And so it had become crucial that the Stepsons who sniffed round her skirts bekept at bay - or ensnared, or bought, or enslaved. Or, if not, destroyed. Butcarefully, so carefully. For Tempus, who had been her enemy three decades agowhen he fought the Defender's Wars on Wizardwall's steppes, was a dozen StormGods' avatar; no army he sanctified could know defeat; no war he fought couldnot be won. Combat was life to him; he fought like the gods themselves, like anentelechy from a higher sphere -and even had friends among those powers notcorporeal or vulnerable to sortilege of the quotidian sort a human might employ.

And now it was being decreed in Mygdonia's tents that he must be removed fromthe field - taken out of play in this southern theatre, manoeuvred north wherethe warlocks could neutralize him. Such was the word her lover-lord had senther: move him north, or make him impotent where he stayed. The god he servedhere had been easier to rout. But she doubted that would incapacitate him; therewere other Storm Gods, and Tempus, who under a score of names had fought in moredimensions than she had ever visited, knew them all. Vashanka's denouement mightscare the Rankans and give the Ilsigs hope, but more than rumours andmanipulation of theomachy by even the finest witch would be needed to makeTempus fold his hands or bow his head. To make him run, then, was animpossibility. To lure him north, she hoped, was not. For this was no place forRoxane. Her nose was offended by the stench which blew east from Downwind andnorth from Fisherman's Row and west from the Maze and south from either theslaughterhouses or the palace - she'd not decided which.

So she had called a meeting, itself an audacious move, with her kind where theydwelled on Wizardwall's high peaks. When it was done, she was much weakened - it