by Janet Morris
Then, as the horse plunged and shivered, out from behind the bush strode Brachis, Theron's premier priest of revolution, his pink cheeks plump and his feminine bottom swishing.
"Priest," Tempus snarled, "if the gods don't punish you for a pretender to godhead, I will, if you ever scare my horse again. If you called that fire from heaven, put it out."
Brachis smirked and stepped away from the burning bush. "It will burn out, by and by." Approaching, he rubbed his hands together, then took Tempus's horse by its reins. "Let us not spar with each other, Riddler. If the gods exist, they work through men. As one man of the god to another, I say to you that the time has come for you to reveal the chosen assassin's name to me."
"Why? So you can prepare a bier? Ready your men to arrest and torture a scapegoat? I'm facilitating a coup, not a purge. My man's willing to put Theron on the Lion Throne, but not to take the blame for it alone. If any of mine are singled out for so-called Rankan justice, there'll be at least one fat, impotent priest roasting alongside—"
"Now, Riddler, would we do that to you?"
"Not and live through it," said Tempus, sliding from his saddle. As he did, the Trôs whose reins the priest held, feeling Tempus's anger or the god's, snapped at Brachis, catching the priest's fleshy forearm between its teeth, then shaking his head.
"Aüeel" roared the priest in pain as the horse, ears flattened, shook his head savagely and Brachis's arm with it. Brachis batted at the jowly stallion as if at a dog caught in a temple.
"Hold still, fat fool," Tempus ordered, but neither Brachis nor the horse did that, so that it took longer than it should have for Tempus to grab the horse by one ear and stick his thumb in its mouth, behind the teeth, to pry those jaws apart.
Bloody teethmarks were deep in Brachis's arm as he staggered backward, rubbing it, his pale eyes full of fury. "You'll pay for this, Sleepless One. Mark me!"
"Done," Tempus muttered, but the priest was gone behind the bush. When Tempus went around to see where he might have disappeared to, he saw a hidey-hole disguised with sod and leaves that led down into a tunnel.
Thinking that at least things were out in the open now, and that the horse wasn't to blame, Tempus mounted and rode toward the Festival village with the god's chuckle ringing in his ears.
And that made him angry, that the god should be so petty, and willing to subject Tempus's fighters to the retribution of a man like Brachis, who had power, though it came not from heaven but from his faction.
"Show Yourself, craven Lord of Strife!" he demanded aloud. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't pull my troops out now and lead them north, leave this empire to perish as then it must!"
And what happened then reminded Tempus of the old days, when the hidden god wasn't hiding: clouds boiled up from a clean blue sky, lightning ripped down from heaven and snaked along the ground, corraling the Trôs horse, which closed its eyes and stood still, shivering.
"You wish to see Me, foundling son? Look upon Mine Glory!"
And Tempus, who'd never closed his eyes before any god or turned his head, who'd stared hell in the face and farted under demon's noses, found his arm up to protect his face, so fierce was Enlil shining.
The god was tall, a lightning shape of manlike splendor, all crackling and golden as it trod the Rankan hillside toward him. In one hand it held a thunderbolt, and in the other, a globe that spun upon its palm.
And the man who'd never once been cowed or cowered before a deity felt his throat close up.
"Well, mortal? Your wish is granted, yet you hide your face. Does My Majesty offend thine eyes? Look upon Me, who asked to see Me."
So Tempus tried again, but the sight of Father Enlil made his eyes tear. Still, he saw the globe as the war god threw it toward him, saying, "Catch, foster child, and be you warned: as long as the Nisibisi globe of evil is abroad in the world, godhead itself is threatened. The reason you asked for is simply this: the globe must be shattered, its stones separated, its clay made into tableware, before any of your beloved little men can truly claim salvation."
Then Tempus found his voice. "Now you say this. Before, you made no such demands. And why me—why my men? I don't accept the challenge." And with his sword, drawn without thought and as fast as even a god could move, he batted the hurtling globe away so that it hit the ground, and bounced, and rolled, and everywhere it went the earth was scoured and scored in its wake.
