Linsha looked quickly around. She wanted to choose her place to make a stand where the advantages would be in her favor. She had neither helmet, mail, nor shield, only her sword and her athletic ability to keep her alive. This was not a good place, for it was steep and slippery, with beds of gravel and scree. She hurried higher, but nothing offered itself to suit her purposes.
Finally the trail reached the crevice and widened out into a broad, level ledge almost like a porch. She ran across the ledge and entered a huge cave. Far back, at the very edge of the cavern, she saw a bright yellow glow flicker and gleam against the black rock. A figure stood silhouetted there, dressed in long robes, his arms held high over his head while he chanted his spells to the erupting power of the mountain.
“Lord Bight!” she shouted, but there was no answer. She thought she saw him move, but she couldn’t be sure, and there was no time to find out.
Commander Durne caught up with her at last. Panting, he charged up the path and onto the ledge.
Linsha whirled to face him, her sword raised and ready. She slid a dagger out of its sheath and tried to will her muscles to relax.
“Oh, my beautiful Lynn, why can’t you just stand aside? What does that man mean to you?” He advanced toward her, his own blade poised.
The lady Knight refused to answer. She could only stare at his face. Varia’s talons had scored across his cheek and forehead and had torn his eyelid. That side of his visage was a mask of blood, and she doubted he could see through the gore that covered his right eye. She drew a long, quavering breath. “Oh, Ian,” she sighed, and she walked to meet him.
Their swords clashed, steel on steel, in the first tentative test of each other’s skill. At first glance, it looked to be an uneven contest. Durne was a head taller than Linsha, broader, older, with height, reach, and weight all on his side. But he was blind in one eye, and she had the speed and agility to hold her own.
Back and forth across the ledge they fought with deadly concentration, their swords and daggers rasping and clashing together as they struggled. The sun had risen higher and poured its relentless heat on the ledge. The volcano belched its fumes and smoke into the air they breathed. Both suffered, but both fought on with relentless care, conserving their strength and using their skill to prolong their endurance. At times, when their eyes met across the braced blades of their swords, there was no love left, only the inflexible determination to fulfill their purposes: she to save the lord governor, he to kill him.
At one point, Linsha drew back, panting, and Durne followed her example. In that brief respite, Linsha had to ask, “I know why you killed Captain Dewald. Were you also the one who stabbed Mica?”
He laughed at the timing at her question. “Since you’re going to die, Lady Knight, I will tell you. Yes. I met Mica on the road back to the palace. He started to tell me what he had learned and I was forced to kill him.” He shrugged and wiped some blood and sweat from his face. “We are not yet ready for Sanction to find a cure.”
“So you knew about the poisoned sailors and the magic plague. That’s why you wore gloves all the time.”
“Of course. It was my idea.”
By the gods, Linsha marveled. What a cold, callous, bald-faced statement. How could this man have deceived her so thoroughly? “Was the dark-haired rabble-rouser one of yours, too?”
“Actually, yes. The irony of it was the bottle striking me in the head and you diving into the water to save me.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I think I fell in love with you then.”
Linsha went white-hot with fury, and she leaped back into the battle, her sword arching toward Durne’s right side. The Dark Knight barely blocked her blow. He aimed a punch at her head, but she slid sideways out of his reach. The duel continued.
From her vantage point on a high rock, Varia watched and waited for her opportunity. She wouldn’t interfere as long as Linsha held her own, for Varia was terrified of swords, but she might spot another chance to could take out Durne’s remaining eye, and she didn’t want to miss it.
For over an hour the two combatants fought in the sun. Both bled from minor wounds, and both were struggling with exhaustion and dehydration. Here and there, blood splattered on the rocks.
Although neither one noticed it, the volcano was quieter now. Its steam and smoke drifted to the southeast to irritate the Knights of Takhisis, and the lava that spilled from the dome followed a simple course down the volcano’s side in a direction that would bring it directly to the existing lava moat.
It was about midday when the shell of the dome collapsed and the pyroclastic flow everyone feared began its charge down the mountainside in a roiling, lethal cloud of black ash and gas that boiled outward at the speed of a flying dragon.
Both Linsha and Durne froze in place and looked up at the approaching flow in horror. On it came, a black storm that burned and buried everything before it. They were about to bolt for the slim protection of the cave, when the flow suddenly lost its power and collapsed. To their amazement, the grit, ash, and gas subsided into a mere cloud that drifted southeast on the wind.
It was Durne who recovered first. He pressed Linsha hard and drove her back with a sudden lunge. Her foot slipped on a bloodstained rock, and she fell hard to the stone. He rammed his blade toward her throat.
Frantically she raised her arm to parry the thrust but succeeded only in pushing the tip toward her chest. The sword point struck her on the breastbone, and to his amazement, it skittered sideways and slashed across her shoulder and sank into her forearm. Linsha cried out in pain, nearly as surprised as he at her reprieve. She managed to pull herself free and slither out of his way. Bleeding heavily, she struggled back to her feet.
He drew back, panting, and demanded, “What armor do you wear beneath that shirt?”
Hunched over her wounded shoulder, she slowly drew out the dragon scale and let it shine in the sun. Her throat burned from thirst and her limbs quivered from her exertion. Pain flamed in her shoulder. But somehow the scale gave her strength and eased her pain.
She was in the act of straightening up when Durne launched himself upon her in a ferocious leap. Throwing his sword down, he battered into her, slamming the air out of her lungs. He wrapped his arm around her neck and shoved her sword aside. For a moment they heaved and strained, but then his weight bore her down, and they fell heavily onto the stone only a few paces from the ledge. Linsha’s sword slid over the rim of the ledge and dropped out of sight.
“I want you to die in my arms,” he hissed in her ear. “I want to be the last thing you think about.” He pressed his lips to hers even as he tightened his arm across her throat. Summoning his dark mystic power, he poured his last strength into his arm muscles and tendons and pulled them tight around her neck.
Linsha felt as if a steel band was squeezing her head off. Her blood roared in her ears as her veins were compressed, and her vision turned black and red. Her heels drummed on the rock, and her lungs wanted to explode. She tried to pull her own power from her heart, but the strength that crushed her throat seemed to drain her body of any spark of mystic energy. She groped for the dragon scale, and as her mind fell spiraling into darkness, she inexplicably thought not of Ian Durne, but of Hogan Bight.
Then the pressure on her neck suddenly released. She gasped and coughed, trying to pull air into her lungs past her abused throat. Something seemed to be happening to Durne just above her, but she was too shocked and fighting too hard for breath to understand what he was doing. Desperate to save herself, she pulled out from under him and rolled away from his struggling body. As her breathing returned to some semblance of normal, her head began to clear, and she groped for her second dagger hidden in the side of her right boot.