"The vipers are sacred to the Beysib and to Mother Bey. You, most especially, should respect this," Molin said sternly as the temperature continued to drop.

"Mother Bey! Mother Bey, my hind foot. Do you know where she found her first snake? That's all she needs, you know, a silly blood-mouth World Serpent. Not my father. No, she doesn't need him at all!"

When she wasn't doting on the children, Jihan fumed about her father's progressive entanglement with the fish-folk's goddess, Mother Bey. Jihan, who had never had a rival for her father's affection, was developing a dangerous resentment for all things Beysib.

Gods were the priests' problems. Randal had heard the adolescent protests before and was openly relieved to leave them to Molin. He found a fist-sized watch-lamp beside the glowing brazier, lit it, and headed toward the curtained alcove where Niko convalesced. Tempus had forbidden the direct application of magic on his partner's wounds so Jihan worked her healing through vile unguents; the taint of rotting offal drew Randal to the alcove more surely than the flickering lamplight. He swallowed his sneezes as he drew the curtain aside and stood at Niko's feet.

The mercenary thrashed on his pallet in the grip of nightmares or pain.

"Leave me be!" he gasped-and Randal pressed his back against the wall of the alcove.

Chiringee had followed the magician. She stalked across the damp, discarded linens, easily eluding Randal's cautious attempts to restrain her. Her teeth glistened and her tail quivered as it only did when she was closing on her prey. Randal set the lamp carefully on the footboard and moved closer.

"Leave me!" Niko murmured again before his words became incoherent moans and his body stiffened into an arch above the pallet.

Randal froze, horrified not merely because the creature he had enchanted to protect Niko was going to rip through the soft flesh of that Stepson's neck but because he knew, despite his chastity, that Niko was a victim of neither nightmares nor pain. The injured mercenary collapsed flaccidly on the linens; Chiringee's jaws clicked shut harmlessly and Randal watched as Niko's lips moved silently around the word he most feared: "Roxane..."

The mongoose reared up and began a keening that drew Molin and Jihan to the alcove.

"He's had a relapse," Randal said, a tremor in his voice. "I'll go tell Tempus." He ran from the alcove and the nursery hoping he could reach privacy before the deceit and sick fear that had taken root in his bowels overcame him.

"I can see that," Jihan said coldly as she stared first at Molin, then at her patient. She drew the linens up to cover him. "Go now, I'll take care of him alone."

Molin was alone in his sanctum when Illyra arrived at the palace to deliver Chiringee's new cage. She had been instructed to take it directly to the nursery, but she was the natural mother of one of Sanctuary's Stormchildren and when she insisted that she would see Vashanka's priest first no one argued with her. She dumped the iron-wire contraption on the floor and ordered Molin's scrivener, Hoxa, from the room.

"Is something wrong, Illyra? I assure you: Alton receives the same care as Gyskouras." Molin stood up from her table and gestured to take her heavy cloak.

"I have Seen things." She kept the cloak tight at her neck though braziers and windows made the sanctum one of the more comfortable private rooms in the palace. "Torchholder- it's getting worse, not better."

"Sit down, then, and tell me what you've Seen," He dragged his own chair around to the front of the worktable for her. "Hoxa! Get some mulled cyder for the lady!" Propping himself against the table, he addressed her with calculated familiarity. "Since the... accident?"

"That night."

"You said you Saw nothing," he chided her.

"Not about Arton or the other boy; not something I even noticed or understood at the time. But the others have felt it too." She pulled the cloak close around her; Molin understood that once again Illyra was violating some S'danzo taboo with her revelations. "There are stones-spirit stones-from the times before men needed gods. When they were lost that was when the S'danzo were born and when men began to create gods from their hopes and needs....

"If men possessed these stones again there would be no need for gods."

She paused when Hoxa came into the room with two goblets.

"Thank you, Hoxa. I won't be needing you again tonight. Take the rest of the cyder and have a pleasant evening." Molin handed Illyra the goblet himself. "You think that with these stones we could free your son and Gyskouras?" he suggested when it seemed she would say no more but only stare at the twisting plumes of steam.

Illyra shook her head. Tears or the fragrant vapor of the cyder had smeared the kohl under her eyes. "It's been too long. One of the lost stones was invoked and destroyed that night- some of its magic was directed against the children, some went into a woman who came to me with death in her eyes, some of it is still falling to the ground like rain, but all of it was evil, Torchholder. It had been damaged when the demons hid it in the fires of creation. Our legends have played us false. Men can no longer live without gods.

"The other women have felt the falling but I've felt something else in the shadows. Torchholder-there's another stone in Sanctuary and it is worse than the first one."

Molin took the goblet from her trembling fingers and held her hands between his own. "What you call spirit stones are, in fact, the Nisibisi Globes of Power, the talismans of their witches and wizards. The one that was destroyed was the source of most, if not all, of the witch Roxane's power. She was evil, it is true, and the demons will have their sport with her, I'm sure. But the globes themselves are only pottery artifacts. The S'danzo needn't worry about the second one, whatever its previous owners might have been." He stopped short of telling her that Randal's globe still rested, enveloped by nothingness, on the table behind him.

Illyra shook her head until her hood fell back and her dark, curling hair fell freely around her shoulders. "It is a spirit stone and the demons have tampered with it," she insisted. "It is not safe for men to possess it."

"It could be destroyed, like the other one."

"No." She shrank back as if he had struck her. "Not destroyed-Sanctuary, the world, wouldn't survive. Send it back to the fires of creation-or to the bottom of the sea."

"It is safe, Illyra. It will hurt no one and no one will hurt it."

She stared distractedly at the table; Molin wondered what her S'danzo sight could actually reveal. "Its evil cries out in the night, Torchholder, and no one is immune." She lifted her hood and moved toward the door. "No one," she reminded him as she left.

The priest finished his cyder, then opened the parchment window. Time always passed strangely when he was with Illyra-it had seemed no later than early afternoon when she arrived, but now the sun had set and a fog bank was moving across the harbor to the town. He should have arranged an escort for her back to the Bazaar. Despite her prejudices Illyra was one of his most prized informants.

"Isn't it rather early to be sending them home. Torch?" a familiar voice inquired from behind.

Molin turned as Tempus settled himself into the chair which creaked and was dwarfed by his size.

"She is the mother of the other child. Sometimes she brings me information. I don't mix business with pleasure, Riddler."

They used mercenaries' names when they met; their personalities always created the aura of a battlefield between them.