by Ed Greenwood
"Just like vaugren."
"Just like vaugren, indeed."
"Well," another of the masked men at the back of the room spoke up, "you are all of Arvale; if these two travel on, come morning, they pass off your platter and become a problem for other Falconaar. I'm traveling on to Galath with my wagons, and I suspect they will be, too. I'll watch them, and if your suspicions are correct, do what has to be done."
"I'm bound for Galath, too," the only woman in the room put in, scratching thoughtfully at her mask. "I'll do the same, and as a woman may well learn more from the Aumrarr through friendly chatter than you can with your blade. You know how Aumrarr are with ladies."
There were chuckles. "Aye, we know," the short, fat Vengeful said meaningfully.
* * *
THE CHILLING HAND on Rod's trembling shoulder thrust him firmly aside and let go; Rod Everlar cowered away, whimpering, "but could not keep from looking at what strode past him.
A skeleton, tall and terrible, its bones black and shimmering with blue fire at every joint, the rotting tatters of a shroud clinging to its limbs as it climbed up two stairs and jabbed one bony hand into the Dark Helm's face—actually into it, blue fire swirling, piercing helm, flesh, and bone alike.
Those skeletal fingers closed together and pulled back, tearing away the front of the man's head, leaving his skull like... like Rod's mailbox, gaping open after he'd pulled all the letters out.
The Dark Helm's body pitched forward, collapsing down the steps, and his fellow Helm rose from crouching over the top steps with a frightened curse, whirling around to flee.
"Stop him!" Taeauna cried feebly. "He must not live!"
The skeleton clambered down a couple steps and bent in one fluid motion, for all Falconfar as if it were a sleek and strong giant serpent rather than a thing of bones, and plucked up the huge stone lid of its coffin. Rod glimpsed an elaborately carved likeness of a warrior in battle, sword raised in victory, above a long and flowery inscription, before the skeleton leaned forward and threw the great slab of stone up the stone stairwell as a warrior hurls a shield, edge-on and spinning, at foes in battle.
It struck the Dark Helm in the back of the neck, smashing him off his feet and up into the air, head almost severed. When man and stone slab crashed on the stairs together, and bounced wetly once, there was little left of the fleeing warrior's head.
As an onrushing crowd of Dark Helms came to a wary halt, Taeauna crawled hurriedly up the steps and plucked up the grisly crushed helm from the broken body under the slab.
She bore it, dripping with its contents, back down the crypt stairs to Rod. "Drip some of your blood on it," she panted, "and the magic that compels it should burn away."
Wonderingly, he did just that. The metal hissed and smoked, Taeauna hurriedly let it fall to the stone steps, and together they watched the helm melt away to nothing.
STANDING OVER HIS crystal, the wizard Arlaghaun arched over backwards with a startled cry of pain, and clawed at the air as the sudden agony of being burned raged up within him.
With a shriek and a rattle of chains, honey-blonde hair flying, his apprentice flung down the guttering candles and fled.
Unnoticed, the book of spells on the floor glowed and started to turn its own pages, tiny voices hissing out incantations that went unheeded.
THE DOZEN DARK Helms roared in common pain, clutched their heads, and staggered away into the night, some of them dropping their swords and all of them hurrying.
"Come," Taeauna whispered. "Swiftly! Take up my sword; let's be up and out of this place of death!"
Rod did as he was told, grinning wryly at how used to swiftly obeying her he was getting, and pleased as Punch that she was awake and alert and with him again.
As they went up the steps, Taeauna sucked greedily at Rod's fast-vanishing wound, seeming to gain strength with every step. Behind them, the dark and gaunt skeleton reached out beseeching hands and begged hollowly, "Shaper, give me life again! Raise me to the living, and I'll serve you! I—"
"You can't," Taeauna whispered in Rod's ear. "You musn't!"
Rod was hastening up the last few steps, swallowing down a fresh surge of horror that threatened to choke him. "I... I don't know how," he admitted helplessly, "even if I wanted to."
"Noooo!" the skeleton howled, hurling itself desperately at his ankles. "Don't leave! Master of All, don't leave me!"
