Sanctuary might once have been an impossibility, but not now: The feuding witches and the greedy priests had, between them, managed to destroy both
Nisibisi Globes of Power before spring had sprung, leaving Sanctuary’s magical fabric rent and its wards weakened.
At long last. Sanctuary had become what Tempus’s fighters of the Sacred Band had long called it: well and truly damned. That this damnation had come from the greedy power plays of its low-lifes, rather than from the pillar of fire which had sprung from an uptown house to affront the heavens, didn’t surprise Tempus.
The fact that no one in town save the weakened wizards and a handful of impotent priests knew the truth of it-how Sanctuary had destroyed its own manna and been deserted by the more prudent of its pantheon of gods-did surprise even the unflappable Riddler who now headed his horse into the storm and northeast toward the Maze.
He felt no twinge of nostalgia for the old days, when he’d ridden these streets alone as a palace Hell-Hound in Kada-kithis’s employ, testing the prince’s mettle for the Rankan interests who eventually chose Theron in Kadakithis’s stead. But he felt a spark of regret when he passed the docks from which
Nikodemos, his favorite among the mercenary fighters who followed him, had departed seaward, bound for the Ban-daran Islands with two godchildren who might have been Sanctuary’s only hope.
As Niko might have been the only hope of a man who’d taken the name Tempus when he realized that his curse caused time itself to pass him by. But hopes were for