"I cannot trust you not to interfere. By noon I shall be installed as temporary First Hazard of your local Mageguild-"
"Slumming? It's hardly your style."
"Style?" he thundered so that his companion shuddered and Niko started, dislodging a stone which clicked, rolled, then lay still. "Style? She came unto me with her evil and destroyed my peace." His other hand cradled his wrist. "I was lucky to receive a reprieve from damnation. I have only a limited dispensation: either I force her to renege on murdering me, or make her finish the job. And you of all men know what awaits a contractee such as myself when existence is over. What would you do in my place?"
"I did not know how she got here, but now it comes clearer. She went to destroy you in your place, and was spat out into this world from there? But how is it she has not succeeded?"
The Power, looking past Tempus with a squint, shrugged. "She was not certain, her will was not united with her heart. I have a chance, now, to remedy it... bring back restful dreaming in its place, and my domain with it. I will not let anything stop me. Be warned, my friend. You know what strengths I can bring to bear."
"Release my people, if you want her, and we will think about how to satisfy you over breakfast. From the look of you, you could use something warm to drink. You do drink, don't you? With the form come the functions, surely even here."
Askelon sighed feelingly; his shoulders slumped. "Yes, indeed, the entire package is mine to tend and lumber about in, some little while longer... until after the Mageguild's fete this evening, at the very least. ... I am surprised, not to mention pleased, that you display some disposition to compromise. It is for everyone's benefit. This is Jihan." He inclined his head toward his companion. "Greet our host." .
"It is my pleasure to wish that things go exceedingly well with you," the woman said, and Niko saw Tempus shiver, a subtle thing that went over him from scalp to sandals-and almost bolted out to help, thinking some additional, debilitating spell was being cast. He was not fooled by those polite exchanges: bodies and timbres had been speaking more plainly of respectful opposition and cautious hostility. Distressed and overbalanced from long crouching without daring to lean or sit, he fell forward, catching himself too late to avoid making noise.
Niko heard Tempus remonstrate, "Let him be, Askelon!" and felt a sudden ennui, his eyelids closing, a drift toward sleep he fought-then heard the dream lord reply: "I will take this one as my hostage, and leave Jihan with you, a fair trade. Then I will release these others, who remember nothing-for the interim. When I am done here, if you have behaved well, you may have them back permanently, free and unencumbered. We will see how good your faith can be said to be."
Niko realized he could still hear, still see, still move.
"Come here, Nikodemos," Tempus summoned him.
He obeyed. His commander's mien implored Niko to take all this in his stride, as his voice sent him to see to breakfast for three. He was about to object that only by the accident of meditation had he been untouched by the spell-which sought out waking minds and could not find his in his restplace, and thus the cook and all the menials must be spellbound, still-when men began to stir and finish sentences begun before Askelon's arrival, and Tempus waved him imperatively on his way. He left on the double, ignoring the stares of those just coming out of limbo, whistling to cover the wheeze of his fear.
3
So it was that the Sacred Bander Nikodemos accompanied Askelon into Sanctuary on the young Stepson's two best horses, his ears ringing with what he had heard and his eyes aching from what he had seen and his heart clandestinely taking cautious beats in a constricted chest.
Over breakfast, Askelon had remarked to Tempus that it must be hell for one of his temperament to languish under curse and god. "I've gotten used to it."
"I could grant you mortality, so small a thing is still within my power." "I'll limp along as I am, thanks, Ash. If my curse denys me love, it gives me freedom."
"It would be good for you to have an ally."
"Not one who will unleash a killing mist merely to make an entrance," Tempus had rejoined, his fingers steepled before him. "Sorcery is yet beneath your contempt? You are hardly nonaligned in the conflict brewing."
"I have my philosophy."
"Oh? And what is that?"
"A single axiom, these days, is sufficient to my needs."
"Which is?"
"Grab reality by the balls and squeeze.' "
"We will see how well it serves you, when you stand without your god." "Are you still afraid of me, Ash? I have never given you cause, never vied with you for your place."
"Whom do you think to impress, Riddler? The boy? Your potential, and dangerous proclivities, speak for themselves. I will grant no further concessions...."
Riding with the dream lord into Sanctuary in broad daylight was a relief after the tension of his commander's dining table. Being dismissed by Askelon before the high-walled Mageguild on the Street of Arcana was a reprieve he had not dared to hope for, though the entelechy of the seventh sphere decreed that Nikodemos must return to the outer gates at sundown. He watched his best horse disappear down that vine-hung way without even a twinge of regret. If he never saw that particular horse and its rider again, it would be too soon.
And he had his orders, which, when he had received them, he had despaired of successfully carrying out. When Askelon had been absorbed in making his farewells to the woman whose fighting stature and muscle tone were so extraordinary, Tempus had bade Niko warn certain parties to spread the word that a curfew must be kept, and some others not to attend the Mage-guild's fete this evening, and lastly find a way to go alone to the Vulgar Unicorn, tavern of consummate ill repute in this scabrous town, and perform a detailed series of actions there.
Niko had never been to the Vulgar Unicorn, though he had been by it many times during his tours in the Maze. The east-side taverns like the Alekeep at the juncture of Promise Park and Governor's Walk, and the Golden Oasis, outside the Maze, were more to his liking, and he stopped at both to fortify himself for a sortie into Ilsig filth and Ilsig poverty. At the Alekeep, he managed to warn the father of a girl he knew to keep his family home this evening lest the killing mist diminish his house should it come again; at the Oasis, he found a Hell-Hound and the Ilsig captain Walegrin gaming intently over a white-bladed knife (a fine prize if it were the "hard steel" the blond-braided captain claimed it was, a metal only fabled to exist), and so had gotten his message off to both the palace and the garrison in good order.
Yet, in the Maze, it seemed that his luck deserted him as precipitately as his sense of direction had fled. It should be easy to find the Serpentine-just head south by southwest ... unless the entelechy Askelon had hexed him! He rode tight in his saddle under a soapy, scum-covered sky gone noncommittal, its sun nowhere to be seen, doubling back from Wide-way and the gutted wharfside warehouses where serendipity had taken his partner's life as suddenly as their charred remains loomed before him out of a pearly fog so thick he could barely see his horse's ears twitch. Rolling in off the water, it was rank and fetid and his fingers slipped on his weeping reins. The chill it brought was numbing, and lest it penetrate to his very soul, he fled into a light meditation, clearing his mind and letting his body roll with his mount's gait while its hoofbeats and his own breathing grew loud and that mixed cadence lulled him.