v1.0       
 Scanned and proofed by dongquang
 This is a short novel from Reave the just and other tales. I'll scan the other tales soon.
 
       THE KILLING STROKE
       By Stephen R. Donaldson
      
       
When he was returned to the cell we shared, he retained nothing except his short, warrior's robe and his knowledge of shin-te. The years of training which had made him what he was despite his youth had not been taken from him. Everything else was gone. His birthplace and family, his friendships and allegiances, his possessions and memories—all had been swept aside. The faces of his masters and students had vanished from his mind. He could not have given an account of himself to save his life—or ours. Not even his name remained to him.
   I was familiar with his plight. As was Isla. We had experienced it ourselves.
   The look of bereavement in his eyes did not augur well for him. It had settled firmly into the strained flesh at his temples and the new lines of his cheeks, causing him to appear almost painfully youthful and forlorn. He might have been a small boy who had
   
grown so accustomed to blows he could not avoid that he had learned to flinch and duck his head reflex-ively.
   Weariness clung to his limbs, burdened his shoulders. His ordeal had been immeasurably arduous.
   Still his skill, and the rigor behind it, showed in the poise with which he carried himself, in the quick accuracy with which he saw and noted everything around him. He had presumably been dealt a killing stroke, with blade or fist. Yet he remained lithe of movement, prompt of gaze—and centered in his qa.
   So he had returned on previous occasions. That he could continue to move and attend as he did, in spite of defeat and death, moderated his air of bereavement.
   His throat was parched from his various exertions. Studying us with his incipient flinch, he tried to speak, but could not find his voice at first. With an effort, he swallowed his confusion and fear in order to clear his mouth. Then he asked faintly, "Where am I?"
   It was the same question he had asked each time he entered. With repetition, his voice had grown husky, thick with doubt, but his mind continued to arrange its inquiries in the same order.
That also did not augur well.
   As she had each time before, Isla shrugged, glowering darkly from her smudged features.
   As I had each time before, I spread my hands to indicate the cell. Its blind stone walls and eternal lamps, its timbered ceiling, its pallets and cistern and privy, were the only answer we could give.
   Frowning fearfully, he asked his second question. "Who are you?"
   Isla turned her glower toward me. Behind its grime, her face might have been lovely or plain, but she had long since forgotten which, and I had ceased to be cu
rious. The shape of her mouth was strict, however, and the heat of her qa showed in her eyes. "Does he never get tired of this?" she demanded.
   Her protest was not a reference to the young man standing before us.
   "Or she?" I retorted. The debate was of long standing between us. It meant nothing, but I maintained it on the general principle—oft repeated by my masters— that we could not escape our imprisonment by making unwarranted assumptions.
The young man swallowed again. "He? She?"
That question, also, he had asked more than once.
   No doubt deliberately, Isla chose to violate the litany of previous occasions. "You answer," she ordered me. "I get tired, if he doesn't."
   Simply because I enjoyed variations of any kind, I tried to provoke her. "How are you tired? You do nothing except pace and complain."
   "Tired," she snapped, "of being the only one who cares."
   Her defeat had predated mine—although neither of us could measure the interval between them. In fact, she had preserved my heart from despair. I could not have borne my own ordeal alone. But my gratitude did neither of us any good.
And she was not the only one who cared.
   Smiling ruefully, I faced the young man. "I am As-per." For entertainment's sake, I performed a florid bow. "This uncivil termagant is Isla. We are here to serve you. However," I admitted, "we have not yet grasped what aid you might need."
   Isla snorted, but refrained from contradiction. She knew I spoke the truth.
   A small tension between the young man's brows deepened. He may have been trying to anticipate the

next blow. For him the litany remained unbroken. He had not moved from the spot where he had appeared in the cell.
"Have we met before?"
   Since Isla had elected to vary the experience with silence, I continued alone. "Several times."
   He did not ask, How is that possible? His masters had trained him well. He remained centered in his qa—and in his thoughts. Instead he observed hoarsely, "A mage has imprisoned us."
   This was not an assumption. If it were, I might have challenged it. His conclusion was inescapable, however, made so by the perfect absence of a door through which any of us could have entered the cell. And by the fact that we yet lived.
Keeping my bitterness to myself, I shrugged in assent.
   His sorrow augmented the weariness which burdened his spirit. In the unflinching lamplight, he appeared to dwindle.
Sadly, he asked, "What are you?"
The same questions in the same order.
   "By the White Lords," Isla swore, "he learns nothing."
   There my temper snapped. My own memory had been restored to me after my last defeat. I recalled too much death. "And what precisely," I demanded of her, "is it that we have learned?"
   She answered at once, crying at the walls, "I have learned hatred! If he makes the mistake of letting me live, I will extract the cost of this abuse from his bones!"
   I understood her anguish. We both knew that neither of us would ever see the light of day again, if this shin-te master did not win our freedom for us.
   Still I was angry. I did not allow her to leave her place in the litany.
   
   Smiling unkindly at the young man, I performed a small circular flick with the fingers of one hand—a gesture both swift and subtle, difficult to notice—and at once a whetted dagger appeared in my palm. Without pausing to gauge direction or distance, I flipped the bladepoint at Isla's right eye.
   My cast was true. Yet the dagger did not strike her. Instead it flashed upward and embedded itself with a satisfying thunk in one of the ceiling timbers.
She adjusted the sleeve of her robe.
We both gazed at the young man.
   Curling his hands over his heart, he accorded us the shin-te bow of respect. "Nahia," he said to me. And to Isla, "Mashu-te."
   In our separate ways, we also bowed. We could not do otherwise. He had named us, although he remembered nothing.
   "Your mastery is plain," he observed unhappily. "You must have answered better than I."
   Opening his hand, he indicated what lay beyond our cell.
   "If that were true," Isla snapped, "you wouldn't be here."
For myself, I added, "Neither would we."
   There was nothing for which we could hope if his mastery did not prove greater than ours.
   Fortunately, he appeared to understand us without more explanation. We had none to offer. Nothing had been revealed to us. If our captor had placed any value on our comprehension, we would not have been deprived of our memories while we fought and failed.
   Shouldering his dismay as well as he could, he asked the question which must have given him the most pain.
"Who am I?"
Because we were familiar with his distress, both

Isla and I faced him openly so that he could see that we had no reply for him. We knew only what he had told us—and he remembered only shin-te.
   For the first time, he varied our litany of question and response himself. Slowly, he raised his hands to wipe tears from his eyes. His struggles had exhausted his flesh. Now his repeated return from death had begun to exhaust his spirit.
That also did not augur well.
   When he spread his hands to show us that they were empty—that he was defenseless—we recognized that he had come to the point of his gravest vulnerability. So softly that he might have made no sound, he voiced the question which haunted us all.
"Why?"
   We would have answered him kindly—Isla even more than I, despite her hate. We knew his pain. But any kindness would have been a lie.
   "Presumably," she told him, "it is because you failed."
As we had failed before him.
   Despite his training, he allowed himself a sigh of weariness and regret. That, too, was a slight variation. He had sighed before. With repetition, however, it had begun to convey the inflection of a sob.
   His last question contained little more than utter fatigue.
"Is it safe to rest?"
   I might have answered sardonically, "We survive the experience, as you see." But Isla forestalled me.
   "We will ward you with our lives," she assured him. "While you are here, we have no other hope."
   He nodded, accepting her reply. Carefully, he moved to the nearest pallet and folded himself onto it. Within moments he had fallen asleep.
As before, I found no satisfaction in his willingness

to trust us. I knew as well as he did that his weariness left him no alternative.
He had endured altogether too much death.
Folk like myself might have said that we had already seen enough to content us. After simmering and frothing for the better part of a decade, the Mage War had at last boiled over three years ago, spilling blood across the length and breadth of Vesselege until all the land was sodden with it. For reasons which few of us understood, and fewer still cared about, the White Lords had scourged and harried the Dark until only one remained—the most potent and dire of them all, it was said, the dread Black Archemage, secure among the shadows and malice of his granite keep upon the crags of Scarmin. Even then, however, the victories of the White Lords, and the withdrawal of the Archemage, did not suffice to lift the pall of battle and death from the land. The reach of a mage was long, as we all knew. During that war, we learned how long. A hundred leagues from Scarmin's peaks and cols, hurricanes of fire and stone fell upon Vess whenever—so we were told—Argoyne the Black required a diversion to ward him from some assault of the White Lords, and of Goris Miniter, Vesselege's King.
   Vess was Miniter's seat, the largest and—until the Mage War—most thriving city in the land. So naturally I lived there, within a whim of destruction every hour of my days. By nature, I think, I had always enjoyed the proximity of disasters—as long as they befell someone else. Certainly, I had always been adept at avoiding them myself. And that skill had been enhanced and honed by my training among the nahia.
   My poor father, blighted by poverty and loss, had gifted me there after my mother's death. Though I had
   
squalled against the idea at the time, I had learned to treasure it. When my masters had at last released me, I was a gifted pickthief, an impeccable burglar, and an artist of impossible escapes and improbable disappearances. I was also a true warrior in the tradition of the nahia. Faced by a single antagonist, I might leave him dead before he realized that I was not the one being slain. Confronting a gang of ruffians, I could dispatch half of them while the other half hacked at each other in confusion and folly.
   Despite the visitations of power which blasted one section of the city or another at uncertain intervals, I lived rather well in Vess, I thought. Unfortunately, late in the third year of the War, some mischance or miscalculation must have brought me to the attention of one mage or another. The life I knew ended as suddenly as if I had severed it at the base of the neck. Without transition or awareness, I found myself in a stone cell with Isla and no door. When my memory was restored, I recalled days or weeks of bitter combat. I felt myself die again and again, until my spirit quailed like a coward's. Yet I remembered nothing of how I had been taken from Vess—or why. And I had nothing but assumptions, which my masters abhorred, to tell me where I was.
   Isla's story, as I learned it after my memory had been returned, was completely different than mine— and entirely the same.
   Her father and mother, her brother and sisters, her aunts and uncles—her whole family, in fact—had dedicated their lives to the mashu-te, the Art of the Direct Fist. As a young girl, fiery of temper, and quick to passion—or so I imagined her—she had been initiated in the disciplines and skills of those masters, and she had studied with the clenched devotion of a girl deter-
   
mined to prove her worth. The study and teaching of mashu-te had consumed her, and in all her years she had never left the distant school where her masters winnowed acolytes to glean students, and students to glean warriors. When she spoke of that time, I received the impression that she had never tested her skills against anyone not already familiar with them.
   Still, her skills were extraordinary. It was said around Vesselege that a mashu-te master could stop a charging bull with one blow. I doubted that—but I did not doubt that Isla was a master. I had slipped once with her, and my qa still trembled in consequence.
   From time to time, I had assured her that I could slay her easily, if I permitted myself to use my fang, the nahia dagger secreted within my robe. But that was mere provocation. I did not believe it. The truth was that I feared her—and not only because of her vehement excellence.
   She had endured alone an ordeal which had nearly broken me despite her companionship.
   Like mine, her life had simply ended one day, without transition or explanation, and she had found herself here. Like me, she had faced countless opponents and death, and had remembered nothing until her captor had given up on her. Yet she was whole. She was bitter, and she had learned hatred, but she was whole. I could not have said the same of myself. Without her, I would have succumbed to despair—that death of the spirit which all the Fatal Arts abhorred. She possessed the strongest qa I had ever encountered, surpassing even the greatest of my masters. I had never seen the like—until the young shin-te warrior joined us.
   For three years, we had both ignored the Mage War, after our separate fashions. Now, however, we
   
considered it a personal affront. For that reason, among others, we did what we could to aid the new prisoner.
After a time, he awakened. When he did so, there was food. There was always food when we needed it. He ate sparingly, respectful of his qa. Then he performed the ablutions and devotions of the shin-te, centering himself in meditation. Isla and I passed the time as we had on previous occasions, watching him with the tattered remnants of hope.
   Rest and nourishment had restored him somewhat, as they had in the past. His air of bereavement had been diminished, and the pallor of death had receded from his cheeks. After meditation, he asked us to train with him. His manner as he did so was curiously diffident, as if he considered it plausible that we might refuse—that if we aided him we would do so out of courtesy rather than desperation.
   So we trained with him, although our previous efforts had not done him any discernible good.
   The exercise was little changed from other occasions. Isla and I feinted and attacked, or attacked and feinted, as our inclination took us, but we made no impression on him. He altered his tactics in accordance with our assaults, varying his blocks and counters easily, deflecting us without effort. Despite his youth and forlornness, he seemed impervious to our skills, and our cunning. Behind his fluid movements and light stances, his qa had a staggering force. In truth, I feared him as much as I feared Isla. Although we challenged him furiously, he did us no harm. But the harm he could have done was extreme.
How, I wondered, had such a very young man be-

come so strong? And how was it possible that he had been slain so often?
   When he had thanked us for our exertions, he meditated again, perhaps on what he had learned, perhaps on nothing at all. No word or glance from him suggested that we had in any way given him less than he needed from us. Yet we knew better. We were not his equals, but we were masters, able to recognize the truth. And we could see it in the deepening sorrow which underlay every turn of his gaze, every shift of his mouth.
   Again and again, we failed to prepare him for his opponents. Or for his death.
"We should stop holding back," Isla muttered to me sourly. "This polite exercise is wasted on him."
She had said the same more than once.
   Earlier, I had argued with her. What if by some chance we injured or weakened him? What became of our hope then? But that debate had lost its meaning, and I gave it up. Matching her tone, I replied, "I will follow your example. When I see the full strength of the Direct Fist turned against him, I will do what a nahia can to emulate it."
   She snorted in response, but I knew that her disgust was not directed at me. The training of the mashu-te had penetrated her bones. She would have considered it a crime to put all the force of her qa into blows struck against a training partner.
   The nahia spared themselves such prohibitions. I was restrained, not by conscience, but by understanding. If I slew him, my last hope would die with him. And if I attempted his death and failed, he might well break my spine.
   
