by Ed Greenwood
A notion dangerous to the rest of his false selves, yet this one could obviously handle it. And all too much more. He'd best cast a few goading spells at the knights in Chainamund, to make them assault Sornspire again, the moment this one was installed there.
Or she just might seek alliances with them, to build herself into a challenge to the real Narmarkoun.
She was wearing a little smile right now that he liked no part of. Sun, stars, and Aumrarr, why was everything so complicated?
"Very well," she asked, "tell me: why is Ironthorn so important? As opposed to any other Raurklor hold, or Galathan castle, or waves wept isle in the Sea of Storms?"
Narmarkoun nodded approvingly. "There are places of magical power in Falconfar. Places that can renew waning magics on swords and wands and the like, or erupt in lightnings and other magical furies if the wrong magic is cast nigh them, or that can awaken magical powers in certain creatures who may not even be aware they possess them."
"Your oh-so-casual tone tells me it's the latter ability of the place that interests you now. So some magical innocents are going to awaken there? Perhaps shifting balances among the Dooms?"
Narmarkoun smiled. "The balances are shattered already."
"Lorontar."
It was not a question. Briefly Narmarkoun considered calling forth all the slumbering magics in his cold castle around them, and utterly destroying this false semblance of himself.
He decided against it. There was danger here, but not failure, yet. A powerful Narmarkoun would last longer against Galath, and do more harm to Lorontar when he at last reached out to slay. If the old Archwizard instead chose to mind-conquer and subvert, Narmarkoun's little trap would be waiting for him, and the harm would be inescapable.
"Indeed," he said again. "Some of those innocents may become Shapers, and thus players in their own right, or-"
"Or the most powerful weapons any Doom could hope to wield against another," his double interrupted.
Narmarkoun made himself nod and smile. "You see it all. Why Ironthorn is so important to the Dooms, and therefore why the strife that matters will soon erupt there."
"Do you know who these innocents are?"
"If I did, would I be just standing here, talking to you?"
"So how-"
Narmarkoun decided it was more than his turn to interrupt. "Aumrarr legends and certain writings of Stormar seers-the sort who had dream-visions, of old, and wrote them down-tell us there are all manner of these innocents. Falconaar-beasts as well as humans, but for the most part they will be human-who are ignorant of their magical powers but who, if ever awakened, may far outstrip any trained wizard in the hurling of magic. Beings who can feel the flows and webs of magical force, and wield them through sheer instinct, not painstaking experimentation and following the written spell-processes of others."
"And Ironthorn is one of the places they can easily awaken to mastery of magic, all by themselves."
"It is. Rod Everlar was one innocent. The Dooms all seek to learn who the others are, so we can destroy them before they ever reach Ironthorn. Yet there is a restlessness in Ironthorn right now, that warns me one of them may have wandered there already."
"So why are you sending me to Galath and not Ironthorn?"
Narmarkoun eyed his false self thoughtfully, and calmly enunciated the largest lie he'd uttered in a long time. "Because the magics I used to lend your mind some of my power, so you can cast spells, would burst apart in Ironthorn-rending your wits utterly."
"And you know this how?"
"I've tried it before."
Well, after all, one lie often needs to stand on another.
The deepening golden hue of the sunlight told Rod Everlar the day was drawing on.
The sunlight he could see very clearly, ahead, where it came stabbing down through the endless green gloom in a great shaft, to illuminate the first real clearing he'd seen in this great forest.
The stream beside his boots zigged this way and then that, only to plunge right through that clearing; he could see it sparkling in the sunlight. He could also see something moving, up there. No, two somethings.
They were too far away to identify clearly, yet. Two creatures that could fly or at least hop and flutter wings, they looked to be. Creatures that stood upright on two legs when they were on the ground. They were fighting each other, or courting, or-well, facing each other and moving quickly, in some sort of excitement, anyway.
Rod started to run, ignoring the meanderings of the stream for the first time. It was too large to lose now, perhaps a dozen feet wide and knee-deep or more in places. If he ran up its bank, heading for the light, he would have to cross only a few strides of uneven, tree-choked forest before he'd be slithering down its banks again, as its winding brought it back across his path. Clamber along around its curve, then up over the next hump of land, and-
A scream rang out, of rage and pain more than fear. From the clearing, of course. It sounded like a woman.
