Sword Brother

curiosity after all.'

He bowed slightly, then straightened.

'My name,' he said in flawless ancient Kontovaran, 'is Wencit of Rum, and by my paramount authority as Lord of the Council of Ottovar, I judge thee guilty of offense against the Strictures. Wouldst thou defend thyself, or must I slay thee where thou standest?'

Tremala didn't reply to the formal indictment and challenge. Not in words, at any rate. The tradition that the first blow in any arcane duel belonged to the weaker of the opponents, unless he chose not to take it, was more ancient even than the Strictures themselves. Tremala had come to realize in the last few moments just how hopeless her plight truly was, but whatever her other sins, cowardice was not among them. A sorceress she had lived; a sorceress she would die, and her wand swept up spitting livid green lightnings.

They ripped through the air towards Wencit like living serpents, and he raised his hand. It was a simple gesture, but Tremala cried out as her lightnings shattered against his raised palm and the back blast blew her wand into a hundred smoking fragments.

She stood there, clutching her wrist in her other hand, bent over the sudden pain where the exploding wand had stung her hand. She cradled it against her breasts, then made her spine straighten and looked levelly at Wencit.

'So be it.' His voice was quiet, almost gentle, but there was no mercy in it, and he pointed a finger at her. 'As thou hast chosen, so shalt thou answer.'

The last thing Tremala of Kontovar ever saw was the sudden flash of wildfire from that finger.

XVII

Garsalt stumbled backward, flinging himself away from the images in his gramerhain. Not even his mastery of scrying spells had allowed him to hear what had passed between Tremala and Wencit after Wencit's shields had enveloped them both. But he'd been able to see just fine, and terror had bubbled up inside him like winter quicksand as the sorceress' body had sifted to the stony floor like no more than another drift of rock dust.

They were both gone-Tremala, Rethak. And inside, Garsalt had always known both of them were more powerful than he. Tremala, especially, had been an acknowledged mistress of combat magics. More than a dozen challengers for her position on the Council of Carnadosa, most with extensive records of victory of their own, had faced her in arcane duels. None had survived, yet Wencit had destroyed her easily, almost casually.

Garsalt whimpered. The stone wall Wencit had erected across the tunnel guarded by Tremala's armsmen had sealed that escape route. There was only one other way out . . . and Wencit and Bahzell were already moving towards it.

The balding wizard's hands scrubbed together in front of him, washing each other compulsively while he shuddered in terror. If Wencit could annihilate Tremala that effortlessly, then-

His hands clenched into a white-knuckled knot, and his jaw tightened. This was all Cherdahn's fault! He was the one who must have given away the location of his temple somehow. It was the only explanation! And he was also the one who'd promised his precious demon would save them all!

The wizard turned his back on the glowing crystal.

* * *

Cherdahn's head snapped up as the sacrificial chamber's door flew open.

His eyes flashed crimson fire, and his lips drew back, baring his pointed teeth, as his face twisted in a snarl of rage at the totally unprecedented intrusion. In that moment, soaked with the blood of his handiwork and filled with fury, the remaining human portion of his being was scarcely even perceptible.

'How dare you-?!' he started in hissing, sibilant rage, but Garsalt had found the courage of trapped panic.

'They're coming!' he snarled back. 'Tremala's dead, and Bahzell-and Wencit, Krahana damn your eyes!-will be here in another ten minutes!'

Cherdahn froze, and the worm of fear which had grown larger and larger within him even as he denied its existence to himself, was suddenly a crushing python.

He stared at the rumpled-looking wizard, trying to force his brain to work, but it was hard. His entire being had been focused on the ceremony of binding-on the sacrifice's agony and the way it had fed his own inner hunger even as he offered it to the Servant. On the ritual, and the propitiation. The fear he'd so resolutely suppressed, the sense of something wrong, had only intensified that focus. Now, for the first time in all his years in Sharna's service, the ritual of sacrifice had been interrupted. And not even by another of the Scorpion's worshipers, but by a wizard. The shock of that blasphemy was so great it almost displaced his fear.

Almost.

'Get him out of here!' he grated, and one of his acolytes thrust the intruder out of the chamber. He wasn't particularly gentle about it, flinging Garsalt back through the door, then slamming it behind him, and Cherdahn tried to regain his focus.

He couldn't. His thoughts seemed to race in every direction at once, colliding, caroming off one another in showers of sparks, sliding like feet on water-slick ice, but one of them pulsed and beat above all the others, even through his intoxication with the sacrifice's torment.

Bahzell was coming . . . and he was almost there.

He glared at the door which had closed behind Garsalt for one more quivering second, then wheeled back to the altar.

* * *

Trayn was almost gone.

His breathing had become so faint, so shallow, that only the most skilled healer could have detected it, and the pulse which had raced madly as he contorted around their shared agony had slowed to a dying flutter. He'd poured too much of himself into the sacrifice. He was down to his final reserves, his own soul dipping closer and closer to extinction, yet still he held the link.

He wasn't thinking about it any longer. Indeed, he was no longer capable of thought. Yet neither was he capable of letting go. Some final store of determination, dredged not from training, or strength of will, but from who and what he was and the promise he'd made a terrified young woman, held him still. The shield he'd thrown about her soul frayed, thinner and more tattered with every shallow, fluttering breath, and beyond that barrier, the demon stirred. A forked, slimy tongue caressed the mage's failing defenses. It slithered across them, savoring the treat waiting on their other side, yet not quite able to pierce them. Not yet. But soon, the demon knew. Soon.

* * *

Cherdahn glared down at the quivering, whimpering wreckage on his altar, and terror-fueled rage boiled behind his glittering eyes. Anger was no proper part of the ritual. Anger destroyed focus, diluted the distilled purity of cruelty, the perfect technique of agony, the Scorpion's service required. Cherdahn knew that, yet the knowledge meant little beside his own fear and his fury at the sacrifice who had somehow managed to defy him and all his years of skill and training for almost an hour.

He snarled and reached for his knife once more.