Ischade!

The appeal hit her like a scream at her back. She physically turned and lookedin the direction from which it had come. It was Randal's voice. It was bluelight. It was...

She ran to the window, flung open the shutters, flung wide the window andlaunched herself from the floor of the bedroom to the incoming wind that sweptthe curtains, never questioning whether she had the control or knew where shewas going: Randal's outpouring was a shriek of utter panic, shuddering andwavering in and out of focus in a wild undulation across the whole of the town.

Ischade! Help!

It's Roxane!

"She's gone," Haught whispered, gathering himself to his feet. "Her attention'selsewhere. It all is-"

"What are you doing?" Moria gathered herself up off the dust of the warehousefloor and the mouldering sacking which was the seating Stilcho had provided her.Her foot still hurt, though the bleeding had stopped. She staggered, blinked atthe ex-slave turned magician, her Haught, who had stood straight up and lookedoff toward a blank wall of the rotting building as if his eyes saw throughwalls. Stilcho caught her arm when she wobbled on her feet, his hand cool butnot cold, certainly not the deathly cold she always expected to feel. He heldher there; she held onto him a moment; then Haught just stopped being there.

There was a thunderclap that rocked the building, a wind jerked roughly and onceat her clothing and her hair toward the spot where Haught had been, and herskull all but split with Haught's voice thundering in it and into her soul andher bones and her gut.

Go home. She's not there now. I'll find you at the house.

There was threat implicit in that order. There was rage and jealousy and allpromise what that power that racketed about her skull could do.

That and disgust for her soiling. Haught was always fastidious.

Dead man and damned drab. Wait for me.

She sobbed. It was different than a voice. It got into her soul and she hadnever felt so dirty and so small and so worthless to the world.

Stilcho hugged her head against his chest, hard. She heard his heart beating,which, through all her pain and her confusion, confounded her further; she hadnot thought it beat at all.

The door to Molin's office slammed wide, hit the wall and started a cascade ofbooks and papers about the feet of the apparition which staggered into the roomhalf-naked and wild and going straight for him, his desk, his life. And thepottery globe which was/was not there. Molin flung himself in a dive whichintercepted Niko in mid-lunge as they both skidded over the desktop and off it.The sick man rolled and twisted and it was Molin who hit the ground on thebottom, Molin who had the wind half knocked from him and his skull cracked onthe rebound of his neck as he tried to curl and save himself. Sparks explodedacross his vision; Niko was trying to rip free, sweating, naked skin offeringprecious little purchase as he surged to his feet.

Molin grabbed Niko's leg with both arms, rolled and brought the Stepson down inanother scrape and clatter of furniture. The chair this time. As shouting closedin on the room and he had hope of help if he could only hang on to the madmanwho was trying to scrabble and twist round to get at him. He bent the leg andgrabbed the ankle and got his own foot around to slam into Niko's face.

"Get him," someone yelled from the doorway.

"Niko!" That shout was Tempus.

And something exploded through the window in a shower of glass, something thatexisted a moment in midair and then toppled in a tumble of black cloak, blackhair and dusky skin that landed with a thump in front of Molin's dazed eyes.

Ischade lay on the floor like a dead thing, eyes open, lips apart, a strand ofher black hair lying across her open eyes without a reaction at all, her barearm outflung, fingers curled in the light of the broken window. Blood welled upin cuts on that arm-did not spurt, but only leaked, slowly, to pool under thearm, amid the fragments of glass. All this he had time to see: Niko had suddenlygone limp as Molin sprawled atop him. Ischade lay not breathing at all and hewas desperately afraid that Niko was not breathing either.

He pushed himself up on his arms, had help as a strong hand grabbed him andpulled, and Tempus waded in, shoved the oak desk aside to get room and grabbedNiko up in his arms.

"He collapsed," Molin said, "he-just-"

Reason tottered. He felt himself pulled up and set aside like a child, and theFroth Daughter let him go and sank down to grab Tempus's arm as he held ontoNiko.

"I can't get through," Tempus shouted in desperation. "Dammit, Stormbringer-letme get to him!"

"You can't go in there," Jihan yelled. Her fingers closed on his arm and dentedthe muscle. "She's there, Riddler, she's in there, and you want it too much-Stayhere!"

It was wreckage, everywhere wreckage. Ischade cast about her in the woods, withthe wind blowing everything to wrack and the trees creaking and groaning in thegusts. A stream ran there, and it was clear water around its edges, but itscenter was blood; and in the center of the blood was a thread of black, likecorruption.

She knew where the attack came from. She clutched her cloak about her to shieldherself from it as best she could and ran with her back to the wind, trying tofind the lost soul whose refuge this was. A little bit of hell had crept in andsettled in the meadow. A great deal of it was not that far away, and there wasin a place this numinous a great deal of what it could use, if her enemy was anutter fool and let it in.

A tree gave way at the roots and crashed down, taking others with it, showeringher with its ruin. She had no magic in this place. She had nothing but her mind,and that was unfocused, chaotic as this place was chaotic: she was the worst ofhelps for it, a raw Power without a center of her own, an existence without areason. It was the worst of places for her to come.

The ground quaked. Thunder rolled and a voice pursued her without words, ashrieking shout that impelled the winds and stung with mortal cold.

She stumbled upon a tumble of rocks, a little rise, a place where a guardianwaited, faceless, selfless, a pale shape that shone with inner light and itshands glowing more terribly than its face as it lifted them to bar her way,light against her black, certainty against her doubt. It had had a name once,and she suddenly knew it: once she knew that name, it took on shape and becameJanni, a torn and failing ghost that blew in tatters in the wind.

"I need his help," she said. "Janni, I need yours."

She had raised only his Seeming out of hell; the part of Janni that stood thereflaring with light came on loan from elsewhere, an elsewhere with which she hadas little to do as possible, wanting its expensive bargains no more than hell's.

But he had come for this. To stand here. For hell's reason: revenge; and areason out of that other place: raw devotion. It shone out of him like a candlethrough paper, and made his face unbearable: she flinched and avoided thesight of it. He blinded. He burned the eyes and left his imprint when shelooked aside, so that a shadow-Janni drifted in front of her eyes when ashining hand at the edge of her vision indicated the sleeper by thestreamside.

"Niko," she said, and exerted all the power she had stored, one vast pushagainst the wind and the accumulated ruin of this place. "Niko. Nikodemos.Stealth, it's not your time. Do you hear me?"