4 Chapter Four

"Do you think I'm made of mice? I only have the one." The grumbling teenage tyrant wrung her drizzling hair. Despite the towering promontory that shielded them from the gushing downpour, the rain dashed down in slashing diagonals, spitting into the soil, spraying mud, and furling a fine mist that puffed into their faces. Like the rain, good and evil always landed, even if it had to blow around the hard earth. As the dark clouds billowed and blew, Suvani paced here and there, unable to rest in her overwhelming victory over Teriana. If the Zalgynes had roared above, dropping boulders to shatter her siege engines, splash her soldiers into bloody puddles that gashed the battlefield, then send them scampering within the ramparts; and if the Ephremians had marched in, pinning her armies within the woodland city; that was no fault of the sphinx. She had done her part, and Suvani knew it.

Not that the sphinx was not so foolish to think spoiled Suvani honorable. If she was a little more human, Suvani would have broken her end of the deal, but being part Queen and part sorceress, Suvani had more in common with fairy creatures than humanity, and could be held to her word. if only because she was unwilling to lose the power invested in a queen's words.

That said, she was taking her sweet time honoring their deal.

At first, the sphinx thought it was only that the Queen did not wish to dispense with her services. Having a sphinx at your beck and call was so useful that the myths not only made mention of it, but recommended it to readers in more than one tale handed down to the present day. Ever since Ungrir the Wolfish bested a sphinx with a foul riddle typical of the filthy minds of humans, then rode a humbled sphinx into battle against the talking beasts besetting his tribe, every would-be conqueror believed it child's play to best a sphinx at a riddle game. While Ungrir had it easy, having chosen just the kind of dirty joke that proved thorny to the clean mental mechanisms of sphinxes, more riddlers rode in the belly of a sphinx than on their backs. While sphinxes were big as sheds, and had heavy paws that could crush horses, a sphinx's weapons of choice were not her claws but her much sharper words, and most fell to pieces long before the touch of a paw, an unsolved riddle having driven a spike in their brains.

"Would you trust an Alsantian Queen, knowing Alsantians and Queens as well as you?"

"I would ask you to stop, if I didn't already know riddling is as much a part of you as the moral sense is the domain of my wretched kind." Suvani sighed and shook her head.

"Who here knows good from evil? Who above? Who below?"

"I told you to take your leave, you detestable creature. And I hope you've learned your lesson."

Having prowled just behind Suvani, the sphinx brooded and scowled, knowing the pretender queen would renege by pretending forgetfulness. As the sphinx would be too shamefaced to return, she could not force Suvani to make good on her word. If she was going to bargain for the griffin's freedom, it must be now.

"Would you keep two innocents pocketed in my presence, owing both their liberty?"

"Who are you calling innocent? Mice are disgusting, filthy creatures." Suvani's head tilted back into a proud, haughty contempt. "And I only have the one. You can hardly blame me for holding the other at my castle for security, with you being such a gambling addict." She snickered. "If you don't trust me, take this one as collateral. One mouse is as good or as bad as another."

The sphinx growled. Suvani was not only squirreling her way out of their agreement, and scheming to keep the griffin, but bartering a child's freedom. "What is a monster?"

"Spoken in truth. Not that Michel will know the answer to that, being as blind as a mouse as she was as a Marchioness. She may even cozy up to you, if you stop posing questions."

"Who is not themselves but a monster?"

Suvani's cruel eyes stabbed, then relaxed as still and flat as glass, "I know your slights touch on me. You're not as clever as you think. Always remember who beat who, sphinx."

The sphinx snorted, turned, and ambled toward the rough-hewn shrine. While religion had once been part of daily life in Alsantia, it proved as shifting as politics, and even more unstable, with each cult redecorating past idols to honor their new deity. Here the sky-god's effigy had been sanded down to shape the Stranger, its blue dye painted over with a red wash that shaded to violet as the sun set. But when Alsantia's moons kissed in their nightly conjunction in the pale orange horizon, the statue was enflamed with their golden light. While this joining of the two moons was not an irregular occurrence-- happening, as it did, twice a month--it now seemed staged just overhead, as if their ledge under the promontory was balcony seating.

"What evils must our moons overlook?"

"I know what you're insinuating by that wry grin." sneered Suvani.

"How lonely are the good," growled the sphinx. "Even more so the hungry. Which of these knows how good deeds taste?"

"If you're waiting on justice on my account, you'll wait a long time. What are you looking at?"

"What united the hateful and made the proud kneel?"

When Suvani stood from the earthen ledge, so comfortably had she settled on her impromptu seat that the crumbling dirt now bore an imprint, and left one on the seat of her windblown gown. Having flown for the best part of two days, her royal threads were frayed at the hems and split at the seams, having never been designed to withstand gale force winds, nor the hurricane force wings of the sphinx, who had only done her literal best to convey the teenage tyrant to and from the siege of Teriana.

While the sphinx had her reputation and the honor of her word to think of, she was so loath to be ridden--never having allowed the withers of man, woman, child, or beast to grace her back--that she could not help indulging cruel and malicious caprice, not only aiming for the upswells and downswells

from which her instinct unerringly warned her away, but bounding and landing with such jarring force that her paws still ached.

