Chapter 383

strolling a few steps toward Trollmage with one hand up, palm out, lazy as a man waving at a friend across a harbour.

black-green script flickering across them and vanishing. And the air round Trollmage folding: not the hand's-breadth Vigolas meant, but everything in reach, the whole space a man writes spells in, collapsing in on itself from every side like a box being shut.

squeezed inside a fold of space no bigger than a wardrobe, the walls of it glassy and green, his arms pinned to his sides, his chin on his chest, the Codex out of reach at his hip. No room to lift a finger. No room to write. He is, for a moment, only a man.

staring at his own hand.

inside the fold, and smiling. Two fingertips, the only thing he can move, crawling up an inch along the glassy wall, trailing violet light, writing small:

MACRO : UNFOLD = 2 DAYS

The fold shudders, and opens: its sides falling outward like the sides of a crate, space springing back into place with a sound like a sail filling. Trollmage standing in the middle of it, robe smoking faintly at the hem, the crow dropping back onto his head out of the sky.

blinking. Then laughing, honestly delighted, the way he laughs at a good trick on a deck at night.

green lightning crawling up out of his collar and down both arms, the fern-shaped scar on his neck lighting emerald.

The Emerald Knuckle, thrown on purpose a full arm's length wide of the troll: a column of green fire thick as a tree trunk roaring out of his fist. And the Arena bending it: the column curving in the air like a river round a stone, swinging back, finding its mark.

Full in Trollmage's chest. The troll lifted out of his slippers and flung backward across the bark, the slippers left standing where he was.

Smurjan's head snapping back as if a fist had caught him under the chin. The crimson script across his throat flaring. One step back, for no reason at all.

Kompis, a hand flying to his face, blood running from his nose. No grey world. No Subtick. Nothing.

Vigolas sprinting across the floor toward the troll, coat flying. Trollmage on his back on the bark, smoking, the bark round him already healing over the long skid-mark he made.

touching his own jaw, frowning at it.

skidding to a stop over Trollmage, his hand going down to pull him up, and stopping an inch from the troll's fingers. Remembering. Every rescue becomes a blow. His hand hanging there, empty, shaking.

Trollmage getting up, by stages, like a mountain deciding to stand: an elbow, a knee, a long sigh, upright. Vigolas backing away from him with both hands raised. Across the floor, Smurjan, Kompis and Rougeina all looking at each other. Nobody sure why their faces have gone so pale.

Smurjan stepping in from the west, Kompis from the south, the bark between them. And out of Smurjan's shadow, rising, a one-armed woman with a red braid and a black-glass sickle, Kali, standing at his shoulder.

unslinging the gold-veined rifle from his back, Mingus pressed against his left leg. The soul-light along Ivar's barrel burning almost blue.

looking at Smurjan: at the long calm grey face, the shut third eye, the one-armed sister at his shoulder, the vast shadow behind them that is all mouth.

quieter.

rising: Bakasura, a colossal maw lifting out of the bark, its small eyes looking down at the hooded man.

raising the rifle.

sinking back into the bark, chewing thoughtfully.

the colour snapping back, lowering Ivar. A thin line of blood from his nose. Nodding slowly, as if he'd known.

slinging Ivar onto his back. Then unbuckling the bandolier with the other four, Lilla Ulv, Fru Gnista, Tyst and Bror, and laying it down on the bark, carefully, the way you'd lay down something asleep. Mingus sniffing it.

Perne at the top row lowering Fjärran's scope; Krydog at the front rail gripping the wood so hard it creaks; Roffe beside him with the empty ladle still in his hand.

Kompis walking across the bark toward Smurjan with nothing in his hands. Open palms. The hood half up. Mingus at his heel, the golden pulse line steady along the bottom of the panel.

very still, watching him come.

The third eye opening. He doesn't open it. It opens: crimson-rimmed, wide, the Wrath in him answering a man walking at him the only way Wrath knows how.

A crimson line ruling itself across the floor, perfect and straight, from Smurjan's raised palm to the exact centre of Kompis's chest. The Sightline. And Kompis walking along it, step by step, unarmed, toward the one correct strike.