Smiling, I turned toward Shadow and took a step. Then my smile faded.
There. A spark of light on the tips of his fingers, so faint it was barely visible even with my night vision.
I blinked. Had I imagined it? And if not, had he noticed it?
Shadow’s fingers moved slowly, carefully. A flicker of ghostly light slithered along them, faded. Shadow chuckled, soft and low.
He’d noticed.
The magic was coming back.
Jelem hadn’t been able to tell me how long the effects of the candle would last. It all came down to how long it burned and how much magic it ate up. The longer, the better. I’d been hoping to get a good three hours off it, but Shadow’s early arrival had barely given me one. Which, it seemed, translated into less than five minutes of no magic.
I sprang forward, Iron’s sword high, my dagger low, and ran at him. There wasn’t time for quiet anymore-no knives in the dark, no circling for the perfect shot, no trying to make the bastard sweat like he deserved. It had become a simple matter of me getting to Shadow before the magic got to him. If I beat it, I had a chance-the darkness was still on my side, after all; if I didn’t, well, like I said, I’d seen the bastard fight.
I was still three steps away when the fire bloomed in Shadow’s hand. My heart sank and my eyes burned at the sudden light, but I kept coming. I yelled, just for the hell of it.
I don’t know if it was the yell or the surprise of suddenly seeing me nearly on top of him, but Shadow staggered back. This was a good thing, since it meant that the whiplike tendril of flame he sent arcing out passed over my left shoulder, instead of hitting me square in the face. The bad thing was that I could still feel the heat of the fire’s passage as it went by my ear and cheek.
I flinched, and that was enough to throw off my cut. Instead of coming down where Shadow’s neck met his shoulder, the heavy blade dipped low, sloping toward his left leg. Shadow caught my sword on his own and used the impact to bring his own tip over and around, ready for a cut of his own.
I closed in fast, rushing to put myself inside the arc of his attack. Swords have more power near the point when swung, and getting past it would keep me safer. At the same time, I struck with my dagger, over and over, using short, underhand thrusts. I kept meeting chain mail with the point, but I didn’t care; I just needed to stay in close, where my size and the dagger gave me an advantage. Even if I wasn’t separating any links, I was driving the mail into him-hard. With luck, I’d break a couple of ribs and maybe even rupture something.
Shadow pivoted, trying to shift with my attack. I could feel the pommel of his sword hitting me in the back, but he didn’t have the right angle to put any real force behind it. I pressed forward even harder and alternated my dagger thrusts-now low, now high, now from the side-to make it harder for him to catch my arm with his free hand. If I could get the blade under his arm, or even up along the side of his head…
Then I saw his left hand come up and begin to pass before my face, just like before.
I turned and dropped away. An instant later, my shadow was projected on the floor in front of me by a brilliant flash of light from behind.
I felt burning-in my eyes, not on my face-as I stumbled away. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been in the alley; I could still see the floor, still make out my hand in front of me, although everything seemed to be shifting. Amber mixed with yellow in my vision and ran across everything in waves, rather than the constant highlighting I was used to. It looked almost like…
Oh.
I raised my eyes. The back wall of the room was on fire. Shadow’s arc of flame must have continued past me and hit the old wood and plaster and lathe. It was no roaring inferno yet, but, judging by how quickly things were spreading, it wouldn’t take too long to get there.
I spun around. Shadow was maybe ten paces away, bent over slightly, his left forearm pressed against his side. His sword sat ready in his right hand; in his left, near his chest, I saw the glint of coins.
“No darkness anymore, Drothe,” he said in the glowing, growing light of the fire. “No glimmered candles.” He straightened slowly and squared his shoulders. “My turn.”
He took a step and I ran, not toward the doorway, but to the blanket I’d been using as a pad. At this point, only one of us was going to get out of here; heading for the door would only get me a sword-or something worse-in the back.
I cast the dagger away and swept up the blanket with my left hand. Turning, I was just able to avoid the first molten blob that came flying through the air. I shook out the blanket, shifted my hand, and spun the fabric twice through the air, wrapping it around my hand and forearm. That left a couple of feet of cloth hanging free, giving me a flexible wall of fabric to use either as a shield or a whip.
I swept another coin from the air with the blanket, then a third. Two more came after that, with Shadow right behind them.
He wasn’t playing now. Shadow didn’t set up out of measure and ease in, or play with my blade, or stand back and cast coins at me until I was a smoldering, exhausted mess; he came in fast, his sword a fire-tinted blur in his hand. A cut at my head, a second, then a switch to an attack on my outside line, followed by a thrust and then another slash, all in fewer heartbeats than it takes to tell. I caught the first two on my sword, got lucky when the blanket intercepted the next, barely backed away from the fourth, and watched as the last cut swept by, three finger breadths from my face.
I followed up with a counterthrust, but Shadow turned it aside almost absently and flicked a coin at my neck. I didn’t have time to get the blanket up, so I instead rolled my head and neck away as best I could.
I felt a searing pain just inside the ball of my left shoulder. I screamed and backed away.
I crouched lower and extended the blanket out before me. The room was brighter now, and I was beginning to feel the heat of the fire as it ran up the wall. I saw my right arm trembling in the wavering light. Part of that was nerves, I knew, but part was fatigue as well; I wasn’t used to Iron Degan’ sword, and even the addition of half a pound of blade can make a big difference.
If this went on much longer, I wasn’t going to be able to maintain any kind of solid guard. Then again, if it went on too long, we might both die when the roof collapsed, or the air ran out, or the heat cooked us. None of the options appealed, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it at the moment-I was too busy being outmatched.
Then Shadow threw three coins at once, and I suddenly knew exactly what to do.
Three coins meant I couldn’t dodge-not all of them; three coins meant I had to commit to blocking them; three coins meant Shadow was coming right behind them, counting on their threat to clear his way.
Three coins meant I had him-I hoped.
As the coins spread out and turned liquid, I fanned the blanket out and up, catching them in its folds and sending them off to my left. I let that action draw my left arm back and turn me into profile. Then, I extended my sword.
I’d seen Degan do this before, and had even tried it myself once or twice. He called it a simple voiding of the body; I called it damn slick. The idea was that you got your body out of the way while you left your sword in place, thus allowing your opponent to throw himself on it when he attacked. Degan had made it look like high art; the best I usually managed was a child’s rough sketch in the dirt. But it worked.
Usually.
I saw the flash and felt the breeze of Shadow’s blade passing through the space where I had been. Even better, I felt my sword bite-only it seemed wrong.
I looked down the blade, and my heart went cold. I had extended Iron’s sword into Shadow’s path all right, but I had forgotten about the curve in the blade. Where a rapier’s straight blade would have planted its point in the middle of the Gray Prince’s face, Iron’s tip instead sloped off to my right. What should have been a killing thrust had instead ended up sliding past his face and coming out through the side of the cowl. I might have grazed a cheek if I was lucky, but I hadn’t come close to stopping the Gray Prince in his tracks.