Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [163]
Nevyn struck first with a wave of light that made Alastyr bob and float like a bit of jetsam on the sea. He thrust again, sending his enemy swooping up, but as he followed, he felt Alastyr’s own forces working on him—a decay, as if a thousand claws pulled at him and tried to tear him apart. Much of his will was diverted to keeping his simulacrum together, pulling down more and more light and building it up as fast as Alastyr could rend it. The rest of his power went for attack, a rain of golden arrows and long spears that drove Alastyr this way and that as Nevyn circled round, edging, pressing him with light that beat against the darkness and shrank it back.
His whole strategy was to force Alastyr out of the blue light and into the first sphere of the Inner Lands proper, where he would have mightier forces to command. As yet Alastyr was too strong. The dark eyes within the hood burned and raged. Nevyn kept hammering him, striking with spears of light, while Alastyr sent out wave after wave of darkness to claw and bite him in return. When Nevyn struck hard enough to tear some of the pompous sigils off the black robe, Alastyr howled like an animal and pulled back. Nevyn risked trying to build a gate behind him, using part of his will to pin the dark enemy and part to open a path to the Inner Lands. Too soon—Alastyr slipped away and sent out a flood of darkness like a wild sea.
For a moment Nevyn plunged and fell. He felt his simulacrum loosening around him like a slipped cloak and desperately called upon the Light. All he could do was struggle to heal himself and fend off the worst of Alastyr’s blows as the dark enemy pressed in closer and closer. Like boulders of palpable darkness the blows hit home. All at once Nevyn saw the water veil over the stream coming closer, too close! He wrenched around and flew up fast, dodging past before a startled Alastyr could react. Yet he’d barely repaired his shattered body of light when the enemy was after him with a darkness like a spew of poison.
Straight into his face Nevyn hurled a wall of light that tore and dissolved the severed heads on his kirtle, yet he could feel himself weakening as the enemy pressed ever on, the darkness pouring from twisted hands. All at once Alastyr screamed, the thought-sound echoing in the blue light, and swooped this way and that like a swallow coursing a field for gnats. Below him his silver cord lay dangled, broken. Someone had killed his physical body, and Nevyn could only assume that it was Jill or even Blaen.
But there was no time to indulge his shock at this unexpected aid. Alastyr’s simulacrum was breaking up, revealing the pale-blue etheric double underneath. While the dark master fought against the inevitable decay, Nevyn built up a gate to the Inner Lands, two pillars, one black, one white, with an indigo void between them. As soon as they held steady, he sent a blast of light that shoved Alastyr through, then rushed after. Although he’d lost the first battle, the enemy was far from crushed, and Nevyn knew it.
Nevyn threw himself through the gate after the fleeing dark master, both of them rushing, gliding, falling down the path, blown like scraps of parchment on a livid indigo wind, while all around them were voices, laughter and screaming and torn scraps of words blown past them on the indigo flood, and images—faces, beasts, stars—swirling and beating against them like a flock of manic birds. Nevyn threw waves of light ahead of him, pounding