I threw the Elietimm away from me but he came back with renewed vigor. Now I had no time to spare to wonder who was working this cursed enchantment as I dodged and shifted, fighting to turn every defensive move into a chance to regain the initiative. All the while the feeling of being undermined, that my defenses were crumbling, grew stronger and stronger. In a burst of desperation I unleashed a storm of blows on him, sacrificing my own protection in an all-out assault, taking a few bruising blows myself but managing to leave some telling cuts on the priest’s arms and legs. I withdrew, satisfied, careful to avoid the treacherous patches of blood-stained sand, happy to let the Elietimm go back on the defensive now he had bleeding injuries to drain his strength.
A ripping noise tore through my head. Cold talons dug themselves into my mind and clenched themselves, sending my senses reeling. The hot sunlight faded before my eyes, and I could feel nothing beneath my feet. The sounds of the crowd died to nothing as I gasped and stumbled, knees as weak as water, head swimming. Some instinct pulled me away from a mace stroke that would have sent my brains rattling in my skull, but I could only watch the bastard prepare for his next stroke, unable to move as the black iron flanges came hammering in toward my blurring eyes, wrestling as I was with the grasping hatred that was clawing at my wits.
My sword met the stroke, turning it fluently aside. My feet followed up the move, spreading my weight, light and balanced, as my hands launched a series of piercing thrusts. I could only look on in astonishment, locked in a frantic struggle for possession of my own mind, as some other intelligence took over my body and defended it against everything the Ice Islander could do. I was dimly aware of a long, shadowy hand overlaying my own work-hardened fingers as they wrapped around the sword hilt, the great blue stone of a signet ring catching the sunlight. My mind was stumbling a step or two behind my body, struggling as I was with the clutching hands of the magic trying to drag me down into the blackness. Someone else’s emotions were running through my veins, stiffening my sinews, guiding my every move. I could feel an eagerness, a resolution, a youthful energy and above all an implacable hatred of the Elietimm and all his kind, but somehow I was isolated from it, as if I were lost in a fever dream.
The priest went down, stumbling on a sticky patch of sand, weakened by the punishment he had taken. I watched from some distant corner of my mind as the long hands sent blow after hammering blow down on the Elietimm’s back, head and shoulders as he rolled, this way and that, feet kicking, mace flailing, trying to evade the razor-sharp blade as it gouged into his armor, his skin and the raw red flesh beneath, his blood running freely. A voice that was not my own came from my lips, Tormalin words ringing with an archaic cadence I had only ever heard in poetry and law courts.
“Go back to your master and tell him this land is ours. We will hold what we have won from the wilderness to the last man!”
The priest looked up in startled horror, his face paling beneath the mask of blood and sweat. He gabbled an incantation and was suddenly no longer there, leaving only a welter of blood-stained sand before my eyes.
The place erupted with noise, but all I could hear was the frantic shouting inside my head.
“What is this? Who are you? Where am I?”
I sank to my knees, ripping off my helm, my gauntlets, clutching my head as I summoned every measure of strength I possessed to force that panic-stricken presence out of my mind. With a suddenness that left me gasping, it was gone, leaving my skull echoing with a hollow silence in the midst of the deafening uproar. I looked at my hands; they were my own again, no shadows blurring them, but I saw that I bore a pale mark and a dent in the flesh around the long finger of my sword hand. Anyone would say that I habitually wore a broad ring with one central stone, now somehow lost.
“Ry-shad, where are you hurt?” I looked up to see the captain of the guard peering at me with wide-eyed concern.
“I’m bruised but I’ll be fine.” I turned my head to try and find Grival and Sezarre, wondering why they had not been first to my side. I was more than satisfied with what I saw. Grival had Kaeska face down in the dirt, kneeling on her thighs as he tied her hands securely behind her back. Sezarre was using that cursed veil of hers to gag her securely, pulling her head up at a cruel angle with a hand twisted hard in her hair. The bitch, the whoring, murderous bitch; that poisonous enchantment had to have been her work. No wonder she’d been veiled. Too bad her tame sorcerer had fled his fate, leaving her condemned before all the Islanders to suffer who only knew what fate.
“Ryshad!” Shek Kul’s abrupt summons silenced the assembled Islanders so thoroughly I could hear the heedless chirping of the birds in a distant tree. Getting to my feet, stumbling slightly as my knees still seemed to be looking for someone else to give their instructions, I crossed the bloody sand to stand before him.
“The truth condemns the woman Kaeska and she will pay the price,” said the Warlord in an unemotional voice. “You are vindicated, but I find much to trouble me in this matter. This magician has singled you out and you say there has been much strife between his people and those that were yours before you came to this place.” Shek Kul’s voice grew a little louder, to carry his words unmistakably to the outer reaches of the avid crowd. “I truly believe that you are innocent of any taint of magic, the omen of Rek-a-nul declares this. However there is a very real danger that these men will seek you out, to avenge their comrade. I cannot keep you here, to risk bringing such pollution to the domain.”
Laio stirred in her seat, subsiding as Shek Kul’s head moved as if about to turn and look at her. I stared at the man, wondering what in Dastennin’s name he was saying. Shek Kul folded his arms as he studied me. “You will leave this place as soon as the execution is complete.”
Turning on his heel, the Warlord strode from the practice ground, Gar catching Laio under the elbow to force her along, Grival and Sezarre hauling Kaeska between them, cruel hands gripping her shoulders, not even allowing her to regain her feet when she stumbled, but dragging her along to score her knees on the gravel of the path. A hand from somewhere thrust a waterskin at me and I emptied it in a handful of parched gulps before taking a cup of thin wine from the steward whose wide smile was belied by the fear in his eyes.
“Come.” I followed the captain of the guard numbly to the barracks, where I stripped and washed in a quiet corner, my mind in turmoil at this unexpected turn of events. Finding everyone else keeping a constant arm’s length away from me, I was anointing my various bruises and scrapes with a selection of Sezarre’s ointments when a murmur of surprise made me look round. I turned to find that the guards had all melted away. Shek Kul was standing there, looking at me thoughtfully.
“Let me.” He held out a hand and I gave him the pot of salve, not knowing what else to do. Obeying his gesture, I turned and felt him rubbing the pungent balm into a vicious bruise on my shoulder.
“You have done me a great service, in many ways, by ridding me of Kaeska,” he remarked. “I always knew she would become ever more dangerous when her brother was killed. Once I no longer needed the alliance of her marriage she knew I would get the domain an heir and stop indulging her nonsense. In many ways, you are a very good slave. I know Laio thinks so and there would be much you could teach her, given time. Yet you remind me of a hawk I once had, taken wild too late and only trained with harshness. He was a fine bird, brave and fearless, swift to fly but always slow to return to the lure.” Shek Kul handed the little jar over my shoulder and I turned to face him.