From atop the mesa, Thelyan combed the world for a sign of his enemy. He had sensed Ka'an for a time, but then the trace had vanished. It was possible that the evil one had discovered some way to cloak himself, but Thelyan doubted it. Such spells had not yet been discovered the last time Ka'an had been active. So that implied that the enemy was moving along the blind zone created by the train tracks.

Since the interference of the rails would prevent Ka'an from repelling from the ground to ride the wind, he must be running. It would probably be full night before he arrived. That would suit him; he reveled in darkness, after all.

A puff of black smoke in the west caught Thelyan's attention. That would be the troop train, with Strindner's reinforcements. They would arrive in plenty of time. Going to the edge, he looked down to see that Liss had his men formed up near the platform, ready to merge in Strindner's unit and brief them. The neat ranks of white uniforms pleased Thelyan. The White Watch were the most disciplined men in the world, thanks to the harsh training he had designed for them. Even when Ka'an began killing them, they would hold their formations and return fire. Thelyan doubted that Ka'an would be harmed in any serious way by the hail of lead and spells the Watch would throw at him, but he would have to use much of his power to prevent his body's destruction.

Then it would only remain for Thelyan to break and devour him.

The Director's thoughts were interrupted by a sparking alarm in the back of his mind. He sought its source, and frowned. The null sphere had been damaged. Perhaps breached. He hadn't thought that was possible.

Perhaps putting Medur in with Chaiel had been a mistake. The Green Lady was weak, but might have sacrificed herself to give Chaiel the power to break free.

Well, he had time to deal with the problem before the joining of battle. Thelyan turned toward the entrance to his hidden stairway, away from the ant-small ranks of his troops below; but something in that direction nagged at him. He paused, trying to puzzle out what it was. He could sense the lives of his mages, he could sense that the prison ward was intact, he could hear the troop train approaching --

Whirling, he gasped -- the first involuntary sound he'd made in centuries -- as he realized what was wrong. The sound of the train. It should have been slowing. It was accelerating.

Despite the distance, his eyes picked out the dark shape crouched atop the engine just before the train derailed. Throttle jammed open, the train hit the switch just before the platform at its maximum speed of sixty miles per hour, jumped the track, and crashed tumbling and screeching into the massed men there. Some tried to run; some threw useless spells at the grounded mass of iron; all to no avail. Thelyan watched helplessly as his men died for nothing.

His mouth opened without his command a second time, and a cry of rage leapt out. How? How could the evil one, that vestige of a barbaric prehistory, have managed to use Thelyan's own machinery against him? How?

"Where are you?" Thelyan growled. "Where are you, you snake, you sneaking spider?" There -- he found the dark shape again, leaping and dodging among the few survivors beyond the still-skidding train. As the burning engine tore through the outer fence and dug itself to a halt half-buried in sand, Ka'an in Trevarde's skin neatly turned the spells thrown at him by the last few Watchmen. Then the dark one produced a pistol and fired off three shots, leaving no one to oppose him.

Again, he should not have been able to do that. What did that ancient serpent know of modern weapons? He shouldn't even have known what a gun could do, let alone use one so neatly.

Scowling, Thelyan stretched out a hand. Sent a thread of force down into the carnage below to snare a discarded rifle.

Ka'an glanced up, following the motion of power. Thelyan could see the glint of his eyes, and of his teeth -- the mad creature was grinning eagerly. It was not an expression he had expected to see on Ka'an's face. Fury, arrogance, megalomaniacal posing at grandeur, yes; but not this wild-dog smile. Something had changed. Ka'an was no longer what Thelyan remembered. It began to seem possible that the outcome of the fight was not predetermined.

Men held in reserve were pouring out of the compound. Ka'an looked between them and Thelyan. He threw out his own thread of power, catching at the rifle before Thelyan could receive it. Thelyan retaliated by following that thread back, snagging at Ka'an's body. Ka'an copied the action.

With a simultaneous, counterbalanced pull -- ironically cooperative -- they jerked Ka'an's body from the ground and flung it high into the air, toward Thelyan.

