Soul of the City tw-8

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  But in the meantime, if she must fight for Straton, would she? She didn't know. She had a horse to raise, now, to see for certain what would happen. Strat would have more decisions to make tonight than one.

  Niko was holding one child under either arm when Tempus and Jihan came upon them in the nursery.

  One babe, Alton, had thumb in mouth; the other, Gyskouras, gave a single cry on seeing the interlopers.

  Then Gyskouras-god-child, Niko was certain-held out his tiny hands and Jihan, mayhem forgotten, stepped over a decapitated snake oozing ichor, her own arms outstretched and the red fires of Stormbringer's passion in her eyes.

  "Give him here. Stealth," Jihan crooned, calling Niko by his war-name. "My comfort's what he seeks."

  Niko's gaze flickered questioningly to Tempus, who made a sour face and shrugged, sheathing his sword and squatting down to examine the snake.

  Niko gave the child up to Jihan and shifted Alton, who immediately began to wail. "Me, too! Me, too! Take Alton, or tears come! Take Alton!"

  In moments, Jihan held both children, the dark-haired and the fair, and Niko was kneeling opposite Tempus, the snake between them.

  "Greetings, Commander. Life to you."

  "And to you. Stepson. And glory." The words were only formula tonight, an afterthought from Tempus, who had out a dagger and with it turned the snake's head toward him.

  "How did you kill this thing. Stealth?" asked the Riddler.

  "How? With my sword...." Niko's brows knit. His canny smile came and went and his hazel eyes grew bleak as he slipped his weapon from its sheath and laid it across his knee. "With this sword, the one the dream lord gave me. You mean it's not an ordinary snake?"

  "That's what I mean. Not a Beysib snake, anyway. Look here." He turned the snake and Niko could see tiny hands and feet, as if the snake had been starting to turn into a man when Niko's stroke had killed it.

  And the ichor, now, was steaming, eating like acid into the. stone of the palace floor.

  "Why did you kill it?" said the Riddler gently. "What made you think it would attack you? Did it threaten? Did it rear up? What?"

  "Because..." Niko sighed and tossed back ashen hair grown long enough to flop into his eyes. He'd shaved his beard and looked too young for what he was and what he'd been through; his scars were pale and the haunted look he bore made Tempus glance away. These two were each other's misery: Niko loved the Riddler and feared the consequences; Tempus saw in the youthful fighter the curse of a man the gods desire.

  "Because," Niko said again, voice low and heavy with words he didn't want to say, "Alton told me to. Anon-the dark-haired-he's the prescient one. He knows the future. He protects the god-child. I'm glad you're here. Commander. It's hard trying to-"

  But Tempus got abruptly to his feet. "Don't say that. You can't know it, not for sure."

  "I know it. My Bandaran... my maat knows what it sees. Maat-my balance, my perception-shows me too much, Commander. We have things to talk over; decisions must be made. These childlren must go to the western isles, else there'll be havoc. I don't want the blame of it. Gyskouras, he's yours ... your son-or your god's. I prayed.... Did the gods inform you?"

  Tempus turned away from the young fighter and the words came back over his shoulder to Niko and hit as hard as a blow from the Riddler's hand. "Abarsis. He came and told me. Now we're all down here. Why in any god's name didn't you just take them and go, if that's the answer? Theron will be here by and by." He turned on his heel and faced Nikodemos. "You're sequestered here like a babysitter while Sanctuary is torn by the wolves of civil war? Are you no longer a Sacred Bander? Do you command some regiment, a cadre of your own? Or did Strat give you leave to-"

  "It was by my order. Sleepless One," came an unctuous voice from behind: Molin Torchholder. The priest was accompanied by Kadakithis and by the prince's side was the Beysib woman, streaming tears, holding a dead and definitely Beysib snake in her arms and weeping over it as if over a stricken child.

  "Your order, Molin?" Tempus said and shook his head. "I own I didn't think you'd have the nerve."

