"You'll see to this." He pointed his finger at the most curious of the lot; with their bald skulls, bulging eyes, billowing tunics, and pantaloons, the Beysib men all looked alike to him. He seldom thought of them as individuals.
The Beysib he had addressed cleared his throat nervously and the one at the front of their triangular formation pushed himself slowly to his knees. "The priests of All-Mother Bey serve only Her transcending aspects. We... that is. You, the Regum Bey, do not serve the Avatar," he explained.
Torchholder leaned forward to grip the other man's pectoral ornament. Reversing it with a quick snap, he used the golden chain as a simple garrotte. "The Beysa will be hungry. My prince will be hungry," he said in the soft, intense voice his own people had come to fear.
"It has never been so," the Beysib protested, his face darkening as the Rankan priest hauled him to his feet.
"There is a first time for everything. This could be the first time you visit the kitchens or it could be the first time you die...." Molin gave the pectoral another quarter turn.
It was true that the Beysib could show white all around their eyes even when they were staring. The priest gasped and clung to Torchholder's wrist with both hands. "Yes, Lord Torch-holder."
The mosaic floor of the hypocaust room was hidden under icy, ankle-deep water. Isambard removed his one-and-only pair of sandals and tied them together over his shoulder before stepping into it. With his lantern held high he moved cautiously, knowing there had been snakes down here once and not knowing if the cold water would stop them.
"Most Reverend Lady Jihan?" he inquired into the darkness, addressing her as he would have addressed Molin's long-absent wife.
Silence.
"Most Reverend Lady?" he repeated, sloshing a few steps further.
They were all heaped together on the pallet where they had tied the demon possessed mercenary, Nikodemos: Jihan, Tem-pus, Randal, and possibly Nikodemos himself-Isambard couldn't be sure in this light. They weren't dead, or not all of them anyway, because someone was snoring.
"Great Vashanka-Giver of Victories; Gatherer of Souls- abide with me on Your battlefield."
Lantern rattling in his hand, the acolyte moved forward. He cleared one of the great columns that continued upward all the way to the Hall of Justice. A faint light reflected off the water- a faint blue light such as his lantern could never cast. His heart seized with panic and his gut tumbling with fear, Isambard turned around.
A column of ice loomed midway between the bodies and the far wall. Within it a blue sphere the size and height of his head throbbed; water cascaded to the floor with each rising pulse. The light grew brighter, calling to him. He walked toward it: one step, two steps, three-and put his foot down squarely on the sharpened clasp of Tempus's discarded cloak. The pain jolted him backward and backward and broke the spell.
He had left the room before he had time to scream.
Roxane had been within the Globe of Power longer than was prudent especially since her bond with life was through Tasfalen-who was dead and already beginning to ripen. With her reacquisition of a globe, the Nisi witch was powerful beyond comparison but even she could not do all the things which Sanctuary's situation required at once. She had a demon hounding her now, as well as all the other enemies she had accumulated since the first battles were fought along Wizardwall. The strain of uprooting her soul so many times was starting to show. She was getting careless-being gone so long, leaving a freshly claimed sack of bones like Tasfalen without ensuring that it was life-worthy.
Haught, who was frequently foolish but never careless, knelt beside Straton's unconscious body on the floor of the Peres house kitchen. The interrogation Haught had promised his new mistress/master was going worse than slowly. In his delirium, the Stepson made no distinctions between truth and imagination; wandering, his mind had given Haught no more than tantalizing hints about Ischade or Tempus-plus a throbbing headache.
He comprehended smaller healings like the slash on Moria's foot; he could tamper with the magic of his betters as he had when he'd exerted his control over Stilcho but he lacked the complex magical vocabulary necessary to contend directly with the inertia of a dead or mortally wounded body. He had failed with Tasfalen; the Rankan noble's body had turned a pasty shade of blue and its stiffness, when Roxane returned, would be far more serious than muscle cramps. But Tasfalen had been Haught's first attempt; he had already learned from those mistakes-and Straton was not dead.
The would-be witch studied Tasfalen's silver-white eyes. A touch from the globe and he'd have the power to mend Strat's body enough that the Stepson would no longer have his retreat into delirium and imagination. He'd unwind the man's secrets like so much silk from a cocoon and present his mistress/master with a portion of it.
Just a touch.
A piece of Haught swiped out toward the Globe of Power like a child dragging a finger through the icing on a cake. He had enough to heal and a bit to hide for the future but he hesitated. The wards were wrong: weakened, eroded, vanishing. He reached a little farther and had a vision of an equine face surrounded by ward-fire; consuming the ward-fire-
"Impudent slime! Ice water! Damn her! And you-"
The voice was Tasfalen's but the inflection was all Nisi and malice. The witch swung a clublike open hand at him, striking with the force of a Wizardwall avalanche. Haught heard his spine crack against the far wall and felt the blood streaming from his nose and mouth.
She does not love you, a nameless voice rose out of Haught's memory. Remember your/other: a wind-filled husk of flayed skin when the Wizardwall masters had finished with him. Haught shook the blood from his hand and healed as the witch ranted, cursed, and swallowed the globe.
Haught was against the cupboard where Shiey kept the knives. Silently he called one to his sleeve and held it against his forearm when he meekly rose and followed his mistress/master from the room. He said nothing about the wards or his vision.
Stilcho crept back up the stairway to the dark landing where Moria waited.
"It's now or never," he told the quiet woman, grateful he could not see her face when he found her wrist and led her back down the stairs.
There were two stairways leading to the kitchen of the Peres house: one came up from the larder and pantries in the basement, the other ascended to the servant's quarters under the eaves. Both had been occupied. Stilcho opened the door to face the malevolent leer of the household's cook, Shiey. He knew that face-the last face his missing eye had seen-and it turned his bowels to ice. His resolve and his courage vanished; Moria's hand fell from his trembling fingers.
"We're taking Straton to the stables," Moria said in a soft but firm whisper as she stepped out of Stilcho's shadow. She had her own fears of these servants whom the beggar-king Moruth had provided for the house and she had learned how to hide those fears long ago. "You and you," she pointed to the burliest pair, "take his feet." She looked up to Stilcho.
Giving the one-handed cook a lingering glower, the one-eyed man took position at the Stepson's shoulders.
"We'll get him into the lofts, if we can. And we'll wait for the help that's going to be coming-from everywhere."
"An' if'n it don't?" Shiey demanded.
"We bum the stables around us."