Soul of the City Part 21

The ambitious mind of the ex-slave, ex-dancer, ex-apprentice s.h.i.+vered when Ischade touched it. Foolish child-he had believed she would not look for him again and had taken none-of the simple steps to ensure that she could not. She sealed her hypnotic surgery with a gentle caress on the ring he wore: the ring he had thought to use against her.

Ischade retreated, then, behind the little statues, the gewgaws and the sharp knives she had scattered throughout the house. Her thoughts would eat at a mind already disposed to treason just as the essence of the bay horse ate the ward fire. It was only a matter of time.

"You have to eat. Magic can't do everything."

Randal opened his mouth to agree and received a great wooden spoonful of Jihan's latest aromatic posset. His eyes bulged, his ears reddened, and he wanted nothing more than to spit the G.o.dsawful curdled lump to the floor. But the Froth Daughter was watching him and he dared do nothing but swallow it in one horrendous gulp. His hands were immobilized in gauze slings, suspended in oval buckets filled with a salted solution of the Froth Daughter's devising. His own magical resources were insufficient to guide the spoon to his mouth- if he had been so inclined in the first place.

He had been to the Mageguild and found his treatment there even less pleasant.

Get rid of the globe; get rid of the demon; get rid of the witches, his colleagues had told him-and don't come home again until you do. So he'd come back to the palace to be tended by Jinan and to fret over the way fate was unfolding for him.

"You tried," Jihan a.s.sured him, setting the bowl aside. "You did your best."

"I failed. I knew what happened and I let her trick me. Niko would have understood; I knew that Niko would have understood why we had him down here. But I listened to her instead." He shook his head in misery; a lock of hair fell down to cover his eyes. Jihan leaned forward to brush it back, moving carefully to avoid the s.h.i.+ny, less severe b.u.ms on his face or the singed, almost bald, portion of his scalp that still smelled of the fire.

"We've all made more than our share of mistakes in this," Tempus commiserated from the doorway. He unfastened his cloak, letting it drop to the floor as he strode across the room. The hypocaust fires had been banked for two days but the room was still the warmest, by far, in the palace. "How is he?" he asked when he stood beside Niko.

The young man's body showed few traces of his ordeal. The swellings and bruises had all but disappeared; his face, in sleep, was serene and almost smiling.

"Better than he should be," Jihan said sadly. She laid her hand lightly on Niko's forehead. The half-smile vanished and the h.e.l.l-haunted mercenary strained against the leather straps binding him to the pallet. "The demon has his body completely now and heals as it wishes," she acknowledged, lifting her hand.

Niko, or his body, quieted.

"You're sure?"

She shrugged, reached for Niko again, then restrained that impulse by gripping Tempus's arm instead. "As sure as I am of anything where he's concerned."

"Riddler?" The hazel eyes flickered open but they did not focus and the voice, though it had the right timbre, was not Niko's. "Riddler, is that you?"

"G.o.ds-no," Tempus took a step forward then hesitated. "Janni?" he whispered.

The body that contained the demon and Janni and whatever remained of Nikodemos writhed and pulled its lips back into a skull-like grin.

"The globe, Riddler. Abarsis. The globe. Break the globe!"

Its fingers splayed backwards, seeming to have no bone within them; its neck snapped from side to side with force enough to make the wooden slats jump.

Tempus rushed to weave his hands through Niko's slate-gray hair, cus.h.i.+oning the other-world tortures with his own flesh.

"Do something for him!" he bellowed as the spasms rocked Niko's body and blood began to seep from his nose and lips.

"Do something for him!"

The demon's mocking echo erupted from somewhere in Niko's gut. Sparks sizzled along Tempus's forearm, paralyzing him. Niko's arms, no longer trembling, strained purposefully against the leather straps.

"It's going to transfer!" Randal screamed, leaping up from his chair. He gestured with b.u.m-twisted fingers. His will called forth fire but his ruined flesh could not support it. Groaning, he sank to his knees.

"Poor little mageling," the familiar voice issuing from a s.h.i.+mmering blue globe chuckled with strychnine sweetness. "Let me fix that for you." A tongue of indigo flame licked out from the globe; Randal, like Tempus, was motionless.

