Page 71 of Shroud of Eternity (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles 2)

“But friends don’t,” Bannon said. He held his arms out, raising Sturdy with its point turned away. “I’m your friend, Ian. We were friends. Do you remember Chiriya Island?”

“No one wants to hear you talk,” Adessa said. “Demonstrate your skills, or your failings.”

“But…” Bannon looked at the morazeth leader. “I have a sword. I could kill him. He just has a club.”

“If you can kill my champion, then he is worthless to me, and I will just take another lover,” she said. “Do not be fooled. The knout can be just as deadly as a sword. Ian can batter you to death with a sharp edge, or just bruise you with the leather-wrapped parts. The choice is his—and yours, boy. Can you defend yourself?”

Bannon glanced at Adessa, then at Lila, seeking some escape while trying to find words. In that moment, Ian moved like an arrow launched from a bow. Making no sound or threat, he lunged, swept back his arm, and swung the knout with all the strength he possessed.

Bannon saw him just in time, twisted out of the way, and brought Sturdy up so that the sword blade deflected some of the force. The club’s sharp edge grazed his shoulder, and Bannon realized it would have been a killing blow if he hadn’t dodged in time.

He staggered backward, whirling to face his opponent. He heard the morazeth muttering, critiquing, some cheering, others jeering. Lila’s sharp voice cut through them all. “Fight, boy! Disappoint me at your peril!”

Bannon braced himself, and Ian paced back and forth, studying him. He shifted the knout from one shoulder to the other. His gray eyes darted.

“Ian, I’m sorry!” Bannon said.

The words seemed to trigger the other young man. Ian strode toward him, sweeping the knout down toward his head. Bannon swung Sturdy up to meet the heavy wooden club, and the blow rang through his wrists and arms all the way up to his shoulder. He yelled in pain, stumbled back, and Ian kept coming.

Bannon parried with his sword, using every skill that Nathan had taught him during their training sessions. “I don’t want to hurt you, Ian.”

The young man’s lips curled back. “Fighters fight.” He drew a quick breath. “Cowards die.”

“I’m sorry, Ian,” Bannon cried again. “I mean it. I shouldn’t have run. I shouldn’t have let the Norukai have you.” Anger flared across Ian’s face, and he swung the knout again, battering Bannon. Sturdy’s sharp edge shaved off splinters of the wood, gouged notches into the club, but the blows themselves nearly broke Bannon’s wrists.

“You talk too much,” Adessa called.

Her words only hardened the determination. “I talk because I have something to say to him,” Bannon snapped. He softened his voice even as the wooden club smashed against the sword. “Do you remember when we collected shells on the beach or picked crabs from the tide pools?” He watched for any flicker of memory on Ian’s scarred face. “Remember when we found caterpillars on the cabbages and raised them until they hatched into white butterflies?”

Ian swung, his face blank, and Bannon raised the sword to block the club. “Remember it, Ian! I know you remember it.”

“I remember the Norukai,” he said, and struck again harder. The knout slid down the sword and struck him on the right bicep, leaving what would surely be a purple bruise within days—if Bannon survived.

“Do you remember the stray dog we fed? How we collected scraps and gave them to him every night, until my father caught me?” Dark wings of memory fluttered around his vision. “I paid dearly for that.”

His father had beaten him so badly he could barely get out of bed for days. His body was so mottled with bruises he had been ashamed to show himself, and his father had told the other people in the town that Bannon suffered from a bad fever. Ian had come to check on him, worried about his friend.

The champion faltered. “I fed him for that week when you were in bed. Then he ran away.”

“I’m sorry,” Bannon said again. “When I learned you were here in Ildakar, I came to save you. I tried to get you free.”

“He is free—free to be a fighter!” Adessa said.

“I am free to die in the arena.” Ian’s expression became wooden again, and he flashed forward, swinging the club.

Bannon braced himself, blocked the blows.

Lila removed her agile knife, holding the black handle in the hand of her unbandaged arm. “If you don’t draw blood, boy, I will make you feel more pain than you have ever before enjoyed.”

“I don’t enjoy pain,” Bannon said.

“Then fight!” Lila cried.

He drove himself forward, hoping to somehow render Ian senseless so this combat would end. He swung his sword, imagining not his warm boyhood friend, not the companion who had roamed across the island with him.

Ian swung the knout sideways like a mallet, trying to crush Bannon’s ribs, but he spun out of the way, his muscles oiled with the heat of the battle. Blow met blow. The knout was splintered, and Sturdy’s edge was dulled. Bannon thought of how he had chopped the testing block to pieces in the swordsmith’s backyard in Tanimura.

“I’m sorry, Ian,” he said again. He saw an opening, his friend’s head exposed, and he turned the sword, using the flat of the blade. He knew this was how it had to be. He could stun Ian, end this combat. He saw the sword descend with plodding slowness, moving through the air like thick honey toward the curve of Ian’s skull.

At the last instant, his friend somehow moved with the speed and grace of a coiled whip. The knout slithered up, deflected the blade, and twisted Bannon’s wrist. He gasped in pain, spun, and tried to dodge, unable to believe that he had missed his target.

Then the knout came up and around faster than Bannon could react, faster than his eyes could even process the blur. He had no breath with which to cry out. From the corner of his eye he watched the deadly club hurtle toward the side of his head. Only at the last instant did the square club rotate slightly so that the splintered edge turned and the leather-wrapped section smashed the side of Bannon’s skull, just above his ear.

The explosion of blackness engulfed him and sucked him down into a bottomless pit of pain.

CHAPTER 55

Full darkness fell over the city. When the duma members declared a rare nighttime session to discuss the damage done by the rebels, Nicci decided not to wait any longer. She chose her moment—this would be the time.

She was on her own here in Il

dakar, and she knew it, but she was never helpless.

Nicci had slain wizards before. She had proven herself again and again. Though she was wary about how Lani had failed in her challenge a century ago, Nicci knew she was more powerful than Thora, and she would demonstrate it.

“I am an enemy unlike any you have ever seen before,” she muttered to herself as she climbed the stairs of the ruling tower. When she reached the throne chamber, the sovrena and the wizard commander sat on their tall chairs while the remaining duma members—Andre, Elsa, Quentin, and Damon—had taken their places.

Nicci kept thinking of Mrra now imprisoned in a cage with the other combat animals. Nathan remained stretched out in the fleshmancer’s studio, breathing, but lost in his coma. They were trapped beneath the shroud that contained all the people of Ildakar, the shroud created when Thora had butchered those twelve poor slaves on the stair-stepped pyramid.

As Nicci walked into the open chamber with the tall windows that looked out to the glittering city buildings far below, she felt the fire within her.

And the Sorceress must save the world.

Perhaps the world didn’t need saving—Richard had already done that, far to the north. But the city of Ildakar certainly needed something. It needed her. She was Death’s Mistress. She would be sufficient.

Stepping forward into full view, Nicci concentrated on her gift, feeling all the powers and abilities she had gathered over the years, spells she had learned, tactics and techniques. The air crackled like an aura around her. The fabric of her dark skirts flowed and stirred. Her loose blond hair drifted faintly as if charged with a building storm.

The morazeth Adessa stood beside the raised dais, watchful, as if she guarded the sovrena like a pet hound. The hardened warrior woman looked at Nicci, did not seem impressed.

Wizard Commander Maxim perked up on his throne as Nicci arrived, and a satisfied smile crossed his face. Sovrena Thora scowled at the interruption, and her sea-green eyes drank in Nicci’s demeanor. “Sorceress, you are presumptuous to intrude on our meeting. You already interfered enough today.”

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