Hoots and applause came from the stands.

"I am not damned, Kamahl; I am Damnation. I am not diseased; I am Disease. You cannot bring me back to life, for I am Death."

Let the bloodthirsty masses cheer her words. It distracted her, gave him time. Already, he had managed to circle around so that he was closer to the staff than she. He needed only a little more time.

"There are two ways to defeat death," Kamahl said as the crowd sounds died. He edged nearer to the staff.

Obsidian-eyed, Phage stalked him. "How?"

"The first is to bow to it," Kamahl said. "That's how I defeated you last time, by surrendering. If I fall to my face-"

"I'll kill you anyway!"

"And queer the match, so all bets are off? I don't think so," Kamahl replied, his feet still shuffling.

Avarice gleamed in Phage's eyes as she glanced toward the booking windows. "What is the second way to defeat death?"

A few more steps, and he smiled. "It is quite simple. Defeat death by living!" He leaped for the staff. His hands reached across trammeled sand, and he descended, his fingers closing.

She struck him in the belly-a hard blow that knocked the wind from him and sent him tumbling away from the staff. Kamahl rolled in agony, clutching his torso. Beneath the rotting hand prints on his chest, rotting knuckle marks showed. On his stomach, Phage's face had made a ghastly silhouette-brow, nose, and empty eyes. The unhealing wound formed a crooked mouth. Phage had struck his chest with fists, and his belly with her skull, and hurled him away from the one thing that could save him. Now, her contagion slowly ate him away. He convulsed.

Everyone cheered. This bout was proving to be well worth the entrance fee: fierce fighting and fiercer words, high drama and low blows, a sibling rivalry with teeth in it.

While Kamahl thrashed his life away, Phage strolled slowly up to stand above him. She pursed her lips. "Forgive me. Though I am the tool of the Cabal, you are the one who bears the doom." The spectators cheered the mockery of Kamahl's words. "Let death be drawn into you. Let life flow out. Come with me." She reached out her hand. "Just take my hand, and all the pain and guilt will be gone forever. I will heal you so that you will never ache again. Just a moment more, sweet Kamahl. Let the death bell toll, and be done."

He stilled his thrashing and stared at her. Something showed in his eyes-terror or pity. "Jeska…"

"I am Phage."

"Look out!"

She laughed, shaking her head incredulously, and reached down to wrap her hands around his neck.

The impact was horrific. It felt like a rhino bashed her in the back. White-hot pain burst through her spine, and Phage hurtled through the air. She lost her putrefying hold on Kamahl. Curling into a ball, she struck the sand and rolled. Her back clenched, dying tissue by tissue.

Is this how my death-touch feels?

Biting back the agony, Phage scrambled to her feet and glared at her attacker.

It was an angel, bright-beaming in the midst of blood and bets. She was beautiful, her face somehow familiar. At her belt hung a magna-sword, which she could have used to cut Phage in half. She had not, for this was no doubt a creature who fought fair.

The beaming warrior drew the sword and pointed it at Phage. "I am Akroma. I have come to kill you."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: GRAND MELEE

Kamahl lay gasping in ecstatic pain.

Before him hovered a creature of light, glorious and beckoning. It was the death vision. Many barbarian warriors reported seeing this creature as they lay dying-a light so intense as to cast all else in a tunnel of darkness. Kamahl was dying, coming to pieces at throat, chest, and belly. The angel of death called him, her face so beautiful and yet so stark. She reached toward him.

If he took her hand, he would die.

Kamahl clawed away from her. He was a barbarian warrior, and all barbarian warriors clawed away from the angel of death. Kamahl rolled onto his face on the sand, and suddenly he could breathe. His throat was in ribbons, air sucking into and out of an open windpipe. Breathing, he averted his eyes from the beckoning angel.

She turned her eyes away as well. She moved with savage surges around the coliseum. It was as though she pursued another soul. Let her.

Kamahl crawled. If he knew anything in that moment of exquisite pain, he knew he needed his staff. The power of life was gone from him but not from that staff. It sparkled with green lightning where it lay in the sand. If only he could grip it, power would flow into him and knit him together.

Everything else fell away. He forgot who he had been, how he had become so wounded, what he fought for. Caught between the angel and the staff, Kamahl became a tabula rasa, a soul upon which nothing has been written.

White and black, figures flitted by. They shrieked, two raptors swooping, slashing, tangling, breaking. Their battle verged near to the crawling man. For a moment, he feared they would catch him in their lashing midst and tear him to pieces. He dug in and clung to the sand, throat rasping rotten breaths. The two creatures tumbled past.

The man scuttled forward, a lizard sliding on his scaly belly. Sand packed the gangrenous spots. One more surge, hands before him, and he gripped the sparking pole.

Life leaped in green bolts into his fingers. It hissed and cackled, sinking into his flesh. Putrid skin and muscle dribbled away. Power burst in bright loops from the wound at his throat, and lines of force wove themselves into new flesh. The surge of power plunged through his chest, healing it as well. Only when it reached his belly and the wound carved there did it stop.

The wound. "Jeska!"

It was the first word he had spoken since his throat had been eaten away. With that word, all his long life scrawled itself across him-a feverish and violent graffiti. How good it had felt to be white and unmarked, the crawling man instead of Kamahl. He had reentered the scarred carcass of his life. He was Kamahl again, and Kamahl had a sister.

He clung to the staff and turned over. "Jeska."

There, before him, she fought. The angel of death pursued her, a moth battling a roach. Her magna sword, as wide as an axe and as long as a sword, roared down to slice Jeska in two.

"No!" shrieked Kamahl. "No!"

Phage could not escape that blow. She had dodged every other, had flipped backward and dived low and performed every possible evasion, but Akroma learned with each leap. No evasion remained. Phage lay on her back, and the magna sword descended.

It struck. Metal that was stronger and keener than steel cut through her shoulder, cleaving silk, skin, flesh, and bone. It hung up halfway through her third rib, only inches from her heart. Gritting her teeth, the angel shoved downward. It would kill her, its eyes as white as ice.

Phage grabbed the blade. It was a thing of pure light and she of pure darkness. Her fingers clamped tightly around the metal. It hissed under her touch, and metal ran like wax. Her nails jabbed through. Phage ripped away a hunk of the sword and hurled it across the coliseum, where it struck stone. Her hand fastened again, and another slab came away. The angel struggled to withdraw the blade, but Phage was tearing it apart. Molten metal poured from her riven shoulder.

The black sorceries that filled her joined bone to bone and flesh to flesh. Even as the cleft closed, Phage hurled the last of the sword away.

She leaped to her feet, hands shoving the chest of the angel and leaving black prints.