On and on I climbed. There were no other colors now; only the red. The path was barren, rocky, unforgiving. The drop on either side would have been enough to kill me. In the distance I could see some trees, clustered like cattle in a rainstorm. Mountains rose beyond them, gray and austere. Closer, the terrain rolled like swells on some grassy sea, silvered where the wind blew, bending the grasses so that they gleamed in the pale light.
I slowed as I neared the top, fearful, eager. Far to the west, the sun seemed to teeter on the edge of the world, huge, ovate, its color a match for the path I’d followed to the top of this rise. But I saw nothing. I’d reached the top, and there was nothing. Rock, the lurid glow of that sun, and laughter riding the wind. That was all. The path was gone; it wasn’t even behind me anymore.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
I’d been so sure that I was following him. Red. I’d known that he’d be here at the end. So where was he?
“Right here.”
I opened my eyes, not realizing they’d been closed. He stood over me. Tall, broad, bald. Eyes as pale as bone. His nose was hooked and crooked. Broken once, maybe. There was something regal about it. His lips were thin and pale, and his chin was dimpled. For so long I’d wanted to see his face, to memorize his features. I stared at him. Stared and stared. I couldn’t help myself.
“Tu aies me cherche, oui?” he said, his smile cold and cruel. “You have been looking for me?”
For a moment I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. At last I nodded. “Yes. But you couldn’t come tonight. It’s. . the moon. You couldn’t come. And I put wardings on my. .”
I stopped, because he was laughing. A sound that chilled me, that seemed to make the room colder. The sun was a light again. No heat. I was shivering.
And in that moment I knew. The rest had been delusion, hallucination; whatever you wanted to call it. It hadn’t been real. But he was. Red was standing over me in my bedroom. And I was a dead man.
I tried to crawl away from him, my eyes never leaving his face. But he stood between me and my door. I groped for a spell-any spell-that would send him away or shield me from whatever he was about to do. But I could feel the moon pressing down on my mind, crushing memory, knowledge, craft-everything I needed.
“You are resourceful,” he said. I remembered the accent from before. Did it even matter anymore that he was French? “I thought you would die from that spell I placed on your house.” He glanced from side to side, clearly surprised that the walls around us still stood. “Tu as fait bien. You have done well.”
I closed my eyes.
My weapon, my shoulder holster, my hand.
Nothing happened.
He laughed again, and I shuddered.
“I do not think it will help you to have that. . that gun.” It sounded strange when he said it. “But I do not think I want you to have it anyway.” He canted his head to the side. “I do not believe it is where you thought it was. I sense nothing there.”
Of course not. I’d given it to Kona. Like I always did.
“The phasing,” I said. “It. . you’re not affected?”
“No.”
I should have known this. I remembered someone saying that the moons didn’t touch him. Who’d told me that? And then it hit me.
“That’s what you were doing!” I whispered, amazed at the clarity of my thought. “That’s why you killed those kids! You were. . doing something to make yourself immune to the phasings.”
Laughter filled the room, as if blown in on a cold wind.
“You are limited. Almost as much as those with nothing. It is a waste that you should have any power at all.” He cocked his head to the side once more. “And yet, you have tracked me and managed to come closer than others. Tu as un peu de talent, eh?”
Apparently he thought I had talent. A little, anyway.
“Why did you kill them then? If it wasn’t for the phasings, why did you do it? You always kill them on the quarter moon, and you use magic. There’s got to be something that you get from them, something that makes you more powerful than you were when you began.”
He stared down at me, nodding, his lips pursed now. For an odd moment, his expression reminded me of Kona. “Yes, you are not without some cleverness. A shame then that you have to die.”
“Cahors.”
Red raised his eyes. I turned, knowing that voice.
Namid stood near my window, his waters as roiled as I’d ever seen them. He was the color of lead, his surface rough as from an unseen wind, like he was covered with scales. His eyes shone as white and hard as the full moon.
“Namid’skemu,” Red said, his voice as soft as a kiss, the name rolling off his tongue as liquid and graceful as Namid himself. I wished that I could speak the runemyste’s name like that one time. “You should not be here, mon ami.”
Namid rumbled, the sound like breakers rolling over a rocky shoreline. “I should not?” he said. “What of you?”
“I am beyond your control now. I am free to do as I please.”
“Not here,” Namid said. “Not tonight.”
Red’s smile turned brittle. “You have already interfered once. They will not let you do so again.” He shook his head, and even this he did with grace. “No, you cannot stop me. And to prove it, I will kill your little friend while you watch.”
I wanted Namid to tell him he was wrong, to laugh at his surety, as Cahors had laughed at me. But instead the runemyste looked down at me, sadness in his glowing eyes.
Cahors stared at me as well, and I felt like a rabbit under the gaze of an eagle. Only more helpless.
I knew better than to think that I could attack him directly. If the moon couldn’t touch him, how could I? But I also knew that with the phasing underway, I was stronger than usual. And now that Red had pulled me out of my hallucination, my thoughts were clear enough to conjure. I hoped.
Defend yourself! I heard once more in my head. And the remembered sound of Namid’s warning triggered another memory.
Three elements: my magic, a book on the shelf by my bed, Red’s head.
The book flew across the room, smacking the myste hard in the back of his head. He spun, as if expecting to see someone behind him.
Before I could cast again, I heard Namid’s voice in my mind-for real this time, not a memory.
Ohanko! I can ward your house.
It was all I needed to hear.
Again three elements: Cahors, my bedroom, my lawn. It was the most powerful spell I had ever attempted, but the phasing made it possible, as long as I didn’t foul it up.
I didn’t. One moment Red loomed over me, eyes blazing in anger, and the next he was gone.
Namid raised his hands, and a clear shimmering shield appeared on the walls of my bedroom.
I clamored to my feet and hurried to the window. Cahors stood outside the house, rage contorting his features.
“You cannot interfere!” he howled. “You challenge me at your own peril, Namid’skemu!”
“My peril?” the runemyste said, keeping his voice low, the way he would have if Cahors had still been in the room. “You are strong, and more than you used to be. But you are no threat to me.”
Somehow Red heard him. “You are forbidden to interfere! I know you are!”
“I have done nothing to you,” Namid said. “I have merely warded this house.”
“That is still interference!”
“Not anymore. The rules have changed. Thanks to you, we had no choice. Surely you did not think that we would stand aside and let you do this.”
Red’s eyes appeared to burn white hot. “After all you did to me,” he said, his voice so low I could barely hear him.
“We did nothing that you did not force us to do.”
The man raged in silence, and my face seemed to be scalded by the heat of his glare. I knew that if not for Namid’s wardings, his mere glance would have turned me to ash and razed my home to the ground.