It was uncomplicated, that spell. True, it had required a sorceress of remarkable skill to create it, especially on such short notice, but that was only because of the sheer power levels involved. As far as complexity went, it was about as subtle as a meat axe. When Wencit stepped fully into the intersection, the stone above him simply shattered. They were deep inside the hill, under well over two hundred feet of solid rock and earth, and Tremala's spell split that massive overburden like a sledgehammer splitting slate. It collapsed, countless tons of stone and dirt crashing down in a precisely shaped and controlled avalanche, and Wencit of Rūm stood at its very focus.

Tremala's lips drew back in a predatory snarl of triumph. Visions of Carnadosa's reaction, the power and rewards awaiting the person who finally killed Kontovar's most ancient and dangerous foe, flashed through her mind. But Wencit never even glanced up. His wildfire eyes never looked away from her, and the soaring exultation of her triumph became something else entirely as he showed her the difference between even the most powerful wand sorceress and a wild wizard.

The hundreds of tons hammering down upon him suddenly stopped. A sphere of light, blazing with the same rippling colors as his eyes, erupted from the very air about him. It wrapped itself around him, then roared up with volcanic power. It caught Tremala's avalanche, stopped it in midair, and then-effortlessly-exploded upward in an eruption of wild magic that dwarfed anything Tremala had ever imagined. The rock and soil she'd turned into her weapon vomited heavenward. He didn't simply stop the avalanche, didn't merely turn it aside. Tremala's spell had worked with the natural force of gravity; Wencit's spell made gravity irrelevant, and rock dust sifted down as he blasted a two-hundred-foot deep pit out of the shuddering hillside above them.

Tremala's jaw dropped as she abruptly found herself standing under the open sky at the bottom of a vast, cone-shaped shaft open to the stormy skies above. Whips of lightning scourged the heavens, solid sheets of rain pounded down, and thunder rumbled like the wrath of Tomanâk himself. The shaft walls were smooth as glass, fused and polished by the searing breath of the wild magic, and cold rain steamed gently as it sluiced down them. It was forty feet across at the base, and at least three times that at its top, and the sorceress' skin tingled and crackled with the echoes of Wencit's spell.

No, not his "spell," she realized numbly. That wasn't a spell at all. It was just raw, focused power, ripped straight from the magic field itself.

No wand wizard could have done it. Power levels like that required exquisitely careful manipulation, with every possible safeguard in place. But Wencit had used none of them. He'd simply reached out to the energy from which the entire universe had been woven, and channeled it through the power of his will. She'd always known that that ability to seize the magic field by the throat was what truly made a wild wizard, but she'd never actually seen it, and the knowledge which had always been theoretical had not prepared her for the actuality.

A few pebbles pattered to the tunnel floor, and the last drift of rock dust settled, sifting over Tremala's riding habit like flour and drifting about her ankles like sharp, dusty-smelling fog. Raindrops came tumbling down, splashing the dust on her riding habit with large, dark circles, and Wencit looked at her.

"That was a formidable spell, My Lady," he said quietly. Fresh thunder crashed overhead, but the sound was distant somehow, perfecting the intense, ringing silence rather than breaking it. "Not many wand wizards could have cast it that quickly and that well."

"Apparently," she heard her own voice say, "it wasn't cast quite quickly and well enough."

"Apparently," he agreed. She glanced over her shoulder at the tunnel where she'd left her armsmen, but the tunnel wasn't there anymore. She saw only a smooth surface of stone, as solid as if the tunnel had never existed, and she looked back at Wencit.

"Doesn't that constitute a rather severe breach of your precious Strictures?" she asked.

"By no means." Wencit smiled. "I could have allowed just enough of your avalanche to rebound up the tunnel to crush them all to death. After all, I wasn't the one who created it, was I? But I didn't. They're all just fine on the other side of that wall. Of course," his smiled turned colder, "that also means they're on the same side of it as your friend Garsalt and Cherdahn."

Tremala stiffened, her expression shocked, as he spoke those names.

"How-?" she began, but Wencit only shook his head.

"I'm afraid time is short, My Lady. Your curiosity will have to remain unsatisfied, I fear."

He raised his hand, and a spray of wildfire erupted upward from it. It reached up, then flowed outward to form an arching dome. The sides of that dome spilled back downward, falling like curtains woven of rainbows until they touched the stone floor, and Tremala of Kontovar found herself enclosed within a glorious canopy of light . . . with Wencit of Rūm.

"A formal duel?" She heard the slight quaver of fear she couldn't quite keep out of her voice, and it humiliated her. But Wencit didn't seem to notice. He merely bowed gravely to her, and she swallowed hard.

In its way, the offer of an arcane duel was both a compliment and a mercy, although she had to admit that it was a bit hard to see it that way just at the moment.

At least the wild magic is quick, she told herself, and, gathering all her courage, stepped out into the center of Wencit's canopy of light to face him.

He waited for her with a sort of merciless courtesy, and she reached into the sleeve of her riding habit and extracted her wand. Wencit only stood there, hands empty, waiting, and she frowned. There was something about him, something that grew stronger as she stepped closer.

No, she realized. It wasn't growing stronger because she was closer; it was growing stronger because he'd allowed it to. Or, rather, because he'd allowed the glamour no Carnadosan had ever even suspected existed to weaken briefly, let her see what lay locked away within it.

Her eyes narrowed, then dropped to the sword at his side and widened in sudden, shocked understanding. No wonder he knew so much, had managed to predict so many attacks so accurately!

"My compliments, Wencit," she heard herself say. "I've always wondered how even a wild wizard could see the future as accurately as you've always managed. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity after all."

He bowed slightly, then straightened.

"My name," he said in flawless ancient Kontovaran, "is Wencit of Rūm, and by my paramount authority as Lord of the Council of Ottovar, I judge thee guilty of offense against the Strictures. Wouldst thou defend thyself, or must I slay thee where thou standest?"

Tremala didn't reply to the formal indictment and challenge. Not in words, at any rate. The tradition that the first blow in any arcane duel belonged to the weaker of the opponents, unless he chose not to take it, was more ancient even than the Strictures themselves. Tremala had come to realize in the last few moments just how hopeless her plight truly was, but whatever her other sins, cowardice was not among them. A sorceress she had lived; a sorceress she would die, and her wand swept up spitting livid green lightnings.

They ripped through the air towards Wencit like living serpents, and he raised his hand. It was a simple gesture, but Tremala cried out as her lightnings shattered against his raised palm and the back blast blew her wand into a hundred smoking fragments.

She stood there, clutching her wrist in her other hand, bent over the sudden pain where the exploding wand had stung her hand. She cradled it against her breasts, then made her spine straighten and looked levelly at Wencit.