Falconfar 03-Falconfar

by Ed Greenwood

  Rod sighed and bent to arrange the cloaks in three side-by-side rolls, hefting the fourth roll ready in his hands. He was hoping he could flick it open in midair like the red carpets in cartoons, but he already doubted things would go that smoothly. Rod's life was Rod's life, and cartoons were... cartoons.

  Taeauna gave him a grin that startled him—did she know what he was thinking? If so, how the hell had she ever managed to see Saturday morning cartoons?—hefted two of her daggers, and stepped forward.

  On the floor, like the brooms in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the swords stirred.

  "Aras brack," Taeauna announced crisply. "Taerlo muhaervo haras hrack."

  She started forward—and the swords, seven of them, rose from the stone floor like sleepy dogs shaking themselves awake, hanging points down for a moment, then sped to the attack.

  "Now, Rod," she snapped, charging at them and smashing aside the nearest flying blade with her dagger.

  Then she was ducking, darting and dancing in the heart of them, leaping about wildly in acrobatics Rod scarcely saw as he focused on tossing cloaks, swirling them out and letting them go. The damned things hung in the air so long, settling ever so slowly...

  Steel rang on steel to his left and he heard Taeauna panting with the effort. Rod sidestepped hastily to where he could snatch and throw the second cloak, then the third, not waiting at all for the second to settle. He was way over to the right now, probably pretty close to that snarling lion pillar, and the fourth cloak was going to be useless unless he darted in, trampling down the third one, to cast it closer in...

  To the Falcon with staying farther from the door than Tay! Surely he could outrun a few swords...

  Rod raced in, let the cloak unroll as he took a step back, then let go, spun around, and ran like hell.

  Fear rose chokingly in his throat as he panted along, cursing himself for being a fool, and ran for the pillar for all he was worth.

  Picturing glittering swordpoints behind him, Rod flung his left arm wide to catch hold of the pillar as he ran past it, and raised his right hand to slap down the tongue, hopefully as he swung around the pillar, to get its thick stone between him and the swords.

  It worked, as smoothly as if he'd practiced it. The tongue grated a bit but came down readily enough—and just as the foremost sword crashed off the pillar right in front of Rod's nose with a shriek that sent stone chips spraying, the swords all... fell.

  Just fell, in mid-dart, to bounce and slide to a stop on the floor, the nearest four of them ringing loudly on bare stone. The cloaks muffled the noises of the others.

  Not that Taeauna, standing alone behind them all, watching him with her mouth open to scream, looked all that impressed.

  "Idiot!" she hissed, furiously stabbing towards the armory door with her daggers. "Get to that door! Now!"

  Rod got.

  "All Rauthtower heard that," she snarled, opening the door. "Thanks to you. Can't you even follow simple comm— instructions?"

  "I guess not," Rod gasped apologetically, starting to shiver at what a reckless idiot he'd been. "Sorry."

  "You may well be, if we have to fight our way out of here in the morning," the Aumrarr said darkly. "Now stand in this doorway and don't move, until I rush in past you. You will keep the door open while I collect the cloaks."

  "Collect—?"

  "To sleep on, remember?"

  Rod watched her toss her daggers past him into the armory— he didn't dare turn to look where they fell—and race around snatching up cloaks.

  By the time she burst past him with the untidy bundle of cloaks, reaching out to pluck at his leathers and drag him into the armory on her heels, Rod had his next question ready.

  "Fight our way out of here through who?"

  The armory door slammed behind them, plunging them into utter darkness.

  "Not 'who,' but 'what,'" Taeauna snapped, through its echoes, from somewhere close to his nose. "And let's just hope you never find out, hmm?"

  Falcon, but she was angry...

  "S-sorry, Tay," Rod mumbled, really meaning it. He'd heard from her voice that she was moving on, away from him, and hesitantly followed her into the chill blackness.

  A faint amber glow kindled as they approached, emanating from the tops of smooth marble ledges, running around three sides of the square room. An astonishing array of weapons lay on the shelves, in neat rows.

  The fourth wall held a rack of polearms by a long row of suits of plate armor, each on its own stand. Between the suits smaller shelves thrust out from the wall, holding helms, gauntlets and other odd pieces of armor.

