Beyond Wizardwall

by Janet Morris

  By this, Niko knew that the prohibition which had banned his name, his memory, and his person from Bandara had been lifted—a parting gift from Niko's master. "May we talk?"

  "Privately, whenever you wish. But we have not softened our attitude toward magicians," the Bandaran replied, looking straight at Grippa.

  Niko was about to introduce Grippa to the Bandaran when the youth pulled on his arm. "There she is, Stealth. Oh, she looks glorious! I'll get us a seat up front!" and the boy dashed up the aisle between the wooden benches.

  Then the Bandaran seemed to relax. "Shed these ties, initiate, and you're welcome anytime. Or come before your tests are done—but come alone. We won't have another incident like the last, when you brought sorcery among us."

  "Ties?" Niko was going to ask the Bandaran his name, but the man's comments made him forget. "I'm no longer paired with Randal, the adept—"

  "We know that, student. You should shed this one, too." The Bandaran looked after Grippa, and his words floated back to Niko: "We return home on Winner's Day. If you like, you are welcome to come with us." Then he faced Niko, and his expression was compassionate: "Don't worry about your future, student. You're prepared for what's to come."

  And with a touch which told Niko that this must be his dead master's successor, so calming and pleasant was it upon Niko's arm, the Bandaran glided away.

  Watching him go, Niko felt a renewed sense of purpose: not an external purpose of accomplishment, but an internal purpose—one of centering the perfectible being that he was without so much concern as to how others saw him or what others thought of his behavior, or even what his fate might be in human terms. Maat made him recall that he was building a different Niko, a spiritual abode in another place, and that, in extremis, he'd been able to protect that place from even the intrusion of Aŝkelon, lord of dreams.

  Feeling much calmer, much clearer, he took his seat beside Grippa, who looked at him with an odd, troubled expression on his face, and waited for the bard's contest to begin.

  Six bards stood on the stage together, and Grippa was right: none looked so fine as Kama, in her 3rd Commando dress blacks with every buckle shining.

  She was the fourth to spin her tale, and so she left the stage with the others when they'd been introduced and sat quietly beside it, the only woman there, until her turn came.

  "Even if she wins," Grippa whispered as the man before her finished his tale and bowed his head to the stomping of feet and thunderous applause, "it won't be because she's better—it'll be because she's a girl."

  Someone from behind hissed at them to be quiet.

  On the stage, the drum beaters on either side began to pound a muffled rhythm and Kama stepped up to the front of the stage.

  "Come muse," she began, "sing to me of mighty men and witches' ken and the wind of stones on Wizardwall."

  Then Niko realized that Kama's tale was going to be about him, and about his struggles with Roxane, the Nisibisi witch, and he slid down in his seat, his neck hot and his palms suddenly sweaty, embarrassed and proud of all he'd suffered and all he'd done.

  And when Kama was finished relating the tale of the war for Wizardwall and Niko's battles during it, men got to their feet and cheered themselves hoarse.

  Not for one moment, from the beginning of her story, was the outcome in doubt: Kama would be among the celebrants in the winner's tent at the Festival of Man.

  * 14 *

  The celebration that had begun, for some Stepsons, with Straton's defeat that morning, lasted well into the night. Kama's win brought everyone their second wind and even brought the 3rd Commando and the Stepsons together on better terms than the two units had ever enjoyed.

  In the largest Nisibisi tent, men milled and caroused, some with girls they'd met at the games, some with boys; everyone smoked krrf and drank whatever could be found.

  Outside, where Tempus had gone to escape his sister, men and women reeled and laughed toward their beds.

  It was on nights like these that Tempus regretted most that sleep was never his. The moon had risen and under it folk snored with lovers well known or lovers just met.

  Only he was solitary, he presumed to think, having left the sweet camaraderie of his fighters because Cime was intent on bestowing her favors on Sync: "to set a good example for your men—this rivalry between the 3rd and your Stepsons serves no purpose," she'd told him venomously, smiling with all her vicious beauty. "And you, who could have stopped it, just make things worse by allowing the Stepsons to think you love them best."

