by Janet Morris
Tempus's return, however, when at last he had urged his filthy sable steed through the Outbridge station's gate, lightened the mood of the Stepsons quartered there.
The fact that their commander had already re-connoitered the town and knew in more detail than they just what sort of sorcerer's mischief they were up against made the senior Sacred Banders smile covertly and nod their heads when he'd passed by: they had orders from the Riddler now, orders none would hesitate to obey. It wasn't that any of them distrusted Crit or found him wanting as a tactical officer; it was simply that holding Tyse was more a task for gods than men—everyone knew that Tempus, now and always, had the Storm God whispering in his ear and the favor of the higher heavens.
Men who had been sullenly chewing straws on doorsteps set off trotting to their tasks. Swords were whetted, bucklers checked for rivets or straps worn thin; horses came out of their stalls and amulets out of their pouches—if the Riddler said a disruption of the parade was in the offing, then they'd be ready to keep the peace at any cost. Those who'd ridden through gouts of molten rock spewed from restless mountains with the Slaughter Priest would ride through worse for Tempus— he'd led them to victory on Wizardwall against the massed defenses of the archmage Datan and all his Nisibisi warlocks.
So as Tempus left his stables and the sable in the care of a grinning, zealous groom who mumbled shyly, "Glad to have you back, sir," he heard Stepsons whistling battle airs and Sacred Band pairs harmonizing hymns of war.
But before he'd reached his quarters, where he'd thought to shed his mud-heavy mantle and quench his thirst before seeking out Critias, the sight of Randal the Tysian Hazard on a horse made him halt, his fists upon his hips.
"Randal!" Tempus's gravelly voice rang out so that men paused in their tasks even on the battlements and looked on in silence. "I'd like to see you for a moment."
Randal dismounted, slapped his gelding's rump, and the old nag ambled toward its stall alone. The mageling, hitching up his swordbelt, approached Tempus with an uncertain but relieved smile upon his freckled face.
Swordbelt? Tempus looked again. By the time Randal was greeting him as befit a Stepson his commander, Tempus had determined that it was indeed a swordbelt Randal wore and that a kris, of all weapons, depended from it.
Ignoring protocol or even politeness, Tempus demanded: "Where did you get that kris? What are you doing with a weapon like that?"
The startled mageling blinked twice, his feelings hurt; even in the oddly colored light of this enchanted dawn, his flush was obvious. "Doing with it? Nothing much, as yet. Aškelon gave it to me. Isn't it wonder—?"
"Aškelon!" Tempus thundered, one fist pounding an open palm. "What have you done?" He cursed himself silently. No mage was beneficent. No sorcerer was trustworthy. Not even this harmless-seeming youngster had a single moral or ethical fiber in his entire body.
"Done?" Randal almost shouted back, his voice quavering with temper. "Done? I brought Niko back, as I was ordered—as a Stepson, I've so often been told, always does obey his orders. Without question! No one said to me, "Bring him back but keep shut of Meridian, if it should appear in your path in the middle of an empty sea!" I brought him back by way of Meridian and I assure you, commander, the choice of port was hardly mine! And I'm supposed to be paid for it with the stand to my globe, which Critias promised—"
"I'll pay you for it, if you've let Aškelon get his claws into—" Before he could speak Niko's name aloud, where so many ears were pricked, or before he said the next thing on his mind and expelled the mageling Randal from the Stepsons with an appended prohibition from associating with any man of his henceforth, Tempus marshaled his anger. If things were getting witchy, as they seemed, he needed Randal, his one sworn mage, right now. So he continued, in a quiet tone, "I'm assuming that both you and your partner suffered no ill effects from this visit—correct me if I'm wrong."
Randal, his bony arms crossed, inclined his head, his face suffused with blood from rage or embarrassment—Tempus hadn't time to determine which.
"Good. Then go in my behalf to your archmage and ask him for an opinion on the meaning of this weather and whether he will join with us in attempting to ensure an uneventful and pleasantly routine harvest festival. Then—"
"I'm not going anywhere until I get my globe's stand… sir!"
Tempus had to chuckle. "Who's got it—Crit, is it? Yes? Well, come along. We'll see you in possession of your trinket and you can tell me your opinion of how Niko fared with Ash."
