by Janet Morris
* 4 *
In a cavern in Meridian, the dream lord paced. Tempus was a fool, a wanton slaughterer, his sister's true soul mate.
What Niko needed was no initiation into war, not congress with foul battle gods, but an introduction to the joys of peace.
Aŝkelon had lived on earth and waged livid wars for power in his time. He'd passed through that phase, his soul at risk, and out again to become the regent of the seventh sphere, a plane and place away from space and time.
But it was exile, if a gentle one. The dreams of mortals were wholly his; their subconscious his work place. Yet men still turned to gods and set their sacrifices on bloody altars—not just sheep and lambs, some places, but maidens and poor prisoners of war.
He didn't understand why men could not make peace within themselves—he had, and pulled himself hand over hand toward perfection, though he could only go so far.
For Aŝkelon had traded much away for power; he'd haggled with the accountants of creation. He ruled now in Meridian as much because of the sins he'd done as the power he'd accrued.
As long as Tempus and his sister were abroad, his dream realm and his person were not safe.
Once in the misty past, Aŝkelon had been an archmage, one of true power, not like these weakling magicians who lived now. And in extremis, if he would pay the price, he could call upon the sons and daughters of magic. He could, if he dared flout the rules of plane and sphere.
And he just might, for fate had cheated him, giving him Cime's sister as a companion for a year. Only once each thousand years was Aŝkelon granted a companion, a woman to warm the loneliness he'd earned from ancient bones. The rest of the millennium, he must labor, paying penance for wrongs done when he was young and foolish, bringing salving dreams to hearts his sorcery once had tortured.
He didn't mind it, most times; he'd grown accustomed to his fate.
But then Cime had come, undoing all his comfort, giving nothing, taking all, spending a year here to earn her freedom and leaving him more lonely than he'd been before she came.
She'd half-killed him once, come with her diamond wands and near destroyed him. A year with her had destroyed more than it had mended—his peace was gone, contentment no longer his.
Because of her he'd conceived a plan to make an avatar on earth, a herald of the power of dream, and he could not let the plan, or Niko, who should by now have been his instrument, go.
He knew he was succumbing to a risk he shouldn't take. He knew that Cime might yet destroy him, for she'd made him lust for things beyond his realm—the love of men, the right of wisdom to triumph over ignorance. His time with Cime had made him discontent with the suffering of the race from which he'd sprung.
This was insolence he was heaping upon the gods, he knew, and he might be punished for it. But he wanted so to see an end to everything Tempus stood for—blind murder, blind allegiance to the murder gods, blind adherence to causes which existed only in the minds of some men whom others blindly followed—he told himself he didn't care.
He paced and paced and thought and thought and considered the repercussions of his fate.
At length, he stoked the fire in his cavern and began to forge a chariot fit for riding into battle: hell on wheels it was, and surely would be.
For Aŝkelon needed something daunting, something more than the occasional mortal's weapon he'd forged before. If he were to ride out, beyond the veil in the opposite direction, take a hand in human events which affected more than dreams, he'd need this chariot, and more.
When he'd finished it, it smoked and gleamed, its sides worked with warlock's legends. Perhaps he was regressing; perhaps he was deluded, senility overcoming him, trying to regain his long-lost youth.
But a year with Cime had made him long for life as once he'd known it; all in Meridian was shadow—shadow life, shadow joy, shadows of existence.
Those he ruled over were not awake; those he longed to free from bondage and elevate forever spurned him—or simply woke up.
So when the chariot was done, Aŝkelon began the long and complicated process that would free him, temporarily, from the land of dreams.
He called upon Randal, his lone apprentice, called him in faraway Tyse where he lay sleeping. And in Randal's dream, Aŝkelon appeared and made a bargain, as wizards will: Aŝkelon would take away every one of Randal's allergies, each infirmity that plagued him, if Randal would drive this chariot down to the Festival and do certain things there when he arrived.
And the dreaming soul of Randal agreed.
