He did that-her spectacular body, sheathed in muscle, taut and sensuous, was too powerful and yet too shapely to be mortal, but even so, he did not critique her.
"Then," she continued, rising up, hands on her impossibly slim waist, pacing as she spoke in a rustle of armor-scales, "consider my plight. To become human for the love of a demiurge, and then not to be able to claim him....It is done, I have this form, I cannot undo it until its time is up. And since I cannot collect satisfaction from her-he has forbidden me that pleasure-all the powers on the twelfth plane agree: I may have what I wish from you. And what I wish, I have made quite plain." Her voice was deepening. She took a step toward him.
He objected, and she laughed, "You should see your face."
"I can imagine. You are a very attractive . . . lady, and you come with impeccable credentials from an unimpeachable source. So if you are inexperienced in the ways of the world, brash and awkward and ineffective because of that, I suppose I must excuse you. Thus, I shall make allowances." His one hand raised, gestured, scooped up her loinguard and tossed it at her. "Get dressed, get out of here. Go back to your master, familiar, and tell him I do not any longer pay my sister's debts."
Then, finally, she came at him: "You mistake me. I am not asking you, I am telling you." She reached him, crouched down, thighs together, hands on her knees, knees on what had once been Jubal the Slaver's bed. "This is a real debt, in lieu of payment for which, my patron and the elementals will exact-"
He clipped her exactly behind her right ear, and she fell across him, senseless.
Other things she had said, earlier in passion, rang in his head: that should he in any way displease her, her duty would then be plain: he and Vashanka could both be disciplined by way of the child they had together begotten on one of Molin Torchholder's temple dancers.
He was not sure how he felt about that, as he was not sure how he felt about Askelon's offer of mortality or Vashanka's cowardice, or the positives and negatives of his sister's self-engendered fate.
He gave the unconscious woman over to his Stepsons with instructions that made the three he had hailed grin widely. He could not estimate how long they would be able to hold her- however long they managed it, it had better be long enough. The Stepson who had come from seeking Niko in Sanctuary found him, garbed for business, saddling a Tros horse in the stables.
"Stealth said," the gruff, sloe-eyed commando reported: " 'She said stay out of it, no need to fear.' He's staying with the archmage, or whatever it is. He's going to the Mageguild party and suggests you try and drop by." A feral grin stole over the mercenary's face. He knew something was up. "Need anybody on your right for this, commander?"
Tempus almost said no, but changed his mind and told the Stepson to get a fresh horse and his best panoply and meet him at the Mageguild's outer gate.
5
There was a little mist in the streets by the time Tempus headed his Tros horse across the east side toward the Mageguild-nothing daunting yet, just a fetlock high steaminess as if the streets were cobbled with dry ice. He had had no luck intercepting his sister at Lastel's estate: a servant shouted through a grate, over the barking of dogs, that the master had already left for the fete. He had stopped briefly at the mercenaries' hostel before going there, to burn a rag he had had for centuries in the common room's hearth: he no longer needed to be reminded not to argue with warlocks, or that love, for him, was always a losing game. With his sister's scarf, perhaps the problem of her would waft away, changed like the ancient linen to smoke upon the air.
Before the Mageguild's outer wall, an imprudent crowd had gathered to watch the luminaries arriving in the ersatz-daylight of its ensorceled grounds. Pink clouds formed a glowing canopy to the wall's edge-a godly pavilion; elsewhere, it was night. Where dark met light, the Stepson Janni waited, one leg crooked over his saddlehorn, rolling a smoke, his best helmet dangling by his knee and his full-length dress-mantle draped over his horse's croup, while around his hips the ragged crowd thronged and his horse, ears flattened, snapped at Ilsigs who came too near.
Tempus' gray rumbled a greeting to the bay; the curly-headed mercenary straightened up in his saddle and saluted, grinning through his beard.
