Pol was awakened from a dreamless sleep by the sound of his cell door being unbarred. At first he felt leaden-limbed, hung over, ragged about the edges of his mind, almost as if he had been drugged. But then, within moments, before Larick had even set foot in his cell, the dragonmark began to throb wildly, heavily, in a way it had never done before, sending an adrenalin-like shock through his entire system, clearing his head instantly, informing him with a sense of wild power unlike anything he had known previously.
"Get up," Larick said, approaching him.
Pol felt that he could strike the man dead with a single gesture. Instead, he complied.
"Come with me."
Pol followed him out of the cell, adopting the cumbersome, lumbering gait suitable, he'd judged, for a disguised monster. Through the first window they passed, Pol saw that full daylight now lay upon the world, though he could not see the sun to judge the hour. They took a different route than that upon which he had magically followed Larick the previous evening--different, too, than the way upon which the flame had led him.
"If you cooperate," Larick said almost casually, "it is possible that you will be released unharmed."
"I do not consider myself unharmed," Pol said, mounting a stair.
"Your present situation might be remedied."
"What's in this for you?" he asked.
The other was silent for a long while. Then, "You would not understand," Larick said.
"Try me."
"No. It's not for me to explain things to you," he finally answered. "You will have your explanations shortly."
"What is the price for betraying the trust of the initiation committee?"
"Some things are more important than others. You'll see."
Pol chuckled softly. The power continued to spiral within him. He was amazed that the other could not feel its presence. He had to restrain himself from tasking out with it.
They traversed a lengthy corridor, mounted another stair, crossed a wide hall.
"I would like to have met you under different circumstances," Larick said then, as they reached a downward stair.
"I've a feeling that you will," Pol replied.
He recognized an area through which he had passed during the night. He realized then that they had come into the northeastern wing of the building. They approached a dark, heavily carved door. Larick moved ahead and knocked upon it.
"Come in," came a voice slightly higher in pitch than Pol had expected.
Larick opened the door and stepped across the threshold. He turned.
"Come along."
Pol followed him into the room. It was a study in rough timbers and stone, with four red and black rugs upon the floor. There were no windows. Ryle Merson was seated at a large table, the remains of his breakfast before him. He did not rise.
"Here is that Madwand we discussed," Larick said. "He is completely docile in all but spirit."
"Then you've got the part that counts," Ryle replied. "Leave him to me."
"Yes."
"I mean it literally."
Pol saw the look of surprise which widened Larick's eyes and parted his lips. "You want me to go?"
Ryle's broad face was expressionless.
"If you please."
Larick stiffened.
"Very well," he said.
He turned toward the door.
"But stay within hailing distance."
Larick looked back, nodded curtly and departed the room, closing the door behind him.
Ryle studied Pol.
"I saw you at Belken," he said at length.
"And I saw you," Pol said, returning the older man's stare. "On the street, talking with Larick, in front of the cafe where I sat."
"You have a good memory."
Pol shook his head.
"I can't recall giving you cause for abduction and abuse."
"I suppose it must look that way to you."
"I suppose it would look that way to anybody"
"I don't want to start off with you on the wrong foot--"
"I didn't want to start off with you on any foot. What do you want?"
Ryle sighed.
"All right. If that is the way it must be. You are my prisoner. You are in jeopardy. I am in a position to grant you any discomfort, up to and including death."
The fat sorcerer rose, moving around the table to stand before Pol. He made a simple gesture and followed it with another, his movements similar to those Larick had used. Pol felt nothing, though he realized what was occurring and he wondered whether the disguise within the disguise would hold.
It did.
"Perhaps you have grown fond of your present condition?"
"Not really."
"Your face is masked by your own spell. I will leave it in place, since I already know what you look like. I suppose we could start with that."
"You've a captive audience. Go ahead."
"Last year I heard a rumor that Rondoval was inhabited again. A little later, I heard of the battle at Anvil Mountain. By magical means, I summoned up your likeness. Your hair, your birthmark, your resemblance to Det--it was obvious that you were a member of that House, and one of whom I had never heard."
"And of course you had to do something about it, since nobody likes Rondoval."
Ryle turned away, padded across the room, turned back.
"You tempt me to agree and let it go at that," he said. "But I have reasons for the things that I do. Would you care to hear them?"
"Of course."
"There was a time when Det was a very good friend of mine. He was your father, wasn't he?"
