Falconfar 01-Dark Lord

by Ed Greenwood

  "So who is that man?" he whispered to the dark and silent stone. "I'd never seen him before I first glimpsed him at the Aumrarr's side, I know I haven't, yet he looks so familiar."

  “So THAT'S JUST how it was, lord," Iskarra said warmly, concluding a long and fanciful tale as to why she and Garfist Gulkoon were in the cellars of Deldragon's keep in the heart of Bowrock.

  As they all strode together down yet another long and many-doored passage in this seemingly endless tower, Deldragon regarded her thoughtfully, something impish or merry dancing in the depths of his ice-blue eyes. "I don't believe a word of it," he said, firmly but politely, as he stroked his flaxen mustache. "So tell me something else, instead: what are your intentions now?"

  "To take every last bit of magic we can carry from these rooms all around us," Garfist growled, "and get ourselves far away from here. Somewhere in Falconfar, I care not where, that the mage whose tower we're standing in can't find us."

  "There is no such place," Taeauna snapped. "Nor can you escape his scrutiny for longer than it takes him to mumble a rather simple spell, if you carry off even one of his things of magic. Your schemes doom you."

  Iskarra sighed. "They always have."

  "Yet we're still here!" Garfist rumbled triumphantly. "So I think we'll just keep right on scheming, and not listening to folk who have their own reasons for saying us nay for this and that."

  Taeauna didn't bother to shrug; she was too busy pointing ahead. "Gates! A row of them!"

  As if her words had been some sort of cue, the air brightened into a bright silver-gold shimmer and the passage around them rocked. From out of that shimmering, something small, strange, glowing and golden fell into Rod Everlar's hand. It resembled a miniature coach-horn, only with valves like a trumpet, and three misshapen eyes that winked and glowed with moving, vary-hued radiances.

  It was soft, rather than as hard as any other metal object he'd ever touched, and warm, too, and...

  That was all the staring at it he was able to manage, as something more sinister caught his eye. Down the passage ahead of him, just this side of the row of distant glows that Taeauna had just pointed out as the way out they were seeking, a warrior's helm—close-faced and menacing, for all that it was empty—was floating slowly down out of the ceiling.

  Literally out of the ceiling. Rod saw it emerge from apparently solid stone, sliding down to hang in the air. As if it were watching him, and worn by a man whose stomach was on a level with the tousled top of Rod's head.

  Shit. It certainly didn't look friendly; Taeauna and Deldragon were already stepping forward, swords rising.

  At least it was just a helm, without arms and shoulders to swing some great big sword.

  Something else was emerging out of the solid stone walls on either side of the passage, drifting forth in eerie silence. Arms, or rather hollow assemblies of armor plate to cloak the arms of an absent body, from flaring shoulder-plates to elaborate gauntleted fingertips. A giant's body, by the size of them. They were converging below the helm, where they would probably mate with...

  A breastplate and chain-linked assembly of overlapping back plates, now rising in stately silence up out of the floor, to—

  "Falcon!" Iskarra spat. "Are we just going to stand and watch it? Hack it to ribbons, or let's run!"

  "Now," Taeauna said calmly to the velduke a moment later, as the drifting pieces came to smooth halts, and the air between them seemed to brighten. "Right where they're meeting."

  Deldragon didn't bother to nod. Sword-fire streaking from the point of his blade was already lashing the armor where it was drawing together, snarling and clawing at the plates, curling around and between them.

  And seeming to harm them not at all.

  Leg armor was rising up out of the floor, and a sword as long as a lance was sliding out of the wall, wisps of smoke curling along its deadly-looking blade. Deldragon aimed his sword to blast its hilt with his sword-fire, trying to halt it and prevent it from joining the assembling armor.

  He might have been shining a flashlight on the sword, for all the effect it had, and Rod and Taeauna gasped in unison as the sword-fire darkened, faded, seemed to cough and fade... snarled and spat, faded away completely... spat again, and then faded...

  "That sounds not good," Garfist growled. Is it...?"

