Nothing happened, and then all the killing power Dalamar had flung turned back on him in a wave of energy like an ocean's wave. Crested red as the sea-waves are crested white, it surged back, screaming on the air and not to be turned.
Strangely still and numb to pain or fear, Dalamar thought, There is my death.
A hand grabbed his ankle, tumbling him. He fell, hit stone, then something soft and yielding. Regene! He scrambled aside, dragging Regene with him, and rolled until he hit a stone wall. The wave passed over him, burning and clawing at his skin, bearing down on his chest.
Gray and sweating, the dwarf lifted a hand, that hand trembling, and it had no magic in it, but it did have a dagger. Sunlight gleamed on the blade, glinting as it swooped down, hungry for blood.
Regene coughed, and on the coughing, she rose, not swiftly, not strongly, but in time. Like silver streaking, like the silver hand of her own god descending, the shining blade cut the air, cut into the breast of Regene of Schallsea. Dalamar's hand shot up, clamping round the wrist of the dwarf mage. He snapped bone, and the avatar screamed. The knife fell from his hand and Dalamar snatched it up. In one swift motion, he lunged to his feet, knife grasped awkwardly in his left hand. He struck an upward blow, a heart-blow. Blood poured out from the breast of the avatar, spilling over Dalamar's hand onto Regene's ruined robes.
"Go!" she whispered, her sapphire eyes dimming, her face livid in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. Dying, she said, "Find the mage-"
Dalamar ran swiftly down long corridors until he found what he sought, the guarded door and clutch of dwarf soldiers outside. There were four, but he didn't care. He tore through them like a storm. Turning their weapons to slag, he killed one of them with only a glance. Two more rushed him, and these he reduced to ash as though their living flesh and bone were no more than the clay of which Tramd o' the Dark made his avatars. The fourth did not stay. He fled and got no farther than the stairwell before he met the fate of his fellows.
Servants cried out, but none on this floor. Dalamar heard them, men and women, and they shouted in several languages. Some were human, others dwarves, one or two were even elves. Servants and slaves, the staff of the Citadel of Night made up with the captives from Tramd's forays in war.
The door would not be locked; he knew it instinctively. What man lying on his sick bed manages that? What man so helpless forbids entry to the servants who will feed, clothe, and clean him? None.
Dalamar opened the door and entered into a bedchamber hung with satins and draped in silks. All around him he saw the booty of a man who had wandered far in war- silver-hinged chests from the North Keep in Nordmaar, tapestries from the halls of the wealthy in Palanthas. From Zhakar he'd stolen silver statuary and golden plate. From Kernen in Kern he had paintings. From Thelgaard Keep he had shields and lances, axes and swords. He didn't seem to have cared much about order. The stolen treasures lay all around, as though in a museum's vast storeroom.
Neither could Tramd see what treasure he had. He lay upon a bed of silk and satin, eyeless, his ruined body reeking, his limbs covered in scabrous flesh. His head tossed weakly, one side to another. Some time in the morning, servants must have lit incense and perfumed the air with oils. The incense was ash now, the oils not enough to cover the stench in the bedchamber of this mage who had fared so ruinously in his Tests of High Sorcery. Not even the breeze blowing in from the sea could do more than stir the stench.
"I see you, Tramd," Dalamar said, standing as near as he must and not minding the reek. "I see you."
The dwarf's head rolled from side to side, a blind man trying to place the speaker. His body quivered, but that was the trembling of his illness, not the will acting on muscle. Scabbed lips parted, and a line of spittle ran down this thin, patchy beard. He groaned, and the sound he made might have been a word. It might not have been. He had used his avatar's body in magic, but he had used his own strength as well.
Dalamar looked around and plucked a weapon from the wall, an axe with a fine, honed blade. He walked to the bed, his shadow on the dwarf.
"Do you feel me near, dwarf?"
The mage on the bed moaned. Silk coverings rustled. He could do no more.
"Now I think it a shame that you cannot see me. I think it a pity that you won't be able to look into my eyes when I kill you."
Outside in the corridor voices gathered, whispering. Servants had come, and soldiers, but no one ventured to cross the threshold. Softly, the hinges on the door creaked. Slowly, someone drew it closed. He had not been beloved, the master of this fortress. No one would interfere here. No one would challenge the mage who had come to kill their master.
Wind sighed across the window sill. The sea rushed to the shore far below and rushed out again. Somewhere a dragon's corpse floated, turning up, belly to the sky. Gulls would feed on that corpse, and sooner or later the sea would soften what even swords could not hurt. Then the gulls and fishes would pry the scales from the belly and pry the flesh from the bones.
"I will tell you," Dalamar said to the dying man on the bed, "what you have so dearly wanted to know. I have come to kill you, Tramd, and it will be my personal pleasure. You killed many good men and women in the battle for Silvanesti."
He stopped, watching the dwarf groan, watching his cracked lips bleed with his effort at speech. Standing there, Dalamar heard the forest burning. He heard the Wildrunners shouting. He heard a dragon dying, and the last prayer of a cleric who had put all his faith in gods who did not seem to know or care. Sunlight ran on the honed edge of the axe's blade, sliding down the curve as Dalamar shifted it from hand to hand.
"I have come in the name of Ladonna of the Tower of High Sorcery. I have come in the name of those who revere the High Art, the gift of the three magical children. I have come in my own name, Tramd Stonestrike, to remove you from the ranks of Her Dark Majesty's servants. There will be Light," he said, "and there will be Dark."
He lifted the axe higher, right over his head.
The dwarf heard the lifting, the sigh of air on the blade. He groaned and found a word. "No," he sobbed, "no."
"Yes," said Dalamar, very gently. "Yes."
He let fall the axe, a headsman, an executioner come to avenge early deaths and late.
"Yes," he said to the dead man. "There will be balance."
Dalamar put back the axe, the blood still running. He rolled the corpse to the floor and snatched up a sheet from the bed. With the silk he wrapped up the head, the eyes still staring, the ruined mouth still gaping.
"My lord," said one, a human woman, bowing to him as she spoke. "What is your will?"
He looked at her, and she cringed from his glare. "Go," he said, and he didn't care if she took the word to mean she must leave him alone or she must go out from the citadel and never come back. They made, servants and soldiers, the choice they had wanted to make for long years. They fled.
Dalamar didn't watch them. Their running footsteps meant nothing to him. He carried the head of Tramd o' the Dark, wrapped in bloody silk, back to the chamber where he had left Regene. She lay dead, her blue eyes wide, her lips a little parted. He knelt beside her, brushed her dark hair from her face, and he closed her eyes. He stayed that way for a time, listening to people flee the castle. Then he lifted her in his arms, took up the proof of the dwarf mage's death, and spoke a word of magic.
The floor fell away. The walls fell away. In the grip of the transport spell, Dalamar Nightson shouted, and this time he didn't cry a spell. This time he shouted a curse.