Into the Void

"Why?" Teldin wheeled on Ria

Ria

"Why do you want it?" he asked, really wanting to know her answer. "They'll all be after you!'

She laughed, a harsh sound. "You handled it wrong," she told him flatly. "I don't intend to make the same mistakes. No quest to find your mythical 'creators.' Just auction it off to the highest bidder. I'm sure the bids will be very high." Her smile faded. "Now hand it over."

Teldin looked into her sea-green eyes. There was no trace in them of the person that he thought he'd loved. There would be no mercy from Ria

He looked deeper. There was no mercy, but there was a trace of fear. Maybe he could play on that. "Take it," he told her softly, "if you think you can."

That made her pause, then her smile returned. "I think the neogi was right," she said slowly. "I don't believe you can control the cloak at all. It's just reflex, random reflex."

She's trying to convince herself, he realized. The bluff might just work. "If you really believe that," he said evenly, "then take it."

Ria

The Juna knife, the weapon that Estriss had dropped, was still in Teldin's hand. He snapped it up into an en garde position. The grip, with its alien network of ridges and furrows, felt strange in his hand, but it felt somehow comforting, too. My fate's in my own hands, he told himself, just the way I've always wanted. "I'd like to see you try," he said.

Ria

Another spell! If he let her complete it, he'd be dead-like Julia, like Estriss, like Dana…. With a scream of rage, he flung himself forward. In that instant, he remembered Aelfred's training, the big man's voice: "Get that left hand back. You're just asking to have it cut off." He flicked the blade out toward Ria

The long, curved knife bit home,, cleaving flesh and bone. Ria

Teldin recovered from the cut, poised himself on the balls of his feet for an instant, and aimed a vicious thrust at the woman's chest. With a normal short sword, it might well have co

Ria

"Forget it," she spat, punctuating the phrase with another snake-quick thrust that Teldin barely managed to counter. "You'll never best me. Drop your sword, and I'll let you live."

"You're a liar," he hissed. Another thrust, another parry.

"You're right," she chuckled. Thrust, parry, riposte. She danced back out of range of his counter. "Drop your sword, and I'll kill you painlessly. Otherwise, I'll make it last."

Teldin followed her retreat. Keep pressing her, he told himself, keep pressing or you're dead. He took another step forward, and his foot slipped in Barrab's blood, not much, but enough to slow him for an instant.

Ria

The woman's blade ripped through his flesh and along his ribs on the right side. Instantly his entire body was aflame with pain. He gritted his teeth against it, fought to smother the cry that erupted from his throat. Ria

"I'll make it last," she said again.

He cursed one of the blistering mercenary oaths he'd heard Aelfred use. With his left hand, he clutched at the ragged tear in his right side, feeling hot blood on his fingers. He gripped tight, trying to staunch the bleeding, almost making himself faint with the agony. His left forearm was pressed against something hard on his stomach. For the moment, he couldn't remember what it was. "Damn you!" he screamed. "You killed them all!" In the churning delirium of his suffering, he wasn't talking to Ria

"Damn you to the Abyss!" He lurched forward.

Aelfred's lessons, the words of the soldiers he'd talked to, everything he'd ever learned about swordwork-all were gone from his mind. All that was left was rage and pain and the desire to kill. He swung the Juna knife in a hissing arc, directly at Ria

She hardly managed to raise her own weapon in time. The nonmetal weapon bit into her blade, notching the tempered steel. For several heartbeats, they were frozen in that position: her blade parallel with the floor, holding up his weapon, preventing it from cleaving down into her skull. Their bodies were close together. He could hear her labored breathing.

Ria

It was Aelfred's dagger. With his left hand he pulled the weapon from beneath his belt, slashed it upward at Ria

For an instant, Ria

Ria

For an immeasurable time, the two of them remained thus, Teldin still grasping the hilt of the Juna knife. Then he released it, and stepped back. Seemingly of its own volition, his right hand wiped itself-again and again-on the blood-soaked cloth of his jerkin, as if trying to remove some stain or taint.

He gazed down at the body of the woman he'd loved. Her face, now in final repose, was untroubled and heartachingly lovely. He felt appreciation for her beauty, but there was no love anymore. The charm was broken. He turned away.

His stomach was suddenly wrenched by convulsions. He sank to his knees and was wretchedly, rackingly sick, each muscle spasm sending jolts of almost unendurable pain through his wounded side.

Finally the spasms ended, leaving him weak and drained. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Why don't I just stay here, he asked himself, with the other dead? It would be so much easier that way, simply to fade away into oblivion. All in all, he reasoned, oblivion would be the easiest, the most comfortable choice.