Rod blinked, dodged around a tree, kicked his way through a rather nasty thornbush-there hadn't been all that many bushes of any sort, in the gloom beneath all these soaring trees, but trust him to find one and blunder right through it-and hastened on.
It hadn't sounded like Taeauna. No, this was someone with a deeper, rougher voice, someone-
Someone who was just a fatal moment too slow with her sword. As Rod came charging up over what proved to be a narrow ridge of land, tripped over a tree-root, and slithered headlong in wet, rotting leaves toward a face-first meeting with the chuckling stream, he saw it all.
The largest lorn he'd ever seen, twice the height of a taller man than Rod Everlar, its barbed tail slashing around to catch the sword of its foe and pluck her off-balance, so she leaned helplessly forward into the reach of its long, thickly-muscled arms. Talons that stabbed into her breast and tightened viciously, forcing out a sob and coughed blood.
That foe was an Aumrarr in dark, well-worn leather armor, her wings slashed and tattered, her face utterly unfamiliar to Rod. He had time to see little more before the lorn pulled the Aumrarr close-and tore out her throat.
Blood fountained, drenching that horned and mouthless skull-face, and the Aumrarr's head flopped over, to dangle at an impossible angle.
Though it had no mouth, the lorn looked like it was chewing.
Then it swallowed.
And then it leaned forward to gnaw her face away.
As Rod Everlar, spewing forth the contents of his heaving stomach, scrambled up from the stream-edge mud and sprinted along the water's edge, around its last curve before the clearing, so he could charge up one more forest slope, crash through more trees, yelling out incoherent fury, and burst out into the bright sunlight to confront it.
The Aumrarr was very dead. There was blood everywhere, and the reek of death was strong.
For the first time Rod realized just how much danger he might be in-and something else, too: he hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to do now.
The lorn lifted its head from the bloody ruin of the Aumrarr's face, and regarded him expressionlessly. Without a mouth, its face a gray skull-like mask, it couldn't do much else, yet somehow Rod felt that it was sneering at him.
This close, he could see how the lorn had been able to bite out an Aumrarr throat without a mouth, then devour her face: a lamprey-like, chewing throat tube drew back out of view, under its jaw. Revealing two saw-edged, curving horns-like giant beetle pincers-that were just emerging from under that same jaw.
Horns that thrust forward again, spreading wide, as the lorn took a step closer to Rod, casually throwing the limp corpse of the Aumrarr over one of its arms. And then another step.
Oh, shit.
Chapter Three
Ironthorn had long been a vale where the cold and careful courtesy of meeting and mingling only in certain neutral places-the market-moots in Irontarl, and at Har's Bridge and Blackstones Hill-kept the three rival lordly families of Hammerhand, Lyrose, and Tesmer from
rising to bathe the valley in open red war.
Though vale-folk and traveling traders alike spoke of "the ever-brawling knights of Ironthorn," those frays erupted with fists and daggers in the taverns, between a hot-headed few, not from end to end of the valley with armies that slaughtered, pillaged, and burned.
The abiding hatreds of the lordly families had not quite turned them into nest-despoiling fools. Yet.
By grudgingly-forged agreement, underscored by cold graves on all sides of the dispute, the forest around Ironthorn had been deemed a place for hunting stags and boar, not men. Its trails were open to all, and it was understood that men who walked or rode there would leave their armor and their bows at home, and carry nothing more menacing than their everpresent swords, belt daggers, and boar-spears. Stags were to be ridden down and speared, or for the most daring, taken with sword and daggers; arrows were for bustards in the sky above, and vermin-four-legged vermin-in the fields below. Not that bows were much use against Ironthar knights and senior armsmen; no armor was worn in the valley that was not treated with the spells that slowed and then turned aside iron. A strong man could bring a sword to bear on an Ironthar-armored foe, fighting through the magic with teeth clenched in effort, but the bow had not been made that could drive even the mightiest war-quarrel home, through the air, to bite.
