corporeal or vulnerable to sortilege of the quotidian sort a human might employ.
And now it was being decreed in Mygdonia’s tents that he must be removed from
the field – taken out of play in this southern theatre, manoeuvred north where
the warlocks could neutralize him. Such was the word her lover-lord had sent
her: move him north, or make him impotent where he stayed. The god he served
here had been easier to rout. But she doubted that would incapacitate him; there
were other Storm Gods, and Tempus, who under a score of names had fought in more
dimensions than she had ever visited, knew them all. Vashanka’s denouement might
scare the Rankans and give the Ilsigs hope, but more than rumours and
manipulation of theomachy by even the finest witch would be needed to make
Tempus fold his hands or bow his head. To make him run, then, was an
impossibility. To lure him north, she hoped, was not. For this was no place for
Roxane. Her nose was offended by the stench which blew east from Downwind and
north from Fisherman’s Row and west from the Maze and south from either the
slaughterhouses or the palace – she’d not decided which.
So she had called a meeting, itself an audacious move, with her kind where they
dwelled on Wizardwall’s high peaks. When it was done, she was much weakened – it
is no small feat to project one’s soul so far – and unsatisfied. But she had
submitted her strategy and gotten approval, after a fashion, though it pained
her to have to ask.
Having gotten it, she was about to set her plan in motion. To begin it, she had