Beyond Wizardwall

by Janet Morris

  The Grippa-form, as it was, was useless. There was only one thing to do: consume it, make a simulacrum of it, and be Roxane once again.

  If she'd had longer, she would have lain with Niko. She wanted to, but she heard voices right outside.

  She had time enough only to spin her globe, speak to it in words it loved to hear, words it hadn't heard for far too long, then spirit it to a safe place where no puny Hazard would ever find it, kiss Niko once upon the brow, and bid him: "Sleep, sleep beloved."

  He lay back, his face peaceful. On his body, scars were fading as she watched. One tear of hers fell on him, a tear for herself, who'd become tainted with self-sacrifice and weakened by this unwanted love for a mortal which had taken Death's Queen and reduced her to a mere slave of hell with only twenty years to live.

  Then she went and knelt before the Grippa-form, made passes over it and, hunched there, began to eat.

  * 8 *

  When Tempus gave the order, Crit himself set the Nisibisi tent aflame.

  Crit didn't like it. He told Strat so as they prepared to rush inside as soon as the 3rd Commando cut the tenting and Tempus gave the word. "It's a big tent, don't worry," Strat told him. "That's not the point, Strat. What if we can't save Bashir?" Strat had reported back to Crit when Grippa had gone into Niko's quarters. Crit needed Strat—Niko would have to take his chances with the witch, if Grippa still was one, as everybody thought.

  "Then Bashir will be a martyr, with a special place in Nisi heaven, and we'll have some fried priests to show for it," Strat said sensibly, wetting himself down with soda water. "Here, partner." Strat gave him a wet turban-cloth to wrap around his face. "Compliments of our Mygdonian friends. Funny, what kind of allies we've got these days."

  Strat's first boxing match was tomorrow; luckily, his opponent was a Mygdonian, who'd also have been up all night. "At least they're human," Crit groused.

  Close by, Tempus's sister and Randal had their heads together.

  Strat said, "What's with you, Crit? The Rid-dler's right—this is the only way. I've never seen you like this…" Then Strat peered into the smoke and saw Kama striding their way. "Unless it's her—I know she's done her best to turn you against everyone, but against the Riddler? Is that it? If it is, I'm going to crack her skull right here and now—"

  "No, it's not—it's… I'm confused, that's all. Bashir's our ally; we could have tried to negotiate.

  Nobody wants a Free Nisibis more than Tempus. And there's the Rankan factions…"

  "Just follow your orders, leftman, and leave those other stones unturned."

  Then Crit had his hands full, assuring Strat that he'd do just that, keeping his partner from saying or doing anything to Kama, and forming up the task force for the imminent assault.

  They had "help" from the 3rd Commando and a contingent of Rankan guards. The 3rd's job was to keep the guards from turning on them in the dark and smoke, or from killing any hostages instead of saving them, or from letting any of the Mygdonians-who-might-be-Rankans escape.

  Cime and Randal were to part the fire—Randal swore that his kris was capable of that.

  Tempus, with a battle cry and a torch held high, leaped forward suddenly and the tent went up like tinder.

  Then there was a general rush in which Grit's job was to keep track of all his people, call formation orders, and sortie forth, hopeful of getting to Bashir before the kidnappers inside could kill him.

  Some magician—Cime or Randal—was as good as the god's word: the flaming tent lifted into the heavens, dragging tentpoles, stakes and all, as the mixed militia rushed it.

  The fire parted before Crit; then he and Strat, coughing and their eyes streaming tears, tried to sight their targets in the melee: targets to rescue, not to kill.

  The first discernible thing Crit saw was Tempus, running past him with Sauni in his arms.

  Then Strat punched him, yelling through the din of combat and howling, burning men: "There's Bashir—tied to that pole!"

  They fought their way together toward the warrior-priest of Free Nisibis, half-conscious, a pig ready to roast upon its spit.

  Strat thrice saved Crit—once with an ax-blow that severed a swordhand from the arm that swung it, once with a timely: "Behind you," as a man whose head was wrapped in a burning turban jumped for his back and Crit had time to see the Rankan armor beneath the Mygdonian costume as he slit his attacker's throat. The third time, Strat pushed Crit from his feet in time to dodge an arrow that would have got him in the head.

