"Upstairs," she murmured, fending off his hands from her. "Upstairs."

Somehow they got there, him carrying her part of the way, till she lost a shoeand he stopped for it; and she pulled him up the steps by the hand, damning theshoe and the laces and all, which he started undoing at the top of the stairs.She shed ribbons all the way to the bedroom, and they fell down together in acloud of silk sheets and her petticoats, which he made shift to shove out oftheir way, layer after layer.

He got the last laces of her bodice and the damned corset finally, and she laythere with her ribs heaving in the sheer sensuous pleasure of clear breaths andthe feel of his hands on her bare skin.

She knew, when the sense had gotten back to her along with her wind, that shewas the most utter fool. But it had all gone too far for more thinking thanthat.

"I love you," he said, "Moria."

He had to, of course. She knew that, the way that the air thrummed and whisperedand the blood ran in her veins with that kind of magic Haught had put into her.

Am I a witch myself? What's happening to me?

She stared into Tasfalen's face, that of a man bewitched.

Or what is he? 0 gods, save him! Shalpa, save me!

"He's quiet again," Randal said. Randal's foolish face was beaded with sweat andwhite under its freckles, and his hair hung down in sweat-damp points; andTempus stared bleakly at the mage, his hand curled round a cup that sat on apolished table, there amongst his maps and his charts. Behind the mage in thedoorway Kama stood, looking frayed herself.

Kama. Gods alone remembered how many others gone to bones and dust. She wassmart as she was likely to be: she had that hard shining in her eyes, about herface, that he knew all too well: it was youth's conviction it was without sin orerror; and if he troubled he could think his way through the maze of all thethings she thought, but he did not trouble: there was enough to occupy hismind, and Kama was only a shallow part of it, shallow as a young fool waslikely to be, though complex in her potentials. She had the potential forsurprises to an enemy; was one part crazy and one part calculating and he hadnot missed the gravitation of the two points that were her and Molin. The lookof a young woman in love? Not in Kama. The look of a young woman with a complexof things seething in a still callow mind, which muddle he evaded with amental shrug of something close to pain: another complex fool, not born to be afool ultimately, but at that stage of growing when the wisest were proneto the most wearisome, repetitious mistakes as if they were new in the world.He knew what she had come to say. He read it before she opened her mouth,and that irritated him to the point of fury.

"I'm going back into the town," she said. "I can't sit still here."

Of course she couldn't. Who of her age and her nature could? The battle wasgoing on here, but it was nothing she could get her hands into, so she went outto find trouble.

"I'm going to find this Haught," she said, and he could have mouthed the words asecond before they left her mouth.

"Of course you are," he said. And did not ask Where are you going to look?because of course she had no particular idea. Haught was the witch's servant;Haught was the trouble they had had previous; and Ischade-was by far the moreinteresting question.

Ischade was keeping a promise. Or she was not, and a bargain was off. That wassomething it would take time to leam. The souls of his dead, she had promisedhim. And the safety of his living comrades as far as she could guarantee it.There was something deadly dangerous in the wind and the woman was onto it,doing battle with it-if she had told the truth. The possibility that she hadlied was one of those lines down which he was quite willing to think, down whichhe had been thinking continually.

"Find Ischade while you're at it," he said. "Ask her whose Haught is."

Kama blinked. He watched her put it together. He watched the caution dawn in herimmature-pretematurally mature mind, and watched the predictable thoughts go on,how she would do this, how she would need more caution than she had planned onin the other business.

Good. Things in the lower town wanted more caution than Kama was wont to use.

"Get out of here," he said then, staring past her and thinking what the worldwould be like without Niko, if they lost; if they lost Niko they would lose agreat deal more than one man; and he, personally-Niko was one who engaged him onall levels, on too many levels. Niko was one who could cause him pain because hecould give him so much else, and without Niko, that magnet for the world'stroubles, that fool of fools who thought the world his responsibility-Nikoalmost made him feel it was, when he knew better. Niko was vulnerable the wayhis kind was when the uncaring little fools got past his guard; when theholding-action stopped and the god came thundering in to wrench the worldapart again and Niko was the one standing rearguard to fools morevulnerable than himself. One like Kama was walking around and Niko was lyingthere in a bed losing a fight far too abstract for Kama to understand. She wentout to do battle.

He did his fighting from this table, with a cup in hand. And could not, now thathe wanted to surrender, find the god. Even that, he might have foreseen.

Randal stayed when Kama had gone. Randal was a fool of Niko's breed; and for amoment Randal, sweating and white as he was, looked at him with Nik's kind ofunderstanding, and came and took the cup out of his hand, which gesture mighthave gotten another man killed. Foolish man. Foolish little mage. Who blunderedhis way along with more deftness and a keener sight and more guts than most everhad at their best.

So Tempus let him do it.

"You won't dream," Randal said, "if you pass out."

"I won't pass out," Tempus said, patiently, oh so patiently. "I heal, remember.There isn't any damn way. Now I want the damn god I can't get there."

"I've got a drug might... put you down a bit. If you let it."

"Try it." It took patience to say that. He already knew it would not work, butRandal was trying.

No god answered him. Not even Stormbringer, who was- gods knew where. There wasnot a cloud to be had out there.

Randal went away to find-whatever concoction he meant to try. Tempus filled hisglass again, perversely, in a cold fury at his own vitality, a fury on the edgeof panic. His body was not even in his control when the god was out of it. Hecould not do so simple a thing as fall asleep, when the ache of the world gottoo much. He healed, and that was what he did. He healed of the very need ofsleep and the effects of alcohol and the effects of drugs and every othermortality. Askelon could have come and claimed him by force. But the gods werenot answering today.

None of them bloody cared.

Even Abarsis failed him. Or was held, somewhere.

II

A door opened somewhere far away. Ordinarily this would have alarmed Moria,though servants came and went for their own reasons. This sounded deeper andheavier than inside doors.

But just at that moment Tasfalen did something which quite took her sensesinside out; and in the danger in which they both pursued this moment she cursedherself for butterflies and turned her mind to doing something which she hadlearned off a hawkmask lover-easy to pick a man's brain when he was feeling thatgood. Then Tasfalen gave as good back, and better- Shalpa and Shipri, she hadnever known a man with his ways, never bedded with a man who knew what he knew,not even Haught, never Haught-