   I was quite certain that if I died now I would not live again. No doubt that was just an assumption. Still, I believed it.
Neither Isla nor I witnessed his disappearance. In some sense, neither of us noticed it. Nothing in the cell—or in our own minds—marked the moment. He was among us. Then he was not. Without transition or summons. He was removed from the cell with the same disdain for continuity with which we had been removed from our lives.
   This was precisely as it had been on any number of previous occasions.
"I had thought," Isla remarked with no more than ordinary asperity, "that the nahia were adept at escape. I must have been misinformed."
   I sighed. "Give me a door, and I will open it. Give me a window—give me a gap for ventilation—give me somewhere to begin." I had long since scrutinized the walls and ceiling and even the floor until I feared my heart would break. "The nahia are not mages, Isla."
   "But we came and went," she protested. "He comes and goes." She meant the young man. "There must be a door."
   "As there was among the mashu-te?" I inquired gently. "As there was on the streets of Vess? A door from those places to this? No doubt you are right. But it is a mage's door, and I cannot open it."
   Attempting to lighten her mood—or my own—I continued, "However, it may be that some among these stones are illusions." I gestured at the walls. "Perhaps if you aim the Direct Fist at them all, one will shatter, revealing itself to be wood."
   
She avoided my gaze. "Do not mock me, Asper," she said distantly. "I have no heart for it." That did not augur well for any of us.
He staggered as he returned, barely strong enough to remain on his feet. We saw differences he could not recognize, having no memory. As before, he breathed and moved among the living. As before, his wounds and bruises had been healed. Apparently, our captor wished to spare him the obvious consequences of death. Yet his exhaustion came near to overwhelming him. A glaze of forgotten pain clouded his eyes as he searched the cell, and us.
   But his thoughts had not been altered. Weary as he was, how could he have considered anything new? When he had recovered his balance, he began the litany of our doom.
"Where am I?"
We had no answer for him.
"Who are you?"
   Suppressing fury or despair, Isla told me, "This must change. We are lost otherwise."
   "How can he change it?" I countered. "Look at him." I was less than she, and endangered by my own despair. "He has nothing left."
"Have we met before?"
   I would have given him an exact answer if I could. But the magery of his disappearances and returns foiled me. Although Isla and I could remember what we had said and done, neither of us was able to keep a count of the days, or the deaths.
   "Your mastery is plain. You must have answered better than I."
Neither Isla nor I suspected him of mocking us.
This time, however, he did not ask "Why?" He

seemed to understand that he had failed. Perhaps his own weakness made the truth evident.
   At last he settled himself to sleep. Isla spread a blanket over his shoulders, then stooped to kiss his forehead. The gesture was uncharacteristic of her. There were uncharacteristic tears in her eyes. His bereavement had become infectious.
   Her voice thick with sorrow, she said, "Asper, it must change. If he cannot change it, then we must. Someone must."
   I dismissed the idea that our captor's intentions would alter themselves. "How?" I asked. Her gentleness frightened me more than her grief.
   "I do not know." For the first time, she sounded like a woman who might surrender.
She was right, of course. It must change. And I was a nahia master, adept—or so I claimed—at impossible escapes and improbable disappearances. The burden was mine to bear.
   While the young man slept, she and I neither rested nor watched. Instead, I questioned her closely, searching her knowledge of the other Arts for any insight the nahia did not possess.
   I hoped that the mashu-te might have some true understanding of shin-te.
Shin-te. Nahia. Mashu-te. Here were represented three of the five Fatal Arts of Vesselege. Only ro-uke and nerishi-qa were needed to complete the tale of combative skills in all our land. And of the two, ro-uke was widely considered too secretive—too dependent upon stealth and surprise—to equal the others in open conflict. It was the Art of Assassination. As for nerishi-qa,

it was said to be the most fearsome and pure of all the Five. The Art of the Killing Stroke, it was called. Indeed, legend claimed that every deadly skill contained in the other four derived from nerishi-qa.
   If legend could be believed, Isla and I had not been joined by a nerishi-qa master because no mage was sufficiently powerful to subdue one.
   That was an assumption, however—so ingrained that I hardly noticed it. My masters had respected all the Arts, but they feared only nerishi-qa.
   Unfortunately, Isla was well schooled in legends, but owned less practical knowledge than I. She spoke of shin-te masters who broke wooden planks with their fists while holding soap bubbles in their palms, but she had not been taught how such feats might be accomplished. If indeed they were possible at all. Her isolated life among the mashu-te had been more conducive to the proliferation of mythologies than to a detailed awareness of the world. Nahia was called the Art of Circumvention. Our skills and our qa were rooted in use. And the masters of the Direct Fist were so very scrupulous—
   If I desired understanding, I would have to gain it from the young man.
As before, he roused himself at last, broke his fast, performed his ablutions and meditations. This time, however, he had slept in the grip of troubled dreams, and had awakened unrefreshed. His gaze remained dull, and the hue of his skin suggested ashes. Still he did not diverge from his pattern. When his meditations were complete, he asked us to train with him.
I refused, in Isla's name as well as my own.
He seemed to flinch as if he had received another

blow. His dreams had left him weaker than before— younger, and more lost. "You say that I failed," he murmured. "Without training, I will surely fail again."
   He had not regained his memory. By that sign, we knew that the mage was not done with him.
   "You have trained enough," I informed him. "You need rest, not more exertion." More than rest, he needed insight. "And we are already familiar with our limitations.
   "With your consent"—he was a master, and deserved courtesy—"I will question you."
   "Concerning what?" Isla protested irritably. "Have you forgotten that he remembers nothing? What do you imagine he will tell us?"
   I ignored her, and instead watched doubts glide like shadows across his bereavement. In his eyes, I seemed to see his desire to trust us measure itself against his failures, or his dreams. And he may have guessed that I desired to probe the secrets of his Art. At last, however, he nodded warily.
"I will answer, if I can."
   Isla wanted me to account for myself, if he did not. But I wasted no effort on explanations. In fact, I had none to offer. I was simply groping, as my masters had taught me, hunting the dark cell of my ignorance for some object or shape or texture I might recognize.
   Stilling Isla's impatience with a gesture, I began at once.
"What," I asked him, "are the principles oishin-tet"
   Having made his decision, he did not falter from it. Without hesitation, he replied, "Service to qa in all things. Acceptance of that which opposes us." He remembered his training, if nothing else. "There is no killing stroke."
   I stared at him witlessly. All the Fatal Arts were given to obscure utterance—it was one of the means by
   
which we cherished our own, and deflected outsiders— but this seemed extreme, even to me. I pursued him as best I could.
   "Please explain. Your words will give us no aid if we do not understand them."
   Politely, he refrained from observing that we were not intended to understand. The urgency of our plight was plain.
   "Qa," he began, "is the seat and source of self. It is the power of self, and the expression. Without self, there is no action, and no purpose. To deny service to the self is to deny existence."
   So much I could grasp. It was not substantially different than the wisdom of my masters. They expressed themselves more concretely, but their meaning was much the same.
   "Qa draws its strength from acceptance," he continued. "To reject that which opposes us is death. Life opposes us. Nothing grows that is not contained. And life will not alter itself to satisfy our rejection. Without acceptance, there is no power."
   Privately, I considered this mystical nonsense. He was worse than the mashu-te. I was nahia by nature as much as by training. I kept my opinion to myself, however. It was as useless to us as his oblique maxims.
   "That there is no killing stroke," he concluded, "is self-evident. No man or woman slays another. There is only the choice to live or die."
   In response, I laughed softly, without humor. I might have asked him if he denied the existence of nerishi-qa, but I did not. I wished to circumvent misunderstanding, not enhance it.
Was not shin-te one of the Fatal Arts?
   "There we differ," I told him. "I myself have shed blood and caused death. Do you call this illusion? Are the men I gutted still alive?"
   
   Isla nodded sharp agreement, although I was certain that she would argue in other terms.
   He appeared to regard my challenge seriously. Yet he gave no sign that it disturbed him. Rather, he considered how he would answer. After a moment, he stepped near to me and touched the place where I had secreted my dagger.
"Strike me," he instructed simply.
   I hesitated. Naturally I did not wish to slay him— or to harm him. But I felt a greater uncertainty as well. That he knew my fang's resting place troubled me. As I had been taught, I varied its location frequently. And I took pains to ensure that I was not observed when I concealed it.
   "The shin-te teach that there is no killing stroke," he insisted. "Show me that this belief is false."
   "Asper—" Isla murmured in warning. Her wish to see blood spilled here was even less than mine.
   I understood him, however. He might have been a nahia master, reminding me to affirm nothing which I could not demonstrate.
   By no hint of movement or tension did I announce my intent. I had studied such moments deeply. Without discernible transition—or so I believed—I transferred my qa from rest to action. More swiftly than the blinking of an eye, my hand projected my fang into the arch between his ribs.
   Yet my fang bit air, not flesh. Wrist to wrist, he had deflected my attack.
   I did not pause to admire his counter. Following the line of his deflection, I turned my stroke to a disemboweling slash.
   Again I found air rather than my target. He had shifted aside, guiding my hand so that my own motion helped him drive my wrist against the point of his knee.
   
   My grip loosened. Before I could secure it, he knocked the fang from my fingers.
   By that time, I had already directed a jab at his face, seeking to gouge him blind. But the motion was a mere formality, nothing more. With a negligent flick of his elbow, he knocked my arm aside.
   Then he stood a pace beyond my reach, holding my dagger lightly by its blade. I could not see that my efforts had inconvenienced him in any way. I told myself that I might have pressed my attack more stringently—that I might perhaps have retrieved my fang in a way which threatened him—but I did not believe it. He had made his point in terms I could not contradict by skill alone.
   When I had bowed to show my acquiescence, he restored the dagger to me and bowed in turn.
   At once, Isla advanced. Her desperation she expressed as anger so that it would not turn to despair. With the compact force of the Direct Fist, she flung a blow at him which caused my own qa to quake, although I was now a bystander.
   Her speed did not exceed mine, of that I was certain. However, the efficiency of the mashu-te had the effect of enhanced quickness. Her first strike touched his robe—as mine had not—before he turned it. And even then her fist focused so much qa that he was forced to recoil as if he had been hit.
As easily as oil, she followed one blow with another.
   He did not deflect her again. Rather, he met her squarely, palm to fist. I hardly had time to see the flex of his knees, the set of his strength. When their hands met, I flinched, thinking that she had shattered his bones.
   Yet it was Isla who gasped in pain, not the shin-te. Her own force had nearly dislocated her shoulder. If
   
the blow had betrayed any flaw, she would have ruined her arm.
   He waited, motionless, until she had mastered her distress enough to bow. Then he replied gravely, with such respect that if I had not seen the event I would not have known he had humbled her, "Have I harmed you?"
   Glaring, she dismissed his concern. "This proves nothing," she retorted. "You are greater than we. Your skill surpasses ours. So much we already knew. You have not demonstrated that there is no killing stroke."
"Still," he assured her, "it is the truth."
   "I disagree," she protested. "A master may strike at a farmer, and the farmer will die. He can neither counter nor evade the blow. Is he then responsible for it? Is it not a lie to say that he chooses his death? Is the blow not murder? The tnashu-te teach that the burden and the consequences belong to the one who strikes. How otherwise," she concluded, "do the shin-te call themselves honorable?"
   He was young and bereft—and apparently better content to contest his beliefs with actions than with words. Yet he did not shirk her demand.
   "Service to qa precludes murder," he answered. "Acceptance of that which opposes us necessitates responsibility. There is no killing stroke.
   "Consider the farmer. Do you contend that the master struck him without cause? Is that the act of a master? Do the mashu-te conduct themselves so?" He shook his head. "If you wish to say that the farmer did not choose his death, you must first consider the cause of the blow."
   "That is specious," I$la snapped. "Maybe mages reason so. Warriors do not.
"No cause is sufficient," she insisted. "Despite what-

ever lies between them, they are unequal in skill and force. Therefore the blow is murder."
   Unswayed, he lifted his shoulders delicately. "Since you do not name the cause," he murmured, "I cannot answer you. The truth is there, not in the conclusions you draw from it."
   Although he had been slain several times, he knew how to render the teachings of the shin-te unassailable.
   He disturbed me. I found suddenly that I feared for him more than I feared his skills, or the distilled potency of his qa. Isla was right. His words, like his actions, proved nothing. I was nahia to the core. I knew—as he did not—that any belief which placed itself beyond doubt nurtured its own collapse. A warrior who did not risk despair could not master it.
Again, he was no longer among us. Neither Isla nor I saw how he was taken from the cell. We could not name the moment of his disappearance. We only knew that while she wrestled with her own beliefs, and I considered my fears, the object of our concern ceased to share our imprisonment.
   "Asper," she said when she had recognized his absence, "we're beaten." She may have meant "broken." "We can't help him. And he can't help himself. If he can't remember what happens to him, he can't get past what he's been taught. And all that shin-te training has already failed him."
   She had endured her own testing without aid or companionship. She had strength enough for any contest, even though it killed her. But she could not suffer helplessness.
I, on the other hand—
   I could not have borne repeated death alone. But I was nahia—oblique of heart as well as of skill. I had
   
been trained to impossible escapes and improbable disappearances. My masters had made a study of helplessness.
   I did not attempt to answer her. She was too pure— no answer of mine would touch her. Instead I turned my attention to the walls.
   As ever, there was no door, no window, no gaps at all. Faceless granite confronted me on all sides. But I did not allow myself to be daunted.
   Raising my fists, I cried as though I believed I would be heard, "Are you stupid as well as cruel? Does magery corrupt your wits as it does your heart? Or are you only a fool? He cannot succeed this way!"
   Isla gaped at me, but I took no heed of her chagrin. I was certain of nothing except that our captor needed this shin-te master as sorely as we did.
   "He remembers nothing," I called to the blind stone. "He learns nothing! Death after death, he fails you. If you do not let us teach him, he will always fail you. And we cannot teach him if we do not know what he opposes!"
   The walls answered with silence. Isla stared at me in shock. After a moment, she breathed, "Asper—" but no other words came to her.
   "Hear me!" I demanded. "They say that the Black Archemage is malefic beyond belief, but even Argoyne himself could not be this stupidl"
   An instant later, I was stricken dumb by the sudden vehemence of the reply. From out of the air, a voice clawed with bitterness replied, "And what in the name of the Seven Hells makes you think I can spare—?"
   As abruptly as it had begun, the response was cut off. A soundless tremor filled the cell as though the stone under our feet had flinched.
   "Asper," Isla whispered, "what have you done?" She stood ready for combat.
   
