as it had begun, the droning ceased. Except for the one in the field, the horses quieted and got back to their feet. One of the men slogged through the mud groping for a torch, but Walegrin called him back to the circle.

"It's not over," he warned in a soft voice. "Randal?"

He crouched down by the window, expecting to see the freckled mage bathed in the glow of his magic. Instead he walloped his chin on Randal's helmet.

"Shouldn't you be doing something with that globe? Raising some sort of defense for us?"

"I don't have the globe," the mage admitted slowly. "We never intended to move it or the Stormchildren. Sorry. But there's no one out there, no one watching us in any way."

Walegrin grabbed the mage by his helmet and twisted it around until Randal was facing him. "There bloody well better be someone watching us-a whole damned estate full of some-ones watching us."

"Of course there is," Randal sighed as he freed himself. "But no one, well, magically inclined."

"What happened, then? The horses just decided to panic? The oxen just felt like sinking into the mud? I imagined there was a swarm of bees in my head?"

"No, no one's saying that," a familiar voice, Molin's voice, called from the nearby darkness. "We don't know what happened any more than you do." He swung down from his horse, handing the reins to one of the five garrison men who'd accompanied him down from the abandoned estate.

For once Walegrin was not about to be mollified by his patron's soothing phrases. His men had been endangered for nothing. A horse, no easy thing for the garrison to replace, was this very moment being put out of its misery. His complaints and opinions were still flowing freely when a lantern was seen to emerge from the trees.

"Strat?" Walegrin yelled.

There was no reply heard above the sound of the pelting rain. Each man silently put his hands back on his sword and waited until the bay was an arm's length from the ox-cart and Strat's grim, torchlit face could be seen clearly.

"Haught."

"What?"

"Haught," Strat repeated, throwing a piece of dark cloth onto the drover's bench. "And someone else-maybe Moria, maybe dead."

"Haught?" Randal poked his head out. "Not Haught. He's got Ischade's mark on him. I'd have recognized-"

"I'd recognize him before you would," Strat interrupted, and there was no one in the group who could gainsay that claim.

"Does that mean Ischade?" Molin asked nervously. They accepted the necromant as the lesser of the two witches, but even so neither was a force that any man. except Straton, was comfortable with.

"It means Haught. It means he wants the globe. It means he wants to be Roxane, Datan, or some other bloody magician. You can take the Nisi away from Wizardwall but you can't boil the treachery out of their blood."

Molin stood silent for a moment after Strat had finished. "At least, then, it wasn't Roxane. Tempus will be glad to hear that."

The other groups Tempus had assigned to guard the oxcart's progress were beginning to appear. Crit came up with a half-dozen Stepsons, most of whom appeared to have heard Strat's accusations or at least had no desire to look their erstwhile field commander full in the face. The 3rd Commando, or a good sized part of it, rode up from behind. Whatever Tempus's opinion of the operation, he'd made certain it didn't lack for manpower.

"I think we've found out what we wanted to know," Molin said, not quite takingcommand away from Strat, Crit, and Walegrin, but eliminating the need for them to decide who was in command. "Randal, borrow a horse. We'll head back for the palace. They'll want to know what's happened. Straton- you should probably come along. The rest of the Stepsons can lend a shoulder to the garrison men in getting this cart turned around and back to the palace. I'll leave it to you two," he nodded toward Critias and Walegrin, "to decide if you need the Third's help. I've arranged for brandy and roast meat to be waiting at the palace barracks: Be sure that everyone- regulars. Stepsons, and the Third if they want it-gets a share."

Molin waited until Randal had directed a docile-looking horse toward Straton before turning his own gelding away from the men gathered around the ox-cart. Critias had ridden down to talk to the 3rd and Walegrin was proving himself quite capable of getting the oxen to turn the cart around. A few riders from the 3rd split off toward Strat and Randal but most of them headed back toward the General's Road and whatever billets they had Downwind or near the Bazaar.

He held the gelding to a slow walk a good number of paces behind them. They were all Rankan people, allied in one way or another to the Emperor or the remnants of the Vashankan priesthood he was no longer on good terms with. They were probably as uncomfortable around him as he was around them but here they had him outnumbered.

The riders were well beyond the ox-cart and still a good distance from the walls when Molin felt the first twinges of divine curiosity. Blood-red auroras rose from the horizon; the ground heaved and stretched, moving him further apart from the others. Despite the rain soaking through every garment he wore, the priest felt a cold, nauseous sweat break out on his forehead and spread, quickly, until it reached his weak, suddenly numb knees.

