Silence greeted my words. Another shudder went through the keep, and I heard the rumble of falling stone. Richard looked at me without expression. ‘You don’t want to do this, Alex.’
‘I have never wanted to do anything more.’
‘Stand against me,’ Richard said, ‘and after I kill you, I’ll kill her.’
‘You don’t know as much about the future as you think.’
‘Look, Alex,’ Richard said. ‘Let’s—’ He stopped suddenly as his expression changed.
There. I’d been wondering when Richard would see this coming. No more reason to hold back. I flooded the futures with static.
Instantly my precognition was blanked out. When you can use divination all the time, you grow to rely on it. I barely even think of it as magic any more; it’s just another sense, like sight or hearing. Now instead of seeing Richard and the room around me in four-dimensional clarity, all the woulds and coulds and mights, my vision dwindled down to only the present, with everything beyond nothing but a blank void. Hard to believe normal people lived like this all the time.
But it was my choice, and that made a difference. I looked at Richard.
‘Very impressive,’ Richard said tightly. ‘Did you learn that from Helikaon or Alaundo?’
I gave him a cold smile. ‘Use your divination and find out.’
There was a new wariness in Richard’s eyes. He’s afraid. For the first time in probably years, Richard couldn’t see what was coming. He was still deadly dangerous, but his best defence had been stripped from him. ‘Last chance to walk away,’ I said.
Richard paused. If I could still see the future, I knew that I’d be seeing the shifting strands of him making a decision. Then his expression became flat and unreadable. ‘As you wish.’
Sagash’s arena was still. The tremors had fallen silent, and the two of us faced each other across the duelling ring.
‘So,’ I said. ‘What’ll—?’
A thread-thin black wire flashed out towards me.
Even without my precognition, I’d seen it coming. I knew Richard, and I knew how he fought – a killing attack as the opening move. I brought up the sovnya, channelling through the fateweaver, and the black wire curved in to strike the sovnya’s blade, the weapon flashing red as it ate the jinn’s magic.
I charged.
Richard struck again but I swerved as I ran; the attack missed and I felt a flash of triumph. He wasn’t used to fighting without his divination. Richard started a third attack but I stabbed with the sovnya and he had to abort his movement to throw up a black shield.
I pressed in, swinging the sovnya in tight, deadly arcs. I had to control my breathing through the fateweaver and maintain the optasia at the same time, but with no need to keep up my precognition, I had attention to spare. Richard fell back before my assault, face tight with concentration. The black shield around him flickered, flaring when the sovnya cut into it. He tried to strike back with those black wires but they were unwieldy at close range and the fateweaver sent them into the walls and floor.
Another tremor shook the keep, and the floor shifted beneath my feet. Both Richard and I stumbled but Richard recovered first and his hand blurred.
Light exploded at our feet, dazzling me. I felt Richard’s jinn magic lash out and I blindly pulled it in to catch it on the sovnya’s blade. Without my divination, the fateweaver was cruder, a club instead of a scalpel, but I poured power into it and willed myself to be safe and nothing touched me.
My vision cleared, black-purple spots fading as I heard running feet. I was still dazzled but I could make Richard out at the other end of the room. It had been some sort of one-shot, a flash bomb; he’d managed to draw it without my seeing. Now he stood half-turned away from me, right hand behind him while the left held a tangle of spinning black wires. He was working on a spell.
‘An impressive weapon,’ Richard said. ‘Unfortunately—’
I activated my headband and kicked off the ground, soaring towards Richard with the sovnya extended.
Richard’s mouth quirked in a smile. He let the spell drop and brought up his other hand to reveal a gun.
Richard shot me twice while I was still in mid-air, then dived aside as I flew past. I crashed into the wall, and before I could recover he’d emptied his gun into me, firing until it clicked on an empty magazine and the echoes of the shots faded away.
I straightened and turned to face him.
‘A bullet ward?’ Richard snapped. ‘You’ve been saving that this whole time?’
‘What can I say?’ I’d been channelling a thread of power into the bullet ward since the fight started, and it had deflected every shot. ‘You taught me to be prepared.’
Richard backed away. That black shield was powerful, but from the way he was eyeing the sovnya he didn’t seem to want to test it against a direct hit. Another tremor ran through the floor; I kept my balance this time and as the spots faded from my vision I lunged.
Richard created an attack behind me, black wires lancing for my head, but I’d seen him use that trick before and I used the fateweaver to make it miss. The sovnya cut rents into his shield and he had to scramble back. But he was running out of space now, underneath the gallery with the wall behind him. I deflected another shot with the fateweaver, then brought the sovnya around, left hand high and right hand at elbow level so that the blade hissed across at waist height in a sweeping blow, impossible to dodge.
Richard dropped his gun and snatched out something smalclass="underline" with a shing! noise it expanded into a thin metal staff six feet long. The sovnya hit it with a high-pitched clang. The staff should have snapped under the blow but it rang and held.
I reversed and struck again but again Richard parried, sliding away. I followed up, not giving him the chance to open the range. The sovnya flickered and slashed, but each time that staff stopped it a foot or two short.
The clash of metal echoed through the room, mixing with the stutter and thud of footwork. My breaths came in and out, harsh and mechanical, as I forced my lungs to expand and contract. Richard fought in silence, but I could see sweat on his forehead and his eyes darted to follow my attacks. Stone dust hung in the air. My left hand was sweaty and my muscles burned, but my right arm was tireless and I put all its power into my blows, forcing Richard to block perfectly or die.
I brought the sovnya down in an overhead strike. Richard deflected the blow, taking the instant’s breather to try to back away, but I reversed to slash at his ankles, forcing him to jump. He landed with a thump and I was on him again; I wasn’t giving him the chance for any more tricks. Richard was too busy parrying my blows to attack with his jinn magic; from time to time he had openings to strike with the staff but he didn’t take them, devoting all his attention to defence. I recognised the style he fought with; it wasn’t so different from the one I’d learnt in his training hall all those years ago. The sovnya did its part, seeming to twist and strike of its own accord. It could sense the thing inside Richard and it wanted to cleave his flesh and bone to reach it.