   I swallowed a moment's panic. Adjusted the fang in my grasp. "Apparently," I said, feigning calm, "I have insulted our captor."
   "Oh, well," she answered between her teeth. "If that's all—"
   Without transition, we became aware that one of the walls was gone. Its absence revealed a corridor I knew too well—a passage as wide as the cell, leading from nowhere to nowhere, and fraught with death. Like the cell, it was endlessly lit. And it showed no intersections or doorways through which it might be entered. Still it held perils without number, threats as enduring as the light.
   It was the arena in which Isla and I had been slain too often.
   In the center of the space stood the young shin-te master, waiting. His back was toward us, but his stance showed that he was ready, poised for challenge. No sound came from his light movements, or from the faceless walls—or from the warrior advancing behind him.
   The warrior held a spear, which he meant to drive into the young man's back.
   I made no attempt to help or warn him. The silence stilled me. I remembered sounds from that corridor, a host of small distractions hampering awareness—the distant plash of water, the rustle of unnatural winds, the grinding of shifted stones. And I did not believe that we had suddenly been given our freedom. But Isla immediately hastened forward, perhaps thinking that she would be allowed to aid the young man.
   At once, she encountered the wall of the cell, and could not pass it. The scene before us was an image, mage-created, showing events which transpired elsewhere. Apparently my demand had been heeded.
" By the White Lords!" she swore, "what—?"
I ignored her confusion. It would pass.


   That warrior looked to be the same one who had slain both of us until we were entirely beaten. I saw no reason to think otherwise. I had killed him occasionally myself, as had Isla, but death had not hindered him significantly. When my memory was restored, I had concluded that he was not a man at all, but rather a creature of magery, returned to life whenever he fell by the same power which had first created him. If he had a man's features—or even a man's eyes—I could not recall them.
   From a distance of no more than five strides, he cocked his spear and flung it.
   Warned by the sensitivity of his qa, the young sbin-te turned, snatching the spear from the air. With the ease of long familiarity, he whirled the weapon as if it were a staff, and confronted his assailant.
   By some means which I could neither observe nor understand, the warrior held another spear. Flipping his weapon swiftly end for end to disguise the moment when he would strike, he attacked.
   The young man countered smoothly with the shaft of his staff. Foot and knee, hip and arm, at every moment his stances were flawless, apt for attack or defense, advance or retreat. The fast wheel of his assailant's blows he parried or slipped aside, adjusting his distance from the warrior at need.
   Then he saw his opening. Stabbing his staff between the warrior's arms, he slapped its shaft against both of the warrior's wrists at once. The spear spun from the warrior's grasp.
   A quick thrust would end the contest, at least momentarily.
   "Now!" Isla commanded sharply, although the young man could not hear her.
   He did not thrust. Instead, he stepped back, holding his staff ready.
   
"Fool," Isla groaned.
   I agreed mutely. That warrior could not be defeated by death. Still, a living assailant was always more dangerous than a dead one. That the young man seemed to have no use for his spear's point disturbed me. To my eyes, the shin-te carried their denial of the killing stroke to unfortunate extremes.
   Surely these contests were being staged to test his ability to master living opponents? If they had some other purpose, I could not fathom it.
   Already the warrior had retrieved his weapon. Now he held it by its balance in one hand, bracing it along his arm so that it extended his reach. With his free hand, he warded away the young man's staff. To my eye, this method of attack seemed awkward, but the warrior employed it smoothly. Feinting forward, he flicked his fingers at the young man's eyes. In the same motion, he kicked rapidly to draw the staff downward, then jabbed with his spear.
   The young shin-te countered, retreating. A line of blood appeared on his cheek before he knocked the spear aside and spun out of reach. The staff blurred with speed in his hands. Undaunted, his assailant advanced. An abrupt slap of the spear broke the staff's whirl. Precise as a serpent, rigid ringers struck at the young man's throat. I felt rather than saw the spear follow the blow.
   The young man saved himself by dropping his staff. Simultaneously, he blocked the spear with one palm, the blow with the other. An instant later—so swiftly that he astonished me—he collapsed one arm and struck inward with his elbow, catching his opponent at the temple hard enough to splinter bone.
   The warrior flipped away to diminish the force of the impact.
The shin-te pursued without hesitation. But the

warrior landed strongly—and in his hands he now held both weapons, their points braced for bloodshed. Again the young man was forced to retreat.
   I hardly saw the warrior settle both spears into his awkward-seeming grasp. The young man commanded my attention. His poise betrayed no uncertainty, and the cut on his cheek was small—dangerous only if the spearpoint had been poisoned. Still he alarmed me. Although he fought well, his eyes held a flinch of defeat. Repeated death had eaten its way into his heart. When his opponent attacked again, weaving both spears in a pattern intricate with harm, he could find no opening through which to repay the assault.
   "Asper," Isla breathed suddenly, "he needs a champion."
   I ignored her. I could not look away from the shin-te master's grief.
   "The mage," she insisted. "He needs a champion. That's what he's testing us for. He's trying to find someone good enough to fight for him."
   Without thinking, I murmured, "That is an assumption."
   A rent appeared in the young man's robe, showing blood on his skin. He countered at the warrior's knees, but failed to penetrate the weaving of the spearpoints.
   "I'm sure of it." In her excitement, she turned her back on the scene before us in order to confront me. "Forget your nahia rigor for a moment. Listen to me.
   "Why else does a mage do this?" She gestured at the young man's battle. "A mage so beleaguered he has no power to spare? If he were not already embattled for his life, he would have no need to treat us this way. What does he gain?"
   I found myself looking at her rather than at the contest. She had thought of something which had
   
eluded me. Her assumption exposed my own. Without realizing it, I had simply believed that the motives of mages surpassed our capacity to explain them— that no guess of ours could hope to approach the truth. But we had been given a hint when the mage spoke. And she had made better use of it than I.
   "Why doesn't he return us to our lives?" she continued. "Or simply kill us? Or let us remember? Because he can't spare the power. These trials are all he can manage.
   "He needs someone," she stated as if she were certain, "to fight for him."
   Behind her, the shin-te went to the floor in a flurry of spear strokes. I thought him finished, but he recovered. Scissoring his legs, he flung out kicks which cost him a jab to one thigh, but which succeeded at breaking apart the warrior's attack. For an instant, he appeared to spin on his back among the spears. Then he arched to his feet, facing his opponent.
   Now he held one of the spears. I had not seen him acquire it, could hardly imagine how he might have wrested it from the warrior's grasp. Nevertheless he had restored a measure of equality to the struggle.
   Although his leg had been wounded, his stance remained sure. His air of strength was an illusion, however. His new weakness revealed itself in diminished quickness, diminished focus. Pain and damage disturbed the concentration of his qa.
   And still he used the spear as a staff—a defensive weapon. While his opponent sought to kill him, he appeared to desire only the warrior's defeat.
   He had said that there is no killing stroke, but he was wrong. And I believed that he knew it, although he might not have been able to name the truth. The anguish in his eyes did not arise from his wounds. Mere hurt could not exceed him.
   
   I knew to my cost that the killing stroke was despair.
   For a moment, I had the sensation that my mind had closed itself, shutting out thought. I felt only panic. Who else but Argoyne might require a champion in the midst of the Mage War? Black Argoyne, Archemage of the Dark Lords? All others like him were dead. And everyone in Vess—everyone in all Vesselege—knew that the White Lords were winning. They had no need of a champion.
   Isla had not yet pushed her assumption to that conclusion. When she did, what would she say? Impelled by the scruples of the mashu-te, would she insist that we must pray for the young man's failure, so that Argoyne would receive no aid from us?
   I was nahia to the bone. The violation of such a sacrifice would burst my qa entirely, leaving me empty and lost.
   While she returned her gaze to the contest, the warrior again changed his tactics. Now he held his spear by its butt with both hands, whirling it about his head as though it were a bolus. To my eye, this seemed an implausible assault. Surely it left him exposed to counterattack? Yet apparently it did not. The young shin-te found no way past the wheeling spearpoint.
   At first this baffled me. And the more closely I studied him, the more confused I became. Why did he not strike now—or there? But then, despite my panic, I glimpsed the truth. The warrior varied his stance, distance, and pace in ways which exactly mirrored the young man's qa. Every shift of the young man's energy or intention was reflected by the whirling spear. He could not counter because the warrior's weapon matched each movement.
   The truth was that I had concentrated my attention on the wrong combatant. Thinking that I must under-

stand the young man's skills and limitations and mistakes in order to aid him, I had missed the real point of Isla's assumption. His mastery was not at issue. Rather, he needed to grasp the nature of his opponent.
   If it was true that Argoyne required a champion, then it must also be true that the warrior we watched had been mage-made to mimic an opposing champion. The champion of the White Lords, and of Goris Miniter, Vesselege's King.
   "Where—?" I tried to ask Isla. But my voice stuck in my throat. I swallowed, breathing deeply to clear my qa. "Where," I began again, "have you seen a spear used in that way before?"
   I feared her reply almost as much as I feared her scruples.
   However, she answered softly, "I haven't." Then she added, "The mashu-te distrust weapons. I know less than you."
   Indeed. No doubt the mashu-te believed that any weapon diminished the personal responsibility of its wielder. In contrast, the nahia studied weapons without number. But ours was the Art of Circumvention. We studied all weapons—apart from the fang—in order to counter or defeat them. We did not wish to become dependent upon them. And I had never encountered tactics such as the warrior used.
   "Do the ro-uke fight so?" I pursued, although I did not expect a response. I was merely thinking aloud.
"If they do," she muttered, "they do it in secret."
   I understood more than she said. The ro-uke did nothing publicly. In Vess, however, I had watched such masters at work. Once or twice I had measured myself against them, when one escapade or another had brought us into conflict. Theirs was not an art of direct confrontation.
In addition, the tactics this warrior now used were

ill suited to the stealthy work of assassination. They demanded great skill, but lacked both quickness and subtlety.
   Still they were effective against the young man. I knew how I would attack in his place. Thrown at the warrior's foot, my fang might serve me well. And I could guess at Isla's counter. Direct in all things, she would attempt to catch the spearpoint—or break the shaft. But I could not imagine how the shin-te would meet such a challenge.
   Service to qa in all things. He may have been handicapped by the strengths of his art.
   Abruptly I received my answer. Amid a flurry of feints and deflections, the young man struck.
   All the Fatal Arts made a study of qa, and I was a master—yet I saw no hint of his intent, no concentration of purpose or projection of energy, until he had carried it out. A blow like his would have felled me where I stood.
   Whirling his staff, he swung it against his opponent's spear a span or two below the point. I felt the crack of impact before I truly saw what he had done.
   Apparently, however, this was the opening which the warrior sought. Using the young man's force to accelerate his own motion, he reversed the spear in his hands so that its butt punched down onto the shin-te's crown. Less than an instant later, his foot hooked the young man's ankle, jerking away his support.
Stunned, the shin-te dropped to his back.
   Before his spine touched stone, his opponent had reversed the spear again. Both Isla and I winced as the point drove deep into the young master's chest.
   Our only hope was dead before his limbs had settled themselves to the floor.
   
"I'm not sure that was a good idea," she observed when she had composed herself. "What do we gain by watching him die? I don't think any master can beat that—that whatever it is—that creature."
Certainly she and I had both failed often enough.
   Pacing the cell, she continued bitterly, "It's inhuman. None of us can defeat magery. That's not what the Fatal Arts are for.
   "If our captor wants a champion to fight an enemy like that," she avowed, "let him create one."
   "Again you make assumptions," I sighed. "Your conclusion does not follow from your observation."
   I had no wish to argue with her. More than that, I actively wished to avoid speaking of my own assumptions. I did not know how I might counter her reaction to Argoyne's name. But the young man's death had restored my knowledge of despair. I contradicted Isla simply so that I would not succumb.
   "That our captor uses an inhuman test," I explained, "does not necessarily imply that he intends his champion to fight an inhuman opponent. It suggests only that he cannot persuade or coerce an appropriate master to serve him." If he could have done so, he would have had no use for us, and our lives would have been left undisturbed. "Lacking any man or woman who fights as the opposing champion does, he is unable to test us fairly. This is the best he can do. With the power at his disposal."
A power which was itself being tested to its limits.
   "Are you defending him now?" she protested. But her objection was not seriously meant. "Who is he, anyway?" she asked more plaintively. "Who in all the White Hells needs a champion at a time like this?"
   I spread my hands. "Does it matter? If our captor cannot obtain a fit champion—and if his champion does not win—we will die. Nothing else has significance."
   