He wasn't smiling when the Mageguild's ponderous doors enfolded them, and three junior functionaries escorted them to the "changing rooms" within the outer wall where they were expected to strip and hand over their armaments to the solicitously smirking mages-in-training before donning preferred "fete-clothes" (gray silk chitons and summer sandals) the wizards had thoughtfully provided. Askelon wasn't taking any chances, Tempus thought but did not say, though Janni wondered aloud what use there was in checking their paltry swords and daggers when enchanters could not be made to check their spells.
Inside the Mageguild's outer walls, it was summer. In its gardens-transformed from their usual dank fetidness by artful conjure into a wonderland of orchids and eucalyptus and willows weeping where before moss-hung swamp-giants had held sway over quickmires-Tempus saw Kadakithis, resolutely imperious in a black robe oversewn with gems into a map of Ranke-caught-in-the-web-of-the-world. The prince/governor's pregnant wife, a red gift-gown splendid over her child-belly, leaned heavily on his arm. Kitty cat's approving glance was laced with commiseration: yes, he, too, found it hard to smile here, but both of them knew it prudent to observe the forms, especially with wizards....
Tempus nodded and walked away.
Then he saw her, holding Lastel's hand, to which the prosthetic thumb of his disguise was firmly attached. A signal bade Janni await him; he did not have to look back to know that the Stepson obeyed.
Cime was blond, tonight, and golden-eyed, tall in her adept-chosen robe of iridescent green, but he saw through the illusion to her familiar self. And she knew it. "You come here without your beloved armaments or even the god's amulet? The man I used to know would have pulled rank and held on to his weapons."
"Nothing's going to happen here," he murmured, staring off over her head into the crowd looking for Niko; "unless the message I received was in error and we do have a problem?"
"We have no problem-" glowered Lastel/ One-Thumb.
"One-Thumb, disappear, or I'll have Janni, over there, teach you how to imitate your bar's sign." With a reproachful look that Tempus would utter his alias here, the man who did not like to be called One-Thumb outside the Maze lumbered off.
Then he had to look at her. Under the golden-eyed illusion, her char-and-smoke gaze accused him, as it had chased him across the centuries and made him content to be accursed and constrained from other loves. God, he thought, I will never get through this without error. It was the closest he had come to asking Vashanka to help him for ages. In the back of his skull, a distant whisper exhorted him to take his sister while he could ... that bush on his right would be bower enough. But more than advice the god could not give: "I have my own troubles, mortal, for which you are partly responsible." With the echo of Vashanka's last word, Tempus knew the god was gone.
"Is Lastel telling the truth, Cime? Are you content to face Askelon's wrath, and your peril, alone? Tell me how you came to half-kill a personage of that magnitude, and assure me that you can rectify your mistake without my help."
She reached up and touched his throat, running her finger along his jaw until it found his mouth. "Ssh, ssh. You are a bad liar, who proclaims he does not still love me. Have you not enough at risk, presently? Yes, I erred with Aske-lon. He tricked me. I shall solve it, one way or the other. My heart saw him, and I could not then be the one who stood there watching him die. His world beguiled me, his form enthralled me. You know what punishment love could bring me... . He begged me leave him to die alone. And I believed him... because I feared for my life, should while he died I come to love him. We each bear our proper curse, that is sure."
"You think this disguise will fool him?"
She shook her head. "I need not; he will want a meeting. This," she ran her hands down over her illusory youth and beauty, "w
as for the mage-lings, those children at the gates. As for you, stay clear of this matter, my brother. There is no time for quailing or philosophical debates, now. You never were competent to simply act, unencumbered by judgment or conscience. Don't try to change, on my account. I will deal with the en-telechy, and then I will drink even his name dry of meaning. Like that!" She snapped her fingers, twirled on her heel, and flounced off in a good imitation of a young woman offended b'y a forward soldier.
While he watched, Askelon appeared from the crowd to bar her path, a golden coin held out before him like a wand or a warding charm.
That fast did he have her, too fast for Tempus to get between them, simply by the mechanism of invoking her curse: for pay, she must give herself to any comer. He watched them flicker out of being with his stomach rolling and an ache in his throat. It was some little while before he saw anything external, and then he saw Nikodemos showing off his gift-cuirass to Janni.
