by Ed Greenwood
Arch Wizard
( Falconfar saga - 2 )
Ed Greenwood
Ed Greenwood
Arch Wizard
The Story Thus Far
Rod Everlar, a successful author of Cold War action thrillers and fantasy novels set in his imagined world of Falconfar, is astonished one night when Taeauna-one of a race of good winged warrior women he created for his fantasy books-literally falls out of his dreams, onto his bed.
Badly wounded and beset by sinister black-armored warriors known as Dark Helms (created by a computer game manufacturer who purchased the rights to his world), Taeauna pleads with Rod to aid her-and Falconfar.
Rod discovers that the world he thought was created only in his imagination is all too real-and that its people believe he, Rod Everlar, is its Lord Archwizard or Dark Lord, the most powerful of the "Dooms," powerful wizards who can literally change Falconfar with their magic.
Plunged bewilderingly into a Falconfar that is familiar but also dangerously different from his imaginings, Rod finds himself swept into an ongoing civil war in the kingdom of Galath, where one of the Dooms, the wizard Arlaghaun, is goading the King of Galath into establishing absolute tyranny over the Galathan nobles.
For years, the three Dooms-the wizards Arlaghaun, Malraun, and Narmarkoun-have fought each other, in an uneasily balanced struggle wherein none of them could achieve supremacy. Rod's arrival shatters that balance, just as Arlaghaun is on the verge of seizing control over Galath.
There are signs that a long-dead wizard of matchless might, Lorontar-the only Lord Archwizard ever known in Falconfar before Rod-is stirring, somehow still alive (or perhaps not), and seeking to control the living.
At the end of Dark Lord, the first novel of Falconfar, the wizard Arlaghaun is slain in the fortress of Ult Tower. The wizard Malraun appears, snatches Taeauna, and magically whisks her away as his captive, leaving Rod Everlar (laden with magical items from Ult Tower he's snatched up but doesn't understand) raging helplessly, wanting to rescue her but not knowing how.
For what happens next, read on…
Chapter One
The Dark Helms laughed.
They stood at ease, forming a ring in the dark, torchlit stone chamber, hands on hips, not a blade drawn. In their midst, emerald eyes blazing in fury, clad only in manacles attached to a few rattling links of chain, Taeauna of the Aumrarr swung a sword at them.
A sword that skirled and shrieked as it struck-nothing. Empty air as hard as stone, in front of every Dark Helm. Spells shielded them all from her steel, striking it ringingly aside amid sparks as she slashed and swung and panted, sobbing in frustration.
Rod Everlar snarled out his own frustration, standing in front of the magic mirror with the gauntlet that held the orb raised in front of him, fumbling with Klammert's notes.
"Take me there!" he spat, glaring at Taeauna and the Dark Helms, in the mirror before him. She was in a dungeon or a fortress somewhere-a large, bare, stone-lined chamber with iron torch-sconces in the walls, but that room could be anywhere…
"Take me to Taeauna!"
His shout made the orb against his palm quiver, as if it was an egg trying to hatch, and the gauntlet covering it grew a sudden glow. A glow that washed away again in a handful of instants, leaving the gauntlet as dark as ever.
In the mirror, the Dark Helms were advancing, crowding together, their ring tightening around Taeauna, and they were raising their own gauntleted hands.
"Take… me… to… Taeauna," Rod snapped, spacing the words out slowly in fierce determination as he glared hard at the image of the bare, wingless Aumrarr.
They were starting to slap her now, or rather, swinging their hands at her and letting that stone-hard air bludgeon her, driving her back and reeling, the sword clanging out of her grasp. She fell to her knees, crying out in pain-and Rod, trembling with the head-pounding effort of trying to will himself to her, roared out his own wordless rage.
And Ult Tower, around him, flickered and turned golden. The walls, the air…
Everything had a golden hue, as if he was peering through gilded goggles. "Taeauna!" he shouted. "Tay, I'm coming!"
