by Janet Morris
Meanwhile, Niko's armor gleamed and then glowed with antimagical heat and the Aškelonian stallion who bore that weight suddenly blared a challenge, rearing up. Walking on its hind feet, it interposed itself between young Shamshi and the Nisibisi witch across the battlefield who called to the boy while the troops of Mygdonia attacked the sleeping cadre in a multitude, pouring from the pitched tents which could never have held a fraction of their number.
As yet, only Randal's armored form, Niko's—on the ground, dismounted, grabbing up the boy—and the Riddler, in slow motion, moved among the defenders.
Where was the help she'd summoned?
Cime, then, decided not to wait, but dismounted, running as soon as her feet touched the ground first to her brother, to tap him on the shoulder and return to him his twice-human fighting speed, then toward the Nisibisi witch to whom young Shamshi was calling out "Roxane! Roxane! No!" as he struggled, held by the waist like a flour-sack, his fists pounding in vain upon Niko's glowing armor.
Tempus dashed at speed, now, toward the armored figure who held the writhing boy with one hand. Six Mygdonians, howling "Lacan is great," were closing fast upon them with only Niko's sword to worry about.
But even Tempus was not fast enough: the six closed in and with war axes swinging, hacked away the arm that held the child and, from behind, severed Niko's helmet, cleaving it in twain.
The Aškelonian screamed in rage and, riderless, stalked upon its hind feet among the enemy, cracking skulls and pummeling flesh.
All was chaos, by then. Cime glimpsed Tempus fighting a horde and Randal's crested helm barely visible amid taller adversaries.
Cime hadn't time to do more than wonder what was delaying Aškelon, whom she'd called upon for aid, and Jihan's father, who'd surely come to save his daughter from humiliation at the hands of the seven Mygdonians who, with one warlock directing them, were now pulling her from her horse to "have her now!"
Cime only looked back long enough to see young Shamshi run, not to Roxane, but to Jihan's side, before she turned away again to use her rods to clear a path toward her immortal enemy, Roxane, when from the sky above a rumbling, whistling, then whining sound began and escalated, and she looked up.
A tornado was forming above the combatants. The sound of it was deafening. Horses and men broke and ran or threw themselves to the dirt. The tents from which Mygdonians still came were gone in an instant. The tornado, Cime saw as she sprinted full speed toward Roxane, who must not get away, was moving slowly through the press as if it searched for someone: its little tail had not yet touched the ground.
In the distance, galloping horses could be heard approaching: Tempus's main contingent. They'd never get here in time, but Cime wasn't counting on the havoc mere men could wreak.
She'd called upon her consort and now, just before she would have her way and confront the Nisibisi witch, Aškelon appeared, pallid in the yellow light: Aškelon, shadow lord, lord of dreams, in black, with an ethereal nimbus about him, so that even the Mygdonians gave ground.
Walking calmly forward as if in Meridian, not on a battlefield where bolts whizzed by and horses neighed their pain and fury, he waved his hand and every spellbound fighter of the negotiating party woke and looked about, drawing weapons— swords and crossbows, javelins and flying wings— and launched themselves at the Mygdonians.
Still Aškelon came toward Cime, his arms outstretched to her, his eyes shadowed with all the death lurking here, so that she could not see Roxane any longer, so that even the whirlwind picking up fighters, lifting them high and throwing them to earth, seemed remote.
Only Aškelon's voice and Aškelon's presence existed for her.
"Come, my dear," he said to her. "You've done your part. Murder is denied you. You must return with me or forfeit all the time you've spent already."
"Murder is denied me? What about the witch? Shall she go free? This war's not over—it's just begun."
"Come, before Jihan sees me and you have a co-wife to share our bed in sweet Meridian." And those compassionate eyes hypnotized her.
Cime's strength left her. Her resolve dissolved.
"Ash," she promised him, "when this is over and I'm free from my vow to spend a year with you, you'll regret this day."
But even as she spoke, the battlefield bled away and Meridian, with all its pacific beauty and its happy, dreamlike folk, appeared around her. She hadn't even had a chance to bid her brother farewell or slay a single wizard.