  They reached Bashir about the same time that Sync, the 3rd's colonel, did.

  The warrior-priest was overcome with smoke, showing signs of Rankan and not Mygdonian-style torture, but he'd live. As they cut him down, Crit had time to yell: "Sync, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be outside. Can't you follow simple orders?"

  "Sorry, Stepdaughter," Sync yelled back. "In all the excitement, I forgot."

  Then there were enemies to slay and captives to take—Tempus wanted at least two of the hostage-takers alive.

  Crit and Strat let Sync finish rescuing Bashir and collared two fleeing enemies, reasoning that those who ran the fastest were those with the most to lose.

  But from somewhere, arrows whizzed, and both their captives died on the spot.

  When they'd sorted out the mess and put out the fire, and coughed the soot out of their lungs, it developed that not one of the hostage-takers had survived.

  Whether this was due, as Tempus generously proclaimed, to Rankan interference and no fault of Grit's task force, or from "overzealousness," as Sync suggested, it was done and nothing could undo it.

  A bunch of corpses in Rankan-made undergarments and an occasional piece of Rankan armor proved nothing.

  They had to be content with having saved Bashir, who'd been tortured the least of all, since his captors were saving him for last, and Sauni, who Cime said needed "rest, away from men," and nearly fifteen of Bashir's contingent.

  Later, when the Stepsons went in a body to cool their throats and talk about the evening's work, Randal pulled Crit and Strat aside:

  "My globe's gone. I can feel it," the Hazard said, looking at them both with worried eyes.

  "What are we supposed to do about that, witchy-ears?" Straton growled.

  "Strat, Randal did a good job tonight. No more 'witchy-ears," where I can hear it. Randal, will that sword of yours do that for any man—control fire?"

  "What does it matter? Strat, did you let Grippa alone with Niko long?"

  Crit intervened: "Randal, we can't fight your battles for you—it's not that we wouldn't like to, it's that we can't… we're not able. If you want us to go with you now, to find Grippa…"

  The scrawny mage looked relieved. "I'd like that, task force leader. I don't want to hurt Grippa, you see…"

  "Right," Crit said, while Strat guffawed.

  But when they got to Niko's quarters, Grippa wasn't there.

  Niko was alone, sleeping deeper, looking better than he had in weeks.

  "It's gone, by the Writ; it's gone without a trace," Randal moaned, feeling around in a hole in the middle of the air.

  "What's gone? Your hands?"

  Randal's hands reappeared from nowhere and he slammed nothing down as if it were the lid of a box that had failed in its purpose.

  "The globe. She's got it now. Oh drat and—"

  "Randal," Straton said companionably, putting a huge arm over the mage's shoulders, "Crit says you're really one of us now, and because he's right, I'm going to teach you to curse—properly, like the Stepson you are. Now repeat after me…"

  Crit, watching Niko sleep, noticed something: an open window over the Stepson's bed. He went to close it and heard a noise outside.

  "I'll be right back," he told Strat and Randal. "And do that in the other room, will you? Niko needs his rest."

  Behind the lacquer cabin, hunkered down against the building wall, sat Grippa, sobbing his heart out.

  Crit couldn't get a coherent word out
of the boy or witch or whatever it was, but since he was supposed to treat Grippa like a Stepson, he invited the boy to have a drink with them, assuring him that his sister would be all right.

  And when the youth had wiped his nose and palmed his eyes and gained his feet, Crit noticed something different about young Grippa, but for the life of him he couldn't have said exactly what.

  * 9 *

  The crowd was especially large and especially polarized for Straton's match with the Mygdonian champion, a boxer half-again his weight.

  Men that big were often clumsy. Watching Crit watch Straton, Tempus wished his first officer had more faith. Crit was clearly nervous, though the six Sacred Band pairs around him in Strat's corner, oiled and silked and sporting their finest panoplies, were clearly anticipating a victory celebration.

  The Band had taken last night's successful rescue of Bashir and Enlil's priestess as a sign from heaven, a reconsecration of their bond to the warlords of the afterlife. Had they not triumphed over the Rankan priesthood?

