Across the fire, their eyes met. The silence stretched like tensioned wire, straining toward its inevitable breaking point, bitter and undeniable. It flashed across Rudy's mind that he stood in hideous danger; but, as when he had stood paralyzed, gazing into the dragon's eyes, he could not have moved, had he wanted to. In the changeable brightness of Lohiro's eyes he could see nothing human. Nothing at all.
Ingold said softly, 'You never worked decoy in your life.'
The eyes were blank, empty. The Archmage's stillness was that of an automaton; the restless hands ceased moving, and the long, sensitive muscles of the face suddenly slacked. For an eternity, there were no sounds except the cold roar of the ocean and the ragged draw of Ingold's hoarse breath.
Then Lohiro struck, blindingly swift. The metal crescent of his staff seemed to burn in the light as it lashed across the fire, aimed at Ingold's throat. Ingold's sword was in his hands. The old man parried from his knees and rolled to his feet seconds later as Lohiro rushed him, sand and cinders flying from the Archmage's ragged mantle, emptiness in his staring eyes. Immobile with shock, Rudy could only watch in horror.
Ingold parried Lohiro's rush so closely that the crescent's metal point put an inch of red line on the outer edge of his right cheekbone. He caught the back of the crescent on the strong part of his own blade and continued the momentum of the rush, tearing the weapon from the Archmage's hands. It skidded away into the sand. Rudy cried out, in terror or warning, he did not
know which, as Lohiro threw himself, empty-handed, toward Ingold...
... and changed!
The long, clever body seemed to melt into the billow of his wind-torn cloak, and his white, reaching hands appeared to multiply and become snatching claws. Without stopping his movement, he became a falling darkness of gaping, tentacled mouth that slobbered acid on to the sand and a spiny whip of tail snaking out to wrap itself around Ingold's body. Then the storm winds hit them like a freezing avalanche, caught that dark, tenuous body like an immense kite, and whirled it away into the howling night.
The winds roared down around Rudy and Ingold, a universe of noise and spray. Slashed sand buried the fire. Rudy was still sitting, his mouth open in shock and horror, when Ingold reached him at a staggering run through the wild chaos of the elements and pulled him bodily to his feet. The old man paused long enough to grab his staff and Che's lead-rope, then shoved Rudy along ahead through the blinding hurricane toward Quo.
Lohiro was waiting for them on the steps up from the beach. His face was as white as that of a glass-eyed corpse in the wild darkness of wind and magic, and his gold hair lifted from his brow in a fiery halo. Under the booming of the breakers, his voice was clearly audible, cool and amused. 'Well, Ingold? Will you really slay me?' He started down the steps, his pronged spear at the ready. 'Me?'
Ingold whispered, 'You above all, my son.'
With a swift, snapping movement, Lohiro reversed the staff, slamming its iron-shod foot like a club at Ingold's temple. The old man ducked, slashing upward and inward. Rudy saw white flesh and a thin streak of blood as the Archmage stepped away from the blade and chopped the staff down like an axe. Ingold caught the force on his pommel, drove the whining hardwood down past him, and struck along the shaft in the split second that the spear was entangled and his opponent's balance upset.
Fire exploded between them, thrown from Lohiro's hand almost in Ingold's face. The old man staggered on the steps, his arm flung up to protect his eyes, and the younger one reversed the staff again, catching him under the knees and throwing him down on to the sand. In the same motion, Lohiro turned the staff and struck downward with it like a pitchfork at Ingold's throat. The movement was unbelievably quick and smooth, as deadly as a striking snake. But somehow the old man was not under the razor edge of the weapon. He rolled and parried, catching the shaft with his hands and bringing his foot up in his opponent's groin, hurling the Archmage bodily over his head and into the dark beach beyond. Ingold rolled to his knees, gasping, with fire streaming from his open hand...
But Lohiro was gone.
Ingold scrambled to his feet as rain began to slash from the black, boiling skies. Rudy ran to him, as if woken from a trance. Without a word, Ingold caught his arm and half-dragged him up the steps. Lightning roared into the sky above them, laying bare the bones of the deserted town and blinding the fugitives in its passing, the thunder shaking the world like the crack of doom. Rain plastered their hair to their cheeks as they fled along the water-sheeted colonnade, the pillars on both sides leaping into electric-blue visibility and plunging into darkness with the bursting of the lightning. The gusting wind tore at their robes as they ran, and the rain drenched them. Che was squealing and jerking against the lead-rein, in terror at the smell of electricity and power. Rudy wondered desperately what they'd do if the stupid critter succeeded in bolting with all their food supplies and the books Ingold had risked both their lives to salvage.
Then light burned his eyes, the smell of ozone searing at his nostrils and his hair prickling with the crackle of the lightning. The ruined wall before them smoked with the blast. Turning, Rudy saw Lohiro behind them, with his empty eyes and mocking grin.
Lightning illuminated Lohiro's raised white hand in the rain. Earsplitting thunder came simultaneously with a burning white
explosion; a ruined doorpost near where they stood shattered, the splinters tearing the thick buffalohide of Rudy's coat. A rain squall veered, blinding him. Through it, the Archmage was a dim, watery form, his soaked gold hair lying slickly on his head, slowly advancing with his razor-pronged spear. Rudy shrank back, too afraid to run further, knowing that if lightning hit the pavement, they would all be electrocuted from the inch of water that flooded it.
Between Rudy and the Archmage, Ingold stood, the blade of his sword gleaming eerily in the soaking darkness. The winds increased, hurling great sheets of horizontal rain. On the drowning pavement the two wizards circled, feeling each other out. Thirty inches of blade, Rudy thought dizzily, to six and a half feet of dark, iron-hard wood. Slick footing and blinding rain. Ingold edged to the right, feinting, testing; Lohiro swayed like a snake. There was a swift gesture of Lohiro's long, white fingers and Ingold's quick counterspell, followed by the murmur of stillborn thunder and the acrid stink of ozone.
There were two Lohiros. Rudy saw the second one step, catlike, from the shattered doorway not three feet from him; with swift and deadly silence, the double plunged the pronged blade at Ingold's unprotected back.
Che reared, screaming in terror at the apparition. Rudy yelled wildly, 'INGOLD, LOOK OUT!'
The wizard whirled. Half-blind in the wind, Rudy drew his own sword and slashed at that second Lohiro, only to have the figure flicker out of existence. He saw Ingold twist too late away from the razor crescent and stagger back, hand to his side. There was a whine of air as the Archmage reversed the staff in his hands again and the crack of the wood against the old man's skull. Rudy stood for one instant in paralyzed horror as Lohiro reached down and wrenched the sword from Ingold's nerveless hands. The Archmage bent over the crumpled body with a look of chill, pitiless satisfaction in his inhuman eyes. Then, with an inarticulate cry of fury, Rudy flung himself at the Archmage, heedless of the consequences. His sword seared through the
blinding curtain of rain, but met only darkness and the fading echo of Lohiro's mocking laugh.
Rudy turned and scrambled back to where Ingold was struggling to rise from a pool of rain and blood. Che had already bolted through one of the dark doorways. Rudy pulled the old man erect, collected the sword where it lay a few feet away, and half-dragged, half-carried him to shelter inside.