Falconfar 03-Falconfar

by Ed Greenwood

  Rambaerakh sank a little lower, until he was nose to nose with Rod again. "Well, man? Will ye?"

  Rod Everlar set his jaw, wiped tears away with an impatient swipe of the back of his hand, and said grimly, "I'll do it."

  "Faugh! Did ye have to set us down in the shit-heap?"

  Garfist staggered as he spat those words, holding his nose. Then he slipped in something slippery, windmilled his arms desperately for balance—and dropped into a low, braced stance to keep from railing over in the waiting muck.

  "No," Juskra replied sweetly. "We thought you'd prefer not to take a sword through that ample belly of yours right away, wielded by some Galathan who happens—like nigh all Galathans—to be suspicious of anyone who consorts with wingbitches. But we can certainly snatch you up, flap over yonder, and dump you right on the threshold of the Stag's Head, if you prefer. Losing most of that belly would improve your looks—and balance, too, by the looks of things."

  Garfist responded with a loud, coarse description of Juskra's character and anatomy. Some of his phrases made both Dauntra and Iskarra wince, but Juskra merely smiled broadly, sketched an elaborate, exaggerated bow, and waved him in the direction of the inn.

  The Aumrarr and their passengers had landed amid much broker, old furniture and rotting remnants of carts and casks. This refuse was almost hidden in the tall grass, clinging vines, and various wild and thorny bushes that bordered the deeper forest around the reeking midden behind the inn.

  From where they stood, they could peer around the shoulder of the dung-heap that so offended Garfist, to see the sagging, ramshackle chaos of the Stag's Head's back kitchen.

  Almost disappearing in overgrowth of its own, it was a crudely- built, low wooden wing that seemed to have been assembled by drunken carpenters in fits and starts over the decades, always disagreeing in style and direction of expansion or repair with what had been done earlier. The result had many corners and mismatched joinings, at least one set of steps up to nowhere at all, and several warped and buckled doors, some obviously so unusable that old tables had been piled against them to rot or boards had been nailed across them. However, the back kitchen thankfully boasted no windows.

  Which meant the four travelers had hopefully thus far passed unnoticed, both upon their arrival and during the pleasantries exchanged since.

  Garfist finished stripping off the leather straps of his carry-sling, flung them in Juskra's general direction without looking back, and started picking his way carefully around the edges of the muck, snapping off branches and trampling down vines with a series of deafening crashes that left Iskarra and the two Aumrarr—who hastily folded their wings and crouched down—wincing.

  "Garfist Gulkoun," Dauntra said quietly but firmly, after him. The fat man paused for a moment in his noisy lurchings and stumblings, but did not turn.

  "Garfist," the Aumrarr repeated, no more loudly.

  This time he swung around, a furious expression on his face.

  "You should know what's afoot in Galath, just now," Dauntra offered, her voice quieter than ever. He leaned back to hear her— and almost slipped into the muck doing so.

  Spitting curses and waving his arms for balance, Garfist started stumping back toward them, circling through the grass and thorns to keep out of the muck.

  Iskarra and the Aumrarr waited nervously for someone in the inn to hear the din and peer out a window, whereupon they could hardly miss the lurching, tramping warrior.

  No one did, and Garfist fetched up against a nearby sapling— which sagged visibly under his weight—to glower at Dauntra and snarl, "What?"

  "You and your lady should be aware of some things," Juskra said crisply, and waved at her fellow Aumrarr. "So listen to her."

  Garfist nodded curtly, and glared at Dauntra.

  The Aumrarr smiled and murmured, "Right now, Galath is just one or two killings away from erupting into civil war. Bands of knights are riding across the realm, bloodying their blades in each other in the name of this challenger for the throne or that one. Every man is suspicious of every other—and strangers, it should come as no surprise, are mistrusted more than most."

  She leaned forward and held up a quelling hand as Garfist drew himself up to speak. "So hear me, Gar and Isk. We are Aumrarr, and Aumrarr try to be fair, and more than fair, with the few we consider friends. We will remain near for the rest of this day, and until the sun rises highest on the morrow. Should you need to be plucked away from the inn in a hurry, call on us. Shout these words: 'Old king or no king!' Twice at least, and as loud and slow as you can. We shall hear... and we shall come."

