by Janet Morris
Tempus, who never slept, invited him in, openly curious: "You need your rest, too, priest. What is it?"
"I met a Bandaran in town who gave me a message for Niko. Who knows what it means, but it might mean something to Stealth…"
Then Bashir realized he'd interrupted something. Tempus was disarrayed, half-clothed, and somewhat sheepish. Such an expression on the Rid-dler's face could mean only one thing: Cime, who collected men and had long been after Tempus as a trophy, was close to winning.
"Do you need the god's help to avoid temptation, Riddler?" Bashir said bluntly. "Anyone can ask; the god is generous."
"The god?" Tempus nearly spat. "Enlil? It's the god who wants what's forbidden me, as gods do. Stay out of this, Bashir, it's not your business. Go say goodnight to your little lamb, Nikodemos, and leave me to wrestle with my fate in peace."
"Ah… as you wish, my friend. But my door is always open, my house your house, my arm your strength."
"I'll keep it in mind, Bashir," Tempus said impatiently, holding Niko's door open.
Inside, alone with the smell of healing and in the light of a single taper, Bashir regretted having come. Embarrassing the Riddler was something he'd never meant to do. And Niko, Bashir thought, was sleeping.
But when he sat down beside Stealth's bed on an elephant-foot stool, Stealth turned his head and opened his eyes.
"Bashir," said Niko in a voice barely audible,
"good."
"How are you, Stealth?"
"Dreaming…" His eyes blinked, steadied. "Witches in my dreams. And gods." He tried to smile and put out a hand as if to sit up. He couldn't manage it, but at least he tried. "Sauni won her race…"
"I know. Niko, in town I met a Bandaran."
Niko closed his eyes.
"Niko? Stealth?"
"I'm listening," Stealth said, and Bashir saw a drop of sweat or a tear run from the corner of his eye.
"The Bandaran said to tell you that your master died when a rainbow-sailed ship came in, and that as the sun shone the master asked for you—by name. I don't know what it means, but he seemed to think you would."
Niko turned his head and looked up at Bashir, smiling for the first time in far too long. "It means," Stealth said, "that I can… go home… if I want. That I'm forgiven."
* 6 *
Tempus was just about to rape his sister when Crit came pounding on the door.
Cime had been his only love for years; he'd stayed away from her for many reasons—her curse, his, their kinship, etc.
But if she was a whore now, with her curse lifted, it was by choice and no fault of his. And if she teased him any longer, with her parted lips and bull-whip tongue, he was going to vent his wrath on some innocent, which she assuredly was not.
Nor was she his sister, he told himself—no relationship of blood, but only marriage, had ever been proved, since their mothers weren't the same.
And Enlil wanted Cime badly; Tempus was deep in godbond, hardly capable of holding back the urge to rape another day.
So when Grit's knock came, he released Cime's hair, took his hand out from between her thighs, and told her: "Get up, while you still can, Cime.
Get out of here and go back whence you came. This is no place to tempt the gods."
Breathing hard, her eyes wide with something— treachery, triumph, fear, or lust, he couldn't tell— she scampered like a maiden from his front room, leaving nothing on the table where he'd thought to have her but a slick of sweat.
So much for that, he thought—for now—and let Crit in, not really surprised by the consternated look on his first officer's face: since Tempus had cursed Ranke, carrying Niko's savaged body through the capital's streets, he'd been expecting trouble. The black rain that had fallen when Grippa had been inducted into the Stepsons and the fact that, well into the second week of the games, Ranke had yet to win one event, told him that he hadn't cursed the empire in vain.
"Commander, sorry to disturb you, but there's trouble over at the Nisibisi tents." Grit's eyes were bleak and icy; behind him, on the doorstep, Sync, the 3rd's colonel, stood with ready crossbow, policing the night.
"Rag-heads slew the sentries," Critias continued. "They've taken the Nisibisi athletes hostage… Bashir and Sauni, too. They want an end to Free Nisibis and they want the Mygdonian boy we had last season delivered there by morning or they'll kill every prisoner they've got."
