"The audacity of the slave!" Suettay breathed, almost in admiration. "Indeed, I have your measure - and you'll be like a child's toy to my power! I am sure of your strengths and weaknesses and know best how to use them!"
Illogically, I felt a flow of confidence that spread a grin across my face. "Sure of yourself, eh? Is that why you've bushwhacked me out here in the middle of nowhere, away from Gilbert and Frisson?"
"Perhaps," Suettay sneered. "They are, indeed, part of your strength - and you are shorn of them now. You are quite at my mercy."
"Oh?" I raised an eyebrow in polite skepticism. "Mercy? Do you have any?"
"None to mention," Suettay snapped, and her arm swung down like the arm of a catapult, a fireball leaping from her fingertips. I dodged, but the fireball swerved to follow me and exploded against my chest in a soft fountain of sparks. A huge, mushrooming pain answered from inside my chest, an instant of unbearable agony, then ...
Nothing. No sensation at all.
The night seemed to darken about me, and strength ebbed from my legs. As I fell to my knees, I realized, with horror, that my heart had stopped. Panic thundered in, but I threw it back with a wrench. Think fast, or die!
And my mind chilled into total clarity, with an icy lack of emotion that almost frightened me in itself. There was, after all, no time for panic-scarcely time for a single sentence. I rasped it out with what breath was left in my lungs:
Pain wrenched my chest again, but blood roared in my ears and a jackhammer yammered inside my ribs. I breathed in against its beat thankfully. As the haze cleared from my eyes, it cleared from my mind, too: This wasn't going to be a trial of strength, or any other limited form of conflict - Suettay was playing for keeps. If she could kill me, she would.
Could I bring myself to try to kill her?
The sorceress came into focus as my heart slowed and steadied. Suettay's hands were weaving, her lips moving. Then the sorceress froze, and I realized she'd finished another spell while I was trying to restart my pump.
Suddenly, the air was filled with darting, whirling streaks of silver - a thousand knives spinning toward me. I threw myself to the side, but the knives followed me, swooping. I whipped out my pocket knife, swinging it in a frantic figure eight as if it were a rapier, chanting,
There was one slant rhyme, and the meter wasn't exactly constant, but it worked - the air was suddenly filled with a thousand whirling clasp knives. They buzzed out at Suettay's daggers, and I grinned as I watched each of the poniards collide with one of the pocket knives and fall to the ground.
Then the grin slipped as I caught sight of Suettay; I realized I shouldn't have taken time out to watch the show. The sorceress' hands were weaving air again, stringing a pattern of forces. My face tightened grimly, as I realized the nature of the fight. Working a spell took time - so, while I was chanting my counterspell, Suettay was working up her next attack. That meant that I was going to stay on the defensive, unless I could figure out how to jump a spell. I had to, or I was dead. Sooner or later, I'd tire - and if I was late on just one counterspell, I was had.
Dust writhed, and a hundred serpentine heads lifted up around me, spreading cobra hoods.
It threw me back to my childhood, and Kipling's stories.
I carefully did not watch as the dust boiled alive about me; I didn't have time. Suettay's arms were weaving, and I took the offensive:
I didn't even get to the chorus before the tableland was filled with a howling wind, laden with dust. It swept between the sorceress and me, blocking us from each other. Far off, I heard a roar that just barely penetrated the thunder of the churning dust wind-Gruesome, letting out an unbelieving, horrified bellow.
Yes - my mascot was out in this, too. He must have waked, seen l was gone, and realized I was in danger. I felt an instant panic - had he broken the guarding circle as he came waddling out to search for me?
I whipped a fold of my cloak over my nose and mouth, but Gruesome wouldn't know he should do that. Besides, he didn't have a cloak. The storm would kill him as quickly as Suettay's spells.
And maybe not just Gruesome; my chest heaved with a huge, wracking cough. Some of the dust was getting in through the cloth. But I only needed a few seconds to rank the priorities in my mind:
One: Get rid of whatever it was that Suettay was whipping up for her next spell;
Two: Throw another spell of my own at her, and keep on throwing; and
Three: Get rid of the dust.
Right. Get going on number one.
Actually, now that I thought about it, that took care of point two, too; Suettay couldn't do much of a spell with an IQ suddenly lowered to slightly better than an onion's.
If she hadn't deflected my spell in time. The dust was thinning, and the wind was dying down. So Suettay had wasted time lessening the loesS2
Then I heard a rumble of thunder and realized I was wasting time, myself.
Too late. With a sound like a lireaking sieve, the rain drenched down. The dust settled, fast; and through the curtain of water, I saw Suettay - or something that had been Suettay.
It still wore the queen's robes, but it had small eyes under a very low forehead, and a wide, gaping grin-on one of its heads. The other two were similar, and maybe worse. I stared, appalled-was this what happened when you practiced magic without a license?
Certainly without really knowing what you were doing. I was disgusted with myself. A clean death would have been infinitely better!
Until I realized the loose grins were forming themselves into words. Sure-two heads are better than one, and three idiots add up to a modicum of sense. Whatever spell it was going to be, it wouldn't be too effective - committee work never is - but I didn't feel like waiting around to find out. I grabbed for another verse:
A silver chain lashed down out of the rain, snaked around the center head, and snapped taut. Suettay's body jerked upward a good three feet and dangled, kicking and writhing, from a chain that wasn't attached to anything.
But the other two heads were still forming words, slowly and painfully ...