  "He's trying to help, Tempus," said Kadakithis, looking worried and drawn, trying to comfort the weeping Beysib monarch and keep peace as best he could. "You've been away too long to judge this at face value. Nikodemos has been of exceptional help to the State and we thank you for his loan." The prince's eyes strayed to Jihan, a child on each hip and a beatific look in her inhuman eyes. "Let's go to the great hall and talk about this over food and drink. I warrant you're all tired from your long journey. We have much to decide and little time. Did I hear that Theron is coming? Tempus," Kadakithis's princely smile was strained and worried, "I hope you've told him good things of me-I hope, in fact, that you'll remember your oath. I wouldn't want to end up like my relatives in Ranke-spitted and bled out like pigs in the town square."

  If the curse-or its ghost-was still in effect, it would mean that all the Riddler loved were bound to spurn him and those who loved him doomed to perish.

  It was this that bothered him as he put a hand on Kadakithis's shoulder and assured the prince that Theron would look with kindness on Kadakithis's particular problems here in Sanctuary, that "he's coming because the Slaughter Priest manifested in the Rankan palace and told a soldier to look to the souls of his soldiers. That's why we're all here, boy-and lady."

  He didn't tell them not to fear. Both the prince/governor and the Bey matriarch were too familiar with statecraft to have believed him if he had.

  It wasn't until after dinner that everyone realized there were too many dead Beysib snakes in the palace for Niko-or the single snake he'd killed-to be responsible. And by then, it was nearly too late.

  Strat's horse was at the gate. The bay horse he'd loved so well, who'd carried him through so many campaigns. And Ischade was standing in her doorway, where night blossoms bloomed, watching with that look she had which cut through the shadows of her hood.

  She'd healed the horse, obviously. She had the healing touch, when she wanted to, had Ischade. He was so glad to see the bay, who nuzzled in his pockets for a carrot or the odd sweetmeat, it took him a while to clear his throat and make sure his eyes were dry before he turned to thank her: "It's wonderful having him back. There's not another in my string to equal him-not his size, his stamina, his conformation. But why didn't you tell me? I'd not have believed he could be..." His words slowed. He looked harder at her. "... healed. That's what you did, isn't it? Spirited him away somewhere after I had to leave him for dead, and nursed him back to health?" The horse's teeth felt real enough, nipping his arm for attention. "Ischade, tell me that's what you did."

  Her words were wispy as the wind. "I saved him for you, Straton. A parting gift, if this visitor of yours..." She pointed up the road, where a figure could be seen if one looked hard through the moonlight-a rider so far away the sounds of his horse's hooves were yet masked by the breathing of the bay. "If this visitor makes an end to what is-was-between us. It's yours to say."

  With that, she turned and went into her house and the door closed, of its own accord, with an all-too-final sound.

  He'd never heard it close that way before.

  He examined the bay from head to tail, from poll to fetlock, waiting for whoever it was Ischade said was coming, but he couldn't find a scar. It was bothering him more and more. He'd seen Janni, once a Stepson, now a decomposing thing motivated by revenge upon its Nisibisi murderers; he'd seen Stilcho, in better shape but still not one to be mistaken for a living man. But the bay was just exactly what he'd been-all horse, all muscular quarters and deep-hearted chest. The bay couldn't be a zombie horse. At least he didn't think it could.

  He was just thinking to mount up and see how it went when the approaching rider drew close enough to halloo: "Yo! Strat, is that you?"

  And that voice froze Straton like a witch's curse: it was Critias. Critias, his leftside leader; Critias, to whom he'd sworn his Sacred Band oath. "Crit! Crit, why didn't you tell me you were coming?"


  Crit just kept riding toward him, inexorable on a big sorrel. Crit, seeking him here. That meant that Crit had heard. That he knew, or thought he knew, the hows and whys of something Straton barely understood himself.

  They'd come together to Ischade's house the first time- met her together. Then, Crit had tried to "protect" Straton from the necromant. Now, if damage there was, it was done.

  Crit said, "Am I too late?" crooking one leg over his saddle and fishing in his pouch for the makings of a smoke. In Ischade's garden there was always a weird light and it underlit the line officer's face so that Strat couldn't tell what Crit was thinking. Not that he ever could.

  Something inside him tensed. He said, because there had been no Sacred Band greeting between them, "Look, Crit. I don't know what you've heard or what you think, but she's not like that...."

  "Isn't she? Still got your soul. Ace? Or wouldn't you know?" Crit's eyes were slitted and he fingered the crossbow hanging from his saddle.

