'Shirak!' he shouted and fell, coughing on the word, weak as a fevered man whose lungs were filling with fluid. Staggering, he stepped back before the light, the small wavering globe that was all his magic could manage. As he staggered, so did the Shadow, but not for long. The light shivered, his magic sighed, and the Shadow lunged.
Dalamar stumbled, he fell to one knee and rolled away from the advancing darkness. Magic! Where was it in him? Deep, he plunged deep into himself, into the heart of him, the soul, and he flung off fear and all dread of the weakness sapping his strength. Light, said his mind, light and fire and-
The Shadow reached for him with arms grown broad and long. Strength and life drained out from Dalamar, running from him as though it were his very blood. Fed upon his strength, the Shadow surged forward to grasp even more. Dalamar gathered his waning strength and his faltering wit. In his mind he put the image of his need, of fire and light and a weapon. He lurched to his feet, to the sound of Tramd's laughter, he rose and filled his right hand with a fiery lance. He had nothing of magic or wit to form protection for himself.
The Shadow reached. Dalamar's flesh blackened and peeled back from bone. Someone screamed-ah, gods! — it was he, the sound of his pain and that of Tramd's laughter weaving one around the other, becoming a single, terrible anthem. Howling in rage, rage dispelling pain, Dalamar drew back his arm to let fly the flame-lance, his eyes on the eyes of the Shadow. And so he saw what he had not before. He knew that Shadow, that reaching wight. In those pale eyes he saw consciousness, wit, soul and pleading urgency. He saw a sapphire glint! Regene! Too late he knew illusion, in the moment he let fly the lance.
The Shadow screamed, and Tramd's illusion fell away. Regene fell, struck by the fiery lance, her robe, her very flesh, burning. Dalamar flung himself forward and beat out flames with his good hand. Eyes wide with pain, choking, Regene tried to form some word, some warning. She need not have, Dalamar felt danger behind him in the itching between his shoulders, the crawling of his skin.
Raging, Dalamar turned, stumbling in weakness. Tramd backed away, groping behind him for a weapon. Dalamar smiled coldly to see that, for it told him the thing he needed to know-Tramd had spent himself deeply to support the light-cage, to call forth the grimlock, and to create this illusion that cloaked Regene. A fool would think he had nothing more to spend, but a wise man would see that he had not so much as he would like.
'Dwarf,' Dalamar said, his voice rasping, his hand trembling even as he reached within for one last burst of strength, one last weapon. 'You've been dying since the day of your Test. It is time for that to end.'
Sweat glistened on Tramd's face and ran into his red beard. He took another step backward. Behind him, Dalamar heard groaning, Regene's breathing sounded like a death-rattle and like sobbing all at the same time. Rage rose up in Dalamar, and with it such strength as he did not think he could find. He lifted his burned hand, the flesh peeled from the bone, the bone glaring white at him, glistening with his own blood and the thin lines of blood vessels and muscle. He felt the pain, and he embraced it, changing it to strength. Fingers moved, his fingers, bones shining in the sunlight pouring in from the window. He created, from magic and from his own will, a lightning-lance, the kind that had killed a dragon.
Eyes wide with fear, Tramd dug down deep for his magic, and he came up wanting. Light shimmered before him, as though he'd been trying to magic a shield. The light turned dark, and the darkness collapsed upon itself. He tried again, and Dalamar let him, a cat toying with a mouse. The collapsing darkness before Tramd shifted, changed, magic still struggling. Fear and rage both battled in him, giving him a mad look.
Laughing, Dalamar let fly his bolt. It sizzled on the air, and the darkness before Tramd coalesced at last, turning to something black as obsidian, strong as steel. The bolt hit, exploding into a burst of blinding light.
The sting of ozone hung in the air. Dalamar filled up his lungs with the smell, and he filled up his hands again with power and magic. He hurled no bolt now but fistfuls of energy, the stuff of which lightning is born. He flung these bright weapons, one after another. Tramd's magic trembled and it wavered. The dwarf turned as his shield collapsed. Three more balls of energy Dalamar threw, and in the exact moment he did, Tramd lifted his hands in one last spell.
