by Janet Morris
Unguided, his horse led him slumward—a barn-rat, it was taking the quickest, straightest way home. When he looked up and out, rather than down and in, he was almost through the Shambles, near White Foal Bridge and the vampire's house, quiet now, unprepossessing in the light of day. Did she sleep in the day? He didn't think she was that kind of vampire; there had been no bloodless, no punctures on the boy stiff against the drop's back door when one of the street men found it. But what did she do, then, to her victims? He thought of Straton, the way he'd looked at the vampire, the exchange between the two he'd overheard and partly understood. He'd have to keep those two quite separate, even if Ischade was putatively willing to work with, rather than against, them. He spurred his horse on by.
Across the bridge, he rode southwest, skirting the thick of Downwind. When he sighted the Stepsons' barracks, he still didn't know if he could succeed in leading Stepsons. He rehearsed it wryly in his mind: "Life to all. Most of you don't know me but by reputation, but I'm here to ask you to bet your lives on me, not once, but as a matter of course over the next months…"
Still, someone had to do it. And he'd have no trouble with the Sacred Band teams, who knew him in the old days, when he'd had a right-side partner, before that vulnerability was made painfully clear, and he gave up loving the death-seekers—or anything else which could disappoint him.
It mattered not a whit, he decided, if he won or if he lost, if they let him advise them or deserted post and duty to follow Tempus north, as he would have done if the sly old soldier hadn't bound him here with promise and responsibility.
He'd brought Niko's bow. The first thing he did—after leaving the stables, where he saw to his horse and checked on Niko's pregnant mare—was seek the wounded fighter.
The young officer peered at him through swollen, blackened eyes, saw the bow and nodded, unlaced its case and stroked the wood recurve when Critias laid it on the bed. Half a dozen men were there when he'd knocked and entered—three teams who'd come with Niko and his partner down to Ranke on Sacred Band business. They left, warning softly that Crit mustn't tire him—they'd just got him back.
"He's left me the command," Crit said, though he'd thought to talk of hawkmasks and death squads and Nisibisi—a witch and one named Vis.
"Gilgamesh sat by Enkidu seven days, until a maggot fell from his nose." It was the oldest legend the fighters shared, one from Enlil's time when the Lord Storm and Enid (Lord Earth) ruled the world, and a fighter and his friend roamed far.
Crit shrugged and ran a spread hand through feathery hair.
"Enkidu was dead; you're not. Tempus has just gone ahead to prepare our way."
Niko rolled his head, propped against the whitewashed wall, until he could see Crit clearly: "He followed godsign; I know that look."
"Or witchsign." Crit squinted, though the light was good, three windows wide and afternoon sun raying the room. "Are you all right—beyond the obvious, I mean?"
"I lost two partners, too close in time. I'll mend."
Let's hope, Crit thought but didn't say, watching Niko's expressionless eyes. "I saw to your mare."
"My thanks. And for the bow. Janni's bier is set for morning. Will you help me with it? Say the words?"
Crit rose; the operator in him still couldn't bear to officiate in public, yet if he didn't, he'd never hold these men. "With pleasure. Life to you, Stepson."
"And to you, commander."
And that was that. His first test, passed; Niko and Tempus had shared a special bond.
That night, he called them out behind the barracks, ordering a feast to be served on the training field, a wooden amphitheatre of sorts. By then Straton had come out to join him, and Strat wasn't bashful with the mess staff or the hired help.
Maybe it would work out; maybe together they could make half a lempus, which was the least this endeavor needed, though Crit would never pair again...
He put it to them when all were well disposed from wine and roasted pig and lamb, standing and flatly telling them Tempus had left, putting them in his charge. There fell a silence and in it he could hear his heart pound. He'd been calmer ringed with Tysian hillmen, or alone, his partner slain, against a Rankan squadron.
"Now, we've got each other, and for good and fair, I say to you, the quicker we quit this cesspool for the clean air of high peaks war, the happier I'll be."
He could hardly see their faces in the dark with the torches snapping right before his face. But it didn't matter; they had to see him, not he them. Crit heard a raucous growl from fifty throats become assent, and then a cheer, and laughter, and Strat, beside and off a bit, gave him a soldier's sign: all's well.
