“You can’t do this!” shrieked Claybore. The ghastly apparition of the sorcerer leaped and cavorted about, dodging unseen menace. The cracks in the skull deepened until Lan wondered how it held together. With the jaw bone already gone, Claybore’s visage turned even more gruesome with every passing moment.

Lan found himself unable to speak, but the sensation of victory assuaged that. Claybore was becoming wrapped in the spell and would soon lie as numbed on the floor as his left leg. No longer even kicking, the leg presented no menace at all. Its magics were contained. And Claybore would be soon, also.

Lan blinked in surprise when all the magical attacks against him suddenly ceased. His tongue still burned, but that was the product of his own conjuring.

“Giving up so easily, Claybore?” he croaked out. Then Lan saw what the sorcerer did. The attack hadn’t lessened, it had shifted.

Kiska k’Adesina writhed on the floor, face blue from the spells cutting off her air. Her body arched violently as if her back would snap, then she flopped onto her belly and fingers cut into stone as she tried to escape Claybore’s vicious magical punishment.

“Stop it!” cried Lan.

Without thinking, he directed his full power to shielding the woman from Claybore. The instant his attack on Claybore stopped, the disembodied sorcerer countered.

“You can’t let her come to harm, can you, Martak?” chided Claybore. “You love her. You must protect her. You have to. She means more than your own life, doesn’t she?”

“No,” said Lan. The weakness of his reply told him everything. He did love Kiska k’Adesina, his sworn enemy, the woman who hated him with an obsession bordering on insanity; he loved her.

The geas controlled him.

“I see it in your face. Defend her. Keep her from harm.”