"Yes."
"Where did he have you hidden, anyway?"
Pol shook his head.
"He didn't. As I understand the story, I was present at the fell of Rondoval. Rather than slay a baby, old Mor took me to another world, where I grew up."
"Yes, I can see that. Interesting. For whom did he exchange you?"
"Mark Marakson, the man I killed at Anvil Mountain."
"Fascinating. A changeling. How did you get back here?"
"Mor returned me. To deal with Mark. So you knew my father?"
"Yes. We engaged in a number of enterprises together. He was a very accomplished sorcerer."
"You speak as if there was a point where you ceased being friends."
"True. We finally disagreed on a very fundamental issue concerning our last great project. I broke the fellowship at that time and sent him packing. It was then that he initiated the actions which led to the conflict and the destruction of Rondoval. The third party to our enterprise left him when things began looking bad on that front."
"Who was that?"
"A strange Madwand of great power. I don't really know where Det found him. A man named Henry Spier. Odd name, that."
"Do you mean that if you both hadn't deserted him Rondoval might have stood?"
"I am sure that it would have, in a cruelly changed world. I prefer thinking that Det and Spier deserted me."
"Of course. And now you want some extra revenge on the family, for old times' sake."
"Hardly. But now it is your turn to answer a few. You say that Mor brought you back?"
" 'Returned me' is what I said. He did not accompany me. He seemed ill. I believe that he went back to the place where I had been."
"The exchange... Yes. Were you returned directly to Rondoval?"
"No. I found my own way there, later."
"And your heritage? All the things that you know of the Art? How did you come by this?"
"I just sort of picked it up."
"That makes you a Madwand."
"So I've heard. You still haven't told me what you want."
"Blood tells, though, doesn't it?" Ryle said sharply.
Pol studied the man's face. Gone now was the bland expression which had accompanied most of their earlier exchanges. Pol read menace in the narrow-eyed look now focused upon him, in the rising color and the tightness about the mouth. He noted, too, that one pudgy hand was clenched so tightly that its rings cut deeply into the flesh.
"I don't know what you mean," Pol said.
"I think you do," Ryle replied. "Your father tipped the Balance which prevailed in this world, but did not succeed in his attempt. I stopped him here and Klaithe's forces finished him at Rondoval. There had to be a reaction sooner or later. Mark Marakson brought it into the world at Anvil Mountain, where you stopped him. Now it must tip in the other direction again--your father's way--toward total sorcerous domination of the world. It can be stopped for good at this point, or it can go all the way--your father's dream realized. I have been waiting all these years to stop it again, to end it, to see that it does not come to pass."
"I repeat. I don't know what--"
Ryle came forward and slapped him. Pol fought down an impulse to strike back as he felt a ring cut his cheek.
"Son of a black magician! You are one yourself!" he cried. "It can't be helped! It's in your blood! Even--" He grew silent. He stepped back. Then, "You would open the Gate," he said. "You would complete your father's great work for this world."
Pol suddenly felt that this was true. The Gate... Of course. He had forgotten. All those dreams... They began phasing now into his consciousness. With this, a certain wiliness came over him.
"You say that you were party to the entire business, at its beginning?" he asked softly.
"Yes, that is true," Ryle admitted.
"And you were talking about black magic ..."
Ryle looked away, walked back to the table, drew the chair farther back and lowered himself onto it.
"Yes," he said, his eyes directed toward the remains of his breakfast, "in both senses, too, I suppose. Black because it was being used for something that was morally objectionable, and black in the more subtle sense of its deepest meaning--the use of forces which must warp the character of the magician himself. The first is always arguable, but the second is not. I admit that I was once a black magician, but I am no longer. I reformed myself long ago."
"Employing Larick to perform the actual spells for you hardly seems to avoid the spirit of black magic. As in my case ..."
His words trailed off as Ryle raised his eyes and fixed him with them.
"In your case," he said, "I would--and will, if necessary--do it myself. It would at worst be an instance of the first sort--employed to prevent a greater evil."
"On the general theory of morals--that others need them?"
"I am thinking of more than the two of us. I am thinking of what you would do to the entire world."
"By opening the Gate?"
"Exactly."
"Excuse my ignorance, but what will happen if the Gate is opened?"
"This world would be flooded, submerged, by the forces of a far older world--in our terms it is an evil place. We would become an extension of that land. Its more powerful, ancient magic would completely overwhelm the natural laws which hold here. This would become a realm of dark enchantment."
