Air currents began to stir, powered by the Logrus, almost immediately achieving gale force and sending the flames back away from me. I adjusted my position then so that they were blown toward the wizard upstairs. Instantly, he gestured, and the flames fell back within the fountain, sub- . siding to the barest glowing trickle.
Okay. A draw. I had not come here to have it out with this guy. I had come to finesse Luke by rescuing Jasra on my own. Once she was my prisoner, Amber would sure as hell be safe from anything Luke had in mind. I found myself wondering, though, about this wizard, as my winds died down and the chuckle came again: Was he using spells, as I was? Or, living in the midst of a power source such as this, was he able to control the forces directly and shape them as he chose? If it were the latter, which I suspected, then he had a virtually inexhaustible source of tricks up his sleeve, so that in any full-scale competition on his turf I would eventually be reduced to flight or to calling in the nukes-that is, summoning Chaos itself to utterly reduce everything in the area-and this was a thing I was not about to do, destroying all the mysteries, including that of the wizard’s identity, rather than solving them for answers that might be essential to Amber’s well-being.
A shining metallic spear materialized in midair before the wizard, hung a moment, then flashed toward me. I used my second defensive spell, summoning a shield that turned it aside.
The only alternative I could see to my dueling with spells or blasting the place with Chaos would be for me to learn to control the forces here myself and try beating this guy at his own game. No time for practice now, though; I’d a job to do as soon as I could buy a few moments in which to get it done. Sooner or later, however, it seemed that we would have to have a full confrontation-since he seemed to have it in for me, and may well even have been the motive force behind the attack by the clumsy werewolf in the woods.
And I was not hot on taking chances to explore the power here further at this point-not if Jasra had been good enough to beat the original master of this place, Sharu Garrul, and then this guy had been good enough to beat Jasra. I’d give a lot, though, to know why he had it in for me….
So, “What do you want, anyway?” I called out.
Immediately, that metallic voice replied, “Your blood, your soul, your mind and your body.”
“What about my stamp collection?” I hollered back. “Do I get to keep the First Day Covers?”
I moved over beside Jasra and threw my right arm about her shoulders.
“What do you want with that one, funny man?” the wizard asked. “She is the most worthless property in this place.”
“Then why should you object to my taking her off your hands?”
“You collect stamps. I collect presumptuous sorcerers. She’s mine, and you’re next.”
I felt the power rising against me again even as I shouted, “What have you got against your brothers and sisters in the Art?”
There was no reply, but the air about me was suddenly filled with sharp, spinning shapes-knives, ax blades, throwing stars, broken bottles. I spoke the word for my final defense, the Curtain of Chaos, raising a chittering, smoky screen about us. The sharp items hurtling in our direction were instantly reduced to cosmic dust on coming into contact with it.
Above the din of this engagement I cried out; “By what name shall I call you?”
“Mask!” was the wizard’s immediate reply-not very original, I thought. I’d half expected a John D. MacDonald appellation-Nightmare Mauve or Cobalt Casque, perhaps. Oh, well.
I had just used my last defensive spell. I had also just raised my left arm so that that portion of my sleeve bearing the Amber Trump now hung within my field of vision. I had cut things a bit fine, but I had not yet played my full hand. So far, I had run a completely defensive show, and I was rather proud of the spell I had kept in reserve.