Ka'an landed lightly on the mesa's top, long hair and coat settling around him like dusty black wings. His power was spun tightly closed, defensive; another thing out of character. He studied Thelyan with eyes that held more curiosity and wariness than malice. The pistol in his hand -- a new model, of the kind that Thelyan didn't yet trust enough to issue to his troops -- covered Thelyan before the Director could bring his own rifle to bear.

"You seem like a smart guy," the dark one said. "Has it crossed your mind that we don't have to do this?"

Thelyan's eyes narrowed. What did he mean, spouting such nonsense? "If you're trying to negotiate a truce, Ka'an, you're a fool. I will not let you return the world to chaos."

"Whoa." The enemy's eyebrows climbed. "Wait a second. This is starting to make sense. You're one of these immortals too. That's why Ka'an wanted to kill you. How many of you fuckers are there?"

"This is a ruse," Thelyan frowned, but as he said it a scenario presented itself that might explain this. Could a mortal vessel possibly have bested Ka'an and taken his tainted power? No, that was impossible. "This is a trick."

The dark one shook his head. "We're not understanding each other. Look, here's the deal. I owe you a kicking for messing with my head a while back, and I guess I wouldn't mind seeing you dead on account of your job title. But I just took out about fifty of your guys, and I figure we can call that even. Let Ashleigh Trine go, and I'll leave."

"Unbelievable," Thelyan snarled. "No. I don't believe it. You end here, Ka'an."

The enemy's lips quirked. "Oh, I see. So I guess we fight, huh?"

Thelyan answered with a slash of power in lieu of words. The enemy twisted aside and replied with a blast of his own, and the battle was joined.

The last thin shell of sandstone crumbled away under Ash's hands. He sagged to his knees, smiling despite his fatigue. A fresh-smelling draft stirred his hair. He was rather proud of himself. Breaking through the wall by main force would have been impossible, with the tiny trickle of energy he'd been able to pull, but he'd used the principles of steam power to do the job. Finding tiny pockets of moisture in flaws among the rock, he'd jolted them to heat, cracking the stone. Far more efficient. Even so, he was tired.

Chaiel climbed past him, hair dragging in the dust. The little light Thelyan had left in the room bobbed along obediently behind him. The kid looked ridiculous, bare-legged in Ash's overlarge boots, drowned in Ash's mud-crusted coat, with the matted rope of his hair snaggling behind him. But for all his weirdness, he'd turned out to be a solid ally. He looked up and down the hallway they'd broken into, then glanced back at Ash, gray eyes round as a kitten's.

"I smell outside. Which way? I can't tell which way."

"Pick one, I guess." Ash took a steadying breath, made himself get up. He chose a direction at random, and set out toward the left. That one seemed to be slanting down a little, so it was more likely to let them out, since he sensed they were high up in the mountain.

He could feel that Kieran was near, and the sense of him made Ash's head spin with an anxiety of need. Every moment, he had to fight the urge to act with frantic haste. He wouldn't help Kieran by panicking. Calm persistence was what he needed.

Are you fighting now, Kai? Are you in danger? I'm so tired of being afraid for you. Be smart, defend yourself, hold on, and I'll find a way to join you.

He thought he sensed a flicker of emotion in response. Just a confirmation, thrown out of a state of concentration. It conveyed something along the lines of: Busy. Doing fine. Patience.

It was reassuring. But then, it took a lot to scare Kieran. He might not even begin to fear until he was already too deep in trouble to dig himself out. Ash's help -- and possibly Chaiel's -- might be necessary. And the sooner the better. Ash forced his weary body to pick up the pace, and heard a groan behind him as Chaiel followed suit.

The hallway made a gradual curve left and down, then ended in a metal door. This one, unlike the one that had sealed the sphere room, had a handle and lock, and was painted white. Ash put his hand to it, then his ear.

"What --" Chaiel began.

"Ssh." It was almost silent beyond the door, but there was one puzzling little noise. A dull thumping in irregular rhythm.

No voices, though, or sounds of feet. Ash put his hand to the lock plate, but discovered that his senses slipped and skewed within the metal. He moved to the wall, contemplating the feasibility of tunneling around.

Chaiel went past him, grasped the door handle, and turned it. The door swung open.

Ash slapped himself on the forehead. "I'm an idiot."