"The evil may well be relative then. Tell me what objection a sorcerer could have to something which would make sorcery more important."
"You use the argument by which your father first swayed me. But then I learned that the forces released would be so strong that no ordinary sorcerer could control them. We would all be at the mercy of those others from beyond the Gate and those few of our own kind to whom it would not matter, in league with those others."
"And who might those few of our own kind be?"
"Your father was one, Henry Spier another; yourself, and those others like you--Madwands all."
Pol repressed a smile.
"I take it that you are not a Madwand?"
"No, I had to learn my skills the hard way."
"I begin to understand your conversion," Pol said, instantly regretting the words as he saw Ryle's expression change again.
"No, I do not believe that you do," he answered, glaring, "not having a daughter bound by the curse of Henry Spier."
"The ghost of this place... ?" Pol said.
"Her body lies in a hidden spot, neither dead nor alive. Spier did that when I broke the fellowship. Even so, I was willing to fight them."
Pol wanted to look away, to shift his weight, to pace, to depart.
Instead, "What exactly do you mean when you say Madwand?" he asked.
"Those like yourself with a natural aptitude for the Art," Ryle said, "those possessed of a closer, more personal relationship with its forces--its artists rather than its technicians, I suppose."
"I appreciate your explaining all these matters," Pol told him, "and I realize you are not going to believe any denials I might make concerning my intentions, so I won't make any. Why not just tell me what it is that you want?"
"You have had dreams," Ryle said flatly.
"Well, yes ..."
"Dreams," he continued, "which I sent to you, wherein your spirit traveled beyond the Gate to witness the starkness and desolation of that evil place, wherein you saw the creatures who dwell there, engaged in depravities."
Pol recalled his earlier dreams, but he thought too of the later ones, showing him the cities beyond the mountains, neither stark nor desolate, but holding a culture so complex as to surpass his understanding.
"That is all that you showed me?" he asked, puzzled.
"All? Is that not enough? Enough to persuade any decent man that the Gate must not be opened?"
"I suppose you made a good case then," Pol said. "But tell me, are dreams all that you sent to me?"
Ryle cocked his head to one side, frowning. Then he smiled.
"Oh. That," he said. "Keth..."
"Keth? He was the sorcerer who attacked me in my own library?"
Ryle nodded.
"The same. Yes, I sent him. A good man. I thought he'd best you and settle things then and there."
"What things? For all your talk about the Gate and my father and Madwands and black magic, I still do not know what it is that you want of me."
The fat sorcerer sighed.
"I thought that by sending you the dreams--showing you the menace of the thing--and then by explaining the situation carefully, as I have just done, that I might--just possibly might--win you over to my way of thinking and persuade you to cooperate with me. It would make life so much easier."
"You didn't exactly start off on the right foot by playing monster games with my anatomy."
"It was also necessary to show you the extent to which I will go if you do not choose to help me."
"I'm still not sure of that. What's left--besides death?"
Ryle rubbed his hands together and smiled.
"Your head, of course," He said. "I have begun in the easiest manner possible. But if, after suitable painful practices upon the body you are now wearing, you refuse to give me what I want, then I will complete the transfer. I will send your head to join the rest of you in exile beyond the Gate. I will be left with a somewhat maimed demon servant, and you--you have seen that place--you will have an unfortunate existence before you for all your remaining days."
"It sounds very persuasive," Pol observed. "Now, of what might it be the consequence?"
"You know where the Keys are--the Keys that can open the Gate or lock them forever. I want them."
"Presumably to do the latter?"
"Certainly."
"I'm sorry, but I don't have any such Keys. I wouldn't even know where to look for them."
"How can you say that when I saw them on the table in your study numerous times--and even as I watched your struggle with Keth?"
Pol's thoughts went back, both to that scene and to one of his dreams. He felt the resistance building within him.
"You can't have them," he said.
"I'd a feeling this was not going to be easy," Ryle remarked, rising. "If opening the Gate means that much to you, it just shows how far gone you really are."
"It is not opening the Gate," Pol replied. "It is having something taken from me in this fashion that rankles. You are going to have to work for anything you get out of me."
Ryle raised his hands.
"It may be easier than you think," he said. "Painless, in feet--if you're lucky. We'll learn in a moment how far-sighted you might have been."