   She snorted. "Of course it matters." Apparently she felt a mashu-te contempt for the ambiguities of the nahia. "All this must have something to do with the Mage War. Why else does a mage need a champion? Are you saying that you see no difference between the White Lords and the Dark?"
   In Vesselege it was believed that the White Lords were the servants of light and life, while such men as Black Argoyne devoted themselves to havoc and cold murder. For that reason—it was believed—Goris Miniter had allied his reign and his kingdom against the Dark Lords, and the Archemage.
   I shared such assumptions. If I distrusted them, I did so on principle, not from conviction.
   "That is not how you reasoned with the shin-te," I countered wearily. "Then you claimed that only the blows mattered, not the context." More than my companion, I had been broken by my defeats. "Who we are asked to serve will mean nothing to us if we are dead."
   I prayed that this thin argument would suffice. I lacked a better one—except that I was nahia, and my loyalties did not much resemble the abstract purity of the mashu-te.
   Fortunately, Isla was silenced while she considered the contradictions of her beliefs.
Once again, he returned from death to the cell, remembering nothing. The sight of him wrung my heart, for his sake as well as my own. The bereavement in his eyes had deepened until it seemed to swallow hope. For the second time, he staggered as he appeared. And he was slow to recover, as though he were unsure where his balance lay.
Still his thoughts followed their familiar path. When

he could summon his voice from his parched throat, he asked, as he had always asked, "Where am I?"
   Neither Isla nor I attempted a reply. Instead we stared in dismay at the blood which drained from his lips with each word, dripping from his chin to spatter his robe with failure.
   Then he was gone. We observed his departure no more clearly than we had witnessed his arrival. We only knew that he had been given back to us—and taken away again.
"By the Seven—!" Isla cried. "Asper, what's happened to him?"
   The young man's blood might have been my own. I had grown tired of speculation. I did not like where it led me. But I did not need to assume much in order to answer.
   "Our mage grows weak." According to the stories told in Vess, Argoyne had fought alone against the assembled might of the White Lords for the better part of a year. "He could not spare the power which allowed us to witness the contest. For that reason, the shin-te was inadequately restored from death."
   She accepted this explanation. "Who is he?" she asked again. "Asper, I do not know what to wish for." She was close to despair herself. " I want to live. I want to repay what this mage has done to us. He has taught me hate, and that I will not forgive. But I cannot desire victory for such as the Black Archemage.
"I need to know who it is that requires a champion."
   Behind the grime on her face, her anguish was plain. Until then, I had not fully appreciated how costly the scruples of the mashu-te might be. During my own trial, she had saved my spirit. Now she threatened to crush it within me.
   
   "Isla," I replied as gently as I could, "I am nahia. We have taken no part in this war because it surpasses us." Tales were told of mashu-te who fought for Goris Miniter, and of ro-uke, but never of nahia. "Who are we to stake our allegiance"—our honor—"on a struggle we cannot understand?" Honor was a word which my masters did not use lightly. "I want to live. And I want to repay this mage. Other concerns do not trouble me."
Mine was the Art of Circumvention.
   I expected more mashu-te contempt, but Isla surprised me. She regarded me, not with scorn, but with wonder and pity. "You're avoiding the truth," she breathed. "You know who he is. And you don't want to name him."
Her qa confronted me as though she readied a blow.
   "You believe he's Argoyne," she said softly. "And you're willing to help him. You believe we'll die here if we don't help him defeat the White Lords, and you're willing to do it."
   I would have preferred being struck. Stung by despair, I cried, "Because it does not matter!" Against her scruples and her purity, I protested, " J matter. To me. You matter to me. The shin-te matters to me. But this war of mages and kings—" I could not explain myself to one who was not nahia. "It requires too many assumptions."
   Her reply might have finished me. Before she could utter it, however, we became aware that the young man had returned.
The blood was gone from his lips. He appeared stronger—perhaps better rested. This time more magery had been spent on his restoration. But it did not soften

his loss and bafflement. Mere power could not heal the aggrievement of his young heart.
"Where am I?"
Mere power could not make him other than he was.
"Who are you?"
   This could not go on. If Argoyne was scarcely able to heal those he tested, his crisis must not be far off. And despair was not cowardice. Although I feared Isla in several ways, I did not allow her to daunt me.
Only memory would be of any use to him.
   Instead of answering the young man, I faced Isla squarely.
   "Stop me now," I told her. I was certain that she could do so. " If you mean to abandon your life"—and your hate—"for the sake of guesses, do so now. Or stand aside, and let me do what I can."
   The young man appeared to think I meant to attack him. His stance shifted subtly, focusing his abused qa.
   She glared at me from the depths of her begrimed face. The mashu-te placed great value on achieving their ends through sacrifice—in this case, obtaining Argoyne's defeat at the cost of her life. But to sacrifice my life, and the young man's, for the sake of her purpose troubled her. And if she played only a passive part in the Archemage's death, her hate would not be appeased.
   Deliberately she withdrew. From the distance of a few paces, she fixed a gaze hungry with anger on the shin-te.
   In haste, I turned to the young man. I could not know when Argoyne's crisis would overtake him.
   Recognizing his apprehension, however, I paused to bow. I wished him to see that I meant no challenge— that I regarded him as a respected comrade, not as an opponent.
   
   As he bowed in reply, he softened his stance somewhat. But he did not set aside his readiness.
   "Young master," I began, "you have been imprisoned by a mage. As have we. He has deprived you of your memory. For that reason, you cannot recollect your circumstances, or your name. You do not remember us. But we remember you. We are your allies."
   I could not imagine why he should believe me. In his place, I would not have done so. Certainly I had mistrusted Isla long enough—until death and isolation had forced me to set aside suspicion. Nevertheless I spoke with all the conviction I had learned from my plight.
   "Our captor," I continued, "is Argoyne the Black. The Dark Archemage. Somewhere beyond this place, the Mage War rages, and he intends you to play a part in it, if you are able."
   I studied the shin-te for a reaction, but he betrayed none. His expression revealed only courtesy and grief, nothing more. Lacking memory, he could attach no significance to Argoyne's name. Doubtless the Mage War itself meant nothing to him.
Perhaps that simplified my task. I could not tell.
   Stifling a sigh, I informed him, "The Archemage desires a champion. By some means which we do not understand and cannot fathom, this war has become a matter of single combat. Both Isla and I have been tested to serve as Argoyne's champion, but we failed. You are all that remains of hope for the mage—and for us.
   "You have not failed," I insisted, fearing that Isla would contradict me, although she made no move to speak. "You have met certain setbacks." This was difficult to explain. "They account for your weariness and confusion. The magery which restores you exacts
   As he bowed in reply, he softened his stance somewhat. But he did not set aside his readiness.
   "Young master," I began, "you have been imprisoned by a mage. As have we. He has deprived you of your memory. For that reason, you cannot recollect your circumstances, or your name. You do not remember us. But we remember you. We are your allies."
   I could not imagine why he should believe me. In his place, I would not have done so. Certainly I had mistrusted Isla long enough—until death and isolation had forced me to set aside suspicion. Nevertheless I spoke with all the conviction I had learned from my plight.
   "Our captor," I continued, "is Argoyne the Black. The Dark Archemage. Somewhere beyond this place, the Mage War rages, and he intends you to play a part in it, if you are able."
   I studied the shin-te for a reaction, but he betrayed none. His expression revealed only courtesy and grief, nothing more. Lacking memory, he could attach no significance to Argoyne's name. Doubtless the Mage War itself meant nothing to him.
Perhaps that simplified my task. I could not tell.
   Stifling a sigh, I informed him, "The Archemage desires a champion. By some means which we do not understand and cannot fathom, this war has become a matter of single combat. Both Isla and I have been tested to serve as Argoyne's champion, but we failed. You are all that remains of hope for the mage—and for usr
   "You have not failed," I insisted, fearing that Isla would contradict me, although she made no move to speak. "You have met certain setbacks." This was difficult to explain. "They account for your weariness and confusion. The magery which restores you exacts
   
a toll. But you have not failed. The shin-te teach that you must give 'service to qa in all things,' and you have done so."
   The young man received this assurance as he had all I said—sadly, without acknowledgment. Though he had no memory of the experience, he appeared to understand in his bones and sinews—in his qa—that he had indeed failed.
   Breathing deeply to quell my alarm, I pursued my purpose. "However," I announced, "you have not grasped the nature of the champion who opposes you. The champion you are asked to defeat. And your ignorance has caused your setbacks."
   At last I saw a hint of interest in the shin-te's eyes. He found it easy to credit that he was ignorant—and that ignorance was fatal.
   I summoned my qa. "The challenge before you is the true test," I told him, "simple and pure. The shin-te believe that 'there is no killing stroke.' You will face a master of the nerishi-qa. The Art of the Killing Stroke."
   There I stopped. I saw in the sudden flaring of the young man's eyes that he knew more of the nerishi-qa than I.
   Isla could not silence her surprise. Advancing, she demanded, "Nerishi-qa, Asper? How do you know?" At once she added, "How long have you known? Why haven't you said anything?"
   "I do not know," I replied without disguising my vexation. "I am making an assumption." An exercise I did not enjoy. To the young man, I said, "We were permitted to watch the contest from which you have just returned. In it, you were slain. And restored by magery. At the cost of your memory. Your opponent fought in ways unfamiliar to me. I am nahia. Isla is
   
mashu-te. I have seen the ro-uke. And you are shin-te. Your opponent's skills belong to none of these. Therefore he is nerishi-qa."
   From the first, the shin-te had met death with sorrow, remembering nothing except his loss. Now, however, there was another light in his gaze. Strictures shaped the corners of his eyes, the lines of his mouth. A sensation of anger emanated from him.
   "The nerishi-qa," he pronounced softly, "teach a false Art."
Isla rounded on him. "How so?"
   "Legend teaches," I put in, "that nerishi-qa is the first and most potent of the Fatal Arts. All others derive from it."
   The young man shook his head. There was no doubt in him. "It is false.
   "You have called it 'the Art of the Killing Stroke,' yet there is no killing stroke." The strength of his conviction shone from him. "The nerishi-qa claim for themselves the power and the right to determine death. But he who determines death also determines life, and that they cannot do. Life belongs to the one who holds it. It cannot be taken away. Therefore no killing stroke exists. There is only choice."
   In my urgency, I had no patience for such mystical vapor. And Isla felt as I did, apparently. Nearly together, we objected, "We saw you die."
   Direct as a fist, she added, "That champion nailed you to the floor with a spear."
"Did you choose that?" I demanded.
Uncomfortably, he answered, "I do not remember."
   A moment later, however, he shouldered the burden of his beliefs. "Yes. I did."
   Then his earlier sorrow returned to his gaze—a bereavement shaded by shame. "You say that I was ignorant. I did not know him for nerishi-qa."
   
   I accepted his assumption. I feared to weaken him with doubt. But Isla did not.
   "Or you knew," she countered, "and that's why you chose to die. You knew you couldn't defeat him." Mashu-te to the core, she accepted the risk of what was in her heart. "You surrendered to despair."
Anxiously I watched the young man for his response.
   "I do not remember," he repeated. "Perhaps I did." The flinch had returned to his eyes, although he did not look away. "If so, I do not deserve to be named among the shin-te."
   Seeking to help him if I could, I asked, "Are you acquainted with the nerishi-qa? Would you recognize that Art?"
   He considered for a moment, then shook his head. "There are scholars among the shin-te, preserving our knowledge of all the Arts. I have studied the texts. But they are old. And what is written conceals as well as reveals what it describes. I have never seen the nerishi-qa."
I sighed privately, keeping my relief to myself.
   Isla was plainer. "Then perhaps," she said, "we can still hope."
   "I do not know," he said as if admitting the true source of his sorrow. "Every year, my masters send one of us to carry a challenge to the nerishi-qa, so that we may test our skills—and our beliefs. But the messengers are always spurned. The nerishi-qa disdain to measure themselves against us."
   I was sure that Isla retained her wish for Argoyne's destruction. For the present, however, she had apparently accepted that life was better than death. There may have been a hint of the nahia in her nature. Rather than merely assuming that the Black Archemage would be ruined by the young man's defeat, she hoped to witness that ruin herself—and to participate in it
   
if she could. And for that purpose sacrifice would not serve.
As on previous occasions, the young shin-te needed rest. Both death and restoration had been arduous for him, as I remembered well. Despite my eagerness to know what he had read in the texts of his scholars— and my belief that Argoyne's crisis was near—I urged him to his pallet.
   He acquiesced readily enough. But he was not granted an opportunity for sleep. As he uncoiled his fatigue upon the pallet, a tremor shook the cell. In the distance, we heard a mutter of stone, as though the crags of Scarmin ground their teeth.
   "Earthquake," Isla suggested when the tremor had passed.
"Do you believe that? " I asked sourly. I did not.
   A second tremor followed the first, stronger and more prolonged. In its aftermath, dust sifted from the ceiling, filling the constant light with hints of peril. Again we heard from afar the rumor of crushed rock.
   We were on our feet, the three of us, instinctively keeping our distance from the walls—and watching the timbers above us, in case they should start to crack.
   For the second time, a voice spoke in the air. "Now," the mage said harshly. "It must be now."
   Then the young man was gone. Neither Isla nor I saw his departure.
She reacted while I stood motionless in consternation. In the wake of Argoyne's bodiless utterance, she protested, "He's exhausted! He hasn't rested!" Furiously, she cried, "By the White Lords, do you want him to fail?"

