hurts.
Stooping, he retrieved the Staff and passed it to Linden. “Rise, Chosen,” he said quietly. “It appears that the Mahdoubt will have need of you.”
At once, she surged to her feet. For a moment longer, she kept her back to the flames and the Insequent while she assured herself of Earthpower. Then, abruptly, she turned to see what the Mahdoubt and the Harrow were doing.
The Harrow laughed with renewed confidence. “Forswear my purpose?’ he countered in a tone of abundant mirth. “I? As the years pass, you have become an object of ridicule. At one time, you were remembered respectfully among the Insequent, but now you are viewed with scorn.
“This, however, I will grant,” he added more dangerously. “I have merely been delayed, and will yet triumph. If you depart now, you may perchance retain some portion of your mind.”
Keeping her eyes lowered, Linden scanned the vicinity of the campfire. The Harrow stood on the far side of the flames with his arms folded across his chest, defiant and dire. Although he had staggered into the blaze, his boots and leggings were undamaged. Like their wearer, they seemed impervious to ordinary harm. The bottomless holes of his gaze tugged at Linden. But she did not allow herself to glance above the level of his waist.
While she looked around, she readied her own fire.
Opposite the Harrow-directly between him and Linden-the Mahdoubt squatted as she had beside her gentle flames in Garroting Deep. She faced her fellow Insequent steadily. The curve of her back suggested poised stillness rather than relaxation. Shining through the unkempt tangle of her hair, the firelight seemed to crown her head with an oblique glory, subtle and ineffable. Stark against the campfire, she wore a nimbus of determination.
Stave stood at Linden’s side a little ahead of her. Perhaps he thought that if the Harrow snared her again he would be able to save her by stepping in front of her; blocking the Harrow’s gaze.
The Humbled also had emerged from the night. They had positioned themselves behind the Harrow, waiting to see what would transpire. They had fought longer than Stave: their bruises and abrasions were worse. Nevertheless Linden did not doubt that they would attack again without hesitation if they saw a need to do so.
The random flare and gutter of the flames effaced the stars overhead. But around the horizons of the plain, and along the rims of Revelstone, faint gleams still defined the dark like sprinkled flecks of ice. And behind her, Linden felt the moon arc placidly across the heavens, undismayed by earthbound conflicts.
“On other matters,” the woman was saying as if the Harrow had not spoken, “the Mahdoubt does not intrude. Assuredly she does not. You will act according to your desires. But she will see your threat to the lady’s mind and spirit and flesh abandoned. If you accede, no evil has occurred. And if she fails, there is again no evil. But if you seek to measure yourself against her, and are outmatched, she will require your bound oath.
“Then will your paths be altered in all sooth, and there will be no gainsaying the Mahdoubt’s culpability. She herself will not question it.”
The campfire dwindled, and night crowded closer, as the Mahdoubt said distinctly, “Choose, then, proud one. Accede or give battle. The Mahdoubt has grown weary in the service of that which she deems precious. She does not fear to fail.”
The Harrow’s voice was full of amusement as he replied, “Do you dare this challenge?” Yet behind his mirth, Linden thought that she heard the gnashing of boulders. “Have you fallen prematurely into madness?”
“Pssht,” retorted the woman dismissively. “Words. The Mahdoubt will have deeds or naught.”
Linden wanted to protest, No, don’t do this! I can fight for myself! The Mahdoubt had nothing to gain here: she could only lose. And she was Linden’s friend. But Linden’s voice was locked in her throat.
Urgent fire curled around her fingers and ran along the Staff as she prepared to defend the older woman.
“Then ready yourself, relic of foolishness,” the Harrow pronounced with plush confidence. “You cannot rule me.”
Stave shifted closer to the direct line between Linden and the Harrow’s eyes.
Linden saw nothing to indicate that a contest had commenced. Her health-sense discerned nothing. To all appearances, the Harrow simply stood with his arms folded over his chest, a figure of irrefragable self-possession and surety. Opposite him, the Mahdoubt squatted motionless, seemingly devoid of power or purpose; as mundane as the gradual slope of the plain.
But the campfire continued to shrink as though moisture from some cryptic source were soaking imperceptibly into the wood. Around the battle, darkness thickened like a wall.
If she could have spoken, Linden would have asked Stave, What are they doing? She might have asked, Have they started yet? But she had no voice. As the flames died, they seemed draw sound as well as light with them. Nothing punctuated the night except her own taut breathing and the muffled thud of her heart.
But then, subtly, by increments too small to be defined, the Harrow began to fade as if his physical substance were being diluted or stretched thin. Some undetectable magic siphoned away his tangible existence.
For long moments, Linden watched the change, transfixed, until she was able to catch glimpses of the Humbled through the Harrow’s form.
With a palpable jolt, the Mahdoubt’s opponent snapped back into solidity. The flames of his fire flared higher, driving back the encroachment of the night.
Without risking the hunger of his eyes, Linden could not see his expression. But his chest heaved, and his strained breathing was louder than hers.
A heartbeat later, he started to fade again, leaking out of himself into some other dimension of reality. Or of time.
This change was more rapid. He seemed to dissolve in front of her as the fire died toward embers. Clyme, Branl, and Galt were clearly visible through the veil of the Harrow’s substance.
The impact when he forced himself back into definition was as visceral as a blow. Linden felt the intensity of his exertion. It touched her percipience on a pitch that scraped along her nerves, vibrated in the marrow of her bones. His flames guttered higher as he gasped hoarsely. Hazarding a glance upward, she saw that his cheeks were slick with sweat. Fine droplets caught a skein of ruddy reflections in his beard.
The Mahdoubt was beating him-
His arms remained clasped across his chest. Yet Linden could see that they trembled. All of his muscles were trembling.
The Mahdoubt still had not moved. But now her plump form and rounded shoulders no longer suggested quiet readiness. Instead they were implacable; vivid with innominate strength. She had made herself as unyielding as the bedrock of mountains.
Earthpower and protests itched for expression in Linden’s hands as the Mahdoubt renewed the Harrow’s failure.
Now he did not fade slowly toward evanescence; dissolution. Instead he appeared to flicker. For an instant, he was nearly solid: then he came so close to transparency that only his outlines remained: then he struggled back into substance. Linden felt every throb and falter of his efforts to find some finger hold or flaw in the Mahdoubt’s obdurate expulsion.
If Stave and the Humbled had struck at him, they might have broken his bones; or they might have passed through him as if he were no more than mist. But they merely witnessed the eerie conflict, as unmoving as the Mahdoubt, and as unmoved.
Linden did not realise that she was holding her breath until a soundless implosion snatched the air from her lungs. The sudden inrush of force swallowed the Harrow’s power, and the Mahdoubt’s. As Linden panted in surprise, the Harrow’s campfire burned normally again. He stood across the flames from the Mahdoubt as if nothing had occurred. Only the heaviness of his respiration, and the sweat on his face, and the wincing hunch of his shoulders betrayed the truth.
“That is difficult knowledge,” he remarked when he was able to speak evenly. “It emulates the Theomach’s. Yet I am not displaced.”
“Assuredly.” The Mahdoubt shook her head as if she were casting sparks from her hair. “The Mahdoubt acknowledges that choices remain to you, flight among them. But you will not flee. Greed will not permit you to surrender your intent. Nor are you able to withstand the Mahdoubt’s resolve.”
“You know me, then,” he admitted. “Yet you are thereby doomed. While I endure, your long service comes to
