Falconfar 03-Falconfar

by Ed Greenwood

  Not that he had any time to care.

  Fire from his undluth seared Rod's leg for a moment, and then he was rolling desperately away across the floor, he knew not where, the rod held out away from the rest of him. He had to get clear—

  Of the great stone-rattling crash as the maercrawn slammed into the floor just behind him, jaws first.

  Its fangs and one jawbone shattered deafeningly, shards cartwheeling through the air, and the beast gave a gurgling, piercing shriek. Then the thrashing, roiling smoke of its body vanished in a roaring burst of purple flames.

  The flames spat and spread in a crawling filigree to the corners of the room. By their actinic purple light, Rod saw two young, intent men in a doorway, now rushing forward into the room.

  Apprentices of Malraun, or the first wizards to come plundering his tower; they had to be.

  And his doom, right here and now, if he didn't get out of here damned fast.

  He bent his head again and kept rolling, keeping low and trying to ignore his body's protests. There were open doorways everywhere, and right now he just wanted the nearest one on the far side of the room from these new arrivals, one that led not into a dead-end room but out to a passage that could take him—

  The door he was heading for was suddenly full of grim-looking men with swords and knives in their hands, wearing motley armor or dirty clothes. Men streaming out into the room, seeing him but paying him no attention as they stared at the wizards—and then charged at them.

  Near the rear of this flood of newcomers strode a man—bald, blue of skin, and cold-eyed—who cast a keen glance at Rod Everlar before glaring across the room to spit an incantation at the two mages.

  Narmarkoun!

  Shit! If it wasn't one Doom of fucking Falconfar, it was another!

  Rod desperately slashed at the wizard with his undluth, knowing how feeble its fires must be against a Doom—but grimly aware that he had to do something.

  Bronze fires lashed cold blue skin, and Narmarkoun stiffened, but didn't even spare Rod and his undluth a glance, keeping all his attention on the two mages across the room. Whatever magic Narmarkoun had cast was already bursting into being around them, with force enough to rock the room. Rod tried not to think or his own pains as he scrambled to his feet—Christ, that hurt!—and charged at the blue-skinned man, raking the air with his undluth.

  Fire swirled and slashed at Narmarkoun, scorching his head. The blue wizard shook himself, and ducked as if to shield himself from rain, but was still facing the two mages across the room as he muttered another vicious spell, gesturing furiously.

  The room rocked again, exploding into bright amber light amid ragged cries, as torn and blackened bodies came tumbling back through the air at Narmarkoun, hurled by the spell.

  Most of them, Rod suspected as he kept pounding across the floor in his desperate charge, were Narmarkoun's own men. A human head with no body attached to it plunged past his nose, and a moment later he slipped in gore and found himself looking back across the room, into dying amber flames.

  Outlined against them stood the scorched and blackened bones of the maercrawn, reduced to a skeleton but not yet fallen, still moving feebly toward Rod in its dying charge.

  In the air above and behind it, Rod's lost staff was spinning wildly, pulling in the flames of Narmarkoun's spell and absorbing them. Beyond it, the two young men were still on their feet and casting spells, their hands shaping the air desperately in front of their pale, frightened faces.

  Some of the warriors were still standing. Running, actually, charging at the young wizards in slow motion. Caught in the grip of a magic Rod had never seen, they hung in the air in mid-run, limbs moving inch by treacle inch as everything else roiled and flashed around them.

  "Falcon shit," Rod murmured in amazement, dragging his gaze from them almost reluctantly to turn back to Narmarkoun. He was doomed, of course, but he might as well be looking at the man killing him, in the instant before they slammed into each other.

  He was in time to see a tendril of bright magic form around his wrist, with Narmarkoun's cold blue smile behind it. A tendril that was tightening to crush Rod's wrist and force him let to go of the undluth.

  Rod's hand spasmed and opened, but even as the undluth tumbled from his fingers, tongues of flame fading, he knew Narmarkoun's magic would go on tightening until it wrenched his hand off.

  With his other hand Rod tugged the lurstar out of his belt, and swept it up to slash through the tendril.