There was no answer. Instead a third tremor jolted us. It struck the cell harder than the first two combined, endured longer. I staggered, despite my training, and Isla fought for balance. Above us, timbers shrieked against each other. A disturbing unsteadiness afflicted the lamps.
   Argoyne's peril was more desperate than I had imagined. He had expended too much of his power testing us—and lost too much time.
   When the convulsion eased, I saw that its force had stricken a crack up one wall from floor to ceiling beside the door.
The door—
   Isla did not see it. The straining timbers consumed her attention. "Asper!" she shouted. "The keep is falling! We'll be crushed!"
   The door. At last. Argoyne's magery had failed him. Or he no longer needed it. Or our imprisonment served no further purpose in his designs.
   "I think not." Between one heartbeat and the next, my dismay vanished. Some sleight of circumstance transferred it to her, and I was freed. "These quakes will cease as soon as Argoyne announces his champion."
   I had already turned my fang to the challenge of the door.
   Now she noticed it. "Asper—" she gasped. "What's happening? How did this—?"
   "Compose yourself," I snapped, "and let me work." Her questions, and my own, would answer themselves soon enough.
   I was nahia, a master of Circumvention. No mere door could hold me if I bent my will to escape. But could I bypass this obstacle quickly? That was another matter altogether. The more strictly the door had been secured, the more time and skill would be needed to open it.
   
   I did not care why Black Argoyne's concealment of the door had failed. Rather, I wished to know how much trust he had placed in that concealment.
   "This changes everything, Asper," Isla insisted at my back. "The White Lords must have beaten him. He can't protect his keep. Why don't they press their advantage? Why risk this war on a champion when they can tear his power stone from stone?"
   "Am I a mage?" I snarled without interrupting my efforts. I had no patience for her. "Do I understand these things?"
   I understood bolts and locks, staples and bindings. Estimating the actions of mages required too many assumptions. Words were also a form of circumvention, however, and they could cut as well as any blade.
   "Perhaps," I continued while I tested the door, "the effect of their attacks is hidden from the White Lords. Or perhaps the Archemage has other uses for his power. The truth—"
   Abruptly I sighed. It appeared that Argoyne relied more upon magery than upon physical restriction. My fang found the doorbolt and turned it so that its hasp left the staple. Carefully I began to slip the bolt aside.
   "The truth," I repeated as I pulled the door open, "will be revealed when we find him."
   Between her teeth, Isla remarked, "Asper, you amaze me." But she did not pause to admire my handiwork. "Come on," she commanded at once. Ahead of me, she hastened from the cell. "I have a debt to repay."
   I followed without hesitation. I, too, had a debt to repay—although it did not much resemble hers.
   For the first time in uncounted days, we were free of imprisonment. Therefore we were also free of Argoyne's purposes, and could now choose our own way—or so she apparently believed.
I did not make that assumption.
We found him with relative ease. The corridors and chambers within the keep were simply arranged, one level above the next. On each, a large hall filled the center of the structure, surrounded by a wide passageway. Smaller rooms were arrayed between the corridor and the keep's walls. A broad stair climbed from floor to floor. We might have spent days at it if we had attempted to search the outer chambers, but by tacit agreement we concentrated on the central halls. I was content to believe that the Archemage would need space around him in order to wield his power. On each level, we opened massive doors to look inward, discovered nothing, and proceeded to the next stair.
   None of the passages we traveled resembled the one in which we had been tested.
   At another time, I would have been fascinated by the apparent absence of any servants, retainers, companions, or defenders. Argoyne the Black, it seemed, desired no human service—or had been abandoned by it. In addition, I would have been intensely interested in the possessions with which the outer rooms were filled, as well as in the uses to which the inner halls were put. Much of what I saw served no purpose I could recognize. Now, however, I was in too much haste for curiosity. Refusing investigation, I kept pace with Isla.
   Five levels above our cell, we came upon the Archemage.
   In a stone chamber lit by the keep's ceaseless lamps, he sat at a long trestle table scattered with scrolls and charts, his back to the door. More scrolls curled outward from the stool on which he perched, in reach of ready reference. And still more, texts by the hundreds, were piled upon row after row of shelves propped
   
against all the walls—scrolls in profusion, of every description, some plainly ancient, others still gilt and gleaming. Together they held more knowledge than I had ever seen, or indeed imagined, in one place.
   At the sight, I experienced an eerie pang. Where the mashu-te valued purity and scruples, the nahia prized knowledge. Granted the opportunity, my masters would have cheerfully slaughtered a kingdom to obtain so much treasure.
   Isla, in contrast, would have cheerfully fired the room to rid Vesselege of Black Argoyne.
   Even here, our captor was alone—a small figure immersed in his robes, hunching over his scrolls as though he fed from them. Whatever his needs may have been, for food or drink, for companionship or service, he supplied them by magery. The White Lords and Goris Miniter had made him a pariah to be feared and shunned.
   From the back, a nimbus of white hair as fine as silk concealed the edges of his face. And he did not turn toward us. Indeed, he seemed unaware of our arrival. Sacrificing stealth for haste, we had not opened the door quietly, but other concerns held his attention.
As they would have held mine, in his place—
"Asper—" Isla breathed softly.
I ignored her.
   Before the Archemage hung an image like the one in which Isla and I had watched the young man's last test. This was far larger, however, filling one end of the hall. And the scene arrayed within it lay at some considerable distance, that was obvious. Argoyne's stone walls—his keep among the peaks of Scarmin— contained no sunlit meadows, rich with wildflowers and grasses, like the one I saw beyond the table.
   I knew at once that I gazed upon the ground appointed for the contest of champions. For the blood of
   
the young shin-te—or of his opponent. For the resolution of the Mage War.
   From the foreground of the image, the young man emerged, striding slowly away from us as if he strolled the meadow at his leisure. At first he was alone among the flowers under a sky defined by plumes and wisps of cloud. Before he had taken ten paces, however, a row of horsemen appeared along the far horizon. Dark with distance, and silent as dreams, they galloped swiftly forward, converging on the shin-te as they rode—an ominous throng, fifty or more, most of them soldiers and warriors. Soon I distinguished Goris Miniter by his helm and bearing, and by the crest of Vesselege on his velvet cape. The men on either side of him, clad in flowing robes so pure that they appeared to flame with reflected sunlight, must have represented the White Lords.
   Neither Isla nor I advanced. The sight of the young man, isolated among the blooms, facing a force great enough to overwhelm any champion, kept us motionless.
   At last the riders drew near enough to encircle him. By some trick of magery, however, they did not obscure our view of him. From horseback, Goris Miniter appeared to address the shin-te, but his words made no more sound than the mute hooves and tack of the horses, the silent commands of the soldiers. If the young man answered, we could not hear it. In the image they were all as voiceless as the dead.
   Abruptly Argoyne searched among his scrolls, opened another on the table, and set his hand upon it. At once the scene seemed to gain depth as the meadow unveiled its sounds to the hall. A breeze we could not feel soughed gently. Horses stamped their hooves, jangled their reins. Men coughed and caught their breath.


"Goris Miniter," Argoyne muttered, "King of Ves-selege, I'm here." By magery his voice carried into the distance until it appeared to resound in the air of the meadow, echoing strangely.
   Startled, many of the horsemen searched for the source of the sound. One of the White Lords leaned aside to advise or instruct the King.
   Miniter raised his head. His features were plain before us—the iron will of his mouth, the lines of calculation around his eyes. In Vess he was known as a clever monarch, a man adept at ruling powers he did not possess and could not match.
   "Join us, Archemage," he commanded the breeze and the sky. "This war will be decided here. Your absence warns of treachery."
   "As does your presence, King of Vesselege," Argoyne answered. His tone was querulous and unsteady, the voice of an old man, wearied by his struggles and bitter about death. "I've agreed to this contest in terms that bind me. If my champion loses, my defenses fail with him. And if I attempt treachery to help him, my own powers will destroy me.
   "Your White Lords are similarly bound. But you are not. You're only an ally here, not a mage. Not a participant.
   "I'll stay where I am," the Archemage concluded, "in case you're tempted to take matters into your own hands."
   Goris Miniter scowled at this response, but did not protest. Instead he barked, "Then we will begin! The sooner your darkness is brought to an end, Black Argoyne, the sooner hope and healing will dawn at last in Vesselege."
   With one gloved fist, he made a gesture as if he meant to fling all his riders against the shin-te.
Only one horseman advanced, however. A warrior

nudged his mount a pace or two into the ring. Among so many other men, he had not caught my eye. But when he left his place in the circle I seemed to know him instantly by the completeness of his command over his horse, the liquid flow of his movements as he dismounted, the perfect readiness of his strides and his poise—and by the palpable force of his qa. The might compressed within his frame was as vivid as a shout.
"Asper," Isla breathed again. "It must be now."
   Still I ignored her. Argoyne could not remain deaf to our presence indefinitely. And when he noticed us, we would be lost. We had no hope against magery. Yet I could not break the spell cast on me by the sun-blazed robes of the White Lords, by Goris Miniter's grim attention—and by the plight of the young man who had fought and died, fought and died, without knowing why.
   The nerishi-qa was not a large man, perhaps no more than three fingers taller than the shin-te, and of somewhat greater bulk. Among my other apprehensions, this also troubled me. Where skill and qa were equal, any contest might be decided by weight of fist. Here was another disadvantage for a young man already hampered by fatigue and sorrow. In contrast, the nerishi-qa seemed arrogant and calm, certain of his strength.
   His masters had at last accepted the challenge of the shin-te. And the fate of a kingdom rested on the outcome.
   Respectfully, the young man bowed to his opponent. We could not see his face. Within myself, I prayed that the gaze he fixed on the nerishi-qa held anger rather than grief. When it did not sow confusion, anger bred force. Grief nurtured despair. And the harvest of despair was death.
   The champion of the White Lords did not bow. His smile held untrammeled disdain as he advanced.
   
   Despite this insult, the shin-te withheld attack. From the distance of the keep and the image, I saw no tension in his shoulders, his hips, his qa. Standing lightly, he waited in sunlight for the test of the killing stroke.
   When it came, Isla also struck. Seemingly borne aloft by his qa, the nerishi-qa focused both weight and muscle in a flying kick which might have snapped his opponent's spine—and Isla launched herself at the Archemage. While the shin-te slipped the kick aside, countering with elbow and palm, she slapped the crook of her arm around Argoyne's throat, clamped her forearm to the base of his skull. Holding him so, she could snap his neck with one quick lift of her shoulders.
   Instinctively he clutched at her arm. At once, she swept her leg over the table, wiping the clutter of scrolls beyond his reach.
"Isla—!" I protested.
In her turn, she ignored me.
   "Now," she murmured to his ear. "Now you're mine. I hold your death, mage. I'm going to repay my own."
   Carried past the shin-te by his kick, the nerishi-qa rolled in the air to deflect the swift force of the young man's elbow. Then, instead of landing heavily, he seemed to settle into the grass, his poise undisturbed. I could not hear him—the image had lost sound when Argoyne's hands left his scrolls—but he appeared to be laughing.
"Wait," I told Isla urgently. "Wait!"
   Hastening to the table, I confronted her past the Archemage. I feared and distrusted him as much as she did. Now that she had grasped his defeat, however, I found that I did not want him slain. Instead I wished to see the outcome of the young man's contest.
   
