noncommittal way that almost passed for deference, “Salutations, Ash. What
brings you into so poor a realm?”
Askelon’s proud lips parted; the skin around them was too pale. It was a woman
who held his arm; her health made him seem the more pallid, but when he spoke,
his words were ringing basso profundo: “Life to you, Riddler. What are you
called here?”
“Spare me your curses, mage.” To such a power, the title alone was an insult.
And the shadow lord knew it well.
Around his temples, stars of silver floated, stirred by a breeze. His colorless
eyes grew darker, draining the angry clouds from the sky: “You have not answered
me.”
“Nor you, me.”
The woman looked in disbelief upon Tempus. She opened her lips, but Askelon
touched them with a gloved hand. From the gauntlet’s cuff a single drop of blood
ran down his left arm to drip upon the sand. He looked at it somberly, then up
at Tempus. “I seek your sister, what else? I will not harm her.”
“But will you cause her to harm herself?”
The shadow lord whom Tempus had called Ash, so familiarly, rubbed the bloody
trail from his elbow back up to his wrist. “Surely you do not think you can
protect her from me? Have I not accomplished even this? Am I not real?” He held
his gloved hands out, turned them over, let them flap abruptly down against his
thighs. Niko, who had been roused from deep meditation in the barracks by the
cold which had spread sleep over the waking, skidded to a halt and peered around
the curve of the fence, his teeth gritted hard to stay their chatter.