Yet despite the ban, this day saw two armed and armored warbands out riding the largest forest trail-the only one where two horses could just pass without touching, if the riders were careful. The trail that wandered through the Raurklor heights from one end of Ironthorn to the other, and beyond. The two forces were riding right toward each other.
Neither intended to meet the other, or even knew the other was abroad. Both were bound for hostile territory, on violence bent; purposes that inevitably brought them, in time, face to face.
Where mounts were reined in, hard.
The two forces then regarded each other in a stony silence that for many breaths was broken only by the snorting of their head-tossing mounts. One band numbered eight in all; the heir of Hammerhand and seven knights, three of them riding with visors down, as if expecting war.
The other mustered twelve: the Lyrose heir and his two younger brothers, three bowmen whose saddle-slung crossbows were only a few turns shy of full, firing-ready tension, and six knights.
"Well, now," Eldred Lyrose said at last, flashing a brief and mirthless smile, "it seems the forest yields up stranger game at our every hunt. Ready bows."
His eyes never left the Hammerhands as he spoke those last words, so calmly that two of his bowmen did not at first take them as an order, and had to scramble to join the third in cranking windlasses to bring their bows to full, straining tension.
"Do you customarily hunt in full armor, Eldred?" the Hammerhand heir asked coolly, making a casual gesture that brought swords sliding out of scabbards in hissing unison amid the Hammerhands behind him.
"It seems I scour out vermin when full-armored, Dravvan," Eldred Lyrose replied softly, and raised his riding whip to point at Dravvan Hammerhand.
"Bowmen, scour me this talkative one," he announced with a smile, then added, "Fire at will."
Three crossbows loosed their quarrels in a triple crash-and Dravvan Hammerhand's head spun bloodily around on his shoulders, neck broken and skull shattered by three heavy war-quarrels bursting into it in eager unison.
There were gasps from the Hammerhands and shouts of glee from the Lyroses-ere the foremost Hammerhand knights spurred forward with furious bellows of "Fell magic! Slay them! Slay them all!"
Eldred Lyrose's casual manner vanished in an instant as he spurred his horse off the trail and out of the way, seeking to circle around behind the Lyrose warband as he snatched at the helm bobbing on his saddle.
"Kill me yon Hammerhands!" he shouted as he rode. "Let not a one of them-"
A low-hanging bough swept him out of his saddle into a startled landing among the dead leaves. The rest of his words would have been drowned out anyway in the loud tumult of snorting horses, shouting men, and ringing clangs of furiously-swung swords clashing with each other and rebounding off armor. Horses reared, lashing out with hooves and crying their displeasure, as men fought to find room enough among the trees to swing their blades.
Dravvan rarely rode anywhere without his bodyguard, three strong and serpent-swift veterans. They led a charge, aghast at Dravvan's death and the impossible manner of it-his armor should have stopped that bowfire! — and it so happened the spot where the Hammerhands had halted upon seeing their rivals afforded them space enough to spur their horses, whereas the riders of Lyrose were hampered by trailside trees.
So it befell that one Lyrose knight, in less than the time it took him to draw breath again after roaring out his mirthful approval of Dravvan Hammerhand's fate, was driven from his saddle by the sheer force of the sword cuts seeking his face. Head ringing, he fetched up against a tree, dazed and stumbling, and was ridden down and trampled ere he could raise his blade with any strength.
The bowman behind him, helmless and in lighter armor bearing weaker iron-warding spells, was promptly rendered faceless by a deep-biting Hammerhand blade. He hadn't even started to topple from his saddle ere swords were slashing out across it, to hew the crossbow held by his nearest fellow into ruin.
Then the Hammerhand bodyguards were in among the Lyrose, hacking and thrusting at wild will, dealing death viciously with no thought for their own safety.
That savagery won them two more kills before a Lyrose blade first drew blood. The wounded Hammerhand bodyguard, reeling in his saddle and beset from all sides, caught sight of the running Eldred Lyrose-and spurred his mount right at the terrified Lyrose heir.