  This was an armory, all right. Just the swords, right here by his elbow, must be worth a small fortune...

  "So, which weapons do we take?" Rod asked, a little doubtfully. He knew that lugging around a lot of heavy stuff was dangerously foolish, and that it was best to find light, balanced weapons that suited one's strength—for him, that would probably mean swords meant for twelve-year-olds, if they made such things—but as to how he could decide what was balanced for him—

  "Leave that for the morning," Taeauna told him, a little less curtly than a moment ago. "Sleep first. After we find the most useful piece of armor here, that is."

  "Oh? What's that? Something enchanted?"

  "No, though we'll each be taking one of those, on the morrow. Enspelled codpieces that will hurl back one spell each that's cast at us, then melt away."

  Rod shook his head and grinned wryly. "Of course. I should have known someone would think of such things. And the armor that's more useful than that?"

  "Ah," the Aumrarr replied briskly. "This one." She went to one of the jutting shelves and hauled a great helm that looked as if it was fashioned for a giant off it, clasping it to her breast.

  Then she turned and shuffled to the bare table in the center of the room—a worktable, Rod supposed. Before he could move to help her, Taeuna braced herself, grunted, and heaved it up onto the table.

  Falcon! It was larger—and probably heavier—than an old deep sea diver's helm. Taeauna leaned on it, pointed at Rod, and then over his shoulder at some more helms. "Fetch me that one and that one—and those two immediately beneath them, too. Don't try to bring them all in one trip."

  "Four? How many heads do we have, anyway?"

  "Those two are for our muddy wastes," Taeauna told him flatly, "and those two for yellow-wine wastes. To use the polite terms."

  "Oh," Rod said, discovering he was starting to blush. Again. "So do they go on the floor somewhere?"

  "Pick a corner for each of us. Where we aren't likely to knock something down on our heads when we get up."

  "So, uh, we'll be wiping ourselves with our hands?"

  Taeauna gave him a disgusted look, then drew four scarves from her bosom, one after another. "From the wardrobe. Hues I never liked. Leave one beside each helm."

  Wings of the Falcon, she thought of everything.

  When Rod was done arranging things, he came back to Taeauna and the massive helm on the table by her elbow.

  "This is it," she told him patiently. "The most useful thing here."

  "Really?" Rod asked, peering at it. Taeauna was already tipping it over to expose the underside.

  The helm had two dangling strings of overlapping plates attached to it, that hung down to protect the wearer's throat, and neck... and the plates had been latched together, turning the helm into a sealed sphere.

  Taeauna was trying to undo the latches and fold back the plates.

  "So," Rod asked curiously, watching her struggle. "Do we bathe in it, or is it for carrying the crown and all the royal treasure?"

  Taeauna didn't bother to answer, because she had just won her battle and swept the plates open.

  A strong, sharp smell assaulted Rod's nose. Cheese.

  The Aumrarr lifted a wrapped disk out of the helm and onto the table, and started unwinding it. Even before Rod saw the wedge- shaped segment missing from the disk, through the cloak, he knew what he was sta
ring at. A large wheel of cheese.

  Which proved to be green and veined in purple.

  It also proved, after two deft slices of Taeauna's dagger had cut off a sliver and separated the evil-looking green rind, to be the best cheese he'd ever tasted.

  "Nothing," she told him tartly, "is more useful than a good meal. Eat until I tell you to stop, and then sleep."

  Rod felt like groaning with pleasure. He had never tasted anything this good. "Is—is it magic, making this so tasty?" he asked, almost begrudging the time it took to speak instead of chewing more cheese. "And is there anything to drink?"

  "No," the Aumrarr told him briskly, pulling other packages out of the helm and inspecting them. "And yes. That is, there's no magic, just lurmbrauken cheese from Elskurn, beyond the Sea of Storms. And yes, there's water in yonder earthen jugs—that suit of armor on the end isn't a suit of armor at all, but an armored carryall with earthenware on shelves inside it. It won't taste nice, but it won't kill you. Eating too much of this cheese might, so you will stop when I tell you to."

  "Or else?"

  "Or else the painful duty will fall to me," Taeauna told him, not quite smiling, "of teaching a Lord Arch wizard that even he must obey limits."

