heed none from such as you,” said Naramala, and raised her staff.
She muttered no memory-hooks, choosing a simple blast of pure magic that would have thrown Colrean to the ground, doubtless breaking many bones. But he concentrated magic of his own from some unseen source in his clenched fist, raising it against her spell. Naramala’s blow broke upon it like a wave on a tall rock, all force diverted about Colrean, dissipating into nothing.
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” said Naramala. “But you have annoyed me now.”
She spoke memory-hooks, her staff raised high. Magic coalesced around the silver-chased tip of the staff, becoming visible as luminous trails that swirled and spun to become a globe of sick yellow light, which with a flick of her arm, Naramala sent drifting toward Colrean’s head.
He knew what it was: a standard of wizard’s duels, though few could cast it so well or so swiftly. The Asphyxiation of Lygar, an impenetrable globe that would settle on his shoulders and constrict, denying him breath or crushing his skull, death coming swiftly either way.
Colrean drew yet more power into his fist, babbling memory-hooks himself, each word reminding him how the magic must be shaped to form a specific spell, this one a counterspell of considerable strength.
A wizard’s spell.
The globe began to lower over his head, but Colrean thrust his hand within it and opened his fingers. There was a flash of brilliant light, a shower of small sparks that died even as they fell to the earth, and the globe was no more.
“How—”
Naramala did not finish her question, but immediately began to mutter again, building another spell. Colrean watched her intently, trying to read her lips, to work out which memory-hooks she was using in order to anticipate her casting. A few seconds after she started, he began as well, calling power as he sketched an outline in front of himself in the air. Smoke trailed from his fingers, lines of lurid too-white smoke that he drew across and up and down, weaving the smoke together to make a solid shield.
Colrean finished a scant second before Naramala unleashed an incinerating bolt of power from her staff, of such strength it blew his shield of smoke apart and struck him full on the chest, flames licking over his entire body. But the shield had almost worked, for the flames died even as they struck. Though blackened and shocked, Colrean was hardly burned.
Naramala shrieked in frustration as she saw he still lived, though he had fallen to one knee and was blinking away soot. Raising her staff, she ran forward, clearly intent on delivering a killing blow of both magical and physical force—a favored tactic of the most brutal wizards when their opponents were temporarily stunned.
Colrean raised his hand and called more magic into it, but he was dazed and could not shape it, could not get his ashen tongue to utter a memory-hook, and then Naramala was in front of him, her staff blazing with power, and she raised herself up and—
The rowan struck first. Two branches wound around the staff and plucked it from her grasp, even as another forked branch closed around the wizard’s neck. Lifting her high, yet another branch secured her legs, and then, just as a farmer might kill a chicken, the rowan broke Naramala’s neck and threw her down upon the ground.
The wizard’s arms twitched. Her heels drummed, and a terrible inhuman clicking sound emanated from her throat. Then she was still.
Colrean flinched as the rowan threw the wizard’s staff down next to her body. Coughing up soot, he groaned and leaned back against the tree, stretching out his legs. The wound in his left foot had opened again, the bandage blown off. His right boot had black-rimmed burn holes and scorch marks all over it, as did his breeches, and through the holes he could see the sheen of his narwhal-horn peg leg, and the shine of the gold bands that wound around the horn from tip to base.
The Islanders also had wizards, but they did not carry their staves openly.
Colrean looked across at Naramala’s body and then over at the Corner Post, looming dark against the lighter sky. The bronze foot of the staff high up seemed to wink in the starlight. Colrean stared at it and became certain of something he had begun to suspect.
“Come out!” called Colrean, his voice unsteady. There were tears in his eyes, tears running down his cheeks, making trails through the layer of soot. They were for Naramala, as he had once thought she was, and for his younger, foolish self, and because he was hurt and weakened, and the night was still not done.
“Come out!”
The staff in the stone shifted against the backdrop of stars, slanting down. As it moved, a line of light sprang up behind it, so bright that Colrean had to duck his head, put his chin against his chest, and cover his face with his forearm. Even shielded so, and with his eyes tightly shut, it was almost unbearably bright.
The light ebbed. Colrean risked a glimpse, raising his arm a little. There was a figure stepping down from the Corner Post—from inside the Corner Post—lit from behind by a softer light, as if deep within the stone there was sunshine. The silhouette was almost a caricature of a wizard, with the pointed, broad-brimmed hat, the trailing sleeves, the staff as tall as its bearer.
“Verashe,” said Colrean, naming the wizard as she came toward him, now rounded and real under the moon and stars, not a shadowed shape backlit by the strange illumination from the stone, a light that was already fading. “Grand Wizard.”
“Coltreen,” said the wizard mildly. She was very old, but not stooped. Still taller than Colrean, straight-backed and imposing. Her face was lined and thin, but her green eyes sharp as ever. Her long hair, once red, was pale with time and tied back under her hat, save for one slight wisp, which was escaping above her left ear. “Or Colrean, as I believe you call yourself now.”
She bowed her head to the rowan as Colrean had done, if not so deeply. A greeting of equals, or those long familiar.
“So you set your snare, and have caught two unbound wizards,” said Colrean bitterly. He lifted himself against the trunk of the rowan, trying to sit more upright, and winced as new pains made themselves felt.
“I did not even know you were in these parts,” replied Verashe. “Not until I came here, at least, and by then matters were already in train.”
“So the lure was for Naramala alone?” asked Colrean wearily. “Did you expect the Grannoch too?”
“I was not sure what might come,” answered the Grand Wizard. She knelt down at Colrean’s side and ran her fingers over the sole of his foot, once again stemming the flow of blood with magic and doing something else that vanquished the pain. A curious thing to do for a condemned man, thought Colrean, and a small spark of hope grew inside him.
“I did try to ensure Naramala would be foremost of the wizards, since it was well past time her ambitions should be thwarted.”
“You knew she had evaded the oath?”
“Of course,” replied Verashe. She sighed. “Almost every class has someone like Naramala, certain of their own cleverness and destiny. And the oath, though robust, cannot hold against continued use of blood magic and human sacrifice. She killed Cateran and Lieros too, you know, and quite a number of beggars and the like—those she believed would not be readily missed. All the while thinking herself unobserved.”
Colrean wiped his eyes and pretended no new tears brimmed there. Cateran and Lieros had been fellow