"Ash? Oh, the dream lord. I can't tell tales, not even to you. You know the Stepsons' oath—you wrote it. As for that 'trinket'—give it here, and we won't need my archmage… or any help from anywhere but herel" Randal tapped his shallow chest, puffed out to its fullest. "Indeed? Then let us hurry." So it was that Randal, on the way to Critias's quarters, told Tempus about the evening's dual disappearances—those of Grillo and of Shamshi— and explained that he'd just returned from Hidden Valley, where he'd left the Mygdonian prince in Jihan's "capable hands."
"Good. Thank you, Randal." On Grit's office steps, Tempus paused and gave his orders gently. "Find Niko, will you, and bring him here. I'll have your reward for you as soon as you return."
"Niko? All right." Randal seemed disappointed, then he brightened. "We'll soon clear up this foul weather, once I've got it."
Tempus nodded absently and the mageling hurried off, a slight figure in the cobalt-shadowed dawn.
Crit, when Tempus found him pacing back and forth in his bedroom where Kama lay bandaged and a local healer was applying leeches to her wounds, was more troubled than Tempus had ever seen him. Even Crit's sardonic smile sat askew on his stubbled face as he suggested softly that the tiny room was too crowded and they'd best talk out front.
"I told you to stay away from her," Tempus said without preamble.
"I thought we'd burn that bridge after we'd crossed it. I couldn't leave her alone… not like this. She's virtually a stranger here—the locals don't care for fighting women, Jihan avoids her, she makes the pairs nervous… This state she's in… it's my fault. I sent her out with a task force patrol and they ran into a death squad with incendiaries as well as superhuman members… demons, white-eyes, the lot."
This speech, Tempus realized, was one Critias had long been preparing. He gazed at his second in command steadily.
Crit, crossing to his front room's table on which lay a blanket-wrapped bundle, an oil lamp, a half-eaten meal, and a copper humidor, motioned to one of the two chairs. "Have a seat, commander. I've got some flat beer and this…" As he spoke, Crit rolled a smoke, then another, and held one out to Tempus. "Say some damn thing… relieve me of my command or whatever you're going to do."
"Is that what you want?" Tempus took the broad-leaf Crit held out and lit it from the oil lamp, sinking down into the chair opposite his first officer with a deep, rattling sigh. Since the god had left him, though his regenerative abilities remained and his stamina and sleeplessness also, physical fatigue was no longer strange to him: his muscles ached from riding.
Crit didn't answer until Tempus had blown out a long stream of blue smoke. "Want? I don't know what I'm supposed to want. I'd like Kama to recover, but the leech in there says it's no simple poison—it's some witch's brew. Of course, that's the kind of excuse you'd expect from one of them, but…" He spread his hands. "Strat's in town with Madame Bomba—he's sick too, and Strat's as strong as one of the god's bulls. Tonight, so far, we've lost and found both Grille and Sham—" "I know."
"Then you tell me whether we've got another sorcerous infestation on our hands or I'm just trying to excuse a total botch of things. I'm sure I don't know. But the pairs think it's Niko—as soon as he got back, this weather boiled up and everything I've tried to do turned to dung." Grit's smile, this time, was its normal, cynical self. "Stealth says, by the way, that he saw Oman the once-noble coming out of Grille's Lanes hidey-hole tonight. He also says that—"
A voice interrupted Grit's dour monologue f
rom the door which Tempus had left ajar: "—that it's more likely my fate than Grit's, causing all this trouble."
Tempus turned his head and saw Niko, wet hair slicked back from a recent bath, leaning in the doorway, Randal's head visible just behind. The young fighter wore no armor, only hillman's shirt and trousers, and his feet were bare.
Tempus wondered where the charmed panoply the boy had gotten from Aškelon was now—buried, most likely, in some forsaken spot; or on the bottom of the sea. Tempus remembered his own struggle against supernatural forces who craved a mortal representative. He thought he saw in Niko the loneliness of a man who fought a private war he knew he couldn't win. It was there for any knowing eye in the subtle changes this young fighter called Stealth had undergone: Niko's eyes, once merely shielded and blank to a casual observer, had retreated into his head. His movements, as he eased inside, made room for Randal, then closed the door and slid its bolt, were fluid, economical: no earthly threat weighed on Niko now. The boy had learned that death was not the worst that might await even him.