  Rod decided it must be lack of sleep that was making him so reckless. That, or knowing his house was burned, and everything he had—everything he'd saved and collected and surrounded himself with, all the souvenirs of a life he'd on the whole quite enjoyed—was gone. "Teaching how, exactly?"

  "Ah. That—for you—will be the painful part."

  Rod smiled.

  GARFIST WAS RISING from a very pleasant dream. Soft hands were caressing him, running gently over his flanks and the corded muscles of his chest and the great mound of his belly, and then lower...

  "Yes," Isk said with a sigh of relief, from close above him. "No wounds at all. It's all someone else's."

  "Good," Juskra said, from off to his left. "I thought so."

  It was then that Garfist smelled the blood, and woke with a start. "Hurrh? Whahuh?"

  "Hush, Old Ox. Lie still; go back to sleep. I'll tell you all about it in the morning."

  "No," Garfist growled, "I know that tone, Snakehips. Tell me now." He felt for the hilt of his sword, but Juskra's steel-strong hand was suddenly holding his wrist immobile.

  "It seems some Galathan noble's hired wizard knew about this cave, and crafted a gate to bring the noble and his men through it, to camp here and march to Galathgard come morning."

  "What noble? Which wizard?"

  Gar felt her shrug, through her firm grip. He tugged, testingly, but it hadn't loosened in the slightest.

  "I know not and care not. The wizard is dead, and most of the armsmen who came through with him. His death collapsed the gate, and the noble—shouting some very unkind words at us, I thought—and the rest of his guards and toadies were left where they'd started from, back the other side of it. Unless he can find another mage right speedily, and I suspect they're hard to come by right now, he'll have to start riding horses to death come morning, to have any chance of getting here before the Great Court begins. At any rate, they came tramping across us, and stabbed at us when they felt us under their boots, and we had to kill them all. Which is when someone's blood got all over you."

  "And you slept through it all," Iskarra added, and Garfist couldn't tell if her voice was accusing or envious or both. Probably both.

  "Huh," he rumbled slowly. "Could we go back to the part where one of ye was running yer hands all over me? Ye didn't quite finish, as I recall..."

  THE GUARD HAD already gone white with fear, but was standing his ground in front of the closed—and undoubtedly locked—doors.

  "I am very sorry, Lady Maera," he said again, sounding as if he really was, "but the Lord and Lady Tesmer are not to be disturbed." He was, yes, starting to tremble.

  The tall, slender woman facing him took another step forward. "On whose orders?" she asked flatly.

  "Theirs, of course, Lady. I would turn away a Tesmer on no lower authority."

  Maera Tesmer regarded the sentinel coldly. "My mother and father are not in the habit of chanting like novice minstrels, Haelgon. There is no 'theirs' in this; either Lord Tesmer or Lady Tesmer gave you those orders. Which of them was it? And what precisely was said to you?"

  "I..." The guard flushed as red as the draperies flanking the doors. "It would be indiscreet of me to say. Lady."

  Maera Tesmer's eyes flashed and she took another step forward.

  "Haelgon, you have no idea just how indiscreet I'm going to be in a moment, if you fail to answer my question. I am a Tesmer, whom you're sworn to obey—and find myself positively afire with spells that I'm just itching to use, that might do almost anything if I lose my temper, from turn you into a frog to blast you to drifting ashes."

  Her sharp, lashing voice dropped to an intimate, conspiratorial purr. "I might even just force my way into your mind and learn what I want to know that way, leaving you forever a drooling idiot lacking all control over your bowels... the sort of man-beast that would so disgust my mother that she'd see you chained naked, just out of earshot of Imtowers, to be a chew-toy for our war- dogs—and, of course, a lesson to all of our subjects about the folly of disobeying a Tesmer. Oh, there are a lot of things I might do. Unless you answer me, right now."

  "Uh—I—uh—L-lady Tesmer told me to let no one—no one at all—pass these doors and disturb them, upon pain of death. Then she turned to Lord Tesmer and said... something I tried not to hear."

  "But obviously did. What was it?"