  He fell silent. The sword-fire was gone again, and the blade of the velduke's sword was crumbling to rust-red dust, a collapse into nothingness that raced down the steel in a silent haste so swift and menacing that Deldragon barely had time to fling down the hilt before it reached his hand.

  The hilt burst into dust as it hit the floor, and was gone just like that, and all in velvet silence.

  Beyond it, a crackling arose in the air, a singing tension that rose in pitch as the armored guardian, wholly bonded together and with sword in hand, took its first tentative step toward them.

  Its second stride caused a squeal of metal against metal, yet was smoother, more confident, with none of the swaying of the first. Its third brought it smoothly into the crouch of a veteran warrior, hefting that huge blade from side to side, its reach blocking the passage, walling off any way to the gates beyond.

  Everyone cursed.

  "What's that thing of magic in your hand?" Deldragon snapped at Rod. "Something we can use?"

  Rod and everyone else stared at Rod's palm where the golden-valved horn was sinking into his flesh, apparently dissolving into him. He shook his head slightly in disbelief; he couldn't feel a thing, not even weight. If he closed his eyes, it felt like his hand was simply... empty.

  Empty...

  DARED SHE?

  Amalrys stopped in front of the closed, featureless stone door, her eyes like two small but bright blue lamps, shivering in her chains not from being otherwise bare in the cold darkness, but from excitement.

  And fear.

  Dared she, really? To raise her hand against the man who'd put these chains on her, claimed her so cruelly, lorded it over her daily because he could destroy her at his pleasure?

  Dared she lash out at him at last?

  Yes, a voice whispered exultingly, deep within her. She laid her hand on the door, trembled as the glow grew around it, and then scraped her bare skin on its opening edge as she slid past a trifle too soon, in her eagerness to get inside.

  FAR FROM A woman in chains forcing her way past a door in Ult Tower, a short, slender, and darkly handsome wizard rose from his claw-footed chair in one lithe movement to clench his fists, the better to hurl his will at her.

  "Yes," Malraun breathed, putting all of his fierce will behind that word, feeling the distant Amalrys yield to it and embrace it as her own. "Yes, little unwitting slave," he murmured, "strike down your tormentor at last. Let there be one fewer Arlaghaun in the world."

  As agile as any dancer, still thrusting his way deeper into the mind of Amalrys, he spun around and sprang back onto his chair, bouncing several times until his body was at rest again, his concentration never wavering.

  "And if his slaying is beyond you this day," he remarked almost pleasantly, "let him taste torment, and be afraid, and be lessened. Aye, see that you humble Arlaghaun the Mighty."

  He smiled, and told the ornately painted ceiling above, "For increasingly, his swaggering truly bothers me."

  * * *

  IN A DARK chamber of slowly dripping water, where every solitary drop plummeting the height of a castle into a patiently waiting pool awakened its own uncaring echo, the tall, blue-skinned wizard Narmarkoun sat alone, as always, and at ease.

  Nearby stood the staff he'd been augmenting, upright in the air though there was no hand to hold it there. The cold fires of his spells still flickered up and down its length betimes, reflecting back off his scaled hands.

  He smiled.

  "Goad her indeed, Malraun, and think yourself her master," he told the darkness. "Succeed or not, survive or not. I care not. Her mind is an open door into yours, and you are mine as surely as she is, whenever I care to re
ach out and take you.

  "And then squeeze."

  THE WATCHERS SAW the gold-hued bauble disappear entirely into Rod Everlar's palm, sinking out of sight beneath his unbroken, unblemished flesh.

  With a squeal of grinding metal, the armored guardian took another step forward, blade reaching out menacingly.

  Rod Everlar reeled, raised a hand to his head, and fell, toppling onto his face without a sound, to lie in an unmoving heap right in front of the lumbering guardian.

  Taeauna rushed to stand over him, sword raised against the reach of the looming guardian. Garfist and Iskarra looked at each other and with one accord spun around and fled back along the passage, leaving Deldragon standing alone where he was, stroking his mustache as he watched the guardian take another ponderous step, and then another.

  The velduke seemed to reach a decision. He drew his dagger and snapped at the Aumrarr, "Get back! Yon guardian will kill you."