"Mygdonians? Are you certain?" Tempus gathered up his panoply, his sharkskin-hilted sword. The Mygdonian boy in question, Shamshi, was the wizard-child Tempus had seen languishing in Meridian under the dream lord's spell. And the Mygdonians knew as well as Tempus that no mortal power could produce the child.
Crit shrugged cynically. "Hardly. Anybody could be under those turbans. Their message said 'blood for blood; priest for priest." The Mygdonians are godless still, so far as we know."
"What do the Mygdonians say?" Tempus demanded, buckling on his cuirass.
"I sent Strat over to interrogate the leader of the Mygdonian delegation." Crit squinted at Tempus ruefully: "Nobody lies to Straton; the Mygdonians say it's not their doing and they've offered to help. That's why I'm here… I know you're… ah… busy; I wouldn't have disturbed you if it wasn't ticklish. Orders?"
"Could it be the witch-caste, the rebel Nisibisi? Was Grippa taken hostage?"
"Grippa? No, he was with Randal the whole time. Commander, we think—Kama and I, that is… Vashanka's balls, Riddler, it seems like Abaki-this's faction, avenging the priests you slew and sending us a message to stay clear of Theron, not resurrect the coup. Kama says we can ask for help from Theron's—"
"Surround the Nisibisi tents. We'll burn them out. If we lose Bashir and the girl, it's a kinder death than they'll get otherwise. Make sure Randal's there, and Grippa. Go on, I'll meet you there. And send Sync in here."
"Commander?"
"Crit?"
"Is there some reason you haven't mentioned finding a replacement for Niko… will you accept a volunteer?"
"Not you, Stepson, nor any one of yours. If I didn't know you wouldn't disobey my orders, I'd think you'd been letting my daughter whisper in your ear. Now go on, let's see if we can't roast those bastards, whoever they are. And don't worry about Bashir—a martyr's death will suit him."
Crit grinned without humor and saluted, opened the door and called Sync in, then left, closing it.
"You wanted to see me, Commander?" said the rangy commando colonel warily, crested helmet in his hands.
"Sync, I have a task for you, if you'll accept it. One that should be done by a Rankan, a man who remembers what Ranke used to be, and wants to be proud of the empire once again."
The Rankan ranger watched the quasi-immortal he'd deserted Abakithis to serve without emotion. Then he said: "Something the Stepsons can't handle, Commander?"
"A special mission that Niko was to have performed."
Sync's eyes glinted. "I was hoping you'd ask."
When they'd discussed the details and the commando had gone, Tempus threw open the door to his back rooms and found his sister right behind it, still half-naked.
She came to him and said, pressed against him, her hand on his loinguard: "So? You've sent your boys out to do men's work. Now you come to me to save you once again… What is it this time, brother, that you can't accomplish without my help?" A finger traced his lips; her breath was warm against his throat. "Shall I call upon Aŝkelon and secure the Mygdonian boy for you?"
He knew he shouldn't bargain with his sister, yet he had little choice. He meant to ask her for help, to make a deal with this creature half siren, half witch. But the god came into him, full force.
He put a hand on her; she closed her eyes.
The god wanted rape; he wanted peace between them.
Too long they'd fought and spat at one another. She leaned against his hand and spoke his name, her voice soft and nothing like the harpy she'd become.
"You're free of everything but me, is that it, sister? Am I the
curse that even the dream lord couldn't lift?" It was no good, he knew: the time was right, and after three centuries of longing, he couldn't deny his feelings—calling her "sister" wasn't even helping.
"I could make him free you, too."
"Of everything but you?" The god deepened his voice and in his head, silently, he fought a batttle with Enlil. He'd do anything but rape her, if the god would settle for less than that.
But the god was adamant and Tempus had fought this battle so many times—it was a matter of personal import, of self-respect. If she'd come to him before the god had, and begged him then, as she did now, to make her truly free by consummating what had lain undone between them for three hundred years, he could have done it. Done it even though the girl he'd loved—a girl so beautiful in mind and body that he'd stepped between her and a wizard, knowing full well he'd suffer eternally for what he did—no longer existed in this twisted creature who sought to mount him as if she were a man and he her conquest.