"Life to you, commander," Niko said with a commiserating smile, "and everlasting glory. I've come to see that Critias makes good his word and gives Randal, here, the stand for his warlock's globe. We need the use of it, from what I saw in town tonight," Niko reached behind and urged Randal to come forward, saying more softly, "Claim your prize, rightman. Then take it to the mageguild and see what you can do for us—for her." His gaze flickered to the other room, then returned to Tempus, where it stayed. "Randal thinks Kama's in receipt of some witchery meant for me or you from our old friend, Roxane. He needs a leave of absence."
"Done. Give it to him, Crit." Tempus took another drag upon the broadleaf and stubbed it out among the bones of quail on Critias's dinner plate.
Crit reached out without rising and hefted the blanket-wrapped bundle, then tossed it through the air toward Randal, who lunged forward fast enough to catch it.
Grit's lips twitched in disgust and he muttered, "Maybe it's fine and dandy now we've got our own resident Hazard-class adept, but I'm glad it's you, Riddler, not me, who gave the order and dispensed the weapon."
Randal, wrestling with the wrappings on the gilded stand, hadn't heard, but Niko did and gave his task force leader a withering look, saying, "I told you, Randal, that Crit would keep his word. Among Stepsons, it's necessity, not choice," and turned to open the door, adding: "I've got to see my partner to the mageguild gates. I'll be right back—"
"I'll go with you." Tempus rose, chuckled as he looked down at Crit, and clapped his first officer on the shoulder. "Don't blame yourself, or worry. Neither does a bit of good. What fools and gods and witches make, each party freely shares. As for the rest of us—those in between the victims and the manipulators—we simply do our best to help the innocents and save our own lives."
Crit stood up then. "Fine. Good. Then go say something to your daughter, who may not last the night, who only wanted to help—to earn her sire's respect, to take part in a saga worth retelling. You should hear her poetry. If she lives, she'll surely win first prize at the Festival of Man. Or rather, would have done: if her life's in Randal's hands, we'd best start felling timber for her pyre."
"Wait outside, Randal, Niko," Tempus ordered, putting himself between his task force leader and Niko's eloquently reproving look until the pair had gone.
Then: "Crit, you're not in love with that woman? She's 3rd Commando," Tempus reminded him. "She's not capable of love, only of using you."
"What's she using me for? To find herself an early death? I've done my best at that. I'd rather light her bier than have her live because of magical intervention. She won't like it if she owes her life to Witchy-Ears, out there."
"I want you at the reviewing stand in my place this morning. Get Straton and put your task force out among the populace. Keep off the actual parade route, in case the ground is hungry yet, though." The only cure Tempus knew for what ailed Crit was work and lots of it. "And watch this Oman; Niko's hunches are worth heeding. When the parade's done, send every Stepson not on crucial duty over to Bomba's to help rebuild her place. Put two senior band pairs out at Hidden Valley; I want the Mygdonian boy under surveillance, around the dial. I'll be keeping Jihan with me. From what I understand, her father may be looking in on us, by and by."
Crit raked a hand through feathery hair. "Anything else, commander? Raise the dead? Move Tyse lock, stock, and barrel out of harm's way?"
"Yes, now that you mention it: stay away from Kama. I don't want to have to tell you again. You've got a task force to love and nurture. She's not a member of it. Once we hear yea or nay from her superiors on the proposed sortie north, she'll be on her way. I don't want her taking you with her."
"You're sure she'll live that long?"
"I'm sure. When it comes to women plaguing us, this unit doesn't get that lucky."
But when Tempus was alone with Kama, he found himself moved by her plight, even distressed. Touching each leech in turn with wooden swabs lit from the candle by her bed, he caused them to loose their hold, then slowly and methodically he crushed each one beneath his heel.
"Healer?" Kama's voice was weak, uncertain. "Crit? Critias, is that you?" Her hand reached up toward the wet cloth over her eyes; his met it there and grasped her fingers.
