And then she did, when Haught’s silken voice oozed down the stairs from a shadow
at their head.
“Ah, Mistress, how kind of you to visit sickbeds with so much at stake.”
She reached out for the ring he wore, but the apprentice was reaching on his
own: grown desperate, he was full of pain, and wanted to make her a gift of it.
Suddenly (more because she underestimated what lay behind him and what hid
within him than because of Haught himself) she was dizzy, spinning in another
place, a place of blood and murky water-of ice and great gates whose bars were
rent as if a giant shape had bent them out of its way.
Niko’s rest-place! How had she come here?… not by Haught’s strength.
And a laugh tinkled-a laugh with razor edges that cut her soul: Roxane.
Yes, Roxane-but something less and something more hobbled through that gate,
misshapen and huge, and shrunk until Tasfalen’s beauty masked it.
And then the thing… for it was part highborn, mortal lord, part witch, and
part Haught… held out its hand to take her arm as if to escort her to some
formal fete.
She met its eyes and gripped her own ribs with both her hands: to touch it might
imprison her here. This was where Janni had lost the last shreds of self-concern
that made him act predictably in the interest of what life he still led.
The eyes that bored into hers were gold and slitted; deep behind them glowed a
purple fire she knew wasn’t right.
She forced her leaden limbs to work and backed a step, watching first her feet
and then scanning the horizons, winding wards that worked in Sanctuary which