   I wished to believe that my own deaths had not been wasted.
And I wished to understand this war.
   Argoyne the Black had the look of a man who had spent his life among midnights and maggots. His beard was of the same fine white silk as his hair, but beneath it lay the slick, sunless complexion of a fish. And with Isla's arms wrapped about his neck, he gaped like a fish, eyes bulging, scarcely able to breathe. Hints of milk in his eyes obscured his vision.
   As she had said, she held his death in her arms. Yet he appeared undaunted. Gasping for breath, he demanded, "What do you think you'll gain by breaking my neck?"
   "Our lives," she retorted without hesitation. "Victory for your enemies."
"You won't enjoy it," he warned.
   "Won't I?" She tightened her grasp. "You don't know me very well."
   I could imagine no appeal which might reach her. Her face held nothing for me, no doubt and no softness. Her scruples lay elsewhere.
   I could have killed her there. My skills and my fang were apt for such an action. But my masters would have never forgiven me that dishonor. No nahia would have forgiven it.
   "And you," Black Argoyne panted in return, "don't understand the tyranny of the pure. You fool, I'm all that remains of hope for this land!"
   There I saw my opening. "Hear him, Isla," I urged quickly. "Let him speak. We know nothing of this war. If we will determine its outcome, we must know what we do."
   She looked at me. As if involuntarily, her grasp loosened, permitting the mage more air.
"Isn't he the Black Archemage," she challenged me

angrily, "devoted to darkness? Hasn't he rained down death on all Vesselege until Goris Miniter himself has been forced to side with the White Lords? How much more do you need to know?"
   In the image, the nerishi-qa attacked again. His tactics had changed. He no longer attempted to end the contest with one blow. Instead he advanced through a flurry of strikes and feints.
   As before, the shin-te countered, landing a blow of his own when he could, parrying when he could not. Despite the pressure of his opponent's assault, he moved easily, preserving his strength.
   In a sense, the battle had not yet become serious. Both champions still measured each other, probing not so much for victory as for an estimation of their skills and weaknesses.
   "You understand honor," Argoyne coughed. Hooking his fingers on Isla's forearm, he strained against her hold. He could not shift her grasp, but he gained space enough to speak more clearly. "Or you should. Every Fatal Art preaches it.
   "Why do you think all the White Lords and Goris Miniter have banded together against me? Do you call that honorable? Do you really believe I'm so malign— and so powerful—that they had no choice? I'm just one mage. One man. Would every mashu-te in Vesselege go to war against one nabiai Or even one nerishi-qa?
"This whole struggle," he spat, "is dishonorable."
   His assertion surprised me. I had not expected such an argument from a mage. Despite my experience of death, my enmity toward him wavered.
   For her part, however, Isla was unmoved. Sneering, she retorted, "And what do you have to do with 'honor,' Archemage?"
   "Little enough," he admitted. "Everything they say about me is true." His voice held an edge of
   
savagery—of rage prolonged and constricted beyond endurance. Battle after battle, death after death, he had nurtured his fury until it filled him. "I study darkness. The Seven Hells are my domain." He released one hand to indicate the ring of riders in the meadow. "They can't bring slaughtered warriors back to life. I can. And I have rained violence on Vesselege. But not until they forced me to it. Not until they formed their alliance against me.
   "Your White Lords—" In his mouth the words were a curse. "They don't just think I'm wrong. They think I should be crushed. Because my magery isn't like theirs. They want to destroy me because I look for power in places they fear. They want to destroy my knowledge. Not because of anything I did. Because of what I am. And what I know. Until they started this war, I'd committed no crime they could hold against me."
   That argument I felt as well, but Isla snorted contemptuously. "They aren't here to defend themselves. Why should I trust anything you tell me?"
   My attention was torn between Argoyne and the contest—between Isla's grim hostility and my own uncertain intent. Glancing aside, I saw that the nerishi-qa had begun to spin, flinging out kicks and blows as if from the heart of a whirlwind. His balance and the stability of his qa on the uneven ground of the meadow seemed unnatural to me, almost inhuman. I could not have done what he did. Even at this distance, I feared to encounter such a master.
   The young shin-te retreated steadily, dodging from side to side to foil the onslaught, occasionally diving beneath a kick to improve his position. If he discerned any opening in the assault—as I did not—he took no advantage of it.
   But the Archemage had not faltered. He pointed at the White Lords before us. "They believe they're in
   
the right," he answered. "In the right! As if being in the right has anything to do with knowledge. 'Right' and 'wrong' have to do with how knowledge is used, not with knowledge itself."
   Every word he uttered seemed to whet his fury. His tone was as sharp as my fang. I felt its edge against my heart, although Isla held him helpless. My masters might have spoken as he did.
   "I tell you on my soul," he rasped bitterly, "if there were fifty mages of my kind in the world, I would not have formed an alliance with them against the White Lords. I don't want the White Lords dead. I don't even want them hurt." He strained at Isla's grasp to express his ire. "But I will not stand by while my knowledge and my life are erased as if they never existed."
   She opened her mouth to voice an objection, but he overrode her. "That is not a claim your White Lords can make," he insisted. His vehemence seemed to flay at the air. "They do wish me dead. They wish my knowledge destroyed. Because they believe they're in the right.
   "Oh, they're as pure as sunlight," he raged, "and just as cruel. Do you think they care about Vesselege? You delude yourself. They could have ended this war whenever they chose." His voice rose to a shout against the pressure of her arm. "They could have stopped). But then I would have been able to keep my life and my power. All the land would have seen that I attacked no one except in my own defense. And that,'" he cried, "they can't tolerate because they are in the right."
   Then he subsided to bitterness. "They're so pure that they're prepared to see the whole kingdom laid waste to prove it. As if 'right' and 'wrong' have anything to do with war."
At the edge of my sight, I saw the shin-te fall under

a vicious wheel of blows. At once, kicks like adzes hacked at him among the grass and flowers. Several he blocked, but one caught him a glancing blow at the point of his hip. As he regained his feet, I saw a small twitch of pain on his cheek. His stance suggested a subtle weakness in that hip—a hurt that slowed and hindered him.
   My heart went out to him, alone among his enemies, but I could not help him there. The meadow might have been leagues or days distant. I could do nothing until I found my way through the maze of Ar-goyne's self-justification and Isla's hate.
   Troubled, she looked to me. Apparently she desired some response. She had not been swayed—not as I had—but the Archemage had touched a nerve of uncertainty in her, which she did not know how to relieve.
   I took hope from her glance. "Heed him," I urged her softly. "Would the mashu-te be enriched if there were no nahia? If every master of the shin-te were slain? If the nerishi-qa ceased to exist? Light must have darkness, Isla. Without contention, the Fatal Arts would have no purpose. Therefore the shin-te teach 'acceptance of that which opposes us.' "
   When I saw my words strike home in her, I turned toward the mage. Deliberately I toyed with my fang so that he could see it in my hands and know that I, too, might choose to kill him. Studying the blade, I asked, "What is Goris Miniter's place in this?"
   Black Argoyne coughed an obscenity. "The tyranny of the pure is easily manipulated. Miniter knows he'll never truly rule this land if he can't rule the mages. And he doesn't have the power to do that directly. Not without drowning Vesselege in blood. When he was done, he wouldn't have anyone left to rule. So he's playing on the purity of the White Lords. Using it to make
   
them do what he wants. They think he serves them because he knows they're in the right. The truth is, they serve him because he knows how to lie."
Isla tightened her hold. "And you don't?"
   He groaned his distress and exasperation. "Of course I know how. But I'm too tired to bother. / don't want to rule anybody. Right now the only thing I want is to keep myself and my knowledge alive."
   When she eased her pressure, he added, "I'll tell you how you can recognize the truth. If my champion wins"—again he indicated the image before us—"if that poor young man finds some way to defeat the enemy of everything he believes— Those self-righteous fanatics won't stand for it. They'll intervene. They'll strike him down themselves. They'll accept their own ruin to prevent me from surviving."
   Darkly, he muttered, "And I still expect treachery from Goris Miniter."
   Isla seemed to think that she had found the flaw in his self-justification. As if she were pouncing, she demanded, " 'Accept their own ruin'? What good will it do them to strike the shin-te, if they're destroyed in the process?"
   "Oh, 'destroyed.' " Argoyne made a dismissive gesture. "They won't be destroyed. Fewer than half of them took part in the oath of this contest—the oath which seals them to its outcome. The ones who swore will die. The rest said they would abide the result, but that's only because they think their champion can't lose. If he does, the War will go on as before. They'll say I betrayed the challenge. As long as Miniter stands by them, no one will question their story."
   To my surprise, I found that I believed him. I was nahia, disinclined by nature and training to trust men and women who predicted the actions of others. But
   

Isla had taught me that those who prized their own scruples did not think as I did.
   Belief tempted her as well. That was made plain by the doubt which darkened her gaze, the way her teeth gnawed the inside of her cheek. Where the nahia studied habits of mind, the mashu-te served convictions. Was she not prepared to sacrifice her life to gain Ar-goyne's defeat? Then would the White Lords not do the same? If they were certain of their own purity, as the Archemage insisted?
   However, her uncertainty led her to questions which I would not have considered important.
   "So that young shin-te is your only hope," she snarled in his ear. "If you're telling the truth. You can't betray the oath of this contest, and you won't try, even though you assume your enemies will attempt treachery." Word by word, she tightened her arm on his neck until he again began to gape for air. "So tell me why you've done everything you can to weaken him. Explain why you're trying to make sure he loses."
   His eyes bulged wildly. "That's madness," he gasped. "I've done no such—"
   She clenched his throat. "You took his memory! You prevented any of us from learning anything from all those tests!"
"Isla," I put in sharply, "let him breathe."
   The glare she turned toward me had the force of a kick. Still she eased her arms again, granting the Archemage air.
   "Do you think it's easy," he panted quickly, "bringing people back from death?" With both hands he pulled against her grasp. "Do you think all I have to do is wave my arms and wish? You don't know what you're asking.
   
   "If you reanimate a corpse, what you get is a walking corpse. A body without a mind. But restoring the mind— Ah, that's hard. Dreams, memory, reason, layer by layer, you have to bring it all back, or the corpse isn't fully alive. And hardest of all to bring back is the spirit, the"—he muttered a curse—"you don't have words for it. It's qa, but it isn't—not the way you think about it." Squirming against Isla's insistence, he tried to explain. "It's the resilience and hunger that makes people want to go on living in the face of death. When you reanimate a corpse, if you restore the memory of death, and don't restore the spirit that refuses to accept it, what you get is a madman.
   "I've been fighting a war here." Sorrow mounted in his tone as he spoke. His plight might have been the same as the young shin-te master's. "The whole time while I tested you, I've been fighting for my life. And I've been losing. When I brought you back from death, all of you, I didn't have the time or the power to do everything. So I chose to keep you sane. Instead of making you whole. You're all useless as warriors without qa. So I held back memory instead."
   I could see—as Argoyne could not—that he baffled her. Her anger could not accommodate his account of himself. Frightened by uncertainty, she demanded, "Then why did you restore our memories when you were done with us? Why did you bother?"
   "I hoped," he admitted, "that if you were whole you might find some way to help me. But even if you didn't—even if you hated me too much to try—" He sighed, sagging within his robes. "I couldn't bear to leave you that way. You didn't ask to serve me. And nobody deserves to be crippled like that. To be alive without memory or spirit—" He shrugged weakly. "You'd be better off dead."
At another time, I might have contested this asser-

tion. Whole or crippled, I did not wish for death. I knew it too well, and the knowledge had done me great hurt. For the present, however, I left Argoyne's belief unchallenged. Where Isla suffered confusion, I felt only urgency. I did not know how long the young man could endure his opponent's assault—or how long Goris Miniter would abide the uncertainty of his own fate.
   Hampered by the pain in his hip, the shin-te was forced to counterattack. He could no longer afford to await openings which he would then ignore. If he failed to drive the nerishi-qa back, he was finished.
   His weakened stance gave rise to an awkwardness which began to impede his blocks and parries. Blows which he had once deflected with ease now threatened him. His hands seemed to stagger as he warded strike after strike away. Lessened in grace and speed, he appeared helpless to save himself when his ribs were left exposed to a slashing kick. Only the concentration of his qa betrayed his intent.
   As the kick arrived like the sweep of a mace, he flipped his legs from under him and dived backward below it. The strength of the blow and the momentum of his own fall he used to spear the fingers of one hand into the pit of his opponent's groin. At the same time, he swept his other arm around the nerishi-qa's leg and rolled so that he bore it beneath him to the grass.
   Before the White Lords' champion could wrench free, or scissor another kick, the shin-te cut with his elbow deep into the nerves at the back of the nerishi-qa's thigh.
   When the nerishi-qa regained his feet, his jaws were clenched on a pain to match the shin-te's, and his own stance hinted at weakness. A new respect disturbed the arrogance of his gaze.
The time had come. Deliberately I made my choice.

   "If Goris Miniter means treachery," I asked the Archemage, "what form will it take? "
   Argoyne shrugged. The question did not appear to interest him.
   I indicated the image before us. "Are you able to show other scenes? Can you spare the power?"
"As long as my champion is still alive."
   Containing my exasperation, I pursued, "Can you reveal our surroundings?" At once, however, a more useful question occurred to me. "Can you detect movement within the keep?"
   The mage snorted. "There isn't any. We're alone." His tone suggested that he had been deserted long ago.
   "What's the point, Asper?" Isla did not look at me. Disturbed by Argoyne's answers, she kept her gaze on the young shin-te while she wrestled with her hate. "The contest is there, not here."
   "But if the King means treachery," I retorted, "it will be done here." With every passing moment, my urgency grew. "He cannot interfere with the White Lords' champion.
"Can you do it?" I demanded of the Archemage.
   He lifted his hands to show that he was helpless without his scrolls.
   "Isla," I instructed the woman who had saved me from despair, "release him."
   She turned to me hotly. "Have you lost your mind? As soon as you let him touch his scrolls, he'll put us back in that cell." She secured her grip. "He'll turn us to dust. We'll be dead before you can blink."
"No," Argoyne and I said together.
   "Do you 'assume,' " she shouted, "that you can trust him?"
   "No!" I yelled in return. "I assume that the man who troubled to make us whole again after we had failed him has no interest in our deaths!"
   