  The doorguard blushed an even darker red, shook visibly, and mumbled unhappily, '"Get yourself disrobed right quick, Irrance, so you can take your time baring me properly.'"

  Maera nodded. "I thought as much. So the doors behind you are locked from without right now, and barred and bolted within?"

  "Y-yes, Lady."

  "Tell me: if Imtowers caught fire, what would you do then? Stand like a statue at these doors, silently guarding them, because you knew you were not to disturb my parents? Or use your key, and thrust your sword in through the gap to lift the bar, and pound on the doors and bellow to rouse them or their maids to shoot the bolts and so survive?"

  "I—uh—Lady, please don't bait me so! I but—"

  Maera Tesmer smiled wickedly. "Faithful Haelgon, I'd not dream of doing so. You have been most loyal to my parents, and most helpful to me. I'll not even demand those door-keys from you. Oh, no."

  Eyes still gleeful, she murmured something, made a swift and intricate gesture, and—

  The doors behind the sentinel exploded outwards in eerie silence, the blast that destroyed them contained in an invisible sphere.

  Haelgon was slammed against the inner curve of that magical prison, bowed gorily outwards along its arc and flattened in an instant—as well as impaled by many wooden shards and splinters.

  Then the sphere melted away, spilling the limp, bloody body of the guard out into the passage, leaving no trace of the doors at all.

  "Fool," Maera told the boneless remains coldly. "The rules in Imtowers, behind my parents' backs, haven't changed in years. Obey me and live; defy me and die. It's quite simple."

  She stepped over the mess and through the hole where the great doors had been, into a draperied outer chamber where two uniformed maids lay broken, sprawled amid spreading blood and the splintered remains of their chairs, their limbs lying at strange angles and jagged, broken ends of the chair-legs thrust through their bodies.

  Through the blood-spattered silks on the chamber's far side could be heard Lord Tesmer asking feebly, "What, by the glorking Falcon, was that?"

  Only to be answered by the sharper tones of his spouse. "Ranee, I care not. Just you put your tongue back to what it was doing."

  Maera sighed, struck aside the draperies, and strode across the opulent and deserted receiving room beyond to one of the half- dozen archways around its richly paneled walls.

  She passed her hand in
front of her, murmured something, and heard a faint singing in the air that told Maera her parents' swirldagger shield had faded before her assault.

  The eldest child of Lord Irrance and Lady Telclara Tesmer smiled tightly. So she was still stronger in her wizardry than the best mage her parents could hire. That was gratifying.

  She conjured a hand-shield—just in case; in younger days, her mother had been known to be quick indeed with thrown daggers, and to keep them well-poisoned—and walked through the last set of draperies, into her parents' bedchamber.

  Lord Tesmer was spreadeagled face up, naked and bound, between the four posts of a new and grander gilded bed than they'd had the last time Maera had been in here—furtively and alone, testing her spells against the wardings that were laid thickly upon the chamber. Lady Tesmer was also naked, and as beautiful as ever. Her hair unbound, she was straddling Lord Tesmer's face on widespread knees, languidly lashing him over her shoulder with a whip that looked like a horse's tail.

  Her mother turned blazing eyes on Maera and stiffened in anger, but wasn't given the time to draw breath and launch into a tirade.

  "Satisfy her, Father!" Maera snapped. "She'll not be in a listening mood until she's felt the full fire of her pleasure. As for yours, some other time will have to suffice, or a handy maid, later. I've something important to show you both; yes, important enough to interrupt you this way."

  Keep them off-balance, unable to start shouting at her in concert.

  "So, Lord Irrance Tesmer, ply that tongue! Ply, I say!"

  "Maera Harilda Mehannraer!" her mother hissed. "How dare you?"

  Maera gave the Lady Telclara Tesmer a cool look. "Very easily, Mother. After all, I learned daring—to say nothing of rudeness— from you. Yet kiss the Falcon and take calm, both of you, and spare me all the snarling and storming. When you see what I've discovered, you'll understand why it just wouldn't wait. This concerns the very future of House Tesmer."

  Her mother looked angry enough to dispute that, and opened her mouth to say so—but then stiffened, panted as her eyes went very wide, sobbed as a spasm of pleasure shook her entire body... and collapsed backwards atop her helpless spouse.