by Ed Greenwood
"Don't toy with it," was all Syregorn replied, "or, like as not, it'll start toying with you."
The passage full of doors seemed to stretch on forever. "Seemed to" were the right words, because at one step Thalden had found a place where Malraun's magic crafted an illusion: the image of the passage stretching on and on, dwindling into the distance, when it actually became a short flight of stairs, descending to a door.
Closed, of course, and as featureless as all the rest of them. Malragard did not yield up its secrets to intruders, except the hard way.
They'd found no sign of Onthras, but a lone, staring eyeball impaled on a needle-thin metal spike that had suddenly thrust up out of a door as they'd passed it had been a dull olive green.
The color of no one's eyes that Syregorn and Thalden had ever known except Sir Jelgar Thusk of Hammerhold.
A little farther on down the passage they'd heard a loud, grisly gnawing sound coming from under the floor, but—not feeling foolish enough to want to open one of the doors waiting so temptingly on the floor they were walking along—had no way of knowing if they were hearing the devouring of Jelgar, Onthras, or someone else.
Something else, perhaps.
A few hasty paces beyond where the sound of gnawing faded behind them, they'd traded glances that told each other, as loudly and as firmly as if they'd shouted it until the walls rang: "I hate this place."
Syregorn had worn a bitter half-smile for quite a few careful steps after that. He strongly suspected that where Malragard was concerned, the feeling was mutual.
They reached the bottom of the steps, and stopped facing the door. Thalden looked at Syregorn, who nodded; his usual silent order to proceed.
Slowly the oldest knight of Hammerhold reached out, laid a reluctant hand on the door-ring, and pulled.
The door opened, as easily and silently as if its stone pivots had been polished mirror-smooth and oiled—and two metal war-quarrels, as long and as heavy as horse-lances, raced out of the darkness beyond the door amid the crash of a giant double-bow going off.
One of them chipped the stone stair as Syregorn hurled himself against the wall, but the other tore right through Thalden's armor and ribs, pinning the old knight against the steps.
"Greet the Falcon, old friend," the warcaptain said sadly. Spewing out a great gush of blood, Thalden sagged over sideways and did not reply.
HE HAD TO get out of here, right now!
The gate and the creatures he'd sent through it must be abandoned! To the Falcon with all the rest of his schemes, too, until he was far from here!
Anything else he did in Yintaerghast—the slightest little thing—might awaken Lorontar, or the Great Doom might be already awake and watching him right now, lurking and silently laughing—
Narmarkoun whirled around. Had that been a chuckle? A distant footfall? Coming to Yintaerghast had seemed clever enough, so long as he didn't tarry so long that Malraun got tired of conquering forest holds and grew bold enough to come looking for Lorontar's magic, but now...
Clutching the scroll, he ran back to the room where he'd left his staff of power and the few wands he'd brought along, his cloak, food, and water, his spell-tome and book of notes he was compiling, all guarded by a silent ring of his undead lasses. He had to—
Everything was gone. Even his playpretties. The stone slab that had served him as a table was bare.
At first he thought he'd mistaken the room, stepped through the wrong archway in his haste and, yes, rising panic, but—no, when he stepped back out into the passage and looked at the arch again, it was the right one. Could only be the right one...
He strode into the room again, almost running, to peer all around and make sure his things hadn't somehow fallen to where he couldn't see them, or been dragged away and left some trail.
Nothing.
He turned, wildly. Well, let them be lost, then. Crafting a new staff of like powers would cost him a year or more of work, but the rest could be replaced easily enough—if he kept his life, of course!
He found himself running, shedding scales as his deep blue arms went pale—something that happened only when he was wracked by sickness, or truly terrified.
Well, he was, fear like a cold flame rising in his chest as he pounded along the empty stone passages as fast as he could run, his rising gasps of breath loud in his ears, a feeling of being gloatingly watched strengthening around him now—
There! The door out, an archway opening into blank nothingness thanks to Lorontar's mighty shielding, but something he'd easily penetrated and mastered before, that was nothing but a moment of cold mist to him.