   She faltered. The simplicity of her loathing for the Archemage did not sustain her. He had challenged too many of her beliefs—as I had as well. "Treachery" was not a threat which the mashu-te suffered lightly.
"Asper—" she breathed, warning me.
   With an effort of will, she removed her arms from Argoyne's neck.
   Instantly his hands plunged among his scrolls, scrambling for the one he sought. When he found it, he slapped it open before him. "Movement?" he croaked as if she had damaged his throat. "Movement?"
   Without transition, a new scene—smaller, and apparently more distant—appeared beside the meadow and the contest. The image showed a stone passage, featureless apart from the mage's eternal lamps and the doors on either hand, and entirely empty.
   Empty except for the brief flutter of a black robe at the corner of the corridor.
   "By the Seven Hells," Argoyne muttered, "you're right. Conniving bastard!" He meant the King of Ves-selege. "They're already inside. I can feel"—he paused momentarily, then announced—"six of them."
   From his scroll and his power, he produced other scenes, all of passages within the keep, all empty—and all defined by glimpses of stealth.
   Somehow the intruders eluded more direct observation.
Ro-uke.
   I did not hesitate. I had made my choice. As I left the table, running, I called to Isla, "Guard the door! We must have one of them alive!"
   "Alive?" She did not appear to understand me. "Alive?"
"We must have evidence!"
   If the nerishi-qa did not study honor as well as killing, I did not know how to combat them. I had
   
seen the young shin-te slain once. I did not expect him to triumph now.
   From the doorway I flung myself into the outer corridor.
Six of them— If they were allowed to reach Argoyne's chamber, they might slay him, regardless of his defenses. Theirs was the Art of Assassination. And their weapons were many.
   An hour ago, I would have applauded the Dark Lord's death. But now I did not mean to see the Mage War decided by treachery.
   I wished for other weapons myself. My fang's range was limited. But first I required a vantage from which I could watch over the Archemage without hazarding him. I could not seek out the ro-uke—I had recognized none of the corridors revealed in Argoyne's images. Therefore I must await his attackers.
   A quick circuit of the passage showed only one stair rising to this level from below. That was fortuitous. I might be able to hold one stair against six ro-uke— although I doubted it—if they came at me singly, and did not take me by surprise.
   Already, however, I had made a false assumption. And assumptions of all kinds were fatal. Because the scenes which Argoyne had opened in the air appeared distant, I had believed that the ro-uke were likewise distant.
   As I hastened down the stair to select my point of vantage, a trident bit into my shoulder, tearing at my flesh with such force that I was thrown to the wall.
   My fall became a tumble on the edged stone. I could not yet feel the pain of my wound, but only the shock of impact and the hard stairs. Later, if I lived, I would chide myself for a fool. Now, while I plunged
   
downward, I reached out with my qa, measuring the trident's path toward me, gauging the location of my enemy.
   When I struck the floor, he was no more than four paces from me, charging with his ro-uke katana upraised to sever the skull from my spine. Masked in black from head to foot, and voluminously robed to both conceal and contain his weapons, he might have been a long scrap of shadow cast by a torch held in an unsteady hand.
   But the illumination in Argoyne the Black's keep shone without wavering, as endless and unmoved as stone.
   Within two strides, the ro-uke folded at the knees and pitched onto his face with my dagger buried in the base of his throat. His sword slithered from his grasp, skidding its steel across the floor.
   Now the pain of my shoulder came to me, and I knew at once that the points of the trident carried poison.
   How swiftly the toxin would act I could not guess. And there were five more assassins to be considered. I did what I could, however. Retrieving my fang, and snatching up the katana, I ducked behind the foundation of the stair. There I pulled back my torn robe to examine my wound.
   Some poisons were swift—others, slow. Some might be endured by a concentration of qa and will. To others I was immune. But the nature of this toxin had not yet revealed itself. Gripping my courage, I dug my fang into the wound until my shoulder bled heavily. Perhaps the worst of the poison would be flushed away.
   Past its stone foundation, I saw no one approach the stair. No one advanced at my back. No sound carried from above, where—or so I prayed—Isla guarded Argoyne's door. After a moment spent to quiet my
   

heart and my fear, I risked leaving the stair in order to peer beyond the corner of the corridor behind me.
   My fang I again secreted within my robe. The sword I bore before me, ready for use.
   Although I was cautious at the corner, I was not cautious enough. By ill chance, the ro-uke creeping toward me caught my gaze as I met hers. She was some distance from me yet. But now I had neither the advantage nor the disadvantage of surprise.
   Rather than attempting to foil her by stealth— which was her Art, not mine—I stepped past the corner to confront her formally. With the katana's point directed toward her heart, I bowed in challenge.
   As if by magery, she produced a sword from within her robe. This, too, was her Art, not mine. However, I was not daunted. I was nahia, and understood edged weapons. And I had always believed that because the ro-uke were proficient with weapons by the score, they were expert with none.
Soundless on the stone, she advanced to assail me.
   Her first blow would have cleft me where I stood, but mine was the Art of Circumvention. I slipped her katana away along my blade, then turned my edge against her. She countered fluidly, liquid as a splash of ink.
Point to point, we considered each other.
   A low slash followed, and one high. I saw that if I met her blade directly, force against force, I would open myself to her return stroke. However, that was not my nature—or the nature of my training. With each oblique deflection, I disturbed as well the cut which came next.
Again she brought her point to mine and paused.
   There I might have died, but the alteration of her qa gave me warning. By the standards of the nahia, her
   

skills were too thinly spread. She had not the gift of launching an attack without discernible preparation.
   Warned, I flinched aside as she flung a shuriken at my face. Her stroke skidded from my blade. Unbalanced by the angle of my deflection, as well as by the force of her throw, she extended more than she had intended.
   At once, I stamped a kick into the side of her knee, and felt the tendons tear as she collapsed.
   Alive, I had told Isla. We must have one of them alive! But a growing numbness had taken hold of my shoulder, and four more assassins still crept the keep. In desperation the ro-uke cast another shuriken, but I stepped past it and cut her chest apart.
   Dark death spilled and pooled beneath her as though her black attire melted to shadows.
   A moment of dizziness swept through me. Fearing for my life, I slashed a strip from her robe and bound it tightly about my shoulder. Its pressure weakened my arm, but might also slow the toxin's progress.
   If mine was the Art of Circumvention, clearly I must find some means to circumvent another direct contest. My dizziness receded, but did not pass entirely, and my heart had acquired an unsteadiness which alarmed me. After a moment's deliberation, I compelled myself to cut into the fallen ro-uke's robe and search her until I discovered a rope and grapnel, which a stealthy assassin might use to scale a sheer wall.
Coiling the rope, I returned warily to the stair.
   In my absence, any number of intruders might have ascended to the level of Argoyne's chamber. That I could not alter, however. If Isla did not choose to defend him, then the Archemage must defend himself. I could do nothing more than guard the stair.
Among the outer chambers, I found one with its

door unlocked. From within the room, with the door nearly closed, I could watch the stair unseen. Failing to imagine an alternative, I accepted the disadvantages of surprise—which had slain my first opponent—and secreted myself to wait.
   While I crouched at the slim crack of the door, numbness slowly sank its teeth into the side of my chest. A renewed wave of dizziness bore with it the bitter sensation of despair.
   The young shin-te still lived, of that I was certain. If he—and Argoyne—had fallen, some sign of it would be felt in the mage's keep. Such powers did not pass lightly from the world. But how long could the shin-te endure? How long could I?
   Focused and feverish in my confusion, I did not notice the ro-uke as he gained the stair. I had seen him approach—and yet he appeared to arrive like an act of magery, without transition.
   With my strength ebbing, I waited in silence while the assassin crept upward. I could not challenge him openly, and did not trust my stealth to equal his. Despite the danger that he might ascend beyond my reach—or that another ro-uke might come behind him—I did not move until his head had risen into the stairwell, out of sight. Then I eased open the door of my covert and hastened toward him.
   By good fortune, he paused where he was, no doubt studying the hazards of the floor above. Whirling the grapnel by its line, I flung it at his legs.
   Again by good fortune—for I could not claim skill in my condition—I had cast true. The grapnel caught him securely. At once, I hauled on the rope, heaving him off the stair in a rush.
   The snapping sound as he struck the floor told me that he had broken bones. He flopped nervelessly at


the impact, then lay still. When I ventured near him, I saw that he was dead. The fall had crushed his skull, or his neck.
   Giddy with relief and poison, I stumbled to the foot of the stair, seated myself, and rested my head on my stronger hand.
Three ro-uke remained. In a moment, I promised my weakness, I would rise to my feet and consider how I might oppose them. But first I must breathe. So that I could estimate the progress of the toxin, and concentrate my qa against it.
   " Asper," Isla called softly from the head of the stair. "How many?"
   I lifted my head to peer upward. A haze clouded my sight—apparently Argoyne's lamps had begun to smoke—and I could not see her clearly.
"Three," I told the stairwell.
   "Then come up." She sounded impatient. "There are three here. One used the stair—I thought you were dead—but the other two must have climbed up the outer wall. They came at me from rooms across the passage.
"Asper, what's wrong?"
   I had been foolish. A ro-uke must have gained the stair while I fought around the corner.
Vaguely I indicated my shoulder. "Poison."
   Like the ro-uke, and Argoyne himself, she had lost her need for transitions. I alone still required movement from moment to moment. She appeared at my side, tugged me to my feet. "We don't have much time," she said as she urged me upward. "The shin-te is losing. Maybe Argoyne can help you." Rents marked her robe. Blood dripped from a cut in her
   
scalp. Her cheek showed a bruise so deep that it must have covered cracked bones. "I kept one of them alive for you. I stunned her, but she'll recover soon."
Alive— She had succeeded where I had failed.
   I could hope again. Gratitude swelled my qa, and a measure of stability returned to my limbs. "I am in your debt," I murmured as I amended my pace. "You are a tribute to the mashu-te."
   "I hope they'll think so," she replied. Apparently her scruples disturbed her yet.
However, they no longer troubled me.
In the chamber of the Archemage, I saw at once that Isla had spoken truly. Argoyne's young champion stood near defeat. The resilience was gone from his movements, his eyes were empty of purpose, and his qa seemed to flutter within him like a torn rag. He still kept his feet, still blocked and countered. And he had exacted a price from his opponent. The nerishi-qa fought with one eye swollen shut, two broken fingers, and a falter in all his steps. The arrogance was gone from his gaze. Yet it was plain that the shin-te would be the first to fall. If I had not felt the proximity of his death like an emanation from Argoyne's image, or read it in the vehemence of his opponent's qa, I would have seen it on the faces of the White Lords, and of Goris Miniter. Anticipations of triumph defined the sunlight in their eyes. The young master had received blows which his flesh could not withstand.
   The remaining ro-uke had recovered consciousness. Isla and I kept the woman between us, pretending to hold her captive. Perhaps Isla did so. For my part, however, I clung to her for support. Unsteadiness surged and receded in my head, and I could not trust
   

my legs to sustain me. Like Argoyne's champion, I would soon fall.
   Without delay, Isla informed the mage, "Asper needs help."
   Reluctantly Argoyne turned from the meadow to consider my plight. His obscured vision regarded me as though I had lost my place in his attention.
   "No," I said at once. "His need is greater." I indicated the shin-te. "Send us there. While you still can. We must go now."
   The Archemage appeared to understand me. "They won't listen to you," he warned.
I sighed. "Then we will not speak to them."
   Isla glared a question at me, but I had neither the heart nor the will to answer her. The outcome of the Mage War lay between warriors now, shin-te and ner-ishi-qa. Goris Miniter and the White Lords no longer had any part to play.
   Argoyne nodded, reaching among his scrolls. "After all," he muttered as he found the one he sought and opened it, "I have nothing more to lose. If you wanted me dead, all you had to do is wait for it. And it's always easy to trust warriors. That's why," he finished cryptically, "they're called 'the Fatal Arts.' "
   I could not have asked him what he meant if I had wished to. He and his chamber and the stone keep were gone.
Washed by morning sunlight, we stood in the meadow, surrounded by Miniter's horsemen. Isla still held the ro-uke by one arm, and I clung to the other, concealing my weakness as well as I was able. Five paces from us, both the young shin-te and his opponent had paused to stare in confusion and mistrust at our sudden interruption.

   Around us, horses flinched and reared, snorting their alarm. Several of the riders prepared to charge against us until the King called them back to their places. The White Lords made warding gestures in our direction, but sent no magery to harm us.
   Again haze dimmed my sight, as though the smoke of some vast and fatal bonfire had clouded the meadow. Yet I could see well enough to determine where we were. The meadow lay in a broad valley among the abrupt foothills of the Scarmin. Beyond them, crags and mountains shrouded by distance towered into the sky. And there, distinct against the high cliffs, stood Argoyne's keep.
   This struggle for the fate of Vesselege took place at the boundary between the domains of magery, separated by height and stone—the borderland between the White Lords and the Dark.
   Before Goris Miniter could raise his voice to demand an explanation, Isla and I bowed to him formally. Coerced to do so, the ro-uke followed our example.
   "King of Vesselege," Isla said at once, "this test of champions has been dishonored. We've brought proof of treachery."
   At her words, quick consternation echoed around the ring. Horsemen muttered and cursed. If she had announced to him that all his pain and effort had been wasted, the young shin-te could not have looked more bereft. Bowing his head, he slumped in sorrow or despair. However, the nerishi-qa reacted otherwise. He advanced a step or two angrily, as though he meant to challenge us. His qa was a furnace, feeding him where a lesser man such as I would have been consumed.
   Once more Miniter stilled his riders. At his sides, the White Lords considered the peaks of Scarmin like
   
men striving to bridge the distance in order to see Ar-goyne's thoughts.
   Despite the haze which troubled my eyes, I could not mistake the King's calculation as he asked in tones of iron, "What has the Archemage done?"
   "King of Vesselege," I answered, "the treachery is not his." Although I spoke weakly, my voice carried across the meadow. "The dishonor belongs elsewhere."
   The White Lords' champion approached another step, outrage burning in his open eye.
   "Inside the keep of the Archemage," Isla explained for me, "this nahia and I met and defeated six of the ro-uke. They are assassins, King of Vesselege. I think it's safe to assume"—she gave the word a sneering force—"Argoyne didn't send them against himself."
   "Then who?" the King countered harshly. "And for what purpose? If you 'assume' so much, do you also 'assume' you know why they were there? The ro-uke have as much honor as the mashu-te. Their presence is not 'proof of treachery.' "
   Turning to the captive woman, I shifted my grasp on her arm so that my mouth reached her ear.
   "Speak," I told her softly. "The truth. On the honor of your Art." Within her robes, my fang drew blood from the skin along her spine. "I do not hold you accountable for the service you were asked to perform. But your life and all Vesselege are forfeit if you lie."
   Bitter as a blade, Miniter continued, "And you ask us to believe that you and one nahia alone defeated six of the ro-uke? That is hard to credit. If there is treachery here, perhaps it is yours."
   The assassin cleared her throat, lifting her head to the young shin-te and his opponent rather than to Goris Miniter and the White Lords. "No," she pro-
   
