As she wove her web of terror, Randal's mage's talent screamed silently forhelp.
It screamed so well and so loudly, with every atom of his imperiled being, thatfar away to the west, in his cabin before a pool of gravel neatly raked, high ona cliffside overlooking the misty seascape of the Bandaran Islands' chain,Nikodemos paused in his meditation and rubbed gooseflesh rising suddenly on hisarms.
And rose, and sought the cliffside, and stared out to sea awhile before he bent,picked up a fist-sized stone, and cast it into the waves. Then Niko began makingpreparations to leave-to forsake his mystical retreat once more for the World,and for the World's buttocks, the town called Sanctuary, where of all places inthe Rankan Empire Niko, follower of maat-the mystery of Balance and TranscendentPerception-and son of the armies, least wanted to go.
Even for Niko's sable stallion, the trek from Bandara to Sanctuary had been longand hard. Not as long or hard as it would have been for Niko on a lesser horse,but long enough and hard enough that when Niko arrived in town, bearded andwhite with trail dirt, he checked into the mercenaries' guild north of thepalace and went immediately to sleep.
When he woke, he washed his face with water from an ice-crusted bedside pot,scratched his two-months growth of beard and decided not to shave it, then wentdown to the common room to eat and get a brief.
The guild hostel's common room was unchanged- wine-dark even in morning, quietall and every day. On its sideboard stood steaming bowls of mulled wine andgoat's blood and, beside, cheese and barley and nuts for men who needed possetsin the morning to brace them for hard work to come.
These days, in Sanctuary, the meres were eating better -a function, Niko