He dove at me and, on my back, I lashed out with my right foot. I caught him beneath the chin and kicked him over the top of me. He hit the ground awkwardly and then rolled to a jerky stop. He spat and I heard pieces of a tooth rattle on the smooth granite floor. Blood trickled from his split lower lip and he wiped it into a red smear with the back of his right hand.
He laughed, then mentally turned inside to repair the damage and show me his power. The second his eyes rolled up so I could only see the whites, I rose, dashed forward, and thrust my tsincaat through his chest.
His eyes popped down and he pivoted. His twist tore the tsincaat from my grasp; then he punched me in the chest with an open-handed blow from his right hand. Agony burst above my heart and I heard my breastbone crack as I flew back. Out of control, I somersaulted backward across the stone floor. I smacked my head against a bier, stars sparked before my eyes, and I lay stunned.
The nekkeht laughed like a madman. A thin river of blood poured from his mouth with each word as he scolded me. "This cannot stop me, Talion." He ripped his shirt halfway down and looked at the tsincaat transfixed in his chest. He wrapped his hands around the blade. "You cannot stop me." He slowly pulled the blade free. Inch by inch it slid from his chest and the hole around it closed. The bloodflow from his mouth stopped and he smiled at me with a mouthful of scarlet teeth. "I am invincible." He discarded my tsincaat and stalked forward.
He obviously expected me to summon the blade and attack him again with it, but I already knew it would have no effect on him. I rolled to my stomach, pushed off the floor, and fought against the pain radiating out from my rib cage. I glided forward and feinted a blow at his eyes with my left hand. Invincible or not, he'd spent a lifetime reflexively guarding his eyes and raised his hands to save his sight. I jerked my knee up and smashed it into his groin.
His hands shot down, but instead of grabbing himself, he caught my left leg and tightened his right hand around my kneecap. He held me motionless, then crushed the bone as he had the dart.
Argent torments washed away my sight and geysered up through the roof of my skull. Agony swirled through my body and raked red-hot talons across every nerve and fiber in my being. I felt myself falling and felt the grinding click as my left knee hit the ground, but that new pain could be nothing more than a shadow of what I felt twisting and ravaging my body.
His laughter swallowed the echoes of my scream. The nekkeht walked forward and stood above me. "Are you hurt, Talion? How can that be?" He stepped over and straddled me. "You thrust your sword through me and I am not hurt."
He dropped into a crouch and grabbed up my left hand. He trapped my little finger between his thumb and forefinger. The candlelight sunk his eyes in shadow and made his head into a skull. "I will enjoy this, Talion." He grinned, squeezed, and pulverized the bone in that finger.
I jammed my right hand against his forehead and clawed his scalp with my fingers. I hoped he might think, just for a moment, that I meant to tear at him and hurt him. I needed just a second to start pulling his soul from his body, then we would battle will against will, and his extra souls would count for nothing.
I breathed in ... and nothing happened.
The nekkeht roared with laughter! He poked his face down to mine and spattered me with mirth-driven spittle. "They tried that once on me, Talion, but I've worked a counter-spell. Your magick won't work here." He looked up and I saw pinpoints of candlelight reflected in his black eyes. "I've got an hour until my candles burn down, but you'll be dead by then." He looked down at me. "But you won't have been long dead."
I tried to summon my tsincaat but felt nothing. It lay behind him only ten or fifteen feet away, but it might as well have been back in Talianna. Flat on my back I could not reach my ryqril, and he held my left hand, which made a grab for the stiletto sheathed on my forearm impossible.
He nodded slowly at me and selected the middle finger on my left hand as if choosing a key from a ring of them. "I know all your secrets and I have countered them. There is nothing you can do but die, Talion."
My eyes narrowed. I stared into his midnight eyes and carefully pronounced one word with the finality of a headman's ax hitting the block. "Leoht!"
Gouts of incandescent gold and orange fire exploded within each niche and rolled out to lick at the ceiling in an obscene caress. The brilliant light washed all color from the nekkeht's face, and etched every twisted line of uncertain and confused terror on it in ebon.
