Beyond Wizardwall

by Janet Morris

  And Niko confided in Grippa the way he never would in Sauni: when the Stepson, ponying a loaded pack horse, armed and armored with shabby duty gear, dropped by to say goodbye on his way southeast to the Festival site, it was Grippa, not Sauni, Niko took aside.

  "Take care of your sister now, Grippa," Niko advised. "Keep a close eye on her, in case she's with child. Don't let on you're doing it, but don't let her hurt herself—nothing too strenuous, until it's certain one way or the other. Get her down to the Festival unscathed, and I'll give you this." Niko tapped the hilt of a bronze war-ax thrust in his belt which had obviously seen a dozen battles.

  As Grippa would, Roxane oohed and aahed. And then she said, pretending naivete: "But why are you leaving so early, Niko? Our training's not yet done. This is the crucial week, and you won't be here to help us."

  "Don't worry, pud." Niko ruffled Grippa's hair. "You'll do just fine. Don't overtrain, that's all."

  Roxane, out by Partha's stone house, squatted down on the thawing sod and picked up a stick: "But can't you stay and ride down with us? What if the death squads attack us on the way? What if we're overrun by slavers? Or rival factions? Niko, please don't go—"

  "I have to, pud." Niko hunkered down beside him. "And you must be brave. You're a man now, not a boy since New Year's. If you're attacked, you fight. If you can't win, then you give your sister an easy death before you let her be a slave or a pawn of witchcraft. Understand?"

  Grippa/Roxane gulped, then nodded, eyes downcast, saying very low, "It's a long way to the Festival."

  "I know, I know." Niko sighed and brought out a little wooden box of krrf. "Here, Grippa, try a bit of this. It'll make you mean, but start you thinking like a man."

  Roxane, curious and titillated, did as Niko showed her, piling a pinch of brown powder in her fist's well, then sniffing krrf. A rush of well-being overcame her manly person, so that she found herself aroused and put her hand on Niko's arm.

  He misunderstood: "Don't worry, I said. I'm safe enough; I'll be with the Riddler—a rightman goes where his left-side leader goes, and Tempus wants to straighten out some things with the Rankans before the Festival. But Bashir's sending a contingent—that's the team I'm on—and you and Sauni are welcome to travel with them. Going with the warrior-priest is as good as going with the god." Niko's eyes were deeply sunken, his mouth tight-drawn.

  Grippa, as northern boys were free to do, flung his arms around the Stepson's neck and kissed him.

  Niko held him tightly for a moment, then pushed him back: "Don't tempt me. You're a man now, and that's a different matter. Krrf does strange things to men… we've both got your sister to consider."

  His breath was warm against Grippa's neck, and Roxane first longed for her abandoned woman-form, then cautioned herself that Grippa must not, under any circumstances, seem fey. And somewhere deep inside her a boyish presence struggled in its bonds. She could have erased the soul of the child whose flesh she now inhabited; she would, but not just yet: she needed to monitor his reactions, use the Grippa-personality for occasional corrections of her course.

  So since Grippa couldn't bear being seen as less than manly in Niko's eyes, Roxane straightened his shoulders, blinked fiercely, and sat back. "I won't disappoint you, Stealth. I'm not afraid. And if I'm good… if I win my events, and prove myself worthy, would you… could you… no, it's too much to ask." Roxane/Grippa bowed his head.

  "What? What is it, pud? We're friends—we have no secrets."

  "If… you're not forever going to be the Rid-dler's rightman, are you? You've been a squadron leader on your own."

  "That's so," Niko said uncomfortably. "It's just a temporary thing, a whim of my commander's. That's why they call him Tempus the Obscure. But what of it?"

  "If…" Roxane peered through Grippa's eyes soulfully "… when you're a left-side leader again, you ever need a partner—if you'd consider an untried youth with honor and glory on his mind… that is, unless you go back to consorting with magicians…" She ended with a wicked grin as she trailed off.

  This time Niko grabbed him playfully and wrestled him to the ground. "So you want to be a Stepson, do you?" Niko's elbow bore down upon his throat. "Think well before you act, young man: you're a first son, with an inheritance coming. Mercenaries tend to come from lesser fortune— second sons and third, men escaping bad love affairs and murders, or marriages they can't otherwise avoid. Your father might not like it."

