Doomed, she thought, damned. Dead. Gods save this man. Gods save me. And she held his hand until his closed on hers with painful force.
"My lady," Tasfalen whispered once, "what's wrong? What's happening here?"
"I can't say," she whispered back; while Ischade said something else to Tempus, which made less sense than before. Of a sudden she realized they were speaking some foreign tongue.
And there was no laughter. There was sudden quiet all about the table. No word from Straton or the man next to him. Critias. The men nearest caught that contagion and it spread down the table. Wine stayed untouched.
"It's sufficient," Ischade said at last. "Your pardon." And rose.
Tempus got to his feet. Straton was next. The whole company began to rise, and Moria thrust herself from her seat, tangling her legs and the skirts and the resisting fabric of the chair until Tasfalen's arm steadied her. She stood there with her heart pounding in terror no wine could numb, suffered Ischade's direct glance, suffered a moment that Ischade put out a hand, lifted her chin with a delicate forefinger and stared her straight in the eyes.
"M-m-mis-"
"How fine you've become," Ischade said, and there was hell in that look, that sent a weakness through her bones and her sinews and made her sway against Tasfalen. Ischade let her go then, and nodded to the lord Tasfalen, as Straton came and took her arm. She walked toward the door with Straton, while everyone stayed standing and the confused kitchen started sending out another course.
A low murmur went past their backs. Slowly Tempus settled to his chair again. It was going to go on. She was left with these men after all. Moria sank back to her chair with the last strength in her legs and smiled desperately at Tasfalen.
Ischade walked for the door, paused to gather her cloak from the bannister of the stairs, and let Straton drape it about her shoulders. "Thank you," she said, and walked on toward the door. Stopped abruptly as he followed. She looked back at him and felt her whole frame shudder with the effort of calm, with the effort to keep her face composed and her movements natural. "I said," she told him carefully, "that I needed time to myself. Don't touch me-" As he reached his hand toward her.
"I hod to come, dammit!"
"I said not!"
"Who is that man?"
She saw the madness in his eyes. Or it reflected hers, which pounded in her veins and grew to physical pain. He caught her arms and she flung up her head and stared him in the eyes until the hands lost the strength in their grip. But the pain grew; became madness, became the thing that killed.
She shoved him back, violently, walked with quick steps to the door and heard his steps behind her. She turned before he reached her.
"Stay away!" she hissed. "Fool!"
And jerked the door open and fled, into the wind, and on it.
CHILDREN OF ALL AGES by Lynn Abbey
It was spring in the lush forests far to the south of Sanctuary. Trees and shrubs put forth their leaves; delicate flowers swayed on gentle winds and, beneath a swag of ivory blossoms, a mongoose sneezed violently. He sneezed a second time and for a moment he was not a mongoose but something larger, something with huge, flapping ears. Then he was a mongoose again- preening his thick, musteline fur; fluffing out his tail and casting coy glances at the female a leap and a bound away. The female chattered her response and they were off along the branches, across a stream and ever further from the magical trap Randal had laid for her.
The Tysian mage had conjured and cast to exhaustion looking for her. She was the finest mongoose alive: the largest, the fastest, the boldest, and the most intelligent. She had, at least, evaded every snare he'd set from his power-web in distant Sanctuary until, in desperation, he'd transferred his essence to the forest to pursue her in person-or, rather, in mongoose. She was also, as mongooses measured such matters, the most wildly attractive creature in the forest. Giving himself over to mongoose instincts was doing Randal's vow of chastity no good at all. If he didn't lure her into the charmed sphere soon he'd forget himself completely and settle down to the business of begetting.
Forgetting Sanctuary and everything it stood for was not an entirely unattractive notion-especially when her tail flicked across his nose and he was lost enough in mongoose-ness that he didn't sneeze. Roxane was missing; Ischade was irrational and bloated with power; the Stormchildren were moribund with a venom the snake-worshiping Beysib did not understand pooling in their veins; a dead god's high priest had been revealed to be a Nisibisi warlock-and those were only Randal's magic-tainted concerns. The mage had, however, one concern that stood above all the rest; which made him secure against momentary lust and drew him, and her, back to the grove where a circle of stones glowed a faint blue. Nikodemos, the impossible Stepson whom Randal worshiped with a chaste, fervent love, was trapped at the focus of every dangerous incongruity prowling Sanctuary and anything that might help Niko was worth every risk Randal might have to take.
She had caught him when they reached the grove. They were rolling across the grass when they pierced the sphere and hurtled through nothingness back to the palace alcove where the body of Randal slumped over an embossed Nisibisi Globe of Power. The transfer back into himself was all the more uncomfortable for the mongoose teeth digging into his neck and the pottery crags of the Wizardwall mountains pressing against his breastbone. Randal slipped from the world back into nothingness and sheer panic. He had almost regained himself when a weighted net slapped over him.
"The cage, Molin. Damn you, the cage before she eats through my damned neck!"
"Coming up." The erstwhile high priest of Vashanka brandished a wicker-and-wire cage while magician and mongoose thrashed on the table.
Having the cage was not the same as having the unrequited mongoose in the cage. Both men were bloodied and torn before the bolt was thrown.
"You were supposed to have the cage ready."
"And you were supposed to be back before sundown- sundown yesterday, I might add."
"You're my assistant, my apprentice. Apprentices are like children: Children don't make decisions; they do as they're told. And if I tell you to have the cage ready-you have the cage ready no matter when I return," the magician complained, daubing at the wounds on his neck.
The men stared at each other until Randal looked away. Molin Torchholder was too accustomed to power to be any man's apprentice.
"I thought it best to save the globe after you and she knocked it off its pedestal," he explained, nodding toward the table where an unremarkable pottery sphere rested against a half-emptied wine glass.
Randal slumped back against the wall. "You touched an activated Globe of Power," he mused. He possessed the globe and still hesitated before touching it, but the high priest simply picked it up. "You could have been killed-or worse," Randal added as an afterthought. His fingers wove glyphs that made the globe first shimmer, then vanish into that way-station between realities magicians called their "cabinets."
"I've made my way doing what had to be done," Molin said when the process was complete. "You've led me to believe that the destruction of that globe could unbind the planes of existence. I can see that, at its heart, the globe is nothing but a piece of poorly made pottery. Perhaps it was necessary to use magic to destroy it, as you and Ischade did with Roxane's, but, perhaps, simply falling off the pedestal would be as effective a destruction. I could not take the risk of experiment; I moved the globe."