There would be, she promised herself, another day. She still had Randal's coin.
* * *
The whirlwind, dark and moist with the breath of Stormbringer from whose anger it was sprung, chose its targets carefully among the warring press of men.
And when it reached the Mygdonian boy whom Jihan loved, it sought to lift him up. Jihan saw what her father had in mind and dove for Shamshi, catching the youth by both his legs.
The child was wailing, "Help me, help me, Roxane! Jihan! Someone! Please!" And thus Tern-pus, dispatching three mortal enemies with one swing of his sword, caught sight of the boy, his body being sucked toward heaven and Jihan's whole weight trying to anchor him to earth, as the Froth Daughter too was lifted, her feet dangling clear of the ground.
Tempus rushed toward Jihan, calling out her name. By the time he'd closed the distance between them, he had to leap to catch hold of her ankles. Then, like a human rope, all three swayed, suspended in midair.
Higher and higher the three were drawn until Tempus called, "Let go, Jihan! Save yourself, as I must!" and dropped down through the roiling air twice his own height to land heavily upon the ground.
When he'd regained his feet, he saw Jihan, holding Shamshi, disappearing into the funnel in the air. He caught a glimpse of Randal's armor, chasing a witchy woman-form, his kris outstretched before him.
Tempus's Aškelonian mare, sighting him, trumpeted a greeting and galloped toward him.
He saw Roxane, Death's Queen, the Nisibisi witch, one last time before his horse obscured his view: Randal's kris had wrenched itself from its owner's grip and was flying through the air toward Roxane's unprotected back, weaving and dodging as did she, homing in on her.
At that moment his reinforcements, mortal troops, arrived, and though they were nonplussed to see such things as Niko's armor—headless, minus an arm—fighting Mygdonians on its own and Randal's, too, doing battle, cleft down the middle, they joined right in.
So much for negotiating with Mygdonia, Tempus had time to think as he caught sight of Lacan Ajami, trying to rally and direct his army while the whirlwind chased them and from its midst, red-glowing eyes glowered down, unforgiving.
Vaulting up on his Aškelonian's back to force through the thick of battle and engage his enemy in person, Tempus saw many of his most beloved fighters: Crit, unhorsed and standing over Kama, who was on her hands and knees with her elbows pressed to her belly as if she'd taken a mortal wound; Straton, not far away, slashing about him with berserk abandon, bloody sword in one hand and a Mygdonian war ax in the other; Gayle, profanity streaming from his open mouth as he and Ari, back to back, held off ten Mygdonians and one wounded Nisibisi warlock whose flesh was beginning to steam and char, a sure sign that death was near.
Tempus took a moment to stroke his steed's sweating, blood-flecked neck. "Ready, horse? That's our man there," he told it, pointing out Lacan Ajami, who was trying to reach a group of wizards standing away from the fight as if they were preparing to call up their tiresome, stupid fiends and a platoon of demons. He reined his horse around and unsheathed his sharkskin-hilted sword. "Let's get him."
The Aškelonian leaped forward, snorting.
Lacan Ajami, as if a warlock had warned him, looked straight at Tempus and shook his fist. Then all the wizards joined hands around the Mygdonian warlord and the whole circle of enemies disappeared.
* * *
Kama hardly felt it when some soldiers dragged her from the field. By then she didn't care whose troops they were; she'd lost
her child, miscarried on the battlefield. She was in pain she couldn't justify, out of action for a reason she hoped none of these would guess.
Crit had been there, she remembered, protecting her. Now that it didn't matter, she was sure he loved her, and that she loved him.
She'd seen Niko's armor strewn about and Randal's cracked helmet lying on the ground.
She wept in the dark in a low black tent filled with other wounded, none of them silent in their pain. That her wounds were not exactly the sort of battle scars she'd like to sing about at the Festival of Man was all her own fault, and nobody else's.
Eventually, she slept.
When she woke, she began to wonder if she'd die of her wounds. Even on her deathbed, she would never tell and shame both Critias and herself.
A light appeared, small and far away in the dark.