* 5 *
Niko was having a hard time of it in Ranke, capital city of the empire.
Tempus was well known there but Niko was a stranger. Men coveted his position on the Rid-dler's right and the wondrous panoply that Tempus, after his visit with the dream lord, insisted that Niko wear.
All that Tempus would say about his reasons was that the panoply was too valuable to lose, until Niko, emboldened by krrf one night in the seraglio of a Rankan noble, pressed him.
Then Tempus, jouncing the girl on top of him, had said: "It's this way, Niko: wear the talisman and the armor both, and they cancel one another out."
The next morning Niko went to the Storm God's temple.
He bought a black lamb from a sacrificial vendor near Vashanka's temple, paying twice what it was worth even if it was certified, as the shopkeeper swore it was, by the priesthood as being perfect, free from flaw.
He led it in and up among the fluted columns, standing in a line with other penitents and afflicted souls.
When six sacrifices still remained until his turn came, the priests on duty noticed something strange —a liver the wrong color, a goat with two hearts, or something worse—for they closed down the temple for the day, sending everyone away.
Alone, with his black lamb on a tether, he wandered through the magnificence of Ranke, where he didn't know a soul but Tempus, who was having conferences with generals that a mere rightman could not attend.
The weather was heavy, full of spring's rainy musk this far south in the lowlands: a good omen, he'd heard this promissory spring called while he'd been in the temple line. He wasn't sure about that—the Festival needed the hard-packed winter ground for chariot racing; boggy muck would be a disenfranchisement from the war gods.
He'd been wandering the temple district for an hour with his bleating lamb, his cloak open to the wet warm air, when he encountered soldiers by the Mother Ea's temple.
Soldiers lounging about where women were routinely deflowered to please the gods didn't seem unusual. Niko tugged upon his lamb's leash and dragged it across the stone-paved street.
Two of half a dozen brown-cloaked regulars were talking to another whose bronze-and-leather cuirass denoted higher rank, who'd just come up the street.
Niko, gawking at the friezes on the temples, didn't hear the soldiers coming up behind him until one said, "This way, citizen, if you please."
The hands on his arms were less than polite, though, and he regretted that he'd been drinking. If not, he might have heard them, or paid more attention to what he'd seen. The Riddler was right: Niko had to give up wine and face his fate head on.
The first step on that road, he supposed, was not to struggle against the Rankan guard. If they wanted him, they must have a reason. He'd done nothing wrong, but these men might not know that.
He went along unprotesting, enduring jokes about his lamb, until one soldier took the ax from his belt and slew it in the street.
Then Stealth's temper got the better of him and his training took command.
The soldiers, not expecting trouble from the slightly drunken, almost pretty youth who'd come so meekly despite his fancy armor and his battle-scarred face, were caught completely unawares.
One went down with a satisfying thud as Niko's elbow jabbed his sternum where the brass plates of his armor joined; another found himself tripped and sprawling on the stones.
Since there were six and no blood had yet been let, Niko, no s
word drawn but throwing stars in one hand and the other on his hilt, said, "Now tell me what this is about."
"About?" said the man he'd tripped, wiping the blood from a split lip, his helmet rolling back and forth beside him. "It's about you, Stepson."
The four on their feet hesitated, awaiting orders, while Niko realized they knew who—or at least what—he was. This was no mistake, then.
"I want no trouble with you Rankans," he said, his eyes flicking from man to man, blade to ax, wondering how he was going to get out of this without killing any of them.
The other on the ground was taking gulping breaths, his head still down: "We've heard that about Stepsons. So why don't you just stop pretending to be fearsome and come along, little girl." He pushed himself to his feet.
Niko was sober enough now to be ordering his targets—those he'd take singly, those he could use to knock others off their feet.
He was saying, "Not until you tell me what this is about—who wants me and why," and looking for escape routes in a city he didn't know at all when the officer, who'd been watching from the temple steps, approached and joined his men.
