by Ed Greenwood
The rest just poked at Rod, almost gently, as if trying to guide him, or warn him to stay down.
Skulls glaring eyelessly at him, a cold barrage of unblinking gazes he could feel...
Clenching his teeth to quell their chattering, Rod tried to get up again. They let him, but their swords gathered in a flicking, stabbing cloud at his arm. The arm holding the gewgaws.
Aha. There was something he had there that they didn't like, eh? Well, then-
He turned sharply away, as suddenly as he could—and gasped as the edge of a blade that was slicing along under what was covering his flank sank through it, just for a moment, and touched skin.
No, cut skin.
Rod shrieked.
If he'd thought he was feeling utter cold before, he now knew better. That sword hadn't gone into him—he might have a shallow cut a few inches long, at best—but the pain! Ohhh, the God-damned pain!
Blindly he staggered, vaguely aware that skeletons must be dancing aside to keep from collisions or impaling him on their swords... Slowly, as he shuddered against the chilling pain— Falcon, but this was a cold that didn't numb, it only bit deeper and deeper!—he became aware of something else, too: the two or three swords slicing at him were cutting away clothing, mainly what was covering his arms and the side of his chest and gut where he was holding those magical gewgaws—they had to be magical; this proved it, or why else would a bunch of skeletons want them so badly?—baring his upper torso strip by strip.
The other swords, the rusting stubs that just poked delicately at him, never boldly enough to pierce, were concentrating on the arm clutching the gewgaws—all but a few that were jabbing at his other hand, the one holding the spindle.
The cold brought Rod to his knees, sobbing for breath, and the volley of needle-like prickings became a hard, swift barrage. In the space it took him to pant out one ragged breath, Rod's arm was so chilled that he found himself grunting in despairing pain, his forehead pressed against the stone floor.
Quite suddenly, that arm gave way, the gewgaws bouncing and rolling—and the pokings ceased.
Only to resume all around his spindle-hand, jabbing and drawing back, darting in and jabbing again.
They wanted him stripped of the magic, all of it, but weren't killing him when they so easily could. His neck and throat, now his chest—they could have stabbed right through him, dozens of times, and hadn't.
Yet. Were they just waiting until all the magic was gone from him? Before they all stabbed into him, hilt-deep, and—
Rod shook his head, trying to wave away that grisly image, but it wouldn't go. He was writhing, dying slowly and horribly, impaled on dozens of swords with more sliding in to stab through his tongue and pin it to the back of his throat... then more sliding into his eyes...
He waved the spindle, one last feeble time, before the tip of a blade kissed his thumb so coldly that it spasmed—and his flashlight was gone, clanging off the stone floor with a bell-like ringing as it bounced, bounced again, then skirled to a clinking stop.
And the skeletons stopped.
Rod fell on his face on the cold, dank stone, groaning as the shivers claimed him, slamming through his body in waves that slowly faded away. He was lying alone in the cool silence, aware now of a gentle steady glow off to his right—the spindle, of course— and much fainter glows, that shifted silently and constantly, above him and all around him.
Coming from the skeletons?
He didn't want to look, didn't want to do anything except lie here and wince as the searing cold ebbed into a mere uncomfortable chill, taking stock of his hurts. His side throbbed faintly where it had been cut, and he was undoubtedly bleeding there. He felt tired, bone-tired, which was probably from all the shivering, not to mention the pricking swords...
He lay there until all the pain was gone, hearing nothing but silence, and feeling nothing but the faintest of cool breezes and the endless chill of the stone beneath him against his bare torso.
Then, gently and gingerly, a lone blade pricked his shoulder.
He lay still, though feigning death was probably futile when dealing with skeletons who could probably smell death—and life, too, for that matter.
The blade pricked him again, still tentatively.
He sighed, but didn't move.
Did they just want him to lift his face, so he'd see his doom— and then stab him, right up his nose and out through the back of his head?
The blade pricked him twice. Nudge, nudge.
Oh, all right, damn it. If he wasn't even going to be allowed to die in peace...