He raised a hand, and they fell quiet; it was a power he'd never tried before: "But the only way to leave with honor is to work your tours out." They grumbled. He continued: "The Riddler's left busy-work sorties enough—hazardous duty actions, by guild book rules; I'll post a list—that we can work off our debt to Kittycat in a month or so."
Someone nay'd that. Someone else called: "Let him finish, then we'll have our say."
"It means naught to me, who deserts to follow. But to us, to cadre honor, it's a slur. So I've thought about it, since I'm not to leave myself, and here's what I propose. All stay, or go. You take your vote. I'll wait. But Tempus wants no man on his right at Wizardwall who hasn't left in good standing with the guild."
When they'd voted, with Straton overseeing the count, to abide by the rules they'd lived to enforce, he said honestly that he was glad about the choice they'd made. "Now I'm going to split you into units, and each unit has a choice: find a person, a mercenary not among us now, a warm body trained enough to hold a sword and fill your bed, and call him 'brother'—long enough to induct him in your stead. Then we'll leave the town yet guarded by 'Stepsons' and that name's enough, with what we've done here, to keep the peace. The guild has provisions for man-steading; we'll collect from each to fill a pot to hire them; they'll billet here, and we'll ride north a unit at a time and meet up in Tyse, next high moon, and surprise the Riddler." So he put it to them, and so they agreed.
Book Three:
MAGEBLOOD
On Wizardwall, those he favored called the archmage Datan; the rest knew him as the Osprey. Under that war name and its aegis, he wreaked his havoc, soaring over high peaks, predator to all—the adepts, the lesser mages, "mighty" enchanters, lowly sorcerers and fey magicians; of the secular populace of Nisibis, he thought little, if at all.
Roxane knew his real name, though he'd gone to great pains to conceal it; she'd kept the fact from him as her insurance, should he ever play her foul. Mages hid their names in fear of retribution. Names are power; true ones tell the number of your soul. Her true name she'd not signed or spoken for a hundred years; she missed it not at all.
Flying, transmogrified, northward on black eagle's wings whose span was twice her human height, she left the caravan far behind. Jagat would bring the spoils home; he'd never failed before. And now he led the caravan, leaving a scented trail the Tempus-fox would follow of his own accord. Her beaked head turned right and left, seeking prey along her way. Being eagle always made her crave warm blood and quivering loin and fur upon her tongue.
In night flight, she was careful: mages fed upon mages; she was yet over Ranke, where a rival mageguild held vicious sway. Gods fought gods and magics, magics; she exulted, thinking there must be no finer time to be alive and abroad with power. She had no doubt who, when this was over, would have the final say.
Towns below showed pastoral fires; the roads here were dotted with convoy lanterns; Rankan cities sprawled not far away. She veered northeast to skirt the capital and soared still higher, thinking of Datan and what he would say to the news she brought of theomachy and flouted gods, of entelechies and Stormbringer and a problematical demigod called Tempus. Some intelligence she bore might not be welcome; favorable assessment of an enemy seldom was. But she had learned so much from Nikodemos—of Aškelon, lord of dreams; of Abarsis, the Slaug
hter Priest who was in heaven; of the twelfth-plane force called Stormbringer in unearthly league and immortal collusion with the Riddler, and thus the Rankan foe...
Approaching the Wall, she spiraled low after touching the stars to clear its shimmering barrier. She noticed changes in his abode, in the Wall itself. She alighted on his very rampart, and as she did an arrow whickered past, the whucka-whucka-whucka of its trajectory whispering in her feathered ear. Her eagle-squawk turned to a howl of rage as she half-changed form, sighting a mortal guard, a man with crossbow drawn. Her human finger pointed; power words leaped from her tongue. His crossbow clattered to the stone and a mouse ran into one boot it had just worn as a man. Back again in her eagle form she took wing and swooped and grabbed the boot, upending it as she bore it high. Then she dropped the shoe and caught the mouse, so recently a man, in her claws as it fell toward the ground far below. And, skewering it through its heart, she bore it back to Datan's crenelated high peak keep, and ate its innards upon his wall. As it died, it turned back to soldier, and as she fed she became a girl.
