Madwand (Illustrated) (23 page)

Even as he made the gesture, however, Pol saw Larick stiffen and begin to turn, knowing that the other sorcerer had heard the sounds of his entrance. He saw the look of astonishment upon his face, succeeded immediately by one of apprehension.

But Larick managed to move, and he moved quickly. His left hand shot upward, fingers knotting. He seized upon a red diagonal and jerked it into the path of Pol’s attack.

The force of the blow knocked him sprawling upon the floor, but he had managed to keep it from striking him. Pol turned the long shaft which he still held, and with a chopping motion of his left hand shortened it to a javelin. Larick shook his head and began pushing himself up from the floor. His gaze locked with Pol’s as Pol was drawing back his right arm to hurl the gleaming shaft.

Larick pushed himself back onto his heels and raised both arms high up over his head. Pol cast the spear of light directly toward him and Larick dropped his arms. The bright bands which lay before him jumped and seemed to turn on their longitudinal axes.

It was like the sudden snapping shut of a Venetian blind. Larick was momentarily invisible behind a rainbow wall. Pol’s lance struck against it and both the shaft and the wall seemed to shatter in a fountain of sparks. As these fell away, he saw Larick standing, moving his hands crossbody.

His peripheral vision warned him, barely in time. Larick was operating two lateral diagonals like a bright pair of scissors. Pol extended both hands before him and rushed forward.

He seized upon a vertical and thrust it before him into the jaws of the light-spell. The diagonals closed upon it, their edges halting inches from his waist. He saw a slight sign of strain upon Larick’s face as the man’s hands tightened further. The diagonals jerked nearer. He pushed even harder himself, holding them back. Larick leaned forward, straining against the pressure.

Abruptly, Pol heaved forward with all of his strength, throwing himself backward, dropping to the floor and rolling to the side as Larick staggered back and the bands closed above him.

Regaining his feet, he faced Larick again, watching his hands. He began circling the other at a distance of about fifteen feet and Larick turned slowly, accommodating his position to the movement. Slowly, the other sorcerer’s hands began to move in an elaborate pattern. Pol followed them as closely as he could but was unable to detect any manipulation of the magical materials as he now perceived them.

Suddenly, Larick’s foot passed through a wide, sweeping gesture and one of the lower bands took Pol across the ankles and he pitched sideways to the floor. Cursing himself for being misdirected so easily, he struggled to rise.

But the floor seemed to ripple and heave, preventing his recovery. As he fought against it, he realized that his weight no longer rested upon the floor, but that he now rode upon a rippling wave of the bands several inches above it. It was then that he began to realize that technique in these matters could be more important than raw energy. He could not regain his footing, but supported himself on his knees and left hand. He saw Larick’s right foot moving rapidly up and down as if pumping a piano pedal, keeping the surface in agitation beneath him. It seemed that Larick’s facility so far exceeded his that effective countermeasures were a matter of reflex to him, whereas Pol had to think for several moments to decide upon each attack and defense.

He wondered then whether a magical attack was the ultimate answer in dealing with the man. If he could only get near enough to land a blow capable of distracting Larick from magical manipulations, he felt confident that his own boxer’s reflexes would be sufficient to deal with him in hand-to-hand fighting. If they were not, then he’d a feeling that he’d simply met a better man . . . 

The bands! They could obviously be employed to support one’s weight. So . . . 

Reaching upward, he took hold of the higher, rising bands and drew himself upright, continuing the motion until he swung free above the heaving layer. Larick’s right hand was already moving, out to the side, at shoulder level.

Pol reached far forward, took hold of another horizontal, swung upon it, directly toward Larick.

He was able to twist his body aside at the last possible moment, release himself and drop.

Larick had held a three-foot blade of green light, sword-like, swung ready to impale him.

He felt the normal floor beneath him again, and he snatched at a diagonal band of yellow light, willing it into blade-form, dragging it into an
en garde
position as he struggled for footing. It was the first time in this world that he had held anything like a blade in his hands—and also the first time since the end of the previous fencing season at the university.