"You're a genius," Chaiel countered. "I expect you frequently miss the obvious."

"Let me go first." Ash peered cautiously into the dimness beyond the door, then stepped forward, allowing Chaiel to follow with the light.

This was a large, ominously laboratory-like room, with a series of doors along the far wall. It smelled rank, like a hospital and a kennel combined. The doors opposite were like jail doors, each with a small barred window at head height. The thumping sound came from behind one of these. Ash crept toward it, into a growing miasma of pain and despair as thick as the smell.

"What is this place?" Chaiel breathed.

"Light." Ash beckoned. He followed the thumping to look through one of the barred windows, from which came a strong stench both physical and emotional.

The faint gleam of the light revealed a cell occupied by a single, deformed figure. The figure was crouched in a far corner, banging its overlarge head against the wall. Its upper limbs were useless paddles, its legs short and fat as an infant's. It was a little larger than an ordinary man, squat enough to weigh three or four times as much, and its skewed face was blank. It did not react to the light.

Ash reeled back, choking. As he struggled not to throw up, he sensed Chaiel's echoing shock as he, too, looked into the cell.

The thumping didn't pause.

"What are they doing?" Ash gasped, when he could speak at all. "Oh god, what do they think they're doing here? And --" He straightened. "Are there more of those things?"

Chaiel shook his head in dismay. "What should we do about it?"

"Do?"

"Should we put it out of its misery?"

Ash spread his hands. "How? We're unarmed."

Then they both jumped as a sharp clang sounded from one of the other cells. Spinning to face it, Ash saw a pair of eyes glittering behind another barred window. The clanging noise came again, and he realized the cell's occupant was tapping something against the metal door.

The face retreated as Ash came forward. It backed off just enough that he could see that it appeared human, small, a child. White face, dark eyes, dark stubble on its scabbed scalp.

He swallowed sour spit before speaking. "Um. Hello. Can you talk?"

The figure shook its head. It made a small whimpering sound.

"Hold on, I'm going to try to get you out."

Whimpering again, the figure nodded frantically.

As Ash fumbled with the mechanism that barred the door, Chaiel grabbed his arm. "Is that a good idea, Ash? What if the creature's dangerous?"

"What if it is?" Ash returned. "It's aware of its situation, not like that giant fetus in there. I can't just walk away." Setting his teeth, he finally got the wheel to turn, and the bar cranked back. He hauled the door open.

The prisoner wobbled out, smiling gratitude, and Ash's heart squeezed small with pity. It was a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, naked, emaciated and bruised. Attached to her shoulderblades, surrounded by swollen and suppurating flesh, was a pair of enormous, greasy black wings.

"Oh." The meaningless syllable was all Ash could get out. He reached to steady her, wincing at the way she flinched.

Chaiel's face twisted. He spit on the floor. "This place is sick. I want to leave."

"Wait. Are there... are there others?"

The girl shook her head. She pointed at the cell that held the head-banging creature, then made loops by her head with her finger: crazy. She gestured at the other cells and drew her finger across her throat: dead.

Ash nodded. He took the child's arm to help her walk, avoiding the hideous taxidermy on her back.

Moving more slowly now, they followed the hall the other direction. This time what they found was more encouraging: a stair leading down. No discussion was necessary.

Kieran wasn't afraid, but he sensed it wouldn't be long until he began to be. Fighting Ka'an had been a bar brawl compared with this. He was in over his head.

Thelyan was powerful, and he was fast. Far too fast. And he knew what he was doing. He had a repertoire of spells that he could just rip off in an instant. He'd bark out a phrase, trace a shape with flickering fingers, and suddenly something nasty would be flying at Kieran's face -- a hissing gout of invisible heat, or tendrils of pain groping for his nerves, or a clap of eardrum-rupturing concussion. No matter how tight his defenses, some of it always got through. Kieran had learned the hard way that by the time he saw what the spell was, it was too late to avoid it. The air reeked of singed hair and burnt leather, and the palms of his hands were blistered.

But he'd learned. He had a sort of strategy. He'd decided that since it was impossible to tailor his defense to the attack, the best he could do was to throw something out at the same time, it didn't matter exactly what. He didn't try to make these blasts into spells; just did his best to get them into the right place to disrupt whatever Thelyan was making. It mostly worked. So far.