  "You don't think I'm good enough?" Grippa accused, his young voice as deep as she could make it with resentment, rejection, and disappointment. Niko's quick, canny smile came and went. He released the boy he'd tutored. "I trained you, didn't I? You're more than good enough, and more than welcome, as my rightman or a single I'll gladly sponsor with the guild. When the time comes. If you're certain. It's a life from which there's little turning back. Even if you want to, once you've sacked and pillaged, hired yourself out to this army or that, given up on passing judgment, you've got too many enemies to settle down and raise a family without providing a fortress's worth of protection or looking ever to your back."

  "See? You don't think I can do it." Grippa scrambled to his feet and went to the stone house wall, where he pulled a stone loose and dug inside.

  "That's not what I'm saying," Niko said, frustrated and concerned, following just where Roxane led. "I'm only saying, think it over. When your father dies, you'll be a lord—"

  "Partha? Die? In twenty years, or thirty. I'll be old by then, my life half over!"

  "I understand. I'm not rejecting you. At the Festival, if you still want it, I'll arrange to have the Stepsons take you on."

  "Not you? You won't take me as your rightman?"

  Niko, who'd been Grippa's age when a Syrese fighter of renown had paired with him, scratched his two-week beard: "That's not up to me. When you're one of us, you'll understand it better. I'm Tempus's right-side partner until he frees me. Then…"

  "Then there's Randal, isn't there?" Roxane spat the accusation from shining eyes that said that Grippa's hero shouldn't be beholden to a wizard.

  "No, there's not. Never again. Believe me. It's over. And so is this. I've got to go. The Riddler's meeting me at the Shepherd's Crook at noon."

  "Then take this, Niko. With all my love," Grippa said as Roxane sprung her trap and took from beneath the stone she'd pulled out from the wall a trinket—an amulet of hair and bone.

  "What's this?" Niko turned it in his fingers, one eyebrow raised. "A talisman?"

  "It will keep you safe, forever." Grippa's voice was proud, his demeanor noble and self-sacrificing. "It's very old; it's been in my family for years." It had been—in Roxane's family. While Niko had it, no lesser witch could touch him, no warlock covet him: it marked him as Roxane's with strands of hair and shards of discarded bone.

  Niko, not wanting to offend, said only, "My thanks, Grippa. And a safe trek to you." With a final, manly slap on Grippa's backside he left her there, headed for his horses.

  Grippa/Roxane watched him go, his fine athletic form so appealing, his gait only slightly uncertain from the krrf.

  It had been risky, giving him a marking charm, but worth it: she didn't have to worry that any lesser evil might chance upon him first.

  She'd been lucky all this morning: the Aŝkelonian panoply Niko owned was wrapped in oxhide on his pack horse. If he'd been wearing any part of it, it would have warmed to warn him that magic was about.

  Watching him dwindle, then crest a hillock and descend out of sight, she began to spell, calling upon what minions she still commanded from beyond the veil. She needed to steal that armor, destroy the sword and dirk he had which alone of all he owned could threaten her—or coax fate to take it from him.

  She'd make sure he lost it on the way or cast it from him, or somehow down in Ranke was parted from the stigma Aŝkelon had marked him with— not because Niko wanted to be free of it, but because the dream lord stood in Roxane's way.

  * 2 *

  The Shepherd's Crook wa
s a way station on the "general's route" leading from Upper Ranke down into the heart of empire.

  The Crook was at the southernmost edge of Tyse. Niko had stopped here once before, when coming home after years of roving, and found that his uncle, who'd once owned the place, was dead.

  It was a favorite watering hole of Tysian "specials" —those who wore the yellow armband of Grillo's secret police and Rankan agents.

  Grille himself was in the Crook, scuffing sawdust with his boots and drinking with the Riddler when Niko arrived. Grillo was wholly owned by Tempus, though once he'd served a plentitude of interests. If not for the fact that Grillo and his spies were crucial to the survival of Bashir's Nisibis and the Stepsons' best conduit of information from the empire, Grillo wouldn't have survived this long.

  He was a handsome Rankan, treacherous, double-dealing, who'd had the corner on the drug trade when the Stepsons had arrived. He'd had brushes with the witch, too, and even Niko, who should have sympathized, was uncomfortable in his presence.