He parried a head cut and leaped backward, not having sufficient footing and balance to venture a riposte. As he recovered and Larick advanced, he became aware of two things simultaneously: Larick was facing him full-body rather than sidewise, and a dark oblong several feet in length had taken form upon his left arm.

He backed away as Larick came on. Blade and shield was not normal collegiate fencing. It was something medieval—slower, more ponderous, entailing different footwork. He was not about to materialize a shield of his own and face Larick on terms with which the other man had to be more familiar.

Larick swung his blade through a chest cut and Pol leaped backward, entirely avoiding any engagement. Larick continued his advance, Pol his retreat.

Quickly, he reviewed everything he knew concerning the other’s techniques. Larick should be unfamiliar with the lunge; also, most of his bladework should involve the edge rather than the point of the weapon. Pol maintained a saber en garde, but began thinking in terms of the épée.

He halted his retreat and feinted a chest cut. Larick raised his shield slightly and moved to ready his blade for a slashing riposte. Pol did not follow through, and he saw that Larick was beginning to smile.

He adopted a low stance and beat once upon the other’s blade. The attack followed.

The moment Larick’s blade moved, Pol was back and up, very straight and high, his weapon describing a clockwise semicircle into an overhand position, from which he executed a stop-thrust to the other’s forearm. Larick made a small noise in his throat as Pol then continued the movement through a full bind in anticipation of going in for the body past the edge of the shield.

But the weapon spun out of Larick’s hand, and he stepped backward, covering himself more fully. Pol smiled, stamped his foot and rushed him.

Larick raised his right arm, but Pol ignored it and threw a head-cut. The green blade came flying back from the floor into Larick’s hand, and he parried it. Pol could not check his momentum, so he increased it, crashing into Larick’s shield before he could riposte.

As Larick staggered back, Pol chopped heavily at his weapon, knocking it aside, then kicked as hard as he could squarely against the center of the shield. Larick stumbled and Pol chopped again, knocking the blade from his hand once more. The shield swung aside and Pol was no longer in any orthodox fencing posture, but was near enough to drive his left fist into the other’s midsection.

The shield fell away as he struck, and he cast his own weapon aside to throw a right at Larick’s jaw.

Larick recovered, and raising his hands before his face, his elbows together over his midsection, rushed directly toward him. Pol stepped to the side and threw a left toward his head but did not connect.

Larick dropped and seized him about the knees. Pol felt himself go off balance; grabbed for Larick’s shoulder, caught only a handful of his shirt and fell backward to the accompaniment of a tearing sound.

“Kill him! Hurry!” the voice came into his head.

As Pol fell, Larick attempted to hurl himself upon him but was met with a crosscut that knocked him off to the side. At that instant, Pol knew exactly what he must do.

He raised his right hand to shoulder level, palm upward, as he rolled to straddle Larick’s supine form. His dragonmark throbbed as the blackness of the lines which separated the bands about him fled toward his hand and coalesced into a dark ball of negation, cancellation, death.

As he swung the ball downward toward Larick’s face, his eyes jerked once and he barely had time to twist his body and hurl the death-sphere across the room, away.

Larick struggled to rise, and he clipped him once, hard, on the point of the chin and felt him grow slack. Then he rocked back onto his heels, brushed his hair out of his eyes and stared.

He reached slowly forward. There, where he had torn away the sleeve . . . Larick’s right arm lay bare.

His hand trembled slightly as he touched the exposed dragonmark above Larick’s right wrist.

XVI.

Ryle Merson’s voice filled the chamber:

“Is he still alive?”

Pol ignored it, reached up and removed the bandana from Larick’s head. A single streak of white ran through his dark hair, front to back.

Only then did Pol turn his head and regard the heavy figure which had just come into the chamber.

“Have you slain him?” Ryle asked.

Pol stood and took a step toward the man.

“I haven’t killed anyone here, yet,” he said. “Who is Larick, anyway? And what is he to you?”

“How did you come free of the spell which bound you?”

“No. You answer me. I want to know about Larick.”

“How quickly you forget your position,” Ryle said softly. “You may have freed yourself from direct control, but your leash is short.”