"Your Stepsons, as you call them, insolent mortal, loosed that globe upon the world, destroying its owner but not its own self, which is a potent evil. Remove it, destroy it, and your forces and your person may live in peace. Until then, seek no rest, for you will not find it. And all the blood shed for evil's sake will be upon your hands until you've ground it into My good clay!"
And then, before Tempus could retort that he wasn't interested in any quest nor convinced that the god had the right to force him, Father Enlil disappeared, and the rolling globe of lightning with him.
This pleased Tempus's horse, who stopped shivering and pawed the ground, ready to trot home to his stable.
But neither he nor the horse could pretend that nothing had happened here: the horse's flanks were black with sweat and the ground where the god had walked was pocked with giant, blackened footprints and crisscrossed with lines like chariot tracks where the lightning ball had rolled.
* 2 *
Few souls attend their own funerals. Roxane had been at Grippa's, which was much the same thing, discorporate and ghostlike.
She'd seen Sauni wail and blacken her face with ashes, tear at her breast and try to throw herself upon Grippa's bier.
She'd seen Niko break a javelin across his knee and throw it onto Grippa's pyre, a javelin he'd won during the special funerary games in honor of Grippa… or of Roxane, so far as she was concerned.
Bashir had said his/her eulogy, praising the loyalty, youth, and honor of the departed Grippa, calling him his father's son. Bashir had shed tears for a youth he called a friend, and recommended Grippa's soul to heaven.
Even Randal, her enemy, the mage, seemed sad now that she was "dead." And Randal knew exactly who and what Grippa was, had known from the very beginning.
All this praise and love, this outpouring of affection from these mortals, had its effect on Roxane. It made her melancholy and it made her long for human form once again.
At first she'd thought she might be content without a body, the better to harass her enemies. But during the rites she grew morose and lonely, and during the eulogies she became unsure of just who her enemies were.
So she flitted from mortal to mortal, peering into eyes that couldn't see her, looking for hidden hatred, despite, or worse.
But not even in Randal could she find it, and Randal was the mage who'd had a hand in killing her Grippa-form, who'd brought Aŝkelon through a portal to this time and space.
Confused, she was distressed; distressed, she spent her nights in Niko's quarters, a noncorporeal ghost, until one night Sauni, the priestess of Enlil, crept in there, and all of Roxane's feelings began to change.
The sight of Sauni seducing Niko hardened her heart but it also decided Roxane upon a plan of action: she couldn't just hover about, a ghost, a wisp of wind, and caress her beloved Nikodemos ectoplasmicly. He'd find other girls—girls with bodies, flesh and blood. And why shouldn't he? Roxane, or the Cybele-form in which he'd loved her, was long gone as far as Niko knew.
So she went out summoning on Winners' Day eve, which meant she went out hunting on the Festival grounds first: Roxane had to eat a soul or two to gather strength enough to take human form again.
She chose a minor priest of Ranke from the priestly enclave at the Festival, since Rankans were her enemies—a Rankan of Abakithis's faction, since these were enemies of Niko's.
And she sucked out his soul before his missing god's untenanted field altar, to make it sweeter. When the priest had clutched his chest and foamed at the mouth and died, a shape began to coalesce around him, a shape with sorcerous
eyes.
First it was misty, then it was milky, then it became a girl. And this girl had the innocence of a waif, Cybele—the silken hair, the comely limbs, the flawless skin—but the soul of Roxane, and the face was a cross between Roxane's own and a face Niko had come to love.
Rising up, naked, from the cold dead priest, she looked about her.
Defiling the god's altar further became her evening's work. Upon it, nude, she crouched, and there she began to chant, summoning what she could lay claim to from the underworld.
A portal spun against the twilight, brightened. Foul odors told her that in its depths, a presence stirred. She called it forth, saying: "Come, demon, fiend, or devil. We've a prank to play, souls to suck, a globe of power to spin."
When she'd said that last word, a head poked out of the hole in heaven, two hands upon empti-ness's edge like a marsupial peeking from its mother's pouch.
"I swear," intoned Roxane, hands raised in invocation, her legs widespread upon the altar of a hated god, "to feed you well with innocent souls, to use you well, to wreak revenge upon all of Ranke's filthy, god-loving priests."