Had she not been so bent on his seduction, she might have had him, damned him in his own terms, brought him at last as low as she. But she was too forward, too much the courtesan for him. And she always would be. This final time, when he could have taken her with a god to blame, he turned away from Cime, just disgusted.
And all the love he'd nursed forever, which had kept him from loving women and constrained him from making an accommodation with his fate, bled out of him.
* 7 *
Roxane, in her Grippa-form, slipped away from Randal in the confusion before the Nisibisi tents.
The dark lords had smiled upon her; Bashir, her hated enemy, was in the hands of the Rankan priesthood. Even as she sneaked away, she heard tortured screams and moans from inside the tent where the hostages were being held.
And it was hard to leave: inside, a man was dying, being bled over a barrel sacred to Vashanka, the missing god. And since there was no god to take his soul, Roxane could have had it.
Nor was that the extent of the feast at hand: the girl Sauni, Enlil's pregnant priestess, was learning that all men were not as gentle or as loving as Nikodemos, that more could happen in a man's arms than ecstasy. And Bashir was suffering most, watching his flock suffer under Rankan torture and his young priestess defiled by Rankan hands.
The psychic anguish emanating from that tent was so extreme she was giddy from it, so that she didn't notice that Randal saw her slip away, and went to Crit, or that Crit sent Straton after her.
Grippa's young, strong form seemed to glide among the shadows and the tents. Full of bloodlust and nearly sated from the suffering on the air, she hurried him through the crowd, avoiding Stepsons, 3rd Commando rangers, and onlookers held back by Rankan soldiers.
From the scuffles among the crowd and the mutters of the factions, a war might break out this night.
But it wasn't Grippa's war—she had no trouble moving away from the black tents of Nisibis, where brush and oil were being set to make a flaming pyre out of hostages and hostage-takers.
At the Stepsons' billet, all was deserted; in Randal's quarters, she didn't have to slit a single ward.
She spent long minutes searching for the globe before she realized it wasn't there. Then she looked at the mess she'd made, cursed herself, and began to put the little room to rights.
She thought she heard a footstep, stopped still, heard nothing more, and began again.
Where was the globe? Where would the accursed Hazard have secreted it? As she put mageguild robes and finery away, she could think of nothing but the power globe, made from Nisibisi clay with precious inset stones and a stand of gold with glyphs her race alone knew how to read.
And then she thought of another place that it might be.
She dashed out of Randal's room and collided with Straton, the Stepsons' chief interrogator.
"Grippa!" Strat's huge hands caught Grippa by the arms. "Randal's out at the Nisibisi tent. Come on, boy, your partner's waiting."
She almost struck him dead. She had the strength in her, from all the pain abroad tonight, to do it. But Strat was stupid—she thought to get around him.
"But Straton, someone's got to be with Niko— look in on him at least. He doesn't know about my sister—my…" She made Grippa's lip quiver, his eyes fill with tears "… poor, benighted sister. I've got to go to Stealth!" She jerked Grippa's arms free and turned and ran—a thing the grief-stricken brother of a captive girl might easily have done.
Cursing folly, Strat pounded after Grippa. She didn't try to lose him in the crowd, just ran full-tilt among the lacquered buildings until she came to the one where Niko lay abed.
Inside, she barred the door behind her and halted, panting.
The outer room seemed deserted; there was no one here.
With a spell on her tongue, she searched for the magic globe of power; she thought she felt it near.
If it was here, it was in the rear room, where Niko slept.
She cautioned herself—Niko made her do things and dare things and feel things no witch should try.
She pushed open one door, then another. In the second room, Niko lay.
Inside, she closed the door behind her and leaned upon it, just looking at the sleeping fighter who'd bound her to him as surely as once she'd bound him to her with a string of magic.
He must have sensed her; his head tossed on his pillow; he ran a hand through tousled, ashen hair and raised his head.
In the light of one candle burning low, his eyes seemed sunken; yet she could sense the vitality in him, the vigor coming back again.
And for the first time since she'd changed her shape, she regreted taking man-form.
"Who's there?" he called out.
