towering only in its insignificance: the “life” of a petty mageling, a would-be
wizard called Randal, a flop-eared, freckled fool who fooled now with forces
beyond his ability to control.
Yes, Niko had dared to trick Roxane, to distract her with his charms while this
posturing prestidigitator, whom she’d thought to have for dinner, got away.
And now Niko lurked in priestholes, palaces, and princely bedrooms, protected by
Randal (who had a Globe of Power similar to Roxane’s own, and more powerful) and
the countermagical armor given Niko by the entelechy of dreams. Not once did
sweet Stealth venture riverward, though his de facto commander, Straton of the
Stepsons, rode this way on evenings to visit another witch.
This other witch, too, was an enemy of Roxane’s-Ischade the necromant, whom by
rights the Stepsons should have hated more than they did Roxane, vilified in
their prayers as they nightly did Death’s Queen.
There was some irony to that: Ischade, a tawdry soul-sucker with limited power
and unlimited lust, was a friend of the Stepsons, ally of the mercenary army
that was all that stood between Sanctuary and total chaos now that the town was
divided into blood feuds and factions as the Rankan Empire’s grasp grew weak and
the Rankan prince, Kadakithis, was barricaded in his palace with some salmon
eyed Beysib slut from a fishy foreign land.
And Roxane, who’d been Death’s Queen on Wizardwall and flown high, ruler of all
she once surveyed, was shunned by Stepsons and even by lesser factions in the