Falconfar 02-Arch Wizard

by Ed Greenwood

  Leaving Garfist and Iskarra momentarily alone—though ominous cracks were spreading across the still-thundering tower door—as the tapestries blazed on, and flames billowed up everywhere in the ceiling overhead. Unconcernedly the floating wizard's skull grinned at them as shouts arose behind the tower door, and guards boiled back up onto the balcony.

  Gar had lumbered forward to loot Lord Lyrose's body of all those golden gem-bedecked rings, but Isk plucked at his arm.

  "Come," she commanded. "Bring his sword and come. We have a task, up yon stairs, and burning castles have a habit of falling down. I'd rather not be up there when this one decides to collapse!"

  "Bah! Always right, y'are!" Gar growled at her, hastily clawing up Lyrose's sword and dagger. Shoving himself to his feet, he took her hand.

  Ducking aside from the spears now hurtling at them from the balcony in a quickening rain, they ran for the nearest door.

  MALRAUN FOUND HIMSELF rising out of a fading but unpleasant dream of flaming tapestries and rushing guards, to blink up at an unfamiliar ceiling, in silent darkness.

  He was lying on his back, linens thrown off him, in a large but sweat-soaked bed—soaked with his sweat—with the bare, beautiful form of Taeauna warm on his shoulder. He was in... oh, yes, the best bedchamber in conquered Darswords.

  And he was now thoroughly awake.

  Though his head ached cursedly and he felt as tired as if he'd not slept a wink. Lyrose had... had what?

  Something had flared in his mind. Falcon rend all.

  With a grunt of disgust that awakened Taeauna, he rolled over and away from her. "Idiots," he growled into the darkness. "If that castle burns, I'll lose all I've hidden there, and the Lyroses besides. And I've plans for them."

  Ignoring Taeauna's reaching, soothing hand, he angrily clambered out of the bed, strode naked across the room until he was far enough from where his clothing and carried magics were all heaped together, and worked a swift spell.

  Light flared briefly around his limbs, leaving him a glimpse of Taeauna kneeling on the bed staring at him in sleepy concern.

  Then that radiance took him to distant Lyraunt Castle in a glowing, tingling instant, and faded away.

  He was standing on the Three Thorns in the center of the great hall, with flames blazing away above him, smoke and corpses everywhere, and—

  Malraun waved both hands in a mighty magic that swallowed the tapestries and hall ceiling alike, hurling them high and far up into the starry night sky, and leaving the fires nothing to feed on.

  Above, the last few flickering flames fell toward him, slumping into sparks as they came, and... were gone.

  Something struck the tiles right beside his leg. Malraun sprang aside and turned, even before a second spear cracked off slightly more distant tiles and skidded away across the hall.

  The balcony rail was crowded with hard-eyed guards, glaring at him and hefting spears. With a silent snarl, the naked Doom waved his hands again. Magic surged out of him—and the balcony was suddenly empty of men, its ceiling and back wall dripping and glistening with fresh red gore.

  He turned on his heel to peer around the hall. It no longer had a ceiling, but then fire was no longer raging in Lyraunt Castle. Yet someone had set that fire, and—

  Malraun spotted an all-too-familiar face among the nearest bodies on the floor, and cursed bitterly.

  Gorget gone. Taking two swift steps, he drew the dagger up out of Lord Lyrose's eye. Darfly poison, and a Lyrose blade at that. A family slaying, then.

  He thrust the dagger right back into dead Magrandar's eye—and yawned, rage ebbing before a sudden rush of weariness. Idiots.

  Well, at least this wasn't Hammerhand work. So it could wait until morning, when he wasn't so workmule-tired from killing wizards. And when he wasn't standing naked in a castle far from home, with only pitiful remnants of magic left. Another balcony full of guards with spears wouldn't be all that welcome, just now...

  Stifling another yawn, he cast another spell—and vanished. Sleepily padding across a dark bedchamber where Taeauna's arms awaited, back to his bed in Darswords, having never noticed a certain silently-smiling floating skull—or a bone-thin woman and a fat, gruff man who were decidedly not of House Lyrose.

  A handful of moments later, a dozen maids and stablehands rushed into the room, water slopping from their buckets as they slowed.

