this day come.”
Strat nodded slowly: Ersatz Stepsons had rousted real ones in the town, and even
dared to confront the black-souled 3rd Commando rangers. And Zip’s indigenous
fighters had reason to hate all oppressors-the PFLS would as soon have made the
gutters run with blood up to Zip’s knees.
“So now what?” said the big man, distress naked in his tone.
The necromant looked up, reached up again, craned her neck so that her hood fell
back and only her hair shadowed her face. “Now you remember the promise you made
me, that first night-not to blame me for being what I am, not to blame yourself
for doing what you have to do. And not to ask too many questions whose answers
you won’t like.”
The soldier closed his eyes, remembering what she’d bade him forget until the
time was right. And when he opened them, they’d softened just a bit. “Your
place?” he said tiredly. “Or mine?”
That night, down in Sanctuary on a perpetually dank street called Mageway, in a
tower of the citadel of magic, Randal the Tysian Hazard woke in his Mageguild
bed, strangling in his own sheets.
The slight mage went pale beneath his freckles-pale to his prodigious ears-as
the sheets, pure and innocent linen as far as anyone knew, bound him tighter. If
he ever got out of this alive, he’d have to have a talk with his treacherous
bedclothes-they had no right to treat him this way. Had his mouth not been
stoppered by their grasp, he could have shouted counterspells or cursed his
inanimate bedclothes, come alive. But Randal’s mouth, as well as his hands and