Wiping her bloody mouth she paused just long enough to conjure robes to clothe her nakedness, and then a second guard came on the run.
She waved him sleep, and he crumpled as he ran, landing sprawled between the wall's stone teeth, his weapon falling a thousand yards before it crashed.
By then she'd changed her mind, unmade the robes, and soared: his palace was too crowded now with men and warlike toys. Circling high, she beat away his warding spells like cobwebs with her wings, and landed on his tower's very sill.
Within the room, through colored panes of leaded glass, she saw him with three human allies, Mygdonians: a swaggering man, a general by his uniform, proud, fair-haired, festooned with arms and armor; a woman, pale and elegant; a boy.
She pecked the lock and swung the windows inward at their joint. All ceased their conversation. She saw Datan's down-drawn frown and flickered out of view. What men should see or know she left to Datan's judgment; he came toward the windows, striding across in simple robes of black.
She'd scrambled in, invisible, by the time he reached out to close the windows; he spoke no word of greeting but she saw his mouth twitch—he was amused.
She waited then, unseen by the three Mygdonians.
"What in hell was that?" the general growled, his dagger drawn though even he must know he drew in vain. The woman, flaxen-haired and green-eyed, touched the general's arm and hustled the boy away, her fingers trailing from Datan's as the archmage kissed her hand. The tow-headed boy kept staring where she was, though no human could truly see her, his pale eyes wide and grayish as if he had a trace of Nisibisi blood.
She thought on that, until they'd gone: when warlock or witch mates with a mortal, the eyes give all away. The last high-blooded coupling they'd recorded was when the Defender took the witches' queen to wife, three decades past when last men were ascendant, and the Defender's forces with Tempus's sanction climbed up Wizardwall. They hadn't won, but they'd gotten farther than mortals should have, and the sibyl had wed to consummate a pact of peace. The Defender, unknowing, signed his own empire's eradication warrant when he spread the legs of magic's queen. Abarsis had been their issue, and treachery among the army had led the officers to conspire to the mother's murder, lest their commander be a pawn of witchcraft—dark vengeance had followed in good order, the destruction of his empire by Ranke, the gelding and enslavement of his son fair payment for the sibyl's life, once peace was declared and Tempus drifted away south to Ranke where war and blood could still be found.
When the door closed upon the Mygdonians, the general last to leave, the archmage turned and welcomed her with outstretched arms, his mighty hairless head inclined: he'd missed her, sensitive lips kissed her, long lashes brushed her cheek.
Datan's corpulence was apparent in any shape; his was a soul of appetites; his was a face of classic beauty, sensual amid the fat; his were hands to crush a world; his soul, if he still owned it, was second-mortgaged, loaned back to him by powers who could wait forever and pile up interest—but it was this weight of payment due which made his manner dark. He exacted all he could from life; he'd given up eternal peace for war and yet conquest could not sate him.
Their embrace had heated up and her robes fallen by her feet when the door was pounded from without: a sentry with news of breached ramparts; the general back again bearing the eviscerated body of an elder son.
It took a while to calm the father, clothes gory and already rent with Mygdonian grief. Datan hushed her when she would have stepped forward and claimed the kill—she'd been attacked, done nothing wrong by fighting back. She flushed, and when the man was gone, she sat with folded arms upon his bedroom table and pouted: "Are we afraid, these days, of puny human ire?"
"These are our allies, Roxane. Need I remind you?" Datan's tone, severe, caused her back to stiffen. Her robe, pulled round her hastily when the knock had come, fell open as she leaned back, stiff-armed. He glared at her and chilled her flesh: "As for fear, it has its place. I'd just as soon not contend with Mygdonian hordes screaming 'Lacan is great' and clambering over one another, dead and living, to be the next soul martyred in his cause. The time will come to trim his sails, but not yet; not 'til Ranke's a forgotten name. One clutch of gods and one of enemy mages is enough to deal with—at a time. Do I make myself understood?"