"It's Tempus. I told you to stay clear of Crit. When you're well enough, I'll spank you until your bottom's blue."
She smiled faintly. "I can't wait. I'm… sorry."
"I see you are. Any word from your friends in the capital?"
"Not yet." Her face was shiny with sweat and he could see her frame twitch as the poison did its work. Her grasp was weak in his; she shuddered and he wished he'd known her better. Then she seemed to forget that he was there; her grip grew limp and her mouth moved as she whispered words he leaned close to hear. But these words she spoke were not for him: she recited poetic works in which he figured in some heroic part.
He shook his head and, as quietly as he could, left her. So foolish, to think that words in songs or stories were worth this kind of risk. Words of power belonged to the archmages and the politicians, to the generals in the field. And they had no time for art or hidden meanings. She sought what? Some ephemeral glory for herself through making a folk hero out of him? Some propinquity of the spirit she had not had, indeed could not have, in flesh?
If Kama died of this foolishness, Tempus decided—leaving Crit behind with just a wave answered by a smart salute—it was no worse a death than that a killer wolf might earn by exposing himself to crossbow quarrels atop a mountain where he must bay at the moon. But it was no better, either. A woman who craved heroics was like a dog who longed to talk or a horse who ached to fly: what could not be had was imbued with a value beyond what was natural, or attainable, or real. But then, she was his daughter, after all.
* * *
In the mageguild, Randal sat alone in his little tower room. He'd said goodbye to Niko and to Tempus behind the Outbridge stables. It was no more difficult for him to remove himself to his quarters by means of magic than to endure another trek by horse. Aškelon's handkerchief might not last forever; he didn't want to waste its power. And he didn't want Tempus to interrogate him or Niko to watch over him with that fondly distant look.
Here Randal was secure, alone, an upwardly mobile Hazard, not a fumbling semi-Stepson.
The floor of his room was flagged with marble. He took the precious golden stand with its arcane runes and ball-and-claw feet and set it in the middle of his spiral power glyph.
Why couldn't Stealth be content to be chosen by Aškelon, more humane and more powerful than many a bloody god who demanded never-ending sacrifice and laughed with garlicky breath in its desperate penitents' faces? If Aškelon had chosen Randal for such an honor as the one Niko deemed a curse, the seventh-level Hazard would have risen to the occasion with all his might.
But the fighters were inscrutable; they loved their war and death and picking through the bones of time to sort
out right from wrong, good from bad, evil from holy, honor from dishonor.
Even Tempus, who knew better, played this silly game and justified it by the end results, whatever they turned out to be.
So, as Aškelon's single willing adherent and Tern-pus's single magical ally, Randal could not fail to prove himself worthy.
With hands atremble in anticipation, he got his globe from its warded chest, almost forgetting the power-lock he'd spoken over it so that he had to say the reversion spell twice.
With the globe poised over the stand, Randal cleared his mind and ordered his tasks: in these he must not, would not, fail. He'd foil the curse which wrapped Kama tight, which any adept could clearly see and even Niko had noticed. He'd give Niko the - courage to accept his fate and the strength to meet his challenges. He'd help the Riddler win his peace—for that, he knew, was what Tempus wanted most of all—and protect Bashir on high Wizardwall, even if it was Roxane whom Randal had to oppose. And his gut told him it was in truth Death's Queen, she who coveted Niko once and perhaps lay in wait for Randal's partner still. Randal had previously found within himself the bravery to fight against Nisibisi wizardry, against Roxane herself, for those he loved. And though he was a mage, committed, he neither felt nor was evil. He supped on no souls. The energy he needed, he took from the resonance around him as planes rubbed upon planes; he worked in harmony with nature, not against it.
But this was a Nisibisi globe he sought to use, to tame and turn to his purpose, the very globe the Nisibisi archmage, Datan, had used to bring coherent evil upon this and other towns.
So Randal was very careful as he set the globe upon its stand. It could be that in order to save those he loved and prove himself the whitest of mages, he must expose his very soul to all the evil he'd these long years been content to do without. He might become a soul-sucker, a contractee of powerful demons, or worse. But he would do it for the best of reasons, without a thought to personal gain.