nounced. She, too, recognized the nature of this battle. And, as Goris Miniter had said, the ro-uke understood honor. "The King of Vesselege sent us to rid his land of Black Argoyne, the last of the Dark Lords. He wished the Archemage slain during your contest."
   A hush fell over the meadow—the silence of shock and dismay. The sky itself seemed to carry an echo of chagrin like a suggestion of distant thunder. Although his glare spoke of murder, Goris Miniter held his tongue. It may have been that his soldiers and adherents were more disturbed to hear the words spoken than they were by what the words meant. The White Lords revealed no surprise. But there were warriors among the horsemen, students and masters of the Fatal Arts, and their distress was plain.
   To the nerishi-qa, I said, "There is no honor for you here. No victory. The contest is meaningless. Let it go."
   "No!" one of the White Lords returned sharply. "The challenge was made and accepted in good faith. The contest is between mages, and we are bound by it. We stand or fall by the deeds of our champions, not by the honor or falsehood of kings and assassins. Goris Miniter's actions are his own, irrelevant. The contest must be resolved."
   Although the mage's lips moved, his voice did not appear to issue from his mouth, but rather from some source as distant as Argoyne's keep.
   The nerishi-qa withheld reply. He studied me narrowly for a moment, considering my wound and my weakness—gazed briefly at the young shin-te—then strode from the center of the ring toward Goris Miniter. Raising his head and his qa, he confronted the mounted King as though he were accustomed to passing judgment on the actions of sovereigns.
"Is this true? " he inquired softly.
Goris Miniter's calculation was written on his face,

plain to all who chose to see it. His eyes sifted lies and half-truths, deflections, while under his beard his jaws chewed the consequences of whatever he might say. In the end, however, the man before him was a nerishi-qa master, able to distinguish truth from falsehood, and he did not hazard prevarication.
   "In case you failed," he answered. "The Dark Lords are an abomination. Vesselege will never be whole while one of them endures."
   "Vesselege," the champion of the White Lords retorted, still softly, "will never be whole while the King is treacherous."
   So suddenly that his action startled the wildflowers, the nerishi-qa braced a hand on the neck of the King's horse and vaulted upward, sweeping a kick which struck Goris Miniter upon the helm and dropped him like a stone to the meadow.
   Among the grasses the King of Vesselege lay still, with blood drooling from his mouth, and his skull crushed.
   The young shin-te watched in bafflement and rue, as though he grasped nothing.
   On all sides, soldiers and adherents shouted their fury and fear. They might have goaded their mounts to charge at the nerishi-qa, but the warriors around the ring were quicker. Ro-uke and mashu-te, they hastened their horses forward to block the soldiers. Doubtless they felt as the King's adherents did. For one reason or another, they had pledged their service to Goris Miniter. Yet they understood that a contest of champions had been dishonored.
And without honor the Fatal Arts would fall to dust.
   In relief, I sagged against the support of the captured assassin. The toxin in my shoulder had become stronger than my resistance, and I believed that I had accomplished my end. The nerishi-qa had acknowl-
   
edged the contest dishonored. Now he and his opponent could withdraw without loss on either side. Without more death. Argoyne would live to defend his knowledge a while longer. And my life, and Isla's, and the young shin-te's, would not be forfeit for our service to the Black Archemage.
   Haze gathered over the meadow. Helpless to do otherwise, I trusted that the ro-uke would uphold me.
   I could only stare in dismay as the White Lords announced together, "The King's treachery has been repaid." Their voices tolled thunder. "The honor of this contest is restored. It will continue."
   Isla groaned. She may not have felt my qualms about sacrificing her own life, but she could see that our young comrade was already beaten. Only a few blows were needed to complete his death.
   The nerishi-qa appeared to ignore the White Lords. Turning his back on them, as well as on Miniter's corpse, he advanced again into the trampled circle of the contest. When he was within five paces of his opponent, he stopped.
   He spoke quietly, but the thunder which the White Lords invoked was not more clear.
   "I care nothing for mages," he informed the shin-te. "If they are bound here—White Lords or Dark— the oath is theirs, not mine. This test lies between nerishi-qa and shin-te.
   "For years we have refused your challenge, believing you fools. But you have become offensive to us. You have named nerishi-qa a false Art. I was sent by my masters to repay your folly, and to teach you that the falseness you repudiate is your own."
   Although he had been injured, his readiness for combat betrayed no flaw. The resilience compressed in the muscles of his legs matched the hard force of his
   
qa. Relaxed and quick, his hands seemed to hold every blow which had ever been struck.
"Now," he concluded, "our contest has meaning."
   From the edge of the ring, the White Lords nodded their approval.
   A low moan escaped the young man's lips. Yet he did not withdraw. Wavering on his feet, he answered, "Then I must accept. This test lies between us." A maimed formality dignified his words, despite the frailty of his flesh. "Yours is the Art of the Killing Stroke. I will show you that it is false."
   His knee buckled as he assumed his stance, and he nearly fell. Staggering, he drew himself upright again. The loss in his eyes was terrible to behold.
   He had met despair. Already it proved itself against him.
   Had I been less weak, I might have wept for him. My own death crouched near me on the meadow, but it did not trouble me as much as his. Poison filled my thoughts, and I could not imagine any help which might save him. His spirit and his qa had not failed him. Still he was too young for the burden Argoyne had given him to bear.
   Unsteadily he braced himself to meet his opponent's last attack.
   Within me, the toxin seemed to clench its jaws. The nerishi-qa had not yet moved. However, I could see his assault in the haze before me, precise and fatal. When he struck—
   "Shin-te," Isla called out suddenly, "remember your Art!"
   As if involuntarily, the young master turned his bereavement toward her.
"There is no killing stroke," she reminded him.

Her voice rang with certainty. "There is only choice. Or despair."
   I feared that she had lost her mind. Had she not contested his beliefs herself? Yet in the end it was plain that she understood him better than I did. Or that he understood her—
   Empowered by the magery of her words, his limbs regained a measure of their strength, and the sorrow receded from his eyes. Years of pain shed themselves from his shoulders. As he rose out of his stance to face his opponent again, he conveyed the impression that he was being lifted beyond himself.
   Surprised by the young man's movement, the nerishi-qa paused, easing his own stance.
   Deliberately the shin-te bowed to his opponent. When he straightened his back, his arms hung de-fenselessly at his sides. Yet he appeared taller in some way, as if his own words in Isla's mouth had given him stature.
   "Your skill surpasses me," he told the nerishi-qa, echoing her certainty. "But your will does not. No man's choice exceeds another's. You cannot make me other than I am."
   Slowly he spread his arms wide, closing his eyes as he did so.
   "Here I stand," he said, "unguarded. Strike me, if that is your wish. Your blow is mine. The victory is mine, if I have chosen to die, you cannot kill me. Any blow of yours can only carry out my will.
   "How, then," he finished softly, "will you teach the shin-te that they are fools?"
   The nerishi-qa frowned, studying his opponent's displayed form as though to determine the best target for a killing stroke.
   "Strike," one of the White Lords commanded urgently. "His choices have no significance. The contest
   
does not rest on them. Only the blow matters. Only his death matters. The Dark Lord will be destroyed when his champion falls."
Clinging to the ro-uke, I fought to clear my sight.
   Without warning, the nerishi-qa struck—a blow so fierce that it seemed to stun my own heart. His fist flashed forward with all his qa behind it. Under its force, the cloth of the young man's robe sprang to tatters across his chest, torn thread from thread.
   And yet the shin-te did not flinch. His skin had not been touched.
His arms remained wide in sacrifice.
   With great care, as though he had found himself on the edge of a precipice, the nerishi-qa stepped back, rising from his stance. After a moment, he snorted under his breath.
"Look at me," he instructed his opponent.
Obediently the young master opened his eyes.
   "You are indeed willing to die," the White Lords' champion observed between his teeth.
   Lowering his arms, the shin-te shrugged. "Your skill surpasses mine," he repeated. "Yet my life is my own."
   The nerishi-qa snorted again. "The shin-te are fools to challenge us."
   For the first time in my experience of him, the young master smiled. "So I believe." Years lifted from his face in an instant. Without transition, he resembled a boy, innocent and unbereaved. "We learn nothing from each other."
   As if at a great distance, I heard Isla sigh, "Well said. Well done."
   The nerishi-qa did not smile in turn. Scowling around his swollen eye, he left the center of the ring to stand before the White Lords on their mounts.
"The contest is ended," he informed them. The au-


thority of his tone allowed no contradiction. "The shin-te has proven himself against me. I am forced to acknowledge defeat."
   Hearing him, I buried my face against the shoulder of the ro-uke to conceal my tears. The nerishi-qa had studied honor in such depth that I was humbled by it.
   Yet I looked up again at once, for the White Lords had raised their voices in a cry as cruel as the clamor of a storm. From within their bright robes, they summoned their power, and thunderclaps answered, rolling among the foothills and over the meadow, gathering fire. Called from the clear sky, lightning hammered downward. Isla, the ro-uke, and I were knocked from our feet, horses were scattered, soldiers and warriors were tossed to the ground.
   In the center of the ring, the blast scorched wild-flowers and grasses to char—and the young master with them.
   But his death was not defeat. The White Lords who struck him down had already ceased to exist.
We did not, however. Instead we stood in the chamber where we had left Argoyne, the three of us, shin-te, mashu-te, and nahia. The Black Archemage was not present. In his place we found three goblets brimming with wine, enough food to satisfy us twice over, and the rich silence of peace.
   Like our struggles in the meadow, the Mage War had ended.
   My shoulder had been healed, although it still held the low ache of remembered poison. Isla's lesser hurts had been made whole. And the young master stood intact before us, restored by a Dark Lord's magery. He had shed his sorrow in fire, and his eyes smiled when his mouth did not.
   
   His memory also had been restored, but he neglected to tell us his name. Perhaps he thought that we already knew it.
   Smiling, he raised his goblet to thank us for the part we had played in his victory. "While I live," he told us with the earnest sincerity of youth, "I am in your debt."
   I bowed to answer him. "As we are in yours." I was foolishly pleased with myself, and cared not what I said.
   Isla also bowed. She smiled as well. Yet the expression in her eyes revealed the trouble in her heart. After a moment, she protested, "But we didn't do anything."
   The young man laughed—a happy sound which suited him well. "I also did nothing," he assured her.
   Perhaps for that reason shin-te was called the Art of Acceptance.
   But her concern was not relieved. With some severity, she observed, "You took a great risk. That blow—" She shuddered, despite her training. "Your heart would have burst."
   He nodded gravely. "I believed that I would die." Then he added, "But that was a small matter. I was already beaten. Yet when you spoke my own words to me—one of the mashu-te—a student of the Direct Fist—I heard them in a new way. They became"—he rolled his smiling gaze at the ceiling—"how shall I say it? They became simple. Despair is the killing stroke. There is no other." Lightly he shrugged. "My hazard was no greater than yours."
   That was true. If their champion had killed the shin-te, the White Lords would no doubt have slain both Isla and me, for the help we had given Argoyne.
   We lived only because the young man had stepped beyond the circle of his own comprehension.
   

   Still Isla had not named what was in her heart. Instead she asked, "What will become of Vesselege now?"
   The wine seemed quick to intoxicate me. I, too, laughed. "Argoyne and the White Lords will endure each other until the contest between them takes another form. Then they will resume their struggle. As for the rule of Vesselege— Sovereigns are easily replaced. Perhaps the new King will profit from Goris Miniter's example." I drank more wine so that I would not laugh again. "I would advise him to make peace with both the White Lords and the Dark while he can."
   "And what will you do?" Isla inquired of the shin-te.
   He did not hesitate. "I have learned a precious truth. I must teach it."
She looked to me. "And you, Asper?"
   I met her gaze across the rim of my goblet, concealing my mirth. "First I will drink. Then I will sleep. And when I have recovered, I will dedicate myself to the study of dangerous assumptions. There is power in them, which the nahia have neglected."
She fell silent, frowning to herself.
   Seeing her unease, I returned her question to her. "What are your intentions, Isla? The wine is excellent, we are whole, and the sun shines on Vesselege. What disturbs you?"
   With an effort, she revealed her thoughts. "I've come to doubt the teaching of the mashu-te," she admitted unhappily. "If nerishi-qa is a false Art, then so are the others. I'll have to leave my home to study among the shin-te."
   I stared at her. The idea of turning away from the nahia had never occurred to me. Her scruples—her need for the purity of her beliefs—surpassed me.
"Do not," the young master urged at once. "The


shin-te are indeed fools to challenge the nerishi-qa. My Art is as false as any."
"And as true," I murmured.
   That challenge had been rightly spurned by the nerishi-qa. It resembled the hostility of the White Lords toward Black Argoyne. In the meadow surrounded by enemies, however, the young shin-te had learned his own wisdom.
After a time, Isla nodded.
   When she had let her concern go, I sighed my relief, and drank again. In all my life, I had never been farther from despair.
   What we were could not endure without honor. And the price of honor was death, in one form or another. I thought of the young man's acceptance of death—of Isla's willingness to sacrifice her life—of the nerishi-qa's surrender to defeat. I thought of the hazards I had faced.
   Argoyne had said, It's always easy to trust warriors. That's why they're called "the Fatal Arts." I believed now that I had begun to understand him.