Narmarkoun ran faster, clutching the precious scroll like a baton. He had to get out of here, had to get away from Lorontar's long shadow, to where he could calm himself and—
He plunged through the archway and ran on, shivering at a sudden chill that had lanced deep into his bones, that clawed at his heart and his groin and his brain, now, freezing, making him stagger...
He skidded and stumbled to a halt, panting, not believing his eyes. He was in Yintaerghast, and had been running hard down the passage he'd come in by, the same hall he'd just run along to—
He whirled around. There, behind him, was the archway he'd just run through. Silently mocking him, as he stood winded and shuddering, shivering in the bone-biting cold.
Somehow, he'd run through the archway and its magic had spun him around and sent him running on, right back into the castle he'd been fleeing.
Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Narmarkoun fought to calm himself.
"I am a Doom of Falconfar," he said aloud, pleased at how calm his voice sounded. The word "Doom" seemed to roll away through the castle to vast and echoing distances, a very long way, ere it sank into whisperings. Whisperings that sounded like cruel mirth.
Narmarkoun walked to the archway this time, slowly and carefully, gathering his will about himself like the cloak that had been stolen from him as he stepped into its icy mists.
He would win through the shielding, just as he'd done before. He'd mastered it, and could break it again. He was Narmarkoun, a Doom of Falconfar, the most mighty Doom of Falconfar—
He was blinking at the dark walls and ceilings of Yintaerghast again, standing alone in its emptiness.
Turned around again. Imprisoned.
He took two steps away from the archway, turned to face it, and worked the strongest magic he knew, raising his arms when the great wall of spark-studded power was at its height, and hurled it at the shielding spell. He might well shatter this wall of the castle, but so be it.
If that was what it took to win the free of Yintaerghast and its not-so-dead master, that was what he would—
Like a great ocean wave, his own spark-studded spell came back at him, crashing down over him and burying him under hammerblows that struck as hard inside his head as out, dashing and numbing and breaking him, hurling him over and over and… out.
ROD EVERLAR SWALLOWED, and retreated another step. In grinning silence the skeleton advanced, still beckoning to him in a friendly, even coquettish manner.
The grinning skull stared at him as if its dark, empty eye-sockets could somehow see him clearly, and trailed—or rather, shed, at every eerie step—tresses of what once must have been a spectacular head of long, trailing hair. From the skeleton's bony shoulders hung the crumbling gray wisps and tatters of what Rod now saw had once been an elaborate and probably very beautiful gown, with flared shoulders and an upthrust collar, gathered down into a tight-laced, corset-like middle portion that descended to a be-gemmed triangular pelvic panel from which in turn blossomed out a broad, full sweep of skirts. That were crumbling, ever so slowly and sighingly gently, into dust.
Rod swallowed again, his mouth suddenly very dry. If that thing touched him...
... what? What would happen?
Yes, this was a walking skeleton, probably animated by, or controlled by, the wizard Malraun. And even if he hadn't seen far too many horror movies,
there was something horrible, something grotesquely not right, about a silent skeleton beckoning to him in an alluring manner, as it—she—
The skeleton stopped, put both hands on its—her—hips, and struck a pose. Then it raised one hand languidly and drew its forefinger slowly across its lower line of teeth, parting its jaws slightly as if it licking its finger with a tongue that was no longer there, empty eyesockets fixed on his eyes.
Suddenly Rod felt his fear fall away from him like a wet and heavy cloak dropping from his shoulders. He blinked, astonished at how calm he now felt.
"Wait," he almost said aloud. "I'm a fantasy writer. I can handle this. She looks horrid, yes, but what if she's just a lonely walking skeleton..."
She put her head to one side, like many a movie star he'd seen in films, flirting. Rod shrugged, smiled, and offered her his hand to shake.
As smoothly as any real movie star, she shifted her hips and stepped past it without taking it, moving to embrace him.
He stood his ground, skin no longer crawling, as those bony limbs closed around him—chilling him to the bone.