Stormbringer.

Gathering every mote and shred of determination, Molin concentrated on weaving his fingers around the saddle hom. Not there. Not on a rain-swept field with Tempus's men all around him. His heart pounded wildly. He heard, but could not feel, the loose stirrups clanking against the lace-studs of his boot.

One step. One more step. The longest journey is made of single-

The red auroras rose until they touched the zenith. Molin felt the scream trapped in his throat as the god reached out and pulled him from his body, mind and soul.

"Lord Stormbringer," he said, though he had no proper voice in the featureless, ruddy universe where he met with the primal storm god.

You tremble before me, little mortal.

The roaring came from everywhere and nowhere. Molin knew it well enough to know it could be louder, more painful, and that the present modulation revealed a certain, dangerous, humor.

"Only a foolish mortal would fail to tremble before you, Lord Stormbringer."

A foolish mortal who seeks to elude me? I do not have time to waste searching for foolish mortals.

Here, in the god's universe or perhaps within the god, there was no place for hidden thoughts or verbal gymnastics. There was only nothingness and the raw, awesome power of Stormbringer himself.

"I have been such a foolish mortal," Torchholder acknowledged.

You trouble yourself with the opinions of those not sworn to me or the children. You know that all Stormgods are but shadows of me-as Vashanka is a shadow I have abandoned, the llsig god a shadow I have forgotten, and the one they call "Father Enlil" a shadow which shall not fall across Sanctuary.

"I did not know. Lord Stormbringer."

Then know now! The universe throbbed with Stormbringer's pique. I am Sanctuary's god. Until the children claim their birthright I am their, and Sanctuary's, guardian. Fear only me!

Of course they fear you. A second presence, feminine but no less awesome, wove its way through and around the presence that was Stormbringer. Mortals fear everything. They fear the woman's god more than they fear the man's god, and they fear a woman without a god most of all. You must tell them where to find the witch-woman who killed my snakes.

The deities twisted around each other but did not mix or merge. Molin knew he was in the presence of what was already being called the Barren Marriage. Yet there was something like mortal affection, as well as immortal lust, between these two. He felt the part that was Stormbringer contract, and an upright figure with the head of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the lower parts of a bull manifested itself out of the red mist.

"I cannot tell you where she is," the apparition said in a voice that was both male and female. "There are things forbidden even to me. Demonkind is brother and sister to you mortals, but no kin to gods. The S'danzo have the greater part of the truth; the Nisi witches have the rest.

"Roxane promised the souls of the children-or her own if she failed. She is not where you or I can find her-and she is not fallen among the demons. What I cannot find, what the Archdemon cannot find, must lie in Meridian or beyond."

Molin discovered that he, like Stormbringer, had become corporeal and, so far as he could tell, very much the man he had always been. Tracing his fingers along the familiar, imperfect embroidery of his sleeves, he considered what he knew of the topology of nonmortal spheres and Meridian, the realm of dreams where ASkelon held sway. He thought about ASkelon as well and reflected that if there were one entity-ASkelon hardly qualified as a man-who could both complicate and resolve their problems, the Dream Lord was that entity.

He made the mistake, however, of thinking that because he felt like himself, he was himself and slipped into rapid considerations as to which of the players would be best for the part.

"That is not for you to decide," the lion reminded Molin, baring its glistening teeth. "ASkelon has already made his choice."

"Tempus will not go."

"Give him this, then." Stormbringer laid a linen scarf across Molin's unwillingly outstretched hands.

The netherworld that was the gods' universe fractured. Molin held the scarf to his face for protection as the lion-head apparition became hard, dark pellets that beat him into a dizzying backward spiral. The scream he had left frozen in his throat tore loose and engulfed him.

"It's over now; relax."

A strong, long-fingered hand was wrapped around his wrist, pulling his hands away from his face. The hard pellets were wind-driven raindrops. His hands, Molin realized as he unclenched them, were empty. He was on his back-had fallen from his horse.

"You're back with us ordinary folk," the woman told him as she yanked on his cloak and twisted his torso until his shoulders were propped on a relatively dry pile of straw. "Are you all right? Your tongue? Your lips?"

