The River of No Return

use her strength against her. The worst had happened. He was using her. She concentrated her attention, straining against him until she thought her head would burst.
    He was pushing back against the strength of her will. She watched through the peephole as time slowed and Eamon’s motions became ponderous, but try as she might she could not stop time altogether. Her head hurt with trying, and she managed to slow the scene only a fraction more, before her concentration snapped as if it were a dry, dead stem. She pulled back from the peephole with a gasp, clutching her head.
    The pain faded almost immediately. She turned quickly to Clare, who was still pressed to her peephole. They had to run. Farther away than Blackdown House. She had to leave the country. Eamon knew!
    She grabbed at Clare, whispering her name, but her friend did not respond. Clare was frozen in a moment in time. Her hands, spread against the wall on either side of her peephole, were still as death. Julia glanced at the candle. It didn’t move.
    Eamon had stopped time. He had overpowered and used her. She was the Talisman and he was channeling his will through her.
    “Oh, my dear God,” she whispered, and slowly put her eye back to the peephole, letting her shaking fingers rest on Clare’s unmoving wrist.
    * * *
    The earl was suspended in midair, his absurd weapon held triumphantly aloft like Excalibur itself. “That wasn’t part of the plan,” Nick said. He turned to Arkady and was shocked to see that his friend was shaken and sweating. “What’s wrong with you?” He helped him to a seat.
    Arkady pointed at Darchester. “That man is something extraordinary. He is as mad as your King George, but he is powerful. Didn’t you feel it?”
    “I felt you stop time. It took you long enough. The blasted fool was about to slice my face off with Shakespeare’s codpiece.”
    Arkady wiped his forehead. “You are too inexperienced to understand what happened here. He tried to stop time first. I had to fight him. I won. He is not strong enough. Few people are strong enough to win in a duel with me. But still he is very strong. I could feel—he should have been able to fight me, if he were trained. Perhaps he is inexperienced, or perhaps it is that he is crazy, or it is both things combined.”
    “All right . . .” Nick wasn’t quite sure he understood what Arkady was saying, but it was clear they were in some sort of mess. “What the hell are we going to do now?”
    Arkady was not to be rushed. He was calmer now, and contemplated the earl with a scholarly eye. “I don’t understand. Why is he now frozen? If he can freeze time himself, he should also be immune to being frozen. Remember how I trained you to notice when I stopped time? And then you could avoid being frozen with it? And yet you see him there. Even the spittle. It is like ice on his lips.” He stared up from his chair at the earl, suspended in mid-leap. “He cannot be Ofan. The whole purpose of Ofan resistance to the Guild is knowledge, education. An Ofan would know everything about his talent. He would know everything about how to use it.” Arkady propped his head in his hands and stared again at the immobilized earl. “This untrained maniac. He distresses me. Never have I seen anything like him. So strong the talent, and so ignorant the man.” Arkady walked up to Darchester, peering at him closely. “Are you Ofan?”
    The contorted face said nothing.
    “Let me kill him.” Nick heard the words leave his mouth, and realized he meant them. “I want to!”
    Arkady turned, laughing. “The warrior priest! Why do you want to kill him? You who are so squeamish?”
    Nick raked his hands through his hair in frustration. “You brought me here to kill Ofan. You uprooted my life to bring me here for this task. I will gladly begin right here and now and crush this serpent for us all.”
    Arkady rocked back on his heels, that scholarly gaze turned on Nick, now. “Ah. I see. It is the woman. You will kill for a girl, but not for the Guild. This Julia, she beckons to you with the pretty looks and it makes you disloyal.”
    “Do not speak of her that way.”
    “What way?” Arkady looked him up and down. “You do not wish to hear her spoken of as a woman? Nor you as a man?” The Russian smiled, and for the first time Nick disliked him. “You are the great marquess now, is that it? The protector of virgins? You who were so recently the tomcat?” He shook his head. “I’m