Sweeping the dirt from her royal seat, Suvani grumbled and trudged to the ledge overlooking the shrine.

"Now that's a relic."

If her tone was one of exhausted resignation, there were traces of interest, bemusement, and admiration. For the ancient shrine was not only carved from the living rock of the mountainside, but the artist had painstakingly chipped out a doorway, which balanced precariously over the pivot where it rested. Each violet door comprised half of the Stranger, with the lower panels graven to resemble legs tapering to a point like a kite, and terminating just above the pivot, which was painted to resemble feet.

Jamming her right hand into her capacious left sleeve, the Queen extracted a pouch, which she now groped in, producing a quivering bit of fluff.

Suvani scowled at her spark of interest. "No, this isn't your mouse." Her face tightened to a grin.

"But take her on trade if you wish. No? What do you think, mouse?" When she held the mouse high overhead, it shrank from her fingertips as it would a cliff, no doubt inspired to new heights of fear by the real gulf sprawling a half mile downslope, rolling right up to the feet of the shrine. "What do you think of your god?"

"What mouse lays claim to a god?"

"Aren't sphinxes vaunted to be wise? The Stranger is the god of Ghulmarque." She tilted her head. "In the most ancient of days, the Stranger was Alsantia's god, too, even drawing the worship of talking beasts, and monsters like yourself. Nearly every tongue swore fealty to the Stranger. But since then, his domain has contracted, until only some in Ghulmarque know his face, and only those who give half a mind to the faded, chipped idols that dot the promenades, or the defunct temple now serving as servants' quarters for the castle.

"Where is the god of the godless, Queen Suvani?" The sphinx so breathed the comma as to make subtly but perfectly clear that she meant the adjective to envelop the teenage tyrant.

Suvani shrugged. "As you don't want this, I'll leave it here." She eyed the mouse disdainfully, and prodded it with her thumb. "I suppose you think that's cruel, leaving a blind beast on a mountainside."

"Who is more blind than pretenders and monsters, who look on gods and souls without feeling?"

"It's better than blind faith." Suvani sighed.

"Having freed my people from that curse, I should know. They despise me for it now, but may one day celebrate me. In any event, I care not for those who prefer pity to mercy." She maliciously ogled the mouse. "Which is more cruel? Let it scurry away blind, prolonging its inevitable, agonizing fate on the mountainside, or wring its neck, so it slips quickly away, finding its true purpose in death, its flesh lining a vulture's gullet and its bones ornamenting a gorge?"

The sphinx stooped so near Suvani that the clutched mouse was ruffled and fluffed by the breath jetting from her nostrils, then plucked it into her paw.

"Rude!" The steamed child queen stamped her foot and thrust out her hand. "She's mine! You don't even know her name."

"What nameless wretch would be known by a tyrant?

"Nameless! Godless! You're all about lack, sphinx! A loudmouthed nothing!"

"What riddle does not break silence and question nothingness?"

Having taken a deep breath, Suvani exhaled slowly and smiled a wry smile. "Not that I mind the noise. Without gods or meaning, there is nothing but noise, and you must come to an appreciation of the chaos if you want any quality of life." When the tremoring slope made her sway side to side, she seemed not to notice, and instead warmed to her subject and broadened her smile. "Or you can menace and manage the chaos, and come to an understanding with the monsters. Give back my mouse or face a reckoning, sphinx."

At a blurry flutter near the shrine, the sphinx's eyes flicked to the doors. While nothing budged, everything seemed to shiver, as if in anticipation, the way shadows soften and quiver on a scorching hot day.

"Are you listening?" Suvani's brows knit, and she crossed her arms, but she lost both her composure and her footing when the stones underfoot crumbled, and she shot down the slope.

As the shrine shivered apart with a thunderous crack, the bas-relief effigy of the Stranger peeled away from the doors, wobbled forward in shambling steps, then expanded to three dimensions, and stomped and boomed down the crumbling mountainside.

As the rocky flow drew the shrine's tumbling walls into the valley, the sphinx nabbed Suvani by the scruff of her hair, an instinct she regretted an instant later. Not only would letting the evil queen die in a landslide have spared the land her tyranny, but in stopping the queen's fall, her worthless life was now the sphinx's responsibility. While disgust did not stop her honorable instinct, it emended it, and the sphinx flicked Suvani by the hair, to land in a screeching heap of silk-chased limbs at the base of the rockslide. The disheveled royal bundle rose to her feet, fixed the sphinx with a haughty scornful look devoid of gratitude, and hacked and coughed on the sediment-filled air.

Where the rocks quivered, dust trails drizzled, and dust clouds rolled into the vale, filling it with crackling, stony mist. Peeking her majestic head through the crest of the dust cloud, the sphinx saw only settling, grainy mist.

The sphinx looked about for the gigantic statue, expecting it to have ambled near to consider them with the cruel detachment with which Suvani regarded the mouse. While the sphinx was huge, the effigy was colossal, having doubled its stature as it peeled from the shrine.

"Our contract was at an end. You might have let me fall, monster." Suvani hacked on the billowing dust and rubbed red eyes.

"Should a wicked heart blight innocent earth?"

In spite of this sentiment, a looming shadow darkened the ground.

"You dare?"

