'Your spells lack subtlety,' he gasped, pushing to his feet. He picked up his rapier and advanced on her.
The Warlord stepped away from the stone and drew her own sword. 'Blades, then,' she said.
Without hesitation she darted forward and slashed high at his head, a graceful and deadly arc that would have decapitated him with ease if he hadn't thrown himself to the ground to duck beneath it. Jack managed to get the point of his rapier up fast enough to back her off a step when she moved to finish him on the ground. Then he scrambled sideways until he gained his feet again.
The Warlord laughed and came at him again, offering him no chance to rest. She slashed and whirled like a dancer with a baton, impossibly swift and skillful. Jack deflected her blade from his heart by a lucky parry, blocked another by retreating behind a corner of the mythal stone, and then took a long, shallow cut along his ribs as he barely twisted away from a thrust that would have impaled him at the navel. He gasped in pain and backed away again. Already his limbs trembled with fatigue. I can't beat her, he realized. In a minute, maybe two, I'll slip or miss a parry and she'll run me through, and that will be it.
'You are not much of a swordsman, Jack,' Jelan said. 'You might have been a good one, with some training. You've got good reflexes and an excellent eye, but you're not there yet.'
'I'll work on that right after you kill me,' he snapped.
Angrily, he called upon the power of the stone ring and felt new strength flood into his limbs, toughness imbue his flesh. Fueled by the ring's power, he counterattacked with everything he had, thrusting and riposting and lunging. Jelan simply laughed again and danced back, using graceful turns of her blade to deflect his stone-strength attacks. Jack overextended, dropping to one knee to reach her, and she slapped the rapier out of his hand with a wicked cut that would have laid open his right forearm if not for the ring's defensive enchantment. Jack cried out, stung, and staggered back.
'You've made a lot of poor choices recently,' Jelan said. The smile faded from her face, replaced by something cold and deadly. 'Time to face the consequences, Jack.' She stalked closer, the tip of her sword unwavering.
Jack reached for his belt to draw his poignard, futile as it was. But he'd already thrown the weapon at her; the scabbard was empty. The dwarven knife! he remembered. As quick as thought, he stooped to his boot and threw the knife with a wicked underhanded motion using all his marvelous skill and the strength of the enchanted ring.
Jelan almost dodged the throw, twisting her torso with speed a cat would have envied and raising her sword point to deflect the dark knife. She wasn't quite fast enough. The dark blade took her on the left side of the torso, just under her breast, and pierced her fine armor as if it didn't exist. Myrkyssa Jelan grunted in pain and surprise, shuddering, and reached up to grip the knife handle.
'A treacherous blow,' she gasped. 'Hard struck… but not enough, not now.'
Blood running through her fingers turned to green fire as mythal magic played over her wound. Jelan's mastery of the mythal permitted her to draw on the stone's magic to seal her injury and preserve her life.
'Mask's eyes,' muttered Jack. 'She's unbeatable.' He had to do something unexpected, something extraordinary.
Impelled by desperation, Jack took advantage of Jelan's distraction and raised his left hand. The stone ring glowed with power as he willed it to life, this time calling on the impossible, seeking to shape the mythal itself. The mythal stone shrieked energy as the ring's magic fought to change it. Jelan must have felt the change through her connection with the device. She whirled and stared at the stone, trying to gauge its effects on her sorcery.
Jack threw himself forward and pushed her into the mythal stone. At the last moment Jelan sensed her danger and started to turn; cold steel kissed Jack's ribs as she struck out at him. But his momentum was enough to carry him into her, and she staggered back into the wild mythal itself. He sprawled to the ground at the foot of the stone, as the Warlord vanished into the rune-carved rock like a drowning woman sinking beneath black water.
Jack released the ring's power and allowed the stone to heal itself around her.
In an instant, the space Jelan occupied refilled with rock. He caught one last glimpse of Jelan as the stone walled shut, and then she was gone in a green flash of energy. Thunder shook the entire column, and the aurora scoured him like the blast of a furnace. The rings of energy barring access to the stone fell like curtains of water as Jack slumped to his knees, hand jammed against the cold dull ache under his rib cage. Then the maelstrom itself began to waver and collapse, the mythal's magic no longer sufficient to sustain it.
'Jack!' cried Illyth from a great distance. He turned to look behind him; the noblewoman and the others sprinted toward him, even as water began to cascade from above and darkness swirled up from below. He thought that Zandria was trying to work a spell-and then the dark waters swallowed him entirely.
EPILOGUE
White gauze danced over his head.
He was lying in a soft bed, surrounded by a thin curtain of translucent white that shifted and sighed in a warm wind. He ached all over, but his pain seemed very distant.
'Am I dying?' he wondered aloud.
'Do you wish to die?'
A dark-haired woman in blue sat beside him, her face impossibly beautiful. Wisdom gleamed in her eyes, and compassion, and strength, and a hundred things more that he couldn't begin to describe. She was completely serious in her question, and somehow he knew that dying would not necessarily be a bad choice now.
Since she asked in seriousness, he tried to answer her the same way. 'Only if I have to,' he said. 'I am not certain that I am done living yet.'
'Good,' the lady in blue said. 'I have something that I would like you to do for me, and it will be easier if you choose to live.'
He looked at her again and tried to focus clearly on who he was, who she might be, but it was difficult. It seemed impossible that a lady such as she could have anything she needed anyone to do for her.
'What is it, my lady?'
'The wild mythal still exists, unbound, untamed,' she said. 'I could rend the Weave to silence it, but if I did so, I fear that no magic would ever work there again, perhaps not anywhere within a hundred miles of the spot where it stands. The safest thing to do is to disperse its power among a great number of people, as I have always done. In the hands of one person, a weapon may be dangerous. Break it into a thousand pieces and give it to a thousand people to carry, and it is much less threatening. I wish you to accept a greater portion of the load.'
He simply stared at her. 'Why?'
'The wild mythal also needs a will to tame it, a spirit to guide its sentience. The Warlord's will not suffice; you exiled her to a very distant plane when you expelled her from the stone. If you relinquish your bond, the mythal will select another, and its preference is likely to be dangerous. It has tasted of Jelan's ambitions and hungers for more. With my help, you will check the mythal's dangers.'
'Am I to use it to help people?'
'Use it as you see fit,' the lady replied. 'It might be best if the wild mythal served no purpose, malign or benign, but it is a mortal magic and thus a mortal decision. I wish to make sure that the Weave remains whole. Fetter the stone for me, and that will be enough. Will you do this for me?'
He thought for a moment, understanding that this also was a serious question. Then he nodded. 'I will.'
The lady smiled and said no more. She faded away, leaving him adrift in a white maze.
Some time later, he awoke. To his surprise, the whiteness was still there. He rested in a white bed, in a white room with white curtains. And Illyth sat beside him, also dressed in white. She was reading a book, but she looked up at Jack when she felt his eyes on her.
'You're awake,' she said in surprise.
'Did you see the lady?' Jack asked.
'Lady? You must have seen me watching over you,' Illyth said. She smiled. 'You've been unconscious for more than a week. We thought we would lose you.'
Jack started to sit up, but the lightness in his head dissuaded him. He lay back down in the pillows. 'A week? What happened?'
