Tasfalen's nostrils flared. The face seemed hollowed. "I want a drink," Roxane said. "I'm parched."
"Moria," Haught said.
"I'm not your damned servant!"
"I'll get it," Stilcho said, and got up from beside the unconscious Stepson and went for the drawing room.
"Moria," Haught said. "Don't be a total fool." His hand caressed her shoulder but he never looked her way. "Lover's quarrel," he said to Roxane.
"Who are you?" Roxane asked, and Haught stiffened; his hand stopped its motion and Tasfalen's face went hard and careful.
"Answer enough?" Haught asked. "You knew my father. We're almost cousins."
Roxane/Tasfalen said nothing to that. But the expression became thoughtful, and then something else again, that sent a shiver up Moria's Ilsigi spine. The face of the man she had lately made love with began to take on different lines, flush with lifelike color, and settle into expressions alien to its personality.
Stilcho brought the drink in a glass, from the carafe and service on the drawing room sideboard. Tasfalen reached for it; Roxane took it and lifted it with a lingering suspicion in the look she turned toward Haught. Then she sipped at it carefully, and let go a small sigh.
"Better," she said. "Better." And finished the glass and gave it to Stilcho. She put out her male hand in the next instant and stayed him in his departure, then turned the hand as if it had suddenly interested her as much as Stilcho. The fingers ran up the fabric of Stilcho's sleeve. And he stared back with a hard, revolted stare. Of a sudden Tasfalen's face broke into Tas-falen's grin, and a small short laugh came out. "Well." Then the hand dropped and the face turned to them again with the eyes aglitter. "You hold onto that globe so tightly-cousin. You're young, you're handling something you're only half able to use, and you're vulnerable, my young friend. This house is Ischade's property. Anything she's ever handled is a focus she can use; and this is a place she owns, you understand me. I felt your wards when I came through them, a nice little bit of work for what they are, but that streetwalking whore isn't what she was, either. Now do we put something around this house she'll have trouble breaking, or do we just stand here playing power games? Because she's on her way here, you can believe me that she is."
Haught tucked the pottery globe the more tightly in his arms, then slowly reached out and set it in the air between them. It spun and glowed and Moria flinched away, her arm flung up between herself and that thing. It hummed and throbbed and hung there defying reason; it beat like a heart as it spun, and her own hurt in her chest; her tangled hair lifted on its own with a prickling eerie life, her silken, muddy-hemmed petticoats crackled and stood away from her body with a life of their own. All their hair stood up like that, Tasfalen's, Stilcho's, Haught's, as blue sparks leapt from Tasfalen's outstretched hand, from Haught's fingertips, flying against the globe and spattering outward against the walls, lining the crack of the door, whirling up the stairs and into the drawing room and everywhere. From somewhere in the cellars and the rear of the house there was a general outcry of panic; it had gotten to the servants.
The sound became pain. It throbbed in time to the pulse. It screamed with a high thin shriek like wind and became her own scream. "No," she cried, "make it stop-"
Strat moved. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, torn muscles and swollen flesh tensing round the shaft in his chest; something else tore, and the swirl of light spotted with black and went all to gray, but he knew where his enemy stood and he had coordination enough to brace his good hand against the floor, draw up the opposite leg while the pain turned every move weak and fluttery, muscles shaking and weak: one good push, his foot behind the damned Nisi's leg-
He shoved, with all that was in him. Haught screamed; he thought that was the scream he heard, or it was his own.
Tasfalen's hands clutched the globe. Tasfalen's face grinned a wolf's grin "There, wizardling."
Moria made herself as small as she could against the side of the stairs: she shut both eyes, expecting a burst of fire, and opened one, between her fingers. Haught and the witch stood facing each other, Stilcho was down on his knees by the writhing Stepson, but no fire flew.
"You've a bit to leam," Tasfalen said. "Most of all, a sense of perspective. But I'm willing to take an apprentice."
From Haught, a long silence: then, quietly: "Is it mistress or master?"
Tasfalen's right eyebrow jerked in wrath. Then a grin spread over his face. "Oh, I like you well, upstart. I do like you." The pottery globe vanished from his/her hands. "First lesson: don't leave a thing like that in reach."
"Where is it?" There was the ghost of panic in Haught's voice, and Tasfalen's grin widened. Male hand touched male chest.
"Here," Tasfalen said. "Or as close as hardly matters. I learned that trick of a Bandaran." He-Moria shuddered: it was impossible to look at that virile body and think she- walked closer and stood looking down at the Stepson, who lay white and still by Stilcho's knee. "Ischade's lover. Oh, you are a find, aren't you? And you're not going to die on us, oh, no, not a chance of that-"
"... A chance of that," a strange voice said; and another, hated: "I've no intentions of it. Not with what he knows."
"He has uses other than that. Her lover, after all. It has to play havoc with her concentration. Even if personal pride is all that bothers her."
"Oh, it's more than that." A grip closed on Strat's wrist, lifted that, let go and lifted the other, the wounded hand, with a pain that drove Strat far under for a moment; he came back with the feeling of someone's hands on him, roughly probing among his clothing. "Ah. Here it is."
"Hers?"
"I gave it to him. It should have come to you. In your other life."
He thought what it was then. He would have kept the ring. He was sorry to lose it. He had been a fool. He was sorry for that too. Play havoc with her concentration.
With what he knows.
He understood that well too. He had asked the questions for years. His turn now. He thought of a dozen of his own cases and had no illusions about himself. He tried to die. He thought of it as hard as he could. Probably his own cases had thought the identical thought at some stage.
"He wants to leave us," the one voice said. A feathery touch came at Strat's throat, over the great artery. "That won't do." A warmth spread out from it, his heart sped, a hateful, momentary surge of strength, like a tide carrying him up out of the dark. "Wake up, come on. We're not even started yet. Open the eyes. Or just think about what I'd like to know about your friends. Where they are, what they'll do-it's awfully hard, isn't it, not to think about a thing?"
Crit. 0 gods. Crit. Was it you after all?
"We can take him into the kitchen," one suggested. "Plenty of room to work in there."
"No," a woman cried.
"Let's not be difficult, shall we? There's a love. Go wash. You'd rather be taking a bath than stay for this, wouldn't you? You do look a mess, Moria."
THE SMALL POWERS THAT ENDURE by Lynn Abbey
Battlefield chaos reigned in what had once been Molin Torchholder's private retreat from disorder. Niko lay on the worktable while Jihan brought her healing energies to bear on one tortured joint after another. Now and again the mercenary's eyes would bulge open and the sounds of hell would explode from his mouth. The others would cease their arguings until the Froth Daughter had him quiet; then the frantic bickering would begin again.