by Janet Morris
"Archmagical abodes?" Sturm repeated, frowning.
"In our way?" Niko rose up, steadying himself on the table. "What is it?"
"Meridian," Randal said offhandedly, aping Niko's habit of delivering the most startling news in the calmest of demeanors. "The shadow lord's home. Surely you've heard of it, Sturm, even in Bandara? Aškelon's archipelago? The land of dreams?"
Entering Meridian's harbor through clouds rain-bowed like its furled sail, the little trireme shipped its oars and glided by dint of magic smoothly into port.
The waters she plied were calm as glass; the crystal quays she sought, inviting. Few mortals' craft had made this harbor in all the days of time. Meridian was not kind to uninvited guests. The island chain which was part and parcel of Aškelon's mystique partook of more than the dream lord's legend: it shared his power, knew his thoughts, and when it manifested as a phenomenal place with latitude and longitude it had awareness all its own. Treasure-seeking plunderers who thought to fill their holds with the gold pavings of these streets found themselves in sinking ships whose iron nails deserted oak and pine and flew off through the air and whose bronze rams and boarding hooks melted like flaming wax long before their prows parted this harbor's waters.
For Meridian belonged as much as Aškelon to the seventh sphere and that shadow life that men forget while waking. Her populace, her golden streets and homes and barques and palanquins— all became wholly real and fully living, here and now, only when the trireme's hull passed through the rainbow gate, so that the joy of its denizens at this visitation was nearly boundless.
And Aškelon, lord of Meridian, of dream and shadow, entelechy of the seventh sphere, deep below the quayside in his foundry where fires roared high and metal poured like water, readied gifts for these two most welcome guests: Nikodemos, whom Aškelon's heart desired beyond any other earthly adherent, and the promising junior wizard Randal, whom the dream lord had used as a proxy to help young Niko more than once before. The third party with them, Sturm, late of Bandara, was an unexpected guest.
Through every eye and ear and wave and dolphin dancing playfully alongside the trireme, Aškelon kept tabs on the galley's progress. He had too much to accomplish and no time to spare to greet them with mere ceremony: Meridian had arisen from this foreign sea half a world away from where it was accustomed to manifest; even the lord of dreams could hold the archipelago here only so long.
Thus he had sent Cime, his consort for a year, a half-reformed sorcerer slayer and free agent, to greet his guests. This woman, who squatted now like a soldier on the outermost quay, was Tempus's sister and the one who had come to Aškelon with this scheme to engineer a meeting with the mortal Nikodemos. She had almost killed Aškelon once, nearly destroyed Meridian when it manifested in its accustomed place as it did only when the gods and elementals made their millennial peace and Aškelon took a wife to ease his loneliness. Then Cime had come in the guise of that wife and used her arcane evil and her diamond rods to wound him so that Meridian shriveled into clay and settled back into the sea. Later, he had forgiven her, made a bargain with her, traded with the gods upon her account and left his betrothed, Jihan the Froth Daughter, with Tempus in his hellhole world to seal the pact. But still, he could not trust her.
So he watched, very carefully, as she boarded a barge and, with three nymphs attending her and six dolphins gaily towing her, put out to meet their guests halfway. Cime, who called him "Ash" as her brother dared to do and pronounced him "boring," "dull-witted," and "vain," was still both assassin and whore: the curse which made her thus would not be lifted until her year with him was done. And mages such as Randal were her favorite prey.
In the pot of white-hot metal, nearly ready to be worked, he could see her clearly: her hair black and silver like his, her statuesque beauty like a figurehead tall against the wind in the pleasure-barge's prow, her fine and haughty features the double of his own save for what animated them from within. For Aškelon's face was scored with compassion, with the weight of a race's broken dreams and all its dreams to come. Cime, on the other hand, did battle with all the nightmares of excess; she knew the opposites of virtue thoroughly: she was queen of harpies, mistress of the cutting tongue, priestess of murder and lust.
As such, he thought—smiling to himself as he thrust bare hands into a cauldron of boiling hot metal to draw out ensorceled iron for a special blade he'd create with the hammer of his fist—she was an admonition to those he'd brought here: what Aškelon offered could not be had without cost. He knew what they dreamed of having, both the mageling and the young warrior; he knew their dreams more intimately than even they, as he knew Cime's nightmares and her brother's dreamless soul. He could offer much, but he could not coerce.
