“Put it down.”
She spun, astonished to find Ruala standing beside the bed, ready to kill her with the elegant jeweled knife clutched in her fist. She held the blade by its handle, not its tip, ready to throw it; she probably didn’t even know how. Thus she would have to come closer—close enough for Mireva to disarm her, with luck. While the wire was still twisted in her earlobe, she could not use sorcery with ease—and she was two and a half times Ruala’s age.
“Why isn’t your loving lord hovering over his precious darling?” Mireva asked sweetly.
“Put the scissors down,” Ruala said, just as quietly as before.
Long black hair swirled about perfect shoulders; the dark green eyes were reminiscent of Mireva’s own in some lights. The old woman saw herself as she had been over forty years ago: young, beautiful, with the promise of power in her eyes. “We’re the same, you and I,” she murmured.
“We’re no more alike than Fire and Water. Now, put it down.”
Mireva set the scissors on the dressing table behind her. “I know power when it’s near me. You’re diarmadhi, just like me.” She could almost feel Andry pounding on the door down below. Time, time—“Do you think Andry will let you live, knowing what you are? Or do you suppose your brave lord will protect you? How can he, when Andry will be after his blood, too?”
Ruala smiled. “You know power, do you? We’ll see.” She started slowly for the door, never taking her eyes off Mireva. But when she reached her hand to the knob, Mireva made a supreme effort—and what Ruala touched was a thing slimy and foul, a writhing piece of corroded flesh that oozed acid. She screamed and jerked her fingers away.
Mireva could hardly see. The pain was unendurable, spreading along her limbs from a brain that seemed to be on fire. But the torture was worth it. Ruala, stunned and terrified for that brief instant of sorcery, was vulnerable. Mireva threw herself blindly forward. They sprawled together on the floor, locked as tightly as lovers. Mireva dimly heard the knife clatter away.
She wrestled herself atop Ruala, gasping as fingers dug so deep into her lacerated wrists that she was sure the bones would shatter. Ruala was no fool; recovery from shock had been swift, and she knew exactly where to hurt Mireva the most. Mireva flung them over and hoped her pain-hazed sight could be trusted. The thud of the girl’s head against the stout wooden bedframe proved her correct. Ruala wilted.
Gulping for air, Mireva pushed herself to her feet and went for the scissors again. Her hands shook so hard that she drew blood from the side of her neck—but the wire dropped to the dressing table. She was free.
The stars beckoned. She wove their light swiftly, craving dranath, and hurled herself down the silvery skeins toward Rivenrock.
It was as she had feared. Pol and Ruval were already battling, Air and Fire whirling around them, hideous visions conjured and countered in a maelstrom of power. The ungifted onlookers were masked in horror at what they saw. Those who were sensitive to the arts—Sioned and Morwenna, Tobin, Maarken, and Hollis—were on their knees in the sand, faces contorted with agony. No perath had been woven to shield them. This suited Mireva perfectly. She could enter the battle without hindrance and the Sunrunners would feel the deathblow as if it had been directed at them.
Pol backed away from Ruval’s gambit—a blazing whirlwind that sprouted claws from which lightning spewed. The princeling looked frightened. Mireva laughed her satisfaction. It seemed Ruval was doing just fine without her. Still, she watched in wariness for Pol’s reply, for all she knew about him warned of cleverness.
His right hand groped in a pocket of his trousers, emerged fisted around some small thing. He flung it into the air as one might release a hunting hawk—and from a tiny bright glitter it indeed grew wings. Swirling with Sunrunner’s Fire, the thing became an immense golden dragon as tall as the canyon walls, wings aflame, eyes glowing white as if suffused with stars.
Mireva gasped out a curse and hastened her own work. For the trick to this illusion was that some of it was not illusion. Fire concealed the working until it was ready in all its awful details—so that the portions that were real could not be guessed from watching its construction. Any part of the conjured dragon might be made from that small glinting thing Pol had thrown into the air. She had taught Ruval the technique, shown him how stone gathered from the sands could form talons and teeth, or real fire could gush from mighty jaws. If Ruval could not discern fact from illusion, it would cost him his life.
It was almost as painful to work without dranath as it had been with iron poisoning her blood. She needed the drug, could feel its lack screaming shrilly inside her as she readied her weapon. But she did it: Pol’s dragon turned to glass. It cracked and splintered to the sand, and as it did the real portion of it—the lashing tail concealing the little golden carving—crumbled.
Pol fell back stunned as his masterwork vanished. Real fear flashed into his eyes. Mireva sobbed for breath, silently screaming at Ruval to be quick in his answering illusion. She could not sustain this for long, not without the drug in her veins.
She whirled then to stare at Ruala. The young woman was still unconscious, but her power was accessible. Without dranath it would be difficult, but if she did not try, Ruval might be dead before the next star appeared. She broke the threads of light and grunted with effort as she hauled Ruala over to the windows. The spell was arduous under the best circumstances; Mireva felt her head was ready to explode with the strain. But she probed and pushed, groping for the hidden core—and found it.
Swiftly she rewove the starlight. It was easier now, sustained by Ruala’s young strength that had never been taught how to resist this. She saw the sand and walls of Rivenrock much more clearly now, and the two combatants.
Now it was Ruval who fumbled with something in his hand. A new inferno appeared, a monster forming within it. When the thing leaped from its concealing blaze. Pol fell back involuntarily. Fully the size of the dragon, it was the entirety of what Mireva had used to terrify Ruala. Had she had strength, she would have laughed in delight; she had taught Ruval this beast herself, they had formed it together.
She was momentarily distracted by a quiver from Ruala’s mind. She was beginning to wake up, as if sensing the use to which her powers were being put, outrage and sheer terror rousing her from unconsciousness. Mireva groaned with the pain of keeping her under control, and returned her attention to the monster Ruval had conjured.
It was horned and crested and covered in livid scales of every conceivable color, like a stained glass window gone berserk. The gaping eyes oozed yellowish matter down to an open maw filled with endless sharp teeth. These dripped blood onto forelegs as big around as a horse that ended in thick, slime-coated claws like steel spikes. It reared back on its hind legs and plummeted down, ready to clamp its jaws around Pol.
Mireva knew the teeth were not real, nor the claws. It was the pus leaking from the eyes that was dangerous. Formed of sand mixed with a paste Ruval had learned to make as one of his first lessons, hidden in a pocket until he needed it, when it touched Pol’s skin it would sear him to the bone.
She saw him leap away from the hundreds of teeth. Now, it must be now. She could feel her strength waning, her control over the awakening Ruala fading, her heart beating with savage throbs, her brain on fire. A last effort, a gust of Air conjured at an impossible distance—and a spurt of poisonous yellow muck spattered toward Pol.