Robert Asprin - Soul of the City

Ours? There was no mistaking the upper-case tone Abarsis had used-a tone reserved for deific matters and one word 'spoken by the dead High Priest of Vashanka who had come so far to utter it. Liking the smell of things less and less, Tempus took a step backward and sat upon the table's edge, thinking, For this, he comes to me. Wonderful. Now what?

For Tempus, who could refuse a god and obstruct an arch-mage, knew, looking at Abarsis, that he could refuse this one nothing. It was an old debt, a mutual responsibility stretching far beyond such trifles as life and death. It was a matter of souls, and Tempus's soul was very old. So old that, seeing Abarsis yet young, yet beautiful in his spirit and his honor in a way Tempus no longer could be, the man called the Riddler felt suddenly very tired.

And Tempus, who never slept-who had not slept since he had been cursed by an archmage and taken solace in the protection of a god three centuries past-began to feel drowsy. His eyelids grew heavy and Abarsis's words grew loud, echoing unintelligibly so that it seemed as if Theron and Abarsis spoke together in some room far away.

Just before he collapsed on the table, snoring deeply in a sleep that would last until the weather broke the following day, Tempus heard Abarsis say clearly, "And for you, Tempus, whom I love above all men, I have this special gift... not much, just a token: on this one evening, my lord, I have haggled from the gods for you a good night's rest. So now, sleep and dream of me."

And thus Tempus slept, and when he woke, Abarsis was long gone and preparations for Theron, Tempus, and a hand-picked contingent to depart for Sanctuary were well under way.

Trouble was coming to Sanctuary; Roxane could feel it in her bones. The premonition cut like a knife to the very quick of the Nisibisi witch, once called Death's Queen, who now huddled in her shrouded hovel on Sanctuary's White Foal River, beset from within and without.

Once she had been nearly all powerful; once she had been a perpetrator, not a victim; once she had decreed Suffering and marshalled Woe upon human cattle from Sanctuary's sorry spit to Wizardwall's wildest peaks.

But that was before she'd fallen in love with a mortal and paid the ancient price. Perhaps if that mortal had not been Stealth, called Nikodemos, Sacred Bander and member in good standing ofTempus's blood-drenched cadre of Stepsons, it would not seem so foolish now to have traded in immortality for the ability to shed a woman's tears and feel a woman's fleeting joy.

But Niko had betrayed her. She should have known; if she'd been a human woman she would have-no man, and most especially no thrice-paired fighter who'd taken the Sacred Band oath, would feel loyalty or honor toward a woman when it conflicted with his bond with men.

She should have known, but she hadn't even guessed. For Niko was the tenderest of souls where women were concerned; he loved them as a class, as he loved fine horses and young children-not lasciviously, but honestly and freely. Now that she understood, it was an insult: She was no waif, no fuddle -headed twat, no inconsequential piece of fluff. And there was injury to add to insult's sting: Roxane had given up immortality to love a mortal who wasn't capable of appreciating such a gift.

She had been betrayed by her "beloved" over a matter that should have been towering only in its insignificance: the "life" of a petty mageling, a would-be wizard called Randal, a flop-eared, freckled fool who fooled now with forces beyond his ability to control.

Yes, Niko had dared to trick Roxane, to distract her with his charms while this posturing prestidigitator, whom she'd thought to have for dinner, got away.

And now Niko lurked in priestholes, palaces, and princely bedrooms, protected by Randal (who had a Globe of Power similar to Roxane's own, and more powerful) and the countermagical armor given Niko by the entelechy of dreams. Not once did sweet Stealth venture riverward, though his de facto commander, Straton of the Stepsons, rode this way on evenings to visit another witch.

This other witch, too, was an enemy of Roxane's-Ischade the necromant, whom by rights the Stepsons should have hated more than they did Roxane, vilified in their prayers as they nightly did Death's Queen.

There was some irony to that: Ischade, a tawdry soul-sucker with limited power and unlimited lust, was a friend of the Stepsons, ally of the mercenary army that was all that stood between Sanctuary and total chaos now that the town was divided into blood feuds and factions as the Rankan Empire's grasp grew weak and the Rankan prince, Kadakithis, was barricaded in his palace with some salmon eyed Beysib slut from a fishy foreign land.

And Roxane, who'd been Death's Queen on Wizardwall and flown high, ruler of all she once surveyed, was shunned by Stepsons and even by lesser factions in the town-all but her own death squads, some truly dead and raised from crypts to do her bidding, some only a hair's-breadth away from mossy graves like One-Thumb, the Vulgar Unicorn's proprietor, a.k.a. Lastel, and Zip, guttersnipe leader of the PFLS (Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary) rebels who couldn't get along without her help.

And Snapper Jo, of course, her single remaining fiend-a warty, gray-skinned, wall-eyed beast, snaggle-toothed and orange-haired, whom she'd summoned from a nearby hell to serve her-she still had Snapper, though lately he'd been taking his spy's job of day-barkeep at the Vulgar Unicorn too much to heart, thinking silly thoughts of camaraderie with humans (who'd no more accept a fiend as one of them than the Stepsons had accepted Roxane).

And she had her snakes, of course, a fresh supply, whom she could witch into human form for intervals (though Sanctuary's snakes weren't bred for masquerading and turned out small, sleepy in cold weather, and even more dull witted than the northern kind).

Still, it was a pair of snakes-a butler-snake and a bodyguard-whom she called to build a fire in her witching room, to bring her chalcedony water bowl and place it on a column of porphyry near the hearth, to stay and watch and wait with her while she poured salt into the water and words came from her mouth to make the salt into her will and the water bowl into the open wounds in Sanctuary. Not wounds of flesh, but wounds of spirit-the arrogance of loyalty given and withheld, the gall of greed, the acne of innocence, the lacerations of love, the pustules of passion which prickled such hearts as Straton's, as Randal's. as those of the prince/governor and his flounder-faced consort, Shupansea (fool enough to keep snakes herself, thinking that Beysib snakes might be immune to Nisibisi snake magic), and even as Niko's own consuming compassion for a pair of children he wet-nursed like some useless Rankan matron.

And the water in her bowl took chop as the salt hit it, then began to cloud and then to bubble as if salt had turned to acid in hearts all around the town. The color of the water grew grayer, more opaque, and outside her skin-covered window, snow began to fall in giant flakes.

"Go, snakes," she crooned, "go meet your brothers in the palace of the prince. Meet and eat them, then defeat the peace between the Beysib and her Rankan host. And find those children, both, and bite them with the poison of your fangs, so that death beats down on midnight wings and Niko will be forced to come to me... to me to save them." Almost, she didn't get those last words out, because a chuckle rose to block the speech's end-especially the word "save."

For as she'd looked into the bowl she'd seen a vision, then another. First she'd seen riders, and a boat with a lion rampant on its prow: one rider was her ancient enemy, Tempus, called the Sleepless One, avatar of godly mischief; another was Jihan, a more potent enemy. Froth Daughter, princess of the endless sea, a copper-colored nymph of matchless passion, a sprite with all the strength of moon and tides between her knees; another was Critias, Strat's partner and better half, the coldest and boldest of the Stepsons, and the only man among the lot of them who didn't need more-than mortal help to do his job. And on the boat, now seeming like a wedding gift, all wrapped in gilt and gloriously colored sails as it drew nearer, was a man she'd helped become a king, one who owed an unequivocal debt to Death's Queen-Theron, Emperor of Ranke, who was so anxious to pay Roxane's price he was trekking to the empire's anus to bow his knee.