He'd sent young Niko a gift horse as fine as any Tempus had received, and the boy had abandoned it. He had sent Randal intimations and guidance fitted for so noble and mystical a spirit. He had sent Cime to greet them because temptation and danger must accompany them hither. Aškelon, who had traded away much for regency of the seventh sphere and become a contractee to what abided on the far side of heaven, knew better than his visitors how important was tribulation and the element of choice in life. Greatness accretes; one pays as one goes.
He knew this because he was not selfless; he had goals and troubles of his own, gargantuan efforts under way. Success with Niko, his choice among a multitude of possible mortals, would secure Meridian so that never again could a well-meaning but accursed soul like Cime threaten destruction upon it.
For this, he had labored. For this, he would take Randal as his apprentice and even move an archipelago from one side of the world to the other. Already, he could feel the strain of his labors, the possibility of failure like a sad mantle weighing down his shoulders. These were not wise, seasoned souls, but just the children of men. And Aškelon had learned, on the brink of dissolution Cime had brought him to, that inherent value in a cause is no guarantee of success.
And so he had embarked upon this program of honorable risk, with a world to lose and a viper in his bed—this creature Cime who did not understand the value of salvation through dreams or even the meaning of love.
Lovingly, he drew out the white-hot iron in his bare hands, cupping it, speaking over it, enjoining it to serve rightly in his cause. Then, ladling it slowly onto the anvil of his knee, he began creating the recurved kris, a short serpent of a sword which would serve his purpose in this world long after he and his archipelago had faded from it.
* * *
As the nymphs beside her twittered girlishly, and the dolphins drawing her barge slowed to come alongside the trireme, and Niko, boarding plank in hand, scowled when he recognized her, Cime mused that killing was as much a social function as was mating. Cime had been doing both for hundreds of years. She killed mages, mostly. In her mating partners she could not be so choosy: an archmage had cursed her to wander eternally, giving herself for pay to all comers, yet incapable of love.
If she had been capable of love, she would have bestowed it on one like the Stepson, Nikodemos. Twice before, upon encountering him, she had found herself deeply in lust. And, after dull aching months on Meridian, where its surfeit of peace and beauty made her feel as if she'd gorged on sweets, she'd concocted a plan to coax him here, playing on the dream lord's weaknesses. It was she who'd come to Critias in a dream and moved him to send Randal for Niko. Now she intended to convince Aškelon to let her leave with them to win her brother's war. She knew she could: Aškelon had everything he wanted but the allegiance of the young fighter Nikodemos. Ash hadn't been able to resist a meeting face to face with Niko, who wore Ash's smithery, but so far—by dint of luck and mental discipline and Tempus's protective intervention—had not acknowledged Aškelon as his patron.
Cime rose, fixing her diamond wands in her hair and smoothing an aspect of youthful, raven-haired beauty over herself like fine raiment. Though she'd met Niko before, she'd never succeeded in seducing him; though he knew who and what she was and th
us could not be fooled, he might yet be vulnerable to the sort of spell she had in mind. She held out her hand, a signal she was ready to come aboard.
Niko took her wrist, steadied her as she trod the boarding plank, his mouth tightly drawn with wariness. Randal the young adept was behind him, oblivious to the nymphs who should have been distracting the mageling by now. The nymphs, foolish and full of laughter, hung upon the virile, hulking stranger who stood by the trireme's tiller.
He was no problem, but Randal, the wizard in training, might be: she could feel the mage's ties to infernal realms. Her fingers itched to slay him—it was her curse and her vocation, together, taking hold. But Randal didn't feed on souls; if wizards ever were benign, as Aškelon claimed to be, then this Randal was such a one. She controlled herself, smiled at him, greeting him civilly in Nisi. She might need him to bend his left-side leader, Niko, to her will.
Niko had not spoken to her, only nodded. As soon as she stood safely aboard, he had let go her hand and retreated toward the bow where he now stood, watching, as if physical distance could protect him from his own desire.