  They stared around in the gloom, smelling smoke and scorched stone, but seeing nary a flame that wasn't in a brazier.

  Then they saw the bodies on the floor, the balcony a-drip with blood, the floating skull, and the lack of tapestries.

  It took another few gasps and oaths before a shriek went up from one maid—as she pointed tremblingly at their lord, lying dead on the tiles with a dagger sticking up out of his eye.

  There were other screams, but more than a few of the maids stole reluctantly forward for a better look. And when they'd looked, and were sure, they gave the corpse of Lord Magrandar Lyrose some good, hard, heartfelt kicks.

  "THAT WAS MALRAUN!" Iskarra hissed, panting from their long climb. "A glorking Doom of Falconfar!"

  "Don't look like much bare-assed, do he?" Garfist growled back, pausing for breath three steps above her. "He'll be back come morning, mind—after he's finished rutting with whoever he so hastily left to come here and blow the roof off the hall! So let's thank him, very quietly, and be done with setting our trap and get gone from here! At least he took care of all Lyrose's guards!"

  "I'm not so sure his kills were anywhere near 'all' of them, Old Ox," his partner panted, "but yes, let's do it and begone! Do we try to find the Aumrarr and use their wings to get well away? Or try to hide in the forest, and make our own way back to..."

  "Heh," Garfist agreed, "that needs more thinking on, don't it? The Raurklor's dangerous for a band of less than, say, twenty armed knights at the best of times. Given what the wingbitches said about his warning-wards, d'ye think Malraun the Matchless has an Aumrarr-sniffing spell?"

  They looked at each other in the faint magical gloom that filled the upper reaches of this tower, until Iskarra spread her hands and shrugged to signify she could not even mount a worthy guess.

  Then she looked up the spiraling tower stair past him and hissed, "Not much farther. Who was this bedchamber built for, anyway? A babe who was a family monster? Child princes or princesses kidnapped from elsewhere? An Aumrarr, perhaps, so she'd learn to fly?"

  Garfist shrugged. "Who knows why lords with castles do anything? I think they're all more'n a little mad; all that gold and power rots a man's brain."

  Isk smirked. "So when did you have lots of gold and power, that I missed noticing?"

  Garfist was above her on the stairs, so he didn't bother with a clever reply. He just broke wind into her face. Noisily.

  The stairs ended in a plain stone door that wasn't locked. Gar and Isk traded glances over that before Garfist warily turned the door-ring and pushed the door gently open.

  Inside they found no lurking monster, nor any guard. Just a high, uncurtained bed that nearly filled the room, and dust in the corners.

  "Under it, right up nigh the headboard," Garfist rumbled, before Isk could remind him. "Give me the gem."

  "No, my fat beloved," Isk panted gently. "Let's catch our wind first, and then I'll do the crawling beneath. Someone may want to find this bed intact—and a Doom arriving and finding it broken will be wary, for sure."

  "No Doom's going to climb all those stairs," Garfist growled. "Not when he has spells to spare." He held out one hairy hand. "The gem."

  Ignoring him, Iskarra strolled along the far side of the bed, both hands on her belt buckle, fingers undoubtedly touching the mindgem she'd slid into the little pouch she'd sewn behind it some seasons ago.

  Halting at the head of the bed, she turned and gave him a strange little smile. "I've decided something."

  "Aye?" Garfist asked warily. That sweet tone of hers was not one he liked overmuch; it always betokened something bold. An
d dangerous.

  "I'm going to step through the gate, and drop this little mind-trap-stone behind me. After you precede me through, of course."

  Garfist stared at her. "Now who's gone crazed? Without any gold an' power, too!"

  Isk shook her head, still wearing that odd smile. "I'm not a wizard. Nor are you. So we'll be fine, yes?"

  "If 'fine' means happily stepping into the unknown, when that unknown is a wizard's lair!" Garfist growled.

  "Well, Malraun won't have made a gate that would hurt him, if he came home from here through it," Iskarra replied, the mindgem now gleaming in her hand, "for isn't this a bolthole he might use when hurt, or desperate, or in haste, or when trying to sneak into his own home because, say, another Doom has broken into it? And if we stay here in Ironthorn, half Falconfar—the armed, warlike half—are either in our laps already or will soon be here. Arriving ready to kill everyone, even before all the wizards start blasting. If we stroll quick and quiet out of a wizard's tower, we might well make it. It's folk trying to get in that have all the trouble."

