keep of black marble on its unscalable peak, down among the mortal and the
damned. They were all in this together: the mages of Nisibisi; Lacan Ajami
(warlord ofMygdon and the known world north of .Wizardwall) with whom they had
made pact; and the whole Mygdonian Alliance which he controlled.
Or so her lord and love had explained it when he decreed that Roxane must come.
She had not argued – one pays one’s way among sorcerers; she had not worked hard
for a decade nor faced danger in twice as long. And if one did not serve Mygdon
– only one – all would suffer. The Alliance was too strong to thwart. So she was
here, drawn here with others fit for better, as if some power more than magical
was whipping up a tropical storm to cleanse the land and using them to gild its
eye.
She should have been home by now; she would have been, but for the hundred ships
from Beysib which had come to port and skewed all plans. Word had come from
Mygdon, capital of Mygdonia, through the Nisibisi network, that she must stay.
And so it had become crucial that the Stepsons who sniffed round her skirts be
kept at bay – or ensnared, or bought, or enslaved. Or, if not, destroyed. But
carefully, so carefully. For Tempus, who had been her enemy three decades ago
when he fought the Defender’s Wars on Wizardwall’s steppes, was a dozen Storm
Gods’ avatar; no army he sanctified could know defeat; no war he fought could
not be won. Combat was life to him; he fought like the gods themselves, like an
entelechy from a higher sphere -and even had friends among those powers not
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