And it just went on and on. They stood facing each other, hands slashing the air. Thelyan spitting spell words; Kieran muttering fragments of obscenities. To an unmagical eye, they must have looked like a couple of railyard bums having a lunatic argument. Kieran was getting tired. He couldn't tell if Thelyan was wearing out; it was possible that the Director could go on all day.

When he'd felt Ash calling for him from within the mountain, he'd hoped that it meant this fight was only a distraction. Keep the Director busy long enough for Ash to get out, then run for it. But when he'd been able to spare the attention to check his surroundings, he found that there was a lot more of the Watch left alive than he'd thought. Even though Ash was moving within the mountain, which meant he wasn't stuck in a cell, he still wouldn't be able to walk out the front door. Kieran would not only have to beat Thelyan, he'd have to do it with enough juice to spare so he could take down whoever was guarding the compound.

As things stood, that just wasn't going to happen.

He'd wasted a couple bullets finding out that Thelyan's shield against projectiles was a lot better than Ka'an's had been. Thelyan had again moved to snatch up a rifle from below, and this time had succeeded, but Kieran had seen how the shield thing was built and so the gun hadn't done Thelyan any good. It was down to this flicker-fast chess-game staring contest, which Kieran knew he wouldn't win. He had to find a way to move the fight onto better ground. Make it physical, somehow.

This realization came without words, gradually building in the moments between attacks and deflections. He had to be realistic; plain determination wasn't going to beat skill. And I'm thinking too much. I've been thinking way, way too much today.

I'm a thug, damn it. What the fuck am I doing playing brain games with this bastard?

Managing the shape of his power was taking up too much of his attention. Thelyan seemed not to have to consider it at all. He had it trained to his hands and voice. He spoke and gestured, and it leapt from him already formed into some lethal shape. Kieran tossed out random bursts, tangling Thelyan's spells as they emerged, scattering them. Sometimes he was too slow. As his resolve to shift the ground firmed, he missed one, and knives of air tore across his chest, ripping clothes, welting his skin.

A button, sliced from his coat, fell to the ground and bounced. It seemed to take a long time.

"Don't cut the tattoos, asshole," Kieran said. His cheerful tone surprised him a little, and pleased him. He knew what that meant.

This was starting to feel like a fight. Whatever Thelyan was doing, he didn't know what to call that, but a fight he understood. If there was going to be blood flying around, then the thing made sense. And if someone's going to spit teeth, it won't be me.

Hauling his power in tight around him, letting it develop a bit of a spin, Kieran stepped forward. Another set of invisible blades met him halfway; only partially deflected by the whirl of his pattern, it struck him in the side. Now his left sleeve was hanging in shreds. But he'd decided to take the pain. It could have been a lot worse. The coat was a loss, but his skin was barely scratched. Relishing the wary way Thelyan stepped back at his approach, Kieran closed the distance between them until their patterns overlapped. Tangled, clashing, like kite strings fouled together.

The Director's eyes widened in outrage in the instant before Kieran's fist caught him across the cheekbone.

Kieran followed this with a hard hail of fast blows to any target he could see, trying to keep the man off balance so he couldn't form a spell. There was a bitter joy in him now. Where's your fancy magic? Where are your pain spells and your headgames? He battered aside Thelyan's arms, followed the Watchman's attempts to back away. The pale-haired man was far shorter than Kieran, and weaker. Thelyan cringed, he cried out; things broke, things bled, fingers, an ear, and now he was the one off guard, unable to summon a defense.

When Thelyan was staggering, slack-faced, punch-drunk, Kieran hopped back half a step to finish him off with a nice solid kick to the temple.

Mistake. In that split second, Thelyan threw out a wall of solid force -- half-formed, no attempt at subtlety this time, just pure kinesis. It caught Kieran right in the face and lifted him off his feet. The world flashed white as he flew headfirst backwards in a long arc, then flashed again as the back of his skull hit the ground with all his weight behind it.

He lay stunned, looking at the sparkles. There wasn't even pain. And then there was; all at once, fat and dull from behind, small and sharp in front. Something tickled inside his throat and he tasted metal.

