What lies before us? Horrible thoughts arise in my heart. If we had died before today we should have been happy. -- C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

The Magician had not been idle either. He had had almost the exact same idea as Solvej, and had set out to find a weapon that could help him win. Unlike Solvej, he didn't go to the Sky Queen. He went to someone who he considered far more powerful.

The Dark Lord lived -- if he could be said to live at all -- deep in the ocean, at the bottom of a gaping abyss. He was called the Dark Lord by those who knew of his existence because no one knew anything else about him. No one had ever seen his face. No one knew if he even had one. The Magician had dealt with him on several previous occasions. He was probably the person who knew the most about the Dark Lord, and he still knew very little.

What he did know was that the Dark Lord would be delighted to help him. It would mean the Magician owed him a favour, and the Dark Lord loved to have people in his debt. He could make them do anything he liked when they were in his debt.

The Magician hated to be in debt to anyone. But he needed a weapon that was sure to kill that damn ghost. He wanted rid of her once and for all.

The Dark Lord listened silently to his story. When it was over, he remained silent for a long time.

"And what," he asked at last in a low, raspy voice, "do you want me to give you?"

"Any weapon that can kill a ghost."

"That is easier said than done. You will need to take her by surprise for many such weapons to work. And there is a high possibility that the weapons designed to kill a ghost will be equally harmful to a Magician." Something shifted within the pitch black cavern where the Dark Lord lurked, as if he had briefly contemplated leaving it but thought better of it. "The best weapon you could choose would be a blade forged from the night sky."

The Magician ground his teeth. He had heard of such weapons. He also knew that the Dark Lord had one. But he would not give it to anyone except in return for a tremendous favour.

He forced down his pride and spoke, though the words left a bad taste in his mouth."If I borrow it, what do you want in return?"

The Dark Lord was silent so long that the Magician wondered if he was still listening or not.

"I want access to your lair," the Dark Lord said at last.

The Magician's eyes widened. There were things in his lair that not even his underlings knew about. If the Dark Lord was allowed to come and go as he pleased, he would find them all. That idea made the Magician feel sick and woozy. His mind immediately began searching for loopholes in this request.

"Agreed," he said, even as he thought of ways to get out of his side of the bargain.

~~~~

The day of the duel dawned. Early in the morning the sky was overcast and warned of rain. But after breakfast the clouds began to fade and the sun shone brightly. Hjalmar woke up with a sick feeling in his stomach. The feeling got worse and worse as the clock ticked on. Rigmor staggered down to breakfast with dark circles under her eyes and a haggard expression. She looked almost as bad as he felt. Solvej didn't appear at all.

No one spoke much at breakfast. An air of dread and gloom had settled over the palace.

"I took that potion that will fight off the curse for a while," Rigmor said, speaking for the first time. "Just in case."

She didn't say what it was in case of. They all knew. The Magician might win. She might become his slave. She wanted to keep her own mind for as long as possible before his curse took over again.

That thought preyed on everyone's minds.

~~~~

Solvej was the only person in the palace who didn't act as if the world was coming to an end. She whistled as she practiced with the Sky Queen's sword. First she lunged forward, then parried the blow of an invisible foe, then she slashed and stabbed at the empty air in front of her. It was as if she had forgotten the Magician wasn't actually there yet, and imagined she was fighting him for real.

Hjalmar watched her with a sick feeling of mingled dread and terror. How could Solvej die? How could Solvej be killed? She was a ghost.

Everything would be just fine. Solvej would kill the Magician. Rigmor would be free of her curse. They could all forget this had ever happened.

...Damn it. He wasn't even fooling himself.

Hours ticked by. The Magician had yet to appear. Hjalmar begin to allow himself a wild, implausible hope: that the Magician had decided not to fight, that there would be no duel.

He had almost begun to believe it when a grey blur shot over the wall enclosing the castle gardens. The blur raced through the flowerbeds at a speed no human could reach, sped across the lawn, and barreled into Solvej's legs.

The sword flew in one direction, Solvej in another, and the blur in yet another. Solvej shrieked as she hit the ground. Hjalmar yelled, more in shock than anything else.

He ran down the steps and out to the garden. Solvej had already staggered to her feet by the time he reached her. The grey thing lay motionless on the grass to their right.

Now that he got a good look at it, Hjalmar realised that he recognised it. "The goblin!"

Slaugh the goblin blinked up at him through his comically-wide eyes.

"Who?" Hjalmar looked around, puzzled. He half-expected to see another goblin lurking somewhere nearby. "Who do you mean?"

"Him." The emphasis the goblin placed on this word, and his furtive glances around the garden, made it clear who he meant.

Hjalmar shook his head. "The Magician isn't here yet."