  Alone now in the companionable night, he chanced across Randal. "A fine night for celebrating, Hazard. Why aren't you with the other Stepsons?"

  "I…" In the moonlight, Randal's freckles looked like mud spattered across his cheeks. "It's— Well, Riddler… you see—"

  "Out with it, mage. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

  "Bad?" Randal almost whined. "It's worse. I didn't know how to tell you, but… Aŝkelon's here."

  Tempus almost lifted the mageling off the ground. He controlled himself, cracking his knuckles with a sound like breaking bones in the night. "Here," he said calmly. "I see. And just how long has he been here?"

  "Ah… a day or two." Randal's shoulders straightened. "And since he's here, I thought I'd just look in on Niko—see if he's sleeping all right. He drank more wine than was prudent this evening but— you never know."

  "I'll go with you, Randal," Tempus said, and with as gentle a hand as possible, pointed Randal in the direction of Niko's quarters.

  For a while they walked in silence, then Tempus said, "Is there anything else you haven't told me? Anything I should know?"

  "Not really, Commander."

  "How goes your pairing with Grippa? Have you determined yet if he's a boy or just a simulacrum made by the witch?"

  "No, not for certain. I mean, yes, I have," the words came out of Randal in a rush, "to my own satisfaction, but there's no proof and you told me proof was what you—"

  "Yes, yes. Quiet." Tempus hadn't meant to snap, but he had heard squealing in the night, squealing more like a horse's than a girl's.

  "Do you hear that, Randal?"

  "Hear—? Yes. It's coming from Niko's— His horse is tethered there…"

  But Tempus was already running at full speed, far too fast for Randal to keep up.

  When he reached the lacquered building in which Niko was billeted, he skidded to a halt outside, not believing what he saw.

  There, in the fading moonlight, was Niko's sable, rearing up and plunging down, repeatedly, trampling something, a dark shape in a heap under Niko's window.

  And, a short distance away, another shape—this one tall, manlike, but exuding a palpable aura brighter than any man's—was watching the horse but making no move to intervene.

  Tempus did, lunging at the crazed stallion, grabbing for its halter, from which a snapped tether swung.

  The horse was so furious at whatever it was killing that it dragged Tempus up into the air as it reared again and he hung there for a second, suspended.

  Then he grabbed it by the ear and brought it down, his other hand on its muzzle. The maddened horse fought him briefly, but eventually it calmed.

  "Back, back," he told it, conscious of the robed figure watching him from the shadows.

  When he'd secured it to the horse line it had snapped, it pawed the ground and whinnied, an ear-splitting trumpet of triumph.

  By then, there was a light in Niko's window.

  Tempus moved quickly toward the wetly gleaming pile below.

  It quivered, but residually: it was dead.

  Once it had been a boy; now it was a pile of human wreckage.

  Knowing what he would see, certain of its identity now, Tempus bent down: enough of the skull remained intact to identify Grippa, Partha's son. And even if the skull had been shattered beyond recognition, the corpse held something in a clenched fist which, when Tempus pried it open, turned out to be a little talisman of hair and bone.


  "Not even a civil greeting, sleepless one?" came a rich, bass voice from above.

  Tempus, crouched by the corpse, looked up. "Hello, Ash. I was hoping you'd disappear now that your filthy work is done."

  "Disappear?" The lord of dreams put his hands on his hips. "Do you know what it cost me to get there? On a mission of mercy? Someone had to act to free Nikodemos from the witch. You didn't."

  "Mercy, you call this? And are you so sure it was a witch—it's nothing now, that's certain. Hardly enough to be worth a funerary pyre."

  The stallion stamped its forefoot and whickered, its neck arched. The horse had been bred by Aŝkelon. Tempus had no doubt that the dream lord had sicced it upon Grippa—or the simulacrum of Grippa.

  "I call it a necessary evil. Surely, you've heard the term. Admit it, Tempus, I've done you a favor."

  An awful feeling of foreboding came over Tempus as he rose to his full height and faced Aŝkelon, an archmage the like of which existed nowhere else anymore.