The cold of her embrace was so intense that he gasped, and had to fight for breath—and by then, the empty eyesockets were staring up at Rod Everlar from just below his nose, and both of her bony hands had risen to close around his throat.
She was trying to throttle him!
"Well, that was stupid of me," Rod panted, trying to break free. Magic flared into glowing visibility up and down her arm-bones as she resisted him, its force making her grasp tremendously powerful.
Not strong enough, however, to keep Rod from hurling himself to the ground and rolling—in a sudden dust-cloud of disintegrating skirts and flailing skeletal legs that made him sneeze violently and repeatedly, sending fingerbones rattling and bouncing in all directions.
She kept firm hold of him, though, that staring skull and those searingly cold, claw-like fingers sinking deeper into his throat, choking him... and bruisingly deeper and tighter...
Lying on his side, now, one knee thrust forward to keep himself that way despite her kicking bones, Rod clenched his teeth, fought for breath, and patiently opened pouch after pouch along his hip-belt of six pouches, and started thrusting the contents of each against the gleaming bones of her wrists.
The glowing and sparkling dust from the little drawstring sacks in the first pouch made her stiffen and sigh, but loosened her grip not at all.
The magical halo around her bones flared into angry brightness at the touch of the first of the seven rings from the second pouch, but that was all it did. Feeling his way along the fine chain he'd looped through all of the seven rings, Rod touched the second ring to the skeleton that was trying to murder him. Nothing happened.
The touch of the third ring, however, made her to stiffen, and a different hue of cold fire appeared out of nowhere to race up and down her limbs.
Suddenly those strangling fingers were gone from his throat. The skeleton arched and surged against him, thrusting and shifting herself up his front just as a small and squirming neighbor's child had once tried to clamber up Rod from his lap, until their noses—his a nondescript point of living flesh, hers a grotesque hole above a line of even, ever-bared teeth—were touching.
"Thank you," she whispered, her words blowing icy vapor into Rod Everlar and chilling him into shuddering helplessness. "Telrorna thanks you for her freedom. Free to die at last... I curse Malraun for every cruelty of his binding, for every moment of my enslavement... but you... I thank you, sir, for my death..."
And as Rod fought to master his shivering and make some sort of reply, the skull broke off those bony shoulders and rolled away.
Then the skeleton slumped, crumbled, and fell apart, leaving him lying alone on the floor amid eerie wisps of what had once been a gown, with a magical ring flickering and crumbling to nothing in his fingertips.
Its sighing destruction tickled his fingers, and then was gone.
IN A BEDCHAMBER in Darswords, the wizard who liked to style himself Malraun the Matchless jolted awake atop a bound and helpless Aumrarr, shouting in pain.
Then, even before his cry could form words, he slumped down again, senseless, his wits overwhelmed by the roaring tumult within them, as a mind linked to his own burst apart at the height of silently shrieking its savage fury at him.
The dying of that mind rocked his own; Malraun was just—and only just—able to recognize the feel of the thoughts so harming his before his own mind collapsed into chaos. He was suffering the destruction of Telrorna, a sorceress he'd slain long ago, then animated in undeath, and magically bound to himself to serve as his thrall.
One among many.
Now one less among many.
Through the Doom's binding that linked them, Malraun's pain stabbed into the brain of Taeauna of the Aumrarr, lying bound beneath him. She whimpered, more dazed than awakened, and arched in pain not even her own, straining momentarily against her bonds... ere she fell back into limp, sagging silence.
On the far side of the chamber door, the guards who'd flung open a door at the sound of Malraun's shout and rushed across an outer room to wrench open the bedchamber door, skidded to sudden, reeling halts at the sound of the wingless Aumrarr's whimper.
The younger guard shot the older one a doubtful look, only to see that elder warrior was relaxing and starting to leer.
Barring the younger guard's path onward with the sword he'd already drawn and tapping a finger to his lips in a clear signal for silence, the veteran guard closed the bedchamber door in careful silence, then wordlessly started shooing his younger fellow back across the outer room.