Jihan took a deep breath that formed ice in the salt-water buckets an arm's length away. She had been patient with these mortals, abiding by their constraints, accepting their wisdom even when it contradicted everything her instincts demanded, and now that they were finally helpless she was going to do things her way.

Niko turned endless, empty eyes toward the blue sphere, asking a silent question.

"Stormbringer's Froth," Roxane replied, with the malice and disdain reserved by women for lesser women.

A frigid wind swirled through the once-warm room. No one, especially a Nisi witch or a nameless demon, spoke that way about Jihan and survived. No matter that Stormbringer had created his parthenogenic offspring from an arctic sea storm, Jihan knew an insult when she felt one. She pelted the sphere with a thick glaze of ice, then she leaned her palms on Niko's chest.

"I'm here!" she announced, bringing a howl of cold air into Niko's rest-place.

"I'm here, d.a.m.n you."

She rode her anger across the once-beautiful landscape of a moat-endowed mind.

The dark crystal stream roiled and froze in agonized shapes. Charred trees snapped and crashed to the ground under the burden of the ice that came in her wake. She reached the meadow where the pure light of Janni guarded the gate.

"I'm going in," she told him, though she had no communion with such spirits and could not hear nor understand his reply.

The heavy door with its man-thick iron bars loomed before her. Leaving a pattern of rime on the metal, she pa.s.sed beyond it to confront an eternity as vast and empty as the demon-Niko's eyes had been.

"Coward!" the Froth Daughter shrieked as nothingness, which was the essence of all demonkind, leeched her substance away. She lashed out blindly, stupidly expending herself against an enemy whose chief attribute was its absence. "Co war-"

She retreated, a ragged wisp streaming back to the frost-bound doorway, and collapsed in the meadow, her fury and her confidence equally diminished. Demonic laughter using her own stolen voice compounded her shame. In her impotence Jihan gathered shards of ice and hurled them at the gate.

"I'll be back," she told it as the ice melted into the thawing crystal stream.

"You'll see."

She sniffled and wiped her eyes on a damp forearm. The ground was slick with melting ice; she slipped more than once. Pain and cold became part of her mortal vocabulary as she made her way home, never once looking back to see that the meadow was brighter or the crystal stream rus.h.i.+ng fast and clear.

"I thought we'd lost her," Tempus admitted as he watched the Froth Daughter pick her way slowly across the hillside.

We? Do we care? Stormbringer inquired in a dangerously friendly tone.

Tempus didn't bother to turn around. He wouldn't be wherever he suddenly was without some G.o.d or another's interference; and he was no longer awed by interference. "I care- isn't that obvious? She d.a.m.n near annihilated herself for me."

Your care is not enough. She is mortal now and requires something less abstract.

If love is beyond you, surely you remember rape? The Father-of-Weather manifested himself before Tempus: all blood-red eyes and pans that did not become a single whole.

The man who had been Vashanka's minion shrugged his nonexistent shoulders and gave the G.o.d a critical glance. "It is an option / retain," he said defiantly.

You are a nasty little man-but I have need of you- "No."

She is a G.o.ddess.

"No."

I'll attend to this abomination.

"You'll do that regardless-for what it did to her. The answer's still no."

I'll turn my daughter's eyes toward another.

"It's a deal."

The Stormchildren lay in state on a velvet-covered dais in the vault-ceilinged room known as the Ilsig Bedchamber. Musicians gathered in an alcove, playing the reedy, discordant melodies beloved by the Beysib and guaranteed to set Molin Torchholder's neck hairs on end. He pressed his forefingers against the bridge of his nose and sought a pleasant thought, any pleasant thought, that might make the waiting easier.

Shupansea, in a curtained alcove opposite the musicians, was equally anxious but had not the luxury of isolation. Her waiting-women swarmed around her fussing with her hair, her jewels, and the splendor of her cosa. She was the Beysa this evening-as she had not been since her cousin's execution in the summer. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s had been dusted with luminous powders and gilt with gold and silver; her normally slender hips were augmented by the swaying brocade-jeweled panniers in which her personal vipers were accustomed to ride. Her thigh-length fair hair had been supported and wired until it hung about her like a cloak and condemned her to look neither up nor down, nor side to side, but only straight ahead. It was a costume she had worn since childhood but now, after a season in the modest attire of the Rankan n.o.bility, she felt awkward and feared for the outcome of the rites they were about to perform.