"You have an appointment with a priest, Stepson—if you are one. Maybe we've made a mistake." The officer's eyes were narrowed. "Stepsons, we've heard, can't fight their way out of ladies' boudoirs. Yet you fit the description we were given."
He wrinkled his nose and sniffed exaggeratedly in Niko's direction.
Niko ignored the insults. "What priest?" The officer shook his head. "Whatever you are, you need a bit of remedial training. Soldiers, hereabouts, show respect for superior officers. Teach him, gentlemen."
Niko really didn't want to get into anything Tem-pus would have to get him out of, and yet the four men closing on him and the one wiping his bloody lip weren't going to back off with a superior present.
The throwing stars in his hand did for the first four: he could only think that Rankans had never seen Bandaran stars at work.
He aimed to stop, not to maim or kill, but men move and things go wrong in close quarters: one took a star in his right knee, another ducked his head and got one in the face; the third took it where Niko had sent it, to his shoulder, and the fourth got it in the neck.
Not even breathing hard, Niko drew his blade and backed away as the two remaining soldiers on their feet drew their weapons.
It was a good thing, he thought, that Rankans didn't carry crossbows—things were too "civilized" here for that.
His eyes still on the swordsmen, in case one palmed a dirk, he backed toward the building entrance behind him without daring to take a look.
Then something hit from behind and everything exploded into stars, then snow, then night.
When he awoke, he was stripped naked, bound hand and foot, going somewhere in a wagon. He was blindfolded and expertly bound—he couldn't even sit up.
He wondered if he'd get a chance to explain, then told himself he wouldn't: he'd hurt those soldiers badly; he'd be getting only what he deserved.
After a time, the wagon slowed, then stopped. Men talked, it lurched forward once again and stopped again and chain rattled, wood creaked: the wagon's rear gate being let down.
Hands dragged him out; he struggled. He was dropped roughly and landed on hard ground.
"Oh, we're sorry, how clumsy of us," someone said; then he was kicked by booted feet and struck low in the back with a stick or stave.
He cursed and someone forced his teeth apart, pushed wadding in his mouth. "Ssh, that's it; good boy," he heard; then: "Let's get this garbage inside and get out of here."
Those who dragged him up stairs weren't careful: his knees knocked against stone and his head banged against a wall.
Then he was tossed on a floor, he thought. A man said, "Oh yes, thank you for all the spiffy gear." Then the door shut and he thought he was alone.
He tried his bonds, rolled to his side to loose the tension, and began working them.
A voice said, "You're Stealth, called Nikodemos?"
He grunted: he couldn't have answered if he wanted to with the wadding in his mouth.
But then fingers that smelled of rosewater touched his face and pulled the wadding out. The voice, a man's but high, a tenor, said again: "You are Stealth, called Nikodemos. Don't try to lie. The god tells us when a man is lying and we become very angry."
"He speaks the truth," a second voice, lower, said. "If you want to live, answer."
"That's right," he said. "That's who I am." His mouth felt cottony; his neck was wrenched; his head ached.
"And you're here to murder Emperor Abakithis. Don't deny it. We know all about you."
Niko didn't say anything.
The rosewater fingers touched his neck and agony laced up his spine from their pressure on a nerve. "Confess and save your soul, boy. Murder of the god's representative's a heinous crime. Only a confession can save you a maiming that will make you beg for death."
"You're wrong," he gasped in pain. And that was true—he wasn't going to kill Abakithis here; he was going to kill him at the Festival.
"We've an informer in your midst. Confess."
Again, a touch; again the pain. He gritted his teeth and waited: if they were bound to torture him, then torture him they would; there was nothing he could say or do about it. Niko had endured tortures mere Rankan priests knew little of, at the hands of the Nisibisi wizards; a witch's efforts, he presumed to think, couldn't be matched by mortal men.
But as the touching went on and on and smoke filled his nostrils with the smell of metal heating, he began to wonder.
