"Poor little mageling," the familiar voice issuing from a shimmering blue globe chuckled with strychnine sweetness. "Let me fix that for you." A tongue of indigo flame licked out from the globe; Randal, like Tempus, was motionless.
Jihan took a deep breath that formed ice in the salt-water buckets an arm's length away. She had been patient with these mortals, abiding by their constraints, accepting their wisdom even when it contradicted everything her instincts demanded, and now that they were finally helpless she was going to do things her way.
Niko turned endless, empty eyes toward the blue sphere, asking a silent question.
"Stormbringer's Froth," Roxane replied, with the malice and disdain reserved by women for lesser women.
A frigid wind swirled through the once-warm room. No one, especially a Nisi witch or a nameless demon, spoke that way about Jihan and survived. No matter that Stormbringer had created his parthenogenic offspring from an arctic sea storm, Jihan knew an insult when she felt one. She pelted the sphere with a thick glaze of ice, then she leaned her palms on Niko's chest.
"I'm here!" she announced, bringing a howl of cold air into Niko's rest-place. "I'm here, damn you."
She rode her anger across the once-beautiful landscape of a moat-endowed mind. The dark crystal stream roiled and froze in agonized shapes. Charred trees snapped and crashed to the ground under the burden of the ice that came in her wake. She reached the meadow where the pure light of Janni guarded the gate.
"I'm going in," she told him, though she had no communion with such spirits and could not hear nor understand his reply.
The heavy door with its man-thick iron bars loomed before her. Leaving a pattern of rime on the metal, she passed beyond it to confront an eternity as vast and empty as the demon-Niko's eyes had been.
"Coward!" the Froth Daughter shrieked as nothingness, which was the essence of all demonkind, leeched her substance away. She lashed out blindly, stupidly expending herself against an enemy whose chief attribute was its absence. "Co war-"
She retreated, a ragged wisp streaming back to the frost-bound doorway, and collapsed in the meadow, her fury and her confidence equally diminished. Demonic laughter using her own stolen voice compounded her shame. In her impotence Jihan gathered shards of ice and hurled them at the gate.
"I'll be back," she told it as the ice melted into the thawing crystal stream. "You'll see."
She sniffled and wiped her eyes on a damp forearm. The ground was slick with melting ice; she slipped more than once. Pain and cold became part of her mortal vocabulary as she made her way home, never once looking back to see that the meadow was brighter or the crystal stream rushing fast and clear.
"I thought we'd lost her," Tempus admitted as he watched the Froth Daughter pick her way slowly across the hillside.
We? Do we care? Stormbringer inquired in a dangerously friendly tone.
Tempus didn't bother to turn around. He wouldn't be wherever he suddenly was without some god or another's interference; and he was no longer awed by interference. "I care- isn't that obvious? She damn near annihilated herself for me."
Your care is not enough. She is mortal now and requires something less abstract. If love is beyond you, surely you remember rape? The Father-of-Weather manifested himself before Tempus: all blood-red eyes and pans that did not become a single whole.
The man who had been Vashanka's minion shrugged his nonexistent shoulders and gave the god a critical glance. "It is an option / retain," he said defiantly.
You are a nasty little man-but I have need of you-
"No."
She is a goddess.
"No."
I'll attend to this abomination.
"You'll do that regardless-for what it did to her. The answer's still no."
I'll turn my daughter's eyes toward another.
"It's a deal."
The Stormchildren lay in state on a velvet-covered dais in the vault-ceilinged room known as the Ilsig Bedchamber. Musicians gathered in an alcove, playing the reedy, discordant melodies beloved by the Beysib and guaranteed to set Molin Torchholder's neck hairs on end. He pressed his forefingers against the bridge of his nose and sought a pleasant thought, any pleasant thought, that might make the waiting easier.
Shupansea, in a curtained alcove opposite the musicians, was equally anxious but had not the luxury of isolation. Her waiting-women swarmed around her fussing with her hair, her jewels, and the splendor of her cosa. She was the Beysa this evening-as she had not been since her cousin's execution in the summer. Her breasts had been dusted with luminous powders and gilt with gold and silver; her normally slender hips were augmented by the swaying brocade-jeweled panniers in which her personal vipers were accustomed to ride. Her thigh-length fair hair had been supported and wired until it hung about her like a cloak and condemned her to look neither up nor down, nor side to side, but only straight ahead. It was a costume she had worn since childhood but now, after a season in the modest attire of the Rankan nobility, she felt awkward and feared for the outcome of the rites they were about to perform.
"You must not sweat," her aunt chided her, reminding her of the physical discipline demanded of Mother Bey's avatar.
She steeled herself and the offending perspiration ceased.
Footsteps came through the tiny doorway behind her. "You're nervous," a welcome voice consoled her as the prince reached out to take her hand.
"Our priests would have us wait until the fifth decoction has been made but we dare not. Not after this afternoon. We have countermanded the priests; it is the first time we have done so. They are anxious but we think the waiting is more dangerous than success or failure."
"Mother Bey guides you," Kadakithis assured her, squeezing the be-ringed fingers ever so gently.
Shupansea lifted her shoulders a fraction. "She says only that I must not be alone afterwards."
The prince, who had finally edged his way through her women to stand where she could see him, made a wry face. "You are never alone, Shu-sea."
She smiled and gave him a stare which proved Beysib eyes could be erotic and unsettling at the same time. "I will be alone tonight-with you."
The music changed abruptly. Before the golden-haired prince could express his surprise or pleasure he was politely, but firmly, shoved to one side.
"It is time."
The Beysa came forward onto a cloth-of-gold carpet laid between the alcove and the altar. Her first steps were tentative; she tottered between the outstretched arms of her waiting-women. Her glazed eyes held no power, only simple terror of the ancient bald priest who waited for her with a delicate glass' vial and a knife of razor-sharp obsidian.
Her beynit vipers, tasting the incense and the music, rose from the panniers to begin their own journey. Shupansea trembled involuntarily as the scales slid coldly between her thighs- for the cosa was meant for the display and convenience of the snakes, not the avatar. Three sets of fangs sank deep into sensitive skin: the beynit did not approve of her anxiety. Venom enough for the deaths of a dozen men shot into her. She gasped then relaxed as the languid strength of Mother Bey enveloped her.
She raised her arms, lifting the cosa away from her body. The serpents emerged, baring their moist fangs and their vermilion mouths. It was her priest's turn to tremble anxiously. The Beysib priest summoned Molin to the altar where, without ceremony or explanation, the ancient, bald man transferred the ritual artifacts from the old order to the new and ran from the room.