growing weakness in his opponent. He sent an image of that weakness back along with everything else he was trying to project.
Without any warning Targyn broke. The blast of mental light wavered and disappeared. Gryph was so overwhelmed by the sudden loss of a target that he staggered and slipped in the blood of one of the bandits.
He went down on one knee just as Targyn threw himself forward, knife in hand. "I'll kill you anyway!" Targyn screamed. "You can't stop me. I'm stronger than you are. Stronger man
any other Shield!"
Gryph scooped up the knife lying on the floor beside the fallen bandit. He brought the blade up in a short arc that ended in Targyn's chest.
Targyn collapsed across the body of the bandit he had killed earlier, his blood mingling with his victim's.
Gryph crouched warily beside him. A dying Shield was not an unarmed Shield. "Targyn?"
Targyn's eyes opened, revealing a gaze that was already glazing over. He smiled grimly. "Too late, Chassyn. You're too damn late. It's already started."
"What's already started?"
"The reaction. Without me to control it, every weapon on the ship will detonate. It's going to take a big chunk out of this continent, Chassyn. There's enough power in those weapons to reach all the way to Little Chance. Maybe farther."
"How do I stop it?" Gryph demanded savagely.
"You're stronger than I thought, Chassyn. Maybe, just maybe, you could have done something if you had your lock or the aid of another Shield. But you have neither, do you? The storytellers will weave a hell of a legend out of all this, won't they? "
What was left of his life flowed out of Targyn before Gryph could figure out how to threaten a dying man.
Chapter 19
SARIANA fell to the floor as the last of the painful energy vanished from her fevered mind. Lucky, perched on her shoulder, clung tightly and hissed anxiously. Sariana had been kneeling on the floor of the metal chamber, hugging herself while she endured the battle Gryph was fighting.
When she had picked up the echoes of the first blast that had struck Gryph she had known immediately that it was the same sort of attack that had caught him unaware yesterday morning. Now she knew its source. It wasn't hard to tell that Targyn was projecting a killing energy and that Gryph was fighting for his life.
She was powerless to do anything except watch mentally as the battle flared back and forth. But when the end came there was no sense of loss. She could still feel Gryph's presence somewhere in the corridors. He was alive. And she knew what that meant.
"Targyn's dead, Etion," she announced with weary relief. "He's gone."
Rakken, who was working his way through another bottle of wine, looked up with glazed hope in his eyes. "Dead? Are you certain? How can you know that?"
"I just know it." She stumbled to her feet, reaching up to soothe Lucky with a soothing stroke. Rakken eyed her disbelievingly. "Even if you're right there are still those three bandits." The door of the chamber shushed open. Sariana and Rakken both jumped. Gryph stood in the
doorway. There was blood on his shirt and his face was etched with stark lines. "Make that one bandit. Targyn obligingly took care of the other two for us. But we've still got a big problem."
Rakken stood up so fast the wine bottle toppled over and shattered on the floor. His eyes were wide with excitement "What problem? All we have to do is cut up the prisma and we're rich!"
Gryph eyed him coldly. "Targyn did something to the prisma. Before he died he said it was primed to detonate. He claimed it's going to take a lot of the surrounding landscape with it, and I'm inclined to believe him. We can't run far enough or fast enough. We've got to try to stop it."
"We?" Sariana moved toward him, examining the blood on Gryph's shirt to make sure it wasn't his. She was so relieved to see him she could hardly stand. She longed to throw herself into his arms and just collapse.
"We." Gryph looked at her. "You and me, Sariana. I can't think of anything else to try. My weapon kit is gone and I can't use another Shield's prisma."
Sariana caught her breath at what he was proposing. "You think you can use me the way you would prisma?"
"I don't know." He reached for her hand. "But you're all I've got."
"It's so nice to feel needed," she muttered weakly as be pulled her into a run. It wasn't the first time she had made the sarcastic observation, but as usual Gryph wasn't paying any attention.
"Hey, wait," Rakken yelled behind them. "What do you think you're doing? What about the other bandit?"
Gryph ignored the man. He was too busy giving insttuctions to Sariana as he drew her down the hall. "When we reach the ship room I want you to just become passive. Think of yourself as a mirror. You'll catch the light I'm sending at you and reflect it back to me, but that's all. You don't have to try to focus or channel. I'll take care of that."
"I'm supposed to pretend I'm just a lifeless piece of prisma, right?"
"No," he retorted. "You're my new lock. You're tuned to me and I'm going to work the live prisma
through you."
"Has anyone ever tried this before?" she asked breathlessly as she was pulled down another corridor. "Not that I know of. But no Shield has ever had a Shieldmate like you before, either." "How do you know?" Sariana demanded, not certain if the observation was a compliment or not. "Take my word for it. If there had been a linking as strong as ours at some time in the past, there
would be some legend or tale still circulating about it."
"You're probably right. Do you think we'll become legends someday, Gryph?" "At the rate you're going it's not impossible." He turned another comer. "Don't look down," he ordered
brusquely.
But of course she did and her punishment was a close view of three dead men. One of them was Targyn. Sariana tore her gaze from the terrible sight as Gryph yanked her quickly past them. She swallowed a few times in an effort to calm her queasy stomach, but before she could think of anything to say Gryph was turning another comer.
He stopped suddenly as the hallway opened onto a vast cavern. "By the Fire on board the Ship," he breathed in genuine awe.
Sariana knew exactly what he meant, but she couldn't even summon words. The sight that greeted her made her speechless.
The cavern was huge, lined with the same gray metal that lined the passageways and corridors behind mem. But it wasn't the chamber that inspired awe and wonder. Awe and wonder were inspired by the strange ship that occupied most of the space inside the cavern.
