their common son. And he’d spent an interval with the Mother Goddess of the
fishfaces in which he’d learned that Mother Bey had lusts as great as any
northern deity.
So he alone, acquainted with so many of the players intimately and capable of
standing up to more-than-human actors, was competent to negotiate a settlement
among the heavens through supernal avatars and earthly rulers, the
representatives of their respective gods.
This task was complicated, not helped, by Kadakithis’s impending marriage to the
Beysib ruler, as it was obstructed, not advanced, by Theron’s arrival here and
now, when all was far from well and men had brought their hells to life by
meddling with powers they did not understand.
So he didn’t care, he decided, what happened here, beyond his personal goals: to
protect the souls of his Stepsons and those who loved him, to reward constancy
where it had been demonstrated (even by mages and necromants), to clear his
conscience so far as possible before he trekked back north, where the horses
still grazed in Hidden Valley and the Successors on Wizardwall would welcome him
back to what had become the closest thing to home he could remember.
But to do that, he must see Niko on the mend and on his way back to Bandara; he
must do what Abarsis had counseled, and more.
He must get rid of that thrice-cursed pillar of fire burning with renewed fervor
uptown, and spewing fireballs and attracting lightning and spitting bolts into
the sea, before a storm blew up from the disturbance.
For if a storm came riding the wake of all this chaos, then Jihan’s powers would