The two came up to him wondering why it was, when everyone else's armaments had been taken from them, Niko, who had arrived in shabby duty-gear, had been given better than ever he could afford. Tempus drew slowly into his present, noting Molin Torchholder's over-gaudy figure nearby, and a kohl-eyed lady who might easily be an infiltrator from the Mygdon-ian Alliance talking to Lastel.
He asked his Stepsons to make her acquaintance: "She might just be smuggling drugs into Sanctuary with Lastel's help, but do not arrest her for trifles. If she is a spy, perhaps she will try to recruit a Stepson disaffected enough with his lot. Either of you-a single agent or half a broken pair-could fit that description."
"At the least, we must plumb her body's secrets, Stealth," Janni rumbled to Niko as the two strutted her way, looking virile and predatory.
With a scowl of concern for the Stepson to whom he was bound by ill-considered words, he sought out Torchholder, recalling, as he slid with murmured greetings and apologies through socialites and Hazard-class adepts, Niko's blank and steady eyes: the boy knew his danger, and trusted Tempus, as a Sacred Bander must, to see him through it. No remonstrance or doubt had shown in the fighter called Stealth's open countenance, that Tempus would come here against Askelon's wishes, and risk a Stepson's life. It was war, the boy's calm said, what they both did and what they both knew. Later, perhaps there would be explanations-or not. Tempus knew that Niko, should he survive, would never broach the subject.
"Torchholder, I think you ought to go see to the First Consort's baby," he said as his hand came down heavily on the palace-priest's be-baubled shoulder. Torchholder was already pulling on his beard, his mouth curled with anger, when he turned. Assessing Tempus' demeanor, his face did a dance which ended in a mien of knowing caution. "Ah, yes, I did mean to look in on Seylalha and her babe. Thank you for reminding me, Hell-Hound."
"Stay with her," Tempus whispered sotto voce as Molin sought to brush by him, "or get them both to a safer place-"
"We got your message, this afternoon, Hound," the privy priest hissed, and he was gone.
Tempus was just thinking that it was well Fete Week only came once yearly, when above him, in the pink, tented clouds, winter gloom began to spread; and beside him, a hand closed upon his left arm with a numbingly painful grip: Jihan had arrived.
6
Askelon of Meridian, entelechy of the seventh sphere, lord of dream and shadow, faced his would-be assassin little strengthened. The Hazards of Sanctuary had given what they could of power to him, but mortal strength and mortals' magic could not replace what he had lost. His compassionate eyes had sunken deep under lined and arching brows; his skin was pallid; his cheeks hosted deep hollows like his colossus's where it guarded an unknown sea, so fierce that folk there who had never heard of Sanctuary swore that in those stony caverns demons raised their broods.
It had cost him much to take flesh and make chase. It cost him more to remove Cime to the Mageguild's innermost sanctum before the disturbance broke out above the celebrants on the lawn. But he had done it.
He said to her, "Your intention, free agent, was not clear. Your resolve was not firm. I am neither dead nor alive, because of you. Release me from this torture. I saw in your eyes you did not truly wish my demise, nor the madness that must come upon the world entire from the destruction of the place of salving dreams. You have lived awhile, now, in a world where dreams cannot solve problems, or be used to chart the future, or to heal or renew. What say you? You can change it, bring sanity back among the planes, and love to your aching heart. I will make you lady of Meridian. Our quays will once again rise crystal, streets will glitter gold, and my people will finish the welcoming paean they were singing when you shattered my heart." As he spoke, he pulled from his vestments a kerchief and held it out, unfolded, in his right hand. There on snowy linen glittered the shards of the Heart ofAskelon, the obsidian talisman which her rods had destroyed when he wore it on his wrist.
She had them out by then, taken down from her hair, and she twirled them, blue white and ominous, in her fingers.
He did not shrink from her, nor eye her weapons. He met her glance with his, and held, willing to take either outcome-anything but go on the way he was.