  "The day will be dark and strange," Garfist replied sourly, "when I'll either need or want rescue from wingbitches—though I'll grant that if Aumrarr are to come flying to my aid, I'd welcome yer faces more than others I know not. A little, at least."

  "Gar," Isk said sternly, "be civil. More than that, be grateful, glork you! 'Old king or no king!' Yes? Well, I can remember that—and so can you, Old Ox. Or else."

  Garfist grunted by way of reply, faced the inn, and started crushing undergrowth again.

  Iskarra sighed, and turned from him to the two Aumrarr. "Ladies Dauntra and Juskra, have our thanks. Mine and, yes, his, too, if he did but know the most basic of graces, so as to tender it!"

  Juskra's grin was wry. "You are most welcome. As for him... well, we'll accommodate him. For your sake."

  Iskarra smiled crookedly, nodded, rose, and darted after Garfist, who was already well on his way past the midden, heading for the front of the inn.

  The two Aumrarr watched them go. When they'd turned the corner onto the muddy King's Road, Dauntra and Juskra sighed in unison, exchanged looks, shook their heads—and sprang back into the sky, beating their wings furiously.

  Their flight was a short one, almost straight up, to a broad bough overhead.

  It belonged to the tallest tree around, a towering saberwood that overlooked the patched and uneven roof of the Stag's Head. If all went well, they'd perch on it until full night fell—when it would be safe, if they were careful and watched where the moonlight fell, to relocate to the roof of the inn.

  Three vaugren were already roosting on the bough. They flapped up in clumsy, noisy alarm when Juskra loomed right up into their very beaks, reaching out with both hands for the largest of the trio.

  That vaugril shrieked out his surprise and fright as he fell off the bough, squawking loudly and long. The other two vaugren joined in as they fluttered away.

  Settling herself on the bough, Juskra glared at them, then put her hands on her hips and spat out a long, low, rolling caaaaww.

  That brought immediate, startled silence—and the vaugren fled faster, flying frantically.

  Juskra gave Dauntra a satisfied smirk. "Mating-call gets them, every time."

  Joining her on the bough, Dauntra folded her wings behind herself, plucked out a flat, slender flask from somewhere under her belt, and offered it to her sister Aumrarr. "And if one of these vaugren ever tries to take you up on it?" she asked teasingly. "What then?"

  Juskra shrugged. "They'll get a surprise. Save for the smell, it might be an interesting experience. Those hooked beaks have to be good for something.''''

  Dauntra rolled her eyes. "Yon fat man has gone inside the inn, Jusk. You don't have to try to outdo him, just now."

  "Oh? And just when am I going to get a chance to practice outdoing him, if not now?"

  TO ROD'S SURPRISE, the large chamber the skeletons had been marching him toward wasn't their destination.Beyond it were more tunnels, a maze this time rather than any sort of ordered layout. The air here was moving, and although quiet and dark, these passages had a lived-in air, where the earlier passages had felt like silent storage for the dead and the forgotten.

  As far as Rod could tell, they must be just under the surface; any rooms above these must be the roofless chambers the greatfangs had just ruined.

  Quite suddenly, Rod found himself facing an ordinary-looking door, with a ho
nor guard of two rows of skeletons on either side of him, flanking it and all staring silently his way. Rambaerakh was floating beside his shoulder.

  "Open it," the wizard said calmly. "What's beyond is quite safe—so long as ye touch nothing."

  The door had a simple metal latch no sturdier than what you might find on a suburban garden gate back home—an old one from the fifties or sixties, when no one had heard of motion-activated lights or perimeter alarms, and gates were more adornment than barrier.

  Rod wasn't expecting what he saw when the door swung open, away from him, into the space beyond.

  It was a small, low-ceilinged room, with no other doors or windows, and everything was of stone: the walls were lined with massive stone shelves, and they were the only furniture. It was lit by an eerie, multi-hued glow, pulsing gently in places. The air itself crackled with unseen, restless energy, as if scores of unseen presences were waiting breathlessly for something momentous to happen.

