The Prince stepped between all of them with the sword. "I think you should havethis, Tempus. It's too plain for me-but you won't mind that, will you?"

The Hell-Hound examined the blade and set it aside without comment. "I see youcan control your man," he said to Walegrin.

"As you cannot." Walegrin tossed the Hound the boss Dubro had found. "Your menleft it behind when they stole my sister last night." They were of a height,Walegrin and Temp us, but it cost Walegrin to look into Tempus' eyes and foronce he understood what it meant to be cursed, as Tempus was.

"Yes, the S'danzo. My men disliked the fortune she told for them. They bribedsome Downwind to frighten her. They don't understand the Downwind yet. Theyhadn't intended her to be kidnapped, any more than they'd intended to get robbedthemselves. I've dealt with my men-and the Downwinders they hired. Your sisteris already back in the bazaar, Walegrin, a bit richer for her adventures andoff-limits to all Stepsons. No one guessed you were her brother-certain men areassumed not to have family, you know." Tempus leaned forward then, and spokeonly to Walegrin. "Tell me, is your sister worth believing?"

"I believe her."

"Even when she rattles nonsense about invasions from the sea?"

"I believe her enough that I'm remaining in Sanctuary-against all my betterjudgement."

Tempus turned away to take up Walegrin's sword. He adjusted the belt for hiships and put it on. The Stepsons had already departed. "You won't regrethelpingthe Prince," he said without looking at anyone. "He's favored of the gods, youknow. You'll do well together." He followed his men out the door leaving thePrince alone with Walegrin and Thrusher.

"You might have told me you were going to give him my sword!" Walegrincomplained.

"I wasn't. I only meant to distract him-I didn't think he'd take it. I'm sorry.What was the favor you wanted?"

With Illyra and Thrusher safe, and his future mapped out, Walegrin didn't need afavor, but he heard his stomach rumbling and knew Thrush was hungry too. "We'llhave a meal fit for a king-or Prince."

"Well, at least that's something I can provide you."

1

In the archmage's sumptuous purple bedroom, the woman astride him took two pinsfrom her silver-shot hair. It was dark-his choice; and damp with cloyingshadows-his romanticism. A conjured moon in a spellbound sky was being swallowedby effigy-clouds where the vaulted roof indubitably yet arced, even as heshuddered under the tutored and inexorable attentions of the girl Lastel hadbrought to his party. She had refused to tell him her name because he would notgive his, but had told him what she would do for him so eloquently with her eyesand her body that he had spent the entire evening figuring out a way the two ofthem might slip up here unnoticed. Not that he feared her escort's jealousythough the drug dealer might conceivably entertain such a sentiment, Lastel nolonger had the courage (or the contractual protective wardings) to dare areprisal against a Hazard-class mage.

Of all the enchanters in wizard-ridden Sanctuary, only three were archmages,nameless adepts beyond summoning or responsibility, and this Hazard was one. Infact, he was the very strongest of those three. When he had been young, he hadhad a name, but he will forget it, and everything else, quite promptly: thedomed and spired estuary of venality which is Sanctuary, nadir of the empirecalled Ranke; the unmitigated evil he had fielded for decades from his swampencircled Mageguild fortress; the compromises he had made to hold sway overcurmudgeon, courtesan and criminal (so audacious that even the bounds of magicsand planeworlds had been eroded by his efforts, and his fellow adepts felled onoccasion by demons roused from forbidden defiles to do his bidding here at theend of creation where no balance remains between logic and faith, law andnature, or heaven and hell); the disingenuous methods through which his will wasworked, plan by tortuous plan, upon a town so hateful and immoral that both theflaunted gods and magicians' devils agreed that its inhabitants deserved no lessdastardly a fate-all of this, and more, will fade from him in the time it takesa star to burn out, falling from the sky.

Now, the First Hazard glimpses her movement, though he is close to ejaculation,sputtering with sensations that for years he has assumed he had outgrown, orforgotten how to feel. Senility creeps upon the finest flesh when a body ismaintained for millenia, and into the deepest mind, through thousands of years.He does not look his age, or tend to think of it. The years are his, mandated.Only a very special kind of enemy could defeat him, and those were few and farbetween. Simple death, morbidity or the spells of his brothers were like gnatshe kept away by the perfume of his sweat: merely the proper diet, herbs andspells and consummated will, had long ago vanquished them as far as he wasconcerned.

So strange to lust, to desire a particular woman; he was amused, joyous; he hadnot felt so good in years. A tiny thrill of caution had hor-ripilated his napeearly on, when he noticed the silvering of her nightblack hair, but this girlwas not old enough to be-'Ahhhh!" Her premeditated rippling takes him overpassion's edge, and he is falling, place and provenance forgotten, not aterrible adept wrenching the world about to suit his whim and comfort, but justa man.

In that instant, eyes defocused, he sees but does not note the diamond sparkleof the rods poised above him; his ears are filled with his own breathing; thesong of entrapment she sings softly has him before he thinks to think, or thinksto fear, or thinks to move.

By then, the rods, their sharp fine points touching his arched throat, ownedhim. He could not move; not his body nor his soul responded; his mind could notcontrol his tongue. Thinking bitterly of the indignity of being frozen like arearing stallion, he hoped his flesh would slump once life had fled. As he feltthe points enter into his skin and begin to suck at the thread binding him tolife, his mortification marshaled his talents: he cleared his vision, forced hiseyes to obey his mind's command. Though he was a great sorcerer, he was notomnipotent: he could not manage to make his lips frame a curse to cast upon her,just watched the free agent Cime- who had slipped, disguised, into so manymages' beds of late-sip the life from him relish-ingly. So slow she was about ithe had time to be thankful she did not take him through his eyes. The song shesings has cost her much to learn, and the death she staves off will not be sokind as his. Could he have spoken, then, resigned to it, he would have thankedher: it is no shame to be brought down by an opponent so worthy. They paid theirprices to the same host. He set about composing his exit, seeking his meadow,star-shaped and ever green, where he did his work when meditation whisked himinto finer awarenesses than flesh could ever share. If he could seat himselfthere, in his established place of power, then his death was nothing, his flesha fingernail, overlong and ready to be pared.

He did manage that. Cime saw to it that he had the time. It does not do to angercertain kinds of powers, the sort which, having dispensed with names, dispensewith discorporation. Some awful day, she would face this one, and others whomshe had guided out of life, in an afterlife which she had helped populate.Shades tended to be unforgiving.