Rod rolled over, away from the blade, shoved against the floor cautiously, and sat up. Moving slowly, mindful of the forest of sharp sword tips he'd stared up into before.
Nothing touched him. He opened his eyes.
Skulls were still staring down. Not blinking, of course. Swords were still raised and ready—but when he looked up at the skeletons, they moved those blades in slow unison.
Pointing. The way out of the tomb.
As Rod stared at them, several of the blades turned back to point at him, jabbing toward his chest but not touching it, then swept back to point out the door again.
He was being commanded. Ordered out.
Well, they could slice him into little pieces—perhaps only a few at a time—if he defied them. So he might as well...
Rod found his feet, a little unsteadily, discovering he was still wearing his breeches and boots, but nothing more above his waist except a tattered scrap of leather trailing away from what was left of a leathern cuff and sleeve around his left forearm.
Well, now. If he wasn't so scrawny and stoop-shouldered, and didn't have the beginnings of a pot belly—or did he still have those beginnings, after all of the running and suchlike?—he might look a little like Doc Savage.
A little.
Blades waved, pointing again at the door, and there came the faintest of prickings—two or three of them—in his back.
"All right, all right" Rod growled. "Any chance of just talking to me? Anyone?"
There was, of course, no reply. But then, he hadn't really expected one.
He stepped out of the tomb, back into the passage, wondering if they were just going to let him go, once he was out of their resting-place.
He wondered, too, whether or not he dared whirl around and try to snatch up that flashlight-spindle. It was dark ahead of him.
Dark, but not pitch-dark. All around him, skeletons were glowing. A faint eerie blue, more like a series of half-seen, whisper- thin moving edges than steady lights.
Some of them moved ahead.
Surrounded by his cold and silent escorts, Rod Everlar started walking.
Well, at least he wasn't stumbling at random around the underground roots of Malragard.
He was being herded.
"NO," DAUNTRA GASPED, her wings faltering again. "Too cold. I'm too stiff... must land, get a fire going... warm up."
Hanging in the harness beneath her, Iskarra tried not to sound too alarmed. "Glide lower, then, so we can see a good place to land," she snapped, voice quavering despite herself as Dauntra suddenly lurched sideways in the air.
They wobbled sickeningly for a moment before the Aumrarr caught herself, ducking her head and flapping grimly on.
"No? too cold," Juskra snarled from just behind them, spitting out words through teeth clenched in pain. Her left wing was something less than all right, and Garfist wasn't getting any lighter. At least the great lout had seen sense enough to stop kicking and waving his arms about, and contented himself with hanging in the straps like a lifeless lump, grumbling steadily. Thank the Falcon for small blessings.
"Not too cold," she said again. "Cramping! From not enough to drink... find us water!"
Dauntra nodded, but the nod turned into a shudder—and suddenly the Aumrarr and her burden were falling out of the sky, tumbling helplessly.
Juskra snarled a curse and bent herself into a steepening dive, sculling with her wing
s to make herself plummet faster. "Spread your arms!" she shrieked. "Spread your glorking arms!"
Iskarra was already spreadeagled in the air, but still tumbling. Dauntra seemed lost in spasms of pain.
Juskra screamed something else at them, but the words weren't half out of her mouth before the forest floor greeted the falling pair in a terrific crash of dead, snapping branches, bouncing arms and legs, and crackling, whirling leaves. "Flaming feldrouking dung!" Juskra cursed. "Hold on, fat man!"
She and her complaining burden flashed over the tangle of dead trees that had greeted Dauntra and Iskarra, going too fast to land in it, and the wounded Aumrarr flung herself desperately over onto her side to avoid slamming face-first into a huge old gallart-top.
Through its side-branches she tore, Garfist kicking and cursing fervently in her wake, and found herself headed straight for another.
Juskra veered desperately, pulling her wings in tight, and slammed into two branches too stout to break. They sent her spinning, Garfist's snarled oaths rising into a fearful shout—and then, quite suddenly, they found themselves uprooting a sapling as they slid down its length to the ground.
