But it probably was-he was the root and cause of all this slaughter: it was hiscurse, habitual (as Molin Torchholder, a Nisi-blooded slime in Rankan clothing,maintained) or invoked by jealous gods or hostile magic. He didn't know or carewhich force now drove him: he'd lost interest in which was right and which waswrong.

Like the day around him, black and white and good and evil had lost theircharacter, merging like the sullen dusky noon in an unsavory amalgam to matchhis mood.

But it bothered him that the Tr6s was nervous, sweating, and distressed. Hereined it down a side street, hoping to avoid the greater gusts of dust. For heknew that dust as he knew the voices of the gods who plagued him: each particlewas a remnant of pulverized globes of Nisi power, magical talismans reduced topinprick size and myriad in number.

If Sanctuary needed anything less than a dusty cloak of Nisi magic wafting whereit willed, he couldn't think what it might be.

And then he realized what lay ahead, down a shadowed alleyway, and drew hissword: a little honest swordplay might cheer him up, and ahead, where PFLSrebels in rags and sweat-bands fought Rankan regulars in the street, he knewhe'd. find it.

Though he was overqualified for street brawls-a man who couldn't die and had toheal, whose horse shared his more-than-human speed and more-than-mortalconstitution-numbers made the odds more honest: four Rankan soldiers, against amob of thirty, were trying to shield some woman with a child from whatever themob had in mind.

He heard shouts over the Tros's hoofbeats as it lifted into a lope and trumpetedits war cry as it sped gladly toward the fray.

"Give her up, the slut-it's all her doing!" cried one hoarse voice from the mob.

"That's right!" a shrill woman's voice seconded the rebel demand: "S'danzo slut!She bore the accursed Stormchild's playmate! S'danzo wickedness has taken awaythe sun and turned the gods' ire upon us!"

And a third voice, streetwise and dark, a man's voice Tempus thought he ought torecognize, put in: "Come on, Walegrin, give her up and you go free-you andyours. We're only killing witches and their children today!"

"Screw yourself. Zip," one of the Rankans called back. "You'll have to take herfrom us. And we'll have a couple lives in exchange-yours for certain. That's apromise."

Tempus had only an instant to realize that Walegrin, the garrison commander, wasone of the Rankans under siege, and to add up all he'd heard and realize thatthe blond soldier's sister-of-recoro, Illyra, must be the woman whose life wasthe subject of a traditional Sanctuary streetcorner debate.

Then the Tr6s was sighted by the rebels at the rear of the crowd, which began topart but not disperse.

Missiles pelted him, some barbed, some jagged, some meant for rolling bread orholding wine-and some designed for war.

He ducked an arrow hurtling toward him from a crossbow, his senses so muchfaster that he could see the helically-fletched blue feathers on its tail as itsped toward his heart.

The Tros was hit between the eyes with a tomato: it had seen the missile coming,but never flinched or ducked, its ears pricked like a sighting mechanism alignedupon the crowd: it was a warhorse, after all.

But Tempus found this affront unacceptable, and took exception to the brashnessof the crowd. Reaching up with his left hand while still holding his reins, heplucked the arrow from the air when it was inches from his heart and, as heseldom did, flaunted his supernatural attributes before the crowd, holding thearrow high and breaking it between his fingers like a piece of straw as hebellowed in his most commanding voice: "Zip and all you rebels, disperse or facemy personal wrath- a retribution that will haunt you till you die, and thensome: you'll leave my fury to your descendants as a bequest."

And Zip's voice called back from a gloom in which all white faces looked alikeand darker Wriggly skins faded to invisibility: "Come get me, Riddler. Yourdaughter did!"

He set about just that, but not before the crowd surged inward as one body,pinning the four Rankans and the girl they thought to shield against the wall.

He kneed the Tros in among confusion, took blows, and swung back and down withhis sharkskin-hiked sword, inured to the death he dealt, his conscience salvedbefore the fact by giving warning, so that his blood-lust now reigned unimpededand rebels fell, like wheat before a scythe, under his blade, a sword the god ofwar had sanctified in countless bodies just like these, across more battlefieldsthan Tempus cared to count.

But when, finally, the crowd broke to run and none clawed at his saddle or bitat his ankle or tried to blind the Tros horse with their sharpened sticks orhamstring it with their bread knives, he realized he'd been too late to save theday.

Oh, Walegrin, bloody and with a face pummeled beyond recognition so that Tempuscould only recognize him by his braided blond locks and the tears streaming fromhis blackened sockets unheeded, would live to fight another day: he'd beeninnermost, protecting Illyra-the S'danzo seeress who should have forseen allthis-with his own big body. But of the other three soldiers, one's gullet wassplit the way a fisherman cleans his catch, one's neck was hanging by a thread,and the third was hacked apart, limb from limb, his trunk still twitchingweakly.

It was not the soldiers, however, who drew Tempus's attention, but the womanthey'd tried to shield, who in turn had been protecting her child. Illyra,S'danzo skirts heavy with blood, cradled a young girl's body in her arms, andwept so silently that it was Walegrin's grief, not her own, that let Tempus knowthat the child was surely dead.

"Lillis," Walegrin sobbed, manliness forgotten because an innocent, his kin, wasslain; "Lillis, dear gods, no... she's alive, 'Lyra, alive, I tell you."

But all the desperate wishes in the world would not make it so, and the S'danzowoman, whose eyes were wise and whose face was tired beyond her years and whoseown belly bled profusely where the axe that had hewn her daughter had gonethrough child and into mother, met Tempus's eyes before she turned to the fieldcommander who could no longer command so much as his grief.

"Tempus, isn't it? And your marvelous horse?" Illyra's voice had the sough ofthe seawind in it and her eyes were bleak and full of the witch-dust settlingall about. "Shall I foretell your future, lord of blood, or would you rather notread the writing on the wall?"

"No, my lady," he said before he looked above her head and beyond, to wheregraffiti scribed in blood defaced the mud-brick. "Tell me no tales of power: Ifdoom could be avoided, you'd have a live child in your arms."

And he reined the Tros around, setting off again toward Wideway and thedockside, forcing his thoughts to collect and focus on the audience with Theronsoon to come, and away from the writing on the wall behind the woman: "Theplague is in our souls, not in our destiny. Ilsig rules. Kill the witches and mepriests or perish!"

It sounded like a good idea to him, but he couldn't throw in his lot with therebels: he'd made a truce with magic for the sake of his soldiers; he'd made atruce with gods for the sake of his soul.

And perishing wasn't an option for Tempus. Sometimes he wondered if he mightmanage it by getting himself eaten by fishes or chopped into tiny pieces, butthe chances were good that his parts would reassemble or-worse-that each morselof him would reconstitute an entire being.

It was bad enough existing in one discrete form; he couldn't bear to bereplicated countless times. So he smothered the rebellious impulse to throw inhis lot with the rebels and see if it was true that any army he joined could notlose its battles.