“I’m going in,” she told him, though she had no communion with such spirits and
could not hear nor understand his reply.
The heavy door with its man-thick iron bars loomed before her. Leaving a pattern
of rime on the metal, she passed beyond it to confront an eternity as vast and
empty as the demon-Niko’s eyes had been.
“Coward!” the Froth Daughter shrieked as nothingness, which was the essence of
all demonkind, leeched her substance away. She lashed out blindly, stupidly
expending herself against an enemy whose chief attribute was its absence. “Co
war-“
She retreated, a ragged wisp streaming back to the frost-bound doorway, and
collapsed in the meadow, her fury and her confidence equally diminished. Demonic
laughter using her own stolen voice compounded her shame. In her impotence Jihan
gathered shards of ice and hurled them at the gate.
“I’ll be back,” she told it as the ice melted into the thawing crystal stream.
“You’ll see.”
She sniffled and wiped her eyes on a damp forearm. The ground was slick with
melting ice; she slipped more than once. Pain and cold became part of her mortal
vocabulary as she made her way home, never once looking back to see that the
meadow was brighter or the crystal stream rushing fast and clear.
“I thought we’d lost her,” Tempus admitted as he watched the Froth Daughter pick
her way slowly across the hillside.
We? Do we care? Stormbringer inquired in a dangerously friendly tone.
Tempus didn’t bother to turn around. He wouldn’t be wherever he suddenly was
without some god or another’s interference; and he was no longer awed by