Robert Asprin: The Dead of Winter

That night, down in Sanctuary on a perpetually dank street called Mageway, in a tower of the citadel of magic, Randal the Tysian Hazard woke in his Mageguild bed, strangling in his own sheets.

The slight mage went pale beneath his freckles-pale to his prodigious ears-as the sheets, pure and innocent linen as far as anyone knew, bound him tighter. If he ever got out of this alive, he'd have to have a talk with his treacherous bedclothes-they had no right to treat him this way. Had his mouth not been stoppered by their grasp, he could have shouted counterspells or cursed his inanimate bedclothes, come alive. But Randal's mouth, as well as his hands and feet, was bound tight by hostile magic.

His eyes, alas, were not. Randal stared into a darkness which lightened perceptibly before the bed on which he struggled, helpless, as the Nisibisi witch Roxane coalesced from nimbus, a sensuous smile upon her face.

Roxane, Death's Queen, was Randal's nemesis, a hated enemy, a worrisome foe.

The young mage writhed within the prison of his sheets and wordless exhortations came from his gagged mouth. Roxane, whom he'd fought on Wizardwall, had sworn to kill him-not just for what he'd done to help Tempus's Stepsons and Bashir's guerrilla fighters reclaim their homeland, Wizardwall, from Nisibisi wizards, but because Randal had once been the right-side partner of Stealth, called Nikodemos, a soul the witch Roxane sought to claim.

Sweating freely, Randal tried to wriggle off his Mageguild bed as Roxane's form lost its wraithlike quality and became palpably present. He succeeded only in banging his head against the wall, and cowered there, wishing witches couldn't slit Mageguild wards like butter, wishing he'd never fought with Stepsons or claimed a Nisi warlock's Globe of Power, wishing he'd never heard of Nikodemos or inherited Niko's panoply, armor forged by the entelechy of dream.

"Umn hmn, nnh nohnu, rgorhrrr!" Randal shouted at the witch who now had human form, even down to perfumed flesh whose scent mixed with his own acrid, fearful sweat: Go away, you horror, evermore!

Roxane only laughed, a tinkling laugh, not horrid, and minced over to his bedside with exaggerated care: "Say you what, little mageling? Say again?" She leaned close, smiling broadly, her lovely sanguine face no older than a marriageable girl's. Her fearsome faith, behind those eyes which supped on fear and now were feasting on Randal's anguish, was older than the Mageguild in which she stood-stood against reason, against nature, against the best magic Rankan trained adepts and even Randal, who'd learned Nisi ways to counter the warring warlocks from the high peaks, could field.

"Whhd whd drr whdd? Whr hheh?" Randal said from behind his sopping, choking gag of sheets: What do you want? Why me?

And the Nisibisi witch stretched elegantly, leaned close, and answered. "Want? Why, Witchy-Ears, your soul, of course. Now, now, don't thrash around so. Don't waste your strength, such as it is. You've got 'til winter's shortest day to anticipate its loss. Unless, of course ..." The luminous eyes that had been the last sight of too many great adepts and doomed warriors came close to his, and widened. "Unless you can prevail on Stealth, called Nikodemos, to help you save it. But then, we both know it's not likely he'd put his person in jeopardy for yours.... Sacred Band oath or not, Niko's left you, deserted you as he's deserted me. Isn't that so, little maladroit nonadept? Or do you think honor and glory and an abrogated bond could bring your one-time partner down to Sanctuary to save you from a long and painful stint as one of my ... servants?" Teeth gleamed above Randal in the dark, as all of Roxane's manifestation gleamed with an unholy and inhuman light.

The Tysian Hazard-class adept lay unmoving, listening to his breathing rasp unwilling to answer, to hope, or to even long for Niko's presence. For that was what the witch wanted, he finally realized. Not his magic Globe of Power, bound with the most deadly protections years of fighting Roxane's kind had taught mages of lesser power to devise; not the Aske Ionian panoply without which, should he somehow survive this evening, Randal would never sleep again because that panoply was protection against such magics as Roxane's sort could weave about a simple Hazard-class enchanter. Not any of these did the witch crave, but Niko-Niko back in Sanctuary, in the flesh.

And Randal, who loved Niko better than he loved himself, who revered Niko in his heart with all the loyalty a rightman was sworn to give his left-side leader even though Niko had formally dissolved their pairbond long before, would gladly have given up his soul to Roxane right then and there to prevent a call going out on ethereal waves to summon Niko into Roxane's foul embrace.

He would have, if his mind had been able to control his fear. But it could not: Roxane was fear's drover, mistress of terror, the very fount from which the death squads plaguing Sanctuary sprang.

She began to make arcane and convoluted passes with her red-nailed hands over Randal's immobilized body and Randal began to quake. His mouth dried up, his heart beat fast, his pulse sought to rip right through his throat. Panicked, he lost all sense of logic; unable to think, his mind was hers to mold and to command.

As she wove her web of terror, Randal's mage's talent screamed silently for help.

It screamed so well and so loudly, with every atom of his imperiled being, that far away to the west, in his cabin before a pool of gravel neatly raked, high on a cliffside overlooking the misty seascape of the Bandaran Islands' chain, Nikodemos paused in his meditation and rubbed gooseflesh rising suddenly on his arms.

And rose, and sought the cliffside, and stared out to sea awhile before he bent, picked up a fist-sized stone, and cast it into the waves. Then Niko began making preparations to leave-to forsake his mystical retreat once more for the World, and for the World's buttocks, the town called Sanctuary, where of all places in the Rankan Empire Niko, follower of maat-the mystery of Balance and Transcendent Perception-and son of the armies, least wanted to go.

Even for Niko's sable stallion, the trek from Bandara to Sanctuary had been long and hard. Not as long or hard as it would have been for Niko on a lesser horse, but long enough and hard enough that when Niko arrived in town, bearded and white with trail dirt, he checked into the mercenaries' guild north of the palace and went immediately to sleep.

When he woke, he washed his face with water from an ice-crusted bedside pot, scratched his two-months growth of beard and decided not to shave it, then went down to the common room to eat and get a brief.

The guild hostel's common room was unchanged- wine-dark even in morning, quiet all and every day. On its sideboard stood steaming bowls of mulled wine and goat's blood and, beside, cheese and barley and nuts for men who needed possets in the morning to brace them for hard work to come.

These days, in Sanctuary, the meres were eating better -a function, Niko determined from the talk around him as he filled a bowl, of their new regard and esteem in a town coming apart at its seams, a town where personal protection was a commodity at an all-time high. There was lamb on the sideboard this morning, a whole pig with an apple in its mouth, and fish stuffed with savory. It hadn't been this way when last Niko'd worked here-then the meres were tolerated, but not sent goodies from the Palace and from the fisherfolk or from the merchants.

It hadn't been this way, before.... He ate his fill and got his brief from the dispatching agent, who sketched a map of faction lines which divided up the town.

"Look here. Stealth, I'll only tell you once," the dispatching agent said intently. "The Green Line runs along Palace Park; above it are your patrons-the Palace types, the merchant class, and the Beysibs ... don't tell me what you think of that. The Maze's surrounded by Jubal's Blue Line; you'll need this pass to get in there." The dispatcher, who'd lost one eye before Niko had ever set foot in Sanctuary, pulled an armband from his hip pocket and handed it to Niko.