  Strat noticed that there was an arrow nocked, and that the bow would fire, from that position, straight into him at the click of a safety and the touch of a trigger. He tried to shrug away the suspicion he felt, but he couldn't. "You're here to save me from myself? She's the only reason we've survived here-the Band, the real Stepsons-while you and the Riddler have been upcountry playing your palace games. I'm not asking you where you've been. Don't ask me how I've spent my time. Unless, that is, you're ready to be reasonable."

  "I can't. I haven't time. Riddler wants us to roust Roxane, get the Globe of Power and destroy it by sunup. Maybe your soul-sucking friend'll have a few ideas as to how to help us, if she likes you so well. If she does, maybe I'll let her live until you can explain. Otherwise..." Crit lit the smoke he'd rolled and the spark illumined a carefully arranged face that Straton knew wasn't one to argue with. "Otherwise, I'm going to bum her ass to a crisp and then do what I can to beat some sense back into you... partner. Before it's too late. So, you want to call her out? Or just come with me and we'll die like we're supposed to, shoulder to shoulder, fighting the Nisibisi witch."

  Strat didn't have to call Ischade; she was beside him, somehow, though he hadn't heard the door open or seen light spill out and he didn't think Crit had, either.

  She was so tiny in her cowl and long black cloak. He wanted to put an arm around her shoulder, dared not, then dared. "She's on our side, Crit. You've got to-"

  "The hell I do," Crit said, and shifted his gaze to her. "I bet I don't have to explain one whit to you, honey. I just hope you're not too hungry to wait awhile. We've got something on that's just your style."

  "Critias," said Ischade with more dignity than Strat would ever have, "we should talk. No one has been hurt, no one has to be. You come-"

  "-to get my partner. We can leave it at that."

  "And if he is unwilling to leave?"

  "Doesn't have squat to do with it. I've got responsibilities; so does he, even if he's forgotten them. I'm here to remind him. As for you, we can use you. Come help out, and I'll let you have your say-later. Right now, I've got orders. So does he." Critias gestured to Strat, who looked at Ischade and could not, in front of Critias, plead with her for patience, for help, or even for his partner's life.

  But Ischade didn't strike Crit dead, or mesmerize him. She nodded primly and said, "As you wish. Straton, take the bay horse. He'll serve you well in this. I'll ride your dun. And we'll give Critias what he wants-or what he thinks he wants." She turned then to Crit.

  "And you, afterwards, will give me the courtesy of a hearing."

  "Lady, if any of us can hear anything after sunrise, I'll be more than willing to listen," said Crit as Ischade raised a hand and Strat's dun trotted toward her.

  Roxane had been waked abruptly from exhausted sleep when Niko lopped the head from her finest minion-she would miss the bodyguard snake. And Stealth would regret what he had done.

  She'd paid a heavy price this evening; her thighs ached and her buttocks smarted as she got out of her bed and felt her way through the dark.

  Her Foalside home was small sometimes, large at others. Tonight, it was cavernous with all the forces she'd disturbed.

  She found her witching room and and sluiced the sweat from her body as she filled her scrying bowl herself.

  Then, trembling with pain and fury, she spoke the spell to open the well that held the power globe, and another to summon a fiend of hers-the slave named Snapper Jo who spied for her in the Vulgar Unicorn where he tended bar.

  Before the fiend arrived, she spoke her spell of utmost power and in the bowl she saw a fate she didn't understand.

  Men were there, and the cursed Beysa, and a goddess called Mother Bey locked in love or hate with Jinan's terrible father, Stormbringer. And these two deities straddled the winter palace while, inside, Niko played with children and Tempus with the fates of men.

  She trembled, seeing Tempus and Niko in one place-the very place where her surviving snake (more talented than most) slithered corridors in Beysib-snake disguise, biting and killing where he could.

  Good. Good, she thought, and brought back Niko's face to the surface of her bowl. But this time, the vision was not of him alone. Over one of Niko's shoulders she could see the Riddler-or the Rankan Storm God, whose aspect was the same; over the other, a woman's face and that face was comely in an awful way-her own.

  The meaning of it, remaining hidden, chilled her.

  She could do only so much; she had certain words to say.