In the mirror, Taeauna's head jerked up, and she stared around, wide-eyed in hope, for all Falconfar as if she could hear him.
Against his palm, the orb suddenly started to burn. Around him, the golden hue blazed up brightly, until he could no longer see the walls, the mirror, the very floor under his feet…
There was nothing under his boots, nothing at all! Though the orb was painfully hot and getting hotter, the air around had acquired a chill and was moving, the faintest of whistles rising past his ears… Was he falling? Hurtling down to his death, smashed on unseen rocks below? It didn't seem as if he was descending…
"Taeauna," Rod snarled, clinging to his last image of her, head lifted in hope, looking around for her. It didn't feel as if he was falling at all. Around him there were no walls now-nothing but a fading golden glow, a radiance as thick as mist that hid his surroundings from him, yet showed him space, empty air, further away from him than the walls of Ult Tower around the magic mirror…
He was rushing along through a great nothingness, as the golden glow around him ebbed into silver; a strained and thinning hue that he could see through now, could see a golden, roiling cloud ahead, a cloud he was rushing to meet at a speed that made him blink and swallow.
He was still swallowing when he raced into the depths of that cloud, surging golden flows of energy that slowed him and thrust against his arrow-swift flight, shoving him and buffeting him… as if in a dream, he became aware that some of the enspelled armor he was wearing had flared into angry radiances of its own, and was melting.
Not a fiery death he could feel-there was no heat at all-but it was shrinking and being clawed away by the golden mists around him, silently leaving his limbs in great spreading holes and gaps as he plunged on. Ahead he could see the torches of the chamber again, hear the faint laughter of the Dark Helms as they clustered closely around Taeauna, chuckles rising in a crescendo as a gasp of pain burst out of her.
"Taeauna!" he cried again, willing himself on. The orb had lost its heat against his skin, and he was slowing… slowing…
Glossy black armor loomed up in front of him, almost close enough to touch. He reached forward, stretching out his arm, straining-and Taeauna's slender, long-fingered hand thrust out between two dark-armored legs, reaching for him, trying to-
The golden radiance surged up in front of him with an audible snarl of power, hiding Taeauna and the Dark Helms and the torches all at once, smashing at his stretching hand… driving it back.
Wincing at the sting in his fingers, Rod shook his bruised hand and thrust it forth again-but the silver mist around him was gone, drowned in angry gold, and he was tumbling, heels snatched above his head and flung back, thrust along in wild and sprawling helplessness, slammed back across uncharted emptiness amid a chaos of angrily-roiling golden fire.
Tumbling crazily over and over, glimpsing momentary rifts and rents in the thundering golden surges, rifts that held silver-shimmering air, tall castles on great fists of rock that floated in midair, bat-winged and hulking beasts with long claws and no heads that waited with arms spread hungrily, and armies galloping with lowered lances through the billowing smoke of dozens of fires… unfamiliar scenes, all, faster and faster until Rod was almost weeping in confusion, his head spinning, and-
It ended as swiftly as it had begun, leaving him standing silently in the damp green depths of what looked to be a trackless, seemingly endless forest. Rod Everlar didn't have to look all around to know he'd never seen it before.
"The eternal lost one," he murmured aloud, "who knows not where he is."
Most of his
armor had melted away, leaving the various belts and baldrics bristling with pouches and scabbards of hopefully magical stuff sagging loosely around him, but he still had his gauntlets.
With a sigh, Rod tugged off the one covering his left hand, and peered at the small, unblemished orb in his unscarred, unseared palm.
"Take me back," he hissed at it.
Nothing happened.
"Take me to Taeauna," he growled, glaring at it, bending his will upon it as he'd just been doing.
His head started to pound, and the orb quietly cracked apart and collapsed into sand-like grit in his hand.
The second time the great chamber shook, the blue-skinned man sighed and rose from among the dead women who were caressing him.
"They're going to a lot of trouble over this," he murmured, as he plucked his greatcloak off the spire of sculpted rock where he was wont to leave it, shrugged it on over his blue scales, and took up a long, thin black staff from where it leaned against the wall. "I suppose I should be flattered."
