Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,67

mouse, and crushed me.

I guess I was about 70 percent dead when I remembered: I know what to do. I drew a rather shaky second ward; he closed his fingers on thin air, and I was standing behind him.

He swung around, roaring like a bull. He had bull’s horns sticking out of his forehead. I tried second ward again, but he got there before I did, grabbed my head, and smashed my face into the wall.

Just in time, I remembered: there is no pain. I used Small Mercies, softening the wall into felt, and slipped through his fingers. I was smoke. I hung above him in a cloud. He laughed, and fetched me back with vis mentis. The back of my head hit the floor, which gave way like a mattress. I became a spear, and buried myself in his chest. He used second ward and was on the other side of the room.

“You fight like a first-year,” he said.

Which was true. I clenched my mind like a fist; the walls closed in on him, squashing him like a spider under a boot. I felt him, like a nail right through the sole. Back to first ward, and we stood glowering at each other, in opposite corners of the room.

“You can’t beat me,” he said. “I’ll wear you down and you’ll simply fade away. Face it, what the hell have you got to live for?”

Valid point. “All right, then,” I said.

His eyes opened wide. “I win?”

“You win,” I said.

He was pleased; very pleased. He grinned at me and raised his hand, just as I got my fingers around the handle of the door and twisted as hard as I could.

He saw that and opened his mouth to scream. But the door flew open, knocking me back. I closed my eyes. The door was, of course, the intersection of two lines drawn diagonally across the room, at 105 and 75 degrees precisely.

I opened my eyes. He’d gone. I was in the boy’s room, the room upstairs. The boy was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, hands under his chin. He looked up at me.

“Well, come on,” I snapped at him. “I haven’t got all day.”

They were pathetically grateful. Mother in floods of tears, father clinging to my arm, how can we ever thank you, it’s a miracle, you’re a miracle-worker. I wasn’t in the mood. The boy, lying on the kitchen table under a pile of blankets, looked up at me and frowned, as though something about me wasn’t quite right. A quiet, analytical stare; it bothered the hell out of me. I refused food and drink and made father get out the pony and trap and take me out to the crossroads. But the mail won’t be arriving for six hours, he objected; it’s cold and dark, you’ll catch your death.

I didn’t feel cold.

At the crossroads, huddling under the smelly old hat father insisted on giving me, I tried to search my mind, to see if he’d really gone. There was, of course, no way he could have survived. I’d opened the door (Rule One: never open the door) and he’d been sucked out of my head out into the open, where there was no talented mind to receive him. Even if he was as strong as he’d claimed to be, there was no way he could have lasted more than three seconds before he broke up and dissipated into the air. There was absolutely nothing he could have done, no way he could have survived.

The coach arrived. I got on it, and slept all the way. At the inn, I got a lamp and a mirror, and examined myself all over. Just when I thought I was all clear, I found a patch of purple skin, about the size of a crab apple, on the calf of my left leg. I told myself it was just a bruise.

(That was a year ago. It’s still there.)

The rest of the round was just straightforward stuff: a possession, a small rift, a couple of incursions, which I sealed with a strong closure and duly reported when I got back. Since then, I’ve volunteered for a screening, been to see a couple of counselors, bought a pair of full-length mirrors. And I’ve been promoted; field officer, superior grade. They’re quite pleased with me, and no wonder. I seem to be getting better at the job all the time. And I’m writing a paper, would you believe: modifications to unam sanctam. Quicker, safer, much