Nothing happened, and then all the killing power Dalamar had flung turned back on him in a wave of energy like an ocean's wave. Crested red as the sea-waves are crested white, it surged back, screaming on the air and not to be turned.
Strangely still and numb to pain or fear, Dalamar thought, There is my death.
A hand grabbed his ankle, tumbling him. He fell, hit stone, then something soft and yielding. Regene! He scrambled aside, dragging Regene with him, and rolled until he hit a stone wall. The wave passed over him, burning and clawing at his skin, bearing down on his chest.
Gray and sweating, the dwarf lifted a hand, that hand trembling, and it had no magic in it, but it did have a dagger. Sunlight gleamed on the blade, glinting as it swooped down, hungry for blood.
Regene coughed, and on the coughing, she rose, not swiftly, not strongly, but in time. Like silver streaking, like the silver hand of her own god descending, the shining blade cut the air, cut into the breast of Regene of Schallsea. Dalamar's hand shot up, clamping round the wrist of the dwarf mage. He snapped bone, and the avatar screamed. The knife fell from his hand and Dalamar snatched it up. In one swift motion, he lunged to his feet, knife grasped awkwardly in his left hand. He struck an upward blow, a heart-blow. Blood poured out from the breast of the avatar, spilling over Dalamar's hand onto Regene's ruined robes.
'Go!' she whispered, her sapphire eyes dimming, her face livid in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. Dying, she said, 'Find the mage-'
Dalamar ran swiftly down long corridors until he found what he sought, the guarded door and clutch of dwarf soldiers outside. There were four, but he didn't care. He tore through them like a storm. Turning their weapons to slag, he killed one of them with only a glance. Two more rushed him, and these he reduced to ash as though their living flesh and bone were no more than the clay of which Tramd o' the Dark made his avatars. The fourth did not stay. He fled and got no farther than the stairwell before he met the fate of his fellows.
Servants cried out, but none on this floor. Dalamar heard them, men and women, and they shouted in several languages. Some were human, others dwarves, one or two were even elves. Servants and slaves, the staff of the Citadel of Night made up with the captives from Tramd's forays in war.
The door would not be locked; he knew it instinctively. What man lying on his sick bed manages that? What man so helpless forbids entry to the servants who will feed, clothe, and clean him? None.
Dalamar opened the door and entered into a bedchamber hung with satins and draped in silks. All around him he saw the booty of a man who had wandered far in war- silver-hinged chests from the North Keep in Nordmaar, tapestries from the halls of the wealthy in Palanthas. From Zhakar he'd stolen silver statuary and golden plate. From Kernen in Kern he had paintings. From Thelgaard Keep he had shields and lances, axes and swords. He didn't seem to have cared much about order. The stolen treasures lay all around, as though in a museum's vast storeroom.
Neither could Tramd see what treasure he had. He lay upon a bed of silk and satin, eyeless, his ruined body reeking, his limbs covered in scabrous flesh. His head tossed weakly, one side to another. Some time in the morning, servants must have lit incense and perfumed the air with oils. The incense was ash now, the oils not enough to cover the stench in the bedchamber of this mage who had fared so ruinously in his Tests of High Sorcery. Not even the breeze blowing in from the sea could do more than stir the stench.
'I see you, Tramd,' Dalamar said, standing as near as he must and not minding the reek. 'I see you.'
The dwarf's head rolled from side to side, a blind man trying to place the speaker. His body quivered, but that was the trembling of his illness, not the will acting on muscle. Scabbed lips parted, and a line of spittle ran down this thin, patchy beard. He groaned, and the sound he made might have been a word. It might not have been. He had used his avatar's body in magic, but he had used his own strength as well.
Dalamar looked around and plucked a weapon from the wall, an axe with a fine, honed blade. He walked to the bed, his shadow on the dwarf.
'Do you feel me near, dwarf?'
The mage on the bed moaned. Silk coverings rustled. He could do no more.
'Now I think it a shame that you cannot see me. I think it a pity that you won't be able to look into my eyes when I kill you.'
Outside in the corridor voices gathered, whispering. Servants had come, and soldiers, but no one ventured to cross the threshold. Softly, the hinges on the door creaked. Slowly, someone drew it closed. He had not been beloved, the master of this fortress. No one would interfere here. No one would challenge the mage who had come
