CHAPTER 12
Jurt had never played football. I do not believe he expected me to come up fast and rush him; and when it happened, I don't think he anticipated my coming in as low as I did.
And as for clipping him just above the knees and knocking him back through the opening in the railing, I'm sure he was surprised. At least he looked surprised as he went over backward and plummeted, sparks still dancing at his fingertips.
I heard Jasra chuckle, even as he faded in mid-fall and vanished before the floor got to spread him around a bit. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw her rise.
"I'll deal with him now," she said, and, "No problem. He's clumsy," even as he appeared at the head of the stair to her right. "You take care of Mask!"
Mask was on the opposite side of the black stone fountain, staring up at me through an orange and red geyser of flames. Below, in the basin, the fires rippled yellow and white. When he scooped up a handfiil and worked them together as a child might shape a snowball, they became an incandescent blue. Then he threw it at me.
I sent it past with a simple parry. This was not Art, it was basic energy work. But it served as a reminder, even as I saw Jasra perform the preliminary gestures to a dangerous spell purely as a feint, bringing her near enough to Jurt to trip him, pushing him backward down the stair.
Not Art. Whoever enjoyed the luxury of living near and utilizing a power source such as this would doubtless get very sloppy as time went on, only using the basic frames of spells as guides, running rivers of power through them. One untutored, or extremely lazy, might possibly even dispense with that much after a time and play directly with the raw forces, a kind of shamanism, as opposed to the Higher Magic's purity-like that of a balanced equation-producing a maximum effect from a minimum of effort.
Jasra knew this. I could tell she'd received formal training somewhere along the line. That much was to the good anyway, I decided as I parried another ball of fire and moved to my left.
I began descending the stair-sideways-never taking my gaze off Mask. I was ready to defend or to strike in an instant.
The railing began to glow before me, then it burst into flame. I retreated a pace and continued my descent. Hardly worth wasting a spell to douse it. It was obviously meant for show rather than damage...
Well...
There was another possibility, I realized then, as I saw that Mask was simply watching me, was making no move to throw anything else in my direction.
It could also be a test. Mask might simply be attempting to discover whether I was limited to whatever spells I had brought with me-or whether I had learned to tap the power source here directly and would shortly be slugging things out with him as Jurt and Jasra were now obviously preparing to do. Good. Let him wonder. A finite number of spells against a near-limitless source of energy?
Jurt suddenly appeared upon a windowsill, high and to my left. He had time only for a brief frown before a curtain of fire was rung down upon him. Both he and the curtain were gone a moment later, and I heard Jasra's laughter and his curse, followed by a crashing noise off to the other side of the chamber.
As I moved to descend another step, the stairway faded from view. Suspecting illusion, I continued the slow downward movement of my foot. I encountered nothing, though, and finally extended my stride to pass over the gap and on down to the next stair. It also vanished, howevex, as I shifted my weight. There came a chuckle from Mask as I turned my movement into a leap to avoid the area. Once I was committed to jumping, the stairs winked out one by one as I passed over them.
I was certain Mask's thinking must be- that if I had a handle on the local power, reflex would cause me to betray that connection here. And if I didn't it might still cause me to waste an escape spell.
But I judged the distance to the now-visible floor. If no more stairs van…