The silhouetted form in the rent cocked its head; pointed ears twitched and pricked. Teeth gnashed— a sound not soon forgotten by any who'd ever heard a fiend devour anyone.
"Come, come, my pretty, my instrument, my pet," she crooned. She didn't call it "slave"—she wasn't strong enough to summon a horde of fiends, a raft of demons, or a clutch of devils: this one minion must be all she'd need.
"Urp!" came a hoarse voice from the paunch of hell. "Urp? Whozzat?"
"It's Roxane, your mistress. Aren't you hungry, servant mine? It's time to flay our supper." The hole was beginning to flicker, to quiver: it was hard to hold eternities apart.
She was sweating with the effort. She wasn't used to working so hard for what she wanted—she hoped soon things would be easier, then banished all depressing thoughts and in her best commanding voice, said, "Speak thy name, fiend, and come forth, or I'll close that hole upon your head and lop it from your body! Come! Come forth!"
And forth it came, a trifle awkwardly: a long-limbed, gray-skinned fiend of the warty sort, whose eyes looked every way at once and who might pass for human wherever birth defects were the rule, with a prognathic jaw and an orange shock of hair.
She thanked devils it didn't have a tail as it climbed down from the hole in heaven, then hung by one long arm, swinging there. "I can't climb down," it grated. "I'll fall!"
Now she had it—or him, from what hung between its bony legs. "Speak thy name, creature, and I'll help thee. My creature, dependent upon me for life and breath, tell me truly who you are!"
It gnashed its teeth again, then surrendered to her. "Argh; umph. My name's Snapper Jo, and now you've got me. So help me—don't leave me hanging here like fruit upon a tree."
"Snapper Jo," she repeated, "swear to me that you're my obedient servant!"
"Aw—do I have to?" It turned its head and rolled its eyes at her. It sighed again and its mouth worked. "I swear. Now get me down."
Roxane lowered her arms and the hole from hell floated groundward, until the fiend's feet touched the sod.
Immediately, it let go of the hole and dropped to all fours as above, the rent in nature telescoped in upon itself and ceased to be.
Then it gained its feet and rubbed its crotch. "So this is it?" It looked around, absently cracking its jaws. Then it rubbed its arms. "I'm cold. It's much colder here than—"
"Where you're from. I know. Come right this way, Snapper Jo. We'll find some innocents, murder them, take their clothing, and I'll start teaching you about the world of men."
"Murder? Right now?" The fiend's sharp eyes narrowed; it pulled on its lip. "But I just got here. I'd like to-"
She pointed a finger at it and it cowered. "Right away," it said. "We'll murder lots of… what are they? Rankans, that's right. Murder Rankans, yes. Hungry."
She looked at the fiend, who would protect the globe of Nisibisi power and her person, now that she had one, all the way down to Sanctuary, where Roxane was planning to go to hide and gain back her strength. In Sanctuary, anguish flowed freely and magic was tolerated. Witches were safe, respected, feared.
"Now, Snapper," she said, locking arms with the fiend as she led him toward a part of the village she knew was filled with priestlets, "we've a feast in store the next few days—there'll be murder aplenty, done by men. So ours must look as if men did it: no wholesale slaughtering, no throats bitten out, no bones split for marrow."
The fiend frowned earnestly, trying to understand. Fiends were stupid, from the lowest echelon of hell. But this one, who scratched himself and grinned inhumanly as she talked of breaking bones, would be just the right sort to get her through Winners' Day and safe away, on the road to Sanctuary, where she could reclaim some old undeads and marked souls she'd cached there for just this sort of emergency.
And since she was going there in part because of Randal, Tempus's Hazard, and in part because it was the safest place for a witch with a Nisibisi globe, she knew the lords of hell would assist her every step of the way.
* 3 *
The night before Winners' Day, Tempus revealed to Randal the nature of the secret mission the Hazard was to undertake for his commander.
"I want you to go into town, to the Rankan mageguild, Randal, and warn the Hazards to stay clear of the winners' tent tomorrow—to keep out of the coup coming, to take no side and lend no aid to either faction."