Though Suvani boomed and crackled, the sphinx now scorned her storming wrath, for with the terms of their wager fulfilled, the sphinx would brave deathspells and hellfire for the sake of her freedom. "Whose blood breeds sympathy with devils?"

"Whose blood?" shrieked Suvani. "Say it!"

"Whose darkness veils the land?" The sphinx roared. "Who, smaller than my paw, would match her big head with a noble sphinx?" As sphinxes are built not to scale, but with a steeper, sloping line that gains incrementally as it rises from gigantic feet to humungous haunches, veers up a massive, chesty forequarters, shapes a mane and beard more voluminous than stage curtains, then erects a mammoth head, the size of a small ship, that seemed to have fallen like a relic from the end of time,

this was most audacious to say, for contrasting their heads was like comparing peas with watermelons. And yet, why was the Sphinx conscious of feeling small, certainly smaller than the grotesque miracle that animated and expanded the etched Stranger?

"What squatting beast would match its foul droppings with a queen's wits?

When Suvani crouched like a feral beast, and the two monsters--one the flower of supernatural cunning, and the other the upshot of unscrupulous human power--faced off, the blind mouse furrowed through the sphinx's mane with such fearful ferocity that it tickled her neck. When the thickening shadow furled between them, caressing the sphinx like a hand, its touch felt like madness, even to the unending puzzlement of a sphinx's mind. The sphinx's perplexed heart went out to the griffin, whose nonsensical rhymes would have perfectly captured the mad scene.

"What welches on deals and lies as easily as it breathes?" she roared.

"Is that fair, gentle beast?" If the shadow had been a caress, the dulcet and mellow voice was even more intimate, its strangeness sinking so deep that an intense familiarity overwhelmed her, immersing her in some forgotten symmetry to her own being. "A queen doesn't lie quite so easily as that. My children are much too proud to lie, without first coloring it with meaning, shading it with irony, and, in short, building what should have been real. While even the truth falls on rotten foundations, the cornerstone of a good lie is truth, uplifting many more truths into a temple prouder of its grand lie than its embedded truths. To a dumb animal, this is only a heap of stones, and it is only believing that translates it into a temple. Like sphinxes, the faithless feel at home in their rockpile of truths, while my children build realities."

The shadowy undertow of her drowned mind was swept up in the voice, as if her own undercurrents flowed into this being, making of the sphinx only a fantasy of the dark god's making.

When the sphinx tried to turn, it was as if she was rooted to the spot, a statue carved in the ancient mountain. Like a dreamer struggling to awaken, she wrenched her head left.

His dark face shone as if by invisible light, a black radiance that put out the eye of the world,

cut out the Stranger from creation, then skinned deeper, peeling the light from existence to cast into the dark fire like the bones of a beast.

"What burns in your heart, savage queen? Or rather, who? Could a mere human do all the mad things you have done? Have you spited, schemed, and slain without any inspiration?"

"You take credit for my reign?" laughed Suvani. "You who are no god, but the shadow of one?"

"What knavery is this?" As the Stranger's voice hollowed to a thundering bass, it clotted with shadow like a crackling stormcloud. "If I am no god, and you are less than nothing, than what happens here? A fiction? A joke? A monkey jabbered and the thunder answered." The Stranger scowled, but laughed. "If you vex me, Suvani, it is only that you are so cunningly made; if you tempt my anger, should I not reward you for acting according to your nature?" He snickered. "Your wicked nature is my dark design."

"Save me from your gifts, pretender," Suvani said hotly. "Having ruled Alsantia all by myself, what need have I for god?"

"Then let your freedom be my gift." His tone was magnanimous. "I will not offend the apple of my eye, not when you might have wished me to double your armies by raising the dead, unearth all the enchanted swords in tombs, or bequeath a vast dragon that dwarfed your truculent sphinx."

"Save your scraps for those who cannot make their own miracles." Suvani's eyes burned with a scorching, scornful fire. "And as you have plagued my reign with a surplus of talking animals, monsters, and other beggars, I will regift your gift of freedom to the sphinx."

"Freedom is wasted on such a willing slave to instinct." His expression was dark and capricious. "What think you, sphinx? Flaming wings?" At the Sphinx's blanched face, the Stranger chuckled. "Of course I know your heart's desire, you disgraceful beast; who do you think inspired you to fall in love with a griffin? Imagine the mongrels to come from that union."

The snarling sphinx reared high on her hindquarters. "What liar dares a lion's paws?" When she stamped down, the impact stirred the crumbled cliffside into another hazy dust cloud, but as she raised one clawed foot, dust drizzled down, spattering her hollow pawprint. She growled. "Do nothings shrink to the same place as shadows and cowards?"

"Forgive me, Suvani." Not one speck disturbed the pristine darkness of the Stranger. Not only was his face a deeper black than a moonless night, but his silhouette, receding into the night, was so brimful with darkness that he shone with his own light.

Suvani took a step back. "Forgive you? Never. Not that it's personal, but I make it a point neither to forgive nor forget anyone." She raised a finger and drew it down her dimpled cheek. "But if I succumbed to a moment of weakness, what would I forgive?"

"While I had thought this beast an unworthy adversary for you, she is eminently suitable for the jackass you've made out of yourself."