It was Randal who questioned her as to why they had been brought here, and Randal to whom she responded that he must ask Aškelon, who had contrived this meeting. And when Randal, pulling on one ear, insisted that she must know some salient details, she smiled. "I can't say. But I will give you a hint, which you may pass along to your silent, shy friend up there." She indicated Niko with an inclination of her head. "Adherents in the phenomenal world are necessary to 'benign' powers, who get lonely in their semimaterial realms. And who is this?" Ignoring any response Randal might have made, she moved sternward.
The young mage scrambled out of her path as if her touch would scald him, saying hastily, "Sturm. Sturm's a Bandaran… student. Sturm… Cime, her ladyship, mistress of Merid—"
"Mistress of the land of boredom, Sturm," she interrupted, the while thinking that, though she needed Randal, this insolent adept of the Bandaran school qualified for the kind of death she yearned to bestow. "All this beauty, the sparkling piers, the azure harbor, the crowd on the dock… look closer, don't be dazzled like the parade of fools before you. Those nymphs you fondle—" The three were hanging on Sturm like nubile courtesans. He had one hand on a pair of breasts, one between two buttocks, a third nymph cuddled between his legs. "Meridian's out of step with human needs and human blood. Three days among these smiling, dazed denizens and the place will wear upon your nerves," she warned truthfully.
"As it does on yours?" Close behind her, Niko's voice sounded.
She turned and looked up at him, reached out to touch the dirk slung on a belt at his hip. This close, her body could woo his, calm his fears, ease his doubts. She stroked the hilt of his dirk while he tried to ignore the innuendo but held his ground, protective of his fellows. She answered softly that Meridian had become a prison, an irritant, that she was a damsel in distress, in need of rescue, a boon for which her brother would repay him handsomely.
"Are you sure? If I were Tempus, I'd want you right where—"
"Give me a token, Niko, and we'll see where you want me," she said sotto voce, hoping to twine their fates by the mechanism of her curse. "This dirk will do, or even a Tysian copper." She caught his gaze in hers, then, and held him fast by it. Her nymphs, as they had been instructed, did what they could to distract Randal. Dreams told her this young fighter who could not back away from her advances had been celibate for months; her fame and her illusion did the rest.
She'd wanted the dirk, but even half-entranced, Niko was too cautious for that. He dug in his pouch slowly, like one moving in a dream, and came up with a coin. It was gold. She took it, dropping it between her breasts. He watched it disappear beneath her white tunic and when it was gone he still stared there, his brows knitted.
"I didn't mean—" he began.
"It's the gods who move us, Nikodemos, you and I. We'll fight my brother's war together, and win. You know how he is. Without my help, he'll make a fiasco of it."
"That's why Aškelon did this?" Niko's hand gestured to the quayside, coming close now. As he did, Sturm roused himself to prepare to make the galley fast.Cime smiled at Niko. Beyond, the singing throng thickened; behind, she heard Randal's tread, his admonition to the nymphs to "Stop hanging on me! I've got to dock this ship!" She said, "That is why I did this." She took her hand from the dirk's hilt and Niko, as if released, stepped back, muttering that he'd better help Randal,
Cime didn't realize, then, that taking the coin she'd craved from Niko had set in motion forces she could not control.
* * *
The sorcerer-slayer Cime, who had killed more mages than Randal had teeth, leaned close to him as the ivory-screened wagon in which they were riding stopped and Niko vaulted out. "So, you're twirling Datan's globe these days?" she whispered sweetly, her thigh brushing Randal's knee as she moved to follow Niko. Sturm growled in wordless frustration when she patted his head in passing, saying, "Come, come, my little Bandaran monk, there's nothing to fear here but a chance meeting with your own inadequacies."
The mention of Datan, the vanquished Nisibisi mage, had sent a chill down Randal's spine which did not pass, but curled now around his tailbone as it often had when as wolf or dog he'd done covert business for Tempus or the archmage he'd served but never met—Aškelon, entelechy of dreams. Randal had never expected to meet the dream lord. Meridian was a state of mind, a mythos, not a place to wrestle with one's fate in daylight.