He pushed himself up on his elbows. There wasn't a muscle, bone, or nerve that didn't ache-as it always did after Stormbringer. But it was, he told her while still trying to understand where he was and what had happened, nothing worse than that.

"They say that my... Tempus would bite through his lip, or break a bone. I never saw it. He wouldn't notice it, really. You're not him, though."

"Kama?" Molin guessed.

He was in some crude shelter-a lean-to the shepherds used, by the smell of it. The worst of the weather was deflected, anyway. She'd hung a lantern from the center-pole but it didn't provide much light and the priest had only seen Tempus's daughter a few times, mostly when she was considerably younger.

"I saw you stiffen up like that. I guessed what would happen. It wasn't Vashanka, was it?"

"No."

She squatted down beside him; the lantern lifted her profile from the surrounding darkness. She wore a youth's leather tunic, laced tight and revealing nothing. Her hair was twisted into a knot at the crown of her head and was clinging to her face in damp tendrils where it had come loose. She shuddered and went looking for her own cloak which, when she found it, was covered with mud and useless from the rain.

"Did the others go on?" Molin asked.

Kama nodded. "They'll have reached the palace by now. Strat knows I'm with you. He won't say anything."

Molin looked into the lantern. He should, by right, stagger to his feet and hie himself back to the palace. His life was full of gods, magic, and the intrigue that went with them. There was no room for love, or lust-especially not with Kama.

"You needn't have stayed with me," he said softly, shifting the focus of his analysis and persuasion away from politics.

"I was curious. All winter I've been hearing about the Torch. Almost everything that worked had your fingerprints on it. Nobody seems to like you very much, Molin Torchholder, but they all seem to respect you. I wanted to see for myself."

"So you saw me falling off my horse and foaming at the mouth?"

.She gave him a quick half-smile. "Will the Third actually share that brandy and meat?"

"I don't have the Empire or the priesthood behind me anymore," Molin admitted. "I can't coerce a man's loyalty and I can't inspire it either-I know my limits. I bribed the cooks myself long before I left the palace." A stream of water broke through the branch-and-straw roof, hitting him full in the face. "No one, if he's done work for Sanctuary, should be out on a night like this without some reward. If the Third went to the barracks, they got their share."

"What about you?"

"Or you?"

Kama shrugged and picked at the loose threads of a bandage tied around her right palm. "I won't find what I want at the barracks."

"You won't find it with the Third-"

Kama turned to stare darkly at him.

Stormbringer, the witches, the children: everything that was important in the larger scheme of things fell from Molin's thoughts as he sat up, closing his hands over hers. "-You won't find it with any of his people."

It was a thought that had, apparently, already occurred to her, for she unwound into the straw beside him without a heartbeat's hesitation.

They returned to the palace after the sky had turned a soft, moist gray but before, they hoped, any of those whom Molin had to see were awake. There was nothing to set them apart from any other weary, soaked travelers coming to shelter within the palace walls. Molin did not help her from the saddle or see to the stabling of her horse. True, he found himself gripped by an emotion uncomfortably close to sudden love, but not even that was enough to make him a fool. He would have said nothing if she had wheeled her horse around and headed back toward the Maze; he said the same when she followed him up the gatehouse stairs.

He led the way to the Ilsig Bedchamber where, in consideration of all that hadn't happened during the night, he expected to find Jihan, the Stormchildren, Niko, and the bedlam residents. He found, instead, a funereally quiet chamber with only Seylalha hovering between the cradles.

"The mere's guild?" Kama inquired, reading the same omens the priest did. "The mage's?"

Molin shook his head. His mind reached out to that distant comer where his Nisi magic heritage, the gods, or his own luck sometimes placed reliable inspirations. "With the Beysa," he said slowly, then corrected himself: "Near the snakes."

When the Beysib arrived in Sanctuary they had brought with them seventy of the mottled brown eggs of their precious beynit serpents. These eggs, packed in unspun silk, had been installed in a specially reconstructed room where a hypocaust kept the stones comfortably warm. The eggs had hatched before the start of winter and the room itself, filled with the fingerling snakes, had become the favorite haunt of the Beysa and her immediate entourage.

It had also become, because of the skill of the Beysib snake-handlers in preparing decoctions of any venom or herbal, the meeting place of all the palace healers. Jihan brewed Niko's vile unguents there and occasionally, when the other residents of the Ilsig Bedchamber objected loudly enough, administered them there as well. Molin knew he had guessed correctly when he saw Beysib snake-handlers milling forlornly in the hypocaust antechamber.

