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power of the moons.
How can the disc be drained? Throw the disc!”
    “Throw the
disc!” ordered Traz Onmale.
    “Then you
must take Braz, for you are evil and a heretic.”
    “I have
called on Az, which can reject me if it chooses.”
    The magician
shrugged. “As you wish. I will use a fresh disc.”
    “No!”
exclaimed Reith. “The same disc.”
    Traz Onmale
sat erect and leaned forward, his attention once again engaged. “Use the same
disc. Throw!”
    With an angry
gesture the Chief Magician snatched up the disc, spun it high and twinkling
into the air. As before, it wobbled, seemed to float, drifted down with the
pink face up.
    “Az favors
the stranger!” declared Traz Onmale. “Fetch the emblem Vaduz!”
    The Chief
Magician stalked to his shed and brought it forth. Traz Onmale handed it to
Reith. “You now carry Vaduz: you are an Emblem Man. Do you then challenge Jad
Piluna?”
    “I do.”
    Traz Onmale
turned to Jad Piluna. “Are you prepared to defend your emblem?”
    “At once.”
Jad Piluna whipped forth his rapier, flourished it whistling around his head.
    “A sword and
hand-foil for the new Vaduz,” said Traz Onmale.
    Reith took
the rapier which presently was tendered him. He hefted it, whipped the blade
back and forth. Never had he handled so supple a sword, and he had handled
many, for swordsmanship was an element of his training. An awkward weapon, in
some respects, useless for close-range fighting. The warriors at practice held
their distance from each other, swinging, slashing, lunging, swerving the blade
down and up, in and out, but using relatively little footwork. The triangular
knife-foil for the left hand was also strange. He swung the blade back and
forth, watching Jad Piluna from the corner of his eyes, who stood
contemptuously at ease.
    To attempt to
fight the man in his own style was equivalent to suicide, thought Reith.
    “Attention!”
called Traz Onmale. “Vaduz challenges Piluna. Forty-one such encounters have
occurred previously. Piluna has humiliated Vaduz on thirty-four occasions.
Emblems, address yourselves.”
    Jad Piluna
instantly lunged; Reith parried without difficulty, hacked down with his own
blade: a blow which Jad Piluna glossed off with his knife-shield. As he did so
Reith jumped forward, struck with the point of the knife-shield, to puncture
Jad Piluna’s chest: a trifling wound, but sufficient to destroy Piluna’s
complacence. Eyes bulging in wrath, the red in his face almost feverish, he
leaped back, then launched a furious attack, overwhelming Reith by sheer
strength and technical brilliance. Reith was extended to the utmost even to
fend away the whistling blade, without thought for counterattack. His shoulder
gave a sudden ominous twinge and began to burn; he panted for breath. The blade
slashed into his thigh, then his left bicep; confident, gloating, Jad Piluna
pressed the attack, expecting Reith to fall back, to be carved into tatters.
But Reith lurched forward, knocked aside the blade with his knife-shield,
slashed at Jad Piluna’s head and struck the black hat askew. Jad Piluna stepped
back to set his hat straight but Reith jumped forward again, inside comfortable
fighting distance with the rapier. He struck with the knife-shield, batted
again at Jad Piluna’s hat, knocked it off, and with it the emblem Piluna. Reith
dropped the knife-shield, seized the hat. Jad, bereft of Piluna, stood back
aghast, his face ringed by brown curls. He lunged; Reith swung the hat, caught
the rapier in the ear-flaps. He stabbed with his own rapier, piercing Jad’s
shoulder.
    Jad
frantically disengaged his rapier, gave ground, anxious to gain more room, but
Reith, panting and sweating, pressed him.
    Reith spoke: “I
hold the emblem Piluna, which has rejected you in disgust. You, the murderer,
are about to die.”
    Jad gave an
inarticulate call, lunged to the attack. Again Reith swung the hat, to catch
the rapier in the flaps. He thrust and ran Jad, one-time carrier of