"Adversary." Suvani's laugh was shrill. "The very idea."

As the divine laughter mingled with her mirthful squeal, the sphinx pounced, and as Suvani's jaw dropped in gaping fear under the hurtling, overshadowing colossus, their laughter dissolved as the crumbled mountainside, which burst into a thick, grayish gloom, leaving neither god nor queen in the rubble under her restless paws. As the dirt rained back down, and the granite haze settled, a hummingbird darted in and out of the blur, a wry smile twisting its beak into a sarcastic moue. It buzzed in and out, flouncing near the sphinx's furry ears, pinching the sphinx's human nose with her beak, and flitting from the sphinx's batting paws, before bibbling a shrill squeak, then pouring up, a liquid spurt of flesh, wickedly long dark tresses, and a sarcastic smile at the center, as if it was the dark heart of Suvani.

When the queen eyed the sphinx with contempt, the scurrying in the sphinx's mane swelled to her neck, flattening the hairs of her mane in its sudden sprawl. When the sphinx idly raised one claw to her neck, thinking to scratch it free, the pest whimpered--not the squeal of a mouse, but the whine of a human girl: "help! Run! Fly away! Don't let her have me!"

"What mouse dares ask a favor of a sphinx?"

"I'm not a mouse," she shrieked. "I'm a girl. No! Don't put me down! Carry me away from here! Far, far from here."

"Having scorned a queen, should I honor the vermin clinging to my feathers?"

"I'm Michel, the Marchioness of Ghulmarque," she squealed indignantly," but even if I wasn't, my world tells of a mouse that spared a lion's suffering by pulling out a thorn. Suvani is worse than any thorn! Listen to me or she'll kill you!"

"Who do I heed: one who spurns a god, or one who lays claim to a world?"

"Really? Must you take me so literally?"

"Does this Mousy-nest of Ghulmarque now riddle a sphinx, I wonder? Do I wonder, or only speak, as Queen Suvani would insinuate? Am I monster or mynah?" Having leveled a dire look at Suvani, the sphinx turned a perplexed eye over her shoulder to Michel. "What are humans but squeaking monkeys? What is a god but a speaking shadow?" The sphinx looked dourly at the Stranger.

"Are we anything, if we have no future?" After a frustrated snort, Michel slumped across the sphinx, as if through her own mortification, she could melt back to a mouse.

The sphinx squatted and purred. "Why so silent? Is it a sphinx, I wonder?" With a mighty pounce that shook the crumbled mountainside into a dry, hazy cloud, she hurtled into the wind, driving her wings with such hurricane force that the queen and the god , taken by surprise, gulped down dust.

As they hacked and coughed, the sphinx's face spread into a sweet smile. "Have I touched the crown? Am I on equal footing with a god?"

"What are you doing?" Michel's frantic voice trembled.

"Who knows all they do? What worlds may spawn in a god's tear, having been torn by the dust of my wings? Am I then a creator, having sown a world like a pearl?"

"Stop asking questions! You're wasting time! Can't you fly faster?" When the sphinx growled and hunkered down to her flight, the rude girl shouted, "where are you taking me?"

"What is a Marchioness, but a girl who shouts exclamation points? Do we flee, or do we travel?"

"Why not both?"

"Would you listen to the noble riddle?" As they broke through heavy clouds, the sun warmed the sphinx's smile. "Don't you hear yourself?"

When Michel clenched the sphinx's mane and bowed her head, her warm sigh breathed through fur. "I don't mean to be incoherent, you understand. As I'm blind, I'm beholden to you for whatever details you choose to share."

As this sunk in, the sphinx squirmed under the blind girl. "Then everything is a riddle to you as well?"

"No, it isn't. I know you're sad about leaving your friend to the Queen, but kind enough to help me. I know the Stranger is no god, but something evil."

"No matter how evil, if he does the godlike things he brags, is he not a god? Will he not shadow this land like a storm, rage as he wills, and spill ill will where he chooses, whether on the wicked or the good?"

She shrank further into fur. "I don't like this place. Take me far, far away."

"Where should I take you, with Alsantia as far as the eye can see? Should I take you to breathless space or the dead calm of the deep ocean?"

"You're frightening me!" When the blind girl clutched painfully tight, and began hyperventilating, the sphinx purred, looked sidelong on her frightened passenger and attempted a half-smile.

"Far, far away, or safe?"

"What?" The blubbering girl dragged the back of her hand through a snotty trail.

"Far, far away, or safe?"

"You insulted a god. Where is far away enough, or safe enough, now?"

"What is existence?" On remembering the blind girl could not see her sarcastic smirk, the sphinx scowled, and purred deeper and wider, until her whole leonine body thrummed with this resonant sigh. "Where will you be happy, human girl?"

"It's only another riddle," snuffled the girl. "Why can't you be nice?"

"How many worlds lie between nature and human nature? How many lies will humans tell to cover their true nature?" While the sphinx felt her heart soften, the girl was still human, and the sphinx was at war with her own kindness. If this was the famous milk of human kindness, it was sour, and she could not brook the taste. While ancient dragons were said to take humans to their breast, not only as bond-beasts and spear carriers, but feral children, to the sphinx it felt wrong to coddle the girl. Humans were so entitled by nature, that it was likely her cream-white insides might spoil, become rotten as old cheese, and cling forever to her mane, which by nature wanted to unfurl, free and bold. Moreover, a sphinx must tell no lies, whether to others or herself, and if she ever found herself smacking her lips at the thought of dining on girl, she would be unable to deny her nature.

