flesh could not support it. Groaning, he sank to his knees.
“Poor little mageling,” the familiar voice issuing from a shimmering blue globe
chuckled with strychnine sweetness. “Let me fix that for you.” A tongue of
indigo flame licked out from the globe; Randal, like Tempus, was motionless.
Jihan took a deep breath that formed ice in the salt-water buckets an arm’s
length away. She had been patient with these mortals, abiding by their
constraints, accepting their wisdom even when it contradicted everything her
instincts demanded, and now that they were finally helpless she was going to do
things her way.
Niko turned endless, empty eyes toward the blue sphere, asking a silent
question.
“Stormbringer’s Froth,” Roxane replied, with the malice and disdain reserved by
women for lesser women.
A frigid wind swirled through the once-warm room. No one, especially a Nisi
witch or a nameless demon, spoke that way about Jihan and survived. No matter
that Stormbringer had created his parthenogenic offspring from an arctic sea
storm, Jihan knew an insult when she felt one. She pelted the sphere with a
thick glaze of ice, then she leaned her palms on Niko’s chest.
“I’m here!” she announced, bringing a howl of cold air into Niko’s rest-place.
“I’m here, damn you.”
She rode her anger across the once-beautiful landscape of a moat-endowed mind.
The dark crystal stream roiled and froze in agonized shapes. Charred trees
snapped and crashed to the ground under the burden of the ice that came in her
wake. She reached the meadow where the pure light of Janni guarded the gate.