Robert Asprin: Soul of the City

The storm would ground the dust and douse the fires and she knew it was too great a luck for Sanctuary, the most luckless town she'd ever seen. She knew also that, inside the flaming pillar back at the Peres's, evil was held at bay by one whose name could not be spoken but could be approximated: Stonn-bringer, the Weather-Gods' father-Stormbringer, whose daughter Jihan was close at hand.

And then there was no time to put it all together: there was a ring on the finger of Haught which she could see with her inner eye.

This she stroked and called home to her. Its spell, still strong, would bring the scheming apprentice-if he was not already here.

In the ground hall full of shadows she paused. The door behind her closed at a gust's whim. The slam it made was daunting.

Her hackles rose-she hadn't thought of the ring Haught had until she'd entered. Was it her will, or only her perception, that saw him here?

Why had she come here? Suddenly, she wasn't sure. She shook her head, on the ground floor landing, and touched her brow with her palm. She owed Tempus none of this-not so much. Tasfalen was dead, a minion to be summoned to the river house. Why, then, had she risked the streets and come up here?

Why? She couldn't fathom it.

And then she did, when Haught's silken voice oozed down the stairs from a shadow at their head.

"Ah, Mistress, how kind of you to visit sickbeds with so much at stake."

She reached out for the ring he wore, but the apprentice was reaching on his own: grown desperate, he was full of pain, and wanted to make her a gift of it.

Suddenly (more because she underestimated what lay behind him and what hid within him than because of Haught himself) she was dizzy, spinning in another place, a place of blood and murky water-of ice and great gates whose bars were rent as if a giant shape had bent them out of its way.

Niko's rest-place! How had she come here?... not by Haught's strength.

And a laugh tinkled-a laugh with razor edges that cut her soul: Roxane.

Yes, Roxane-but something less and something more hobbled through that gate, misshapen and huge, and shrunk until Tasfalen's beauty masked it.

And then the thing... for it was part highborn, mortal lord, part witch, and part Haught... held out its hand to take her arm as if to escort her to some formal fete.

She met its eyes and gripped her own ribs with both her hands: to touch it might imprison her here. This was where Janni had lost the last shreds of self-concern that made him act predictably in the interest of what life he still led.

The eyes that bored into hers were gold and slitted; deep behind them glowed a purple fire she knew wasn't right.

She forced her leaden limbs to work and backed a step, watching first her feet and then scanning the horizons, winding wards that worked in Sanctuary which were much weaker here.

Niko's star-shaped meadow, once ever-green and pastoral, the very essence of spirit peace, was frostbitten, brown, and gray and riddled with ice like arrows. Where trees had spread rustling leaves, their boughs now held shards of flesh and writhing things resembling tiny men who cried like kittens being drowned.

And the stream which was his life's ebb and flow ran with swirls of red and blue and pink and gold: blood shed and to be shed; magic winding it round and chasing it; Niko's faith and the love of gods bringing up behind.

Tasfalen was cajoling: "Come, my love. My beauteous one. We'll feast." He flicked a glance to the trees hung with anguished, living things. "The boughs are ripe for picking, the fruit is sweet."

And she knew the only salvation here, for her, was in the stream.

She didn't know the consequence if she should do what her wisdom told her: take a drink.

Before she could lose her nerve or be mesmerized, she whirled about and flung herself knee deep in running water.

And bent. And drank.

And saw Niko, when she raised her dripping lips, sitting on the stream's far side, his face calm, unravaged. His quick, canny smile came and went and she noticed he wore his panoply: the enameled cuirass, sword and dirk forged by the en-telechy of dreams.

"It's a dream, then?" she said, feeling the icy water with its four distinct and different tastes run down her chin and hearing a lumbering behind her much louder, and a rasping breath much deeper, than Tasfalen's form could make.

"Don't turn around," Niko advised as if he were training a student in the martial arts; "don't look at it; don't listen. This is my rest-place, after all not theirs."

"And me? It's not mine, fighter. Nor are you."

"And they are. I know." There was no abhorrence in the Bandaran fighter's glance, just infinite patience. And as Ischade looked, his visage changed, contorting through a metamorphosis that seemed to include all the tortures of his recent past- eyes rolled up, cheeks split over bone, lips purpled and torn, teeth cracked and crumbled, bruises filled with blood.

Then the entire process reversed itself, and a handsome man still in the last bloom of youth regarded Ischade once more.

"You're very beautiful, you know-in your soul," Niko said. "It shows here. In spite of everything."

Behind her, the Tasfalen-thing was shambling closer; she could hear it splash into the stream. She almost whirled to fight it; her fingers spread into a shape suitable for throwing coun-terspells.

Niko shook his head chidingly: "Trust me. This is my place. As for your welcome here-when I needed help, you came here, where risk is greater than mortals know, and tried to aid me. I haven't forgotten."

"Are you dead?" she asked flatly, though it was impolite.

His smooth brow furrowed. "No, I'm sure not. I'm reclaiming what's mine ... with a little help." Behind the fighter, the semblance of the pillar of fire came to be.

He knew it was there without looking. He said, "See, you must trust. We're giving Janni his proper funeral, you and I. At last. And you, who kept him from worse and soothed his conscience, ought'to be here."

"And... that?" Ischade meant what was behind her. All her hackles risen, she found her mouth dry and eyes aching-if she had a mouth here, or eyes. It seemed she did.

"We'll put them back where they belong-not here. They're yours to deal with, in the World."

He must have seen her frown, for he leaned forward on one straight and scarless arm that might never have been shattered when a demon raged inside him: "Roxane is ... special. Different. Less. I'm free of all but my own feelings. For that I don't apologize. Like you, I deal in more than one reality. But 1 ask you for mercy on her behalf..."

"Mercy!" Incredulous, Ischade nearly burst out laughing. The thing that was part Haught, part Tasfalen (who was dead and had housed Roxane once and now again, if Ischade understood the rules by which Niko's magic games were played), was shuffling close behind now, intent on biting off her head or munching on her soul. It had been one with a demon; it had merged with devils; it had taken fire out of the hands of arch-mages such as Randal and used it even against her. All of this, Ischade was sure, was Roxane's twisted evil come to ground. And Niko wanted mercy for the witch that had made his life a living hell and wouldn't offer him so much mercy as clean death would bring.

"That's right-mercy. I'm not like you, but we've helped each other. Tolerance, balance-good and evil: each resides within the other, part and parcel."

Ischade, who'd seen too much evil, shook her head. "You must be dead, or still possessed."

"Look." Niko's diction slipped into mercenary argot. "It's all the same-no good without evil, no balance... no maat. If we lose one, we lose the other. It's just life, that's all. And as for death-we get what we expect."

"And you expect what?" Now she realized that Niko himself was not naive, or helpless, or entirely benign. "From me, I mean?"