Then he heard the hardness of her laugh, and prepared himself to face the tithe collectors who held the mortgage on his soul.
Her aspect of blond youthfulness fell away with her laughter, and she stepped near him, saying, "Love, you offer me? You know my curse, do you not?"
"I can lift it, if you but spend one year with me."
"You can lift it? Why should I believe you, father of magic? Not even gods must tell the truth, and you, I own, are beyond even the constraints of right and wrong which gods obey."
"Will you not help me, and help yourself? Your beauty will not fade; I can give youth unending, and heal your heart, if you but heal mine." His hand, outstretched to her, quivered. His eyes sparkled with unshed tears. "Shall you spend eternity as a murderer and a whore, for no reason? Take salvation, now it is offered. Take it for us both. Neither of us could claim such a boon from eternity again."
Cime shrugged, and the woman's eyes so much older than the three decades her body showed impaled him. "Some kill politicians, some generals, foot soldiers in the field. As for me, I think the mages are the problem, twisting times and worlds about like children play with string. And as for help, what makes you think either you or I deserve it? How many have you aided, without commensurate gain? When old Four-Eyes-Spitting-Fire-And-Four-Mouths-Spit-ting-Curses came after me, no one did anything, not my parents, or our priests or seers. They all just looked at their feet, as if the key to my salvation was written in Azehur's sand. But it was not! And oh, did I learn from my wizard! More than he thought to teach me, since he crumbled into dust on my account, and that is sure."
Yet, she stopped the rods twirling, and she did not start to sing.
They stared a time longer at each other, and while they saw themselves in one another, Cime began to cry, who had not wept in thrice a hundred years. And in time she turned her rods about, and butts first, she touched them to the shards of the obsidian he held in a trembling palm.
When the rods made contact, a blinding flare of blue commenced to shine in his hand, and she heard him say, "I will make things right with us," as the room in which they stood began to fade away, and she heard a lapping sea and singing children and finger cymbals tinkling while lutes were strummed and pipes began to play.
7
All hell breaking loose could not have caused more pandemonium than Jihan's father's blood-red orbs peering down through shredded clouds upon the Mageguild's grounds. The fury of the father of a jilted bride was met by Vashanka in his full manifestation, so that folk thrown to the ground lay silent, staring up at the battle in the sky with their fingers dug deep into chilling, spongy earth.
Vashanka's two feet were widespread, one upon his temple, due west, one upon the Mage-guild's wall. His lightning bolts rocked the heavens, his golden locks whipped by his adversary's black winds. Howls from the
foreign Stormbringer's cloudy throat pummeled eardrums; people rolled to their stomachs and buried their heads in their arms as the inconceivable cloud creature enveloped their god, and blackness reigned. Thunder bellowed; the black cloud pulsed spasmodically, lit from within.
In the tempest, Tempus shouted to Jihan, grabbed her arms in his hands: "Stop this; you can do it. Your pride, and his, are not worth so many lives." A lightning bolt struck earth beside his foot, so close a blue sparkling aftercharge nuzzled his leg.
She jerked away, palmed her hair back, stood glaring at him with red flecks in her eyes. She shouted something back, her lips curled in a flash of light, but the gods' roaring blotted out her words. Then she merely turned her back to him, raised her arms to heaven, and perhaps began to pray.
He had no more time for her; the god's war was his; he felt the claw-cold blows Stormbringer landed, felt Vashanka's substance leeching away. Yet he set off running, dodging cowerers upon the ground, adepts and nobles with their cloaks wrapped about their heads, seeking his Stepsons: he knew what he must do.
He did not stop for arms or horses, when he found Niko and Janni, but set off through the raging din toward the Avenue of Temples, where the child the man and god had begotten upon the First Consort was kept.
Handsigns got them through until speech was useful, when they had run west through the lawns and alleys, coming to Vashanka's temple grounds from the back. Inside the shrine's chancery, it was quieter, shielded from the sky that heaved with light and dark.
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