  He saw Narmarkoun's sneer falter at the sight of it—and then Rod drove into him, dropping his shoulder like a football player to take the necromancer low in the chest and try to knock him off his feet.

  A fresh spell broke over them both, as cold as a torrent of ice water and so bright white it blinded them both for a moment—a moment in which Rod felt the wizard under him slam into the floor, and then his own body sink hard into Narmarkoun with satisfyingly solid force. Then the tendril was gone from his wrist, the lurstar torn from his hand, and the Doom under him was crying out in pain as rings and fine chain bracelets and more tore bloodily free from his blue-skinned body and flew away across the room.

  Rod shook his head, fighting to see, and got a distorted, blurry glimpse of the undluth, lurstar, and a score or so of smaller things— rings and the like, some of them trailing thick blue blood—sailing across the room in a cloud that was converging on one of the two young wizards.

  The other mage was staring triumphantly at Narmarkoun as he shouted another incantation—and the Doom sobbed and cursed in pain.

  Of course, Rod's knees, elbows, and fists might have had something to do with that.

  In one of his Cold War thrillers, Rod had written a scene where the hero stopped a guard from shouting a warning by punching him in the throat. Gritting his teeth, he punched Narmarkoun's throat as hard as he could.

  It didn't seem to plunge the wizard into agony, or stop his increasingly frenetic struggles under Rod, so Rod did it again. Then he remembered something he'd written in his first Falconfar book: the difficulty wizards would have castings spells correctly once someone had broken all their fingers. And thumbs.

  He bent one of the Doom's fingers over backwards against the floor and flung the whole weight of his body atop the man's hand—and felt the snap. Narmarkoun grunted under him, then kicked and wriggled, spilling Rod across the floor.

  The Doom whirled to his feet, tall and slender and terrible, and Rod flung himself desperately back at the man's boots, to try to trip Narmarkoun or claw his way up the wizard or—or—

  A new spell washed over the scene, a piercing emerald in hue. a rich green that filled the air across the chamber and turned it into an undersea grotto from a children's book, some sun-dappled never-never reef where pirate skeletons danced like seaweed among open chests of gold, and—

  Rod's fancy vanished in a teeth-rattling impact with the stone ceiling that would have split his skull open if he hadn't started from flat on his belly on the floor, twisting while being hurled at the ceiling to strike it boots-first, with numbing force.

  Elsewhere in the room, others weren't so lucky. Warriors slammed into the ceiling hard enough to break bones loudly.

  The spell ended, the emerald cast winked out with dizzying speed and all those who'd struck the ceiling plunged back hard to the floor.

  The two young wizards on the far side of the room were grinning openly as they hefted Rod's staff, and undluth, and lurstar.

  In the wake of his landing, Narmarkoun writhed and shuddered on the floor right in front of Rod, in obvious agony. Somehow he'd managed to draw his dagger, but all he was using it for at this instant was to repeatedly pound the floor with its pommel in his pain.

  "A good time to vanish," Rod whispered, wincing and shuddering. Breathless and fighting the pain, he spun around on his side on the cold stone and crawled as swiftly as he could out the nearest doorway.

  As more warriors came charging in through that doorway, swords drawn and fe
ar warring with anger in their eyes.

  "Taeauna!" Rod gasped, seeing who led them. He stretched out his hand to her—and saw a gleaming blade swinging down at him.

  TALYSS TESMER RECLINED at ease on the polished leather of the huge new lounge. Grand and magnificent, the lounge had been meant for the ease of the King of Galath alone.

  "So tell me, Annusk," she murmured idly, sipping from the great goblet of nightwine that her watchful manservant kept refilling. "How soon, exactly, is King Brorsavar expected here at Galathgard?"

  Lost in the warm caresses of the braethear coiling within him as he knelt at her feet, Klarl Annusk Dunshar left off tenderly licking sweat and journey-dust from between her bare toes with reluctance, to murmur dreamily, "I know not, Lady, for his arrival will be delayed by the visits to loyal nobles he makes along the road, as he journeys from his home castle to here. How long he tarries with each in feast and parley, and what time it takes them to muster their knights and ride on with him, you see. I have sent knights of my own house to many keeps, with orders to depart them and bring word to me of the unfolding royal approach. Yet I very much fear we'll not have time enough to remake this ruin into the grand seat it once was, and will be again."