  She said them and the dark witching room was lit with balefire. The light touched the globe in its hidey-hole of nothingness and the globe began to spin.

  If there was some bond of fate between her and egregious Tempus, the thread must be cut. Even if it were Niko's life, she must do the deed. And the baby god could not be suffered to survive. Both children's lives and souls were promised to a certain demon of her recent, intimate acquaintance.

  And the cold she felt, which raised gooseflesh on sanguine Nisi skin as smooth as velvet, which drew back lips as beautiful as any that had ever spoken death for men-that cold had to do with failing and winning, with perishing and surviving.

  As the door to her outer chamber shivered from something scratching on its farther side, she decided.

  She let the globe spin faster, let the colors from its stones bathe her in their light.

  A rushing wind filled the scrying room and in its midst was a woman's form, changing shape.

  Black mist spun around the comeliest of female guises. Black wizard hair grew long and covered limbs cut clean and meant to hypnotize any man. Her fine long nose grew chitinous, then hooked; her firm flesh sprouted feathers.

  And by the time Snapper Jo, still wiping his claws on his barman's apron, thought he'd better open up the door himself, an eagle with a wingspan ten feet wide stood where Roxane was before.

  And Snapper, her spy among the Sanctuary denizens, who tended bar at the Vulgar Unicorn, clacked prognathic jaws together and wrung his clawed and warty hands.

  "Mistress," he gurgled in his fiendish, grating voice, "is that you?" His eyes that looked every which-way squinted at the eagle swathed in dusky light. He squatted down, gray gangly limbs akimbo in submission. "Roxane?" said the fiend again. "Call Snapper, did you? Here I be, for what? Some murder? Murder do, tonight?"

  And the eagle cocked its head at him and let out a screech no fiend could misconstrue, then took wing and flapped by him, out the door, leaving him bleeding from a flesh wound made by claws much sharper than his own.

  Muttering, "Damn and damn and murder damned," the fiend scuttled after her. Looking askance at her black shadow in the moonless sky. Snapper Jo chewed a long orange lock of hair in dark frustration. To be human was his wish; to be free of Roxane his hidden dream. But sometimes he thought he never would be free of her.

  And the trouble was, at times like these, he didn't care. He was hungry as the night for blood; just the thought of carnage made him giddy.

  So he scuttl
ed on, following the eagle in the night, cackling wordlessly under his breath as Roxane, in eagle's guise, led him toward the winter palace, then lost him in Shambles Cross when he came across a fresh and bleeding morsel of a corpse.

  Jihan was alone with the two children, her scale-armor discarded, cuddling one to either breast on Niko's bed in the nursery when the snake, man-sized but silent, slithered in.

  The Froth Daughter was not human, but she was lonely. Tempus was no man for progeny-he considered nothing but himself.

  Jihan had wanted children of her own and been refused by him. Now, thanks to her father, fate, and Niko, she had two fine boys to care for-one of them Tempus's own.

  She would never give them up. She was ecstatic in her joy, and drowsy.

  Thus she didn't see the snake until it reared, fangs wide and gaping, and struck like lightning, biting Arton on the arm.

  Then, wide awake with two terrified babes to hold, one wounded and screaming, the other howling just as loudly, she cowered.

  To reach her sword or freeze the snake, arching high above the bed and glaring fire-eyed down upon her, she'd have to put down one or both children.

  This the frustrated mother could not do. She tried to shield Gyskouras with her body, interpose her own arm, even force it like a gag into the snake's gaping jaws.

  But the snake was wise and quick and its jaws unhinged, so that it bit right through Jihan's arm and punctured the godchild's flesh and shook the Froth Daughter and the child, stapled together by its fangs.

  Jihan wailed in rage and agony-a sound the like of which had not been heard in Sanctuary since Vashanka battled Storm-bringer in the sky at the Mageguild's fete.

  And that brought help, though she barely knew it as her body fought the poison and her arms, about the snake's neck, grew weaker as she wrestled it. Even Tempus and Niko paused in horror at the sight of Jihan locked in bodily combat with the viper, the god-child being crushed in between.

  Beside Tempus, Niko drew a breath and then reached out: "Riddler! Quickly! Take this dagger."