This easy, even contemptuous disregard of his spells left Mandes open-mouthed with shock. He began to tremble. Close to him now, Tol saw the whites of his eyes were completely covered with a web of fine, bloody lines. Tiny droplets of moisture gleamed on his high forehead, pinkish blood-sweat.
“This is impossible!” Mandes’s voice cracked. “What are you? No man could do what you do!”
“I’m only a man, not even nobly born, remember?” Tol pointed his dagger at the sorcerer. “Stand up, Mandes, and face what’s due you!”
When he didn’t comply, Tol raised the blade high to strike. Mandes flung out his white hand, crying, “Wait! If I am to die, at least tell me how you can withstand every spell I cast, every supernatural creature I raise to stop you?”
Tol smiled. It was not an expression of happiness, but of savage pleasure, and Mandes flinched visibly.
“I have a millstone.”
Mandes blinked, brow furrowing at the unfamiliar word. He palmed pink sweat from his face with a trembling hand.
“I’ve heard rumors… tall tales,” Mandes finally said. “Waramanthus, the elf sage, tried his entire life to fashion such a thing and failed! The great Vedvedsica wrote of such devices, but he said none had survived the Age of Dreams.”
Tol’s level gaze transfixed the shaken sorcerer. “He was wrong.”
Mandes’s chin dropped to his chest. Twisting his mismatched hands in his lap, he began to sob.
Before Tol could react, the sorcerer yanked his swarthy hand hard. The dark limb came out of its sleeve. As it rose in the air, Mandes snatched a saber from beside his chair and tossed it toward the disembodied limb. The dark hand caught the weapon deftly, fingers closing tightly on the hilt.
The muscular arm drove Tol back with viciously precise thrusts, and while he was engaged, Mandes escaped.
The levitating limb was far nimbler than any opponent Tol had ever fought, and its saber far outreached Tol’s dagger. He could do nothing but parry again and again. A precisely timed slash laid open Tol’s cheek, and the next came within a hair’s breadth of his eyes.
It required all Tol’s training and wit to hold his own. The ensorcelled arm was lightning-fast.
He had a desperate idea, and worked feverishly to retrieve the nullstone from its secret pocket while holding the arm at bay.
The limb beat him back all the way across the vast hall, to the very door through which Mandes had escaped. Tol’s ribs ached. Blood from his cheek was smeared across his face, mixing with sweat, stinging his eyes-
The arm made a simple but shockingly fast lunge at the spot between Tol’s eyes. Tol dropped, and the curved iron blade slid through his hair. The sword tip pierced the door panel behind and hung up there, just for a instant.
That was all the time Tol needed. From below, he rammed his dagger through the palm of the flying limb. There was a momentary tug of resistance, then the point passed through. He had the hand!
He continued the motion, driving his dagger into the door panel. The hand dropped its sword, and the arm hung, impaled, flailing, fingers flexing madly.
The severed limb did not bleed. To Tol’s horror, the fingers ceased their furious motion and closed on the blade. The hand drew itself forward, forcing more of the iron shaft through the flesh of its palm.
Keeping pressure on the hilt, Tol touched the millstone to the dagger blade. There was no effect on the writhing hand, but when he pressed the braided metal directly on the brown fingers, the grotesque parody of life was finally over; the limb went limp.
Instantly, the stench of putrefaction filled Tol’s nostrils. He freed his blade and stepped quickly back. The years of lifelessness, held at bay by Mandes’s magic, overwhelmed the limb, and it began to decay before Tol’s eyes. In moments it was little more than bones and stray bits of rotted flesh.
He flung open the door to follow the sorcerer.
Although Mandes had fled the hall, he couldn’t easily escape this isolated peak. The corridor beyond the door was dark, but Tol felt a faint breeze on his face. The air wasn’t musty or dank, but fresh, with the tang of the mountain in it. He followed the draft.
It led him to another spiral stair, narrower but longer than the one he’d climbed earlier. He ascended cautiously. The breeze grew steadily stronger as he rose.
The stair ended on a tiny landing where a plain wooden door barred his way. Fresh air blew in through a gap between the bottom of the door and the stone floor.
Tol’s booted foot lashed out. “Mandes! I have you!” Another kick. “You can’t escape me!” A third kick.
The fifth blow broke the iron latch, and the door swung open. Beyond was a turret room, the very highest of the old fortress’s many towers. A window opening gaped opposite the door. Mandes stood in the opening.
Wind whipped the magician’s golden robe around his legs and flung his hair wildly about his head. Beholding the bloodstained avenging fury in the doorway, Mandes fairly convulsed with terror.
“You can’t kill me!” he said shrilly. “I am the greatest sorcerer of this age!”
“You’re nothing but a murderer many times over. Your head will decorate the wall of the Inner City!”
Beyond the rogue sorcerer, Tol could see the wizard’s paired griffins circling, pulling their flying golden coach, trying to approach the tower. They were confounded by the mountain, which severely limited their room to maneuver, and by the howling wind, which alternately threatened to dash them against the fortress and lift them high above it.
Mandes rested his forehead against the stone. His shoulders shook. Tol thought he was weeping, but when the wizard lifted his head, Tol realized he was laughing.
Mandes declared, “With me dies your life as you know it, Tolandruth! Your emperor, your army, and all the things you love shall pass away!”
“Your threats are meaningless, betrayer!”
“No, it happens even now. A greater evil than anything I ever dreamt of will sit upon the throne of Ergoth!”
Tol hesitated. “Is it possible to undo what Nazramin has done?”
Mandes mastered himself again. “Only I could undo it, if I live.”
Tol weighed the possibilities. Spare the evil he’d finally cornered to fight worse evil elsewhere? Mandes was a conniving villain, and Tol’s credo had always been a simple one: destroy the enemy when you find him; don’t worry about one you may meet tomorrow.
Mandes saw the judgment in Tol’s countenance. He knew his fate was sealed.
Only two paces separated them. Tol lunged just as Mandes leaped away, arms outspread, trying to catch the side rails as the flying coach whisked past. Tol felt golden fabric whisper through his fingers, but it was too late.
Mandes laughed. He was gone!
For the space of two heartbeats, he believed it. Then the shifting winds lifted the passing coach, his hands closed only on air, and the terror of his mistake struck home. Mouth stretched wide, Mandes shrieked all the way down to the craggy rocks far, far below.
The griffins, freed of Mandes’s hold, broke their traces and flew off, trumpeting their freedom. Moments later, the flying coach shattered to glittering fragments in the crevasse below the fortress.
Tol sagged to the floor, his rage spent.
He didn’t know how long he sat, unmoving, his mind an exhausted blank, but it was the coldness of the wind that finally broke through his stupor.
With Mandes’s death, the mist wall and the unnatural warmth protecting the summit had dissolved. Sundown was coming, and the normal cold was swiftly reclaiming the citadel. Soon ice would engulf everything. Tol’s injured face and shoulder were stiffening. He needed to reclaim his furs and get down the mountain.