Rod flung himself up onto the grass and rolled away from the crypt and up to his feet. He sprinted out into the street, with Taeauna running hard at his heels, and dared not turn to look until he was in the alley.
At the top of the steps leading out of its crypt the undead was straining to follow and starting to crumble. As Rod and Taeauna watched, huddling together, it collapsed into dust with a last, helpless wail.
Shaken, Rod drew in a tremulous breath, shook his head, and asked, "Dare we go back to our rooms at the inn?"
"When I'm stronger," she murmured. "Lord, I need more."
Setting his teeth, Rod put his arm around her, handed her back her sword, and drew her back against him. Then he took his dagger and drew it steadily along his forearm that was around her stomach, cutting deep.
The fingers of his cut arm suddenly felt like ice, and then as if they were on fire. He loosened his grip around Taeauna, and felt her pluck his arm up to her mouth and start to suck hungrily. Glowing blue fire pulsed around her mouth as she leaned back against him.
God, her mouth is beautiful.
Watching her, Rod felt sudden desire rising in him. His body stirred, and he knew she must be feeling it, against her leg.
She ignored it so he said nothing, as the pain in his arm slowly sank into an ache, and then into nothing at all.
Abruptly the Aumrarr spun but of his loose embrace, took his hand with a mysterious little smile, and tugged it gently, bidding him follow.
Along the alley and back to the inn, trotting swiftly, swords out and peering this way and that for any sign of Dark Helms, snake-headed warriors, or anyone else who was up and about in the waning moonlight.
Nothing. Arbridge might have been deserted, empty buildings under the moon. Even the inn-yard doors were firmly latched and barred, and inns were customarily open but well lit and guarded in the dark hours. Rod and Taeauna went around the back, finding the window shutters of their room gaping open, just as they'd left them.
Inside, the room was crowded with the sprawled dead: a Dark Helm, hacked to death, atop too many snake-headed men to count. Many of them had been felled in the wardrobe they'd entered the room through; its back stood open, slid aside to reveal the dark mouth of a secret passage beyond. Taeauna went right past it to the entrance door of the room, waved a stern finger against her lips to warn Rod to be as quiet as possible, and took down the door-bar, taking infinite care to be silent.
When she gently tried to open the door, the Aumrarr found it had been boarded firmly shut from the inn-passage side. She turned to Rod, took hold of his nearest ear, and whispered into it, "As I expected. We must be gone from Arbridge by morning."
"Or?"
"Or tarry and be slain. With every slain wizard, favorable regard in Arbridge for Lord Tharlark grows. He never misses any chance at a mage-slaying."
"But I'm not—"
' "That matters not to him. Come. We have a long walk ahead of us, in the dark. A cold swim, too."
"There's something wrong with the bridge?"
"'Tis guarded by the lord's armsmen. And watched by Dark Helms and the Vengeful, too."
"The Vengeful again," Rod said thoughtfully. "Local crazies?"
At Taeauna's puzzled frown, he hastily amended his question. "Local mad-folk?"
She shook her head. "Spreading now, and ordinary folk who are frightened more than touched in the wits. Some of my sisters believe—believed—the Dooms were encouraging the Vengeful, to scour the lands of hidden and lesser wizards, to drive the survivors to seek apprenticeship with the Three to save their own skins, and exterminate
all unpleasant surprises. None of the Dooms wants someone unknown bursting into their lives as an ally of another Doom, who could overwhelm defenses they've prepared to stand against the rivals they know."
"As I could be," Rod whispered.
She nodded on her way past him to the window. "Let's be going; despite how it may feel, thus far, this night won't last forever."
"BY THE FOUR sinister Dooms!" the tall masked man snarled. "You found it just like this? Nothing's been moved?"
Both of the other Vengeful nodded. "Just like this," one of them offered.
"Nothing," the other confirmed.
The tall man stared down at the headless body under the huge tomb lid.
"A Dark Helm." Unhooding his lantern, he stepped carefully around it, peering closely at the corpse-dust on the top step and stone lip of the tomb, and went down the crypt steps to peer into the open coffin. Empty.
