feet, was bound tight by hostile magic.
His eyes, alas, were not. Randal stared into a darkness which lightened
perceptibly before the bed on which he struggled, helpless, as the Nisibisi
witch Roxane coalesced from nimbus, a sensuous smile upon her face.
Roxane, Death’s Queen, was Randal’s nemesis, a hated enemy, a worrisome foe.
The young mage writhed within the prison of his sheets and wordless exhortations
came from his gagged mouth. Roxane, whom he’d fought on Wizardwall, had sworn to
kill him-not just for what he’d done to help Tempus’s Stepsons and Bashir’s
guerrilla fighters reclaim their homeland, Wizardwall, from Nisibisi wizards,
but because Randal had once been the right-side partner of Stealth, called
Nikodemos, a soul the witch Roxane sought to claim.
Sweating freely, Randal tried to wriggle off his Mageguild bed as Roxane’s form
lost its wraithlike quality and became palpably present. He succeeded only in
banging his head against the wall, and cowered there, wishing witches couldn’t
slit Mageguild wards like butter, wishing he’d never fought with Stepsons or
claimed a Nisi warlock’s Globe of Power, wishing he’d never heard of Nikodemos
or inherited Niko’s panoply, armor forged by the entelechy of dream.
“Umn hmn, nnh nohnu, rgorhrrr!” Randal shouted at the witch who now had human
form, even down to perfumed flesh whose scent mixed with his own acrid, fearful
sweat: Go away, you horror, evermore!
Roxane only laughed, a tinkling laugh, not horrid, and minced over to his
bedside with exaggerated care: “Say you what, little mageling? Say again?” She