My tsincaat leaped to hand the instant I willed it do so and swept through his neck. I twisted and flung his headless body off my chest. On my left side, I curled up and grabbed his head by an ear with my left hand. His jaw still worked but no sound came out of his mouth; it hardly mattered because I knew what he wanted to ask.
"Some Talions have more secrets than others, Gyasi." I dropped my tsincaat, pressed my right hand to his forehead, and breathed in. I felt the rhasa souls pass into me; then the resistance began. I pulled harder, but he fought.
"No, Gyasi, your time is ended. You failed. It is over for you."
He gnashed his teeth impotently because he could not bite me. His body thrashed around blindly but he could not command it because he did not know where it lay or in what direction it faced. He could do nothing, and he sensed that. The instant that doubt crept into his mind, I had him.
His soul flowed into me quickly. His body twitched a time or two down by my feet, then it lay still. His eyes closed and his jaw hung slack. I had killed the nekkeht.
Slowly, painfully, I pulled myself to my feet. Bone fragments shifted in my knee and I almost fell, but caught hold of a coffin and righted myself again. I leaned against the stone sarcophagus and trembled. Then I tossed Gyasi's head aside and started to giggle madly.
"There, Most Holy Shudath, I did it," I laughed aloud. "I defeated the dead!"
The flicker of motion I caught in the corner of my right eye was no warning. The thrown ryqril pierced my right side and its sharp, steel blade found my heart. I looked down in surprise and shock because, even before I wrapped my left hand around the hilt and pulled it free, I recognized the ryqril. I sank to my knees and jammed my right hand against the hole pouring blood from my side in a vain attempt to staunch the flow. I half smiled as I fell forward on my face because I'd mocked her warning and paid the price for my audacity. The ryqril belonged to Lothar.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Justice: Cirhon
Lothar knelt with eyes closed amid the beauty of the Haunted Circle. The short, green spring grasses bowed before the same gentle breeze that tugged playfully at Lothar's white-blond hair and the loose ends of his white silken headband. The grumbled roar of the Tal River racing through a gorge thirty feet below the cliff at his back sounded like distant thunder. Lothar, it seemed, did not notice it and only concerned himself with rubbing a scarlet cloth along the polished, gleaming length of the tsincaat lying across his thighs.
I looped Wolf's reins around a tree branch at the edge of the clearing. I tried not to disturb Lothar, but I knew nothing I did could escape his attention. I untied the laces of a saddlebag and withdrew the bread and wine from its dark interior. I knew I'd wasted my money when I purchased them, but I had to hope Lothar would consider my debt settled without one or both of us dying.
I slowly shook my head. If he'd intended no blood be spilt, he never would have chosen the Haunted Circle for our Cirhon.
The Haunted Circle sat only a few hundred feet above the valley floor on the southern face of the Tal Mountains. Located on top of a cliff overlooking the Tal River, it commanded a beautiful view of the valley and Talianna. Low stones described the circle, except where it became one with the cliff edge. The twenty-foot diameter of the ring made it a large arena for just two fighters.
I walked to the edge of the circle and knelt just outside of it. I bowed to Lothar and placed the bread and wine within the gray stone border. "I have come, and I offer this bread and this wine in the hope we can end this madness."
/> Lothar's eyes opened slowly and he stared at me without saying a word, but his body betrayed his mind. His hand stroked the tsincaat more lovingly and his nostrils flared ever so slightly as his breath quickened. Finally his anxious anger consumed his sense of propriety. "I see you finally dare meet me. I have waited for you half the day."
I shook my head. "Even in your bitterness you know I am not a coward."
A demonic snarl leaped from his throat. He bared his teeth, as if to frighten me, in a sneer. "If you are not a coward, why did you bring an offering for me to accept in lieu of your life?" He hunched forward and dispelled the last hint of tranquil nobility in him.
I clenched my jaw and gave myself time to calm down. In an even voice I answered him. "I brought these gifts because I do not want to fight you. You waited for me because Marana did not return quite whole from our mission." I hoped for a reaction from him when I mentioned Marana, and I got one, but it was not quite what I wanted.
