When it was over, she realized she had worked her spells in the midst of a
downpour which had soaked her to the skin.
Picking up her heavy robes, she headed homeward. Perhaps she should have found
the Riddler and told him what she’d done. But there were Crit and Strat to think
of, and she didn’t want to think of Strat-who was with Tempus by now, alive or
dead.
She wanted to think only of herself for now. She wanted things to be just as
they always had been before. And she wanted to think about mercy, a quality
quite strained and strange, but strengthening, in its way.
In Tasfalen’s house, what had been Roxane lay abed in Tasfalen’s body, half
conscious, rent in memory and power, a mere fragment knowing only that it wanted
to survive.
“Duuu,” it mumbled, and tried again to move the lips of a corpse twice
resurrected. “Dusss.” And: “Dusssst. Haughttt… dussst.”
The ex-slave was rattling windows barred by magic, cursing horrid spells that
couldn’t get outside, but bounced around the comers of the house and back upon
him like ricochets, so that each one was more trouble than it was worth.
Eventually his panic ebbed and he stalked over to the bedside, looking down at
the fish-white pallor of the man who’d brought him here.
Snatched him from somewhere-from elsewhere … perchance from oblivion. Someone
else might have been grateful, but Haught was too wise, too angry: he knew that
all witches took their price.
He’d thought to win; he’d lost. He was captive now, captive in a mansion with
fine stuffs around him, true. But he was caged like an animal by his former