Aces and Eights page 19
Harvey Smith
"Any idea what that was?" I asked Kyla.
"No." She bit her lip, hesitating. "Do you want to accompany me while I check it out?"
Oddly, she seemed serious. I was beginning to wonder again about her involvement with the entire setup. Was she simply, after all, a hired gun? And if so, was Merequist late on a payment? "Does this mean that our duel is canceled?" I asked with a smile.
"No, only postponed."
"Good enough. I'll come along peacefully�for the moment."
Watching each other with all due suspicion and walking apart but abreast, we headed in the general direction of the Shar'Chal. I wondered what her response to Luke's presence would be. As we drew nearer to the center of things�my questionable enemy and I�the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck began to rise. A tangible current of power seemed to run through the air near the tree. Also, the light fell by a number of shades, giving the place an even creepier feel. Several times, odd noises came to us through the gloom.
When we were very close, I could hear the ringing of one blade against another. A final curtain of fog lifted and I beheld Luke and Merequist engaged in a duel.
They were standing several paces apart. Luke was holding his sword loosely in his left hand, while Merequist was wielding a pair of fiery sickles. I saw a small, flower-shaped spot of blood growing on the front of Luke's shirt. Merequist, I noted, had lost some of his humanity. His fingers now sported spindly, black claws and the lower portion of his face had stretched forward, forming a reptilian snout. An awful array of shark-like teeth were visible whenever he drew back his lips.
Nearby, the outer section of the Shar'Chal wheel burned in its own purple fire, the flames now roughly six feet in height. Standing at the heart of the pictographic wheel, like a tower of skeletal wood, loomed the tree I had planted. The mist stopped at the edge of outermost designs, as if forced back by an area of extremely high pressure. The paired combatants both noticed our arrival, but other than making flickering side-glances toward us they remained focused upon one another.
Kyla did not yet seem to have anything in mind in the way of helping Merequist out, and Luke did not appear to need my immediate aid, so I stood back a ways, watching without comment. Kyla did the same.
Merequist abruptly raised and crossed both sickles over his head and a stream of spiraling fire shot forward and down. Simply stepping to one side of the crackling stream of flame, Luke jabbed with the slender, curved blade of his weapon, scoring an effective hit on his opponent's left triceps muscle. Immediately, blood began to flow down Merequist's arm and a grimace of pain briefly crossed his feral, tattooed face.
Moving with snake-like quickness, Luke pressed the attack, stepping in close. He caught up one of the sickles with his sword, reached out with his other hand and grabbed Merequist's free wrist, then stomped down hard on the arch of the sorcerer's left foot. Merequist responded by screaming in agony and rage. He dropped his mouth forward and bit deeply into Luke's shoulder.
Breaking, they backed away from one another, circling for a moment until Merequist stood with his back to the purple flames rising from the wheel. Pointing with one of the sickles, he said, "I have tasted your blood, Amberite."
"And I hope it gives you heartburn," laughed Luke as he executed a fancy attack. Merequist parried and they were at each other again.
From beside me, Kyla spoke up. "What are you going to do if the wrong man wins the fight?"
"He won't. Luke's a survivor. He'll polish Merequist off shortly. I'm sure of it."
She was quiet for a few seconds, pausing to watch Luke behead some striped, serpentine thing that Merequist had just called into being. Continuing, she said, "I believe that you're right, which is one of the reasons I've just opted to summarily end my agreement with Merequist."
"Considering what I've seen of him, it seems that your decision is long overdue."
"It was not always like this. It started off as a means of achieving a kind of security; the place I'm from is not a friendly one, so it pays to be tougher than whatever comes along." Though my eyes did not wander from the battle before me, I nodded; I could sympathize with Kyla's desire to gain an edge against a world full of predators.
"At one time," she said, "my responsibilities primarily involved enacting military raids against Merequist's adversaries, providing security for his various Shadow holdings and doing a number of other things that he didn't want to involve himself in personally. I was usually rewarded well and I've benefited greatly from remaining in his employ for as long as I have. But over the last few years, his obsessive hatred for Luke has grown for reasons I don't understand. I have suspected for some time that his vendetta would eventually get him killed."
Glancing at her, I asked, "So, to hand your own question back to you, 'What are you going to do if the wrong man wins the fight?'"
She chuckled. "Like you said, Luke will take him. If he doesn't, he'll injure him badly enough so that you and I can finish the job. Either way, after this is over, I'll be moving on."
A dazzling burst of pyrotechnics forced my attention back to the fight. Luke was advancing, swinging his sword in a series of rapid attacks. The last of these, a blinding downward arc, Merequist was unable to parry. The sword and sickle missed one another by half a foot, Luke's blade instead passing through his opponent's left wrist. Gnashing his teeth and clutching the stump of his wrist, Merequist staggered. He was bleeding from more places than I could count and had lost even more of his human form.
Not hesitating, Luke leaped forward, thrusting. The point of his blade pierced quickly and cleanly through Merequist's right eye and beyond. The sorcerer collapsed in a jumbled heap. Lifting the body, Luke hurled it forward over the purple flames. It landed with an incandescent flash at the base of the dark tree, igniting and burning brightly. Breathing hard, Luke stood watching as the fire consumed his enemy.
I turned and saw that Kyla was holding a Trump. With her free hand, she tossed me something. It was the phoenix pendant. "Thanks."
"Goodbye," she said with an odd smile. "It has been interesting." She began to take on an iridescent sparkle.
"Wait," I said, quickly digging for my own set of Trumps. "Take this." I sorted through the deck, retrieving my own portrait. Luke had painted several in different settings. I handed her the card. "Give me a call some time."
"I will." Looking at my Trump, she smiled again, then faded away.