She groaned inwardly, for while her pride had just emerged, raw and scathed, from the queen's bet, she was about to suffer another girl's gamble.

"Will you do me the honor of being my guest for the evening?" While delicately phrased,

to the sphinx, it was just another riddle, pent-up with foreboding and suspense. Regardless of how the Marchioness answered, an unknown future would descend upon them both, in which either might prove false, true, or obscure.

"Your guest?" As if half cat herself, the girl shrank further into the sphinx's fur. "Not as the entree, I hope?"

"What would you have me say?" grumbled the sphinx. "Should I leave you in the wild? Drop you in an eagle's nest? Why not my nest? Why not my wildness?"

Would it not be more merciful to

"While beggars can't be choosers," muttered the girl, "if you mean it's better to be eaten by an acquaintance than a total stranger, I call them equal horrors, even if it's a little less impolite to eat someone after you've been introduced." She exhaled a pent-up, fearful breath. "My name is Michel."

The Sphinx snorted. "Have I no ears?"

"Did I already say so? What's your name?"

"Why tell a stowaway my name?"

"A stowaway?"

"If you are no stowaway, than what are you?"

When the girl froze, her fingers tightly wound in fur and feathers, prickling the sphinx's neck, then as abruptly loosed their hold. "It's not a threat, but a riddle."

"What else does a sphinx know?"

"A guest. I'm a guest, sphinx. I accept your offer of hispitality."

"Was that so hard?"

Michel vented an exasperated sigh. "Your riddles are so menacing."

"Should I not punish wrong and reward right? Should I not winnow the evil from the good?"

"But must you be so obscure?"

"Is it not this hard to be human?" The sphinx glanced at her with a sidelong smile, then bent to her flight.

For the remainder of their journey, they kept their riddles--and their other questions--close to their chest, as the silver moons gleamed through curled blue clouds.

***

When her prisoners had flown away, a chill gripped Suvani by the neck, freezing its way down her spine. While the Stranger had been happy to let the queen share in the fun of harrying the sphinx,

there being now only one possible target for his dark wrath, Suvani cinched her sash tighter as her other hand wandered through her robes to the dagger stolen from Vemulus the day after his birthday. While she would ordinarily want nothing of her cursed brother's--however much she kept the peace with smiles she did not feel--this dagger was so sinfully beautiful and wickedly sharp that it cut out a keen desire in Suvani. She had never liked when weapons and wands were bejeweled, bangled, or otherwise bedecked with ornament distracting from their intended, deadly use, but this dagger seemed made with her in mind, being not only unadorned, but naked, a pure blade following a deliberate line so inscrutably fine and impossibly keen that it hurt to look at its point or edge, like looking on searing rays of light. But was it sharp enough to cut a god? While she would be happy to wound the creature, she would prefer to outlive such reckless action. And yet, the thought pleased her so much that a joyous grin spread across her face.

"You are my creature at last, Suvani." As his face creased in a broader smile, one eye outshone the other, like a silvery moonrise quashing a red-gold sunset, and his teeth gleamed like stars. The Stranger was like twilight taking human form. "Which is not to say you were not in the beginning. No matter how many times these shadows come and go, you are always mine."

"As if!" Her loud retort was capped with such a scornful smile that it bordered on the vengeful.

"As if you've seen this happen before." She put her hands on her hips and looked up at the towering stranger, who was clad in nothing but his own dark, slinky elegance. His shadows sewed him up until his head and hands protruded like things not only out of place, but out of this world, the svelte darkness tapering to cowl, sleeves, and leggings, on which he less walked than wafted, like a cobweb dangling by a single thread. "I grant your power is vast. Much vaster than mine. I only question your judgment, your good taste--your honesty."

His smile was mellifluous and melodious, and his dulcet tones were as honeyed as a harp. There was so much of the god, so much to the god, that he burst the seams of her senses, and she tasted as much as she saw, touched as much as she heard. The god's cup was so running over that he bled from one sense to the next in a vast, synesthesic panorama. Having fallen into his eyes, she drifted in the folds of the cosmos, where the stars stared back from his deep black robes

As she grit her teeth in willed contempt--Not one is better than Suvani! Not one is more important!--she tasted the salty and sweet of candied almonds, and was buoyant with the sizzling scent of cinnamon.

"Get out of my eyes! My nose! Get...out...of...my...head!" As she shrieked, each syllable strained to a higher pitch of fury, and when the Stranger took a step back from her shrill rage, she barked a harsh laugh. For at least a moment, she had made the dark god an unbeliever.

"I so rarely take time to enjoy my craft." As the Stranger knelt before Suvani, bringing his immense brow just above hers, he now seemed to stare through her eyes as he pressed his fingers to her temple, making her a circlet of his divine hands. And as the fact of his godhood flowed into her, it was all she could do to stomach it, to accept his omnipotence in the face of her omni-resentment, which brooked nothing superior, whether created or imagined, mortal or immortal, man, woman, child, or god. And when a new star gleamed from her brow, it lit on Ephremia's armies whelming hers, each thundering phalanx headed by children so armored head to toe that only their faces flowered from the steel.