Bloody nose. Concussion? Don't have time to puke. As soon as thought re-formed, he was moving. His head throbbed in big slow waves as he stood up. Hot blood rolled out of his nose in a sheet, down his lips and chin, threaded itching down his neck. His eyes wouldn't focus, but his mind's sight was working just fine. When he saw what Thelyan was doing, he laughed.

The dumbshit was taking time to heal himself. "Can't you take a few bruises, buddy?" Kieran's voice sounded thick, but he was only amusing himself anyway. "Tell me, you ever been smacked in the kidney with the back end of a rifle?" As he talked, he was gathering up his pattern, shaping it more carefully this time. Blood spattered from his lips with his words. "If you're not pissing pink, you can't really say you got beat up. You should have those guards of yours give you a demonstration. You know -- for science."

Thelyan wasn't listening. He was watching Kieran warily, but his attention was turned inward. The injuries Kieran had caused him were righting themselves, and all the power he wasn't using for that was shaped into a shield that looked as solid as a brick wall. He clearly thought they'd reached a stalemate, declared a momentary cease-fire to lick their wounds.

Kieran finished his preparations as he finished talking. He wasn't going to try to get through that brick wall. Instead, he took the hungry, gnawing pattern he'd fashioned and shoved it into the ground at Thelyan's feet.

The Director stumbled as the stone beneath him began to crack and crumble. He scrambled aside, but the crumbling followed him. Leaving off his healing, he sent a spell of his own to block Kieran's, then spread a wide net of force above Kieran's head, which immediately started to radiate a blistering heat.

Spells again, Kieran thought disgustedly as he countered. But they weren't quite back where they'd started. It was a little different now. And he thought maybe he was starting to get the hang of it.

"What's that?" Chaiel balked, pointing. "I'm not touching that."

Ash studied the strange pattern before them. It cut through the hallway at an angle, a slanted plane of regular, interlocked shapes. While he examined it, he stated the obvious: "There isn't any other way to go." At the foot of the stairway, they'd found this hall, and there had been no doors or branches from it in all the long way they'd followed it.

The child with wings grafted to her back sank to her knees. Ash reached out to her, concerned, but she shook her head. Just resting. Her pale face was sheened with sweat; he didn't think he'd ever seen a little kid sweat that much. She was really sick.

He pushed pity from his mind. Once they were out, then he could try to get her some medical help. Right now, he had to figure out whether the thing that crossed the corridor was dangerous, or maybe something they could use. Its pattern was geometric, and its workings were less complex than the null sphere had been. But he'd spent hours on the sphere, and he wasn't sure if he had even minutes now. Brushing off a protest from Chaiel, he went to put his hand to it.

There was no sense of resistance. His hand went right through. The pattern didn't react to him at all. "I think it's safe," he said, and stepped forward.

Blindness snapped down around him, patterns vanished, the walls of his mind closed in. With a short cry of dismay, he scrambled back. To his great relief, nothing prevented him, and his magical sense returned as soon as he was back on the right side of the pattern. Understanding dawned.

"It's the ward."

Chaiel frowned. "What ward, what do you mean?"

"The ward that -- we must be near the prison section. Go through for a second. Go on, it's harmless, you can walk right out again."

"You'd better be right." Chaiel did as Ash asked, and came back out even more quickly than Ash had, and even more shaken. "That was awful," he said with an accusing glare. "Why did you make me do that?"

"So when I tell you that's where they keep the Talents, you'll know what I'm talking about."

"Why do I care?"

"Well, I'm just thinking, if that ward came down, a few locks and bars wouldn't do much to hold those guys. I'm thinking that might do Kieran some good, if the Watch were distracted by escaping prisoners."

"It might do us good as well," Chaiel said thoughtfully. "Can you do it?"

Ash shrugged. "Let me think a minute."

Sighing resignation, Chaiel turned to the child and explained to her. "That means we have to be very quiet for a long time, until we're thoroughly bored, and then he'll suddenly come up with some genius idea he can't explain."

The girl nodded solemnly and folded her hands in her lap.