"You must not sweat," her aunt chided her, reminding her of the physical discipline demanded of Mother Bey's avatar.

She steeled herself and the offending perspiration ceased.

Footsteps came through the tiny doorway behind her. "You're nervous," a welcome voice consoled her as the prince reached out to take her hand.

"Our priests would have us wait until the fifth decoction has been made but we dare not. Not after this afternoon. We have countermanded the priests; it is the first time we have done so. They are anxious but we think the waiting is more dangerous than success or failure."

"Mother Bey guides you," Kadakithis a.s.sured her, squeezing the be-ringed fingers ever so gently.

Shupansea lifted her shoulders a fraction. "She says only that I must not be alone afterwards."

The prince, who had finally edged his way through her women to stand where she could see him, made a wry face. "You are never alone, Shu-sea."

She smiled and gave him a stare which proved Beysib eyes could be erotic and unsettling at the same time. "I will be alone tonight-with you."

The music changed abruptly. Before the golden-haired prince could express his surprise or pleasure he was politely, but firmly, shoved to one side.

"It is time."

The Beysa came forward onto a cloth-of-gold carpet laid between the alcove and the altar. Her first steps were tentative; she tottered between the outstretched arms of her waiting-women. Her glazed eyes held no power, only simple terror of the ancient bald priest who waited for her with a delicate gla.s.s' vial and a knife of razor-sharp obsidian.

Her beynit vipers, tasting the incense and the music, rose from the panniers to begin their own journey. Shupansea trembled involuntarily as the scales slid coldly between her thighs- for the cosa was meant for the display and convenience of the snakes, not the avatar. Three sets of fangs sank deep into sensitive skin: the beynit did not approve of her anxiety. Venom enough for the deaths of a dozen men shot into her. She gasped then relaxed as the languid strength of Mother Bey enveloped her.

She raised her arms, lifting the cosa away from her body. The serpents emerged, baring their moist fangs and their vermilion mouths. It was her priest's turn to tremble anxiously. The Beysib priest summoned Molin to the altar where, without ceremony or explanation, the ancient, bald man transferred the ritual artifacts from the old order to the new and ran from the room.

Molin held both with evident discomfort and outright fear. "What do I do?" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

"Complete the ceremony," the voice he had last heard in Stonnbringer's swirling universe informed him from Shupan-sea's mouth. "Carefully."

Torchholder nodded. The vial contained blood from the Stormchildren, venom from the snake Niko had slain with Askelon's weapons, and ichor from Roxane's giant serpent which had been combined and distilled four times over with I powders the Beysib priests knew but had no names for. The ' scent of its vapors could kill a man; a drop of the fluid might poison an army. Molin intended to be very careful.

"The vial first," the avatar informed him. "Poured on the knife edge and offered to each of our children."

Molin remained slack-jawed and motionless.

"The snakes," Shupansea's normal voice whispered, but the Rankan priest did not begin to move. "Hold your breath," she added after a long pause.

He had once said to Randal that he did whatever had to be done, be it moving the Globe of Power or unstoppering the lethal gla.s.s teardrop. He held his breath and tried not to notice the green-tinged fumes or the sizzling sound the liquid made as it ate through the carpet and on into the granite beneath. The obsidian shook when he extended it toward the smallest of the serpents-the one with its leaf nosed head resting on the Beysa's right nipple. He was prepared to die in any number of unpleasant ways.

The beynit's tongue flicked a half-dozen or more times before it consented to add a glistening drop of venom to the sulphurous ooze already congealing on the knife edge-and it was the most decisive of the lot. His lungs strained to bursting and his vision drifting amid black motes of unconsciousness, Molin faced the avatar again.

Shupansea held her hands out palms upward. He looked down and saw the lattice work of uncountable knife-scars there. During his youthful days with the armies he had killed more times than he cared to remember, and killed women more than once as well, but he hesitated-for once unable to do what had to be done.

"Quickly!" Shupansea commanded.

But he did not move and it fell to her to grab the knife, letting its noisome edges sink deep. 0 Mother! she prayed as her blood carried its searing burden toward her heart. It was too soon. The priests had said wait for the fifth decoction; they had abandoned their offices rather than preside at her death.

