We were on our feet, the three of us, instinctively keeping our distance from the walls—and watching the timbers above us, in case they should start to crack.
For the second time, a voice spoke in the air. “Now,” the mage said harshly. “It must be now.”
Then the young man was gone. Neither Isla nor I saw his departure.
_______
She reacted while I stood motionless in consternation. In the wake of Argoyne’s bodiless utterance, she protested, “He’s exhausted! He hasn’t rested!” Furiously, she cried, “By the White Lords, do you want him to fail?”
There was no answer. Instead a third tremor jolted us. It struck the cell harder than the first two combined, endured longer. I staggered, despite my training, and Isla fought for balance. Above us, timbers shrieked against each other. A disturbing unsteadiness afflicted the lamps.
Argoyne’s peril was more desperate than I had imagined. He had expended too much of his power testing us—and lost too much time.
When the convulsion eased, I saw that its force had stricken a crack up one wall from floor to ceiling beside the door.
The door—
Isla did not see it. The straining timbers consumed her attention. “Asper!” she shouted. “The keep is falling! We’ll be crushed!”
The door. At last. Argoyne’s magery had failed him. Or he no longer needed it. Or our imprisonment served no further purpose in his designs.
“I think not.” Between one heartbeat and the next, my dismay vanished. Some sleight of circumstance transferred it to her, and I was freed. “These quakes will cease as soon as Argoyne announces his champion.”
I had already turned my fang to the challenge of the door.
Now she noticed it. “Asper—” she gasped. “What’s happening? How did this—?”
“Compose yourself,” I snapped, “and let me work.” Her questions, and my own, would answer themselves soon enough.
I was nahia, a master of Circumvention. No mere door could hold me if I bent my will to escape. But could I bypass this obstacle quickly? That was another matter altogether. The more strictly the door had been secured, the more time and skill would be needed to open it.
I did not care why Black Argoyne’s concealment of the door had failed. Rather, I wished to know how much trust he had placed in that concealment.
“This changes everything, Asper,” Isla insisted at my back. “The White Lords must have beaten him. He can’t protect his keep. Why don’t they press their advantage? Why risk this war on a champion when they can tear his power stone from stone?”
“Am I a mage?” I snarled without interrupting my efforts. I had no patience for her. “Do I understand these things?”
I understood bolts and locks, staples and bindings. Estimating the actions of mages required too many assumptions. Words were also a form of circumvention, however, and they could cut as well as any blade.
“Perhaps,” I continued while I tested the door, “the effect of their attacks is hidden from the White Lords. Or perhaps the Archemage has other uses for his power. The truth—”
Abruptly I sighed. It appeared that Argoyne relied more upon magery than upon physical restriction. My fang found the doorbolt and turned it so that its hasp left the staple. Carefully I began to slip the bolt aside.
“The truth,” I repeated as I pulled the door open, “will be revealed when we find him.”
Between her teeth, Isla remarked, “Asper, you amaze me.” But she did not pause to admire my handiwork. “Come on,” she commanded at once. Ahead of me, she hastened from the cell. “I have a debt to repay.”
I followed without hesitation. I, too, had a debt to repay—although it did not much resemble hers.
For the first time in uncounted days, we were free of imprisonment. Therefore we were also free of Argoyne’s purposes, and could now choose our own way—or so she apparently believed.
I did not make that assumption.
_______
We found him with relative ease. The corridors and chambers within the keep were simply arranged, one level above the next. On each, a large hall filled the center of the structure, surrounded by a wide passageway. Smaller rooms were arrayed between the corridor and the keep’s walls. A broad stair climbed from floor to floor. We might have spent days at it if we had attempted to search the outer chambers, but by tacit agreement we concentrated on the central halls. I was content to believe that the Archemage would need space around him in order to wield his power. On each level, we opened massive doors to look inward, discovered nothing, and proceeded to the next stair.
None of the passages we traveled resembled the one in which we had been tested.
