The Magehound   ::   Каннингем Элейн

He placed his hands on the hilts of his daggers as the wizard manifested before him, not drawing them but prepared to defend himself if need be.

The victim of Tzigone's latest theft was a tall man, exceedingly long of limb and narrow through the shoulders. His lanky frame was swathed in the black-red robes of a necromancer, which swirled about him like storm clouds at sunset A faint odor of a charnel house clung to him, whispering softly but unmistakably of death. By some coincidence of fate, the man was paler than a corpse, a true albino, with eyes the color of water and skin whiter than the underbelly of a fish. The black robes cast grayish shadows on his skin.

With almost theatrical menace, the wizard began to advance, one thin hand leveled at Matteo. His skin grew paler still, so that the flesh became as clear as crystal and the skeletal form beneath was revealed.

"Behold the fate of the hands that touched my spellbook," intoned the wizard.

"Sure, give or take sixty years," Tzigone muttered from somewhere behind Matteo.

He shared her confidence-as a jordain, he was immune to most spells. But he wondered briefly how Tzigone might explain her own resistance to magic. After all, the spell of seeking had not worked when she carried the bag, either. The necromancer made a sharp, quick gesture with his skeletal hand and then waited expectantly. His grim hauteur quickly changed to anger when no one obliged him by withering away to bone.

He followed with a series of quick, impatient gestures. At his command, dozens of smooth, polished sticks rose from a basket in a nearby stall, all of them edged in tassels-juggler's tools sold in groups of three as toys for children. The sticks flew into the midst of the now-empty square and clattered into formation. An odd, angular skeleton, the bones of a creature that had never known life, began to advance on Matteo.

Matteo quickly adjusted his stance and his strategy. He had never faced such a foe before, but he reasoned that every creature, alive or dead or fabricated, was held together in much the same way.

He dropped and spun as the wooden skeleton advanced. As he turned, Matteo slashed out at the joints where one of the knees might have been. The silver blade cut deep into something he could not see-not flesh, but an energy that was almost as palpable. The magical bounds were strong and did not sever entirely, but the necromancer's creation seemed to be effectively hamstrung. It stopped suddenly, listing hard to one side as its «arms» flailed about in a quest for balance.