He spoke then the words which dissolved the spell of illusion, and the human guise slipped from Pol to reveal the monster body.

“The spell stands ready for the final transfer of which I spoke,” he said, “requiring but the proper guide-word.”

“I think not,” Pol replied, and his will flowed forth through the dragonmark, shattering the image of the monstrous form which hung over him; his features flowed back into their normal pattern, and his hair was stirred as by an invisible wind, its natural color returning, the white streak reappearing.

His garments hung in rags upon him and he breathed heavily for several moments, but he smiled.

“Answer me now,” he said. “Who is Larick?”

Ryle’s face grew pale.

“Back when your father and I were still on friendly terms,” he said, “he gave his young son into my care, as an apprentice.”

“Larick is my brother?”

Ryle nodded.

“He is about five years older than you.”

“What have you done to him?”

“I taught him the Art and I raised him to be a good man, to respect the decent things—”

Pol did a quick calculation.

“He was perfect insurance, too—when you broke with my father—wasn’t he? You had a hostage then, against the wrath of your former friend.”

“I am not ashamed to admit it,” Ryle replied. “You never knew your father. The man was a devil. And he was one of the best sorcerers around. I had to have some protection.”

A sudden flash of inspiration possessed him and Pol asked, “Could it be that Spier, who was still on good terms with my father, did what he did to your daughter in order to assure Larick’s safety?”

The color returned heavily to Ryle’s face.

“You think just like them, don’t you?” he said. “Yes. Even your father hadn’t pierced my defenses, but that bastard got through and did that thing to her. Larick has felt guilty about it all his life.”

“With no small help from you, I’d guess. That’s how you keep him in line, huh? The old guilt trip?”

“Something you’ve never felt, I’m sure. You’re ready to cut a helpless girl’s throat. You’d have done it by now if I hadn’t heard Larick’s cry.”

“I’d rather cut yours,” Pol said, moving forward. “You’re a damned hypocrite. You’re no better than my father or Spier. Maybe you’re worse. You were ready to go along with their plan when you thought there was something in it for you. When you saw you had something to lose you became a white magician and a defender of righteousness. It’s a lot of bullshit! You haven’t changed. Now you make my brother do your dirty work, to keep your own hands clean. But they’re not. You’re not a big enough fool to believe they are, are you?”

Ryle moved his hands into the beginning of a warding gesture, and Pol slipped immediately into the second seeing, dragonmark still pounding with his pulsebeat.

“You talk to me of morality when you hold the Keys to the Gate and my daughter lies ready for your blade? Who is the hypocrite, Detson?”

An arc of fire passed between the man’s fingertips, and Pol looked about for strands or bands, in vain.

But then, suddenly, it seemed as if great clouds of colored fog were drifting into the chamber.

Pol extended his hand and a blue mist was there when he needed it. He felt the condensing moisture upon his fingers. A moment later, he passed a globe of water the size of a basketball, dripping, from hand to hand. Fire. Water. It seemed he had the logical remedy ready for whatever Ryle had in mind.

As he waited for the older sorcerer to make the first move, he thought back over his battles with Keth and with Larick, wondering again why his perception of the magical world had altered in each instance. Then it occurred to him that on each occasion his vision could have been colored by the other’s magical world-view. Perhaps, now, Ryle’s world was somewhat more cloudy than most.

“We change each other’s way of seeing, don’t we?” he said, half-aloud.

“I am here to kill you, not to instruct you,” Ryle replied, and the fires he held became a curved dagger which he cast toward Pol’s breast.

Pol willed coldness and felt it flow through his fingertips. The watery sphere clouded and grew solid, covered with frost. The blade gouged ice chips from it when it struck, and then fell to the floor. Pol hurled the ice ball at Ryle, but the sorcerer stepped aside and it shattered against the wall behind him.

Ryle raised both arms and lowered them suddenly. The room vanished. They inhabited a region composed entirely of themselves and the colored clouds. Pol took another step forward. As before, he reasoned that if he could get within striking distance with his fists he could become a sufficient distraction to dispense with the magic and then, of course, with Ryle.