Robert Asprin - Soul of the City

They exchanged glances-one immortal and mortally tired, one feral and full of the fire of fierce and forgotten gods.

Then Jihan nodded, rose up, and said, "Your dagger skewered the eagle-witch. I saw it. She's wounded, maybe gone for good."

But it didn't please him, not at the price Niko always seemed to pay for others' folly.

Sometime in that interval, because Niko was conscious and could hear, Tempus affirmed and renewed their pairbond so that he had a rightside partner once again. And so that Niko, should it matter, would know that he was not alone.

Down by the White Foal Bridge, the gathered Stepsons waited: Kama was there, with a dozen hand-picked fighters from Sync's 3rd Commando.

It made Crit uncomfortable to command the Riddler's daughter's unit, so he gave them the periphery, made them the watch guards, kept what distance from her he could.

Strat, on the other hand, was comfortable with everything coming out of the dark that evening-with his bay horse, with paired Stepsons riding up, holding torches, with Ischade's whispered council, with men who once were Stepsons and now were no longer men-men who stayed in shadows when Crit looked at them straight on.

Strat had "explained" about Stilcho and Janni and Ischade's talent for raising uneasy dead. Strat said it was a favor she did them, a gift to those who'd died with their honor blighted.

Crit hadn't argued-there wasn't time. Strat was addled, bewitched, and if he got through this he was going to beat some sense into the big fool as soon as possible, do something final about Ischade or make her loose her hold on Strat.

If-

Something puffed and popped and Crit's horse shivered. Looking to his right, Crit saw Randal, the Stepsons' warrior mage, decked out in Niko's armor.

"Greetings, Crit. I heard you'd like some help." The flop-eared mage looked older, more fearsome tonight in dream-forged battle gear. He caught Crit staring at his cuirass. "This?" Randal touched his chest. "It's Niko's, still. Just a loan. We ... have an understanding, but no pairbond." The freckled face aped a smile (hat was wan in torchlight as his horse reared and Crit realized it wasn't quite a horse at all-it was definitely transparent, though horselike in every other respect.

"Help. Right. Well, Randal, you know the Riddler's orders, if you're here. Any advice? Or should we ride right in there, storm the place, bum it to the ground?"

At his knee came a touch as soft as a butterfly landing. "I told you, Critias, just walk right in and take it-walk in by my side, if you will.... She's not at home and, if my guess is right, quite indisposed."

Crit looked from Ischade to Randal for confirmation. Randal nodded. "That's my best guess as well." The mage scratched one ear. "Only, I'll go in with Ischade. Roxane's my enemy, not yours-at least not so much so. And you don't trust Ischade ... no offense, dear lady."

"None taken. Yet," said the woman whose head reached only to Crit's knee, but who seemed taller than anyone else about.

Strat rode up, concerned, looking at Crit as if to say, 'You'd better not start trouble now, partner or not. Don't push your luck.'

"I'm going," Crit said. "I have my orders."

"Into a witch's house?" Strat shook his head. "You may be my partner, but these are my men, until we've worked things out. We needn't risk them, or you. We've got friends to deal with magic who deal with it routinely. Ischade. Randal. Please be our guests-" As he spoke, Strat bowed in his saddle and, one hand outstretched in a sweeping gesture, motioned the mage and the necromant to precede the fighters up the cart-track to Roxane's house. And as his gesturing hand neared Crit's horse, it snatched a rein, and held it.

"Strat," Crit warned. "You're pushing matters."

"Me? I thought it was you, mixing in what you don't yet understand."

"Let go of my horse."

"When you let go of your anger."

"Fine," Crit sighed, holding up empty hands and feigning a smile. "Done."

Strat stared a moment at him, then nodded and freed the horse. "Let's go, then... partner?"

"After you, Strat. As you say, you're in command-at least till morning."

Inside Roxane's Foalside home was a smell like burning feathers and a glow as if the whole place smouldered.

Ischade was well aware that any instant, the premises might burst into flame. She said so to Randal.

They'd never worked this close, the Tysian Hazard and the necromant.

It was an eerie feeling, especially when Randal drew his kris, a recurved blade, and said, "It directs fire. Don't worry, Ischade. I didn't fight the Wizard Wars for nothing," in his tenor voice.

They walked over boards that creaked as if the place had been abandoned for eternity and Ischade's neck grew cold with trespass.

Randal said, waxing more the fighter with a woman watching, more the expert First Hazard of the Mageguild with a famous witch pacing by his side, "I'll open the rent where she keeps it, get it out for you. But you'll have to destroy it. I can't."

"Can't?" she said, disbelieving.

"Shouldn't, really. You see, I've got one of my own. I wouldn't want it to think I'd turned hostile. You should understand."

She did.

It was odd to work so closely with a rival mage of rival power. She wondered if there would be a price.

And there was, of sorts, though it did not fall on them directly.

When Randal had made the requisite passes with his hands and a flap in space fell down and the globe lay revealed, Ischade's soul wrenched: she loved beauty, baubles, precious trinkets, and the power globe was all of those and more. It was the most beautiful, potent piece she'd ever seen. If not for Randal, here and witness, even despite Strat she would have claimed it for her own.

When he got it out, the floorboards creaked and the roof above began to smoke.

She could see that it singed him and that he'd expected that, now with the timbers above flaring like tarred torches.

In the ruddy light. Randal knelt down, and she did also, and he told her what words to speak.

Then he said, "Reach out and set it spinning-just a push with your palm will do."

As she touched the globe, Ischade felt a shock more intense than any she'd known for ages-this was not a matter of raising dead or ordering the lives of lesser mortals. This was a matter of power great enough to flout the gods.

And there was a bite to all Nisi magic, a corrosion different from her own. She rocked back upon her heels, nearly mesmerized herself though nothing less could have done it to her.

Randal pulled unceremoniously at her elbow. "Up, my brave lady. Up and out before the beams fall down and roast us or she... comes back... somehow."

And then Ischade realized that her sense of Roxane's presence might be more than just echoes from the globe.

Quick as smoke she got her feet under her and ran, Randal beside her, toward an open window.

Once they'd scrambled through, there was a roar as deep as any dragon's and the whole house burst apart in flames.

And in the middle of the blaze Ischade could see the globe, still spinning, spitting colored fire of its own and spouting tongues of purer fire that licked up towards the heavens.

Horses thundered, coming near.

Strat was there, lifting her up onto the bay's rump as if she were a child, and Crit did the same for Randal.

Neither asked if the task was done. All could see the globe, spinning brighter, whirling larger, consuming the lesser flame of burning wood and stone and thatch and blazing like a star.

The horses were glad to be reined back; the heat was singeing. You couldn't hear a word or even the trumpets of mounts who hated fire as they reared and walked backwards on hind legs.

For it seemed, as the house collapsed, that the sky itself caught fire. Demons of colored light slunk through that wider blaze and slipped away.