  "Admitted," he sighed, not liking this one bit. The magicians all played the same game: put you in their debt, then exacted triple payment. "What is it you want, Ash? There must be some reason for this humanitarian act on your part."

  "So suspicious, old friend? Or is it that humani-tarianism is something you've forgotten?"

  "Don't press me tonight, Ash. I'm not in the mood for it. As a matter of fact, I'm not in the mood for you. If you want to do me a favor I'll respect, absent yourself from this place, from my life and the lives of my fighters, and let us all forget that a travesty like you exists at all."

  "Tsk. The same old Tempus. Walk with me, before I speak your true name where you'd not like it spoken."

  Tempus had to do so: they knew too much about each other, Tempus and this shadow lord who'd risen by evil to become regent of the seventh sphere. True names lent true power. Should Aŝkelon speak Tempus's, a war between these two who were not men any longer would begin, one that might make the heavens crash to earth.

  Almost, Tempus longed for it: the chance of death, a worthy foe, havoc of immense proportions to be wreaked. Just a few more words, and they'd begin it. Tempus had been good for a very long time.

  But there were innocents to consider—his Sacred Band, his Stepsons, even the 3rd Commando in their way. And all the hapless, helpless Festival-goers, sleeping in one another's arms.

  "Name your price, Ash, for this favor given but not requested," Tempus said carefully.

  "Once again, I seek your sister."

  "You've had her! By all the gods, haven't you learned your lesson? Isn't a year with her enough?" Tempus was genuinely astonished that Aŝkelon could covet Cime after so long being in her company.

  The dream lord smiled a smile that was unmistakably fond. "The circumstances under which she stayed with me weren't the best. I come now as an honest suitor. I'm asking you, her brother, her only living relative, for permission to court the lovely Cime…"

  Tempus's gusting laughter interrupted Aŝkelon. Tempus couldn't help it: he laughed aloud until his sides ached, until his eyes filled with tears, until he gasped for breath.

  When he got control of himself, he looked back and saw Niko's door open, two shapes—Niko's and Randal's, from their relative sizes—under the window, collecting Grippa's remains.

  "Now, Riddler, what say you? I've given you a wedding gift already—that witch who bedevils Nikodemos won't trouble him here again. I can't guarantee his soul forever, but for the nonce he's safe."

  Tempus started to say that being safe from one witch but in Ash's debt wasn't safe.

  The dream lord intervened, hands up: "Don't thank me. It's quite all right. I've freed the boy from all commitment to me. He may seek me later in life, but as of now, he owes me nothing. This I do to prove good faith."

  "And what am I supposed to do? Hand you Cime, trussed and basted?" He couldn't consign even his sister's wizened soul to Aŝkelon's insubstantial hell, he realized with a sinking heart. Oh, he'd like to, but he just couldn't.

  "The favor I did you, in ridding you of the witch, is conditional."

  "Ah," Tempus said, thinking: here comes the trick.

  "It's conditional," said Ash with a reproving glance, "only because she may take other forms— her spirit lives although the Grippa-simulacrum is gone. Therefore, all I can ask in return is a conditional permission: if I can woo your sister—convince her, by whatever means, to come away with me— just allow it. Don't stand in my way."

  "I won't mix in," he agreed, thinking that this would never work, that Ash was not the vehicle of his freedom—Cime would never go off to live in dreams when she could torture him in the flesh.

  It seemed as if Aŝkelon could read his mind: "Don't worry about me convincing her—there are ways. Just don't 'protect' her from me."

  That was a difficult thing to agree to: she was still his sibling, he told himself. If she came to him begging protection from the heinous dream lord, what was he to do? But he said, "Then keep her from asking for protection. It shouldn't be that hard. She's continually telling me she's protecting me."

  Aŝkelon clapped Tempus on the back like an old war-friend. "Thank you, sleepless one. And since you've agreed to this, no matter the outcome, I offer a boon—no strings, no tricks, no matter what you think of me."

  This time, Tempus's hackles rose. "And may I ask what this gift of gratitude is?"

