Blood of Amber

But I was gone, circling him, dropping and rotating erect. I cut at his own exposed shoulder but was out of range. Despil, on his beachball-sized stone, was circling also, far to my right, while my own second - Mandor high above, was dropping quickly. We clung to our small stones with shapeshifted feet, there on an outer current of Chaos, drifting, as at the whirlpool's rim. Jurt rotated to follow me, keeping his left forearm - to which the fandon is attached, elbow and wrist - horizontal, and executing a slow circular movement with it. Its three-foot length of filmy mesh, mord-weighted at the bottom, glittered in the balefire glow, which occurred at random intervals from many directions. He held his trisp in middle attack position, and he showed his teeth but was not smiling as I moved and he moved at opposite ends of the diameter of a ten-foot circle which we described over and over, looking for an opening.

I tilted the plane of my orbit and he adjusted his own immediately to keep me company. I did it again, and so did he. Then I did the dive - 90 degrees forward, fandon raised and extended - and I turned my wrist and dropped my elbow, angling my raking cut upward beneath his guard.

He cursed and cut, but I scattered his light, and three dark lines appeared upon his left thigh. The trisliver only cuts to a depth of about three quarters of an inch through flesh, which is why the throat, eyes, temples, inner wrists and femoral arteries are particularly favored targets in a serious encounter. Still, enough cuts anywhere and you eventually wave goodbye to your opponent as he spins downward in a swarm of red bubbles into that place from whence no traveler returns.

«Blood!» Mandor cried, as the beads formed upon Jurt's leg and drifted. «Is there satisfaction, gentlemen?»

«I'm satisfied,» I answered.

«I'm not!» Jurt replied, fuming to face me as I drifted to his left and rotated to my right. «Ask me again after I've cut his throat!»

Jurt had hated me from sometime before he had learned to walk, for reasons entirely his own. While I did not hate Jurt, liking him was totally beyond my ability. I had always gotten along reasonably well with Despil, though he tended to take Jurt's side more often than my own. But that was understandable. They were full brothers, and Jurt was the baby.

Jurt's trisp flashed and I broke the light and riposted. He scattered my beams and spun off to the side. I followed. Our trisps flared simultaneously, and the air between us was filled with flakes of brilliance as both attacks were shattered. I struck again, this time low, as soon as I had recharge. His came in high, and again both attacks died in f and. We drifted nearer.

«Jurt,» I said, «if either of us kills the other, the survivor will be outcast. Call it off.»

«It will be worth it,» he said. «Don't you think I've thought about it?» Then he slashed an attack at my face. I raised both arms reflexively, fandon and trisp, and triggered an attack as shattered light showered before me. I heard him scream.

When I lowered my fandon to eye level I saw that he was bent forward, and his trisp was drifting away. So was his left ear, trailing a red filament that quickly beaded itself and broke apart. A flap of scalp had also come loose, and he was trying to press it back into place.

Mandor and Despil were already spiraling in.

«We declare the duel ended!» they were shouting, and I twisted the head of my trisp into a safety-lock position.

«How bad is it?» Despil asked me.

«I don't know.»

Jurt let him close enough to check, and a little later Despil said, «He'll be all right. But Mother is going to be mad.»

I nodded. «It was his idea,» I said.

«I know. Come on. Let's get out of here.»

He helped Jurt steer toward an outcropping of the Rim, fandon trailing like a broken wing. I lingered behind. Sawall's son Mandor, my stepbrother, put his hand on my shoulder.

«You didn't even mean him that much,» he said.

«I know.»

I nodded and bit my lip. Despil had been right about the Lady Dara, our mother, though. She favored Jurt, and somehow he'd have her believing this whole thing was my fault. I sometimes felt she liked both of her sons by Sawall, the old Rim Duke she'd finally married after giving up on Dad, better than me. I'd once overheard it said that I reminded her of my father, whom I'd been told I resembled more than a little. I wondered again about Amber and about other places, out in Shadow, and felt my customary twinge of fear as this recalled to me the writhing Logrus, which I knew to be my ticket to other lands. I knew that I was going to try it sooner than I had originally intended.

«Let's go see Suhuy,» I said to Mandor, as we rose up out of the Abyss together. «There are more things I want to ask him.»

When I finally went off to college I did not spend a lot of time writing home.

«… home,» Vinta was saying, «pretty soon now. Have a drink of water,» and she passed me a flask.

I took several long swallows and handed it back. «Thanks.»