  "If it does," Taeauna told him, her voice trembling on the edge of tears, "it does. Nothing in all Falconfar matters more than keeping this man alive right now."

  Deldragon stared at her as the guardian took another slow step, and swung its sword that was longer than either of them stood tall, up and back, ready to sweep down and shear through anything less solid than an ox or a stone pillar. Then it paused again, waiting, motionless and expressionless.

  The velduke stared up at it, then drew another dagger from his boot and hurried to Taeauna. "He's a Shaper, isn't he?" he asked quietly, his eyes very blue.

  The Aumrarr drew in a deep breath and then let it out slowly, shuddering like a terrified child. Her face was white.

  "He's the Shaper," she whispered. "Until he dies, and most of Falconfar with him."

  “WHOLE ONCE MORE," Arlaghaun murmured contentedly, striding naked across the room with water dripping from him in a racing flood.

  He had to walk briskly away, he knew, and firmly quell what he wanted to do now: take a longing look back at the pool. Its glows would be beckoning, he knew, and that was when it was at its most dangerous. If he slid back into its warm embrace, that was when memories would leave him, unregarded until he later needed them, reached for them, and found them utterly gone.

  Which could well be fatal to the friendless, much-feared wizard Arlaghaun, most feared of the Dooms of Falconfar, and rightly so.

  He allowed himself a tight little smile as he took down his least favorite cloak to dry himself with, wasting no time in toweling but simply donning it as if he were dry and clad, and wearing it close-clasped around him as he walked on in search of what he really wanted.

  His rings and the wandwing, yes, but here on the shelf nearby, his best sword of spells, its blade winking a welcome of sparkling stars to him as he half drew it and then slid it firmly into its sheath again. The pendant that would turn aside blades, and the gorget that would blunt most spells. An unseen dagger that only his questing fingers could confirm still rode in its sheath, to wear up one sleeve, and an archer's bracer that was anything but what it appeared to be, to wear up the other. The slumbering spells it stored flickered into life at his touch.

  Yes, these were happy to see him, these familiar magics, loyal and worthy of his trust, his closest friends in Falconfar.

  Not that they had many rivals for such a title. Arlaghaun shrugged. When he wanted loving arms about him, he could compel such company; the rest of the time he was spared all of the life-wasting fripperies of pleasing friends, doing things for friends, entertaining friends... Bah! Friends! What use were such leeches, but to drain his wealth and time and power from him, stealing his freedom as surely as they stole a coin-worth here and a coin there?

  He needed to gird himself with his strongest things of magic in as much haste as he could manage now, to go hunting the familiar stranger, Deldragon, and the rest.

  None of them must be allowed to live, to flee this place and tell their stories of his weakness to others. For if they could draw blood so easily, and others heard of it, half the wolves in Falconfar would rush in to try their luck.

  He caught up breeches and a tunic impatiently, tugging them on over his still-damp body. Swiftly, before they found one of his gates, or managed mischief... The sword, kick his feet into boots, the rings now... Haste haste haste!

  Like a vengeful whirlwind he strode past the mirror that showed him his own blazing brown eyes, sharp nose, and thin lips—thinner than usual right now, by the Falcon!—and rounded a corner. Flinging the right door wide, he strode—

  Almost into a pit that should not have opened in the floor at all! What the Falcon?

  Arlaghaun sprang over it, took another step, and swayed back as arms folded out of the walls, propelling scything blades. Their deadly arcs shrieked sparks from his shielding-spells as he ducked his head down and went on, skidding to a stop and... Yes, the floor was opening up under his boots again!

  He was under attack from all the tricks, traps, and creatures of his tower!

  "But..." he spat in vain protest, as the seemingly solid stone of a nearby pillar faded away to reveal a tall, thin creature that unfolded into something that looked like a grounded bat, or a flesh-covered spider; all long, grotesque limbs ending in talons or large-fanged jaws instead of hands.

  Several of those jaws grinned unpleasantly as it stalked forward to greet him, great arms stretching to clutch and rend.

  * * *

  AMALRYS SMILED INTO the glowing crystal with eyes that were very, very blue. "Dance, master," she murmured. "Dance as you force me to, and taste the whips, for once!"