At another time, I would have been fascinated by the apparent absence of any servants, retainers, companions, or defenders. Argoyne the Black, it seemed, desired no human service—or had been abandoned by it. In addition, I would have been intensely interested in the possessions with which the outer rooms were filled, as well as in the uses to which the inner halls were put. Much of what I saw served no purpose I could recognize. Now, however, I was in too much haste for curiosity. Refusing investigation, I kept pace with Isla.
Five levels above our cell, we came upon the Archemage.
In a stone chamber lit by the keep’s ceaseless lamps, he sat at a long trestle table scattered with scrolls and charts, his back to the door. More scrolls curled outward from the stool on which he perched, in reach of ready reference. And still more, texts by the hundreds, were piled upon row after row of shelves propped against all the walls—scrolls in profusion, of every description, some plainly ancient, others still gilt and gleaming. Together they held more knowledge than I had ever seen, or indeed imagined, in one place.
At the sight, I experienced an eerie pang. Where the mashu-te valued purity and scruples, the nahia prized knowledge. Granted the opportunity, my masters would have cheerfully slaughtered a kingdom to obtain so much treasure.
Isla, in contrast, would have cheerfully fired the room to rid Vesselege of Black Argoyne.
Even here, our captor was alone—a small figure immersed in his robes, hunching over his scrolls as though he fed from them. Whatever his needs may have been, for food or drink, for companionship or service, he supplied them by magery. The White Lords and Goris Miniter had made him a pariah to be feared and shunned.
From the back, a nimbus of white hair as fine as silk concealed the edges of his face. And he did not turn toward us. Indeed, he seemed unaware of our arrival. Sacrificing stealth for haste, we had not opened the door quietly, but other concerns held his attention.
As they would have held mine, in his place—
“Asper—” Isla breathed softly.
I ignored her.
Before the Archemage hung an image like the one in which Isla and I had watched the young man’s last test. This was far larger, however, filling one end of the hall. And the scene arrayed within it lay at some considerable distance, that was obvious. Argoyne’s stone walls—his keep among the peaks of Scarmin—contained no sunlit meadows, rich with wildflowers and grasses, like the one I saw beyond the table.
I knew at once that I gazed upon the ground appointed for the contest of champions. For the blood of the young shin-te—or of his opponent. For the resolution of the Mage War.
From the foreground of the image, the young man emerged, striding slowly away from us as if he strolled the meadow at his leisure. At first he was alone among the flowers under a sky defined by plumes and wisps of cloud. Before he had taken ten paces, however, a row of horsemen appeared along the far horizon. Dark with distance, and silent as dreams, they galloped swiftly forward, converging on the shin-te as they rode—an ominous throng, fifty or more, most of them soldiers and warriors. Soon I distinguished Goris Miniter by his helm and bearing, and by the crest of Vesselege on his velvet cape. The men on either side of him
, clad in flowing robes so pure that they appeared to flame with reflected sunlight, must have represented the White Lords.
Neither Isla nor I advanced. The sight of the young man, isolated among the blooms, facing a force great enough to overwhelm any champion, kept us motionless.
At last the riders drew near enough to encircle him. By some trick of magery, however, they did not obscure our view of him. From horseback, Goris Miniter appeared to address the shin-te, but his words made no more sound than the mute hooves and tack of the horses, the silent commands of the soldiers. If the young man answered, we could not hear it. In the image they were all as voiceless as the dead.
Abruptly Argoyne searched among his scrolls, opened another on the table, and set his hand upon it. At once the scene seemed to gain depth as the meadow unveiled its sounds to the hall. A breeze we could not feel soughed gently. Horses stamped their hooves, jangled their reins. Men coughed and caught their breath.
“Goris Miniter,” Argoyne muttered, “King of Vesselege, I’m here.” By magery his voice carried into the distance until it appeared to resound in the air of the meadow, echoing strangely.
