Warautumn (37 page)

Even as Vorinn plotted his next move, blood oozed from between Zeff’s fingers.

It was now or never
.

But that did not mean that Vorinn was not careful or controlled or precise. Indeed, Tryffon said later that he had never seen the ensuing move executed with more finesse.

For as Zeff raised his sword again, Vorinn swung with all his strength—but not to bring blade against blade or body. Rather, he sought to bring his hand against Zeff’s own, and follow with his whole weight.

Even so, their blades took the brunt of it and smashed together hilt to hilt, quillions locked, blades raised between them like the horns of the fabled Ixtian oryx. Vorinn could hear the hiss of Zeff’s breath as he strove to disengage without making himself vulnerable to the follow-through. He could see the sweat that already sheened his foe’s brow, and could smell the tang of polished steel, clean velvet, and well-oiled leather sharp in the brilliant air.

He thrust backward, and Zeff staggered but did not loose his grip. Zeff’s lips curled back from perfect teeth as he concentrated. Vorinn saw his eyes go blank for the briefest instant.

Vorinn released his sword at once. Zeff’s blade sliced past his face as Vorinn’s hilt stabbed the ground between them. But by then he had reached out and seized Zeff’s sword just above the quillions. Pain flashed through him, so sharp it was exquisite, as good steel parted excellent glove leather. Oblivious to the agony, he continued to bear down, forcing the blade away by strength alone, and forcing his exposed flesh around it. Steel touched bone and his nerves sang. Blood was everywhere.

More to the point, blood was coursing down the blade past the quillons to join with the blood already welling from Zeff’s hand—which controlled the gems.

And then Vorinn forgot to breathe—because, for a timeless moment, he simply
wasn’t
. And then he was two people again, and then—abruptly—one person with two conflicting wills.

You dare not!
one of those wills protested.

I have dared
, the other asserted.

And then nothing but fear, anger, and determination so closely mingled that he could not tell which thoughts were his and which his foe’s.

Their hands had not moved, but reality had slowed, and Vorinn could suddenly feel the slow pulse of power seeking him through his blood—power that knew him, yet did not know him; that recognized in him something familiar and good, but which yet worked for a countermanding end.

Was this what Avall had felt? This recognition from the gems?
Vorinn knew well enough that they more or less “liked” Avall, and that all subsequent gems based their reactions, in part, on how their wielders reacted to Avall in turn. But Zeff’s gems should never have known Avall. And Vorinn had never bonded with anyone.

Which meant that—maybe—it had come down to wills, and he prayed that his will was stronger.
What would Avall do in this situation?
he wondered, in that moment of frozen time that looked, indeed, to those gathered round, to truly
be
frozen. He wished Avall were here to tell him. He wished he had Avall’s strength and skill and courage. Dammit, he wished he knew everything Avall knew about these wretched gems! And even as he wished, he sensed Zeff wishing as well.

Or hating, which was itself wishing of a kind. And Zeff was wishing about Avall, too: wishing he was forever removed from this or any equation, which in effect meant that he was wishing that Avall was dead.

Yet while they stood thus locked together, Vorinn’s body
went right on pressing the physical advantage granted him by greater weight and height—and eventually inertia interceded.

Zeff staggered backward. Vorinn went with him, not daring to release his hold, yet still his body pressed forward. Zeff could not resist, and fell. His hip struck the pavement, and Vorinn actually flew over him, yet never released his grip on Zeff’s terrible blade. Indeed, such was his momentum that the force of his flip brought Zeff into the water with him.

And then water closed over their heads, and Vorinn felt nothing at all save the pain in his hand and that other, strange, not-quite pain that was water assailing the gates of his breath. Red dyed that water: a murky cloud emerging from where their hands still joined steel and flesh and jewels.

And where, in an odd way, their wishes also mingled.

But … the water was welcoming them! And then Vorinn felt something incredibly, impossibly strange: He felt himself dissolving. And then there was no Vorinn left but raw desire.

And then—finally—a sense of upward motion.

Avall had barely crouched down to wash his hands in the clear, fast-running shallows of the nice-sized river beside which his party had chosen to take its midday meal, when the deeper channel in the center erupted into spray.

With it came a concussion like thunder without the noise, and the unmistakable sharp metallic stench of unseen lightning. Taken off guard, he recoiled—and sprawled on his backside in cold water, aware, even as he fell, that the river was somehow singing to him. Or singing to that which was
within
him, anyway. It was like when he drank from the Wells, sometimes: doors opening in his mind and doors closing. His poor, burned, personal gem pulsed like a wind-fanned coal on his chest, while around him, attenuating in a way that was all too familiar, time began to slow.

So it was that he had ample opportunity to note the wide river valley around him, with the river straight ahead ten spans wide, bordered on either side by a graceful sweep of shore paved with countless rounded stones which in turn stood as a bulwark against a fringe of low-grown scrub that fronted impressive stands of taller hardwoods.

Across the stream—beyond that place where the fountaining water had suddenly frozen to a near stop—more trees grew closer in: aspen, beech, and yew. Mountains rose behind: a hard surge of purple stone with the sparkling white of eternal snow draped around their peaks like lacy shawls.

Farther down to the right, he could hear the long slow gulps Boot made as she drank down the river, while behind him, he caught the slow shouts of his companions acknowledging that they, too, had seen what he had seen and were amazed. He could even feel their thoughts, a little; frozen, as was everything else: mostly thoughts of relief that the morning’s trek had ended, that they would rest here for lunch and assuage a reasonable hunger. Thoughts that the mountains ahead were the most tangible proof yet that, after six days on the nonexistent road, they were finally approaching the first of what would surely prove to be many goals. And then thoughts that all that had been shattered by a sudden insertion of the strange.