  "How soon?" Talyss asked again, gently.

  "More than a dozen days, certainly. Less than two dozen."

  She nodded, then pointed wordlessly at the cod-lacings of her breeches—but before the klarl could do more than lift his face hopefully, Belard stepped forward behind him and drove a boot so hard up between Dunshar's legs that the Galathan's body was lifted right off its knees.

  The klarl crashed back down onto the floor, quite senseless, and slid on his face down one of Talyss's legs, his limp tongue leaving a damp trail.

  She sighed. "Brother, another part of me does need licking."

  Belard turned back from making sure the door was securely barred, and gave her a nod.

  "My job," he said curtly, thrusting the unconscious Galathan aside to take his place on the floor, and apply his teeth to the lacings.

  Talyss smiled fondly down at him.

  "Bite me once or twice," she murmured. "I've been bad."

  "This," Belard growled into her crotch affectionately, "I had noticed."

  TAEAUNA THREW HERSELF desperately against the old, dark-bearded man running beside her, shoving his sword aside a scant inch or two before it struck Rod's hand.

  "Not this one!" she commanded sharply. "Leave him be!"

  The rest of the warriors with her swept past into the room, and noisily crossed swords with Narmarkoun's surviving warriors, who were hastening to form a ring around their master. The wizard rolled over and croaked out a spell, gesturing one-handed.

  In the stamping, hacking heart of the fray, one of Taeauna's warriors plucked up a fallen sword and hurled it across the room— and the young mages ducked away, cursing and abandoning the spells they'd been weaving.

  The blade clanged out the door behind them, and one of the wizards darted after it.

  "Glorn! ' Ware!" a warrior shouted, and the bodyguard grunted his thanks as he parried a Darsworder's blade and sent its wielder staggering back with a vicious slash.

  A moment later, another Darsworder stiffened and gasped, eyes staring in horror and sword falling forgotten from fingertips. A bone white tendril of mist was rising behind him, probing into the cracks and openings in his worn and ill-fitting armor, as men on both sides of the fight shrank back from him muttering in fear.

  Before their eyes, the man shrank and paled and shriveled, his eyes staring hollow cheeks stretched over his skull, mouth locked in a rictus of pain.

  He collapsed, and Narmarkoun stood up behind him wearing a cold smile, tall and whole once more, the eerie mist writhing and curling restlessly around his ankles.

  The mist spread and reared behind Narmarkoun's men, eager to drain another life—and gloatingly forbidding any thought of retreat.

  The Darsworders groaned in despair.

  The warriors arrayed against them pressed them with renewed fury. Those who'd fought together in Malraun's bodyguard worked together, Gorongor and Tarlund moving almost as one, Eskeln and Glorn calling warnings and intentions to each other through the flashing steel.

  The healed Narmarkoun scowled, spread his hands, and hurled death at them, a storm of phantom swords that felled four men before they could scream.

  The two young mages dispelled it, shattering the blades to nothingness, battering Narmarkoun and sending his warriors reeling.

  In the aftermath of the dying spells a shimmering door opened in the air in front of the two young mages, revealing an alien sky, gray rainclouds retreating behind skyscrapers.

  Narmarkoun's warriors charged at the mages and the door.

  Right in front of their blades, the two young men plunged through the magical door and were gone. Their conjured gate winked out with them, and a warrior running towards it slammed into the wall and turned back, shivering in relief.

  "Tay!" Rod cried, far across the room, oblivious to everything but his guide and guardian.

  She reached down for him, smiling, and Roreld lowered his blade with a nod of understanding.

  Then another spell broke over them all, driving the bearded Roreld clear out the doorway and dashing one of Taeauna's other warriors against the walls above it, leaving him limp and broken.

  The spell hadn't even been meant for them; it was a thing of unseen hooks flung at Rod Everlar, to snare him and bring him to its caster.

  The surviving Doom of Falconfar smiled at Rod in easy menace as the magic swept him helplessly up into the wizard's embrace— and then went right on smiling inside bis mind, as Narmarkoun bored into his thoughts, recoiling only briefly at all the others' memories he found.