  "Wizard's tower," Garfist rumbled slowly. "Gems, wine, gold... Isk, ye're going to get us killed some day, ye are!"

  He let his wagging, reproving finger fall—and grinned widely. "So let's be about it!"

  He held out his hand, Isk took it, and he pulled, hauling both hard and upward. She came flying into his arms like the scrawny sack of bones she so nearly was, and they embraced amid chuckles.

  Then they went down on their knees together. Isk promptly gave way until he was lying atop her on the floor, their arms around each other. Garfist glanced at the bedframe beside him, then at the dim dustiness beneath it, and grunted, "Don't think so."

  "Doesn't look heavy enough that you can't heave it up," Iskarra murmured, from just beneath his chin. "I can always worm out of your arms and let you flatten out."

  "Right, wench—lead us on to our deaths," her man growled, and they rolled together.

  Almost immediately, Garfist's shoulders got stuck.

  So he grunted, heaved to shove the bed up from beneath, and won them space enough to roll over again.

  Into a tingling that snatched away their eyesight into swirling mists, and made the mindgem glow like a pale eye.

  "Hurry," Iskarra hissed, and they rolled onward.

  She let go of the mindgem, heard it drop onto a floor that sounded very far away, and they left it behind and fell together through endless, welcoming mists.

  ROD EVERLAR LOOKED up at the moon, serene in a nigh-cloudless sky that was alive with more stars than he'd ever seen before—and then down at the moon-drenched roofs of silent Harlhoh. No dogs barked, no wolves howled, and no nameless night things called. It was very still.

  Except for what was bubbling up inside him again, warm threads stirring like reaching fingers. The drug they'd given him earlier...

  He reeled, and Thalden flung out an arm to steady him and snapped, "Gorn! The wizard's under attack! Some magic of Malraun's, belike!"

  The knights scattered into a ring, swords and daggers out. Their points were thrust toward Rod, not out at the shadows in the garden.

  "No," Rod protested weakly. "Whatever you gave me earlier, that made me babble so... it's back."

  He sank to his knees before Thalden could shift his grip, and then to a crawling along one of the soft garden paths.

  Moss, he thought to himself, suddenly acutely aware of the look and feel of what was under his palms. It's all moss. Thicker and grander than any I've ever seen before...

  The garden was all snakelike curved beds, each one different, each a ridge of heaped earth drenched in shrubs and natural-seeming stones and little shade trees, wandering its own way through the ribbons of moss... Rod crawled along the path like a dazed, unsteady babe, as whatever Syregorn had given him returned with a vengeance, rolling like silent surf through his mind.

  Its thunders submerged him, and he was only dimly aware that he was talking again, fast and wildly and about anything and everything, the words tumbling over each other as he ranted on—and the knights slowly closed in around him in a looming ring, grim disgust on their faces.

  "Strike him senseless," Reld muttered.

  "We daren't have him making so much noise, right here next to where a Doom may be sleeping!" Perthus hissed, looking to Syregorn.

  "Aye, silence him," Tarth agreed.

  The warcaptain held up one hand at them in a clear signal to desist, and ordered, "Pick him up. Gently. Carry him back there, to yon farthest corner, and set him carefully down, where he has space to lie on his back. No talking."

  Rod babbled on as they took him carefully under the armpits and around the legs, and lifted. "So then the Aumrarr showed me a greatfangs, dead and stinking, and God it reeked, like all the open cesspits and rock concert vomit put together, so foul that—"

  "What about him?" Reld whispered at Syregorn.

  The warcaptain's reply was flat and cold. "Magic has prevented me obeying one order from Lord Hammerhand—for this night, at least. I will therefore do my utmost to fulfill his other commandment, and learn all I can from this one who calls himself Lord Archwizard."

  "You mean—?"

  "I mean I'm going to sit and listen. The rest of you can explore the gardens if you'd like—in pairs, and with at least two of you standing guard over our babbler with me. Oh, and I want someone watching yon door at all times."

  "There're only six of us—seven with you, Syre."

  "And eight, with this Rod Everlar. I learned to count too, Perthus." The warcaptain's voice was quiet but very dry, and his youngest knight flushed dark red in the moonlight, and said not another word.