Ash hid a smile and turned to study the ward. After a moment he forgot his amusement. There was something familiar about the way this thing was put together. It had some design elements in common with the null sphere, but that wasn't what nagged at him. Something about it made him think of Dawyer's experiments with electricity; he could see the page in his mind, last spring's issue of the North Bank Technical Quarterly. There'd been diagrams, he'd been frustrated because they weren't labeled right, the experiment couldn't be reproduced without further information...

Batteries. The ward was a battery. That was how it kept anyone inside it from doing magic -- it snatched away any free power within its boundaries, and used it to strengthen itself.

And that meant... yes, it was a simple hexagonal matrix... must be spherical, or at least domelike... so if any of the nexus points were removed... "But how do you get at it? If it just eats anything that comes near it -- from outside, but -- no, that trick's not going to work here. Just make it stronger."

Behind him, Chaiel sighed again. Only then did Ash realize he'd been talking out loud. He turned, catching the gray-eyed boy in a theatrical yawn.

"Hey Shy, if you want to do something to something but the something just grabs whatever touches it --"

"Something something?" Chaiel's tone was mocking, but Ash had already answered his own question, smacking himself on the forehead.

"Another battery. Duh."

"You're making no sense at all. And I wish you'd stop calling me Shy."

"Hm? Sorry." Ash's reply was an absent mumble. He was already building his own battery. It didn't need to have a structure like the ward's; a simple layered pattern would suffice, transparent one way and opaque the other. He constructed it in the palm of his hand. Just as a precaution, he took the time to arrange his own pattern as receptively as possible, in case his one-way membrane drew out more than one nexus point.

When he was finished, he stretched out his hand... hesitated.

"You might want to step back," he said. "There's a remote chance that my head will explode."

"You're joking."

"Mostly." Nevertheless he waited until he heard Chaiel and the child moving away before he plunged his hand into the ward.

He heard the beginning of his own scream before he went deaf. Energy leapt into him with terrible force and speed -- agonizing -- distantly, he was aware he must pull his hand out of the flow, but couldn't find it. Couldn't find his body. Couldn't find himself at all.

Kieran heard Ash cry out in his mind. In the moment of distraction this afforded, Thelyan got a direct attack through, knocking Kieran tumbling across the rough stone of the mesa's top. Kieran didn't care. Something had happened to Ash, something bad, and now Ash was in pain.

What is it? -- the thought was incoherent, just a burst of fear sent nowhere. Huddled crouching with his head behind his arms, pattern meshed tight around him, Kieran didn't care what Thelyan might do to him in the next second. If Ash was being killed right now, then it didn't matter who won this fight. The sense of pain and fear from Ash was mounting. Kieran took a hitching breath, tasting stale blood and dust, and sent out to him again. Will my power help? Take it!

When he touched the bullet charm at his throat to send his power out, though, he sensed immediately that the problem was something opposite. Energy flooded along their link, coming from Ash's direction. It was jetting through, like steam from a pinhole punched in a boiler. Ash had encountered a surge of some kind.

It didn't matter why. All Kieran needed to know was that Ash was being burned out by it, drowned in it.

Give it to me, he thought desperately. Knowing that words wouldn't make it through, not sure whether the sense of his intention would carry. Send it here!

"Exhausted already?" Thelyan's smug voice was an irritating distraction. "Get up, Ka'an. We've barely started."

"Shut up," Kieran said through his teeth, not looking up. He couldn't spare the attention for his adversary just now. He needed to reach out, couldn't find a direction in which to reach -- was suddenly sick to death of all this magic, all this vagueness and sideways thinking. Groping with his mind at the leaking energy, he bullied his way into the part of his pattern that was joined to Ash's, wrenched it wide, flung more strands into it. He robbed his shield to do it, and was buffeted by fragments of an attack from Thelyan, but he didn't care. He could sense the pressure on the other side of that divide, the agony and fear, Ash screaming, he couldn't stand it --

With a soundless sound and a prickling across his scalp, the dam burst. Power shoved into him. It hurt, even more than taking in the Burn had hurt; it was not his own power, not fitted to his pattern. It was something icy and sawtoothed and regular, and he couldn't find a place to put it. No wonder it had pained Ash so much. He heard himself panting, blood from his broken nose gurgling in his throat as he gasped for breath. It seemed, for a time, that he might have sacrificed himself.

