allowing him a single moment's respite to cast a spell.
As they battled on, the crackling staff leaped at Shamur time after time, burning brighter and brighter, its corona of magenta fire burning streaks of afterimage across her sight. She ducked when the weapon shot at her head, jumped over it when it swept toward her ankles, sidestepped blows, or evaded them by hopping backward out of range, sometimes avoiding calamity with less than an inch to spare. Whenever Marance gave her a chance, she struck at him in turn, relying on compound attacks to draw the staff out of line and counterattacks to catch him at the moment he started to swing or thrust at her. She made sure above all else that whether her action succeeded or not, he wouldn't be able to bring his weapon into contact with her own.
Considering the handicaps she was laboring under, her mere survival demonstrated that she was fencing as brilliantly as she ever had in her life. But even so, she couldn't penetrate his guard, and soon, she would begin to slow down, for no one could fight as furiously, as she was, never pausing for an instant to catch her breath, without flagging fairly quickly. Meanwhile, if Marance felt any fatigue, he wasn't showing it, and she feared that such mortal limitations were meaningless to the dead.
If she didn't find a way to kill him quickly, he was going to do the same to her, and she could only think of one tactic that might serve.
Marance twirled the burning, crackling staff in a move calculated to draw Shamur's eyes to his face. He'd attempted the trick before, and, recognizing it for what it was, she'd refused to fall prey to it. Now, however, she intentionally did what he wanted her to do, praying that, having resisted the magical slumber once, she could do so a second time.
Marance spoke the magic word, and gray oblivion surged into her mind. Suddenly, everything was dull, distant, meaningless, and, her body numb and leaden. She simply wanted to collapse onto the cobbles and sleep.
Then some defiant part of her remembered Thamalon and the children, dependent on her to save their lives, and, biting her lip bloody, she thrust the lethargy away.
The magic had staggered her, and, pretending she was still in its grip, she continued to reel, meanwhile watching Marance through slit eyes. When he stepped in to bash her head with the staff, she lunged so deeply it carried her beneath the arc of the blow and buried the broadsword in his chest.
Now it was the wizard's turn to stumble, dropping the staff as he blundered backward. The sizzling sparks blinked out as the rod clattered on the cobbles. Shaking, he struggled to lift his fair, delicate hands, seemingly to bring his iron thumb rings together.
Shamur had no idea what that would accomplish, but, suspecting she wouldn't like it very much, she yanked her weapon from his torso, flicked off the thumb of his right hand, then cut at his head. The broadsword shattered the crescent mask and crunched deep into the skull beneath.
Marance collapsed. Believing that one couldn't be too careful with the undead, Shamur, panting, watched him for a time to make sure she really had destroyed him, and while she was so engaged, she noticed that at some point during the duel, the bridge had stopped shaking.
Apparently it wasn't going to fall.
Chapter 22
The Drum and Mirror possessed a verandah overlooking the bay, a railed porch warded against cold weather by the same sort of enchantment that protected the Wide Realms. Slumped there now, filthy, sore, weary to the bone, yet actually feeling fine, Talbot savored the warmth of the mulled wine glowing in his belly and the splendor of the red and golden dawn flowering above the Sea of Fallen Stars. His equally grubby and battered parents and siblings sat with him, likewise gazing to the east, and amazingly, whether exhaustion or contentment was responsible, it appeared that no one in his loquacious, quarrelsome family had a word to say.
After, as Talbot now knew, Mother had killed Marance Talendar, the wizard's conjured minions had fought on for a little while longer, then, one species at a time, vanished back to wherever he'd summoned them from. That, however, had scarcely been the end of the family's labors. Father had immediately gotten them started digging through the rubble of the several collapsed houses to rescue whomever might be trapped inside. In time, other residents of the bridge and a troop of Scepters had joined the effort, but the task had taken several hours even so.
It was finished now, and here the Uskevren were, all five of them basking in a rare moment of family amity. Then Tamlin straightened up a little, opened his mouth to speak, and Talbot winced, somehow knowing that his brother was about to spoil the mood.
'I did well tonight, didn't I, Father?' asked Tamlin, fatuously, in Talbot's jaundiced opinion.
Father smiled. 'Yes, son. All three of you did.'
'Then maybe this is a good time for me to tell you something,' Tamlin said. 'You know those dreary men from Raven's Bluff and wherever else it was?'
Father frowned. 'The emissaries? Of course. What about them?'
'Well,' the younger man said, 'to tell you the truth, I sent them packing.'
'You what?'
'Well, they just babbled on and on, and I didn't understand a word of it. I thought it would make life easier if I simply got rid of them, the better to focus on the effort to find you and Mother and catch the rogue who was trying to assassinate us. So I broke off the talks, trying to be nice about it, though I must confess, the outlanders seemed rather peeved even so. They said they would sail for home forthwith.'
'You imbecile!' Father roared, his face ruddy with anger. 'Do you know how much money that alliance would bring in?' He made a visible effort to rein in his temper, and Talbot could all but hear the wheels turning as Thamalon began to ponder how to salvage the situation. 'I have commitments that absolutely preclude my leaving Selgaunt for at least a month, and by then some other House will have gotten in ahead of us. You, boy, must journey east in my stead. You'll apologize profusely for rebuffing the envoys, spread a fresh round of gifts and bribes about, and resume the negotiations.'
Tamlin grimaced. 'I told you, I wouldn't know what to say, and in all candor, I really feel that these past couple days, I've done my bit to serve the family already. Besides, I have commitments, too. I've already accepted invitations to any number of parties and balls.'
'Fine,' Father snapped. He turned to Tazi. 'You'll go.'
'No, I won't,' she replied. 'Tamlin's the heir, and if he isn't willing to shoulder the responsibilities of his position, I don't see why I should have to take up the slack, particularly now that I've just gotten over being ill. I'm planning to enjoy myself, not sit cooped up in a room and dicker endlessly over the price of knickknacks, or whatever it is you'd want me to discuss.'
'So be it,' Father said. He pivoted toward Talbot. 'And what do you say, lad?' Tal could see the anticipatory disgust in the old man's eyes, the expectation that his youngest child, like the others, would disappoint him.
Rather to his own surprise, Talbot felt a momentary impulse to surprise his sire, to please him for once by undertaking this task and performing it well. But he knew he couldn't journey to a strange city. The full moon was coming, and it must find him locked in his cage backstage at the Wide Realms when it arrived. 'I can't go either,' he said. 'Mistress Quickly has cast me in her current play and the two that will follow.'
'You feckless ingrates,' Father began, trembling.
Mother, looking utterly strange with her blisters, scrapes, bruises, and torn lower lip, her masculine clothing and short, dyed hair, laid her hand on his arm. To Talbot's surprise, the gesture sufficed to make the old man pause in mid-diatribe.
'You have a choice,' Mother said. 'You can take their recalcitrance to heart, or you can remember the valor they displayed earlier, and be proud.'
The corners of Father's mouth quirked upward. 'You have a point. For the moment, I will be proud, albeit grudgingly. Will you stroll with me to the far end of the porch?'
'All right,' she said. As they walked away, Talbot wondered what they had to say that they didn't want their children to overhear.
