Even if I was wrong about Gash’s role it only made things worse. Oskin Yahlei could have been working for somebody else entirely, and Gash had merely stumbled onto the setup himself. In that case, whoever Yahlei had double-crossed was still out there, and I’d have not only one very powerful and very nasty customer to contend with, but two.
The one thing that looked certain was the ring. Whoever was out there, they’d want the ring. Oskin Yahlei had said that the ring would only work for the original wearer, but that was the kind of restriction a smart technician could usually get around; yeah, they’d want the ring, all right. Everybody would want the ring. At the moment, though, Oskin Yahlei had the ring, and I had Oskin Yahlei.
But I didn’t want him to panic. If he tried anything at all, anything desperate, the chance that I wouldn’t be able to handle it was excellent. I tightened my glare on him. “Yet you still may have your uses,” I said. “Your doom is not immutable. I can avert the harsh decree.”
“… You are still toying with me.”
“No. I will give you your chance. You will take it if you have the sense.”
“What must I do?”
“What do you think? First, the ring.”
He sighed. “Yes. Very well.” He grasped the arms of his chair and rose reluctantly to his feet. “Will you have me just yank it off, or will you allow us more prudent precautions?”
“Since we are at our leisure here, precautions are a reasonable step. Make no rash assumptions, though - remember that I know your perfidy. You are on parole, and I will be vigilant.”
Oskin Yahlei looked at me, his expression of sudden hope shadowed by the cast of fear. He gave a stiff nod. “My workroom is up the stairs.”
I rose from my own chair, taking the grip of the walking stick in my right hand. Oskin Yahlei moved ahead of me toward the circular staircase in the corner of the room. I took a breath and followed him.
My foot was on the first riser and I was beginning to allow myself tentative congratulation for actually pulling this thing off when the skin under my collar began to squirm. Faintly, very faintly, I caught the hint of a larger, different space, being perceived through other senses than my own. A new awareness stirred in the back of my mind. I’d had a feeling a little like this once in a jungle, when something that had been watching me had looked away, and then had suddenly turned in my direction again. Maybe my senses were sharper now than they’d been earlier in the day or maybe I’d just been something else; either way I’d been afraid of this sensation. I didn’t know how great my chance was of explaining to Gash why I was running around impersonating him, let alone telling him what I’d found out, but I wouldn’t have bet more than an ool on me, myself. I’d been hoping I wouldn’t have to find out. Unfortunately, all of a sudden it looked like I wouldn’t have the luxury of the choice. The presence hovered there in the back of my mind, watching, listening, waiting. The bit of awareness that was trickling through reeked of surprise - it couldn’t believe what it was sensing. It couldn’t believe what I was up to.
The wheel had just advanced, and I had the unpleasant feeling I knew who was rolling under the tread. I may have had Oskin Yahlei, but now it looked like Gashanatantra had me. The handle of the walking stick started to vibrate in my hand.
My body was still mine, but who knew how long that would last; I thought I was already feeling some resistance in my limbs. I hurried my next steps on the stairs. Oskin Yahlei was almost a half-turn above me, approaching the exit to the room on the next story. “You wanted me to get him, well, I’m getting him,” I thought desperately to myself.
“Do you have any idea of the full power of this ring?” Oskin Yahlei said.
I mumbled something in response. Oskin Yahlei paused and turned on the steps, but by the time he could see me I had managed to put on a stern face, and the walking stick yanking my arm in a spasmodic dance was on the other side of my body from him. He stared down at me, I stared up at him, and then he turned back and headed up. I went after him. I was five or six steps behind when the sword decided to flame on.
The fact that I’d thought Gash might try to talk directly to the sword didn’t help me at all. Sparks spraying on the risers as the sword condensed out of its cloud, the sword whipped my arm up and around and threw me forward in a lurch; I would have dropped the sword, but my fingers were locked in a rictus around the hilt. Oskin Yahlei’s head was already through the entrance in the ceiling, his hand ahead of him on the railing, not nearly far enough ahead of me to get out of the way. His head started to spin and incline downward in my direction as he heard the sudden whine of the sword, and then my shoulder went into the back of his knee. The sword cut through his arm and into his side with a spray of shooting fire, like hot metal being beaten on a forge, and Oskin Yahlei began to fold toward the floor. His head snapped hard against the solid wood railing, flipping him over, and the sword pulled free with a wet slurp.
Something flashed against the corner of my vision overhead, making a quick szoop/sproing sound, but I was busy with other things. The sword was moving in again. Oskin Yahlei’s body had fallen half on the floor of the second story room, half stretched downward on the stairs, and I was sprawled along the upper steps across his legs. I got my left hand braced against my right forearm, trying to drag the sword off its trajectory and embed it in the floor, but it was no longer bothering with distractions from the likes of me. Ahead of my face, I could see Oskin Yahlei’s drooping eyelid, the eye behind lolling low in its socket. It focused on me as the tip of the sword began to scrape toward him through the wood of the floor. His flesh seemed to flow toward the blade in slow liquid waves.
“You are not Gashanatantra,” Oskin Yahlei said.
“No,” I said around my clenched teeth, “and you weren’t Death, either, so maybe that makes us even.”
The ring on his hand was spinning frantically now, a wisp of friction-raised smoke rising from the finger around it, and vague blue figures were forming in the air above us. The black aura was alive with shimmering highlights and eager snapping sparks. In fact, tendrils of aura seemed to have wrapped themselves around the sword blade, pulling it closer. I threw my weight against the sword one last time to force it back. Then all at once, as I had known it would, the sword tore clear of the floor and threw me to the side and dove deep into the torso of Oskin Yahlei. He made a horrible gurgling sound and went rigid.
“I’m sorry,” I started to say, but beyond us in the room was a flash of motion and another unexpected voice yelling over mine, “Don’t touch that ring!”
My thought and my action came in the same instant. My thought was, “Gashanatantra! He’s here!” My action was plain. I wrapped my hand around the gold ring and yanked it clear of Oskin Yahlei’s finger.
17. COUNTERPLOTS AND COUNTERSPELLS
Max had assumed something would go wrong and had wondered what it would be, but this was the quickest answer he’d ever been hit with. Blowgun and dart at the ready, he watched Oskin Yahlei’s head rise up through the floor at the top of the staircase, taking his aim on the emerging neck. Another rapid footstep sounded behind Yahlei on the stairs. Without warning, the whine of magical energies suddenly released burst up into the workroom. Oskin Yahlei started to spin. A fan of sparks spouted up the stairs toward him like a fountain of pink lightning, arching over his head and out across the room, and a nimbus of flame pulsing with the beat of the whine swung up from behind, cut through his right arm and into his back, and hurled him toward the floor. Max hesitated, then tracked the falling Yahlei downward with the blowgun and puffed. Just as the dart left the barrel, Oskin Yahlei’s head caromed off the heavy banister and flipped him to one side; the dart shot through the space where he should have been and embedded itself in a beam.