  Rod did, though. He couldn't help himself, though what he was revealing was embarrassing him into squirming, blushing depths of humiliation. "No magic at all, but Taeauna insists I'm the Lord Archwizard, greatest of the Dooms, and I don't feel heroic, don't feel lordly or that I have any right to tell anyone to do anything. I can't swing a sword, can't hunt, can't even light a bloody fire..."

  The moss was just as soft in the deep gloom where two of the garden walls met, and bushes flourished in that corner and on the bed two steps away, across the last, looping-nigh-the-walls path. They lowered Rod Everlar onto his back as gently as if he'd been an honored corpse being laid on an altar. Syregorn sat down beside Rod's head, plucked a long shoot from a nearby bush he evidently recognized, and started chewing on it.

  It protruded from his mouth, dancing gently, as he leaned over Rod's face and asked into the helpless, endless flood of words, "So, were you born in Falconfar, Everlar?"

  "No no no," Rod found himself saying eagerly. "I was born on Earth, in the real world. In a hospital that's been torn down now, in the usual way, or so I'm told. I don't remember when I was really young, except standing in a garden one summer in the sun, staring at sunflowers as big as my face; they always told me that summer must have been when I was three, and—"

  "How did you get from this Earth to Falconfar?"

  "Tay-Taeauna came for me, and cried for my help, and the Dark Helms came to finish her off, and she told me to weave a dream-gate, and—and I guess I did. Just as they swung their swords—"

  "A dream-gate?"

  "Think of Falconfar, she told me. Look at me, but think of Falconfar—and it worked! We went from my bedroom to the road leading up to the keep!"

  "Oh? What keep?"

  "Hollowtree Keep, of course, up in the hills east of Galath. One of my favorite creations."

  '"Creations'? Ah, and what else have you created?"

  "Well, ah, Falconfar, and almost everything in it. This place. Ironthorn and the Raurklor and Galath and all."

  Someone who wasn't Syregorn snorted in disgust, and Rod became vaguely aware that some of the knights were standing nearby, listening.

  "A madman," one of them muttered, to another. "I knew it."

  Rod also became aware that the bald warcaptain was fiercely but silently waving his knights away, now, even as he ben
t closer to Rod to say in a gently soothing voice, "Let's go back to Hollowtree Keep. Why is it one of your favorites?"

  "Ah, Syre, shouldn't we be—?"

  That low, uncertain voice broke in on them from just above and behind Rod, the opposite direction from the now-retreating knights. It was Reld, and he was jerking his head in the direction of the distant door that led out of the gardens into Malragard.

  Syregorn gave that knight a level look. "You're in a particular hurry to die? Alone in the undoubtedly-spell-guarded fortress of a Doom of Falconfar?"

  "Alone? But I won't be..." Reld trailed off under the warcaptain's grim glare.

  "Ah, but you will be. If you step through that door right now, none of us'll be going with you. Yet if you feel you must, go right ahead—disloyal knight of Hammerhold. We'll tell Lord Hammerhand you died valiantly. And foolishly."

  Reld moved his mouth as if he was going to make some sort of reply, but then flushed, closed it again, bowed his head in acceptance, and stepped back into the night.

  I know JUST bow he feels, Rod thought, as his own verbal flood flowed on. Humiliated, an idiot, a failure. Some fantasy book hero I'm turning out to be. Wandering along like a dimwit while others do what they like with me, smirk at me, and deem me an utter dolt. And they're right, every last one of them.

  He paused for breath, and Syregorn's gentle voice returned. "So that's all you know about the Aumrarr? Well, then, tell me more of what you know of the world you came from, this Earth."

  Syregorn was smiling, but the smile never touched his eyes. He went right on with his careful, quiet questions—and helplessly, while fear grew inside him like a cold, awakening worm, Rod obediently babbled on and on about the real world.

  The warcaptain wanted to know about everything. What people wore, how they locked their doors at night, how they spent each day.

  Of course. Syregorn was learning all about a foe, so be could invade them and swiftly do all the right things to conquer. And I'm telling him, God help me. Shit. Earth was about to become doomed.

  THE MISTS FADED away, leaving Garfist and Iskarra lying on a cold stone floor in each other's arms.