"Whatever it is you're attempting to do, you are out of time," Jack promised darkly.
He spared the battle outside another look. With Tharzon's aid Anders fought his way to his feet again, blood streaming from several wounds. The powerful Northman beat aside the drow captain's attack and rammed forward breast-to-breast with the mercenary, shoving Hathmar back toward the wall of water surrounding the stone. Feathers of white water streaked away from the drow as he breached the barrier, and then Anders hammered him all the way through, losing his balance as the maelstrom swept away Hathmar. He drifted back into the black depths of the lake, caught in the current and swept back from air and life. Helplessly, the drow vanished into the dark depths.
Anders spotted Jack and Jelan and dashed straight at them, only to encounter the same barrier that restricted Jack. He rebounded and went down hard.
"I have an argument with you, Warlord!" he cried.
"So?" Jelan laughed. "You, too, are not in time." She completed whatever ritual or preparation she had performed, and then slashed open the palm of her left hand with a dagger. Then she pressed her bloody hand to the cold, dark stone.
With a detonation that tossed Jack, Blacktree, and everyone else nearby to the ground, the wild mythal exploded with emerald energy. Whips of green power flailed against the water, the stone, the darkness above with the fury of wildcats, sizzling and snapping. The maelstrom's eye blasted apart in a spray of cold water and reformed fifty yards wider than it had been, hammered backward by the power pouring from the mythal stone. And in the center of it all, Jelan arched and screamed with ecstasy and delight as the energy poured into her body, filling her, dancing across her skin like fire.
"I have done it!" she cried.
Done what? Jack wondered as he picked himself up and staggered to his feet. The magic streamed into Jelan as if she were a bottomless well, drinking and drinking without reaching satiation. Dully he noticed that the tile paths were now marked by walls of emerald force, the invisible barrier now visible and unbreakable, completely encapsulating him with the Warlord and the wild mythal. Magic now ran from his body to the stone, draining from his soul as blood might drain from slashed wrists. Moment by moment he felt it slipping away from him.
"Elana," he coughed. "What have you done?"
"For ten generations my family has suffered," she cried triumphantly. "Once we were mighty sorcerers, born to wield magic, the most powerful of all Kara-Tur. Then our magic was stripped from us by a divine curse! Now, at last, I have undone that wrong! We will be sorcerers again, one with the Weave, strong in the Art! It is in my blood!"
"You wrecked Raven's Bluff for this?" Jack asked in amazement.
Magic buffeted him, ruffled his hair and clothing, howled around him like a demon, but he could not sense it. He only felt its effects, and the ache in his heart, the sense of something missing, was unbearable.
"This is my restitution," she shouted. Energy wreathed her dark hair like a crown of emeralds. "My penance! And my triumph! I have freed my bloodline of the antimagic curse, and I have claimed the first city of my empire. I am bound no longer!"
"What of the mythal?" Jack cried. "You are destroying it!"
"I am taming it," Jelan replied. "Within its domain, I am the arbiter of all magic, I am magic. My kingdom will be unassailable!"
"Who gave you the right?" Jack demanded. "We have no need of an overlord. We do not desire a tyrant to decide who may use magic and who may not. You broke your curse-good! You have righted an ancient wrong, but you have no legitimacy here, no claim to rule Raven's Bluff!"
Jelan met his eyes evenly. "I do not ask for the right, Jack Ravenwild. I take it! I once offered you a chance to serve me. This is your last opportunity to reconsider your answer. Will you swear allegiance to me, serve me as one of the rulers of this city? Or would you rather remain a street rat for the rest of your days?"
Jack studied her face. He could see death waiting in her eyes if he answered wrong. He glanced behind him, where Illyth, Anders, Tharzon, and Zandria waited and watched, hemmed out by the green fields of magic. All of Jelan's lieutenants and swordsmen were down, as were the Hawk Knights. I didn't even see the end of the battle, Jack thought to himself. What happened?
"Well?" Jelan demanded.
Jack's allies were silent. Perhaps they'd already tried to make themselves heard through the wall of power surrounding the stone and failed; they simply watched him now, their expressions unreadable. Hope, despair, anger, compassion-it didn't matter what they wanted. It was up to him. He turned back to Jelan and smiled.
"I decline," he said.
Jelan raised her hand and struck him with a bolt of icy green lightning. Jack howled in pain and collapsed in a seizure of pain, arms and legs flailing against the stone. He bit his tongue hard. Blood filled his mouth. After an eternity of pain, the seizure relaxed, and he moaned aloud. Awkwardly, he turned himself over and levered himself to his hands and knees.
"Your spells lack subtlety," he gasped, pushing to his feet. He picked up his rapier and advanced on her.
The Warlord stepped away from the stone and drew her own sword. "Blades, then," she said.
Without hesitation she darted forward and slashed high at his head, a graceful and deadly arc that would have decapitated him with ease if he hadn't thrown himself to the ground to duck beneath it. Jack managed to get the point of his rapier up fast enough to back her off a step when she moved to finish him on the ground. Then he scrambled sideways until he gained his feet again.
The Warlord laughed and came at him again, offering him no chance to rest. She slashed and whirled like a dancer with a baton, impossibly swift and skillful. Jack deflected her blade from his heart by a lucky parry, blocked another by retreating behind a corner of the mythal stone, and then took a long, shallow cut along his ribs as he barely twisted away from a thrust that would have impaled him at the navel. He gasped in pain and backed away again. Already his limbs trembled with fatigue. I can't beat her, he realized. In a minute, maybe two, I'll slip or miss a parry and she'll run me through, and that will be it.
"You are not much of a swordsman, Jack," Jelan said. "You might have been a good one, with some training. You've got good reflexes and an excellent eye, but you're not there yet."
"I'll work on that right after you kill me," he snapped.
Angrily, he called upon the power of the stone ring and felt new strength flood into his limbs, toughness imbue his flesh. Fueled by the ring's power, he counterattacked with everything he had, thrusting and riposting and lunging. Jelan simply laughed again and danced back, using graceful turns of her blade to deflect his stone-strength attacks. Jack overextended, dropping to one knee to reach her, and she slapped the rapier out of his hand with a wicked cut that would have laid open his right forearm if not for the ring's defensive enchantment. Jack cried out, stung, and staggered back.
"You've made a lot of poor choices recently," Jelan said. The smile faded from her face, replaced by something cold and deadly. "Time to face the consequences, Jack." She stalked closer, the tip of her sword unwavering.
Jack reached for his belt to draw his poignard, futile as it was. But he'd already thrown the weapon at her; the scabbard was empty. The dwarven knife! he remembered. As quick as thought, he stooped to his boot and threw the knife with a wicked underhanded motion using all his marvelous skill and the strength of the enchanted ring.