The Road To Sevendor - A Spellmonger Anthology by Terry Mancour Page A

he felt his mouth respond to her ardent, desperate kiss.  Her hands seemed to roam all over him, which made keeping a good lookout difficult . . . much less anything else requiring the slightest concentration.
    “Ansily . . .”
    “I want to, Tyndal!” she mewed insistently in his ear.
    “Ansily, we’ve got to get out of here, Lespin—”
    “Is right here,” boomed the Censor’s voice.  Tyndal froze.  Ansily yelped.  Tyndal sprang from the makeshift alcove, his mageblade in both hands, throwing the girl protectively behind him.  Yet he didn’t see anyone.  Even with magesight, there was no one in sight.
    Until there was.  The sinister checkered cloak seemed to slide out of the fog where it clearly hadn’t been, and the smaller of the two Censors appeared, one hand clutching a pendant around his neck, the other holding a warwand.
    “Shadowmagic,” he explained, and Tyndal’s heart fell.  “I trained for six months with the Censor’s shadowmagic Master before I was chosen for this post.  Using the river mist to encloud my scrying was clever, lad, but that just suggested where your thoughts were lying.  You couldn’t escape overland quickly enough, even with a horse – one who wasn’t going to throw a shoe, that is.  That left the river.  I knew that if Wantran did not capture you, then you would make your way here . . . just as you did.”
    Tyndal aimed his mageblade squarely at the Censor’s heart.  “I’ve dealt with your partner, Lespin.  Don’t make me kill you, too.”
    Lespin laughed mockingly through his teeth.  “Old Wantran has seen more wiley witches than you, lad, and lived to tell about it.  And I can see that toy you hold is barely more than simple steel – I won’t even dignify it by answering it with my own.  Lay it down, step away from it, and submit.  For if I have to take you by force, I won’t be gentle about it.  Our orders are to take you alive.  They do not specify that you should be . . . intact.”
    The threat was chilling, no less for the matter-of-fact nature of its delivery.  Tyndal didn’t waver.  “If you are so certain that you can take me, then I suppose we’ll just have to see.  You’re a warmage . . . I have irionite,” he said, causing a flare of sparks to sputter from his blade to emphasize the point.  “It took more than one warmage to defeat the Mad Mage of Farise,” he reminded the Censor.
    “And he was an adept, not an untrained mageling,” Lespin said, just as matter-of-factly – but the mention of irionite had made him wary.  Tyndal cursed himself mentally for mentioning it.  Rarely was telling your foe about your biggest advantage a factor in heroic epics.  That was the sort of thing the villain did.  “Lay down the blade.  This is your last warning,” he said, moving toward the end of the dock, his wand soon joined by a second.
    Tyndal swallowed, stepped sideways two steps to move away from Ansily, and nervously began to draw power from his stone.  He didn’t rightly know what he planned to do with it, but having the power there at his call was really the only leverage he had in this duel.
    “Just leave the girl alone,” he said, hoarsely.  “She blundered into this by accident, and she doesn’t know anything.”
    “She’s neither of our concern – unless you make her so,” Lespin said.  “Tell me, why do it this way, when you could have avoided all of the pain and agony you’ll face now?  For I won’t kill you, lad.  You’ll go back to Wenshar in chains, tied like cargo.  And there you will have the misfortune to face the ire of Censor General Hartarian . . . and you will learn the meaning of suffering.”
    “Because I didn’t stand on a wall and look down at thousands of goblins and piss myself, I’m not going to do it for one lousy little Censor,” he said, boldly.
    Unexpectedly, the man chuckled.  “So the tale of invasion is true?”
    “I was there.  It was my home,” he said,