The hell you're not.

Haught's eyebrow twitched. Dangerously. And the cold eyes took on a littleamusement. "Only of your loyalty," he said. "That, I'll have. What you have inyour bed is your business. As long as I have the other. I don't hold anybody myproperty. Moria."

Slave, she remembered, remembered the whip-scars on him, and saw his face growhard.

"I was apprenticed on Wizardwall," he said. "And Ischade was fool enough to takeme on. Now I have what I need. I have this house, I have hands to do what Iwant, and I have one of my enemies. That's a beginning, isn't it?"

He looked up toward the head of the stairs. Moria did, unwillingly, and sawTasfalen standing there naked to the waist and with his hair all rumpled as ifhe had just risen from sleep.

But there was something wrong in the way he stood there, in the lack ofreaction, in the way the hand reached out listlessly for the bannister, all thereactions of life but no reaction to what ought to stir a man. As if he did notknow that there was anything amiss with him or in what his eyes must register inthe hall below him.

"The body's working," Haught said. "The mind's rather spotty, I'm afraid.Memory's not what it was. The soul might retain the missing bits-decay sets invery soon, you know; some tiny bits of him have just rotted, already. So a lotit had is gone. But it doesn't need a soul, does it? It doesn't need one forwhat I want."

"You said you'd help me," Stilcho said from where he knelt by the woundedStepson.

"Oh. That. Yes. Eventually." As the body that had been Tasfalen came down thestairs in total disinterest. And stopped and stood at the bottom. "It doesn'thave much volition. But it doesn't need that either. Does it?"

Niko's body went into still another spasm. Jihan had gotten his jaws open andTempus had forced a small wooden rod there-gods knew where Randal had come upwith it, out of what debris of the office. It kept Niko from biting his tonguethrough. And Randal had pulled another thing out of that otherwhere of a mage'sstorage-had gotten bits and pieces of that armor he had worn and tried to fitthe breastplate to a body that kept trying to break its own spine.

Niko screamed when that touched him. He screamed and flung himself into a spasmthat Molin would not have thought was left in that wracked body; his own musclesached with pity and his hands sweated. "It's killing him," Tempus yelled, andshoved Randal and the collection of metal aside. "Dammit, let him be; Jihan,hold onto him, hold onto him-"

Tempus hugged him hard against him and shut his eyes and tried. Molin saw whathe was trying, sensed the effort to break through the barrier that existed inNiko now. He threw his own strength into it, and felt Randal add his.

Trees groaned in the wind, crashed and fell, and the ground quaked. Ischade putout all her effort to stay others, her arms about the sleeper, Janni's whiteshape holding him from the other side. The wind grew colder, and the thingbattering at the gate grew more powerful.

Even Roxane was afraid now. Ischade knew it. "Get out of him!" Ischade yelledinto the wind. "Witch, you've lost, get out of him, leave this place!"

I'll know when to go, the voice came back. Give me Niko. "Fool," Ischademurmured, holding tight. "Fool, fool-You won't get him, Roxane, I'll send hissoul to hell before you get your hands on it, hear me?"

And then a gate would exist indeed, snake swallowing its tail, a gaping hole inthe world's substance which would pull them all in. She said it and knew it wasnot bluff, that she was not going to let go; she did not know how to let go, inthe way that Roxane did not know how; and at the end that was what would happen,the thing would find its way up out of the pit that had opened in this place andtake the sleeper, and when it did, when it did, that snake-swallowing-taileffect would envelop them all. Her doing, and Roxane's.

Storm broke overhead.

Something else had manifested. Lightnings crashed. The ground shook; and of asudden a bolt crashed down nearby, where the gate was. All of existenceshuddered.

And there was sudden nothingness in her arms and in Janni's. The sleeper meltedfrom them. The sky dissolved in rack and lightnings.

And a dark shape flew from the direction of the meadow to mingle with it, onefused whirling mass of lightnings, of gray cloud, and of night that shotdestruction everywhere....

Niko's unbandaged eye opened. He flung himself in a spasm against Jihan'sstrength and Tempus's inert weight and Molin flinched at the scream that camepast the gag. Let him die, he prayed, was praying, when Randal scrambled out ofhis disarray with the armor and reached after something else. The paintingmanifested in his grip.

"Get a light," Randal yelled at him. In one dullwitted moment Molin knew whatRandal was after, recoiled from the thought of the deed and wondered in the samenumb-minded flicker why a candle, why not call fire: but a candle was apt forfire, the canvas was magical and unapt, it resisted destruction. "Light!" Molinbellowed at the priest who hovered terrified in custody of Ischade's body. Thepriest cast about this way and that, and in that selfsame moment Randal snatchedup a handful of papers and blasted them into flame. The fire whumphed up andtook the corner of the canvas on which Tempus and Niko and Roxane existed intriad, and Molin clenched his hands on the back of the chair in front of him andflinched as the smoke poured up from it, as Randal held onto burning paper andburning canvas, his face twisted in the pain of the burning that went up and up,the fire licking out at sleeves, at robe, at hair, at anything it could getwhile Randal turned and twisted in what looked like some grotesque dancer'scontortions, keeping it away from himself and what else it reached for. Silversmoke poured up, mingled unnaturally with black. There was a stench of sulphur,and a shadow poured out of that smoke, a presence of intolerable menace. Thepriest screamed and covered his head. Then that darkness went- somewhere.

At the same moment Niko's body went limp as the dead and a slow trickle of bloodflowed down from his nose and around the comer of his mouth where the stick wasset between his jaws. Jihan looked puzzled and Randal stood there breathing ingreat gasps with the sweat standing on his white face and his hands all blackand red, his lips drawn back in a grimace of pain and doubt.

Cloth whispered. Molin glanced aside in his distress and saw Ischade move andrise on one elbow and the opposing hand. Her dark hair hid her face. She lookedup then, toward Niko, and that face was drawn and grim.

Tempus stirred and shoved himself up off the floor. His jaw clenched and knottedas he looked into Niko's face; while Jihan carefully pulled the stick frombetween Niko's jaws and closed his mouth, down which a ribbon of blood stillpoured.

"He's alive," Ischade said. Her voice was ragged and hoarse. "He's free of her."

"But not of it," Tempus snarled, "dammit, not of it-"

"Let it alone!" Ischade shouted. Her voice broke. She reached out a forbiddinghand and straightened the other arm, supporting herself. "It's not loose. Yet.Don't meddle with it. It's not something you can handle. Or that I can. I don'tmake that kind of bargain."

"Do it!"

"No!" She got herself up on her knees and staggered to her feet. "He's got Jannistill. And Janni on that ground is power enough to keep him till he wakes. She'sstill loose, do you hear me? Roxane's still free, and she's pacted with thatthing. She's somewhere, and your meddling in that Place can only make it worse:she's still got ties there. She doesn't want that gate open any more than we do:not unless she can get it what she promised. Then she'll open it. She's lost herpower, she's lost her hiding-place, we're that much better off, but not if yougo head-on against her ally-"