hopefully leaving the enemy unknowing; if not, confused.
He no more coveted blades that would bring acquisitive men down upon him hoping
to acquire them in combat than he looked forward to needing ensorceled swords
for battles that could not be joined in the way he liked. The cuirass he wore
kept off supernal evil-should it prove impregnable to mortal arms, that
knowledge would eat away at his self-discipline, perhaps erode his control, make
him careless. In the lightfight, when Tempus had flickered out of being as
completely as a doused torch, he had felt an inexplicable elation, leading point
into Chaos with Janni steady on his right hand. He had imagined he was
indomitable, fated, chosen by the gods and thus inviolate. The steadying fear
that should have been there, in his mind, assessive and balancing, was missing .
. . his moat, as he had told Tempus in that moment of discomfitting candor, was
gone from him. No trick panoply could replace it, no arrogance or battle-lust
could substitute for it. Without equilibrium, the quiet heart he strove for
could never be his. He was not like Tempus, preternatural, twice a man, living
forever in extended anguish to which he had become accustomed. He did not aspire
to more than what his studies whispered a man had right to claim. Seeing Tempus
in action, he now believed what before, though he had heard the tales, he had
discounted. He thought hard about the Riddler, and the offer he had made him,
and wondered if he was bound by it, and the weapons Askelon had given him no