  That hair-raising—literally; Rod lifted one hand into the room, and watched the hairs all over it quietly stand out from his skin— energy suffused the room, but the glow was coming from the objects lying on the stone shelves.

  Things of magic. Wands, and staves, and metal one-piece war-helms with upthrust horns sweeping up and out from their foreheads. As well as a lot of, well, stuff Rod had no names for. and couldn't even begin to know how to describe. So he settled for the blindly safe village-idiot comment. "Magic."

  The floating head nodded, by way of reply.

  "Malraun's?" Rod felt emboldened to ask, taking one step forward into the room, and stopping to look up for any yawning trap, and listen for clicks or grinding sounds—or worse. Nothing. Just the straining, unseen, crawling energy all around. "Was this his private treasure-store?"

  "One of them. Almost all of my craftings lie here—which is whv the unbinding must be here. Let me warn ye again, Rod Everlar: to touch the wrong thing here is to die. Touching any enchanted item will send warnings ye will not want heeded and answered.'"

  "But if Malraun's dead..."

  "Lord Archwizard, I hardly think any man can be called a wizard who does not prepare some web of spells or bound guardian beast or spell-thralled apprentice to act for him after he is dead. I say again: touch nothing."

  Rod nodded, taking another cautious step forward. He cast a swift look back to make sure nothing was hiding behind the door. "The staves and wands and such I know. I wrote a lot about them—and those gauntlets, too. I know what a helm looks like, but what do these do, exactly? Why these brow-horns, if that's the right term? And what are these things? The spheres with the hand-holds?"

  Rambaerakh drifted smoothly across the room to hover above one of the largest, most polished helms, and turned to face Rod. "This is a sarn-helm, and so are all the rest. Any man or maid can use one. It is worn, and the mind of the wearer urges forth beams of harmful magic from the brow-spur. This one bestows fire."

  The floating head moved along above the shelf until it hung over an orb of gleaming, polished stone.

  The orb was brownish granite or some such speckled rock, as shiny as a brand-new curling stone. It rested on a flattened base— and between there and the curve of the sphere it was pierced right through with a smooth, sculpted grip. Obviously it was carried around by the handle, and whatever magic it exuded or fired or gave off came from the rounded part of the...?

  "Lurstars," Rambaerakh said helpfully. "They're called lurstars. One holds them up as if the rounded top was a posey of flowers, murmurs the right word, and they give forth their magic. They can all glow, as brightly or dimly as the holder wills, but they have only one real power per lurstar. Usually it's warmth, to save on firewood all winter, but sometimes it's cooling, if instead ye need to keep meat from spoiling. Fewer still hurl deadlier effects; battle magic. Rarely—very rarely, and I see not the one I had, here—they can heal."

  Holdoncorp, Rod thought. Lurstars were new to him, so they almost had to be—

  "So now that ye know what a lurstar is," the floating head added, "thy curiosity is satisfied, and ye can leave them be. Like all the rest of the magic here. Just leave them alone. Don't touch them. Or else."

  Rod nodded. In truth, he was more than tired of magic, and would just as soon never see a wizard—or a wizard's staff—again in his life.

  "So just what do I do, in this ritual of unbinding?"

  "The Helms will line up, and come to ye one after another. Touch the skull and say aloud: Tbaetb arcrommador ezreeneth. It is important that ye think of leaping flame, or bright sunlight, while doing so. Then stand back and wait for that Helm to be done. Ye'll see what I mean. When ye are ready for the next one, beckon him forward. I'll be last of all."

  "That's it?"

  "Aye, Lord Archwizard, that's it," Rambaerakh said wryly. "Not everyone can do this, but ye can."

  "But I—"

  "Don't know magic, aye. Rod Everlar, cozen me not. Have our minds not just met? Think ye I saw nothing of thine? Ye can."

  "But—"

  "Ye seem overly fond of that word. The Helms are waiting." So they were; as Rod had been staring rather helplessly at the hovering head, the skeletons had silently formed a line, around and around the room. They were waiting, bobbing slightly.

  Rod swallowed. "And so it begins," he murmured. "Death." He lifted his hand to beckon the first skeleton. "The doom of kings."

  The hovering Rambaerakh darted forward. "What's that?"