Or rather, onto a little ridge of sharp rock that left them both groaning.
"Wingbitch," Garfist growled, inevitably finding his feet and his breath before the sobbing Juskra could, "did ye never learn any gentler sort of landing?"
"Fat man," she gasped back at him, still writhing on the rocks in pain, "go glork yourself." She spat out a sob that turned into a hiss, rocking back and forth in pain.
"Get up," he growled. "If ye can curse me that glibly, complete sentences an' all, ye're not sore hurt."
Juskra gave him a murderous glare. "No, but you soon will be!"
Leaving a chuckle behind, Garfist turned on his heel and lurched away, heading back to where light lancing through the trees marked the tangle of deadfalls Isk and Dauntra had crashed through.
He found them sitting together against the moss green trunk of a large and ancient gallart-top, clutching at themselves and wincing. Whipping branches had sliced more than a few cuts across their faces and ears, but they were as small as they were many.
"Anything badly broke?" Garfist greeted them cheerfully.
Two bent heads moved in rather weary unison to tell him "no."
"Need... to rest..." Dauntra gasped, not looking up.
"Aye," Garfist agreed sourly, feeling his own bruises and wincing— those rocks had been sharp, and trust Lady Icycurses Wingwench to find them, in all this muddy forest. "But why heref"
"Because it's near a spring," Juskra said sourly from behind him.
When he turned, she tapped his shoulder and then pointed at a glimmer of water racing past nearby. "Water," she explained brightly, as if to an idiot child. "Water. That we can drink."
Then she turned to Iskarra, who was wobbling to her feet, wincing, and asked despairingly, "Doesn't he think of anything besides stealing, eating, and rutting?"
"No," Iskarra replied crisply. "In our modest little army, thinking's my job."
THESE WERE PASSAGES he'd never seen before.
They were halls he could barely see now, in the fitful glows of the skeletons bobbling along so silently beside him. Still deep enough to be carved out of bedrock, but rising. As he walked, ringed about by his eerie escort—his captors, Rod reminded himself—he was ascending. He must be moving up into the hollowed-out innards of the hill on the far side of Malragard.
Or rather, the hill beside and beyond the exposed roots of the place, now that the tower had been toppled and roofs torn off the wings and buttresses. He wondered if the greatfangs had gone, or were perched on broken walls and high places around the ruins, like so many buzzards in a dead tree.
Then he started to fervently hope the skeletons weren't marching him up to where he'd find out. Probably by promptly serving as a meal to the nearest greatfangs.
Or would they share him, all tugging and tearing at different limbs with their teeth? Pulling him apart, arms and legs and his head...
Rod shuddered, quelled a sudden urge to be sick, and told himself angrily to worry about whatever crises he was facing, not imagine new ones for himself. For one thing, this would be just the sort of time when his Shaping would work, for once—and he'd literally become the author of his own doom.
How large were these tunnels? It seemed to Rod that he'd been trudging for a long time, and it had certainly been long enough to have risen a level or two, and to get a little warmer, with the gentlest of breezes blowing in other scents than just mold and cold stone and damp dirt...
Cross-passages opened in the walls on either side of the hall the skeletons were moving along, and Rod could see that the hall opened out into an open space ahead. That was about all he could see, in the dim glows from the bobbing bones around him... and all of a sudden, he felt very weary.
Tired of it all. Tired of being always scared and lost and not knowing what he was doing. He'd been that way since being parted from Taeauna, and he was heartily sick of it. In all the stories—heck, in books he'd written—the hero moved steadily on toward completing the quest, saving the world, claiming the throne, winning the princess. Here, where fantasy was too damned real, they called him Lord Archwizard or Dark Lord and expected him to wave his hand and blast his foes to win all battles. And all he did was blunder along like some helpless child, too stupid to even know what the right thing was, let alone do it.
The floor under his feet rose more steeply, and the open space was just ahead, now. The dark mouths of side-passages grew more frequent, as if he was heading through a storage area.
Though it could just be a series of regular rooms separated by passages. It might be... well, anything.
