“I did not know. Lord Stormbringer.”
Then know now! The universe throbbed with Stormbringer’s pique. I am Sanctuary’s
god. Until the children claim their birthright I am their, and Sanctuary’s,
guardian. Fear only me!
Of course they fear you. A second presence, feminine but no less awesome,
wove its way through and around the presence that was Stormbringer.
Mortals fear everything. They fear the woman’s god more than they fear the
man’s god, and they fear a woman without a god most of all. You must tell
them where to find the witch-woman who killed my snakes.
The deities twisted around each other but did not mix or merge. Molin knew he
was in the presence of what was already being called the Barren Marriage. Yet
there was something like mortal affection, as well as immortal lust, between
these two. He felt the part that was Stormbringer contract, and an upright
figure with the head of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the lower parts of a
bull manifested itself out of the red mist.
“I cannot tell you where she is,” the apparition said in a voice that was both
male and female. “There are things forbidden even to me. Demonkind is brother
and sister to you mortals, but no kin to gods. The S’danzo have the greater part
of the truth; the Nisi witches have the rest.
“Roxane promised the souls of the children-or her own if she failed. She is not
where you or I can find her-and she is not fallen among the demons. What I
cannot find, what the Archdemon cannot find, must lie in Meridian or beyond.”
Molin discovered that he, like Stormbringer, had become corporeal and, so far as