He was grinning broadly and shaking his head as he did so. It took the younger guard only a moment or two to start to blush.
THE GREAT FRONT doors of Malragard boomed and shuddered as five charging beasts—with a sixth drifting past low overhead, its many yellow eyes glaring—crashed together in the doorway, each determined to be the first out to maraud, freed to slay and maim and—
Lightnings suddenly erupted from the doorframe, a score of angrily-crackling blue bolts that raced from limb to quivering muscled bulk to roaring-in-pain maw, stabbing upward to transfix the flying monster from a dozen directions at once, holding it shuddering in midair.
As beneath, lightning flashed again and again, and monsters writhed, spasmed, and sank down. Malraun's doorwarding magics, prepared long ago for just such a task, ably and brutally sought to hold his six guardians to their guardianship.
In the heart of that surging tangle of flashing pain, the wolf-heads snarled and snapped at the helmcat and the slitherjaws, who snapped and bit back with fierce enthusiasm. The gliding horror's tentacles flailed everywhere, and the stabspider reared back in quivering frustration, its legs too delicate to risk amid the thunderous collisions in the doorway.
Overhead, the flying maw shuddered, vomiting showers of sparks and defecating floods of more sparks as it burned internally. Pincers clattering in pain, it reeled back into the hall, followed precipitously by five rolling, biting beasts, as the most sorely hurt among them sought to win free of their torment by driving their fellow guardians back from the doorway, so they could flee into the lightning-free hall they'd just come from.
In this, they succeeded; the lightnings fell silent as the guardians fell back into the entry hall.
There came a moment of shared, panting relief—and then a moment of dreadful silence, as all six guardians suddenly spasmed in helpless unison.
Out of the empty air around them burst the wordless shout of a wizard hurled into wakefulness by pain, then stricken senseless by that same agony.
That cry ended as abruptly in Malragard as it had in Darswords—and so was still ringing from end to end of the entry hall as the guardians burst into frantic action again—this time, striking viciously at their fellow beasts, now seeking not to get to freedom or pursue the two humans who'd fled, but just to murder each other.
IN YINTAERGHAST, A blue and scaly
Doom of Falconfar rolled over, groaned once, and sat up.
How had he come to be lying on the floor, with a spell-scroll in his hand?
By the Falcon, he must have been tired...
Well, enough slumber for now! He had a new world to conquer—hopefully before Malraun's armies managed to lay waste to much more of this one.
Smiling wryly at that thought, Narmarkoun stood, unrolled the scroll, and nodded at its familiar symbols. Striking a pose and clearing his throat, he carefully cast Lorontar's long-lost spell again, his voice seeming to gather great strength during the incantation, until it was rolling thunderously through the dark vastnesses of Yintaerghast and echoing back to him like the deep roar of a buried titan.
As he finished, notes that had been scribbled at an angle across the lower end of the scroll shone forth brightly. Narmarkoun peered at them with interest. He'd noticed them before, somewhere and some when...
Ah, yes. They must be the work not of Lorontar, who had so boldly and ornately written the spell above them, but of some later, lesser apprentice.
He nodded, resolve hardening. When Malraun was destroyed and his own hold on Falconfar had been secured, identifying and hunting down this scribbler—if the man still lived; Lorontar probably had held little love for those who dared to comment on his magecraft—would be both prudent and entertaining.
Yet enough thoughts of the idle future; if he was to become the only Doom in Falconfar, his entire attention now must be given to the spell he'd just cast so successfully.
Narmarkoun allowed himself a faint smile. This time, he'd focused his casting not on Rod Everlar, but on a vivid scene he'd noticed in Everlar's mind long ago, at his first spying upon the man of Earth. It was a view across a vast gathering of fortresses, tall towers of stone thrusting into the sky like dead mens' fingers or the standing, limbless tree trunks of burned forests. "Skyscrapers," Everlar's mind had termed them, which must be an Earth name for these squared, many-windowed towers.
One in particular Everlar had been interested in; a tower darker, smaller, and older-looking than most of the others, where no less than seven "publishing houses" had offices.