But only for a moment, as reality cried out to him, then slowed once more, so as to command his full attention.

And then normal time resumed again, and he knew without doubt that this was no vision but a real event that was happening before his astonished eyes.

The fountain that had begun it all subsided, but rising from its heart came two figures.

Two
men
, Avall realized: dripping wet and locked in mortal combat, with their hands clamped around something that glittered in the noonday light so brightly it was like frozen fire—or light itself solidified—until the water sluiced away from it to reveal a sword. A
single
sword.

A sword one of those men had suddenly wrenched free and pointed toward the heavens.

Avall covered his ears, but that barely shut out the shout of thunder, the crackling snap of what was closest to lightning, yet not remotely the same as that even more perilous power.

Yet whatever it was struck the water from a cloudless sky, wrenching out a heavy veil of steam that obscured the combatants for a moment—though Avall saw them fly away from each other as the force that one of them had summoned wrenched them both apart.

Even as he scrambled to his feet, he was cataloging colors. The one on the right had worn red of a particularly rich and vivid shade that could only be Warcraft crimson. The other: midnight blue edged with white. Not Eemon, but …

Priest-Clan. The Ninth Face, rather. But what were they doing here?

And who were these two men?

And then came the truly impossible: The water brought him the answer. More properly, it brought a set of images in what was clearly some kind of vision or far-seeing: Gem-Hold encircled with water … a formal combat about to ensue—to the death, using what appeared to be at least one gem-powered weapon … and then those combatants falling into water—and vanishing.

But whose thoughts were these seeking footholds among his own?
Thoughts of glory and anger and fear and triumph and amazement and despair. Thoughts of him: reluctant admiration. And thoughts of him: raw, unadulterated hate.

Faces appeared abruptly, matching themselves to those thoughts.

“Zeff and Vorinn!” he yelled, as reality surged back even more violently.

He was back on his feet now and wading clumsily into deeper water, while the whole shore behind him seemed to have gone mad. Horses neighed, whinnied, and threatened to bolt, while voices he had no time to sort out tried to keep them calm. Others were shouting names—questions—or simply curses or yelps of alarm. The birkit—which Avall could see from the corner of his eye—seemed to have forgotten it was a
man-sized predator and was acting like an anxious watchdog, to judge by the way it was pawing the stones and growling.

And then, clear across the water: “Curse you, Vorinn, this is against all rules!”

“The rules are defining themselves,” came Vorinn’s choked reply.

Avall blinked water from his eyes, shook sodden hair from his face, and floundered on.

The warriors stood in water up to their waists, their surcoats floating around them like leaves, their hair slicked close to their skulls. Vorinn was unarmed now, though even where he was, Avall could see that his hand was bleeding.

And Zeff—Zeff was raising that sword again.

Lightning—or whatever it was that the sword called down—flashed once more. This time, however, it came in a weaker burst that nevertheless made Avall’s whole body prickle. The blast had been aimed at Vorinn, too—but Avall’s brother-in-law had possessed sense enough to hurl himself backward into the water. It boiled in his wake, but he resurfaced—close enough to Zeff to clutch him by the shoulders and drag him over sideways. Both disappeared for an instant, followed by a quicker repeat of their first emergence from the river.

Avall halted where he stood, then turned quickly, as it finally occurred to him that this was not simply some odd martial display put here for his entertainment. “Merry—Rann—some-body—bring me the sword
—that
sword. No questions, no arguing, just bring it now!”

But Strynn—who, after all, had a brother for whom to be concerned—had already preempted him, and was that moment frantically fumbling at the ties that bound the Lightning Sword to Boot’s saddle. Fumbling, that is, until she ran out of patience and used her knife. Steel flashed in the light, and then more steel, and longer, as she yanked the Lightning Sword free. Pausing but the merest moment, she leapt astride Boot’s
back, set heels to his flanks, and charged into the river, heading straight toward Avall and—beyond him—her brother.

Strynn reached down; Avall reached up—and felt the sword’s hilt come into his hand. It was a risk to use it without the other regalia, but there was no time to don the full complement, though Strynn was already down and working at it as well.

As for Vorinn and Zeff—all Avall could see of them was wildly frantic splashes as Vorinn sought to seize Zeff’s sword for himself—though apparently not to claim it, as much as to wrest it from Zeff’s control.

But Zeff still had it, and was raising it again.

Without thinking, Avall raised the Lightning Sword in turn, even as he pressed the trigger in the hilt that would feed that weapon blood.

Power flooded into him—but it was power unbalanced, power untempered by control, power that entered him greedily, reveling in the power that he, in turn, fed into that weapon. He gloried in it—or it in him. And time froze once again.

Froze long enough for Avall to want one single, precise, perfect thing.

One single, precise, perfect bolt of Overworld lightning.

Wishing did it.

Like the strike of a whip, raw white force lanced out from the tip of the sword to spear Zeff where he stood. His face went white; his eyes went wide; his mouth gaped—though no blood showed.

And the sword wanted to do it again: wanted to call down more lightning—and he dared not let it have its way. Seeing no other choice, he dropped it—then picked it up at once, but in such a way that the barb that fed the gem could taste no more than the merest trickle of his blood.

Intent on friend and foe alike, Avall waded onward.

Vorinn surfaced at last, looking bewildered and confused but relieved—especially when he saw Zeff’s body bob to the
surface a span to his right. He snared it by the neck hole of the surcoat, flipped it over, and dragged the Ninth Face Chief into the shallows.