Richard Byers - The Shattered Mask

"Second," said Thamalon, calmly as she'd expected, "depending on how you're counting."

"I don't count the scratch on the cheek," she said. "You hadn't drawn a weapon. That was just to rouse you from your usual senescent daze."

"Well," he replied, "if I'm all that senile, and you can kill me any time you like, then what harm would it do for you to explain to me what this is all abou-"

As he spoke, she stepped forward, but then did not retreat again. Lulled by and still following the rhythm she'd established and now abandoned, Thamalon advanced into distance. She instantly cut at his head.

It was the perfect moment for it, because even the greatest warrior who ever lived couldn't retreat at the same instant he was stepping forward. But Thamalon whipped the long sword just in time to stop her weapon from splitting his head. The impact rang like a bell, and notched both of their blades.

He riposted with a cut at her leg. She counterparried, feinted an attack to his flank, then tried for his head again. He skipped back out of distance, his point extended to hold her back.

He continued to fight in much the same manner, constantly giving ground. Many swordsmen habitually relied on the edge, sometimes carrying blades that scarcely even possessed a point. But the tip of Thamalon's weapon was sharp as a needle, and he knew as well as Shamur how to use it. As she advanced, he constantly threatened her wrist. Knowing that a combatant is most vulnerable at the moment he attacks, he clearly wanted her to try to penetrate deep into the distance with killing strokes at his torso and head. Since his sword wouldn't have as far to travel, he planned to catch her with a stop thrust to the forearm before her blade could touch him.

It was a patient, defensive mode of fighting such as might be expected of such a careful, calculating man. Shamur's natural inclination was to fight far more aggressively, yet she comprehended Thamalon's style of swordplay very well. She'd often employed it in her youth, when robbing her fellow merchant-nobles in the street. Not wishing to kill them or their bodyguards either, she'd waited for the chance to inflict wounds that incapacitated but would neither slay nor cripple. Or better still, to capture her opponent's blade and spin it out of his grasp.

Given her understanding of Thamalon's strategy, she doubted it would serve him well in the long run. He couldn't retreat forever, not with the tangle of bare oaks, maples, and brush surrounding the clearing. Every time he fetched up against it, it halted him as effectively as a wall, and provided her with an excellent chance to attack. Besides, if one didn't count the half century that the rest of the world had somehow experienced without her, he was more than ten years her senior, and already bleeding as well. Therefore, let him play his waiting game. She was willing to wager that his stamina would flag before hers.

His constant retreating did give him the chance to talk, however. "Tell me," he said, just a hint of exertion, of shortness of breath, in his voice. Tell me, tell me, over and over again.

Finally the incessant repetition wrung an answer out of her. "The poisoning," she said, "almost thirty years ago."

"What poisoning?"

"You can't stop lying, can you, no matter how futile it is. It isn't in your nature."

She made what appeared to be a rather clumsy cut at» his shoulder, one that left her arm extended and exposed when it fell short.

As she'd intended, Thamalon instantly thrust at her wrist. She knocked his attack out of line with a semicircular parry, then, keeping pressure on his sword to hold it in its ineffectual position, charged him.

He ran backward, came off the blade, and smashed her weapon away an instant before it could shear into his throat. She tried a second cut as she ran by him, but he parried that one, too. She whirled back around to face him.

"I'm not lying," Thamalon said, his white hair clotted with sweat, and his left profile smeared with red. "I beg you to tell me what you mean."

"Only weeks before your wedding," she gritted, "you poisoned your fiancee, a gentle, innocent girl who adored you." Her fist clenched on the hilt of her broadsword too tightly to manipulate it properly, and she loosened her grip again.

"Someone poisoned you?" he asked, feigning bewilderment almost convincingly. Perhaps it helped that he truly was baffled as to how she'd discovered his secret. "Why wasn't I told at the time? And how can you think it was me?"

"I know it was you," she said, trying to bind his blade. He spun his point to avoid the contact, then thrust at her biceps. She snapped her broadsword back across her body to parry, then extended in her turn, and Thamalon took yet another retreat.

She sprang forward, lunged, and thrust at his leading foot. Once again, he took the bait. He snatched his foot back half a step, and his point flashed out to pierce the back of her hand. She whirled her arm and blade higher, avoiding his counterattack, shifted forward, and cut at his chest. He yanked the long sword back and parried. For a few heartbeats they attacked and defended, grunting with effort, their blades clashing fast as a castle bell sounding an alarm. Finally, Thamalon broke off the exchange by retreating, and the two duelists began to circle one another.

"What makes you think I poisoned you?" he asked. Shamur could tell he was making an effort to control his breathing.

"Not me." she said, hoping to surprise and befuddle him, "my kinswoman, also named Shamur. As a matter of fact, your venom killed her." The instant she finished speaking, she attacked with a cut to the chest.

She obviously hadn't disrupted his concentration as she'd hoped, for he immediately sidestepped to avoid her blade while simultaneously thrusting at her sword arm. But she saw him begin to pivot on his leading foot, and adjusted her aim accordingly. He yanked his hand back just in time to keep her from severing it at the wrist. She renewed the attack, they battled fiercely for a few more seconds, and then he scrambled backward with another shallow cut along his forearm.

Shamur wasn't even sure just which of her attacks had slipped past his guard, but she supposed it didn't matter.

"Second blood," she said.

"What makes you believe I murdered the other Shamur?" Thamalon panted.

Shamur was momentarily surprised he had nothing to say about what must be the perplexing question of her true identity. Then she realized that for the moment at least, it didn't matter to him. Whoever she might be in reality, he realized he wouldn't induce her to break off the fight by inquiring. But he hoped he could do it by convincing her he was innocent of the poisoning, and so the cool, shrewd soul that he was, that was the issue he intended to pursue.

"Lindrian told me on his death bed," she replied. ''Now will you stop pretending?"

"I'm not pretending," he insisted. "Tell me exactly what Lindrian said."

A bit at a time, she did, and about accosting Audra Sweetdreams and finding the green flask as well, the explanation broken up by fierce passages of arms whenever he permitted her to close the distance. By the time she finished, the light was failing, and the sky a somber blue rapidly darkening to black.

"Sick men sometimes lose their wits," Thamalon panted. His unarmed hand rose to fumble with the golden clasp of his cloak.

"Lindrian was rational," Shamur replied, looking for the right moment to attack.

"Well, then, people can be induced to lie, by magic or otherwise."

He pulled the cloak from his shoulders and dangled it by its bloodstained collar.

"Lindrian had been bedridden for months," she said. "How likely is it that someone got to him in the very heart of Argent Hall?"

"I imagine it could be done."

Shamur frowned momentarily, for Thamalon was correct. Some intruder could have penetrated Argent Hall. It was conceivable that she herself could have managed a comparable feat in her youth. But even so, she knew very well her nephew hadn't misled her, because she'd verified his assertions in Audra Sweetdreams's shop and Thamalon's own bedchamber.