A leaf fell and another and another, disturbing that surface, breaking up themirror in which he and the sky were true. It began to be a shower of leaves,falling everywhere in the forest.

"Niko!" he cried. He abandoned hope of attack. He tried to wake the sleeper,back deep in the safe shadow, in the dark. "Niko, wake up, wake up, for thegods' sake. Niko-"

A breeze stirred from off the meadow, loosening more leaves, which turned yellowand tumbled and lay like a carpet, covering the stream.

Then the water began to move, reversed its former course and flowed out of themeadow into the forest, moving sluggishly at first, sweeping the leaves on in agolden sheet. Then the current gathered force and swept all the leaves away ashe hastened into the dark.

A red thread had begun to run through the water, a curling wisp of blood thatran the clear depths and grew to an arm-thick skein.

Janni ran and ran, breaking branches and stumbling over falling branches and theslickness of the dying leaves.

"Ischade!"

Strat ran the stairs and nearly took the fragile bannister post down as he spunround it on his way to the bedroom. He hit the doorframe with his arm as hefetched up in it and stopped still at the sight of the figures in the tumbledbed, the dark and the light entangled.

He stood with his mouth open, with the words choking him. And then waded forwardin a blind rage and grabbed the man by the shoulders with both his hands, hurledhim over and confronted a face he had seen before in this house.

"Strat!" Ischade shouted at him. It had the grotesquerie of comedy, himself, theshocked uptown lord, the woman's shout in his ears. He had never looked to bemade a fool of, dealt with the way she and Haught had dealt with him, made apartner to her rutting with another man-who for one moment hung shocked in hisgrasp and in the next flung up both arms to break his grip. "Damn you," Tasfalenyelled at him, "damn you and damn this lunatic house to hell!"

And the man tumbled against him, collapsing in a way that nothing alive everfelt. Straton caught him in first reflex, recoiled on the second with the deadman tumbling down off the bed and onto his feet. Movement drew his eye and hisreflexes: he seized Ischade's wrist in an access of disgust and horror as shegot to her knees; he jerked her off the bed and to her feet in herdisarray and the entanglement of the sheets and the lord lying on his face onthe floor against his feet.

"Damn!" he cried, and shook her by both arms till her black hair flew and herslitted eyes rolled white in her head. "Damn you, bitch, what do you thinkyou're doing, what have you done?"

Her eyes opened wider, still showing whites, blinked again with the dark whereit belonged, a widening dark, a dark that filled all their centers and turnedthose eyes into the pit of hell. "Get out of here." It was not the voice heknew. It was a feral snarl. "Out! Get out, get out, get out-"

The blood pounded in his veins. He shoved at her, flinging her onto the bed in aflood of grief and rage and outright hate. She scrambled to get to the otherside, and he dived after her to stop her, hurling his weight on her, felt herunder him and himself in control for a moment, himself in a position to teachher once for all that he was not hers to tell to come and go and do her errandsand do it all her way, when she wanted it, if she wanted it....

"Get off me!" she yelled at him, and hit him like any woman, with her fist. Hisown hand cracked open across her face and blood spattered from her mouth, redflecks on the pale satin pillow, her black hair flung in webs across her facewith the recoil. He jerked with one hand at his own clothing, pinned her withhis weight and his forearm, and elbowed her hard when she twisted like a cat andtried to bite his arm. In that distraction she came within a little of gettingher knee into him, but he got his where it counted instead, and got both herhands pinned.

"Fool!" she screamed into his face. 'Wo/"

He looked into her eyes. And knew suddenly that it was a terrible mistake.

"Let me go," Niko whispered to Randal, while Jihan was off doing something,while Jihan flitted somewhere about the countless things that somehow divertedthe Froth Daughter in wild gyrations of attention. It might be Tempus, who stillcourted unwilling sleep, and who was, in his present state, a magnet forStonnbringer's daughter. It might be some other difficulty. She was likely wheretrouble was. And Niko, so wan and wasted, so miserable his voice soundedchildlike soft, wrung at Randal's heart.

"I can't, you know," Randal said. "I'm sorry, Niko."

"Please." Niko strained at the ropes. His unbandaged eye was open, bleary andglistening with Jihan's godsawful unguents. His skin was white and glistenedwith sweat. "I'm all right, Randal. I hurt. In the gods' mercy give me somerelief. I've got to-"

"I'll get a pot, it's all right."

"Let me up. Randal. My back hurts, you know what it's like to lie like this?Just let me shift my arms a little. Just a moment or two. I'm fine now. I'll lieback down, I'll let you put the ropes back again, oh, for the gods' own sake,Randal, it's not your joints that feel like they've got knives in them. Have alittle pity, man. Just let me sit up a moment. Do for myself. All right?"

"I'll have to put you back again."

"That's all right. I know that. I know you have to." Niko made a face andshifted his shoulders. "0 gods. My back."

Randal bit his lip and put out a little magical effort on the strain-tightenedknots. They loosened, one after the other. He got the two closest, which tiedNiko's feet to the bedframe. And got up off the end of the bed and carefullyundid the one on the left wrist, carefully, around the thick padding they hadput there to protect the skin. Niko sighed and flexed his legs and dragged hisarm down to his chest while Randal went around the bed to get the other one."Thanks," Niko said, a ghost of a voice. "Ah. That's better. That's a relief."

"Ought to give you a rubdown, that's what." Randal unwound the last rope, andheld onto Niko's hand to work a little life into the arm.

Then something hit him in the side of the head and he went down blind and numband dazed from the impact of his skull on a marble floor.

"Niko," he cried, trying to focus his eyes or his talent or to organize hisdefenses, but the dark and the daze swirled around him in clouds and gray andshooting flashes of red. He heard bare feet, going away at speed. "Ischade!" Heshouted the name aloud, silently, threw all he had of talent into that scream."Ischade! Help!"

Two men lay motionless in the bedchamber. Tasfalen was one, already chilling,his eyes half-open, his body curled up like a child where he had fallen, wrappedhalf in the bedspread and the sheets. The other lay sprawled in a twist whereshe had pushed him when he lost consciousness. He was still breathing. His faceticced in what might be dream, in such dreams as she gave him, tilled his nightswith, confused the truth with.

And Ischade was trembling all over, shuddering and shaking from sheer fright andaborted rage and the rush of power that, given time, would have done more thanwrenched the life away from the uptown libertine, would have wrenched his soulout and shredded it beyond any power of demons or fiends to locate it.

As it was something got to it, something that wanted that kind of rage as it hadknown when it died. That something wanted through, wanted the essence of a god,wanted to be a god, or something like. It wanted a witch's soul at second best,and got Tasfalen's, which was far from enough to pay what Roxane had raised. Itscented Straton's soul unguarded, loosened from its ordinary resistance, andIschade flung power about him, a shrug as she caught her cloak up from under hislegs and jerked it free in a series of violent, angry pulls.