He looked back at the body under the lid, then up at the other Vengeful. "Get to Olnar's and fetch four pry-bars... and Olnar, too. We've a body to dispose of, an empty coffin to fill, and a crypt to close before the womenfolk are up and seeing things and screeching about them."
The other Vengeful hesitated.
"Go! Unless you've the stomach for explaining all this to half the women in Arbridge, and listening to the other half gossip about you as liars who must have been 'up to something.'" He spread his hands, smiling. "The choice is yours."
Both men turned and started down the street that led to Olnar's.
HERE IN THE shadow of the trees, the black, rushing waters of the stream looked very cold.
Taeauna moved a little way along the bank, peering.
Rod waited, figuring she was seeking the best footing to cross, but eventually she nodded, plucked a few flowering rushes, took off her sword-belt and then various daggers in their sheaths from all over her body, laid them on the bank, and started to strip.
Rod blinked and retreated a few steps, half-turning away, but she paid him no heed at all. When she was done, she bundled her clothing and boots together on the bank, took up the rushes, and climbed down into the stream.
Rod stared at her as she scrubbed at her armpits and crotch with the broken-off ends of the rushes, and then quickly looked away when she looked up at him and said quietly, "Is anyone coming? Either side of the stream? Look well, mind."
"I..." Rod gazed hard past the trees and across moonlit fields, this way and that. "No. Ah, no. Uh, isn't the water cold?"
"Icy," she confirmed tersely, scrubbing hard. The rushes seemed to be oozing a sort of foam; Rod watched with quickening interest as she lifted one breast and then the other, thrusting a rush under them both.
When she shot another quick look up at him, he didn't look away. "How can you do that?" he protested. Darkness descended on them, as a racing cloud hid the moon.
"Shh!" Taeauna hissed at him, and in the same whisper added, "I stink. And so do you. Now get those clothes off and use some of these rushes. Soon we'll have half the prowling beasts in the North following us if you don't. They track by scent, look you!"
The moon chose that moment to come out again, full and bright and clear. Bare and beautiful in the moonlight, the Aumrarr put her hands on her hips and stared up at him.
"Lord Rod Everlar," said Taeauna, somehow contriving to make her whisper sound like a sergeant's bark, "get bare and get down into this water right now. Or I'll come up there and bring you down and wash you myself."
Rod tried to grin and say something snide about welcoming that, but somehow, now that this was happening to him, it didn't seem even the slightest bit erotic. Not like in good fantasy novels.
Or even his. Wincing, Rod Everlar looked around for approaching foes in the bright moonlight, as a cold breeze rose gently out of the east and slid numbingly past him. Finding none, he sighed and started undressing.
THE FRESHENING BREEZE stabbed into them like daggers of ice; the guards on the bare stone battlements of Tabbrar Castle drew their weathercloaks more tightly around their shoulders, cursed softly, and started tramping toward each other, the better to keep warm.
"Any marauding dragons your end?"
"Not just now. Yours?"
"Not a one. It's the invading hosts of lorn that's scared them off, that's what it is. Lorn painted pink, dancing with each other."
"Lorn? I dream of seeing a few lorn. Just to pass the time. Watching the castle wall crumble away with age gets old after a time. If you take my meaning."
"I do, Jorduth. Indeed I do." The older guard leaned on a lichen-spattered merlon and peered over the lip of the rampart, looking out at the moon-drenched and utterly empty road below, winding up out of Arvale past the castle walls and then over the lip of the stone ridge, to begin the long descent into the kingdom of Galath.
Jorduth rested his elbows in the next embrasure, stared down at the same serene expanse of road, and said slowly, "The Dooms alone know who Lord Tharlark thinks will come galloping up here at this time of night—in either direction. Fair freeze your bones off, to be out riding just now." He lifted his head to stare at old Blaurin, more to goad an answer out of the veteran than for any other reason.
Blaurin shrugged and spat thoughtfully over the edge with the easy aim of long, long practice. They both paused to watch his offering land.
THE COLD ALMOST seared his hand. Rod snatched it away from the wall, turned to Taeauna, and shook his head. "Wherever my 'right place' is, this isn't it. I knew there was a castle here, but come to think of it, I don't remember having ever heard of Tabbrar Castle before. It must be Holdoncorp work."