Lothar's eyes narrowed as if he'd bitten into a tardy sour fruit. He raised his tsincaat and studied its edge as the sunlight glinted from it. Then, like a cat caught being watched, he quickly turned his head in my direction and fixed me with a harsh stare. "How dare you mention her to me when you poisoned her mind against me? She is not the cause of our fight, Nolan the Unhomed, your seduction of her is! Do not imagine I will let you live because your death would sadden her." He shook his head regretfully, as if already standing over my dead body and remorsefully lamenting the waste of such a young life. "Fight me yourself, do not use her against me."
I balled my fists and dug my fingernails into my palms. "Damn you, Lothar! I care not that you unman me with such accusations, but you suggest I care nothing for Marana, and that I cannot tolerate." I stabbed a finger at Talianna. "Marana needs you, she needs Jevin, she needs me. She needs every friend she has ever known. She tried to kill herself, Lothar; Marana tried to commit suicide!"
I regained control of my runaway emotions and opened my hands. "I brought the bread and wine so we could both return and stand beside her. Challenge me again when she is well, in a week or month or year. I will never refuse your challenge, but I do not want to take someone special away from her right now."
Lothar heard my words, but ignored their intent. He reared his head back and laughed. "Do not worry yourself, Nolan, you will not kill me."
Lothar stood and walked calmly forward. He bent and picked up the jug of wine, then used his tsincaat to spit the bread. He turned with military precision and marched back beyond where he'd been sitting. He stopped at the cliff edge.
"No, Lothar, please." I reached forward and implored him not to discard the offering. "Marana needs you."
Lothar carelessly pitched the wine and bread over the edge. "And she will have me, Nolan, after I have killed you."
I nodded and stood slowly. I reached into the pouch on my belt and drew out a slender length of black silk cloth. A white skull on a circular red background marked the center point of the three feet of cloth. I smoothed the silk out, flipped it over so the circle faced the ground, and raised it to my forehead. I touched the rough painted surface of the skull and, when satisfied it rested exactly in the middle of my forehead, I tied the headband off with a knot over my right ear.
Lothar watched me and chuckled to himself. He'd knotted his headband—white because he had demanded a Cirhon of me—on the left side of his head. He would only accept my death as the finish to this fight, whereas by knotting my headband on the right, I offered him a bloodless way out of the fight. "Nolan, do not be foolish, you will never drive me from the circle."
"Lothar, please, this circle has drunk enough Talion blood over the centuries. Enough ghosts are bound to this spot. Let us not do this to each other."
The Janian noble strode stiff-legged back to the circle's center. He drew his ryqril and crossed his arms over his chest. "I, Lothar ra Jania, do claim of thee a blood debt. You were as my brother, yet you betrayed me. In the Cirhon this matter will be settled."
I unbuckled my swordbelt, drew my ryqril, summoned my tsincaat, and similarly crossed my arms over my chest. "I, Nolan ra Sinjaria, do reject your claim, and seek neither your blood or your life in doing so. I have not betrayed you. In the Cirhon this matter will be settled."
I took one fateful step forward and entered Cirhon. If I drove Lothar from the circle, it would be ended. If one of us managed to disarm the other and he summoned his tsincaat from beyond the circle, the fight was over. If one of us killed the other, the fight was ended.
Lothar stood tall and waited for me in the center of the circle. He struck a loose guard, with tsincaat in his right hand and ryqril held easily in his left. Unlike mine, his ryqril was balanced and could be thrown, but I knew he would not do that. I could parry it and that would leave him at a disadvantage.
Suddenly I realized that, after the return trip from Zandria, and the Shar ritual, I could not fight a long battle. I felt too tired, and Marana's illness threatened to distract me. I needed to end the fight quickly, but, looking over at the tall, strong, implacable Janian, I knew that would not be easy or without risk.
I drove at him with long strides. I came in straight toward him with both tsincaat and ryqril held low at my sides, more like a brawler than a trained fighter. Lothar planted his left foot and lunged at my chest. I twisted my torso back to the left and swept tsincaat and ryqril up to cross and catch Lothar's blade. I kicked out with my right foot and hit Lothar in the chest.
