Beyond Wizardwall

by Janet Morris

  So now Niko said softly, "I'd like to tell you about Grippa—there are things you ought to know." The old man squeezed his eyes shut, then, as if bracing for a blow, said, "Go on."

  "Grippa won both heats of his footrace with the best times of any athlete from any nation."

  "He did?" The old man smiled and let the bear rug fall from one shoulder. "That's good. Good news. He was always a fast little snipe. Too bad he never grew to manhood…" "But he did."

  "He did?" Partha's voice was thick, armored, yet hopeful.

  "He did. And all of my fellow Stepsons acknowledged him as a young hero. I told you there were things you don't know." Niko, seeing the pain in Partha's face, told himself that this had to be done. Then he began twisting the truth about a dead boy to save a living soul from unnecessary grief. "Grippa became a Stepson, was accepted into the brotherhood as a rightman."

  "Ah," Partha nodded again and the bear rug slipped from his other shoulder. "That's very good. Good news indeed."

  "So much was Grippa beloved among the Stepsons that when he died we held special games in his honor, a full day of games, with wondrous prizes, and Tempus himself presided over the rites." Partha sat up straight, the bear rug falling away. He sat forward. "That's true? The gods are good to an old man." He leaned forward, and it might have been the firelight, but Niko thought he saw the old fierce gleam return to Partha's eyes.

  "And why do you think we held a hero's funeral? Why did I, myself, though I was sorely wounded at the time, enter the javelin throwing, win it for Grippa's sake, then break my prize-javelin and dedicate it to young Grippa's pyre?" "Why?" Partha's eyes were locked on Niko as if on his immortal soul's salvation. "Why?" he demanded again in vigorous, eager voice.

  "Because Grippa died a true hero—fighting witchcraft. Not just any witchcraft, but the Nisibisi witch, Roxane, Death's Queen. He fought her bravely, he fought her to the death and with full understanding." "My son, my son," Partha murmured, healthy tears streaking down his face: tears of pride, not tears of anguish.

  "And there's more," Niko said. He didn't like this sort of duty, didn't like to draw things out or twist the truth, but men who take lives must also save them: Sauni was sure her father was going to grieve himself to death. And Partha, who'd given Niko shelter when it seemed everyone was against him, deserved better.

  "More? There's more?" Partha put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his fists. "My boy—my man—son, the hero—did more than that?"

  "More. That's why we praised him so extensively when he went up to heaven. Grippa gave his life for me—protecting me from the witch when I was wounded and weak in my sickbed. He sat outside my door and when the witch came for me, he tried to drive her off."

  Partha jumped to his feet, thrust his fist high in the air, and gave a whoop that shook the rafters. "Grippa, wherever you are, I love you!" Then, to Niko, he said in his old, commanding way, "Well, boy, get up. What are you sitting there for like a whipped pup? This is no time for mourning, but a time for joy! We've a celebration to arrange, a commemorative day for my son, Grippa the Witch-fighter, the hero!"

  Niko had to bite his lip to keep from smiling as Partha dragged him by the arm through his halls, waking servants from their lethargy to arrange for "Grippa's Day."

  He hoped the witch would forgive him for misrepresenting the facts to Partha, but compassion was something he alone knew that Roxane understood.

  That night, in Niko's dreams, she came to him from beyond the veil—not to lie with him or ensorcel him, but to smile on him and touch his face and tell him, "Niko, I will always love you, but I will not haunt you. When you're ready, come to me in Sanctuary and we'll have a reunion which will offend neither god nor man."

  And there was something in the witch, some sense of poignancy, sacrifice—of a pure and nearly human sort—which made Niko know that he had nothing to fear from her, now to ever.

  He woke up smiling, glad that she was safe.

  * 13 *

  Tempus had to make an appearance at the Grippa's Day fete, the first of what was to be an annual event.

  And as he escorted Jihan, in her tri-colored scale armor, onto Partha's grounds, he heard a rumbling in his head and told her, "Go find Niko and young Shamshi. Keep an eye on the boy, keep him out of witch— out of mischief."

