An invisible force flung her backward. Olvir froze, hearing a steam-on-metal hiss fill the air, watching as Vivian fell sprawling on the ground.
“We had to have that demonstration, didn’t we?” the mage asked, turning its head so that its twitching sockets were facing Olvir. “I promise I can do the same to you. I offer conversation, not battle.”
Valiant denial was the proper response. Half of Olvir’s attention was occupied with watching to see if Vivian was still breathing, though, and so the first thing he said was a question. “How did you get here before us?”
It shrugged what weren’t quite shoulders any longer. “I had no need to cower from the cold.”
“Yes,” Vivian grunted, pushing herself up on an elbow. “Stolen lives would keep you fairly warm, wouldn’t they?”
Olvir’s chest unlocked when he heard her voice. He doubted that his own sword, skillfully forged and blessed as it was, would get through the barrier that had stopped Ulamir, so he waited. He noticed a mound of dirt behind the wizard: had the creature brought its sources of power and sacrificed them while it waited for Vivian and Olvir to arrive? Or was another scheme in play?
“I claimed my rights. You couldn’t understand,” it said to Vivian, and then, to Olvir, “but I am sent to offer you the chance to do so.”
“To understand?”
“To understand a great deal.” The Twisted mage’s mouth opened a little wider, lamprey-like. It seemed to be what passed for a grin. “Our Lord has many things to show you and many rewards for those who will work to bring the proper order to the world. You claim to serve justice. Through Our Lord and his high priest, you will be able to see its true form.”
Communication was flowing quickly between Vivian and Ulamir. Olvir hoped one of them had an idea that hadn’t occurred to him.
Vivian was on her feet. That gave Olvir a coherent plan: buy time.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but what I’ve seen of how your lord treats his servants doesn’t appeal to me. Would I be…reshaped…as you and your fellows were?”
It huffed in disgust, a phlegmy sound through its mouth. “Shallow, shallow. Appearance is nothing, a bauble for those who fail to respect true strength.” The creature cocked its malformed head, thinking or listening to silent instructions. “Still, arrangements could be made.”
“Would you—could you—guarantee that?” As Vivian reached Olvir’s side, her gaze switched quickly between him and the mage, and she appeared equally dubious about both of them. Olvir saw her fingers tighten on Ulamir’s hilt. “Would I have your oath, and Thyran’s, that I would remain alive and in my current form if I gave him my loyalty?”
“You presume yourself clever in your corruption,” the mage spat.
“Only cautious.”
There was another of those silent moments, which were starting to make Olvir as wary as the thing’s speech did. “I would swear it in his name, on the right hand of Gizath,” it gurgled at last. “I can’t break such vows without severe consequences, and those would fall, too, on any who broke them for me.”
Agreeing, then maneuvering Thyran into a position where he broke his own oath, had a brief mad appeal. A Blade could have done it, maybe, or a wizard, or somebody raised in court politics and intrigue. Olvir had grown up with truth, justice, and goals. His talents lay along a more straightforward path.
“Then my terms are these,” he said. “Thyran surrenders himself to the Order of the Dawn, to Letar’s Blades, or to Tinival’s Knights, whichever he can find first. He comes alone, wearing nothing but cloth with no magic about it, gagged and with his hands bound behind him. He submits to the judgment of those he has wronged and makes proper amends—by which I mean that he lays his head on the block so that the Dark Lady can give his wretched excuse for a soul some manner of its just deserts.”
It might be his last speech, Olvir knew. He remembered the tree and the fire, and the idea made him sick, but that was all remote. The words were immediate. So was the power he felt pouring through him as he spoke, a steady and quickening beat, and the sword solid in his hand.
Anger on the Twisted mages looked no different from other emotion, but the wizard made another of the disgusted sounds again, only longer. “I expected no different,” it said. “Be cleansed, then, as the world will be.”
Sickly fire flew from its upraised fingers toward Olvir. He dodged to the side opposite Vivian’s, knowing that he’d be too slow without a Sentinel’s speed and that he had no soulsword to protect him.
A glow the color of the summer sky surrounded the writhing gray-orange shapes, then closed on them, snuffing the Traitor God’s force out as if it had never been.
Olvir heard the mage snarl in anger, but that was of little concern. Awe gripped him instead, and gratitude.
Very distantly, he heard a great voice:Fair is fair, and realized that its owner wasn’t talking to him.
* * *
She had her answer for the moment.
The ground was cold and damp beneath Vivian’s stomach, and a rock had caught her just above the right hip. Still her mind was full of Olvir’s speech and of the blue light that had shielded him from the wizard’s power.
Tinival trusted His servant, it seemed.
With luck, that would let her do more than die relieved.