She drew in a shocked breath of disbelief. Was that her serving girl? And the other faces were so profoundly and instantly graven in her memory that she felt she should know them, that she already knew them, if not by name. That boy has the Architects' eyes, she was sure of it.

"Alsantia is a finely tuned machine, my child..."

"I'm not your child!" However she writhed her neck and shook her head, his fingers firmly clasped her brow and temple.

"...so much so, that these warring peoples are but agents of the atoms and molecules of my creation, giving names to the inevitable onrush of the material universe. The outcome is as certain as any chemical formula or mathematical equation: Ephremia will win, your armies will be downtrodden,

and you and your beloved brother's heads will be mounted on pikes by the end of the month."

"So long? I'd have it done before breakfast!" She screeched and clawed at his implacable touch, but his hands did not tear or budge. "I won't beg, do you hear me! Why do you show me this?"

"While the divine science is exact, what is written may be rewritten."

"Whatever you want, I won't give you the satisfaction! If you mean to let them kill me, I'll fight!"

"But you have already given me the best gift. Even in my hands, with your death whispering, you are true to yourself." His smile became cruel and condescending, if no less joyous, less like a god than the painting of one. "While you will never be grateful, the way you will harbor the bitterness of knowing my blessing secured your wicked reign is an honor I will savor more than mere gratitude."

As his fingers pinched tighter, the vision changed. Under the marching Ephremians, the road sagged, staggering the armored lines to clash against each other, then slide through crumbling stone,

many falling to hands and knees, bumping heads, and tripping the coming ranks.What sundered this undermined roadway was a surge of black fur flecked with rabid, chittering shrieks, a verminous wave dragging the Ephremians along in their scampering undertow, until their gleaming armor served as a bright bridge for the rats, who now charged straight through the Ephremian front. Those that stayed down were clawed, those that thought to raise their shields higher only boosted the scurrying rats a few inches further, and those that rose to their feet were chewed, mobbed, and overcome.

Behind these raging faces wrinkled in red-eyed frenzy loped monstrous rats as huge as hounds,

then the ferocious, towering brutes that towed her brother, whose savage, crazed grin seemed to jut forth with a ratlike mania, and whose crude iron chariot careened here and there like the zigzagging rats, slashing through the Ephremian army.

Moments ago, Alsantia had hunkered in trenches and behind ramparts, too afraid to breathe from the Zalgyne onslaught, but they struck hard now, stabbing and striking free. While they had holed up like timid mice, having been inspired by the ferocity of the rats, they poured in a shapeless mass from the nooks and crannies of wooded Teriana. All military discipline forgotten, they jetted for the Ephremian ranks, whose punchdrunk frontline already wavered from surging rats, and now buckled under Alsantian steel.

When the Stranger took his hands away, she clasped them in her own and pulled them tight to her chest, where her burning heart was at cross purposes with the furious mechanisms of her mind. If her hands were now her own, she never wanted to let go. But what she said was, "this means nothing."

"At least it is a sweet nothing. The things we do for love," sniffed the god.

"Everything is or is not. Nothing loves."

"With no love, there is only suffering and satisfaction."

"It is as you say." As Suvani's scathing tone burned in her own throat, she averted her eyes. If she despised the god, she was also conscious of his power. "You can give rats a spine, or make men into vermin, but you cannot show me love."

"You are so proud." The Stranger's eye twinkled with a dark light. "My eye is always on everything, but I am glad I came to see you in the flesh. You are even better than I imagined. I would call you my reason for being, but even I could never believe that. You are only a trinket, no matter how fascinating."

"Have you come, then, only to get my attention?"

"As if I was only a secret admirer until now. You think so little of your maker." His laugh tinkled as it rose to a feminine pitch. "It's charming."

"Don't take this the wrong way--well, do as you will. Even if you are a god. I don't have the time for you. So make your pitch, if you must, then find your own air to breathe."

"Your air? My pitch?"

"Yes, as in why should I believe in you."

"I'd wish you wouldn't, if it wasn't a vain wish, knowing full well how I created you. Go. Exploit the turmoil, Queen Suvani."

When he breathed upon her, the sweet breath pounded in her ears, the world dissolved in black silence, and she wafted like the delicate scent of roses. Her nose tingled as her cold eyesight warmed from blue to orange, when the arrows flitted in, which she batted away with quick-whispered spells and slaps of her hands. With a flick of her wrist, the arrows ripped free from the earth to twirl back toward the Ephremian line, where they were received with gurgles, groans, and spurts of blood.

Somehow, the Stranger had sent her directly into the battle. Not that she wondered how he did it, when she herself knew of three possible enchantments.

Finding herself in the thick of what she had assumed was a glimpse of the future, she realized he had not only allowed her to witness history as it unfolded, but dispatched her to that living moment. Whether it had already happened before, or was happening now, was now irrelevant, when her skin was most definitely in the game.

Suvani smiled a cruel smile. Having concocted spells especially for battlegrounds, she was delighted to prove this battle magic now.