She nodded; one did not rile him. She smiled at him and commenced her report. He'd been immobile; now he paced: "Let me get this straight: your idea of neutralizing him was to lead him here? The Riddler? Witch, you've overstepped your mandate."
"Not so, my lord. I held a conference here, with all your deputies, who gave me leave to act. Destroying him in his place was impossible; you know what he is—"
"I do. You, it seems, do not. What warlock suggested luring him north for battle?"
She named his most trusted three. He pounded one fist upon the table, more angry than she'd ever seen him, and choked back a curse: from his lips, curses leaped to life and served like soldiers. Roxane tried to recall exactly what words had been given her as mandate: "To 'take him out of play in the southern theater," my lord, was an impossibility. Let those who wish to try Tempus, one by one, step up to fate's starting line. Neither you nor I must face him."
"No? Let's hope you're right, Roxane. I own I wish you'd abided there in Sanctuary as I commanded. I cannot leave these fools alone a week before they're stepping in their own excrement. You do know that his sister's with the dream lord? That Stormbringer's given him an own-daughter for a mate? That Lord Storm claims him as a true son? That under his aegis the Defender almost had me on a skewer the last time? You'll forgive me if I don't congratulate you on a job well done, or take you to my bed for this favor you've done the Alliance?"
She had her pride: "Not until it turns out ill or well. I expect nothing untoward to come of this, Datan. I've controls on him, and I've placed them well."
"How's that?" The archmage's lightless eyes rested full upon her.
She shivered, but hid it well: "Nikodemos, the young bondservant. I invoked his spirit's debt and took him as my own. He'd be with Tempus now but for those damn snakes of yours, who couldn't follow simple orders, but beat him to a pulp. When he mends, he'll follow closely; when he catches up, we'll have a check on Tempus and a spy in his confidence. The Froth Daughter, Jinan, is helpless, lovestruck, and far too inexperienced in human ways to be a threat. And the Riddler himself is full of doubt: the Rankans think their god is dead.
For a Storm God's favorite, this presents some few problems. Keep the god planelocked, and Tempus's curse will destroy him and all he loves… no problem, lord, have I brought you, but a canny solution to all of ours."
"Ah, my snakes. How are they? They're worth a clutch of Rankan factions, and the teetering emperor as well."
She steered him from it: "The faction here that wanted to prop up Kadakithis enough to usurp the throne and depose the emperor, the same faction who hired Tempus in the
first place and who petitioned the god to instruct the man to build a temple in the south, is losing heart. And, this the case, Tempus will never throw his weight behind the reigning Rankan lord—he knows the man's not worth a fart. Without the avatar's sanction, the Rankans war as men; men cannot stand against magic's—"
"I asked," her lover-lord broke in, "about my snakes. Where are they? Have you brought them? I sense a bit of them right here…"
And then she had to tell him what part of them his magic recognized, and where their remains now lived: "Stupid snakes, not worth your concern, or mine… they almost aborted the venture in its most delicate phase… No… No! No!"
But he wanted them back, and he would have them. And the way he called them from her belly caused her agony, indescribable pain. As it was just beginning, he froze her tongue so no curse could issue forth from it, then assured her that once he had them back, she'd have learned a lesson… and possibly, just possibly, survive it.
* * *
The archmage Datan, having looked without compassion on the suffering of the witch, determined that she would live and decreed further punishment: she would pit her strength against the enemy she'd summoned, Tempus, a bright son whose intelligence and powerful friends she and three of his most trusted warlocks had underestimated, when none of their persons had seemed at risk.
He sent them to their deaths, he suspected, but this did not faze him. He needed to test the Froth Daughter, assess the strength of his enemy, try the Riddler to see what time and tribulation had done to that once-uncompromising spirit. If necessary he would take the field himself, but not before the avatar was softened up by summoned demons; perhaps, if luck attended him, and he and Tempus did come face to face, by then the soul of the man would be cracked and rent; possibly magic's minions would have him bound in purgatory; mayhap they'd have harmed him through his men. One way or another, Datan would have him. One cannot conquer peoples without bringing down their heroes and making nightmares of their dreams.