Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes went perfectly round with horror. The other gentleman strode past Lord Eyrdway into the room, looking grimly triumphant.
“Glorious Slave of Scharathrion,” he said in the resonant voice of a mage, “I hereby challenge you to thaumaturgical combat.”
“You’ll have to fight him now,” added Lord Eyrdway, shutting and bolting the door behind them. “For the honor of our house.”
“Despicable coward!” said Deviottin Blichbiss. He was a tall portly man, or at least was wearing the shape of one, with neatly parted hair and a sharp-edged mustache. “Did you really think I wouldn’t hunt you down amongst these wretched mundanes? Now you’ll die like a rat in a wall, as you richly deserve.”
“I’m not a well man,” said Lord Ermenwyr in a faint voice. “I’m afraid I’m not up to your challenge.”
“You’re afraid!” gloated Blichbiss. “And whether you’re well, sick, or dead, we’re going to duel in this room tonight. It’s not a customary combat location, but mundane cities are within the permitted areas.”
“Oh, you’re lying,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pulling at his beard in agitation.
“I most certainly am not. And if you were any kind of scholar, instead of the spoiled scion of a jumped-up Black Arts gladiator, you’d know that!”
“Are you going to let him talk about Daddy that way?” demanded Lord Eyrdway.
“I quote as precedent the Codex Smagdaranthine, fourth chapter, line 136: ‘And it came to pass that in the mundane city of Celissa, in the seventh year of Fuskus the Tyrant’s reign, Tloanix Hasherets was done grave insult by Prindo Goff, and therefore challenged him to wizardly battle, whereupon they dueled in the third hour after midnight in the central square of the city, and Hasherets smote Goff down with a bolt of balefire, and scattered his ashes in the fountain there,’” recited Blichbiss in a steely voice.
“But you haven’t got a second,” Lord Ermenwyr pointed out.
“I’ll be his second,” said Lord Eyrdway. “Smith can be yours.”
“You traitor!”
The bodyguards came shuffling into the room and stopped, staring at Blichbiss. A low growl issued from Cutt’s throat. All four of them began to drool. Lord Ermenwyr put his hands in his pockets, smirking.
“And then again, my gentlemen here just might tear you into little pieces,” he said.
“No, they won’t,” Lord Eyrdway assured Blichbiss. “They take orders from my family, and I’ve got precedence over my little brother. You can’t kill this man, boys, do you understand? That’s a direct order. He’s insulted Lord Ermenwyr, and so he’s Lord Ermenwyr’s kill alone.”
The bodyguards drew back, looking at one another in some confusion. There was a taut silence in the room as they worked out the semantics of their terms of bondage, and finally Cutt nodded and bowed deeply, as did the other three.
“We respectfully withdraw, Masters,” he said.
Smith shifted his grip on the bottle he was holding, just the slightest of movements, but Lord Eyrdway turned his head at once.
“Don’t try it, Smith, or I’ll kill you,” he said. “And I’d really be sorry, because I like you, but mortals shouldn’t get mixed up in these things.”
“Thank you for the thought, however, Smith,” said Lord Ermenwyr, with a hint of returning bravado. “Way-way, you are going to be in so much trouble with Mother.”
Lord Eyrdway blanched.
“I’m doing you a favor, you whiner,” he said plaintively. “You can’t always run from everything that scares you. Fight the man!”
“Yes,” said Blichbiss, who had been standing there with his arms folded, looking on in saturnine triumph. “Fight me.”
“Very well.” Lord Ermenwyr shot his cuffs and drew himself up. “I assume I get choice of weapons, as is customary?”
Blichbiss nodded, hard-eyed.
“Then, given the fact that we’re indoors and my second here has personal property at risk, I think we’ll just avoid incendiary spells, if you’ve no objection?”
“None.”
“So, under the circumstances, I think … I choose … Fatally Verbal Abuse!” cried Lord Ermenwyr.
Blichbiss’s eyes flashed. “Typical of you. And I accept!”
Smith racked his brains, trying to remember what he’d ever heard of mages and their preferred means of killing one another. He vaguely recalled that Fatally Verbal Abuse was considered a low-caliber weapon. It had none of the glamour or impact of, say, a Purple Dragon Invocation or a Spell of Gradual Unmaking. In fact, there was some dispute as to whether it constituted an actual magickal weapon at all, given the propensity of people to believe what they are told about themselves anyway, and their tendency to fulfill negative expectations. There were those on the fabled Black Council who held that only the process of accelerated impact qualified it as a valid means of score-settling between arcanes.
This was not to say that Fatally Verbal Abuse could not produce dramatic results, however, or that strategy was not required in its use.
Blichbiss cleared his throat. He stood straight. “The first assault is mine, under the ancient rules of combat. Prepare yourself.”
Lord Ermenwyr stiffened. Blichbiss drew a deep breath.
“You,” he said, “are a twisted, underdeveloped dwarf with a bad tailor!”
Lord Eyrdway chortled. Smith gaped as, before his eyes, Lord Ermenwyr began to warp and shrink, and his suit seemed to become too long in one leg and too short in one arm.
Lord Ermenwyr bared his teeth and replied; “No, I am a handsome and exquisitely dressed fellow of somewhat less than average height while you are a squawking duck with gas!”
Blichbiss shuddered all over and dwindled, farting explosively, as Lord Ermenwyr and his suit returned to their normal proportions. Through the emerging bill that was replacing his teeth, Blichbiss managed to quack out the counterspell; “No, I am a gas-free man with neither wings nor bill who speaks in pure and persuasive tones, whereas you are a streak of black slime in a crack in the floor, soon to be scrubbed into oblivion!”
And like an expanding balloon he resumed his original shape, as Lord Ermenwyr seemed to dissolve, to darken, to sink down toward a crack in the floor…
“No!” he gurgled desperately. “I am a straight sound mage, mildew-resistant and clean in all my parts, but you are a one-legged castrated blind dog with mange!”
Whereupon he became the upright mage he said he was, and the black fungus that had begun to cover his face vanished; but Blichbiss toppled to the floor, clutching at his groin with swiftly withering arms, and turning his blind scabrous furry face he howled; “No! I am a man, full and complete and strong upon both my legs, clearly seeing that you are a toad whose teeth have grown together, preventing your speech!”
“Whoops,” said Lord Eyrdway gleefully, for both he and Smith had caught the fallacy: Toads have no teeth. “Tried too hard to be clever!”
Lord Ermenwyr jerked back, an agonized look on his face as his teeth snapped shut. He struggled to get out words as he began to shrink and change color; as his mouth widened, the rest of the incantation cycled through and the teeth vanished. He made a horrible noise, just perceptible as words, “No! I am no toad but a man, with perfect and flawless dentition, clearly capable of stating that you are a mere giant mayfly with no mouth at all!”
“No!” gasped Blichbiss, as gauzy wings burst from the back of his dinner jacket. “I am a"—her reached up and tore at his elongating face to prevent his mouth from sealing before he could finish the counterspell—"a man with a mouth such as all men have, and no wings nor any brief life span, whereas you are a cheap tallow taper, your mouth wide with molten wax, your tongue the black wick, awrithe with living flame!”