a glowing violet miniature replica of the bridge back and forth.
The burnt black remains of four men who had apparently tried to interfere with Marance lay within a few paces of the butcher-block. A few pale, horrified faces gawked from the windows of houses adjacent to the market, but evidently none of these spectators could muster the courage to try to stop the spellcaster, even though they must realize that if he kept on as he was, his efforts were likely to kill them.
Shamur, of course, did intend to stop him, and this once, despite her natural inclinations, she had no intention of allowing her adversary a sporting chance, the better to challenge and revel in her own prowess. Marance was too formidable, and there was too much at stake, to opt for a fair fight as long as she had an alternative. If possible, she meant to slip up on him from behind and dispatch him before he even realized he was in danger.
Unfortunately, the fish market was one of the few sections of the bridge that didn't have buildings along the sides. It would have been easier to sneak around behind Marance if she didn't have to descend to ground level, but she reckoned that a skilled thief still should have a chance. It was night, after all, and she was wearing dark clothing, including a hooded cloak to distort her silhouette. She started to clamber down the brown-stone wall of the last house south of the open space.
When she was halfway to ground, a tremor hit, and her poor, abused fingers, battered, wrenched, and rubbed raw by all the difficult climbing she'd already done, finally failed her. She lost her grip and fell.
She thought fleetingly that Marance was going to get his chance after all, for he would surely notice her slamming down on the cobbles. Then she did precisely that. She tumbled into a forward roll to cushion the shock, but it was a hard landing even so, and knocked the wind out of her.
Though half stunned, she felt a pressure in the air around her, and when she looked up at Marance, she observed that the glowing simulacrum of the bridge was reshaping itself into a doll-sized image of herself. Knowing a magic that could shake tons of stone could surely crush her to jelly in an instant, she hastily scrambled several feet to her left. The feeling of pressure vanished, and her replica dissolved into a shapeless, shifting blob of purple light, from which she inferred that this particular spell couldn't seize hold of her as long as she kept moving. Good to know, though it still left her with all of Marance's other tricks to worry about.
She drew her broadsword and stalked toward him, noticing as she did that even though he'd stopped tampering with it, the bridge kept on shaking. That probably meant it wouldn't take much more abuse to make it fall; she only prayed it wasn't doomed to collapse regardless. Staff in hand, Marance rose and glided backward from the writhing ball of purple phosphorescence, maintaining the distance between himself and his adversary, interposing butcher-blocks between them.
'This is rather a pity,' the wizard said. 'If I have to fight one of you Uskevren face to face, by rights, it ought to be my principal enemy, Thamalon.'
'I disagree,' Shamur said. 'You murdered my grand-niece and made me into your pawn, so I deserve the satisfaction of killing you. I've been hoping for a chance to confront you when you weren't surrounded with a horde of protectors.'
'Then you're in luck,' he replied, 'for I've pretty much expended all my summoning spells already. But I really don't think I'll need them to dispose of you.'
He reached inside his voluminous mantle. She sprang up onto a heaving table and charged him, bounding from one butcher-block to the next. He couldn't use them to impede her advance if she was running on top of them.
Still retreating, he brought out a feather, an article which she, who had known her share of wizards, recognized as one element of a spell of flight. She had to prevent him from casting it, or he'd soar up beyond her reach and magically smite her at his leisure. Reciting a rhyme, he twirled the quill through a complex mystical pass, and magenta sparks danced along its length. Meanwhile, still running, she transferred the broadsword to her left hand, drew her dagger with her right, and threw it.
She was grimly certain the quaking would hamper her aim, and in fact, the cast missed. But the knife flew close enough to his Man in the Moon mask to make him flinch, and the feather slipped from his grasp, disrupting the spell in progress.
Not allowing him time to attempt any other magic, she plunged into the distance and cut at his head, a hard, direct attack which, given that most spellcasters she'd known were not exceptionally skilled at hand-to-hand combat, she fully expected to land. But with the facility of a master, Marance slapped the broadsword aside with his staff. The two weapons were only in contact for an instant, but purple fire sizzled from the wooden one into Shamur's blade.
Wracked with pain, shuddering uncontrollably, she saw her opponent spin the staff to deliver another blow. Unable to parry, dodge, or counterattack in her current state, she floundered desperately backward and fell off the back of the table.
Once again, she crashed down with bruising force, but almost felt that the impact jarred some of the spasticity out of her, for her seizure abated somewhat. When, his staff weeping magenta flame, Marance scrambled around the table, she lurched to her knees and met him with a thrust to the groin. Since he halted abruptly, the attack didn't harm him, but it bought her a second to regain her feet. Then it was her turn to retreat and retreat while her twitching subsided.
Abruptly, catching her by surprise, Marance stepped backward as well, putting space between them, snatched something out of his mantle, and murmured another incantation. Voices moaned and gibbered from the air, and shadows danced crazily.
With terrible suddenness, bands of shimmering violet light appeared all around Shamur, thickening, meshing, rapidly combining to form a closed sphere. She lunged at one curved side of the trap and ripped at it, feeling the surface harden from a gummy consistency to steely hardness just as she forced her way through.
By that time, Marance was already completing another spell. A flare of dark power leaped from his pointed index finger. Shamur threw herself flat, and the magic sizzled over her. Even though it missed, for an instant, it made her jerk with agony.
She decided she couldn't allow him any more free shots at her while she was out of distance. Sooner or later, she wouldn't be able to dodge. She scuttled behind a butcher-block, then darted in his approximate direction from one such piece of cover to the next, scrambling on all fours, never presenting a target for more than an instant.
As she advanced, she heard him chanting in some bizarre tongue that was all grunts and consonants, but as far as she could tell, the spell had no effect. No destructive power blazed in her direction, nor did her surroundings alter.
Finally she was close enough to rush in and attack him. Somehow divining her location, he pivoted in her direction, settled into a fighting stance, and lifted the sparking, smoldering staff into a strong guard.
She nearly hesitated, for she was sure that last spell had achieved something, had set some sort of snare for her. But she couldn't very well retreat and permit him to strike her down from behind, then resume demolishing the bridge. She had no choice but to fight him, and so she bellowed and charged, trusting to her skills and aggression to see her through whatever surprise he had devised.
When she was nearly close enough to attack, her eyes met the strange, pale ones shining inside the sockets of the sickle-shaped mask, and Marance spoke a word of power. At that instant, Shamur's eyelids dropped, and her knees buckled, even as her mind grew dull and somnolent. She barely noticed Marance sweeping the staff around in a horizontal strike, and nearly failed to comprehend the significance as she did.
Nearly, but not quite. She dropped beneath the blow and bit down savagely on her lower lip. The burst of pain helped clear her mind of the unnatural sleep that had threatened to overwhelm her.
As she sprang up and came back on guard, she realized that Marance's last spell had given him a capacity somewhat like the basilisk that nightly guarded Argent Hall. He could now induce unconsciousness with his gaze, which meant it was perilous even to glance at his pearly eyes. In fact, she thought with a sudden, unexpected swell of her old daredevil's exultation, given all the wizard's advantages, this would almost certainly be the most challenging duel of her career.
Grinning, she feinted a thrust at Marance's foot, then, when the staff whipped down to club her wrist, she lifted the broadsword to cut his forearm. Retreating a half step, he spun his length of polished wood in a parry, and she snatched her blade back a split second before the two weapons could clash together.
He swung the staff at her head, and she jumped back out of range. At that point, he too tried to retreat, and she sprang forward to keep him from withdrawing too far away. She had to press him hard at all times, never