"You took your own time getting down here," Tempus grumbled as the priest entered the room. He might have added more, but he fell silent when Kama eased through the doorway as well.

Molin took advantage of the lull to look around. Crit caught his eye first because he, like Tempus, was staring at Kama as if she'd grown a second head. Jihan was here as well, though her smile was warmer than Torchholder had seen before. She set down a mortar brimming with dark, spiky leaves and embraced Kama as a long-lost friend. Her movement allowed him to see the real reason they were all in the uncomfortably warm room: Nikodemos.

The Stepson lay on his back, trussed like a roasting chicken and, though he seemed to be sleeping quietly enough now, his face was bruised and his hands covered with blood. Molin took a step closer and felt Tempus's hand close around his arm.

"Leave him be," he warned.

"What happened?" Torchholder asked, retreating until Tempus relaxed. "Randal said-"

"You guessed right," Crit interrupted with a bitterness that made the priest's blood run cold. "She made her move through Niko at about the right time."

"It was Haught," Tempus spat out the name. "Niko bolted for the window saying 'Haught'. It was a warning."

Critias ran his hand through dark, thinning hair. "But not for us. Haught was making his own moves and Roxane had to stop him."

"That's what Strat says," Jihan added.

"It doesn't matter whether Strat's right or not." Crit had begun pacing like a caged tiger. "It doesn't matter whether Haught's Ischade's catspaw or Roxane's. It doesn't matter if Jihan-"

"I didn't."

"-Told Niko about the double-shuffle with the globes. All that matters is that the witch-bitch had Niko. Again."

"What happened?" Molin repeated, though by this point he was getting a pretty good idea and was more interested in the shifting alliances of the threesome.

"When Jihan tried to keep him from jumping out the window he went berserk. It took four guards to hold him until she could get something down his gullet to keep him quiet," Critias explained calmly.

Molin moved closer to Niko, this time without Tempus's interference. The young man had taken a beating, but the priest wasn't looking for bruises.

"What about the mongoose, Chiringee?" he asked, examining the bloody tears on Niko's hands and wrists. "Randal said it was attuned to Roxane."

Jinan looked at Tempus, Tempus looked at the wall, and Crit's voice was a monotone: "It attacked him-and he killed it. Ripped it apart and started to eat it-didn't he?"

The Froth Daughter reached back to grasp Tempus by the wrist. "He was berserk," she said softly. "He didn't know what he was doing. It doesn't mean anything." Glittering crystals of ice and water formed in her eyes.

Critias gave them a malignant stare. When he reached the door he gave Kama the same stare, for reasons Molin could not begin to understand, then he shoved her aside. Molin felt the muscles tighten along his sword arm. It would be the height of folly-Kama fought her own battles and Critias was as cold a killer as moved through the shadows-but the Stepson would answer for that gesture.

"Roxane has taken Stealth?" Kama asked the frozen room. None of the rumors circulating in the Maze had presumed so much.

Tempus pulled his arm away from Jihan. "Not yet," he muttered as he followed Crit from the room.

Molin and Kama turned to Jihan who, with a slight nod of her head, confirmed their worst suspicion. Kama sank back against the wall, shaking her head from side to side. The Froth Daughter, for her part, reclaimed her mortar and went to kneel beside the slate-haired Stepson.

"He was drunk," the dark-haired mercenary said to herself. "Too much wine. Too much krrf. Too much everything." She closed her eyes, purging herself of grief and Niko with long, ragged breaths.

"It's not over yet," Molin told her, daring to take her arm and realizing, with some surprise, that he looked straight ahead, not down, into her eyes. "Last night I was with Stormbringer."

Her eyes widened but she didn't resist as he guided her from the hypocaust and past anxious snake-handlers.

"I have to talk to Tempus-convince him to do something he doesn't want to do. But it's far from over, Kama."

She nodded and slipped from his grasp. "I'll want to see you again," she said, holding his hand lightly as she stepped away.

"I have a wife. Sabellia's priestess and a noblewoman in her own right. She's staying out at Land's End with my brother, Lowan Vigeles, and she'll make whatever trouble she can." Molin swallowed hard, knowing that Rosanda had her good qualities as well but that they no longer meant anything to him. "I am the priest of a dead god and the nephew of a dead emperor. I walk a dangerous path in full view of my enemies-and I would not walk any other."