  Arlaghaun was raging silently in the depths of the crystal, loath to ruin automatons he'd created and beasts he'd captured and trained. He was beset on all sides, his brown eyes two flames of fury. His sharp-nosed face was bleeding copiously, laid open by the barbs of the krauglaur towering over him. Amalrys awakened bone scorpions and freed them from their hidden lairs, to join the fun.

  At the very least, Arlaghaun was going to have to destroy a third of the tower guardians, spend most of his spells, and exhaust a good many of his enchanted items. Not to mention feeling just a touch of the pain and fear he so often and so gleefully visited on others. There was still a chance that he might forget just where all of his traps and spell-traps were, in the frantic heart of the fray, and she had no intention of giving him any time to think or catch his breath. It was time, and far beyond time, for the oh-so-ruthless wizard Arlaghaun to sweat a little.

  "Bleed, master," she purred, watching the krauglaur lurch sideways in pain and thrust its daggerlike tail into the heart of Arlaghaun's failing shieldings, sending him staggering and wincing in a shower of sparks. "Bleed for me."

  The crystal flared so brightly she turned her head away, honey-blonde hair swirling. When she looked back, the krauglaur and one of the bone scorpions had become no more than blackened legs and smoke, and Arlaghaun was stalking angrily past them, brown eyes afire, a black wand as long as a sword in his hand.

  Amalrys whistled at the sight of it. "Master has left his temper behind him," she murmured. "Time to plant some doubts, by making some of the automatons attack him in the name of Ult."

  A rune flared on the wand that Amalrys recognized; she passed a hand over the crystal to make it convey sound in time to hear her master's roar.

  Yet she needn't have bothered; the air itself bellowed with Arlaghaun's voice, echoing around her in the small room.

  "Klammert!" he was shouting, waving his wand to carry his voice from end to end of the tower. "Klammert! To me!"

  Amalrys sneered. "Such a capable master! Yes, when things turn rough, just call on another apprentice. We're all so expendable."

  “SISTER," DAUNTRA SNAPPED, as Juskra started to dive again, "must you? We'll never reach the Doom of Galath at all if you stop to slay every last Dark Helm you see on the way!"

  The fiercest of the four Aumrarr turned to deliver her reply with a glare. "I haven't slain a wizard in years, Dauntra. I'm out of practice. I judge a Doom to be worth a
bout a thousand Dark Helms, so I'd better start killing them right now. I only see a dozen down there."

  Dauntra grinned, shook her head helplessly, and waved her hand to signal Juskra to resume her dive.

  When she did, her three sisters were right behind her.

  * * *

  THE COACH-HORN, OR whatever it was, loomed up before his eyes, revolving, fading through other, impossibly large images of itself, and washed over Rod, leaving everything golden.

  A deep, rich, darkening gold that swallowed him as he plunged into it, the sound and noise of Ult Tower fading somewhere above him as he sank down, down toward... a darkness, a black speck in the distance.

  That grew as he raced toward it, or it rushed up to meet him, becoming a tall black castle, a fortress with a needle-spired tower at one corner, standing in a great forest, with the trees closest around it bare-branched and dead.

  He was racing through those branches now, blurringly fast, whipping past their stark dead spikes and across an open sward before reaching the dark, waiting opening of the arched front door. Then into that swallowing gloom, not slowing, but flashing across a cavernous hall full of emptiness and dust to soar up a staircase, whirling through more archways and darkness, a bewildering succession of many silent rooms, and—

  To a sudden halt.

  In midair, in one dark inner room, frozen, staring at the back of a tall stone seat in this heart of Yintaerghast, able to see only the arm of the aged man sitting in it.

  The chair that did not turn, as an old and cultured voice from its depths said without greeting, "As you have come to suspect, Rod Everlar, the splendid forest kingdoms you dreamed of and wrote about now stand alone, embattled holds menaced by prowling beasts grown both numerous and bold, and by the creatures who serve the three Dooms."

  Rod tried to speak, and found that he could not. I lis mouth, too, was frozen. He wished he could see the face of the old man in the chair.