"Grippa," she had to say, the name foul upon her tongue.
"What's wrong out there, Grippa? I heard commotion—no one's here…"
He pushed himself up on his elbows and she realized how well Niko was healing: the pain that came to her was faint, the will behind the movement sure, determined.
She found herself kneeling at his bedside, wanting most of all to take a form he'd recognize, a woman's form, and bestow herself upon him.
She took his hand and kissed it; he caressed her cheek. "Grippa, you didn't answer me. What's wrong?"
"It's… Sauni." Grippa's voice should tremble, she told herself; she hadn't given anything away.
"Sauni?" Niko took his hand away and sat up. What it cost him made Roxane shiver with delight.
As the covers fell away and he swung his legs over the side of the low cot, she saw the deep scars and half healed wounds on his thighs and groin.
She closed her eyes, realizing that Niko might never love another girl. Once, she would have gloried in such a revelation. Now, she almost wept. And compassion was too dangerous for a witch.
Niko's hands were on her, shaking Grippa's shoulders. "What happened? Tell me."
"Sauni… Bashir… they're hostages of the Mygdonians. Oh, Niko…" She threw her arms around him, the globe forgotten.
"Ssh, pud, we'll think of something. Just help me up. We'll see what we can do."
And though she hadn't meant to, she did something so perverted, so painful to her person, so twisted for a witch, that she staggered with its gravity: all the strength she'd gathered, all the soul-meat she'd eaten, everything she had beyond the strength to live, she wound into a net of power and cast it over Nikodemos.
He'd think he'd dreamed that Grippa came, she told him softly; she touched his face and traced a sign upon his brow.
He was so weak, it took very little of her power to control him. Shaking his head as if bemused, Niko sat back on his cot, eyes half-closed.
Then Roxane, her net of spell and privacy cast about the room, took an even greater risk: she conjured health, she conjured strength, she took the maleness from Grippa's youthful body and gave to Niko what the Rankan priests had stolen.
And her Grippa-self cried out in loss and pain. The boy she inhabited shivered and sobbed while Niko, unseeing, unc
omprehending, ensorceled, sat quietly.
Roxane fought the Grippa-form, forced it over into a corner. And there she left it, whining like a beaten pup.
She knew she might bring down the wrath of hell upon herself; she should have sought out the globe of Nisibisi power for purely evil purpose.
But, wraithlike, discorporate in the middle of Niko's room, she took on a woman's form—like her own, but not that crippled body she'd left dying in a Tysian alley. This was a Roxane fully hale, a conjured Roxane.
And in it, breathing heavily, she could see the globe, a plane away, secreted between realities where Randal had hidden it.
If Niko could have seen, he would have seen a translucent Nisibisi witch pull a globe of power from mid air, as if opening an invisible box.
But Niko saw nothing, heard nothing: she didn't want him to know a witch had helped him. She was asking nothing for her aid. She was trading something, though: the Grippa-form was dying, emasculated, evanescently evincing every wound that Niko had taken, every wound that lesser magicians and weakling gods had tried to heal but could only lessen.
And Roxane heard a rumble deep from underground, a rumble her inner ear knew to be a discontented accountant in the bank of souls.
With her not-quite-corporeal hands on the Nisibisi globe of power, she set it spinning so that colored light spun webs about the room.
And in their midst a stinking, scale-footed demon lord came to be, so powerful a one that Roxane bowed her head.
"Creature," its voice boomed, "thou art close to dissolution. Saving souls is stealing from the lord of hell."
"I have this Grippa-soul to offer, meager penance. I promise others by the score. Let me have this one boy to…" She'd almost said, "to love." She couldn't say that, couldn't dare even to think it. She made promises, instead, which would keep her busy for a score of years. And at the end of that time, Roxane would face her judgment. All this, for Nikodemos.
It didn't seem like quite so much until the demon lord was gone and she sat alone with the mewling Grippa-form, the power globe in her lap, her Roxane-body fully realized.
She looked back once at Niko, who still saw nothing but what she wished him to see: he looked inward, onto his pacific rest-place, a half-smile upon his face.
