She forced her leaden limbs to work and backed a step, watching first her feet and then scanning the horizons, winding wards that worked in Sanctuary which were much weaker here.
Niko's star-shaped meadow, once ever-green and pastoral, the very essence of spirit peace, was frostbitten, brown, and gray and riddled with ice like arrows. Where trees had spread rustling leaves, their boughs now held shards of flesh and writhing things resembling tiny men who cried like kittens being drowned.
And the stream which was his life's ebb and flow ran with swirls of red and blue and pink and gold: blood shed and to be shed; magic winding it round and chasing it; Niko's faith and the love of gods bringing up behind.
Tasfalen was cajoling: "Come, my love. My beauteous one. We'll feast." He flicked a glance to the trees hung with anguished, living things. "The boughs are ripe for picking, the fruit is sweet."
And she knew the only salvation here, for her, was in the stream.
She didn't know the consequence if she should do what her wisdom told her: take a drink.
Before she could lose her nerve or be mesmerized, she whirled about and flung herself knee deep in running water.
And bent. And drank.
And saw Niko, when she raised her dripping lips, sitting on the stream's far side, his face calm, unravaged. His quick, canny smile came and went and she noticed he wore his panoply: the enameled cuirass, sword and dirk forged by the en-telechy of dreams.
"It's a dream, then?" she said, feeling the icy water with its four distinct and different tastes run down her chin and hearing a lumbering behind her much louder, and a rasping breath much deeper, than Tasfalen's form could make.
"Don't turn around," Niko advised as if he were training a student in the martial arts; "don't look at it; don't listen. This is my rest-place, after all not theirs."
"And me? It's not mine, fighter. Nor are you."
"And they are. I know." There was no abhorrence in the Bandaran fighter's glance, just infinite patience. And as Ischade looked, his visage changed, contorting through a metamorphosis that seemed to include all the tortures of his recent past- eyes rolled up, cheeks split over bone, lips purpled and torn, teeth cracked and crumbled, bruises filled with blood.
Then the entire process reversed itself, and a handsome man still in the last bloom of youth regarded Ischade once more.
"You're very beautiful, you know-in your soul," Niko said. "It shows here. In spite of everything."
Behind her, the Tasfalen-thing was shambling closer; she could hear it splash into the stream. She almost whirled to fight it; her fingers spread into a shape suitable for throwing coun-terspells.
Niko shook his head chidingly: "Trust me. This is my place. As for your welcome here-when I needed help, you came here, where risk is greater than mortals know, and tried to aid me. I haven't forgotten."
"Are you dead?" she asked flatly, though it was impolite.
His smooth brow furrowed. "No, I'm sure not. I'm reclaiming what's mine ... with a little help." Behind the fighter, the semblance of the pillar of fire came to be.
He knew it was there without looking. He said, "See, you must trust. We're giving Janni his proper funeral, you and I. At last. And you, who kept him from worse and soothed his conscience, ought'to be here."
"And... that?" Ischade meant what was behind her. All her hackles risen, she found her mouth dry and eyes aching-if she had a mouth here, or eyes. It seemed she did.
"We'll put them back where they belong-not here. They're yours to deal with, in the World."
He must have seen her frown, for he leaned forward on one straight and scarless arm that might never have been shattered when a demon raged inside him: "Roxane is ... special. Different. Less. I'm free of all but my own feelings. For that I don't apologize. Like you, I deal in more than one reality. But 1 ask you for mercy on her behalf..."
"Mercy!" Incredulous, Ischade nearly burst out laughing. The thing that was part Haught, part Tasfalen (who was dead and had housed Roxane once and now again, if Ischade understood the rules by which Niko's magic games were played), was shuffling close behind now, intent on biting off her head or munching on her soul. It had been one with a demon; it had merged with devils; it had taken fire out of the hands of arch-mages such as Randal and used it even against her. All of this, Ischade was sure, was Roxane's twisted evil come to ground. And Niko wanted mercy for the witch that had made his life a living hell and wouldn't offer him so much mercy as clean death would bring.
"That's right-mercy. I'm not like you, but we've helped each other. Tolerance, balance-good and eviclass="underline" each resides within the other, part and parcel."
Ischade, who'd seen too much evil, shook her head. "You must be dead, or still possessed."
"Look." Niko's diction slipped into mercenary argot. "It's all the same-no good without evil, no balance... no maat. If we lose one, we lose the other. It's just life, that's all. And as for death-we get what we expect."
"And you expect what?" Now she realized that Niko himself was not naive, or helpless, or entirely benign. "From me, I mean?"
"Mercy, I already told you." The firewell behind him began to shimmer and to dance, swinging its hips like a temple girl. "To your kind; for the record. For the balance of the thing. Janni we will take now."
"We?" It was one of the hardest things Ischade had ever done to engage in philosophical discussion with Nikodemos while, behind, the shambling thing had come so close she could feel its fetid breath upon her neck, and fancied that breath moist and felt, she thought, a strand of drool land in her hair. Don't look at it; don't turn around-it's Niko's rest-place and his rules, not mine, apply.
"We," Niko said as if it were a simple lesson any child should understand. And then she did: behind him, a ghost appeared.
She knew ghosts when she saw them: this one was a spirit of supernal power, a fabled strength, a glossy being of such beauty that tears came to Ischade's eyes when it sat down beside Niko, ruffling his hair with a fawn-colored hand.
"I am Abarsis," it smiled in introduction, and she saw the wizard blood there, ancient lineage, and love so strong it made her heart hurt: she'd given up such options as this ghost had thrived on, long ago.
"We need Janni's soul in heaven; it's earned its peace. Give it that, and we will restore you totally-all you were, all you had... including this northern pair of witches ... this amalgam behind you of all their hate-if, as Niko asks, you show them mercy, then the gods will be well pleased."
"And if not?" This was no place for Ischade-she had no truck with gods or ghosts of dead priests. Damn Tempus, who muddled all the sides and made ridiculous demands.
"That's done long since," said the ghost, unabashedly reading her mind. "We're here for Janni only, and to give a gift for your safekeeping him until we could take him home. Now name it, Ischade of Downwind. Choose well."
She wanted only to get out of there, to be whole and well and fighting on her own terms, dealing with her own kind. And before she could say that, or think of something better, Abarsis, one arm around Niko, raised his other hand to her, saying: "It is done. Go with strength and purpose. Life to you, Sister, and everlasting glory."
And the rest-place went out like a light. The icy stream of colored water, the pillar of fire which aped reality, the snuffling horror at her back which she'd never truly glimpsed but only felt-and the two fighters, one spirit, one man of balance: all were gone as if they'd never been.
She was standing on the dry floor of Tasfalen's house and Haught was taunting her to come up the stairs.