For the moment, Mask had given up on trying to rise. He had placed his left hand in a simmering puddle of light and had extended his right, palm toward me. The puddle vanished, and a shower of fire emerged from the right hand and sped at me, like drops from a lawn sprinkler. I was ready for this, though. If the Fount could contain the fire, then it had to be insulated against it.
I threw myself flat on the other side of the dark structure, using its base as a shield.
“It is likely one of us is going to die,” I called out, “since we are not pulling our punches. Either way, I won't have a chance to ask you later: What's your bitch? What am I to you?”
The only reply was a chuckling sound from the other side of the Fount, as the floor began to move beneath me.
From somewhere off to my right, near the foot of the undamaged stair, I heard Jurt say, “A fool in all places? What about close quarters?” and I looked up in time to see him appear before Jasra and seize hold of her.
A moment later he screamed, as Jasra lowered her head and her lips touched his forearm. She pushed him away then, and he fell down the remaining steps, landing stiffly, not moving.
I crept to the right of the Fount, over the sharp edges of the broken flooring, which jiggled and sawed at me within the matrix of Mask's power.
“Jurt is out of it,” I commented, “and you stand alone now, Mask, against the three of us. Call it quits, and I'll see that you go on living.”
“Three of you,” came that flat, distorted voice. “You admit that you cannot beat me without help?”
“ Beat?” I said. “Perhaps you consider it a game. I do not. I will not be bound by any rules you choose to recognize. Call it quits or I'll kill you, with or without help, any way I can.”
A dark object suddenly appeared overhead; and I rolled back away from the Fount as it came to rest in the basin. It was Jurt. Unable to move normally because of the paralytic effect of Jasra's bite, he had trumped away from the foot of the stair and into the Fount.
“You have your friends, Lord of Chaos, and I have mine,” Mask replied, as Jurt moaned softly and began to glow.
Suddenly Mask went spinning into the air, as I heard the flooring shatter. The Fount itself died down, grew weaker, as a flaming tower twisted ceilingward, rising from a new opening in the floor, bearing Mask with it on the crest of its golden plume.
“And enemies,” Jasra stated, moving nearer.
Mask spread his arms and legs and wheeled slowly through the middle air, suddenly in control of his trajectory. I got to my feet and backed away from the Fount. I'm seldom at my best at centers of geological catastrophes.
A rushing, rumbling sound now came from the doubled fountain, and a high-pitched, sourceless-seeming note accompanied it. A small wind sighed among the rafters. The tower of fire atop which Mask rode continued its slow spiraling, and the spray in the lowered fountain began a similar movement. Jurt stirred, moaned, raised his right arm.
“And enemies,” Mask acknowledged, beginning a series of gestures I recognized immediately because I'd spent a lot of time figuring them out.
“Jasra!” I cried. “Watch out for Sharu!”
Jasra took three quick steps to her left and smiled. Something very much like lightning then fell from the rafters, blackening the area she had just departed.
“He always starts with a lightning stroke,” she explained. “He's very predictable.”
She spun once and vanished redly, with a sound like breaking glass.
I looked immediately to where the old man had stood, RINALDO carved upon his right leg. He was leaning against the wall now, one hand to his forehead, the other implementing a simple but powerful shielding spell.
I was about to scream for Mandor to take the old boy out, when Mask hit me with a Klaxon spell which tempo rarily deafened me while bursting blood vessels in my nose.
Dripping, I dove and rolled, interposing the now-rising Jurt between myself and the sorcerer in the air. Jurt actually appeared to be throwing off the effects of Jasra's bite. So I drove my fist into his stomach as I rose and turned him into an even better position to serve as my shield. A mistake. I received a jolt from his body, not unlike a nasty electrical shock, and he even managed a brief laugh as I fell.
“He's all yours,” I heard him gasp then.
From the corner of my eye, I saw where Jasra and Sharu Garrul stood, each of them seemingly holding one end of a great long piece of macrame work woven of cables. The lines were pulsing and changing colors, and I knew they represented forces rather than material objects, visible only by virtue of the Logrus Sight, under which I continued to operate. The pulse increased in tempo, and both sank slowly to their knees, arms still extended, faces glistening. A quick word, a gesture, and I could break that balance. Unfortunately, I had problems of my own just then. Mask was swooping toward me like some huge insect-expressionless, shimmering, deadly. A succession of brittle snapping sounds occurred within the front wall of the Keep, where a series of jagged cracks raced downward like black lightning. I was away of falling dust beyond the spiraling lights, of the growling and the whining sounds-faint now within my ringing ears-of the continuing vibration of the floor beneath my half-numbed legs. But that was all right. I raised my left hand as my right slid within my cloak.
A fiery blade appeared in Mask's right hand. I did aot stir, but waited a second longer before speaking the guide words to my Fantasia-for-Six-Acetylene-Torches spell as I snapped my forearm back to cover my eyes and rolled to the side.
The stroke missed me, passing through broken stone. Mask's left arm fell across my chest, however, elbow connecting with my lower ribs. I did not stop to assess damages, though, as I heard the sword of fire crackle and come free of the stone. And so, turning, I struck with my own more mundane dagger of steel, driving its full length up into Mask's left kidney.
There followed a scream as the sorcerer stiffened and slumped beside me. Almost immediately thereafter I was kicked with considerable force behind my right hip. I twisted away and another blow landed upon my right shoulder. I am sure it was aimed for my head. As I covered my neck and temples and mlled away, I heard Jurt's voice, cursing.
Drawing my longer blade, I rose to my feet, and my gaze met Jurt's. He was rising at the same time, and he held Mask cradled in his arms.
“Later,” he said to me, and he vanished, bearing the . body away with him. The blue mask remained on the floor, near to a long smear of blood.
Jasra and Sharu were still facing each other from kneeling positions, panting, bodies completely drenched, their life forces twisting about each other like mating serpents.
Then, like a surfacing fish, Jurt appeared within the tower of forces beyond the Fount. Even as Mandor hurled two of his spheres-which seemed to grow in size as they fled down the chamber, to crash into the Fount and reduce ii to rubble-I saw what I believed I would never see again.
As the reverberation of the Fount's collapse spread and the groaning and grinding within the walls was replaced by a snapping and swaying, and dust, gravel and timbers fell about me, I was moving forward, skirting the wreckage, sidestepping new geysers and rivulets of glowing forces, cloak raised to protect my face, black extended.
Jurt cursed me roundly as I came on. Then, “Pleased; brother? Pleased?” he said. “May death be the only peace between us.”
But I ignored the predictable sentiment, for I had to get a better look at what I thought I had seen moments before. I leaped over a piece of broken masonry and beheld the fallen sorcerer's face within the flames, head cradled against his shoulder.
“Julia! “ I cried.
But they vanished even as I moved forward, and I knew it was time for me to do the same.
Turning, I fled through the fire.