  But Grillo was one of those necessary evils: his specials were the most effective force in Tyse, still; no other unit, Rankan or mercenary, knew the streets or the inhabitants as well.

  It was a good thing Crit wasn't there, Niko thought, enduring a guffaw when he ordered goat's milk (the Riddler had forbidden him strong drink) at the bar and brought it to their table. Crit and Grillo hated each other as much as they dared, foiled each other's plans routinely, keeping their quarrels just below the level where Tempus would intervene.

  The talk wasn't of Crit, directly; it was of holding Tyse steady while the Stepsons were out of town: "I expect," Tempus was saying patiently in response to a question Niko hadn't heard the Rankan ask, "you to do your best to keep order. I expect," Tempus leaned forward, "Randal to give a good report of your efforts when he joins us at the Festival. I expect you to take up the slack when the 3rd Commando and the task force leave. I expect Madame Bomba's caravans to continue to ply the trade routes from Caronne unmolested, if you have to draft half the Rankan garrison to give her convoys safe conduct. Is that clear?"

  "And you expect," Grillo said snidely, "me to do all this without a bit of help from you? What if Ranke decides this is as good a time as any to rid itself of half a dozen troublesome factions, to liberate Wizardwall from the 'Nisibisi outlaws' and put Bashir in a lion cage and exhibit him at the Festival, as Abakithis has sworn to do? What then? Am I still to play the loyal Rankan agent and help the garrison storm Wizardwall?" Grillo looked up, his blue eyes bold, and said to Niko: "Sit down, assassin. Help me talk some sense into—"

  "Grillo," Niko said quietly as he pulled back a bench and joined the pair, "would you like to have your teeth for lunch?"

  "Niko." Tempus shook his head. "Have your say, Grillo—what have you heard about the projected coup?"

  Grillo had come to Tyse as a Rankan spy; elements of Abakithis's opposition had tried to discredit, even kill him, but that had just made him more valuable in the emperor's eyes. And Tempus, who took advantage where he could, was using Grillo to keep abreast of what went by diplomatic pouch and secret message, as well as by the Rankan mageguild network, back and forth between Tyse and the capital.

  Grillo shifted in his seat, his gaze resting on Niko's face as if on a particularly doubtful piece of intelligence. Then he said quietly: "I've heard that Brachis made this man an offer, and the offer was accepted. I've heard an oath was sworn before the gods, a token given. I've heard that though the token itself was handed back to Brachis in a slightly different form than it once had, and Brachis, too, returned to Ranke in a swine's suit, the bargain holds."

  "How's that?" Niko leaned back, sipping goat's milk, wishing Grillo wasn't worth so much to Tempus.

  "Brachis," Grillo said offhandedly, "was restored to human form by the capital's mageguild. He's Theron's man, remember, and a man of the god to boot. The whole opposition faction expects to be in power by the end of the third week of the Festival. And that," Grillo raised his mug to eye level, toasting Niko sardonically, "is all I've got to say about the matter, except…" he grinned wolfishly "… good luck, Stealth. You'll need it. And to you, Riddler, since your unit's slated to take the blame."

  Niko was looking around for prying ears or knowing glances by them. He didn't see any, jvtst a grimy serving wench giving mutton stew to two of Grille's specials. It was early for dinner, late for lunch, and the Crook was nearly empty. Directly behind Niko, on the wall as decoration, was a scythe. He could have reached back, lifted it from its hooks, and cleaved Grillo on the spot.

  But he didn't. He put down his mug delicately and propped both elbows on the table, conscious that Tempus was watching him through brooding eyes: "Let me tell you something, Rankan monkey. The deal I made with Brachis will result in Nisibis being recognized as a free, uncontested state with Bashir its leader—without bloodshed, without strife, with the loss of only a single life." Now he was whispering, his hands balled into fists so that, of their own accord, they didn't lash out and strangle Grillo simply to wipe the supercilious grin off his Rankan face. "And that's what we all want, isn't it? Bashir and his Successors recognized as the rightful government of the independent state of Free Nisibis. Well, Grillo, isn't it?"

  "Easy, Niko," the Riddler warned.