  She kissed him passionately, saying, "Yes, of course. But don't worry: Shamshi's had his fill of mages after his time with Aŝkelon. He wants to be a secular adept, like Niko, not a wizard like his father."

  And off she went, her high rump gleaming in the sunlight. He didn't really mind having the Froth Daughter around, except when she wrestled him to a draw or took it in her head to rape him, which wasn't often. She was on her best behavior, trying to act like a woman, aware that she was a Stepson—or Stepdaughter—on probation, as far as he was concerned.

  Tempus was still watching her when Niko emerged from a crowd of soldiers, in full dress helmet and long mantle, to greet her, with Shamshi beside him and the sorrel mare's foal on a tether. The foal was to be the Stepsons' gift to Partha for fathering such a hero as Niko had made Grippa out to be.

  It was all coming out very nicely, or at least as well as Tempus had expected, he told himself as he climbed a hillock and sat down there, waiting for the god to speak.

  Overhead, the clouds were fluffy, white horse-shapes drawing chariots across an endless field of sky. Spring was upon the high peaks, and they gleamed in the distance, proud and snow-capped as if they knew that they were free.

  Soon enough he'd venture west, with Niko and the Mygdonian-born Shamshi, to make the boy an apprentice in the islands where the elder gods still held sway and men studied the old ways and older mysteries.

  Tempus had taken Abarsis there, when the Slaughter Priest was just a child. Perhaps if someone had consigned the Riddler to the secular adepts, when he was young and foolish, things would have turned out better—he might have a purer sort of soul, not be the avatar of chaos he'd become.

  Niko was sure that the masters of Bandara could help Shamshi overcome his blood and become an initiate of spiritual significance: Niko had the right to demand that they accept the child, despite his wizard's blood. Tempus was sure only that it was worth a try. Shamshi didn't want to go back to Mygdonia and he couldn't stay with the Stepsons, not until he'd been purified from the taint of magic and become a man.

  Sitting on a carpet of old dead grass and new green grass, Tempus ran his hands through it, thinking about nature's habit of cycling struggle into rebirth. Springtime always made him feel reborn. Once, in another world and another life, when nature itself was young, he'd been a philosopher and then he'd said: This world order, the same for all, neither god or men have made, but it always was and is and shall be an everliving fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.

  Some day he'd like to slip his bonds and slide back across that border in eternities over which a god had long ago thrust him, back to that world and those simpler men, and see what alterations time's everliving fire had made.

  But for now he was content with the upcoming trip to Bandara and even with the news coming back from Sanctuary, though he might ride down to the empire's anus and see for himself, if the war with Mygdonia didn't demand his personal supervision.

  He lay back on the hilltop and stared at the clouds, at one cloud in particular which looked like a mighty warrior in a chariot even more splendid than the one Aŝkelon had given him on Cime's wedding day, a cloud-chariot drawn by silver-gray horses whose manes stroked the heavens and whose mighty hooves seemed about to strike the top of Wizardwall's highest peaks.

  He hadn't had much time for this sort of luxury lately, for lying under the heavens and letting the magnificence of the world renew his spirit.

  The curse had darkened his sight for eons; now that he was free of it, he knew that the loneliness and bitterness with which he'd lived so long weren't necessary, but optional: life is such a gift, and men so unheedful of it, that too often they f
orget.

  Remembering, now, he was sure that those thoughts he thought and those deeds he'd done were right enough, in the greater order of the universe, and that the legacy he'd bequeathed his Stepsons was the rightest thing of all.

  Life and everlasting glory was the potential of every soul, if only each one held the thought and lived with honor. The rest, as Niko said, was lend-lease, borrowed for the moment, meaningless in the end.

  So as he waited for Father Enlil to come and grumble in his ear about Nisibisi power globes and wars to come and blood to spill, he didn't mind: it was his lot.

  He was content.