  "The doom that comes even for kings," Rod explained gently. "Stealing in like a hooded lady in the night, or falling suddenly, like lightning from a clear sky. Death. At least, that's how I described it in a poem I wrote once." He shook his head. "It wasn't a very good poem."

  "I'm not so sure of that, man. Those words, at least, strike me as apt indeed. Remember, now: 'Thaeth arcrommador ezreeneth.' That's right."

  Rod swallowed again, stretched out his hand to touch the cool, smooth skull—there was an unpleasant thrill, as if the Helm was alive with low-voltage electricity—and said the words, remembering only at the last instant to think of roaring flame.

  And the skeleton fell away from him with a sigh, plummeting to the floor as if it weighed a ton but disintegrating into dust as it reached those flagstones, in a spreading cloud that claimed not just the skull but every last bobbing bone in its frame. Unseen amid the rising dust—it was like so much rolling, billowing gray smoke—the skeleton's sword clanged, clattered noisily as it bounced... and then shattered with a discordant shriek of metal.

  Not that Rod heard it. He was too busy staggering backward, momentarily blinded by memories rushing through his head— memories that weren't his. A great cavalcade of bared and gasping women, bloody swords swung at shouting foes, dying men falling away with screams or groans, glittering cold coins, great meals by firelight, and—

  He fetched up against something that jabbed against the small of his back and held.

  "Stand!" Rambaerakh snapped, from right behind him. "Stay where ye are! Another step back and ye'll be lying atop a dozen lurstars and I don't know how many wands!" Reeling, Rod nodded hastily, went down into a crouch, and vaited for the worst rush of the flooding memories to subside. Faces, all those faces—furious, anguished, bawling, leering... All the triumphs and worst moments and emotional times in a long, long life. It was exhausting. "How many Helms are there, again?"

  "Just one at a time," the wizard told him curtly. "If ye start counting, ye'll never get anywhere near done. Beckon the next one." "No, I—can't! I—" "Beckon the next one!"

  Trying not to show his disgust and weariness, Rod took two fteps forward, straightened up, and solemnly beckoned the next Helm forward. Bobbing in that eerie, comical manner, silent and grinning eternally, it came, casting its sword aside with a skirling clatter.

  Rod reached out for it, staring into the empty eyesockets as if he could meet the eyes that weren't there. And trying, by the Lone and Flying Falcon, to smile.

  "MUST CATCH MY breath!" R
oreld panted, reeling to a halt beside Taeauna and clapping a heavy hand to her shoulder to steady himself. "Not young enough for this... anymore!"

  "Aye," usually silent Tarlund agreed. "Walking I can do, all day and all night, but this trotting like horses—are we in that much haste?"

  Taeauna gave him a grim look. "We should have been there half the day ago."

  Eskeln left off his own panting long enough to grin. "Well, now we know why grand Olondyn of the Bow said ye nay. I can't see him running anywhere—not if the Falcon itself was swooping down for him! 'Tis hard to sneer at the world with idle disdain while ye're sprinting along gasping!"

  "Come," Taeauna told them all, with a toss of her head. "Onward! Start out at a walk; we're near enough now..."

  "Malragard's just over this ridge," Gorongor called, from ahead. "Or what's left of it is."

  They all scrambled to join him. Among them, Taeauna was quick to hiss, "Keep low. I don't want us flashing steel as we gawk along the ridge-top!"

  They went face-down to the ground amid tangled bushes, to peer over the crest of the ridge at the next hill over—the one tha: had a riven, roofless stronghold atop it, whose tower had topplec.

  "Look!" Glorn snapped, throwing out an arm that still bore stained bandages from the taking of Darswords. "Look there!"

  On that far hill, approaching ruined Malragard ahead of them, was a band of armed men in motley array. In strength, about twice their own. Counting them was hard, because some of them were already half-hidden amid the outermost walls and rubble of Malraun's tower.

  "Thieves," Gorongor growled, darkly.

  "Mage-slayers," Eskeln suggested.

  "Men we must stop," Roreld summarized.

  Even as Tarlund was asking, "Say—that one, there! Isn't that Tresker, of Darswords?" Taeauna was heaving herself upright.