Startled, many of the horsemen searched for the source of the sound. One of the White Lords leaned aside to advise or instruct the King.
Miniter raised his head. His features were plain before us—the iron will of his mouth, the lines of calculation around his eyes. In Vess he was known as a clever monarch, a man adept at ruling powers he did not possess and could not match.
“Join us, Archemage,” he commanded the breeze and the sky. “This war will be decided here. Your absence warns of treachery.”
“As does your presence, King of Vesselege,” Argoyne answered. His tone was querulous and unsteady, the voice of an old man, wearied by his struggles and bitter about death. “I’ve agreed to this contest in terms that bind me. If my champion loses, my defenses fail with him. And if I attempt treachery to help him, my own powers will destroy me.
“Your White Lords are similarly bound. But you are not. You’re only an ally here, not a mage. Not a participant.
“I’ll stay where I am,” the Archemage concluded, “in case you’re tempted to take matters into your own hands.”
Goris Miniter scowled at this response, but did not protest. Instead he barked, “Then we will begin! The sooner your darkness is brought to an end, Black Argoyne, the sooner hope and healing will dawn at last in Vesselege.”
With one gloved fist, he made a gesture as if he meant to fling all his riders against the shin-te.
Only one horseman advanced, however. A warrior nudged his mount a pace or two into the ring. Among so many other men, he had not caught my eye. But when he left his place in the circle I seemed to know him instantly by the completeness of his command over his horse, the liquid flow of his movements as he dismounted, the perfect readiness of his strides and his poise—and by the palpable force of his qa. The might compressed within his frame was as vivid as a shout.
“Asper,” Isla breathed again. “It must be now.”
Still I ignored her. Argoyne could not remain deaf to our presence indefinitely. And when he noticed us, we would be lost. We had no hope against magery. Yet I could not break the spell cast on me by the sun-blazed robes of the White Lords, by Goris Miniter’s grim attention—and by the plight of the young man who had fought and died, fought and died, without knowing why.
The nerishi-qa was not a large man, perhaps no more than three fingers taller than the shin-te, and of somewhat greater bulk. Among my other apprehensions, this also troubled me. Where skill and qa were equal, any contest might be decided by weight of fist. Here was another disadvantage for a young man already hampered by fatigue and sorrow. In contrast, the nerishi-qa seemed arrogant and calm, certain of his strength.
His masters had at last accepted the challenge of the shin-te. And the fate of a kingdom rested on the outcome.
Respectfully, the young man bowed to his opponent. We could not see his face. Within myself, I prayed that the gaze he fixed on the nerishi-qa held anger rather than grief. When it did not sow confusion, anger bred force. Grief nurtured despair. And the harvest of despair was death.
The champion of the White Lords did not bow. His smile held untrammeled disdain as he advanced.
Despite this insult, the shin-te withheld attack. From the distance of the keep and the image, I saw no tension in his shoulders, his hips, his qa. Standing lightly, he waited in sunlight for the test of the killing stroke.
When it came, Isla also struck. Seemingly borne aloft by his qa, the nerishi-qa focused both weight and muscle in a flying kick which might have snapped his opponent’s spine—and Isla launched herself at the Archemage. While the shin-te slipped the kick aside, countering with elbow and palm, she slapped the crook of her arm around Argoyne’s throat, clamped her forearm to the base of his skull. Holding him so, she could snap his neck with one quick lift of her shoulders.
Instinctively he clutched at her arm. At once, she swept her leg over the table, wiping the clutter of scrolls beyond his reach.
“Isla—!” I protested.
In her turn, she ignored me.
“Now,” she murmured to his ear. “Now you’re mine. I hold your death, mage. I’m going to repay my own.”
Carried past the shin-te by his kick, the nerishi-qa rolled in the air to deflect the swift force of the young man’s elbow. Then, instead of landing heavily, he seemed to settle into the grass, his poise undisturbed. I could not hear him—the image had lost sound when Argoyne’s hands left his scrolls—but he appeared to be laughing.