As Ryle's hands began moving, Pol fought down the desire to strike back. A small voice seemed to be saying, "Not yet." Perhaps it was himself. He shifted his vision to the second seeing and saw a great orange wave rolling toward him.
When it struck, he felt a certain slowing and then a rigidity of his thought processes. A genuine stiflhess came over his body. Gone was any certainty as to what he wanted or did not want.
Ryle was speaking and his voice seemed somehow more distant than their proximity indicated:
"What is your name?"
It was with a peculiar fascination that he felt his lips move, heard his own voice reply, "Pol Detson."
"By what name were you known in the world where you grew up?"
"Daniel Chain."
"Do you possess the seven statuettes that are the Keys to the Gate?"
Suddenly, a sheet of flame hung between them. Ryle did not seem aware of its presence.
"No," Pol heard himself reply.
The fat sorcerer looked puzzled. Then he smiled.
"That was awkwardly phrased," he said, almost apologetically. "Can you tell me the location or locations of the seven magical statuettes which once belonged to your father?"
"No," Pol answered.
"Why not?" Ryle asked.
"I do not know where they are," Pol said.
"But you have seen them, handled them, had them in your possession?"
"Yes."
"What became of them?"
"They were stolen from me, on the way to Belken."
"I do not believe that."
Pol remained silent.
"...But you are to be congratulated for your foresight," Ryle continued. "You have guarded against self-betrayal with a very powerful spell. It would take me a long time to ascertain its exact nature and to break it. Unfortunately for you, I have neither the time nor inclination, and you must be forced to speak. I have already mentioned the means which will be employed."
The man began another series of gestures, and Pol felt a certain clarity return to his consciousness. As this feeling grew, the image of the flame faded.
"I have also restored your appearance, for esthetic purposes," Ryle said. "Now that you are yourself again, is there anything that you would care to add to what you said?"
"No."
"I didn't think so."
The fat sorcerer turned away, crossed the room, opened the door.
"Larick?" he called.
"Yes?" came a distant voice.
"Take this man back to his cell," he said. "I'll send for him when the interrogation room has been made ready."
"You tried a coercion spell?"
"Yes. A good one. He's protected. We'll have to go the other route."
"A pity."
"Yes."
Ryle turned back.
"Pol, go along with him."
Pol moved, turning, advancing slowly toward the doorway. He wondered as he did... He would be passing very close to Ryle. If he were to turn suddenly and attack the man, he felt that he could deal with him fairly quickly, before the other could bring any magic into play. Then, of course, he would have to fight Larick, and he wondered whether he could dispatch Ryle before the younger sorcerer was upon him. For that matter...
A vision of the flame flashed before him again.
"Not yet," came the voice in his mind. "Wait. Soon. Restrain yourself."
Nodding mentally, he passed Ryle and stepped out into the corridor where Larick waited.
"All right," Larick said, and he commenced walking, heading in the opposite direction from which they had come.
Pol heard the door of the room he had quitted close behind him. One quick rabbit punch, he decided, just below that kerchief he always wears, and Larick will be out of the picture...
Almost predictably, the image of the flame passed before his eyes once again.
"Turn here."
He turned, then said, "This isn't the way we came."
"I know that, you son of a bitch. I want to show you what your kind have done."
Suddenly, they passed into a familiar area, and with a touch of panic Pol realized where they were headed and what it was that he was being taken to see. He slowed his pace.
"Come along. Come along."
No plan presented itself to him, but the pulse of power still throbbed in his disguised arm. He decided to rely upon the guidance of the invisible flame. Something would provide him with an opportunity, very soon, he felt, an opportunity to smash Larick and--
Of course. His future actions came into perfect focus. He was suddenly certain as to what was going to occur, knew exactly what he was going to do when it did.
They entered the cavern. Larick produced a magical light which traveled on before them, illuminating their advance. Pol readied himself as they made their way around to the place where the opened, empty casket lay. Just a few more steps...
He heard Larick cry out. The sounds echoed from the rocky walls. His vision swam through the second seeing. Bands of bright, colored light moved everywhere. When he tried, he was able to resolve them into strands, but the moment he relaxed this effort they became bands again--horizontal, not drifting, but moving slowly upward, of various widths. After a moment, he saw that they overlay a field of vertical bands, and beyond them, diagonals. The world had acquired a peculiarly cubist structure. And he realized in that instant that he had but shifted to another mode of seeing the same thing which had always been presented to him as the strands--and he knew that there were others beyond it and that, somehow, in the future, he would always view the magical world in the mode most appropriate to his needs of the moment rather than the more restricted vision his power had brought him in the past. And he knew, intuitively, how to use these bands just as he had known in the past what the strands were for. It took a great effort to restrain himself from reaching out to manipulate them as Larick turned toward him, teeth bared.