The Sky Queen's sword had landed blade-first in a flowerbed, like an imitation of the sword in the stone. During this conversation Solvej had yanked and tugged and pulled at it, and now it finally came free. It came free so unexpectedly that Solvj sat down abruptly.

"What do you want?" she asked when she recovered from the surprise. "Are you going to be his second?"

The goblin shook his head emphatically -- so emphatically that his overly-large ears flapped around his face like a bat's wings. "No! I'm here to warn you! He's got a special knife and he's going to kill you with it!"

Solvej and Hjalmar exchanged a look.

"We already know he wants to kill her--" Hjalmar began.

"What sort of knife is it?" Solvej asked, cutting him off. "Is it a Vorpal Blade?"

The goblin shook his ridiculously over-sized head again. "He got it from the Dark Lord. It's forged from the night sky, and he can kill a ghost with it."

This sounded like absolute nonsense to Hjalmar. But Solvej went very still. She never had much colour in her face, but the little she ever had now disappeared.

"I'm glad you warned me," she said in a voice that was almost but not quite her normal one.

Hjalmar stared at her. At first he thought she was afraid. But when he looked closer, he realised that she was angry. Her shoulders shook with barely-suppressed rage, and her grip tightened around the hilt of the sword.

What caused this? he wondered. We knew he wanted to kill her.

~~~~

Some minutes later, when Slaugh the goblin had scurried off who-knows-where, Solvej explained it.

"That blade the goblin was talking about..." She trailed off, apparently at a loss for words. This was so unusual for Solvej that it frightened Hjalmar. After a pause she began again. "A long time ago, thousands of years ago actually, there was a creature called the Dark Lord. He was like the Magician, but much more powerful. The Sky Queen and some of her friends defeated him and threw him into the depths of the sea.

"But before that he had created special weapons that could kill not only ghosts but any living thing they came into contact with. He said they were made from the night sky, but everyone was sure he'd gotten them from anothr dimension entirely. The dwarves destroyed most of the weapons, but they were never sure if they'd got all of them. And now, if the Magician has been to the Dark Lord and gotten one of them..."

Hjalmar turned almost as pale as Solvej had. "He's going to kill everyone?"

She bared her teeth in what might have been a parody of a smile, but might just as easily have been a snarl. "He's going to try."

~~~~

Forewarned was not quite forearmed in this case, as Solvej already had her weapon. But she now knew what form the Magician's treachery was likely to take. And she could take some precautions.

"The important thing, Your Majesties," she told the King and Queen, "is to make sure he can't get close enough to use this knife. I advise everyone stands at a safe distance, and the guards be ready to fire on him if he takes out the knife. Their bullets won't kill him, but they'll distract him enough to buy me more time."

"I don't like this," the King grumbled. "There are too many things that could go wrong."

"I know, Your Majesty," Solvej said. "But it's the best chance we have of killing him."

~~~~

The Magician himself arrived two hours later. He arrived as dramatically as was humanly or Magicianly possible. First there was a crash of thunder overheard. The sky darkened as black clouds appeared out of nowhere. An icy wind tore through every nook and cranny of the palace. Then the Magician himself flew over the palace walls, a nightmarish figure shrouded in a black cloak, riding his monstrous horse.

Solvej watched, her arms folded, as he landed on the garden.

"It took you long enough," she said, as if his tardiness was a personal affront.

The Magician's mouth dropped open. He hadn't expected such a nonchalant greeting. Good. The more discomfited he was, the better. Solvej stepped forward before he could recover from his astonishment.

"I don't believe that this would be a good place for our duel," she said, looking around at the garden and speaking as if she was merely commenting on the weather. "The head gardener will be most displeased if we damage her hard work. The barracks have an open field that I think would be a much better spot for duelling."

The Magician opened and closed his mouth silently. He looked like she'd just slapped him with a dead fish. Solvej smothered a giggle at that mental image. Perhaps if she conjured a fish during the duel, and hit him with it... He might be too startled to block an attack.

She made a note of this thought in case it proved useful later.

~~~~

Dead silence reigned over the barracks training yard, now converted into a duelling ground. A large crowd had gathered around the edges of the yard -- the royal family, Hjalmar, the servants, the guards, the cooks. All of them stayed a safe distance from the combatants.

Solvej and the Magician faced each other, silent and motionless. The Magician held a staff with a glowing orb on top of it. Solvej held the Sky Queen's sword.

The duel started so quickly that the spectators hardly realised what was happening. In a split second the Magician had gone from standing motionless to conjuring a bolt of lightning and hurling it at Solvej. She struck it with the sword, shattering it into thousands of harmless specks of dust.