The Aumrarr shook her head. "Older. Far older." She drew the dungeon key back out of her scabbard again. "Come. Some journeying yet awaits us, this night."
Rod wearily followed her back into the secret passage. As they left the dungeons, Taeauna carefully locked up behind them again.
BLAURIN'S SPITTLE LANDED with a splat, dead center, atop the great iron swivelpost of the barrier that guards below could swing out to block the road, and scratched his chin-tuft of a beard.
"Seems to me," he ventured, "that as long as we watch, no one will come. The moment we nod off, or go down off the walls, that's as when smugglers will come through the vale and down into Galath, or an army will come up out of Galath."
"The latest noble fleeing the Mad King. They'll want to get far and fast, not tarry here."
"Oh? If all that dooms them are his orders, so all as hunts them—half-hearted, like—will be other nobles. Why not stop here, one boot over the border out of Galath? Only a noble house that has a feud going with whoever took this castle would bother to break blades outside the king's writ."
"Well, isn't that most of them? I mean, aren't they all feuding with each other, every last one of them?"
Blaurin shook his head. "Not anymore. The old families, with all their chests full of good gold broons and blood-kin beyond counting, are all dead or fled; they were the ones as saw feuds as daily entertainment. All that's left now are the younger houses, and a few survivors."
Grimacing against the cold, Blaurin lurched upright and started walking again. "Not that I 'spect we'll be seeing any armies this night, nor slave-takers or the like, going either way."
"Oh? Why not?"
Blaurin pointed down into Galath. By night, to guards on the wall, it was just the vast darkness beyond the reach of the huge, chain-hung castle lanterns in one direction, as opposed to the lesser darkness of Arvale in the other direction.
"You can't see them now, but earlier on I marked six banners at the Galath guardpost. Double strength tonight, for some reason. Usually it's the king thinking some poor hunted fool is going to try to crawl past the guards and escape his clutches. There's not a silent cat as will manage to slip in or out of the Realm of the Rothryns this night."
ROD YAWNED AND stumbled again.
"God, Taeauna, if it wasn't so damned cold, I'd have fallen asleep walking an hour ago!"
"Quite likely."
Jesus, she sounded more like a primly disapproving schoolteacher than ever.
A tireless, deadly, magnificently beautiful schoolteacher who had scrubbed Rod's backside, as firmly and briskly as if he'd been a pig or a pony she didn't think much of. And she'd been completely unconcerned about her nakedness while his face was flaming.
She went on into the darkness, drawn sword in hand, ducking and weaving among the low branches and brambles that kept whipping across Rod's face as if she really could see them. The only time she'd slowed was when he'd really torn his face open, and she had turned to lick and suck it distractingly. She wasn't slowing now.
"Taeauna, where are we going?"
"Into Galath. Whose folk aren't deaf, so be still!"
"Are we going to walk all night?"
"If we must. Now shut up, lord."
That at least made Rod snort in wry amusement. Ah, yes, always address the Lord Archwizard of the world politely, after you've snapped an order at him.
He managed to keep silent for most of the way down a difficult hillside of rocks and thorny vines and trees whose gnarled, many-jointed branches grew damnably low to the ground, before he fell down an unseen drop about the length of his own legs to land bruisingly on a jutting rock.
"Where are we heading, anyway? Galath, yes, but where in Galath?"
Taeauna whirled around so swiftly that he almost shrieked, her sword-tip glinting back moonlight right beside his ear.
"Rod Everlar," she said softly, leaning forward to fix him with solemn eyes from less than a hand-length away, "if I answer you now, will you promise—and keep your promise, by the Dooms!— to not speak again until I bid you to? We are very close to being discovered, now, and slain out of hand."
Rod swallowed. "I promise," he whispered, so softly that he could barely hear himself.
Taeauna nodded approvingly, leaned even closer, and breathed into his ear, "A particular haystack."
"A—?" Rod swallowed the "what" even before her finger came up to tap him sternly on his lips.
The Aumrarr dropped her hand down his chest to his arm, and trailed down that arm to his wrist, which she pulled on, gently, and led Rod into deep, branch-tangled darkness.
