Molin Torchholder had been one of the first to climb to the palace rooftops for a clearer view of the flame pillar. Bracing himself against the gritty wind he looked past the light to the dark cloud beyond.
"Stormbringer?"
He nearly fell from the roof as a hand closed tightly over his shoulder. "Not tonight," Tempus said with a laugh.
There were others appearing at the myriad stairways, making their way to the railing circling the Hall of Justice: Jihan and Randal, leaning on each other for strength, with Niko close behind; Isambard, dragged forward by the exuberant Storm-children; the functionaries, retainers, and day-servants all barefoot and in their nightclothes. The palace was no different than the rest of Sanctuary this night-every rooftop, courtyard, and clearing had its collection of awestruck mortals.
Brilliant light streamed into the prince's bedroom. He awoke, sighing with the knowledge that the best must also seem the shortest, and meant to leave Shupansea undisturbed. His heart sank when he realized he was alone in the bed; it did not rise when he saw her transfixed by the column of light in the open window.
Dragging a silken blanket behind him, he came slowly to join her.
"She has kept her promises," Shupansea explained, taking a comer of the blanket around her shoulder and pressing close against him. "Stormbringer fights the demon."
It did not seem like gods and demons at first glance. It seemed like a single, great cloud spewing lightning at a flame of impossible size and brightness-but such a vision was, in itself, so improbable that the Beysa's explanation was as acceptable as any other. Certainly the lightning struck only the flame and the flame directed spirals of its substance at the cloud. The stormcloud, with its percussive thunder, deflected the fire away from itself to the ocean and, occasionally, the city.
"He has it trapped," the Beysa said, indicating the precision with which the Stormgod's bolts prevented the demon-fire from shifting its location. "They will fight until the demon accepts annihilation."
The prince was unable to look away from the awesome spectacle. Armed with Shupansea's explanations he could see the flame shrinking each time it launched a missile against the lightning. He stayed Shupansea's hand when she tried to close the shutters.
"The end is inevitable," she assured him, holding him tightly.
A fine powder blew through the window. The Beysa protected herself but tears flowed freely from Kadakithis's eyes.
"I want to see if there's a beginning as well."
"The beginning is here," she reminded him, closing the .shutters and leading him back to the bed.
PILLAR OF FIRE by Janet Morris
Death was riding the feral wind that blew in off Sanctuary's harbor-even Tempus's Tr6s horse could smell it on the sooty breeze as horse and rider picked their way down Wideway to the wharf and the emperor's barge made fast there.
The Tr6s danced and snorted, its hooves sending up sparks from ancient cobbles that seemed, in the dusky air, to have lives of their own. The sparks whirled round the Tros's legs like insects swarming; they darted hither and thither on smoky gusts drawn seaward from the pillar of fire blazing between the heavens and the Peres house uptown; they skittered along Tempus's clothing like dust motes from hell, stinging when they touched his bare arms and legs; they lighted upon the Tros's distended nostrils and that horse, wiser than many human inhabitants of this accursed thieves' world, blew bellowing breaths to keep from inhaling whatever dust it was that glowed like fire and burned like hot needles when it landed on the stallion's dappled hide.
The hellish dust was the least of Tempus's troubles on this morning that had lost its light, as if the sun had slunk away to hide from the battle under way beneath the sky. Oh, the sun had risen, brazen and bold, illuminating the flaming pillar raging up to heaven and the storm clouds with their lightning ranged round it. But it had been eaten by the stormclouds and the soot of the fire and the lightning spewing up from the grounds around the uptown Peres house and down from the furious heavens of the gods, who smote at witches' work and cheeky demons with equal force.
And it was this absence of the morning, this vanquishing of natural light, that bothered Tempus (accustomed to analyzing omens and all too familiar with godsign) as he rode down to greet Theron, the man he'd helped bring to Ranke's teetering throne, and Brachis, High Priest of Vashanka, while around the town civil war and infamy reigned, unabated.
If the chaos around him (which he'd once been sent here to banish) weren't enough of an indictment of his performance, then the skittishness of the Tr6s horse made it certain: he was failing ignominiously to bring order-even for a day-to Sanctuary.
And though some men would not have taken the responsibility and clasped the fault for all Sanctuary's catalogue of evils to his bosom, Tempus would and almost gladly did-the state of town and loved ones fulfilled his own dire prophecy.
Only the Tr6s horse's distress truly touched him now: animals were pure and honest, not dour and divisive like the race of men. It might not be his fault that Straton lay, somewhere, in the clutches of the revolution (Crit was sure), dead or held for ransom; it might not be because of Tempus, called the Riddler, that Niko was the perennial pawn of demons and foul witches; it might not be directly attributable to him that his daughter, Kama, was now sought as an assassin and revolutionary by his own Stepsons and the palace guard, thus creating a rift between her unit, the Rankan 3rd Commando, and the other militias in the town that no amount of diplomacy would ever bridge if she were executed; it might not be on his account that Randal, once a Stepson and the single "white" magician Tempus had ever trusted, was a burned-out husk, or that Niko stared sightlessly at the pillar of flame uptown in which Janni, his one time partner and a Stepson who'd sworn Tempus a solemn oath of fealty, burned eternally, or that Jihan had been stripped of her Froth Daughter's attributes, humbled to the lowly estate of womankind, or that Tempus's own son, Gys-kouras, looked at him with fear and loathing (even trying to shield his half-brother, Alton, from Tempus whenever the children saw him come).
But it probably was-he was the root and cause of all this slaughter: it was his curse, habitual (as Molin Torchholder, a Nisi-blooded slime in Rankan clothing, maintained) or invoked by jealous gods or hostile magic. He didn't know or care which force now drove him: he'd lost interest in which was right and which was wrong.
Like the day around him, black and white and good and evil had lost their character, merging like the sullen dusky noon in an unsavory amalgam to match his mood.
But it bothered him that the Tr6s was nervous, sweating, and distressed. He reined it down a side street, hoping to avoid the greater gusts of dust. For he knew that dust as he knew the voices of the gods who plagued him: each particle was a remnant of pulverized globes of Nisi power, magical talismans reduced to pinprick size and myriad in number.
If Sanctuary needed anything less than a dusty cloak of Nisi magic wafting where it willed, he couldn't think what it might be.
And then he realized what lay ahead, down a shadowed alleyway, and drew his sword: a little honest swordplay might cheer him up, and ahead, where PFLS rebels in rags and sweat-bands fought Rankan regulars in the street, he knew he'd. find it.
Though he was overqualified for street brawls-a man who couldn't die and had to heal, whose horse shared his more-than-human speed and more-than-mortal constitution-numbers made the odds more honest: four Rankan soldiers, against a mob of thirty, were trying to shield some woman with a child from whatever the mob had in mind.