  Niko hadn't told Tempus about his bargain previously; if he hadn't been so angry, he wouldn't have detailed it now. But the krrf he'd sniffed this morning out at Partha's was wearing off, leaving him argumentative and ready for a fight. And there was no single man in Tyse Niko would rather have pounded into the sawdust on the Crook's floor than Grillo. The man was a liar and anybody's agent who could pay his price.

  "That's right, Nikodemos—it's too late to justify it now. How much are they paying you to make hunted men out of a Sacred Band and fugitives out of—"

  "That's enough!" Tempus thundered as Niko pushed back and, on his feet, suggested that Grillo accompany him outside.

  Grillo, too, was standing. "My pleasure, Niko, if the Riddler will—"

  "Well, I won't. Both of you sit down."

  They did, and Tempus looked between them as if looking at dog vomit in a temple. "It's nice to know that Ranke still feels it has an agent at the Festival," he said calmly.

  "You mean despite the fact that Niko's a drug addict and a sot? They don't care about that, just about having their murder done, and his record proves he's competent enough at that."

  "Do you want to die? I need the practice," Niko said pleasantly, throwing stars glittering ominously between his fingers.

  "Niko," Tempus said as if to a naughty child, "wait outside."

  He couldn't disobey his commander's orders. He left with heat prickling the back of his neck and sweat on his upper lip and without even ordering a meal.

  Outside, he curried his Aŝkelonian with fervor, so that it whickered and half-closed its eyes, its big ears drooping with pleasure. He wasn't used to being a rightman. He'd lost the knack of being quiet and standing by, of taking orders gracefully— even from the Riddler.

  Ashamed of himself and wishing he hadn't let Grillo rile him so obviously, he fumed, so that when the grimy girl from the Crook brought him out a tray, saying, "You're to eat this, soldier. Your commander's orders," he snarled at her: "Get away from me. Just leave it on the ground. That gruel's not fit for a man to eat."

  But when she'd left it and retreated into the Crook with one eloquent, reproving backward look, the smell of lamb and barley made him salivate.

  Putting away his currycomb, an out-of-season hornet buzzing around his head, he took the bowl and sat on a tree stump that doubled as a mounting block, eating without tasting, his eyes on the bowl in his hand.

  When feet appeared in his field of vision, feet in shiny boots, he looked up and saw a tall man who was not Tempus standing there.

  Aŝkelon of Meridian wore wine-dark robes; his face was virile, severe but not haughty, his mouth compassionate, his cheeks hollowed. And the eyes of the entelechy of dream, regent
of the seventh sphere, who had once been an archmage of repute but now was so much more, held all the sorrows of humankind in them, and all the bravery as well.

  Aŝkelon's compassionate mouth twitched; his dream-inducing countenance, so young and yet so old, twisted as if in some awful struggle. From his lips, words tried to issue forth: there was no voice to say them, though, and Niko's lip-reading wasn't good.

  It could have been "Throw it away," that the dream lord said; it might have been, "Do it my way."

  It might, in fact, have been neither of those, but as Niko, spilling his food, shot to his feet and backed away, saying, "Aŝkelon, please let me be. I can't… I know I promised but I can't…" the dream lord's apparition disappeared.

  The lamb and barley stew was all over his hill-man's trousers, globs of it on his boots.

  Cleaning himself up as best he could with shaking hands that hardly could hold the straw with which he mopped up the mess, Niko told himself that krrf sometimes caused hallucinations, that Aŝkelon really hadn't appeared to him, that the dream lord didn't pierce the veil in daylight.

  But it was no good. When Niko had faced every other trial and surmounted every other test, he still had his failure to keep his word to Aŝkelon to contend with: Niko had gifts from the dream lord, power gifts he was keeping in bad faith. Even though he'd built an altar to Aŝkelon in the free zone, he himself had never worshipped there.

  He just couldn't bring himself to worship a demigod who'd once been a mortal—worse, a man who'd traded his humanity for power, who'd become more of a god than some deities, who ruled the sleep of all humanity from his once-in-a-while archipelago of dreams.

  When Tempus came out of the Shepherd's Crook, Niko was unlacing his pack to get out the enchanted panoply which he'd never been able to bring himself to throw away, with hopes of burying it here, in Tyse. If he could just leave it here, he could ride away and free himself of all this madness by simply never coming back.