Strat ignored the Hazard and watched Ischade still. "Is it my fault?" he asked simply. "Some consequence of lying with you against all that's natural?"

"No more than Janni's fate, or Stilcho's, can be laid at any other's feet. Men make their own fates-it's personal, not a matter for debate." She reached up, taking a chance, touching his lips gone white as the big Stepson struggled for control, his hand upon his sword hilt. He might well try to kill her there and then, to exorcise his guilt and pain.

Then what would she do? Hurt this one, in whose arms she could be a woman, not a Power too fearful to survive for any other man? Never. Or not unless he forced it.

Her touch on his lips didn't cause him to toss his head or step away. He said, "Ischade, this is more than I bargained for ..."

"It's more, Strat, than any of us bargained for." Her hand slipped from his lips, down his neck, across the sloping shoulder to rest on his powerful right arm-in a moment she could numb it, if there was need. "It's your god, warring against the Ilsig gods and the Beysib gods-if they have them-turning men's heads and hearts. Not us. We're as close to innocent as your sword, which would as soon stay in its scabbard. Trust me. We all knew there'd be hell to pay, should this day come."

Strat nodded slowly: Ersatz Stepsons had rousted real ones in the town, and even dared to confront the black-souled 3rd Commando rangers. And Zip's indigenous fighters had reason to hate all oppressors-the PFLS would as soon have made the gutters run with blood up to Zip's knees.

"So now what?" said the big man, distress naked in his tone.

The necromant looked up, reached up again, craned her neck so that her hood fell back and only her hair shadowed her face. "Now you remember the promise you made me, that first night-not to blame me for being what I am, not to blame yourself for doing what you have to do. And not to ask too many questions whose answers you won't like."

The soldier closed his eyes, remembering what she'd bade him forget until the time was right. And when he opened them, they'd softened just a bit. "Your place?" he said tiredly. "Or mine?"

That night, down in Sanctuary on a perpetually dank street called Mageway, in a tower of the citadel of magic, Randal the Tysian Hazard woke in his Mageguild bed, strangling in his own sheets.

The slight mage went pale beneath his freckles-pale to his prodigious ears-as the sheets, pure and innocent linen as far as anyone knew, bound him tighter. If he ever got out of this alive, he'd have to have a talk with his treacherous bedclothes-they had no right to treat him this way. Had his mouth not been stoppered by their grasp, he could have shouted counterspells or cursed his inanimate bedclothes, come alive. But Randal's mouth, as well as his hands and feet, was bound tight by hostile magic.

His eyes, alas, were not. Randal stared into a darkness which lightened perceptibly before the bed on which he struggled, helpless, as the Nisibisi witch Roxane coalesced from nimbus, a sensuous smile upon her face.

Roxane, Death's Queen, was Randal's nemesis, a hated enemy, a worrisome foe.

The young mage writhed within the prison of his sheets and wordless exhortations came from his gagged mouth. Roxane, whom he'd fought on Wizardwall, had sworn to kill him-not just for what he'd done to help Tempus's Stepsons and Bashir's guerrilla fighters reclaim their homeland, Wizardwall, from Nisibisi wizards, but because Randal had once been the right-side partner of Stealth, called Nikodemos, a soul the witch Roxane sought to claim.

Sweating freely, Randal tried to wriggle off his Mageguild bed as Roxane's form lost its wraithlike quality and became palpably present. He succeeded only in banging his head against the wall, and cowered there, wishing witches couldn't slit Mageguild wards like butter, wishing he'd never fought with Stepsons or claimed a Nisi warlock's Globe of Power, wishing he'd never heard of Nikodemos or inherited Niko's panoply, armor forged by the entelechy of dream.

"Umn hmn, nnh nohnu, rgorhrrr!" Randal shouted at the witch who now had human form, even down to perfumed flesh whose scent mixed with his own acrid, fearful sweat: Go away, you horror, evermore!

Roxane only laughed, a tinkling laugh, not horrid, and minced over to his bedside with exaggerated care: "Say you what, little mageling? Say again?" She leaned close, smiling broadly, her lovely sanguine face no older than a marriageable girl's. Her fearsome faith, behind those eyes which supped on fear and now were feasting on Randal's anguish, was older than the Mageguild in which she stood-stood against reason, against nature, against the best magic Rankan trained adepts and even Randal, who'd learned Nisi ways to counter the warring warlocks from the high peaks, could field.

"Whhd whd drr whdd? Whr hheh?" Randal said from behind his sopping, choking gag of sheets: What do you want? Why me?

And the Nisibisi witch stretched elegantly, leaned close, and answered. "Want? Why, Witchy-Ears, your soul, of course. Now, now, don't thrash around so. Don't waste your strength, such as it is. You've got 'til winter's shortest day to anticipate its loss. Unless, of course ..." The luminous eyes that had been the last sight of too many great adepts and doomed warriors came close to his, and widened. "Unless you can prevail on Stealth, called Nikodemos, to help you save it. But then, we both know it's not likely he'd put his person in jeopardy for yours.... Sacred Band oath or not, Niko's left you, deserted you as he's deserted me. Isn't that so, little maladroit nonadept? Or do you think honor and glory and an abrogated bond could bring your one-time partner down to Sanctuary to save you from a long and painful stint as one of my ... servants?" Teeth gleamed above Randal in the dark, as all of Roxane's manifestation gleamed with an unholy and inhuman light.

The Tysian Hazard-class adept lay unmoving, listening to his breathing rasp unwilling to answer, to hope, or to even long for Niko's presence. For that was what the witch wanted, he finally realized. Not his magic Globe of Power, bound with the most deadly protections years of fighting Roxane's kind had taught mages of lesser power to devise; not the Aske Ionian panoply without which, should he somehow survive this evening, Randal would never sleep again because that panoply was protection against such magics as Roxane's sort could weave about a simple Hazard-class enchanter. Not any of these did the witch crave, but Niko-Niko back in Sanctuary, in the flesh.

And Randal, who loved Niko better than he loved himself, who revered Niko in his heart with all the loyalty a rightman was sworn to give his left-side leader even though Niko had formally dissolved their pairbond long before, would gladly have given up his soul to Roxane right then and there to prevent a call going out on ethereal waves to summon Niko into Roxane's foul embrace.

He would have, if his mind had been able to control his fear. But it could not: Roxane was fear's drover, mistress of terror, the very fount from which the death squads plaguing Sanctuary sprang.

She began to make arcane and convoluted passes with her red-nailed hands over Randal's immobilized body and Randal began to quake. His mouth dried up, his heart beat fast, his pulse sought to rip right through his throat. Panicked, he lost all sense of logic; unable to think, his mind was hers to mold and to command.

As she wove her web of terror, Randal's mage's talent screamed silently for help.

It screamed so well and so loudly, with every atom of his imperiled being, that far away to the west, in his cabin before a pool of gravel neatly raked, high on a cliffside overlooking the misty seascape of the Bandaran Islands' chain, Nikodemos paused in his meditation and rubbed gooseflesh rising suddenly on his arms.