Abruptly, everything altered. The light seemed to thicken with acrid, smoky fumes, and the air pulsed in blasts of heat like the beating of a gigantic heart. Its color had changed to an uneasy, flickering red. In the place of the condor and the eagle, two huge firedrakes, like sinuous dragons but lacking the great wings, faced one another across a shifting surface of burning embers. One, of a burnished copper hue, had a ragged void that leaked glowing blood, where one jeweled eye should have been. The other, its scaly skin a pure gold, exhaled a gout of sizzling flame and raked at the embers with one immense clawed foot.
This time, the sinuous red lizard was considerably more cautious. Aurian, looking on, suspected that Miathan, not understanding how Forral had come by his magic, had underestimated the swordsman badly. It was a mistake he would not make a second time.
Without warning, another jet of flame shot out of the golden dragon’s maw. The red beast, unnerved by its failure to conquer its foe in the air, had hesitated an instant too long. Caught off guard, it leapt to one side—and the uncertain surface of embers shifted and gave beneath its unwary feet. The red lizard staggered, floundering, one thick foreleg deeply mired in the fiery morass. The more it floundered, the deeper the panic-stricken firedrake began to sink.
Forral crept forward with exaggerated care, distributing his weight as widely as possible on spread toes. The red dragon spat great, untidy gouts of flame in his direction, but it was too busy trying to extricate itself to concentrate on its foe. Forral’s jaws gaped wide to deliver a killing blow and
...
His shape shimmered and changed—became solid, and streamlined, sleekly muscled and beautifully marked in elegant curves of black and white. Aurian remembered the time, long ago, when Ithalasa had been telling her the history of the Cataclysm by feeding a series of images into her mind. He had told her of the race of Leviathan warriors, the Orca, who had been created to save the Seafolk from the aggressive Mages of the land and air—and clearly, this was such a creature.
The water around Forral shimmered with light and shadow, in gold and soft sea-green. The Orca champed the fierce set of teeth in a mouth that seemed curved into a permanent smile. With a swirl of his tail, he turned toward the Archmage and charged .. .
... To meet the razor jaws and the flat, dead gaze of an enormous shark.—The instincts inherent in Forral’s new shape took over. He swerved down to one side with a twist of his muscular body, and came at the shark from an oblique angle, and from below.
Even as he came up and rammed it with all his force, the shark writhed round, bending back on itself like a bow, and caught his flank with its wicked teeth as he curved away. Forral whistled shrilly with pain as a long slash was scored along his side. A thread of blood went spiraling away from the wound in a glowing stream, and Aurian guessed that in actuality it must be his life force that he was losing. Miathan, however, had not escaped unscathed. He seemed to be sinking; dropping away from her, writhing and curling himself about the telling injury that had been inflicted when Forral rammed him.
“I hope that hurt, you bastard,” Aurian muttered grimly.
Forral plunged down after him, clearly hoping to finish it quickly, but the Archmage recovered himself, and the swordsman was met by vicious snapping teeth that forced him into a hasty retreat. He pretended to dodge, feinted, and came in from the other side, his teeth scoring into the thick abrasive leather of Miathan’s hide before he twisted away again, out of reach of those lethal jaws.
Now it was Miathan’s turn to bleed—and the gore in the water, both that of himself and Forral, seemed to send him into a frenzy. He came straight at the swordsman, jaws gaping, eyes blank with mindless hate.
To Forral, it seemed that there was no escape this time. He fled, trying to put some distance between himself and the shark so that she could turn and attack it obliquely once more.
He had underestimated the speed of the creature, however. Already it was right behind him, its teeth snatching at his tail and slicing chunks of flesh from the broad, flat surface....
Wolf was beginning to understand that he and the others I were not literally beneath the sea, but that they had taken these shapes to suit the infinitely changeable otherworld in which this confrontation was being played out. Once he had worked that out, he found that he too could take on a similar form to the others. Though unskilled in magic, he had found the image of a giant eel simple enough to create. Once transformed to his satisfaction, he raced toward Forral and the Archmage—but a glowing tentacle suddenly looped around his body and hauled him back.
Wolf recognized his mother—and even in the shape of a glittering cloud, she looked very angry. “What the blazes do you think you’re doing?” Even in his thoughts, he heard the snap to her voice. “Stay there,” she ordered. “We can only watch.”
“Is that the one who cursed me?” Wolf demanded hotly. “Yes. But your father will deal with him—I hope.”
With an appalling tearing sound, Forral ripped his tail from the jaws of the shark. He turned, toothed jaws agape, to confront the creature ...
... And suddenly he was standing on a broad grassy plain With a low grey sky above him. He was back in his old, much missed body, and in his hand was the familiar, comforting shape of his old sword. Forral wanted to laugh out loud.—Here the element of earth, the weapons chosen were very much more to his taste than fang and claw and flame!
It was his only comfort, however. Blood leaked from a shallow tear in his side, and one leg was gnawed and savaged, and would barely take his weight.—His opponent, however, was on no better case. Blood was seeping through Miathan’s robe, and he held himself awkwardly, his breath whistling and short.—Forral suspected that his ramming of the shark had produced a broken rib in Miathan’s human form. The Archmage held his sword in an awkward grip, for one hand was blackened and burned—and one of the gems was missing from its socket, leaving him with a one-eyed gaze.
“So—it ends at last,” the Archmage hissed. Warily, he began to circle the swordsman, his glittering one-eyed gaze as hypnotic and unrelenting as that of a snake. The swordsman noted with surprise and grudging respect his opponent’s concentration and stance, and wondered whether Miathan had possessed this skill in his corporeal form. Forral kept turning to face him, but otherwise refused to overstrain his damaged leg. They were both wounded and exhausted from their previous struggles—let Miathan do the work!
The Archmage lunged forward, testing his opponent, his thrust clumsy due to the seared hand. Forral parried easily, trying to hide his wince as he flexed the injured leg. Miathan pressed him—again, their swords impacted with a resounding clang. Forral brought his blade around, sweeping deftly under Miathan’s guard. As the Archmage jumped back like a startled rabbit Forral found himself beginning to smile.
Miathan circled, his blade darting in and out, seeking a rare opening and trying to betray the swordsman into taking a false step. Forral kept him moving, kept harrying him, always conserving his own strength. Soon, Miathan began to tire. Forral moved in now like a striking snake, low and deadly—and far more mobile than he had pretended to be. Step by step, he began to drive the Archmage backward.
Though Miathan had begun by giving a good account of himself, he was foundering now. His breathing was labored, and his movements growing jerky with fatigue. Forral noted with keen interest that the injured rib made it difficult for his opponent to lift his arms above the level of his shoulders.—There was the rasp of ripping cloth as the tip of Forral’s sword caught the robe over Miathan’s breast. Damn—that was close!