Were the other Guardians there, in rapport with Naevros, protecting him somehow?

Was Aloê there?

He hoped not, but his choice was made. He dropped his sword to attack; the other parried and riposted with the blade of mist; Morlock circled away from the stroke and stabbed the shining warrior in the side.

A new cry of pain: Vocate Vineion, howling like one of his own dogs. Morlock thought he saw him briefly, peering in pain through the crack on the glowing glass plate.

Naevros spun, struck Tyrfing aside, and lunged. The blade passed through Morlock’s talic self again: he saw the black and white flames of his talic being fade into gray lines where the sword of mist had passed.

Morlock moved back and brought up Tyrfing to guard. Naevros pressed his attack and Morlock contented himself with defense for a while.

They had done the best they could bringing Naevros here. He was the greatest swordsman alive.

And yet. . . . He also thought they had made a mistake. A timeless time ago, when he left the world and came to this place that was and was not a world, he had been utterly bemused.

But a fencing match, a fencing match with Naevros in particular, that was something he understood: a long, coiling argument that ran back and forth with flashing swathes of rhetoric and sharp, pointed periods. He had done this. He could do this. He understood this. And it gave him time to ponder the un-world of these unbeings.

Why hadn’t they attacked him with weapons of their own when he came through the gateway in the sky? He saw them all around him, lattices of tal framing emptiness, moving about the coarse, invisible landscape, staying still, appearing and disappearing in irregular rhythms. He felt their malice and their hate; he heard many more of their thoughts than he understood, but he knew this fight between Guardians was important to them. But they made no move of intention against him, or to help Naevros.

Perhaps they could not. Perhaps the brawling, stabbing, clawing of material survival was so alien to them that they could not participate in it.

They needed Naevros to do their knifework, as Bleys and Lernaion had. Morlock wished he could speak to the man that had been his friend and his enemy, his mentor and his rival. He would have chosen to fight alongside Naevros rather than against him.

Then he remembered that Naevros had killed Earno. Blood for blood, life for life: that was law in the Deep Halls of Thrymhaiam, where he had grown, like a mushroom, in the dark. Naevros had placed his bet; he would have to stand the hazard of the cast.

For a timeless moment, peering past the shining warrior, his enemy, he saw the Sunkillers, appearing and disappearing in the dark lands beyond, and he understood something. They were enacting the passage of a higher dimensional object through a two-dimensional plane. In his mind, the various shapes of the object took solid form. Transfixed by fascination, he was nearly destroyed.

The sword of mist passed under Tyrfing and through the centrality of his self.

Death was near. He knew it, and his enemy knew it. He struck back with all the force his fading will could command, and several of the glass plates shattered in screams of pain. Past them he could see Naevros’ unprotected talic self: a coil of shining, steely lines. Morlock brought back Tyrfing as Naevros twisted the misty blade in his selfhood; he struck through the shattered plates, stabbing at Naevros.

Now it was Naevros’ pain he heard echoing in his mind’s ear. The misty blade withdrew: Naevros backed away.

Morlock watched wearily as the shining plates protecting Naevros began to reform. More Guardians were being drawn into rapport to protect Naevros. How many could they draw on? How many were party to the vile alliance with the Sunkillers? Most of the vocates, by Aloê’s account. He hoped she was not one of them.

He became aware of another being. Not the angular lattices of tal that composed the Sunkillers, and not the shining warrior of the Graith, no part of his own black-and-white talic emanations. This being was more like a rusty, dark stipple on the surface of the darkness, oozing like a serpent among the lifeless stones, nearly as lifeless as the stones themselves . . . but not quite. There was a smear of bloody light there, the merest trace of life.

Native to this place? Impossible. An infection from the world, travelling with the sun’s life along the Soul Bridge? Perhaps. Skellar had done it. . . .

And, of course, this was Skellar! Or what was left of him, not fully alive or dead, body and soul almost untethered, but keeping each other from dying. The way Skellar oozed among the rocks reminded Morlock sharply of how he had groveled in his bed of gold all those years ago, when he had been god-speaker in the town of mandrakes.

Skellar felt his regard, and fled. Or . . . led? The snakelike talic avatar paused at one moment, is if to allow him to pursue it.

Morlock did follow. A thought was in his mind. What was renewing Skellar’s tal? Feeble as it was, it had not been snuffed out, and his body was not sustaining it. He must have a source of tal. Perhaps he was preying on the Sunkillers. Or perhaps he had found the outlet for the river of life, the tal stolen from the sun.

Naevros followed also, striding across the dead, dark world in his suit of light. He was slow at first, surprisingly slow.

Skellar disappeared over a ridge of dead stone. Morlock ascended above it and saw a valley of stars below.

Morlock descended after Skellar, whose rusty tal stood out like a shadow in that life-filled place.

The stars were bulbs of sunlife—smaller in diameter than Tyrfing was long. They seemed to grow from a tangle of thorny tal lattices, hedges of cold unlife caging hot sunlife.

This was what they did with the river of tal that they were stealing from the sun. These things were like jars, or something, restraining the dangerous tal of the sun and keeping in from infecting the un-world with material life.

Morlock wasn’t sure it was working. As he stood there, he saw a new bulb slowly start to take new form among the thorny lattices. Other thorns turned toward it, like flowers turning their faces to the sun. They might not be alive . . . but they looked like they were.

Skellar’s rusty avatar coiled about a low-hanging globe and grew a little brighter. That was how he had stayed alive. His body wasn’t feeding his talic avatar; his talic avatar was sustaining his body with tal bled from the sunglobes.

Morlock became aware of Naevros’ approach and turned Tyrfing toward him. The shining warrior came straight at Morlock—lunged—recovered—parried Morlock’s attack—riposted.

Slow, slow—indefinably slow. How close was the rapport between Naevros and the other Guardians? Was there resistance to his will—misunderstanding of a swordsman’s moves?

Morlock circled around the shining warrior, stabbing and slashing. The warrior, who was Naevros, but only in part, swung about to meet his attacks but could not disguise his lumbering, his failure to attain Naevros’ deadly catlike swiftness.

This was not like every other time Morlock had fought Naevros, half in jest and half in earnest. This was all in earnest, and Naevros’ magic armor was like weights on his hands and feet.

Then, and only then, did Morlock fully realize that he had no hands and feet—not in this fight. His body was on the other side of the sky, at the end of the world. He held Tyrfing by his bond with it and with his will.

Morlock rose from the ground and struck downward. The shining warrior raised his misty sword too slowly and Tyrfing only glanced off it to land squarely on the glassy crown of the warrior’s faceless head. The glass shattered; Tyrfing penetrated deep within it, and Morlock had the satisfaction of hearing both Bleys and Naevros cry out in a harmony of pain.