He was dead with three Lyrose swords in him before his snorting, plunging mount reached the oldest son of Lord Magrandar Lyrose. Yet his screaming, pain-seared warhorse, sides slashed by Lyrose blades and the dead man on his back falling hard and heavily down to the left to batter against trees and drag the saddle painfully awry, charged right through Eldred Lyrose, hooves thudding hard. On it galloped, fleeing wildly through the trees deeper into the Raurklor, leaving a trampled, groaning man thrashing feebly in its wake.
Swords were swinging in earnest now, everywhere, as the Hammerhand bodyguards sought vengeance and above all the deaths of the bowmen, and the Lyrose knights eagerly sought to carry out their lordling's orders.
Riding just behind the Lyrose heir were his two brothers: cruel Horondeir, a loud, fair-haired burly giant with a grin on his face and his sword drawn, and sly, quiet Pelmard.
Horondeir had fairly crowed at the sight of the new war-quarrels working so well-downing the Hammerhand heir, too! Now his gleeful bellows had given way to grunts of effort as he fought for his very life, surrounded by thrusting Hammerhand blades. Pelmard was nowhere to be seen.
Save by Eldred, who had time for one glimpse of his younger brother grinning down at him ere the hooves of Pelmard Lyrose's warhorse crashed down on his skull, twice and thrice. Pelmard deftly reined it around to return to the battle, its hooves dancing hard atop his brother.
Only one Lyrose knight saw what had happened, and Pelmard smiled a tight smile and drove his sword right through that man's opening mouth, before it could so much as exclaim a word. He spurred on, and that killing went unseen in the swirling fray.
"Back!" he shouted, pulling his horse wide of the trail, deeper into the trees. "To me, men of Lyrose!"
He was well content. The enspelled war-quarrels gifted to House Lyrose by the wizard Malraun had been everything the wizard had promised them to be, his cruel older brother was dead, and oafish Horondeir was doomed to die, too, if he didn't get clear of the busily-hacking Hammerhands. The Lyrose knights had been hastening to Horondeir's aid, but if his own rallying-cry drew them off just long enough…
"Over here!" he shouted again. "To me, Lyrose!"
He couldn't even see Horondeir, who was somewhere in the heart of a great knot of milling armored men on horseback, a
ll of them plying their swords like madmen at a farm-reaping. Some of those men were screaming. A Lyrose knight fell from his saddle, one uselessly-dangling arm bouncing free as his corpse landed. Then a Hammerhand knight went down, falling on his face without a sound atop the fallen man of Lyrose.
One of the screams ended suddenly, and something wet and heavy flew out of the fray to thump and roll past Pelmard. His horse shied away, almost braining him on a tree, and he had to fight with his reins before he dared look down at the grisly thing again.
It had stopped facing him, staring up at him in unseeing horror, its mouth agape. The head of his brother Horondeir.
Then the fray was whirling around, and Pelmard realized in horror that Hammerhand knights were coming for him.
Desperately he clawed the head of his horse around and raked its sides with his spurs. "Home!" he shouted. "Home, Jhallon!"
A flung dagger bounced off his shoulder to spin tauntingly in the air before him, just for a moment. Then Jhallon, ears laid back, was racing through the trees as swift as any arrow, heading for a brown ribbon in the trees before them. That ribbon was the trail, winding its way through the trees. The trail back to Lyraunt.
Pelmard Lyrose let go of his sword and clung with both hands to the raised, flared front of his saddle, as the thunder of hooves rose behind him.
Either some Lyrose knights had won free, or the Hammerhands were still after him. Just now, with tree after dark tree seeming to leap past him in an endless whirl, he didn't dare try to look back.
"Be careful, my son. Oh, be careful. It is so easy to put a boot wrong when walking among the Ironthar-and the price may well be your life, there and then. They have been warring with each other for so long that burying blades in folk faster than someone can sink a sword into them is what they do."
The young and darkly handsome Stormar managed not to sigh. "I have heard this before, Father, and not forgotten. Trust me."
"No, Amaddar, that I do not. You swallow a sigh and seek to stride off, lost in your own impatience. Hear me."