Lothar flew back and tumbled in a groaning heap. His tsincaat remained trapped between my blades and I took a step toward the circle's stone border to fling it clear, but my right leg collapsed. Pain drilled up through my leg, yet I forced myself to throw his tsincaat from our arena before I looked down.
Blood covered my right calf. My brown boot gaped open from just below my knee to where the muscle started to taper back down toward my heel. Already sticky warmth filled my boot and squished between my toes, but, even so, I knew I could still hobble. I'd not lost my mobility completely, and that meant I still had a chance.
Lothar slowly climbed to his feet, brandished his blooded ryqril, and laughed at me kneeling there. "A tool is just a tool, eh, Nolan. Well, this time the tool got broken." He looked down at my tsincaat. "I'll kill you even with your advantage." The muscles at his jaw bunched but did nothing to banish the confident grin on his face.
I stood and quickly tested how much weight my leg would support. It held even when I leaned on it heavily, but that did not surprise me. Because of the wound the leg would not respond well to quick and agile moves, and it bled too freely to give me much time to somehow defeat Lothar.
Again Lothar grimaced and I noticed he held his right arm tight against his side. I'd cracked some ribs with my kick, and Lothar struggled against the pain. He'd not paled, and no blood flecked his lips, so I'd not punctured a lung, but that put us closer to even than he wanted to acknowledge.
I looked down at the tsincaat in my hand, then tossed it from the circle. "No, Lothar, I'll have no one say we took unfair advantage of each other." Something flashed through his eyes, and he smothered it with furious hatred fast enough, but I hoped he understood, just for that second, that I never wanted to hurt him.
Lothar dropped into a low stance and I matched it as well as my leg would let me. He came in from his left and tried to keep most of his body between me and his damaged ribs. Unfortunately his advance came at my right side, so I continued to back in a circle to keep him away from my weak spot. I shifted my ryqril to my right hand and made short, slashing feints to keep him back.
Frustration exploded in him. He launched himself and tackled me on his left shoulder and I fell back. I felt his ryqril bite into my back and I screamed. My left fist jerked down, driven more by a spasm of pain than intent, and slammed into Lothar's ribs.
Lothar's back arched in agony and he rolled off to my right. His left hand still held his ryqril, but both lay pinned beneath me. I hammered my right elbow d
own into his left forearm and heard a bone snap; then I twisted to my left and curled up into a kneeling position facing him.
I coughed convulsively and tasted blood. I shifted my ryqril back to my left hand and gingerly probed my back. I felt the hilt of his ryqril, but from the angle I knew the blade was not planted firmly in my back. Instead, the slice ran parallel to my waist and my roll had twisted the blade free so only my leather jerkin held it to my flesh.
I withdrew it and cast both ryqrils from the circle. I coughed again and raised my left hand to my mouth to cover it. When I pulled it away I saw droplets of blood sprayed against my palm. Lothar's stab had cut my lung and, without help, the wound would kill me.
Lothar looked no better off. He slowly pulled his legs up underneath himself and used his right arm to lever himself into a kneeling position. He'd paled badly. His coughing brought blood to his lips and pain to his face. He weaved unsteadily and reached his broken left arm across his body to hold his right side.
His body convulsed and wracked a wet cough from him. He pointed a trembling finger at me. "I will kill you, Nolan."
I forced myself to my feet and backed to the center of the circle. "Then come. Let us finish this." I opened my bloody hands and waited. I knew I had only one chance, and I wanted to stop the battle without killing Lothar, so I had to risk it.
Lothar rushed forward and did not realize my intent until I fell back before his attack. I grabbed the lapels of his tunic and rolled onto my back. I posted my left leg in his stomach and pushed up and off even as my impact with the ground ignited new pain in my back. I released his tunic and let him fly away.
I hoped Lothar would land hard enough to jar him into unconsciousness, but even as I let him go, he tucked his right shoulder under and kicked his legs toward the right to start his body rolling. He hit the ground on his right side, and screamed in pain, but did not black out. Still the pain did rob him, for a moment, of any conscious control of his body. Instead of rolling to his feet and attacking back at me, as he had done in countless practice battles between us, his roll continued and carried him off the cliff edge.