Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

His whole strategy was to force Alastyr out of the blue light and into the first sphere of the Inner Lands proper, where he would have mightier forces to command. As yet Alastyr was too strong. The dark eyes within the hood burned and raged. Nevyn kept hammering him, striking with spears of light, while Alastyr sent out wave after wave of darkness to claw and bite him in return. When Nevyn struck hard enough to tear some of the pompous sigils off the black robe, Alastyr howled like an animal and pulled back. Nevyn risked trying to build a gate behind him, using part of his will to pin the dark enemy and part to open a path to the Inner Lands. Too soon—Alastyr slipped away and sent out a flood of darkness like a wild sea.

For a moment Nevyn plunged and fell. He felt his simulacrum loosening around him like a slipped cloak and desperately called upon the Light. All he could do was struggle to heal himself and fend off the worst of Alastyr’s blows as the dark enemy pressed in closer and closer. Like boulders of palpable darkness the blows hit home. All at once Nevyn saw the water veil over the stream coming closer, too close! He wrenched around and flew up fast, dodging past before a startled Alastyr could react. Yet he’d barely repaired his shattered body of light when the enemy was after him with a darkness like a spew of poison.

Straight into his face Nevyn hurled a wall of light that tore and dissolved the severed heads on his kirtle, yet he could feel himself weakening as the enemy pressed ever on, the darkness pouring from twisted hands. All at once Alastyr screamed, the thought-sound echoing in the blue light, and swooped this way and that like a swallow coursing a field for gnats. Below him his silver cord lay dangled, broken. Someone had killed his physical body, and Nevyn could only assume that it was Jill or even Blaen.

But there was no time to indulge his shock at this unexpected aid. Alastyr’s simulacrum was breaking up, revealing the pale-blue etheric double underneath. While the dark master fought against the inevitable decay, Nevyn built up a gate to the Inner Lands, two pillars, one black, one white, with an indigo void between them. As soon as they held steady, he sent a blast of light that shoved Alastyr through, then rushed after. Although he’d lost the first battle, the enemy was far from crushed, and Nevyn knew it.

Nevyn threw himself through the gate after the fleeing dark master, both of them rushing, gliding, falling down the path, blown like scraps of parchment on a livid indigo wind, while all around them were voices, laughter and screaming and torn scraps of words blown past them on the indigo flood, and images—faces, beasts, stars—swirling and beating against them like a flock of manic birds. Nevyn threw waves of light ahead of him, pounding Alastyr, stabbing him over and over until the last of the black robe tore away and whirled past, torn with rents that opened into the void. The wind blew them onward, rushed them, threw them headlong at last into a glow of violet light, where a river flowed far beneath, tenuous, shifting water of a kind that no stream on earth has ever known and no man ever tasted. A silence here, the wind gone, and around stretched fields of flowers, or the shapes of flowers, moon-gossamer things, white and deathly.

Shaken, Alastyr’s etheric double swooped and fluttered, desperately trying now for escape, not victory. The Moon Land where they fought is the gate to many others, Nevyn’s own Green Land, the Orange of the world of form, the shining home of the Great Ones; here, too, abuts the proper sphere of the dark dweomer, the Dark of Darkness, the Land of Husks and Rinds. If Alastyr could escape to the dark, his soul would live on, working harm for aeons to come. Nevyn could see him trying to open a gate, his hands fluttering, the words of the rite pouring, gibbering from his mouth. Nevyn sent a spear of light that slapped and flung him high just as the first pillar formed, then shattered the half-made gate.

Howling, Alastyr tried to flee, but Nevyn swooped up and rained down fiery light to trap him. With one hand Nevyn flung spear after spear and pinned Alastyr in a cage of light, while the etheric double threw itself against the shining bars and bit them in panic. With his enemy pinned Nevyn built up another gate, this one with the golden pillars of the sun, and between them opened the pure blue of a summer sky.

“Not mine the judgment!” Nevyn called out. “But yours!”

Through the pillars sped an enormous shifting, shimmering arrow of light, flying straight and true, striking Alastyr so hard that the double shattered into a thousand pitiful shreds. There was a shriek, then the whimpering of a tiny child. For the briefest of moments Nevyn saw the child, flickering like a candle flame, a mewling babe with Alastyr’s raging eyes. Then the light swelled, enveloped the tiny form, and swept it through the portal and up the path to the Hall of Light, where it would be judged.

“It is over!” Nevyn cried out. “It is finished!”

Three great knocks, three claps of thunder, boomed through the violet light, while down below the death-white flowers nodded. Nevyn knelt and bowed his head, not in worship, but as a sign of fealty, then let the portals fade away. In his exhaustion he felt the silver cord tugging on him, pulling him back to his body, which lay at a great distance but no true distance at all.

Sarcyn pulled his dagger free of Alastyr’s heart and wiped it clean on his dead master’s face.

“Vengeance! And honey sweet it is.”

He rose and ran into the kitchen just in time to see the farmhand bolting out the back door. Sarcyn let him go; there was no time to waste chasing someone who knew so little about them. Whimpering under his breath, Camdel lay in the straw by the hearth. When Sarcyn knelt beside him, he shrank away from the knife.

“I’m not going to kill you, little one,” Sarcyn said, sheathing it. “I’m going to unchain you. We’ve got to ride fast.”

When Camdel moaned aloud, Sarcyn hesitated, caught by a feeling that he couldn’t quite understand. His pet lordling was going to have a miserable life ahead of him, no matter how much sexual pleasure he took in his master’s torments.

“Ah, horseshit!” Sarcyn said abruptly. “You’re going to see your cursed father again, after all.”

Cursing himself as a fool for succumbing to the first feeling of pity that he’d felt in years, Sarcyn got up and grabbed the leather bag that held Alastyr’s books.

“Fare you well, my fine, noble lord,” he said.

Camdel let two thin trails of tears slip down his cheeks in an agony of relief. Sarcyn ran out of the room and into the farmyard, where his horse was waiting, saddled and ready.

“Gan! Curse you! Where are you?”

Silence for an answer. Sarcyn turned, glancing round the farmyard. No one there. Apparently the old man had seen a chance at freedom and taken it. No time to worry about him now, Sarcyn thought. His horse stamped with a toss of its head.

“Whist, whist! We’re on our way.”

After Sarcyn put the precious books into a saddlebag, he mounted and rode out fast, turning the horse away from the main road into the hills. Ever since they’d moved into the farm, he’d been planning escape routes. He’d gone about a quarter mile when he heard the jingle of tack that meant the gwerbret and his men were coming. Quickly he dismounted and held his horse’s mouth shut as the jingle grew louder, passed him, then slowly died away.

“So much for that dolt,” he whispered.

Yet as he remounted, he knew that the danger was far from over. Once the Brotherhood learned of Alastyr’s fate, assassins would come seeking him—and they were already in Deverry. He would have to stay on the run, always hiding, moving constantly, while he studied the books and learned the ways of power. Maybe he could keep ahead of the Hawks just long enough to garner enough magic to save his life. Maybe. It was the only hope he had.