"You think just like them, don't you?" he said. "Yes. Even your father hadn't pierced my defenses, but that bastard got through and did that thing to her. Larick has felt guilty about it all his life."
"With no small help from you, I'd guess. That's how you keep him in line, huh? The old guilt trip?"
"Something you've never felt, I'm sure. You're ready to cut a helpless girl's throat. You'd have done it by now if I hadn't heard Larick's cry."
"I'd rather cut yours," Pol said, moving forward. "You're a damned hypocrite. You're no better than my father or Spier. Maybe you're worse. You were ready to go along with their plan when you thought there was something in it for you. When you saw you had something to lose you became a white magician and a defender of righteousness. It's a lot of bullshit! You haven't changed. Now you make my brother do your dirty work, to keep your own hands clean. But they're not. You're not a big enough fool to believe they are, are you?"
Ryle moved his hands into the beginning of a warding gesture, and Pol slipped immediately into the second seeing, dragonmark still pounding with his pulsebeat.
"You talk to me of morality when you hold the Keys to the Gate and my daughter lies ready for your blade? Who is the hypocrite, Detson?"
An arc of fire passed between the man's fingertips, and Pol looked about for strands or bands, in vain.
But then, suddenly, it seemed as if great clouds of colored fog were drifting into the chamber.
Pol extended his hand and a blue mist was there when he needed it. He felt the condensing moisture upon his fingers. A moment later, he passed a globe of water the size of a basketball, dripping, from hand to hand. Fire. Water. It seemed he had the logical remedy ready for whatever Ryle had in mind.
As he waited for the older sorcerer to make the first move, he thought back over his battles with Keth and with Larick, wondering again why his perception of the magical world had altered in each instance. Then it occurred to him that on each occasion his vision could have been colored by the other's magical world-view. Perhaps, now, Ryle's world was somewhat more cloudy than most.
"We change each other's way of seeing, don't we?" he said, half-aloud.
"I am here to kill you, not to instruct you," Ryle replied, and the fires he held became a curved dagger which he cast toward Pol's breast.
Pol willed coldness and felt it flow through his fingertips. The watery sphere clouded and grew solid, covered with frost. The blade gouged ice chips from it when it struck, and then fell to the floor. Pol hurled the ice ball at Ryle, but the sorcerer stepped aside and it shattered against the wall behind him.
Ryle raised both arms and lowered them suddenly. The room vanished. They inhabited a region composed entirely of themselves and the colored clouds. Pol took another step forward. As before, he reasoned that if he could get within striking distance with his fists he could become a sufficient distraction to dispense with the magic and then, of course, with Ryle.
He moved to take another step forward and his way was blocked by the abrupt appearance of a low wall. He began to step over it and its top was suddenly studded with tall shards of glass. He withdrew and bumped against something. Glancing quickly to the rear, he beheld another wall. And then there was one to his right, and his left. Almost simultaneous with his awareness of their existence, they began to move nearer. Ryle was staring intently toward him, the palms of his hands facing one another and moving slowly together.
But there was no up, no down here. He willed the fogs to boil beneath him, to levitate him as the bands had done earlier.
He rose out of his prison then and passed over its forward wall. It seemed almost too easy...
Studying Ryle then, he saw traces of concern about those probing eyes. The man did not know his strengths or his weaknesses yet, knew only what he had accomplished thus for. And so there was fear. So he was fighting a very conservative duel at this point, testing him, watching him, keeping his distance. Such seeming the case, Pol was suddenly apprehensive himself. Ryle was doubtless very good at this sort of thing. In a little while he would realize the limits of Pol's experience and would likely unleash a devastating attack. Pol was not at all certain that he could survive it. Therefore, he ought to act quickly and decisively. But how? He could not think of an appropriate offense in this silent, dreamlike place of deadly cotton candy. Unless...
Perhaps he might change the rules, change the milieu. Perhaps he had, in some fashion, been guilty of letting the other man choose his own battleground. There was so much that he still did not know...
He felt that he had to finish with Ryle as quickly as possible. Beyond the possibility of Larick's recovering at any time and coming to the aid of his adversary, Pol feared a recurrence of the effect he had already experienced several times--that unpredictable, intermittent foiling of his powers.
He had wondered several times since he had fought Keth whether all of the symbolic byplay was truly necessary in a magical encounter. Since it was will against will, force manipulation against force manipulation, and perhaps, personal energy against personal energy, it would seem that it might be stripped to its barest essentials and Devil take the hindmost. It occurred to him immediately that this was an untutored, Madwand way of thinking. But he was slowed whenever he tried to imitate the refinements the others had developed in the long courses of their studies, and he knew that he was handicapped when he was forced to play their games. There were obvious advantages in doing things that more subtle way, but he had no time to learn it at the moment. Therefore, he determined to attempt the alternative as he tried to move nearer.
With some trepidation, he blanked the second seeing. The fogs vanished. The room returned to normal, Ryle standing near its entrance, a faraway look in his eyes.
Pol raised his right hand, directing it toward Ryle, and willed that the other fall down, shrivel and die. The dra-gonmark seemed suddenly icy and he felt the power leap forth. He continued to focus his will and a steady flowing sensation moved, wavelike, down his arm.
Ryle swayed for a moment, then steadied himself. Suddenly, Pol found himself standing on a spit of land, his stance unaltered, a mighty torrent of water rushing past him at either hand. Ryle stood upon a small island downstream. Even as he watched, the nearer edge of Ryle's islet was being eroded away and the man was forced to draw back upon it.
But Ryle raised both hands, a look of intense concentration upon his face. The movement of the water began to slow. A tremor shook the land upon which Pol stood. The water lashed about for several moments, then grew still. This did not last long, however. Shortly, it began moving again. But this time it was flowing toward Pol. He watched, fascinated, as its velocity increased and the land began to wear away before him.
He shook his head as if to clear it. Ryle had drawn him back into a symbolic situation. He dismissed the waters for a moment and bent his efforts toward reestablishing his presence in the chamber.
The river vanished. They were back in the room again. Nothing had changed. Only now Pol felt a pressure, a pronounced squeezing sensation all over his body. It was increasing by the moment.
He refocused his energies.
"Burn, melt, fall down..."
The pressure vanished and Ryle staggered, as from a sudden blow. Pol maintained his own pressure now, his entire will behind it. Ryle began to sway, as if caught in a heavy wind.
Then, suddenly, there were flames between them, fanned as if by a great gale blowing in Ryle's direction. They rose from a wide chasm which divided a rocky landscape between them.
Even as he watched, the winds died down and the flames became vertical. Then he felt the warm touch of a breeze upon his face. The tongues of fire began to bend toward him...
"No!" Pol cried, and the vista was swept away.