That wouldn't be so bad. But it would be better if he lived, better still if he could find a way to keep this power and use it... and with this thought, an instinct rose in him, some vestige of the dead god.

The process was violent. Stone cracked beneath his knees. Dust blew away from him in a widening circle. Thelyan intensified his attack, but Kieran ignored the cuts and blows. He tore apart the power as it came, smashed it out of alignment, forced it to follow the rules of his own mind. Sweat beaded and ran, stinging broken skin. His eyes were useless, his limbs frozen, his whole attention focused on this one task.

There was too much -- a river turned to an ocean, a bullet between the eyes, a firehose jammed down his throat -- he couldn't keep up, his brain was going to melt, it was all over --

And then it stopped. There was no more.

He opened his eyes, realized he was lying facedown on the ground. Shoving himself up to kneeling, he scraped his hands across his face, examined the mud of sweat and blood that came off. Looked around for his enemy, to see why Thelyan hadn't finished him off.

The Director was staring at him with an expression of angry awe. "How?" The one syllable was nearly a whine.

Kieran coughed his throat clear, spit, grinned. "Pure sex appeal."

Thelan made a jerky gesture dismissing this flippant answer. "It's not possible. It simply can't be done."

Laughing a bit, Kieran climbed to his feet. His pattern still wove its wall around him, but it was now thick and thorny with the new energy he'd pulled in. He could feel that Ash was alive, and no longer hurting. Weakened, maybe unconscious. But alive.

"Okay," Kieran said gamely. "It can't be done. So I didn't just do it. Damn you're dim."

"How?" Thelyan stepped forward with clenched fists, angrier by the moment. "I've studied power for centuries, and you -- but you're a primitive, a savage! Our last battle -- you couldn't adapt, you weren't smart enough, you were nothing like this, nobody should be able to do what you just did!" He pointed at Kieran, and the pointing finger shook. "You are the soul of darkness, Ka'an. You have no place in the light. How... how dare you change!"

Kieran shook his head. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, pressing hard, dragged down, felt the broken place snap right with a sharp pain behind his eyes. It was easy to trickle in just enough power to heal it. Now his voice came out right when he answered. "I'm not Ka'an, all right? I swallowed him. We fought and I won. I got some of the story from him, but not the part about you. I don't know what you guys were fighting about -- though I bet it had something to do with the fact that Ka'an was a self-involved jackass who pissed off everyone who had to deal with him. Anyway, he's dead now. Can you get that through your head? Or do we have to go around again? Because I'm game, if you wanna. But it's getting stale."

For a long moment, Thelyan just stared at him. The Director looked young, just then, with his white skin pink-blotched and his pale hair darkened with sweat and dust, straggling out of its queue and into his face. It occurred to Kieran that the body Thelyan was using couldn't be much older than Kieran was. And Thelyan must have pushed out the soul that was born in it, killed whatever towheaded boy that face would have belonged to. At this point, one more death probably mattered less than pocket change to him.

He deserved to die. He deserved to be beaten in the most humiliating way and then squashed like a bug. Kieran didn't feel like doing that, though, which didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Thelyan was apparently having the same thought. With narrowed eyes, he said, "Even if that were true, why would you want peace with me?" After a moment's pause, Thelyan's face relaxed, conflict gone. "If you're Trevarde and not Ka'an, then the beast's power is in the hands of a sexual-deviant multiple-murderer from a race of brawling, squabbling savages."

"Well." Kieran snorted, wiped clotted blood on his knuckles. His pattern spiked out all over in a forest of thorns. He heard his voice from a distance, slow and drawling. "That was kinda the wrong thing to say."

The Director moved his hands, had time for the first syllable of an attack, and then Kieran sent spikes of power shooting deep into Thelyan's shield. He aimed not for the forming spell but for the pattern itself, tearing its fabric, grasping and breaking.

Thelyan cried out and lost his spell. He wrenched at the attacking thorns, formed slicing shapes in reply. Locked together, wrestling power against power, they bent all their attention to destroying each other.