But in daylight they had ridden through halcyon streets where curious folk without the pinched faces of want or the rags of despair had smiled at them from doorways or shaken gaily streamered tambourines in their honor. Randal was sure beyond doubt that this was no dream or illusion. He and Niko and Sturm were really here, abroad in Meridian. He should have been elated. But here, where the benign Aškelon ruled, he felt the tremors of his own foreboding, even distress.
Following Sturm out of the wagon, and coming abreast of the Bandaran as Cime's swaying hips led them like a beacon up a shimmering walk into a cyclopean hall moist with ancient shadows, Randal admitted to himself that it was Cime the free agent who troubled him: her presence; her slightly crooked, ageless, and somewhat sullen smile which boded well for no mage or man; and especially the coin she had taken from Niko, who was innocent of the ways of magic and vulnerable, fresh from Bandara with all his ideals polished bright.
So as they descended in Cime's wake down ill-lit stairs up which a tangy metallic smoke wafted hot and stinging, Randal worked a protective ward over Stealth's ashen head bobbing before him. Of Sturm he took little notice—the Bandaran had not been at pains to make a friend of Randal. If Cime's attention could be turned to the son of Levitas, Niko might have time to come to his senses. So Randal took his warding spell for Niko and turned it into a reflective one; thus, whatever Cime aimed at Stealth would gravitate to Sturm.
More than that, Randal could not do. He had ethics, a moral code to which he must adhere. And in Meridian, more even than on the average day, his behavior must be above reproach.
Down they came onto a torchlit landing opening into a subterranean hall illuminated by fires that threw grotesque shadows against rough-hewn walls and aged pillars.
In the midst of this roseate light stood Aškelon, tall and full of grace, his brooding beauty underlit as if he stood over the infernal pit of hell.
Niko, up ahead, stopped still and said something to Cime, who slipped a hand through his arm so that Randal once again was sure that peril emanated from her fetching, ageless form. She hung on Niko, guiding him toward the fire and the cauldron and the entelechy of dreams who, in the captious light, seemed to hover, insubstantial, far above.
It was Sturm who saw the forge and who pointed it out to Randal. It was Sturm who invoked a timeless ward and warned the Tysian Hazard, "Be careful," as Aškelon raised a hand in greeting.
Then Cime stepped back from Niko's side. Randal shivered when she turned his way, not liking the way
the firelight glittered in her eyes. She approached him, taking his arm, saying, "You, too, mageling. The dream lord waits… don't fear." And: "Sturm, not you. Stay here; I'll rejoin you presently. We are merely witnesses, onlookers, you and I."
The distance Randal had to cross with Cime's arm in his was not great or far, but somehow, it took forever. And while he put one foot before the other, the combination of the seductress next to him and the white-hot forge ahead of him made Randal start to sweat. His mind raced with wards and spells and wizardly protections and, suddenly, like a bolt from heaven, a revelation came to him. He said, just before he and Cime came abreast of Stealth, who stood quite still, as if entranced, "Cime, my lady, I hope you know that this coin you've got isn't his, but mine." And as he spoke, he raised one hand breast-high and made the gold piece Niko had given her arise from its resting place between her breasts and hover in midair above them.
It was true: Niko had come out of Bandara penniless; Randal had given him all the extra gear, goods, traveling cash, and papers a right-side partner should thoughtfully provide.
Cime's perfect features quivered, folded into an aged crone's, reformed again into the beauteous mask she wore. "What's this? It's so—I see it now. Tricked me, have you, Randal?" In one swift movement she snatched the coin from midair. "Though I can't move against you while I'm in your debt, hear me well: you'll pay for this once our contract is fulfilled. And don't think you can hold me off forever—" Her hand flickered out, stroked up his thigh, patted him insolently, and then withdrew. "You'll succumb; it's good as done. And yet, I promise, you'll enjoy it—in spite of all you know."
Smiling sweetly once again, she drifted toward Sturm as Aškelon called Randal's name and drew him close by the sheer power of those eyes like melting ice.
Shoulder to shoulder with Niko, then, Randal stood, while the dream lord welcomed them to Meridian, saying, "Both of you have earned a special place in my heart and thus have special tasks awaiting you in the world of men."