brown and smooth, without hair or scar above graven gauntlets. The’driver’s
torso was covered by a cuirass of enameled metal, cast to the physique beneath
it, jointed and gilded in the fashion chosen by the Sacred Band at its
inception.
Tempus did not need to see the face, by then, to know that he was not being
visited by a god, nor an archmage, nor even a demon, but by a creature more
strange: as the chariot emerged fully from the miasma around it and the horses
snorted and plunged, dancing in place, and the wheels screeched to a halt,
Tempus saw a hand raise to a brow in a greeting of equals.
The greeting was for him, not for Theron, who cowered with wide eyes. The face
of the man in the chariot smiled softly. The eyes resting upon Tempus so fondly
were as pale and pure as cool water. And as the vision opened its mouth to
speak, the god-din in Tempus’s ears subsided to a rustle, then to whispers, then
to contented sighs that faded entirely away when Abarsis, dead Slaughter Priest
and patron shade of the Sacred Band, wrapped his blood-red reins casually around
the chariot’s brake and stepped down from his car, arms wide to embrace Tempus,
whom Abarsis had loved better than life when the ghost had been a man.
There was nothing for it, Tempus realized, but to make the best of the
situation, though seeing the materialization of a boy who had sought an
honorable death in Tempus’s service wrenched his heart.
The boy was now a power on his own-a power from beyond Death’s Gate, true, but a
power all the same.