The serpents plunged their fangs into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s many times over but it would not be enough. Not even the presence of Mother Bey within her would be enough to change the malignancy Roxane had created. Clenching her fingers together, the Beysa heard the rough edge of the knife grind into bone but she felt nothing.

She fainted, although the lifelong discipline of Mother Bey's avatar was such that she did not topple to the ground. Still, she was oblivious to the agony when the imperfect decoction reached her heart and stopped it.

She did not hear the collective gasp that rose from Beysib and Rankan alike when her eyes rolled white and the three serpents stiffened to rise two-thirds of their length above her shuddering b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She did not feel Molin let go of the knife or see him ignore the hissing beynit to hold her upright when even discipline faded.

She did not hear Kadakithis's enraged shout or the slapping of his sandals across the stone as he raced to take her from the priest's arms.

She experienced nothing at all until the prince's tears fell into her open eyes then she blinked and stared up at him.

"We've done it," she explained with a faint smile, letting the now-harmless knife fall from her scarred, but uncut, hands.

But barely. Shupansea lacked the strength to gather the drops of blood now welling up on her breast in a second, pristine vial; nor could she take that vial and place its contents on the lips of first Gyskouras, then Alton. Her eyes were closed while everyone else prayed that the changed blood would awaken the Stormchildren and they remained that way when the two boys began to move and a chorus of thanks rose from the a.s.sembly.

"She needs rest," the prince told the staring women around them. "Call her guards and have her carried back to her rooms."

"She is alone with All-Mother," the eldest of the women explained. "We do not interfere."

Kadakithis blinked with disbelief. "The G.o.ddess isn't going to carry her to bed, is she?" he demanded of their gla.s.s-eyed silence. "Well, dammit, then-I'll carry her."

He was a slight young man compared to any of the professional soldiers in his service, but he'd been trained in all the manly arts and lifted her weight with ease. The trailing cosa tangled in his legs, very nearly defeating him until he planted both feet on the gilt brocade and ripped the cloth from its frames. The beynit, their venom temporarily expended, slithered quickly out of his way.

"She is alone with me," he informed them all, striding out of the bedchamber with the Beysa cradled in his arms.

Molin watched as they went through the doorway-turning left for the prince's suite rather than right toward hers. He suppressed a smile as the snakes found safe harbor with the other Beysib women, not all of whom were so comfortable with a serpent spiraling under their garments as Shupansea had been.

Unimpressed by the ceremony surrounding them, the Storm-children behaved as if just awakened from their daily nap. They had already pulled the velvet hangings from the altar. Arton twisted the cloth around his head in unconscious imitation of his S'danzo mother's headgear while Gyskouras put all his efforts into wrenching the golden ta.s.sels free from its comers.

The archpriest turned to his single acolyte, Isambard, who could scarcely be expected to control the Stormchildren when they became either adventurous or cantankerous-which they were certain to do. "Isambard, go downstairs to the hypocaust room and remind Jihan that the children need her more than anyone else." The young man bowed, backed away, then scampered from the room.

Molin then turned his attention to the Beysibs in the room. The musicians he dismissed immediately, sending them on their way with only the most perfunctory of compliments. The women stared at him, defying him to give them orders as they gathered up the discarded cosa and bore it reverently from the chamber. This left him with a double-handful of priests, their foreheads still bent to the ground, who had been left to him by Mother Bey's high priest.

Ignoring the holes and the sacrilege, he paced the length of the gold carpet and back again. "I think a feast is in order: a private feast. Something delicate and easily shared: sh.e.l.lfish, perhaps, and such fruit as remains in the pantries. And wine- watered, I should think. It would not do to dull their appet.i.tes." He paused, waiting to see which s.h.i.+ny head would move first.

"You'll see to this." He pointed his finger at the most curious of the lot; with their bald skulls, bulging eyes, billowing tunics, and pantaloons, the Beysib men all looked alike to him. He seldom thought of them as individuals.

The Beysib he had addressed cleared his throat nervously and the one at the front of their triangular formation pushed himself slowly to his knees. "The priests of All-Mother Bey serve only Her transcending aspects. We... that is.

You, the Regum Bey, do not serve the Avatar," he explained.