“Wait,” I told Isla urgently. “Wait!”
Hastening to the table, I confronted her past the Archemage. I feared and distrusted him as much as she did. Now that she had grasped his defeat, however, I found that I did not want him slain. Instead I wished to see the outcome of the young man’s contest.
I wished to believe that my own deaths had not been wasted.
And I wished to understand this war.
Argoyne the Black had the look of a man who had spent his life among midnights and maggots. His beard was of the same fine white silk as his hair, but beneath it lay the slick, sunless complexion of a fish. And with Isla’s arms wrapped about his neck, he gaped like a fish, eyes bulging, scarcely able to breathe. Hints of milk in his eyes obscured his vision.
As she had said, she held his death in her arms. Yet he appeared undaunted. Gasping for breath, he demanded, “What do you think you’ll gain by breaking my neck?”
“Our lives,” she retorted without hesitation. “Victory for your enemies.”
“You won’t enjoy it,” he warned.
“Won’t I?” She tightened her grasp. “You don’t know me very well.”
I could imagine no appeal which might reach her. Her face held nothing for me, no doubt and no softness. Her scruples lay elsewhere.
I could have killed her there. My skills and my fang were apt for such an action. But my masters would have never forgiven me that dishonor. No nahia would have forgiven it.
“And you,” Black Argoyne panted in return, “don’t understand the tyranny of the pure. You fool, I’m all that remains of hope for this land!”
There I saw my opening. “Hear him, Isla,” I urged quickly. “Let him speak. We know nothing of this war. If we will determine its outcome, we must know what we do.”
She looked at me. As if involuntarily, her grasp loosened, permitting the mage more air.
“Isn’t he the Black Archemage,” she challenged me angrily, “devoted to darkness? Hasn’t he rained down death on all Vesselege until Goris Miniter himself has been forced to side with the White Lords? How much more do you need to know?”
In the image, the nerishi-qa attacked again. His tactics had changed. He no longer attempted to end the contest with one blow. Instead he advanced through a flurry of strikes
and feints.
As before, the shin-te countered, landing a blow of his own when he could, parrying when he could not. Despite the pressure of his opponent’s assault, he moved easily, preserving his strength.
In a sense, the battle had not yet become serious. Both champions still measured each other, probing not so much for victory as for an estimation of their skills and weaknesses.
“You understand honor,” Argoyne coughed. Hooking his fingers on Isla’s forearm, he strained against her hold. He could not shift her grasp, but he gained space enough to speak more clearly. “Or you should. Every Fatal Art preaches it.
“Why do you think all the White Lords and Goris Miniter have banded together against me? Do you call that honorable? Do you really believe I’m so malign—and so powerful—that they had no choice? I’m just one mage. One man. Would every mashu-te in Vesselege go to war against one nahia? Or even one nerishi-qa?
“This whole struggle,” he spat, “is dishonorable.”
His assertion surprised me. I had not expected such an argument from a mage. Despite my experience of death, my enmity toward him wavered.
For her part, however, Isla was unmoved. Sneering, she retorted, “And what do you have to do with ‘honor,’ Archemage?”
“Little enough,” he admitted. “Everything they say about me is true.” His voice held an edge of savagery—of rage prolonged and constricted beyond endurance. Battle after battle, death after death, he had nurtured his fury until it filled him. “I study darkness. The Seven Hells are my domain.” He released one hand to indicate the ring of riders in the meadow. “They can’t bring slaughtered warriors back to life. I can. And I have rained violence on Vesselege. But not until they forced me to it. Not until they formed their alliance against me.
“Your White Lords—” In his mouth the words were a curse. “They don’t just think I’m wrong. They think I should be crushed. Because my magery isn’t like theirs. They want to destroy me because I look for power in places they fear. They want to destroy my knowledge. Not because of anything I did. Because of what I am. And what I know. Until they started this war, I’d committed no crime they could hold against me.”
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