As bristling Ephremian ranks hunkered near, eyeing her with determined but wary eyes, she slashed right, and that flank dissolved, bubbling to the ground; then she flicked left, and a roaring fire, orange and ferocious, pounced from her outstretched hand, slagging their shield wall, then their armor, to a cruel cage, constricting their charring flesh, pinching their screams to death groans, then incinerating the remains until sweet-smelling smoke obscured the battlefield.

As the power rushed within Suvani, she seethed through gritted teeth. The Stranger had left her a remnant of his power. The blasted deity just could not stop giving. While her untried spells might have slain a handful before this, now the slain were like dandelions gone to seed, blown away by the merest puff of her magic. Even if the Stranger had forced his gifts upon her, she did not like the feeling of owing others. All she desired from her people was that they bow with shuddering reverence, and from other lands, that they shrink and cringe before her name.

By the time her resentment had brewed to a fine storm, hundreds had melted to bubbles and char, leaving no hand lifted against her, and when the lent power ebbed, by then she was so hungry for it that she felt the stranger's borrowed wrath retract over the horizon, retracing the dark wind that brought her here.

As the craving smoldered to a dull ache, Suvani tottered, and lifted her hand to her clouding eyes to steady herself, when the dizziness lurched in her guts, again and again, until she swam in nausea she held back once, twice, three times, tasting the bile as it splashed the back of her teeth.

Had the god left her so weak and full of vomit, she wondered, or was it only head to toe exhaustion, having not slept in two days, while her spite-and-vengeance-fevered brain plotted the deaths of heroes, and her other end was wracked by the hard muscles of the sphinx's back? If these otherworldly champions believed their sleepless nights part of their heroic journey, while the evil queen ate candy, slept in a feather bed, and ordered executions with a madcap grin, they would be surprised to learn that preoccupation with power and obsession with might drove the wicked from the dusk to dawn. Just as righteousness haunted the good, one-upmanship tormented the wicked. If she was better at the game of winning, she had been blessed and cursed by a worthy adversary since birth.

As a blue blur rushed in with the exhaustion, she closed her eyes and sank to one knee. Whatever, whoever it was, they waited, but it was hardly noble of them, for they filled the lull with a scornful snicker she knew better than her own heartbeat.

"Why do you not help me up?" While her faintness of breath was no lie, she didn't care one way or the other for his answer, having only riddled him to swell this pause larger, to calm her racing pulse and ragged breath as he second guessed the steps that had led him here, to the only moment in when he might have stolen the throne. Having well learned her uncle's lesson that cunning and cleverness were weapons of the weak, she despised herself even as she took this page from the sphinx's book. It might have been better to be overthrown than to have this feinting question sticking in her craw.

She opened her eyes. It was a gigantic chariot, more monster than war machine. Each wheel was taller than him, and at sixteen, Vemulus was two heads taller than most. Massive kariks groaned against their chomped bits, the bridles taut on their mouths, and their harnesses biting their forequarters, as their clover-shaped hooves dragged through the soil. From his metal perch, Vemulus glared imperiously, his nostrils flaring like some misfit dragon, an impression underpinned by his scale armor, bristling with spikes. Having mastered sphinxes, griffins, and talking animals in all shapes, Suvani was not one to admire size or muscle,but she could not help admiring the huge concatenation of dumb beast and hammered metal. And the karik chariot wasn't too shabby either, she snickered.

"You ride that thing quiet." She breathed a bored, sarcastic sigh. "Your tantrums made more noise than your moping mode of locomotion."

He snorted. "Your mind was elsewhere. There's been screaming the whole way."

"You've been screaming? The rats should take it easy on you."

"Very funny. I meant the Ephremians. It's a complete rout, you'll be glad to know."

"I might be glad, if not for your little coup."

"Coup?" He spat. "I was only countermanding your orders when they had become nonsense."

"You mean your honor was slighted--by children." When he bridled at this, the scorn and spite rushing through her felt like might, but well knowing the difference from careful application of all three, she racked her brain for the best words to stop his mouth and prolong their staring contest, a competition for which she had daily practice from the seat of a throne, just as he was more skilled at regicide, having drilled not only with a twelve foot spear but by running over a fleeing front line with this ungainly chariot. "Everyone's talking about it, Vemulus. Fearing your queenly sister, they don't dare laugh, but whenever you think they whisper about you, they undoubedly are."

Having crossed her arms, the tap of her fingertips on her satiny sleeve ripped through the growing hush, which had swelled to keep pace with Vemulus's reddening face. As embarrassment fought with rage, she raised her hand to her lips, and chewed the nail of her forefinger, working it between her two teeth as she fretted what to do.

It wasn't that they were family, nor that he was second in line to the throne. Since family and politics bored her, the rules of succession were one part party game, and another part elimination game,

not unlike the musical chairs by which uncle had seated her on the throne. No, a more primal connection disturbed her, and a more inflexible set of rules, the laws of magic, which in Alsantia, was the same thing as the laws of the physical universe. So it wasn't just that Vemulus was family, sharing not only a name but a common story, it was that they were born five minutes apart, not only blood siblings but bound to the same rhythm of days and years. Any curse or battle magic launched at her brother would likely backfire to consume her, if it did not mushroom into a new Sargon Vos. Moreover, as magic was in the blood of Alsantian royalty, there was no telling how much of her spell he would remember, or worse, understand.