The Magician tried several different spells. Solvej deflected or dodged all of them. One of them came so perilously close to her head that it cut off half her braid. A chorus of horrified gasps rose from the spectators. Solvej herself hardly seemed to notice what had happened.

Perhaps she cared much more than she appeared to. For the first time she cast a spell of her own, instead of merely deflecting the Magician's spells. She aimed her spell at the ground beneath the Magician's feet. The spell struck the sawdust-covered ground and created a minor earthquake that affected only the Magician. He stumbled and almost fell.

Solvej pushed her suddenly shoulder-length hair away from her eyes as she raised her sword. The Magician only just managed to dodge the blade as she swung it at his arm. The sword sliced open his sleeve, but didn't touch his skin. All her attack did was make him angry.

He struck out with his staff. It hit Solvej across the face, leaving a livid red mark. The ghost stumbled back. The Magician raised his staff -- whether to cast another spell or to hit her again, Hjalmar couldn't tell. But before he could do either, Solvej lashed out with her sword.

She sliced right through the handle of the staff.

As one the spectators cheered and applauded.

The Magician let out an inhuman roar and threw away the pieces of his now-useless staff. No one saw his hand move to his side, but suddenly he held a knife. There was something wrong about that knife. Its blade was jet black, and just looking at it made a sick feeling take hold in Hjalmar's stomach.

Solvej grimaced when she saw it. Her grip tightened on the hilt of the sword.

The Magician circled her, knife in hand. Solvej turned as he moved, so she could always see where he was. Neither tried to attack the other yet. They watched each other, each tensing at the other's slightest move.

Finally the Magician tired of this. He lunged forward, slashing at Solvej's throat with his knife. She dodged under the attack and swung her sword up while he was distracted. The blade sliced through his coat and cut open his side. A green, slimy substance oozed out of the wound.

"Eww!" one of the spectators gasped. "What is that?"

"It's his blood," Rigmor said grimly.

Hjalmar suddenly regretted that he'd had anything to eat today.

~~~~

I never knew how annoying short hair was until now, Solvej thought, pushing her hair out of her eyes for the umpteenth time. Damn him!

The Magician had lashed out with his knife before she could follow up that strike with a killing blow. Now they were back to standing several feet apart, each waiting for the other to move or let their guard down.

The sun had come out from behind the clouds at some point since the duel began. Its bright glare left both duellists wincing and trying to shield their eyes. A plan began to formulate in the back of Solvej's mind. If the Magician was too blinded by the sun to see clearly... And if sawdust got in his eyes at the same time...

She waited for several long minutes, watching the Magician. He squinted against the sun to see her.

Then she swung her sword at the ground. A shower of pebbles and sawdust went flying in the Magician's face.

He let out a furious bellow, rubbing frantically at his eyes. Solvej lunged forward. She aimed the sword at his neck. At the last minute the Magician moved back. The sword only left a shallow scratch on his throat.

A cold feeling swept over Solvej. Her eyes suddenly felt very heavy, and her thoughts became slow and sluggish.

What? she wondered, trying to shake off the unaccountable feeling.

She looked down. The Magician's knife had cut into her arm. It was a shallow cut, but already the skin around it was turning black. The spectators gasped. From this distance they probably couldn't see what happened, but they knew she was injured in some way.

The Magician raised his knife again. Solvej barely had time to block his attack with her sword. The blades collided with a loud clang. The darkness of the Magician's knife seemed to seep from it into the air around them. The Sky Queen's sword turned bright red and its blade grew steadily hotter until they might have been standing in a furnace. Sweat-drops ran into Solvej's eyes. She blinked them away, not daring to let go of the sword with even one hand. Her injured arm ached, a dull and rhythmic throbbing.

It was as if the heat of the volcano the sword had been forged in had somehow been contained in the blade, waiting to boil alive any unsuspecting attackers. Perhaps that was exactly what had happened. The heat was uncomfortable for Solvej, but she could cope with it. The Magician could not.

He held onto his knife for as long as he could. But at last he let go with a yelp and staggered back. Solvej's sword, suddenly no longer locked with the knife, almost fell out of her hand. The ghost stumbled forward.

She recovered more quickly than the Magician. He was still blinking away specks of dust, and the unexpected heat generated by the sword had left him confused and disorientated.

Solvej raised her sword as if aimed for his neck. The Magician, dazed though he was, recognised the threat and raised his knife to block. At the last minute Solvej changed the angle of her attack. Instead the sword plunged deep into his chest.

Three things happened at once. The spectators cheered. The Magician shrieked like a banshee. And the world suddenly turned black before Solvej's eyes.

She had changed her attack, but the Magician had not. He had kept his knife raised at a perfect angle to intercept her sword...

Or to cut open her throat.