  "Your curse—I'll lift it. You can love your nasty little murderers without bringing death to any one of them. You can take any girl in passion, without needing the stimulus of rape."

  "Wait—"

  But Aŝkelon's hand was already risen, making signs that hung in blue trails in the dark long after his fingers had finished moving.

  "Wait!" Tempus said again.

  But Aŝkelon was gone; the dream lord had winked out of existence like a doused candle.

  Tempus put his hand through the space which Ash had so recently inhabited to make sure. There was nothing there.

  Then, whistling tonelessly, he ambled down the hill to comfort Niko in the matter of the dead boy, Grippa; make sure that Randal pretended appropriate bereavement; and that the horse didn't take the blame.

  The sable stallion, after all, was only following his nature: the horse hated witches. And besides, with Ash about, things were never what they seemed.

  As he approached Stealth and Randal, he wondered if it could be true: if his curse could be lifted so simply, and unequivocally; if good could be done by the archmage of evil; if, given that it were true, he shouldn't feel somehow different, or at least released.

  But he didn't feel any different, except that he was a little bit tired. Deep within his mind, he heard a godly chuckle.

  Yawning, he took Randal under one arm and Niko under the other and shepherded them into Niko's quarters, saying: "Let me tell you two Stepsons a story about men and mages, about nights like these, which you may find it in your hearts to believe…"

  Book Five:

  WINNER'S DAY

  If Tempus was without his curse, he surely was not without his new god, Enlil. The curse had constrained him from loving the living: those he chose rejected him, those who chose him suffered unto death. The god loved only gods' games and the gift of death.

  Had he known Aŝkelon would come and lift the curse, Tempus would never have made a pact with Father Enlil. As it was now, he struggled to determine just what, if anything, he'd gained when Aŝkelon had done him this "favor": god and curse, together, balanced one another. With the curse gone, the godbond became an affliction he'd as soon have been without.

  Sometimes now when he got angry, as he did over the politics-in-religion's-robes which were at the root of the Festival of Man, the sky grew dark and thunder rolled as if Enlil seconded His servant's displeasure.

  It was disconcerting, to say the least, for a man whose anger had sustained him for centuries.

  Riding back toward the Festival site from the hilltop where he'd gone to soothe his ire, Tempus had to adm
it that he felt no better than he had when he'd languished under his old, familiar curse.

  The last week of the Festival was upon them, Winners' Day soon to dawn. He'd kept as busy as he could, performing funerary rites for Grippa as if the slain boy had been a Stepson and not a witch. He'd done this at Niko's urging and because Partha's daughter was deep in mourning and Bashir needed Partha's good will. But even the most elaborate funeral, with its own games and testimonial rites, can only take so long.

  When it was done, Abakithis's politicking priests still roamed the Festival site, harassing Stepsons and 3rd Commando where they could; Theron's faction was still no better than those they sought to replace, with the possible exception of Theron himself, who drank these nights with Tempus, recalling simpler times and simpler wars like the old man he'd become.

  And Cime, Tempus's nemesis, still inhabited his fantasies and the tents of the Nisibisi, as well as the beds of whatever 3rd Commando rangers or Stepsons she could find.

  He'd just about decided that Aŝkelon had tricked him after all, that the curse wasn't lifted, but only made to seem so by some dream lord's spell. He'd done some tests: he'd slit his palm down to the bone and watched the cut heal in an afternoon; he'd lain awake one whole night in his billet waiting for sleep to come; he'd found a whore he fancied but he scared her half to death; he'd even tried to talk to Niko about his feelings, with no success.

  But then, he'd lived so long and fought so long that it was hard to tell what was habit, what was nature, what was god and what was man. He had no memories of adult life before the curse, nothing to compare its absence to. For all he knew, he was his own curse, one that neither god nor archmage could ever lift.

  Halting his steel-gray Trôs horse before the designated bush, he waited, not for a god or wizard, but for Brachis, priest of Vashanka the Hidden, the missing god.

  With a roar the bush burst into flame and Tempus's horse danced backwards, snorting, while within his head, Enlil growled in godly displeasure.