No matter how much Suvani wanted to curse him, she couldn't risk this blood taboo. Until Alsantian troops converged here, she must stall her clod of a brother, for while she did not particularly care if she created another Sargan Vos, she was quite taken with Ephremia and had already commissioned plans for a summer palace there.

Flexing her most catty smile, Suvani raised her arms above her head in a bored yawn. "I suppose I should thank you."

"I'd die first," snorted Vemulus. "I don't expect to hear that in my lifetime."

"Well, no, of course not," she tittered, "but I must admit, factually speaking, and not speaking from my heartless heart, that you've done a splendid job." While she had hoped this to be taken sincerely, she couldn't rein in her sarcastic reflex, which sent her brows in a cruel descent toward her sparking eyes. Seeing his sneer, she thought to save her gibe by turning it into a backhanded compliment. "...even if you've been led by the nose the whole way."

"Now that's the sister I know. Taking credit for everything I do."

"Oh no," she cackled, "If I played a part here, it was only as an actor. He pulled my strings too, not that it wasn't a fun bit to play."

"What are you talking about?"

"The Stranger. He's returned to Alsantia."

"You're joking," scoffed Vemulus. "Do you mean to say you did none of this?" He swept his spear wide toward the oozing remnants of the dissolved Ephremian regiments, whose white, ashy residue seeped into the soil, congealed into puddles, and clumped to the long grasses.

"They were my spells." Templing her fingers, Suvani batted her eyes in as haughty am expression as she could muster. "Not only did I mouth the words, but I take pride in my sorcerous heritage. But while I have made sphinxes, griffins, and princes beg"--her smile stretched to a malicious grin--"I am far from the power of a god. Unless you think your sister can make ranks of soldiers vanish into thin air, in which case, where were you when I earned this power? Have you not stood by my side these many years?"

"More or less." Vemulus shrugged. "But not from love."

"Of course not, brother," she snickered. "You were watching me. I was watching me too." At his sneer, she chuckled. "You can't think I was watching you?"

Vemulus's eyes became piercing and frigid. "Then this is a place of power."

"You don't know what you're talking about, little brother."

"I do listen occasionally," he sighed, "and you have told me about such places more than once. Do you not remember convincing our tutors to take us on an outing to the Sargan Vos?"

This was not like her brother; it was neither like him to listen, to admit to anyone's influence or persuasion, nor was it like him to reminisce. In everything he did, Vemulus was an ungainly lion sunning on a stone, without a thought to the origins or consequences of his actions. As Suvani was the cause of everything this lazy villain did, he had proved easy to manipulate since they were toddlers,

when she made him poison their father's hounds so she could retrieve her doll from their kennel.

"You're stalling." While Suvani would never own to her fear by swirling around or looking over her shoulder, she let her eyes flick left, then right, ever so imperceptibly, like the minute shift of a hummingbird. While nothing stirred in the ooze to the left or the ashes to the right, a shadow murmured in the wake of Vemulus's chariot.

He chortled. "Of course I am. I'm not blind. I saw what you did to those dogs, and being not so much dog myself, I'm in no hurry to chase my own tail for all eternity in the Ephremian land of the dead." He leered at her evilly. "And while I've never been your match in verbal sparring, you have always underestimated the value of history."

"How can history save you now?" Suvani scowled. "While the Stranger's dark wind flowed through me to dissolve the Ephremians, I can manage an overgrown lout myself."

"I think not," said Vemulus. "We had the same tutors, Suvani. While I cared nothing for study, even to learn those fascinating tricks, it was so flattering to hear my royal blood was magical that my ears perked up at those parts."

"Who cares what you know? I might do it anyway, and dare the consequences." When she snorted, a slip of hair blew up out of her eyes. "But you know me better, don't you?" As her fingers flexed, Vemulus yanked the reins, but it was too late, and he seemed to melt to a crouch in the chariot.

"I've no patience for maybes and mights, nor babies and mites like you, dear brother--excepting my own might, of course." When she trailed off into a villainous cackle, this vile laugh swelled into a scourging malediction in ancient Alsantian, and the leftmost karik fell inside itself, like a collapsing house, as if its bones were tissue paper, and the issue of its deep groan changed in pitch as it deflated,

ending in a greasy, shuddering squeal; as the beast caved in, its slumping skin yanked at the harness pole, consuming the chariot in the malestrom of flesh, until snapping and cracking rocked the battlefield at a deafening register, and ended by sucking Vemulus's spear into the gory tornado of skin, blood, and bone.

When the other karik, dumb beast that it was, realized this vortex threatened to devour it, it pulled hard against its harness, ripping leather and rending steel, and as the tatters whipped free, Vemulus seized the tail end and was dragged from the crumbling wreckage by its thundering gallop.

As her brother's ridiculous retreat headed for the encroaching shadow, the shadow surged toward Suvani, whose skin cooled, heart palpitated, and eyes blurred in a tremendous squeeze of fear. That couldn't be what it actually was, she reasoned to herself, and as this cold logic resolved, the mirage wrought by her own fear unraveled, revealing the enormous swarm of rats that chittered, screeched, and now hurtled toward Suvani.