"She's gone!" he said. "Stolen! How--?"
Then his eyes took on a strange cast and his head slowly turned to his right. Pol was certain that he, too, was now into the second seeing and something in his version of it was indicating to him the direction in which Taisa had been taken.
Larick turned suddenly and moved rapidly, heading off along the ledge. The light which had guided them remained stationary, somewhere behind Pol, spilling its pale light into the empty casket.
Pol advanced, moving onto the ledge, holding his second sight in focus, ready to utilize his new understanding of magical processes. He hurried toward the natural light at the end of the tunnel, rushing past the place where he had hidden the statuette.
When he came into the chamber, a chorus of voices burst upon his consciousness: "Now! Now! Nowl Now! Now! Now! Now!"
Larick, his back to him, was bent over Taisa's still form upon the sacrificial stone, perhaps ten paces before him. Pol reached up with both hands and seized upon an orange band, feeling his will go forth through the dragonmark.
In a moment, it was loose and swinging freely, like a long, bright pole, sweeping toward Larick.
Even as he made the gesture, however, Pol saw Larick stiffen and begin to turn, knowing that the other sorcerer had heard the sounds of his entrance. He saw the look of astonishment upon his face, succeeded immediately by one of apprehension.
But Larick managed to move, and he moved quickly. His left hand shot upward, fingers knotting. He seized upon a red diagonal and jerked it into the path of Pol's attack.
The force of the blow knocked him sprawling upon the floor, but he had managed to keep it from striking him. Pol turned the long shaft which he still held, and with a chopping motion of his left hand shortened it to a javelin. Larick shook his head and began pushing himself up from the floor. His gaze locked with Pol's as Pol was drawing back his right arm to hurl the gleaming shaft.
Larick pushed himself back onto his heels and raised both arms high up over his head. Pol cast the spear of light directly toward him and Larick dropped his arms. The bright bands which lay before him jumped and seemed to turn on their longitudinal axes.
It was like the sudden snapping shut of a Venetian blind. Larick was momentarily invisible behind a rainbow wall. Pol's lance struck against it and both the shaft and the wall seemed to shatter in a fountain of sparks. As these fell away, he saw Larick standing, moving his hands crossbody.
His peripheral vision warned him, barely in time. Larick was operating two lateral diagonals like a bright pair of scissors. Pol extended both hands before him and rushed forward.
He seized upon a vertical and thrust it before him into the jaws of the light-spell. The diagonals closed upon it, their edges halting inches from his waist. He saw a slight sign of strain upon Larick's face as the man's hands tightened further. The diagonals jerked nearer. He pushed even harder himself, holding them back. Larick leaned forward, straining against the pressure.
Abruptly, Pol heaved forward with all of his strength, throwing himself backward, dropping to the floor and rolling to the side as Larick staggered back and the bands closed above him.
Regaining his feet, he faced Larick again, watching his hands. He began circling the other at a distance of about fifteen feet and Larick turned slowly, accommodating his position to the movement. Slowly, the other sorcerer's hands began to move in an elaborate pattern. Pol followed them as closely as he could but was unable to detect any manipulation of the magical materials as he now perceived them.
Suddenly, Larick's foot passed through a wide, sweeping gesture and one of the lower bands took Pol across the ankles and he pitched sideways to the floor. Cursing himself for being misdirected so easily, he struggled to rise.
But the floor seemed to ripple and heave, preventing his recovery. As he fought against it, he realized that his weight no longer rested upon the floor, but that he now rode upon a rippling wave of the bands several inches above it. It was then that he began to realize that technique in these matters could be more important than raw energy. He could not regain his footing, but supported himself on his knees and left hand. He saw Larick's right foot moving rapidly up and down as if pumping a piano pedal, keeping the surface in agitation beneath him. It seemed that Larick's facility so far exceeded his that effective countermeasures were a matter of reflex to him, whereas Pol had to think for several moments to decide upon each attack and defense.
