Had Nenavar’s Lightweavers suffered the same fate as the ones on the Continent? Had they all been eradicated?
Talasyn cautiously walked beneath a vine-entangled, half-toppled entrance arch and down a cracked passageway lined by pillars etched with intricate reliefs that she would otherwise have paused to examine, but she was focused on the nearby nexus point. Its pull on her soul was magnetic. It called to her like the monsoon winds.
The shrine was vast. A complex rather than a single building: snaking halls and rubble-strewn chambers, the doors of which had collapsed long ago. She negotiated her way through the debris and stepped out into a courtyard the size of a stormship hangar. It was open to the sky but already reclaimed by the wilderness, dozens of those enormous old-man trees having anchored themselves firmly in what was left of the stone facade, their thick roots and myriad grasping arms choking out the paved floor and the surrounding walls and rooftops. The seven moons circled the heavens, raining down a light that was as bright as day.
She ventured further in. At the center of the courtyard, amidst the tangle of shrubs and tree roots and overgrown grass, stood an enormous fountain, which was the only structure that appeared untouched by the passage of time and whatever destruction had befallen the complex. It was carved from sandstone, built around a depression in the flooring as wide as several trees clumped together, its spouts fashioned to look like snakes—or maybe dragons, she realized as she peered at it more closely.
This was undoubtedly the location of the Light Sever. Talasyn’s every instinct screamed that it was so. The magic sang to her veins from behind the veil of aetherspace. She just had to wait for it to break through again.
“There you are,” a familiar voice rasped behind her. The unmistakable shriek of the Shadowgate flaring to life shattered the still air.
Talasyn didn’t freeze even as the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t waste a single second, transmuting her cutlass into a poleaxe and spinning on her heel, leaping straight at the tall figure clad in black and crimson standing several paces away. Her wide blade caught in the prongs of a shadowy trident, light to darkness, the resulting sparks glinting off Alaric Ossinast’s narrowed silver eyes and his obsidian mask carved into a wolf’s fanged snarl.
They’d met like this on the ice floes a fortnight ago, and he’d been a tight coil of menace and determination while she had been scared out of her wits. But this time was different—this time, she wasn’t afraid.
This time, she was angry.
Talasyn set upon the Kesathese prince in a barrage of short, quick strikes that drove him backward even as he deflected with masterful swiftness. She was hoping to corner him against one of the pillars, but he managed to sidestep around her, bringing the trident down over her shoulder. She slanted her own weapon at a defensive angle, and her teeth rang from the force of his blow.
“You’ve been practicing,” he told her.
She blinked at him through the haze of their intersected magic.
“There is some improvement in your combat technique, I mean,” he clarified.
“I know what you meant,” she snapped. “Do you make it a habit to compliment everyone who’s trying to kill you?”
“Not everyone.” His eyes flashed with a hint of amusement. “Just you. And that was hardly a compliment—I’m merely relieved that you’re much more interesting to duel now.”
She pushed against him with a newfound burst of strength, sparked by her ire, and she managed to slip free of the blade-lock. Once more they waltzed, in flashes of gold and midnight, over the stone and the roots, through the warm moonlit evening.
Talasyn didn’t want to think about how she was almost enjoying this. There was something to be said about letting her magic run free in this wild and ancient place. There was something to be said about testing her mettle against a man like Alaric, and making him break a sweat even as she fought for her life.
But she wasn’t supposed to be feeling anything remotely close to enjoyment. He was in her way; he was wasting her time.
Their weapons caught and held once more.
“How are you even here?” she demanded. She wasn’t enthused about how shrilly the words emerged from her lips, but she was so annoyed with him. And he was standing incredibly close to her. “How did you find me?”
“You have a traitor in your ranks.” He said it matter-of-factly, and that was somehow so much worse than if he’d been smug. “Your people are switching sides because they know that the war is already lost.”
“Calm down, it was only one person,” she retorted even as she wondered with no small amount of alarm who it could be. Someone close to Bieshimma or the Amirante, no doubt, for them to know about her mission and to have acquired a copy of the map— but she would deal with that later. She had to finish this first. The fact that Alaric had allowed such information to slip meant that he didn’t intend for her to make it back to the Continent and alert her superiors. She was going to enjoy foiling that particular plan of his.
Talasyn kneed Alaric in the stomach, taking advantage of his momentary falter to put some distance between them, couching her limbs into a two-handed guard with her blade held to the right side of her body.
“I must admit that I went too easy on you, back on the lake.” Alaric assumed an opening stance of his own, the hilt of the trident angled to the ground, his feet closely spaced. “You have proven to be far too much trouble. Consider my misplaced compassion formally rescinded.”
“You and I have very different definitions of compassion.”
When they crashed into each other again, it was vicious and relentless, both of them going straight for the kill with each strike. The shrine’s ancient stone foundations shook and the jungle was ablaze with sound and fury. When they skidded apart after another exchange of blows, Alaric’s gauntleted hand stretched out and unleashed tendrils of the Shadowgate to constrict around Talasyn’s waist, lifting her off her feet and hauling her toward the screeching edges of the trident. Summoning all of her strength, she twisted her body in midair so that she slammed into him instead; his weapon and the crackling tendrils vanished as he landed hard on the floor of the courtyard, flat on his back with her straddling his hips, her poleaxe transmuting into a dagger that she held to his throat.
“Who is the traitor?” she growled.
Alaric’s fingers twitched. With a mighty groan, the tree looming over them from one of the rooftops was ripped apart by splinters of shadow magic. What was left of the trunk came toppling down over their heads, and Talasyn instinctively made to get out of the way—but, the moment the dagger was lifted from his neck, Alaric surged upwards, rolling her over and to the side. The light-woven dagger disappeared from her grasp and the ground shook as the dislodged tree slammed into the spot where they had been a scant half-second ago.
Now the one on her back, Talasyn glared up at the impassive, half-shrouded face above her. “You could have killed us both!”
“Given our respective objectives, it would probably save a lot of time if we died together,” Alaric mused.
“You talk too much.” Her fingers scrabbled over the stone tiles as she readied to conjure another weapon, but he was having none of it. He pinned her wrists to the floor with heavy hands, the sharp points of his clawed gauntlets raking into her skin.