  The Stepsons loitered near the ring in twos and threes, full of all their former surety, arrogance, and grace. Since Tempus and the cadre had saved Bashir, the omen for the coming season was clear: Bashir would reign on Wizardwall, the Rankan-based 3rd Commando would be revealed as unworthy of the Riddler's favor, and Mygdonia as a paper tiger. This, the pairs declared and the singles nodded sagely, was the only proper reading of last night's events.

  Tempus wished he felt as comfortable with side-taking by the gods. Bashir, next to him watching the match, assuredly did not. Bashir had questions clouding eyes once clear with god-given wisdom, questions Tempus didn't want to answer.

  Beyond, in the sand ring, Straton grabbed the Mygdonian contestant by the hair with one hand and thumped savagely on his opponent's skull with his other fist.

  As the man staggered and his head went down, Straton's knees came up and connected with the Mygdonian's chin, lifting the unfortunate a full foot into the air: they were fighting combat-style, with only field rules enforced.

  When a roar came up from the crowd, Bashir leaned over and wondered, "Has my god forsaken me? That is the question."

  "The Lord Thunderbolt steers all things—scatters and gathers, comes together and goes away, approaches and departs."

  "So you are saying that I've fallen from grace?"

  "I'm saying, Bashir, that sometimes it is necessary to depart from the mountain to see its heights. Wisdom is separate from other things; separate yourself from judgment, pride, and questions."

  The god had sacrificed Bashir's complacency for a purpose, no doubt. What that purpose was, Tem-pus wasn't sure. Nor did he wish to dwell upon the intricacies of theomachy or the riddle of the hidden god. Whether Enlil thought to absorb the hidden god, take his place, or only his followers, was not the business of Tempus, or Bashir, who for the first time had been led by a god into folly.

  Tempus, who knew that folly was the only possible result of religion, of philosophy, and of magic, was concerned only that Bashir come to terms with treachery from on high, not seek a flaw within himself or imagine that punishment had been meted out.

  The warrior-priest was badly shaken, so much so that he'd withdrawn from his own events and insisted his followers do likewise: all the freemen of Nisibis were in mourning for their dead.

  This serendipity suited Tempus: none of Bashir's Successors would be at the winners' feast, where an emperor would die, and thus none could take the blame for it.

  Straton, on the other hand, might well be among the victors that night: lifting up the Mygdonian once more with a blow so that the man landed flat upon his back, spread-eagled, Strat put a sandaled foot upon his chest.

  The crowd cheered hoarsely in delight as Strat was declared the winner.

  Tempus, edging away from Bashir, who kept trying to make sense out of the senseless fury of the gods, found himself face-to-face with Theron and Brachis, the revolutionary priest.

  "Ho, Riddler! Congratulations," Theron bawled. "You still find the finest and hone their mettle. There won't be much joy for Ranke in next week's winners' night if your men keep winning everything they enter." The Rankan general was as gleeful as if Straton had been a man of his.

  And Brachis, in a priestly, covert whisper, demanded: "Have we a consecrated tool or not, Riddler? The time is right, the purpose—"

  "I can't be seen with you, god-mouth," Tempus rumbled as quietly as he might; the very sight of the priest made his blood boil. "Trust in the Storm God… practice what you preach."

  He pushed by them roughly, toward the Sacred Banders crowded around Straton, each vying to attend the winner.

  "Life, Straton—the glory's yours already," said Tempus to his Stepson.

  Strat's big chest, covered with bruises, dirt, and sweat, puffed out. Before the Riddler's approbation, Strat turned shy, and mumbled. Crit, a wet towel in hand, grinned fondly down upon his partner and caught Tempus's eye: "Let's wait and see if we can beat Sync—that's Strat's match for the finals. Then we'll talk about glory."

  Tempus hadn't known it would be Sync—no one had until this morning, he found out when he pulled Critias aside.

  "Crit," Tempus said slowly, "Strat must lose to Sync.

  "What's this? Is Enlil whispering in your ear, now that Vashanka's gone?"

  "You might say that."

  Grit's face fell. "What's the use, then, of him taking so much punishment if losing's his fate?"