She watched it coming closer, thinking it might be her patron deity come to take her to heaven (if she still deserved it) or to hell (if lying and cheating and playing at war and womanhood without committing to either was a sin).
But it was not a shade or even Death that came. It was her father, an oil lamp in his hand.
He'd never gone out of his way before on her account; when she'd been doing well, he hadn't noticed. If not for her lust for Crit, the forbidden officer, she'd have won this engagement on her own terms: she had put Grillo out of action, sowing suspicions in Critias's mind; she'd brought the 3rd together with their founder and seen to it that all moved north of Wizardwall to carry the battle to Ajami.
None of it mattered, with her belly ravaged and her thighs sticky from her own blood.
At least she hadn't thought it would until Tempus was standing over her, looking frightful with his scabbed and stubbled face underlit by the lamp's flame.
"Life to you, Kama. May I sit with you?" Tern-pus said.
She tried to see in his face whether he'd penetrated the deception, whether he was here to disavow her formally. The loss of Niko and of Randal would surely have touched him; Tempus's love for his fighters was legend, and Niko was as close to an inheritor of the Riddler's mantle as any offspring of his own loins might have been.
In Tempus's face was only a map of the war ongoing, nothing more. His hooded eyes stared calmly down at her, awaiting her response.
She said, "And to you, Riddler—" she still dared not call him Father; "life and everlasting glory. Sit, if it's your pleasure."
"Hardly that." He sighed and hunkered down beside her bed, placing the lamp on a barrel strewn with bloody cloths. "Why didn't you or Crit tell me you were with child?"
"I tell you? And miss the battle? Be confirmed a worthless woman in your eyes—you, who think of women just for raping or bedwarming or as an excuse to pick a fight? As for Crit," she tried to shrug, then winced at the pain racing up from her belly, then continued: "What he does is up to him."
"Stupid."
It seemed that this indictment hung for hours in the air between them.
"Yes," she agreed at last. "You're right." She was weak. His face swam in granular, colored light that made her queasy. "Am I going to die?"
"You? I don't think so—neither of us will be quit of the other so easily as that. Randal has agreed to see to you—"
"Randal? But he's dead… I saw his armor, his helmet—empty pieces strewn upon the ground."
Tempus chuckled. "Randal and Niko sent their clothes into battle with us. Expecting treachery, a last attempt on Roxane's part to gain control of the contested globe, if nothing more, they stayed with the hidden contingent as field commanders."
"They? Then Niko isn't dead?" Kama felt better, suddenly: she'd thought for certain that the blame for losing them would fall on her.
"Niko? No, not dead. Cranky and still weak, despite all magic and even Cime's healing—he pushed too hard this afternoon. Randal was supposed to keep Stealth out of the thick of things, but he can't be kept from his calling, any more than you or me."
You? He meant her. For the first time she took a deep breath and thought that perhaps her father didn't hate her, or devalue her because she was a woman. She tried to sit up.
Tempus put a horny hand in the middle of her chest and pushed her back onto her cot. "Rest. We're riding tomorrow. Randal will be along to see you—with your permission. We'll have a wag-onload of wounded anyway—one more won't crowd it. But I have a feeling that you'd rather ride than be carted behind the troops. One would want to sortie into Mygdon on one's own."
Into Mygdon? "One would. One does."
"Then you'll agree to let our Hazard treat you, with magic if need be? The sortie party will be chasing what's left of Ajami's army. If that's too much for you, you can ride with the main contingent."
"Where will the 3rd be? Sync? Cri—Critias?" She hadn't meant to stutter. But she had to know.
"Where they'll do the most good." Tempus rose then, picking up the oil lamp. "I'm pleased you're with us. Now that we've lost Jihan to her father and Cime to the entelechy of dreams, we need a representative of the fair sex to help us guess what Roxane's next move might be. Think on it. You have the advantage of being similar in bent of mind."
Advantage? She would have asked him to expand on that, but her father was gone, just a light bobbing as it disappeared in the distance and the dark.
Table of Contents
Book One : Death in Tyse
Book Two: Masters Of Mystery
Book Three: Witch's Work
Book Four: In the Shadow of the Wall
Book Five: Beyond Wizardwall