Kama laughed, a sensuous laugh that could get a man in trouble. "If I cannot walk through your doorway wearing gowns and jewels then you'll find me as I am outside your windows or already in your bedchamber." Then, with another laugh, she was gone-heading back to Jihan and Niko.

Molin returned to his quarters, ordering Hoxa to prepare a cauldron of hot water and to find, somewhere, dry robes and boots. The young man procured the bathwater and the boots, but when he came from the wardrobe with a fresh robe he brought an unwelcome surprise as well: a scarf of linen the length of a man's outstretched arms and the color of Storm-bringer's horizons.

"Have the day for yourself, Hoxa," Molin had mumbled as he drew the cloth through his fingers. "I need time alone."

He'd taken that time, sitting in a room that had been an arcane attic. Randal's Nisi globe remained not on his worktable; Lalo's triple portrait was not nailed to the wall behind him; Ischade's abandoned raven, in all its ill-tempered glory, was truly flapping from one perch to another, and now Stormbrin-ger's gift for Tempus had made its appearance as well. Unlike the other artifacts, the strip of cloth with its ordinary, girlish embroidery seemed innocent enough-until he considered that the sight of it was supposed to convince Tempus to risk sleep and a visit to the realm of Askelon.

The rain finally stopped. It would be days before the streets dried-if they dried at all before the next storm swept through. Molin tucked the scarf in a pouch and threw a cloak over his shoulder. There wouldn't be a better time to find Tempus. He didn't have to go far, just a sidelong glance out the window. The Riddler, followed closely by an exceptionally grim looking Critias, was coming to pay him a visit.

"That picture," the nearly immortal mercenary snarled, pointing above Molin's head as the heavy wood door slammed against the wall.

Pointedly ignoring the priest, Crit walked around to examine the picture closely. After touching it with his fingers he used his knife to scrape off a bit of the background-and got plaster-shavings for his efforts.

"It's not there, Critias," Molin warned.

"Get it," Crit ordered.

"You don't come in here giving me orders."

"Let him see it," Tempus asked wearily. "/'// make sure no harm comes to it."

Molin tried to concentrate. He'd been childishly pleased with himself when he'd hidden the actuality of the canvas while leaving its semblance plainly visible on the wall. It was hard enough for an apprentice of his experience to tuck something away in magic's shadows but now, with Tempus and Crit watching him impatiently, it was proving impossible to find it again. He had almost located the frayed edges when the door slammed open again and he lost them.

"You can't bum it," Randal said, the words coming between gasps for air. "No one knows what will happen when you do."

"We bum the witch-bitch when we bum it-that's what happens." Critias touched his knife to the facsimile ofRoxane's face as he spoke. "Find it," he added for Molin's benefit.

"We don't know what happens to Niko... or Tempus," Randal continued.

Critias fell silent and Molin, getting desperate, lucky, or both, closed his mind around the canvas and gave it a little tug. The image on the wall shimmered before vanishing and, with an unpleasant sulphurous discharge, the rolled canvas dropped to the floor at Tempus's feet. He reached down and held it in his fist.

"No," the big man said simply.

"We can't destroy the globe," Critias said as Randal shuddered in agreement. "We can't kill the Stormchildren." Molin's knuckles went white. "And now you're telling me we can't bum the picture. Commander, what can we do?"

Molin saw his opportunity open before him. Opening the pouch, he laid the scarf across the worktable and waited for reaction. Randal stared, Crit looked nervous, and Tempus jerked upright.

"Mother of us all," he sighed, laying the canvas on the table, taking the scarf in its place. "Where did you get this?" His fingers read the uneven stitches as he spoke.

"Stormbringer," Molin answered softly enough that only Tempus could see or hear.

"Why?"

"To convince you that you have to sleep; that you have to talk to ASkelon because Askelon's decided he'll only talk to you. And, more important, because Stormbringer thinks Askelon's got a way to reach Roxane."

"Thinks? The god thinks? He doesn't know?" He closed his eyes a moment. "Do you know what this is? Did he tell you?"

Molin shrugged. "He thought it would be sufficient to convince you to go where I'd already told him you had no intention of going."

"Damn her," Tempus said, throwing the scarf on the table and taking the picture again. "Here," he threw it at Critias, who let it drop to the floor, "do what you damned well want with it."