Here he was, captured by a bunch of skeletons who couldn't even talk to him. They knew where they were going—they were certainly headed somewhere definite, and brooking no delays; when he'd tried to slow, feigning weakness, the swords jabbing him from behind had been neither gentle nor hesitant—but Rod didn't. As usual.
"Falcon take us all," he said wearily, more to hear his own voice than to make any of these silent skeletons answer him. "Off I'm being marched again. Now, where to, this time, and why?"
"To the place Malraun first bound us all," came a cold and sour voice from behind and to his right. "To unbind us, of course."
Rod whirled to face the speaker—and found himself staring at a floating head.
The head of a grim-looking, grizzled man whose rotting forehead bore a long white sword-scar, and whose neck had been crudely severed by axe-blows, ending in a ragged mess of flesh. A man who had died long ago, judging by the complete lack of blood and the shrunken, shriveled eyeballs.
It had drifted out of one of the side-passages and, as he stared at it, floated nearer to him.
"Well, man?" it asked irritably, sunken eyes flashing. "Have ye never seen a talking dead man before? Are ye sure ye're the Lord Archwizard?"
ANOTHER MAN OF Darswords stumbled, slammed into the passage wall with a curse, and came back to his feet a little unsteadily.
“Mind out!" the deep-voiced warrior said sharply, but before anyone could reply, the nearest man—the one who'd first menaced Daera with his sword, and was still doing so, trudging close behind her as she led the line of grim warriors deeper into the cold stone heart of the mountain—snapped, "Baerold, Laeveren's not clumsy. He's tired. We're all tired. Too weary to go on. If the wizard attacked us now, half of us'd be dead before we even knew what was happening. We must stop—and sleep."
There were emphatic nods of agreement, and some who nodded were yawning hugely as they did so. The deep-voiced warrior with the broad shoulders stared around at them all from under his bristling brows, then slowly nodded his head too.
"You're right, Roar. Back to that last cavern, then? Smooth stone there, underfoot." There were murmurs of agreement.
"Back," Taroarin agreed, his sword still close to Daera's neck. When he hefted it meaningfully at her and
pointed back the way they'd come, she stood still for a moment, staring into his eyes, and breathed a kiss at him.
His habitual frown sharpened, but she kept her eyes on his as she turned, slowly, to obey him, following the shuffling warriors of Darswords back to the smooth-floored cavern.
Baerold was frowning at her, too. She met his narrowed eyes for the briefest of moments before bowing her head submissively, and was pleased to see some of that malice ebb before he turned away.
Only these two were wary of her; the rest kept stealing glances at her bared curves, when they looked her way at all.
She waited until he looked back a second time—a suspicious man indeed, our Baerold—saw nothing to alarm him, and returned his attention to trudging back to where he could rest.
Then Daera turned, nude and magnificent despite her graying skin, to whisper to Taroarin, "I know where rich treasures are hidden, man—but spells have been laid on me by the great wizard Narmarkoun. My tongue is bound, unless I speak to one who has mastered me. To him, and him alone, I am free to speak."
"One who has mastered you," Taroarin echoed, his whisper as ghostly quiet as hers, and gave her the merest crooked hint of a smile. Hint taken.
Men were already settling themselves as best they could on hard rock, with a chorus of sighs, muttered curses, and groans, by the time Taroarin led Daera to the back of the cavern, where it branched into three narrow fissures curving off into the darkness.
As Baerold watched wordlessly, he forced her to her knees on the sharp rocks there, took off his sword-belt, and used it to strap her arms together behind her back, winding it around and around them from elbows to wrists before buckling it tight. Then he did off his half-cloak, wound it around Daera's head, lowered her face-first onto the stones, and arranged stones on the trailing cloak-tails to pinion her head where she lay.
Two swift kicks spread her legs apart, and he growled, "Don't move. Or else." Half a dozen swipes of his boots raked loose stones away from all around her into a ring, so his captive lay on cleared stone but surrounded by a little wall of rock. Reclaiming his blade, Taroarin turned his back on her and returned to Baerold.