  The dark and tattered remnant of Rambaerakh rose inside Rod to resist the Doom's mind—and the man who'd once thought he created Falconfar found himself back on the cold stone floor, sticky blood spreading under his left knee, blinking in bewilderment as Narmarkoun viewed and discarded memories, seeking skyscrapers against gray skies, and where—in Rod's world, the Doom already knew, but precisely where—the young mages had fled to.

  Rod was helpless, his body moving at Narmarkoun's bidding. Enthralled—enslaved—he watched mutely as the Doom plowed deeper, finding what he wanted.

  Holding Rod firmly mind to mind, Narmarkoun conjured up a gate of his own, using what Rod remembered of the office towers he could see in the distance from his back deck.

  A cool breeze was blowing from behind them, whisking the storm clouds away, and the trodden grass was wet. The lawn smelled of mud and rotting leaves and... they were through, stepping out of Falconfar and into Rod Everlar's backyard, the tall blue wizard glaring around imperiously and Rod following him helplessly.

  The writer stumbled abruptly forward, toppling the startled wizard face-first into an old gift from the neighbor's dog, a slobbering Great Dane named Sadly, who got free and roamed from time to time.

  Someone had fierce hold of Rod's legs from behind, just below his knee. Someone who was hissing fiercely, in a voice Rod knew well, "Not this time, wizard! This man is mine!"

  HO, DOGS! CAN ye dance?"

  The fat man bounding from the top of one stout table to the next, swinging his sword lustily at every face that came within reach, roared the challenge across the pillared feasting room of the Stag's Head like a battle cry.

  There weren't all that many diners left to hear it. Bodies littered the floor, blood ran wet everywhere, and Garfist Gulkoun seemed to know within the width of his thick left thumbnail just how far the battered sword in his hand could reach, and had laid open more than a few unwary faces; a dozen men had fled staggering or reeling into the night, trailing blood and cursing.

  Wherefore the Stag's Head was no longer the usual crowded, happy place of brisk chatter and feasting this night, but had become a battlefield. Cooks cowered in their kitchens or slunk out of side- doors before any swords were pointed their way, the tav
ernmaster was in no state to cry them nay nor send for what passed for the law in Galath—and the most brutal of the local lawmen, a cold- eyed knight and his score of armsmen, were already on the scene.

  Their swords drawn and their tempers dark from having the prospect of their usual hot dumplings, overdone roast boar with hot horseradish, and tankards of ale snatched away from them, the knight and his men had thrice made a move for the kitchens. Thrice they'd lost an armsman at the merest scratch from the bodkin the bony outland woman had plucked from her boot.

  "Poison," they'd muttered, and thrown stools, benches, and daggers her way—only to have them all miss their mark, and be calmly collected, the knives laid in a row along the far end of the bar ready for throwing, and the furniture tossed into a growing heap in the kitchen doorway.

  Three had gone for her together, expecting her to scream and run when faced by their largest and best armored warriors, but she'd calmly snatched up and thrown her salvaged daggers coolly and accurately, felling one armsman with a dagger hilt-deep in his eye, and another with a knife sunk so surely in his throat that its pommel held up his chin as he choked his life away.

  They now left the slimbones alone, and drew together to hack at the fat man atop the tables—who seemed not at all fearful of their numbers, but merely amused.

  "I said take him," Sir Raenor ordered curtly. Reluctantly his armsmen shouldered forward again, swords and daggers held high, acutely feeling their lack of decent shields, and made to clamber up onto tables.

  It was expected that the fat man would come racing along the tabletops to stab any man trying to join him atop them, and the armsmen on the floor drew together around every fellow making the ascent, blades ready to protect them—but Garfist Gulkoun had tired of doing the expected years ago. He was down off the tables at the far end to pluck up stools and benches, and hurl them merrily over the tables at the men.

  They had been thrown his way earlier, and he was careful to use furniture that was cracked and splintered—and so disintegrated as it struck the armsmen. They reeled under this assault, then roared and rushed the tables, vaulting or overturning them as they came.