  "Not fate," Tempus explained, hating to compromise his Stepsons, but knowing that Crit, if any man, would understand. "Politics—I need Sync in the winners' tent. I'd also like it if neither one of you two were there."

  "What? Why? Oh." Crit's quick mind stilled his tongue. "Rankan justice for Rankans, if I hear you right?"

  Tempus said nothing, thinking to let it go at that.

  But Crit couldn't. "Is that it, Commander? If so, someone ought to tell Kama, who's—"

  "Tell Kama nothing. Volunteer for nothing. Your orders, Stepson, come only from me—and you've just heard them."

  Tempus turned away.

  Crit fell in beside him: "Make Strat throw the match? That's what you're asking—there's no chance Sync can beat him otherwise. And I can't tell him that… he's put his heart into this. And there's cadre honor. It had better come from you, if such an order—"

  "Crit, I don't care how you do it. Drug him. Get him drunk. Push him down a well. Let's not leave it to the gods, this time… someone might get hurt."

  "I…" Crit had long been Tempus's covert task force leader. He was a man who understood things more complex than simple honor, honest glory. Grit's mouth twisted; he looked at his booted feet in the Rankan mud. "I'll take care of it, Commander."

  "Life to you, Crit," Tempus said, and veered away through the Festival crowd without giving the matter more thought than he had to: Crit was always as good as his word.

  And the Band was right: the omens were auspicious—the sort of omens in which the man called the Riddler believed: he'd finally shaken the hold Cime had had on him for centuries; he'd put even a god in His place to do it. He went now to the field altars by the food tents, to find a likely girl, some temple hopeful, to rape and consecrate as required by ritual—a consolation prize he was glad enough to award Enlil.

  Whatever happened from now on at the Festival, Tempus had already won the most coveted prize of all: freedom to a degree he'd thought he might never claim.

  There were problems still—there always were. There was the matter of his rightman, his sworn partner, Nikodemos, whose freedom must likewise be assured. Sacred Band pairs were bound to strive for parity, and one thing Tempus was unwilling to accept was Aŝkelon's prognostication that Niko would take the Riddler's place as a slave to forces beyond Stealth's comprehension so that Tempus could be free.

  * 10 *

  Each night, Niko was getting stronger. He could feel it in the mornings, as he sorted through the strangeness of his dreams.

  For five nights running
, in his sleep, he'd proved his manhood, made love to a long-lost wench named Cybele, a girl he'd loved and lost who some said had been a witch.

  She came to him in his sleep and he was always ready; none of the impotence he'd feared, then glumly told himself he'd have to live with, marred those dreams.

  Tonight, he was determined to stay awake—to see if there was any substance to the dreams or if they were just his body's trick to hasten its return to health.

  Helping him, unknowing of his plan, was Randal, whom Niko had asked a Sacred Bander to summon when a pair came by with news of bouts won and events to come.

  Randal was uneasy, his ears tinged with red, his glance flitting everywhere but incapable of meeting Niko's.

  Finally, Randal said, "Your armor, Stealth. Tem-pus gave it to me for safekeeping. Now you're well enough, you ought to take it back."

  "Lord Storm forfend!" Niko shrank back in exaggerated fear, then sat up again on his cot, where the Hazard and he were sharing the small ration of wine Nikodemos was allowed. "You keep it, Randal. It suits you. And you've earned it. Call it a parting gift, to a right-side partner I'll never forget."

  "It's… permanent, then—" Randal's voice was suddenly thick, his face turned away "—your pairing with Riddler?"

  "Nothing's permanent for mortals. It's all lend-lease—you magicians, and even Tempus, keep forgetting that. In Bandara we learn that you can't own anything, so why delude yourself?"

  "There's trust… affection… love—honest feelings. Those belong to each of us," Randal said very low. "That sable horse of yours wouldn't eat and kept snapping horse-lines until they tethered him outside this place last night."

  "There's that."

  "You should let Sauni come to see you, Stealth. She's had a terrible time here and all she wants is for you to—"

  "That's why I can't see her. She had a claim on me before, by virtue of the way she got with child. But now the god has claimed her as truly his— vessel of the Lord of Rape."