Robert Asprin - Soul of the City

Wings of lightning beat against the firmament where a rising sun was dwarfed to dullness by their light.

And down from purple lightning and clouds that came together, combusting to form a great cat-thing with hell-red eyes who swiped at it as it came, flew an eagle.

A flaming eagle, descending from the sky, chased by a giant cat of roiling cloud so black it swallowed all the heat, as if a house cat chased a sparrow in the dwelling of the gods.

The bird plummeted, wings bent. The cat struck, sent it spinning, struck again.

A scream like heaven rending issued from one, a growl like hell's bowels settling came from the other.

And the bird tumbled, then righted, then darkened and streaked, shrinking, into the lessening flame that had been the witch's house.

Ischade saw that bird dive among the timbers where a Globe of Power was now melted, fragments of white hot clay and parboiled jewels, and take a fragment in its beak and speed away.

When she looked away, she saw that Randal, face beaded with sweat and freckles standing out black as soot, had seen it too.

The mage gave an uneasy shrug and smiled bleakly. "Let's not tell them," he whispered, leaning close. "Maybe it's not ... her."

"Perhaps not," Ischade replied, looking up at the smouldering sky.

The morning after the sky caught fire, Tempus was sitting with Niko when Randal came to call.

"I'll see to him. Commander," said the mage, who touched his kris, from which healing water could be wrung.

Jihan had applied the powdered placenta of some unlucky cat, and Niko's eye was healing.

But these wounds would take a while, even with magic to help them.

And beside the stricken fighter, in the nursery, two children lay in sleep from which no one had yet managed to rouse them.

That, Tempus knew, was really what Randal must do here. But he had to say, "Stealth and I have reaffirmed our pairbond. Can you tend him in good conscience, with a minimum of magic?"

Randal himself had once been paired with Stealth, at the Riddler's order, and loved the western fighter still.

The mage looked down, then up, then squared his shoulders. "Of course. And the children, too... if I have- their father's permission?"

"Ask the god that; he's the stud, not me," Tempus snapped and stormed out.

He had a woman to rape to placate the god within him, a necromant to thank in person, and a welcome to prepare for Theron, emperor of Ranke, when he arrived.

But Jihan found him before he could find a likely wench on the Street of Red Lanterns. Her eyes were glowing and she squeezed his arm and wanted to know, "Just what kind of houses are these?"

He had half a mind to show her, but not the time: she'd come to get him to mediate between Crit and Strat in matters of command and to ask whether they could all attend a "fete for returning heroes" being given by friends of Ischade's who lived uptown, and whether he'd noticed anything strange about Strat's bay horse.

And since he had troubles enough of his own, and Jihan was one, he agreed to come with her, gave permission for the Band and Stepsons to attend the fete, and lied about the horse, saying he hadn't noticed anything strange about it at all.

"My lady-" Stilcho said, ever so quietly. The dead Stepson hesitated in the doorway of the back room of the riverhouse. Hesitated longer. Ischade sat in the chair before the fire with her hands clasped between her black-robed knees and gazed there, the fire leaping and casting light on her face, on the bright scatter of cloaks and trinkets that made the house like some garish carnival.

And Ischade, a darkness in it, fire-limned. The wind rushed in the chimney. The fire roared up with a dizzy sibilance. The candles burned brighter so that Stilcho flinched back. Flinched and flinched again in the other direction, for he encountered a body behind him and a hard hand on his shoulder.

He turned and looked by mistake straight into Haught's dark Nisi eyes. A muscle jumped in his jaw. His throat grew paralyzed. Haught's grip burned him, numbed him; and there was no sound in all the world but the roar of the fire and no sight in the world but Haught laying a cautionary finger to his lips and drawing him away, quietly.

Back and back into the tangle of silks and drapes and shadow that was that over small room he shared with Haught.

And in this privacy Haught seized his shoulders and put his back to the wall, in the slithery touch of the silken hangings. Haught's eyes held his like a serpent's.

"Let me go," Stilcho said. The voice came through jaws that tried to freeze, that tried to turn to the cold unburied meat and bone that they were without Her influence. No pain, no agony. Just a dreadful cold as if something very solid had come between him and his life-source. "L-let me g-g-go. She s-said-" You weren't to touch me with magic-that was the part that stuck behind his teeth. There were just the eyes.

"Hear it?" Haught asked. "Feel it, dead man? She's worried. She's unweaving her magics. Souls are winging back to hell tonight. Do you feel yours slipping?"

"Get your ha-hands from me."

Haught's hands slid up his shoulders and held there. "She's forgotten you tonight. I haven't. I'm holding you, Stilcho. /. And I can peel you like an onion. Or save your wretched soul. Do you feel it now?"

"Ish-"

Haught's grip tightened, that of his hands and that on his soul. The paralysis grew, and Haught's voice sank deeper and deeper, so that it was not sound at all, only the dazzle of winter cold, was snowflakes falling on dark wind.

The Queen of Death is dethroned. Power is free tonight. Fragments of it drift on the winds, sift through the air, fall on the earth.

It slays the dead.

It casts down the powerful.

Stilcho shivered, his living eye widened and the dead one saw abysses.

He tottered on the edge, reached up hands cold as clay and held to Haught as to his last and only hope.

There is something that shines and I see it, dead man.

It beckons the powerful with an irresistible lust.

And she dares not.

The dust shines and shimmers and falls everywhere and she dares not gather that power up. She seals up the ways. She burns it with fire.

Nisi power. She loathes it and desires it.

I am Nisi, dead man. And I will have that thing. She sits blind and deaf to me what we say she cannot know. That is my power. And it needs one thing.

Things will change, Stilcho. Consider your allegiances. Consider how you fare when she forgets you.

He had a very clear picture then what Haught wanted. He held the image of a shining globe that spun and shimmered. Lust was part of it, in the same way that light was. It was raw power. It was dangerous, dangerous as some spinning blade, as some terrible juggernaut let loose. That shining, spinning thing was a humming regularity that beat like a pulse, that held all the gates of hell and creation in harmony with itself, all beating away with the same thump-thump of a living heart, that was the tiniest imperfection in this spinning. If it were perfect there would be nothing.

The universe exists on a flaw in nothing at all.

A little wobble in the works.

He caught at his chest, feeling an unaccustomed hammering. He felt it as threatening at first, and then he realized that it was a thin, occasional beat in a perfect stillness. It was his own heart giving a little thump of life. And he felt it because for a moment it had been utterly silent.

"You know," Haught said, "you understand it now, what I want." Haught's fine hand touched his face, and a little chill numbed him. "Now forget it, dead man. Just forget it now. Until I need you.... I want to talk to you, Stilcho, Just a moment. Privately."

Stilcho blinked. It was the living eye he saw from now. It was his enemy Haught, a Haught looking uncommonly void of malice, a Haught holding him gently by the shoulder.