He heard Grille's name, he thought; he heard Theron's name, he was certain. He kept lying stolidly, hoping he could get them angry enough to simply kill him, wishing he could seek refuge in his rest-place from the pain.
But Aŝkelon might be there, in his meadow where meditation could wisk him into glorious escape. And yet, when blazing metal touched the inside of his thigh, he had no other option.
Given a choice of betraying a trust or facing the lord of dream, Niko used the pain to escape what agony he could.
He envisioned his Bandaran master, he called his ritual to mind, he blocked the sound of his own moaning from his ears and made his breathing steady: just a little more calm, a little more pain, and he could slip his body's bonds and be away.
They gave him that, not knowing what they did, and thought that he'd passed out: his body went limp, his breathing deepened.
Somewhere in the rafters, a hornet buzzed softly.
And Niko, in another place, sat crosslegged in his meadow, sunshine beaming down on him and the smell of new grass replacing burning flesh in his nostrils.
It didn't even bother him that Aŝkelon was there. The dream lord sat down sorrowfully beside him and shook his head, a slow tear running down his chiseled face.
"You've lost the panoply, my son; you've fled me and vacated your promise. Now look what has come to pass."
"Greetings, Ash." For the first time, Niko dared be flip with Aŝkelon—but he was dying, and if he had to die, he wanted to reclaim the rest-place he'd worked so hard to earn. "That's right, I lost it. I wasn't what you thought I was. I've never been. I don't want to be. I just want this place of mine. I got it on my own. I don't think you have a right to take it from me."
"Don't you care about your fellows? About men's nightmares, about their dreams?"
"Not anymore. I've too many nightmares of my own and I need my soul unfettered. If I'm dying, at least that part of me should be free. Will you go, leave me, let me have what peace I've earned?"
A stab of pain so fierce it traveled even here, where Niko's body was a figment, rocked him. In his rest-place, beset by Aŝkelon, an unwanted guest, and the pain of his person in another realm, Niko began to weep.
And his tears washed the dream lord away, falling like a rain upon his rest-place, and all Niko's maat, his comfort and his spirit, came back to make him whole there, where he had so long longed to be.
The dream lord
's last words, "Call me when you want me, Nikodemos, for one day you will," echoed in that quiet place a while.
Then the wind blew them away and on that wind, come from somewhere deep inside of him, a hawk circled overhead. The hawk was red-tailed and handsome, so beautiful and calm, so at one with this rest-place and the world it represented, that Niko's body's pain was replaced with a transcendental joy.
And as he watched the hawk, on the rainy wind, it circled, then alighted.
It cocked its head at him and then it said, "Niko, don't be afraid. I'm here if you want me," in Randal's voice and before he could answer, beneath the hawk's feet, the grass of Niko's rest-place turned to gravel.
And the hawk bent its beak to the gravel and traced the spiral sign of Niko's mystery, traced it perfectly within a circle and then took wing again to alight upon his shoulder.
It pressed its feathered head to his cheek and told him: "It's so beautiful, don't be afraid."
"I'm not," he told it softly, but then everything— the hawk, his rest-place, the spiral pattern in the gravel, began to fade away.
* 6 *
Abakithis's henchmen were holding Niko in an offering shed out behind the state-cult's priests' retreat, on a hilltop bathed in sunset's ruddy light.
The god had come to Tempus in his meeting with a clutch of Rankan generals, insistent and incensed. The voice in his head was adamant, commanding: Niko was a favorite of Lord Storm's; on top of that, some luckless soldier had slain a lamb the boy had bought, a lamb destined for Vashanka's altar.
"Servant," Enlil's ringing voice decreed, "in the name of my brother god, Vashanka, wreak Our havoc on these infidels!"
Then the god's wrath had come upon him, a red mask before his eyes. Enlil's strength had come into him, doubling his own. And the northern Storm God guided him unerringly to the spot where their mutual protege was being held and tortured.
It was like the old days for Tempus. The joy of the ravening murder gods was in him, the sunset around him just a harbinger of retribution on the way and blood about to spill.