Lyran nodded, and slipped off his mare. He rearranged saddle-pad and pack to make it appear that Martis was using the ill-tempered beast as a pack animal. In the time it took for Martis to gather up the mare’s reins, he had vanished into the grassland without a trace.
Martis rode towards the tower as slowly as she could, giving Lyran plenty of time to keep up with the horses and still remain hidden.
She could see as she came closer to the tower that there was at least one uncertainty that was out of the way. She’d not have to call challenge to bring Kelven out of his tower—he was already waiting for her. Perhaps, she thought with a brightening of hope, this meant he was willing to cooperate.
When Lyran saw, after taking cover in a stand of scrub, that the mage Kelven had come out of his tower to wait for Martis, he lost no time in getting himself positioned within bowshot. He actually beat the sorceress’s arrival by several moments. The spot he’d chosen, beneath a bush just at the edge of the mowed area that surrounded the tower, was ideal in all respects but one—since it was upwind of where the mage stood, he would be unable to hear them speak. He only hoped he’d be able to read the mage’s intentions from his actions.
There were small things to alert a watcher to the intent of a mage to attack—provided the onlooker knew exactly what to look for. Before leaving, Trebenth had briefed him carefully on the signs to watch for warning of an attack by magic without proper challenge being issued. Lyran only hoped that his own eyes and instincts would be quick enough.
“Greetings, Martis,” Kelven said evenly, his voice giving no clue as to his mindset.
Martis was a little uneasy to see that he’d taken to dressing in stark, unrelieved black. The Kelven she remembered had taken an innocent pleasure in dressing like a peacock. For the rest, he didn’t look much different from when he’d been her student—he’d grown a beard and moustache, whose black hue did not quite match his dark brown hair. His narrow face still reminded her of a hawk’s, with sharp eyes that missed nothing. She looked closer at him, and was alarmed to see that his pupils were dilated such that there was very little to be seen of the brown irises. Drugs sometimes produced that effect—particularly the drugs associated with blood-magic.
“Greetings, Kelven. The tales we hear of you are not good these days,” she said carefully, dismounting and approaching him, trying to look stern and angry.
“Tales. Yes, those old women on the Council are fond of tales. I gather they’ve sent you to bring the erring sheep back into the fold?” he said. She couldn’t tell if he was sneering.
“Kelven, the course you’re set on can do no one any good,” she faltered a little, a recollection of Kelven seated contentedly at her feet suddenly springing to mind. He’d been so like a son—this new Kelven must be some kind of aberration! “Please—you were a good student; one of my best. There must be a lot of good in you still, and you have the potential to reach Masterclass if you put your mind to it.” She was uncomfortably aware that she was pleading, and an odd corner of her mind noted the buzzing drone of the insects in the grass behind her. “I was very fond of you, you know I was—I’ll speak for you, if you want. You can ‘come back to the fold,’ as you put it, with no one to hold the past against you. But you must also know that no matter how far you go, there’s only one end for a practitioner of blood-magic. And you must know that if I can’t persuade you, I have to stop you.”
There was a coldness about him that made her recoil a little from him—the ice of one who had divorced himself from humankind. She found herself longing to see just a hint of the old Kelven; one tiny glimpse to prove he wasn’t as far gone as she feared he must be. But it seemed no such remnant existed.
“Really?” he smiled. “I never would have guessed.”
Any weapon of magic she would have been prepared for. The last thing she ever would have expected was the dagger in his hand. She stared at the flash of light off the steel as he lifted it, too dumbfounded to do more than raise her hands against it in an ineffectual attempt at defense.
His attack was completed before she’d done more than register the fact that he was making it.
“First you have to beat me, teacher,” he said viciously, as he took the single step between them and plunged it into her breast.
She staggered back from the shock and pain, all breath and thought driven from her.
“I’m no match for you in a sorcerer’s duel—” he said, a cruel smile curving his lips as his hands moved in the spell to steal her dying power from her. “—not yet—but I’ll be the match of any of you with all I shall gain from your death!”
Incredibly, he had moved like a striking snake, his every movement preplanned—all this had taken place in the space of a few eyeblinks. She crumpled to the ground with a gasp of agony, both hands clutching ineffectually at the hilt. The pain and shock ripped away her ability to think, even to set into motion the spell she’d set to lock her dying energy away from his use. Blood trickled hotly between her fingers, as her throat closed against the words she had meant to speak to set a death-binding against him. She could only endure the hot agony, and the knowledge that she had failed—and then looked up in time to see three arrows strike him almost simultaneously, two in the chest, the third in the throat. Her hands clenched on the dagger hilt as he collapsed on top of her with a strangling gurgle. Agony drove her down into darkness.
Her last conscious thought was of gratitude to Lyran.
There were frogs and insects singing, which seemed odd to Martis. No one mentioned frogs or insects in any version of the afterlife that she’d ever heard. As her hearing improved, she could hear nightbirds in the distance, and close at hand, the sound of a fire and the stirring of nearby horses. That definitely did not fit in with the afterlife—unless one counted Hellfires, and this certainly didn’t sound big enough to be one of those. Her eyes opened slowly, gritty and sore, and not focusing well.
Lyran sat by her side, anxiety lining his brow and exhaustion graying his face.
“Either I’m alive,” Martis coughed, “or you’re dead—and I don’t remember you being dead.”
“You live, Mage-lady—but it was a very near thing. Almost, I did not reach you in time. You are fortunate that sorcerers are not weapons-trained—no swordsman would have missed your heart as he did.”
“Martis. My name is Martis—you’ve earned the right to use it.” Martis coughed again, amazed that there was so little pain—that the worst she felt was a vague ache in her lungs, a dreamy lassitude and profound weakness. “Why am I still alive? Even if he missed the heart, that blow was enough to kill. You’re no Healer—” she paused, all that Lyran had told her about his “Way” running through her mind. “—are you?”
“As my hands deal death, so they must also preserve life,” Lyran replied. “Yes, among my people, all who live by weapons are also trained as Healers, even as Healers must learn to use weapons, if only to defend themselves and the wounded upon the field of battle.”
He rubbed eyes that looked as red and sore as her own felt. “Since I am not Healer-born, it was hard, very hard. I am nearly as weak as you as a consequence. It will be many days before I regain my former competence, my energy, or my strength. It is well you have no more enemies that I must face, for I would do so, I fear, on my hands and knees!”