Randal's jaw dropped open. "Me? In the Rankan—"
"You're First Hazard of Tyse. Pull rank. I'm warning these mages of their own good." Tempus bared his teeth in that smile which all Stepsons knew presaged blood about to spill and carnage in the offing.
"Let's hope they realize that—adepts don't take well to threats from mere mortals… that is, my lord commander, from secular types." Randal shifted on his cot, toying with his kris nervously. "I'll have to be polite, not deliver a verbatim message…"
"Then be polite. And be careful. Hell's own fury is going to break loose when Abakithis dies. I'll need you back by then, in case I have to spirit all our fighters—the 3rd, as well as Stepsons—away from here by magic. You're up to that, if the need arises, aren't you?"
"I'll… have to be." Randal tried to smile, be brave, nonchalant, but intruding in another mage-guild's matters was not a thing to take lightly. And there was something Tempus didn't understand. "Do you know? That is… you surely know that Aŝkelon, the lord of dreams, is quartered in with the Rankan mages."
"Don't worry about the shadow lord—he and I have an understanding of a sort. And if you see my sister there, don't let it trouble you. Just deliver my warning and then come back again." With that, Tempus got up, stretched widely, and left Randal alone in his Festival billet.
Absently, Randal caressed his kris, thinking that he'd go say goodbye to Niko, just in case something went wrong and he didn't come back from the Rankan mageguild in time for the winners' fete—or didn't come back at all. No such message from an adept who had defected to the side of fighters would be well-received.
And then he heard a buzzing, as if an insect had waked from winter's sleep.
Ignoring it, he decided he'd wear the enchanted panoply, just in case. It would be hot and uncomfortable in a citadel of magic, but no hostile force could touch him, except perhaps the dream lord himself.
Again he heard the buzzing, this time louder, as he buckled on his cuirass. This time, the sound seemed closer and as the Hazard, his kris discarded on the bed, buckled on the sword which once was Niko's, a white-headed hornet landed on his nose.
The Hornet King's antennae twitched; its stinger was poised against Randal's skin. "Well, where's my honey? My caterpillars?"
"What are you doing here, Lord Hornet? I didn't call you." Randal thought quickly: he had some honey, a bit left from sweetening his tea. "Is it Niko?"
"Honey first, you welshing wizard. And be quick about it."
Careful
ly, his head held high so as not to offend the big wasp standing on his nose, Randal eased over to his table. "Careful with that stinger, King. I might be allergic." Eyes on the hornet, he groped around for the honeypot, fumbled with its clay top, then said, "Here's your honey. Now, what brings you here, Hornet King?"
The hornet took wing and Randal, with a heartfelt sigh of relief, backed away from the table, his hand on his dream-forged sword, thinking he could probably swat the hornet before it knew what he had in mind.
But its next words stopped him cold. "The witch, the one that haunts Nikodemos, is abroad on the Festival grounds tonight, in human form, with a summoned fiend beside her, killing priests of the Storm God in great numbers." On the honeypot's rim, it rubbed its wings together, then dipped into the pot.
"So?" Randal said nastily. "What's that to me, if she kills priests? They're no friends of mine."
"But Nikodemos, the one I've been watching all this time, is at this moment headed toward the compound where the witch and fiend are at their killing. And so is a contingent of Festival guards and—"
Randal was already running for the door, swearing softly in the name of a tutelary demon, so that he didn't hear the Hornet King's plaintive, "I thought you'd be pleased to know, and grateful," as he careened down the steps and into the Festival village lanes.
At a dead run, headed for the priests' quarters, he told himself that Niko wasn't his partner any longer, that it wasn't his business, that he had a secret mission to perform for the Riddler.
But if Niko was caught by the witch, it would then be the business of the entire Sacred Band. And the Hornet King's arrival was a sign: no matter how Niko felt, or what the Riddler declared, or even what Randal wanted, in some mystical way the kris—and even the Hornet King—understood that Randal and Niko were still a pair. As he skidded onto the grounds of the priests' compound and smelled the sulphur and saw the sick, greenish light, he almost quailed, nearly ran: Roxane the indomitable, Roxane, Death's Queen, Roxane the Unkillable, was surely there. Despair overswept him: Niko was cursed with this witch forever.