He wondered then whether a magical attack was the ultimate answer in dealing with the man. If he could only get near enough to land a blow capable of distracting Larick from magical manipulations, he felt confident that his own boxer's reflexes would be sufficient to deal with him in hand-to-hand fighting. If they were not, then he'd a feeling that he'd simply met a better man...
The bands! They could obviously be employed to support one's weight. So ...
Reaching upward, he took hold of the higher, rising bands and drew himself upright, continuing the motion until he swung free above the heaving layer. Larick's right hand was already moving, out to the side, at shoulder level.
Pol reached far forward, took hold of another horizontal, swung upon it, directly toward Larick.
He was able to twist his body aside at the last possible moment, release himself and drop.
Larick had held a three-foot blade of green light, sword-like, swung ready to impale him.
He felt the normal floor beneath him again, and he snatched at a diagonal band of yellow light, willing it into blade-form, dragging it into an en garde position as he struggled for footing. It was the first time in this world that he had held anything like a blade in his hands--and also the first time since the end of the previous fencing season at the university.
He parried a head cut and leaped backward, not having sufficient footing and balance to venture a riposte. As he recovered and Larick advanced, he became aware of two things simultaneously: Larick was facing him full-body rather than sidewise, and a dark oblong several feet in length had taken form upon his left arm.
He backed away as Larick came on. Blade and shield was not normal collegiate fencing. It was something medieval--slower, more ponderous, entailing different footwork. He was not about to materialize a shield of his own and face Larick on terms with which the other man had to be more familiar.
Larick swung his blade through a chest cut and Pol leaped backward, entirely avoiding any engagement. Larick continued his advance, Pol his retreat.
Quickly, he reviewed everything he knew concerning the other's techniques. Larick should be unfamiliar with the lunge; also, most of his bladework should involve the edge rather than the point of the weapon. Pol maintained a saber en garde, but began thinking in terms of the ep6e.
He halted his retreat and feinted a chest cut. Larick raised his shield slightly and moved to ready his blade for a slashing riposte. Pol did not follow through, and he saw that Larick was beginning to smile.
He adopted a low stance and beat once upon the other's blade. The attack followed.
The moment Larick's blade moved, Pol was back and up, very straight and high, his weapon describing a clockwise semicircle into an overhand position, from which he executed a stop-thrust to the other's forearm. Larick made a small noise in his throat as Pol then continued the movement through a full bind in anticipation of going in for the body past the edge of the shield.
But the weapon spun out of Larick's hand, and he stepped backward, covering himself more fully. Pol smiled, stamped his foot and rushed him.
Larick raised his right arm, but Pol ignored it and threw a head-cut. The green blade came flying back from the floor into Larick's hand, and he parried it. Pol could not check his momentum, so he increased it, crashing into Larick's shield before he could riposte.
As Larick staggered back, Pol chopped heavily at his weapon, knocking it aside, then lacked as hard as he could squarely against the center of the shield. Larick stumbled and Pol chopped again, knocking the blade from his hand once more. The shield swung aside and Pol was no longer in any orthodox fencing posture, but was near enough to drive his left fist into the other's midsection.
The shield fell away as he struck, and he cast his own weapon aside to throw a right at Larick's jaw.
Larick recovered, and raising his hands before his face, his elbows together over his midsection, rushed directly toward him. Pol stepped to the side and threw a left toward his head but did not connect.
Larick dropped and seized him about the knees. Pol felt himself go off balance; grabbed for Larick's shoulder, caught only a handful of his shirt and fell backward to the accompaniment of a tearing sound.
"Kill him! Hurry!" the voice came into his head.
As Pol fell, Larick attempted to hurl himself upon him but was met with a crosscut that knocked him off to the side. At that instant, Pol knew exactly what he must do.
He raised his right hand to shoulder level, palm upward, as he rolled to straddle Larick's supine form. His dragonmark throbbed as the blackness of the lines which separated the bands about him fled toward his hand and coalesced into a dark ball of negation, cancellation, death.
As he swung the ball downward toward Larick's face, his eyes jerked once and he barely had time to twist his body and hurl the death-sphere across the room, away.
Larick struggled to rise, and he clipped him once, hard, on the point of the chin and felt him grow slack. Then he rocked back onto his heels, brushed his hair out of his eyes and stared.
He reached slowly forward. There, where he had torn away the sleeve... Larick's right arm lay bare.
His hand trembled slightly as he touched the exposed dragonmark above Larick's right wrist.