take his eyes off of Master Blint. They’d already practiced with swords of several kinds, with knives of varying lengths. Sometimes they fought with the same weapon, and sometimes they’d mismatch—Master Blint taking a double-edged broadsword against a Gandian blade, or Kylar taking a stiletto against a gurka. “Anyone else would have lost the knife,” Kylar said.
“You’re not fighting anyone else.”
“I wouldn’t fight you if you were armed and I wasn’t.”
Master Blint drew back the knife and threw it past Kylar’s ear. Kylar didn’t flinch. It wasn’t that he didn’t still wonder sometimes if Master Blint was going to kill him. It was that he knew he couldn’t stop him.
When Blint attacked again, it was full speed. Kick met stop kick, punches were diverted, jabs dodged, blows absorbed against arms, legs, and hips. There were no tricks, nothing showy. Just speed.
In the midst of the flashing limbs, as usual, Kylar realized that Master Blint would win. The man was simply better than Kylar. It was usually about now that Kylar would try something desperate. Master Blint would be waiting for it.
Kylar unleashed a storm of blows, fast and light as a mountain breeze. None of them alone would hurt Master Blint even if they connected, but any would cause him to miss the next. Kylar fought faster and faster, each blow being brushed aside or only connecting with flesh tensed for the impact.
One low spear hand got through, jabbing Master Blint’s abdomen. As he hunched over involuntarily, Kylar went for the full strike on Blint’s chin—then stopped. Blint lashed up fast enough that he would have blocked the strike, but with no contact where he’d expected it, he brought the block too far and couldn’t bring his hand back before Kylar lashed his still-cocked fist at his nose.
But Kylar’s strike didn’t catch Master Blint. It was brushed aside by an unseen force like an invisible hand. Stumbling, Kylar tried to recover and block Durzo’s kick, but it blew through his hands with superhuman force. Kylar smashed into the beam behind him so hard that he heard it crack. He dropped to the ground.
“Your turn,” Blint said. “If you can’t touch me, I’ll have a special punishment for you.”
“Special punishment”? Beautiful.
Hunched on the ground with both arms throbbing, Kylar didn’t answer. He stood, but when he turned, in Blint’s place stood Logan. But the sneer on Logan’s face was all Durzo Blint. It was an illusion, an illusion seven feet tall, matching Blint’s moves precisely. Kylar kicked viciously at his knee—but his foot went right through the figure, shattering the illusion and touching nothing at all. Blint stood two feet behind it. As Kylar staggered off balance, Blint raised a hand. With a whoosh, a phantom fist shot from his hand and knocked Kylar off his feet.
Kylar bounced back to his feet in time to see Blint leap. The ceiling was twelve feet high, but Blint’s entire back hit it—and stuck to it. He started crawling, and then disappeared as shadows writhed over him and merged with the greater darkness of the ceiling. First Kylar could hear Blint moving to a spot above him, then the sound cut off abruptly. Blint’s Talent was covering even the scuffing sound of brushing against wood.
Moving constantly, Kylar searched the ceiling for any shadow out of place.
“Scarred Wrable can even throw his voice, or any other sound,” Blint said, from the far corner of the ceiling. “I wonder if you could.”
Kylar saw, or thought he saw, the shadow moving back toward him. He flung a throwing knife at the shadow—and it burst apart, leaving his knife quivering in the wood. It was another illusion. Kylar turned slowly, trying to hear the slightest sound out of place over the pounding of his heart.
The slight brush of cloth hitting the floor behind him made him spin and lash out. But there was nothing there except Blint’s tunic in a pile on the floor. A thump announced Blint himself landing behind Kylar. Kylar spun once more, but something caught his left hand, then his right.
Master Blint stood bare-chested, a dead look in his eyes, his real hands at his sides. Kylar’s wrists were held in the air by magic. Slowly, his arms were pulled apart until he was spread-eagled, then further. Kylar held his silence for as long as he could, then screamed as he felt his joints on the verge of dislocating.
The bonds dropped and Kylar crumpled, defeated.
Durzo shook his head in disappointment—and Kylar attacked. His kick