The tall man strolled down the great room unhurriedly, his every movement smooth and elegant, spell-glows awakening around the staff in his hand and chasing each other up and down its length.
He was barefoot on the old, smooth stones, and made almost no sound at all as he walked. More noise arose from the dead wenches-rotted away to bared bone in many places-who clung to him and caressed him as he passed. He patted them and smiled upon them, but slowed not at all, as he headed for a rail-less ribbon of stone steps that climbed one curving end wall of the chamber, heading up to the battlements.
The room behind him was dank and cold, but as he ascended the air grew colder, mountain breezes blowing in the open windows ahead.
Those winds brought shouts, and the occasional ringing clangs of swords striking upon metal. Sornspire was besieged.
Built centuries ago by a man long dead, it was neither a pleasant nor a comfortable home. Wizards never seemed to crave comfort as much as one might think they would-or perhaps they spun comfort out of their spells, and needed only privacy and great masses of stone around them to shield them from rivals and stray spell-blasts.
The man with the staff had never given it any thought, for he was not what he seemed to be. The tall stature of Narmarkoun, Doom of Galath, was not the body he'd worn a season ago. From his bald blue head to his long, blue scaly limbs, bared to the icy winds at every stride as the cloak swirled back from his shoulders, his shape was new.
Not that anyone else in Galath-or all wider Falconfar-cared what Malagusk Sorn's tastes in architecture had been. Least of all these knights of Galath, who'd come all this way up into the most inhospitable peaks of southwestern Galath with their army, to bring death to a wizard in the name of King Melander Brorsavar for the unthinkable crime of ignoring his summons to court.
For years, this remote peaktop keep had been a secure enough hide-hold for Narmarkoun. It overlooked the barony of Chainamund, and fat, blustering, sneering Glusk Chainamund had been terrified of wizards. Not without good reason.
"Lack of good reason," the bald, blue-skinned man murmured now, stopping on the battlements to watch men whose armor was sparkling with frost struggle up between the stone merlons to crash their boots down heavily on the battlement walk, and confront him. "That's what causes all of this unpleasantness."
"Wizard Narmarkoun!" one of the knights called sternly. "You are summoned by the King of Galath! Will you come with us now, so that this violence can be ended?"
The blue man strolled forward, carrying his staff as if he'd forgotten he was holding it. "Sir knight, I very much doubt it's in your power to end any violence, anywhere, regardless of what I might do."
At his approach, the knights all raised their shields nervously. Small metal badges had been crudely hammered onto them, badges that flickered and glowed with magic. Almost certainly they bore spells to ward off anything a wizard might hurl.
"So you defy us?" another knight barked.
The tall blue man regarded him calmly. "Not yet."
'"Not yet' my left haunch!" the first knight snarled. "Twelve men we lost to your stone statues on the stair, and another seven fighting the walking dead women who guard your walls!"
"Peaceful inhabitants of my castle," the man with the staff replied, "who would have done nothing to you if you'd been invited, or spoken the right words of greeting to them."
"Oh? What words are those?" The knight's bark was as loud and sudden as a sword-thrust. Several of the dead women's swords had thrust points deep into his metal armor, and his broken ribs hurt like godsfire.
"I am come peacefully to speak to Narmarkoun, rightful ruler of this part of Galath."
'"Rightful ruler' my right haunch!"
The wizard shrugged. "If you lose them both, you'll fall down, you know. 'Rightful' might not be a term familiar to a velduke who made himself king bare days ago, but I have held this castle for longer than the lives of King Brorsavar, his sire before him, and his grandsire before that, and in all that time no one else has ruled these few peaks. Chainamund seemed not even to know they were here."
"Enough clever words," the other knight said grimly. "Will you come with us?"
The tall blue man smiled gently, and shook his head. "No. Tell the King of Galath I am too busy keeping him alive, in the face of what the other Dooms of Galath are doing, to have time just now for trading little threats with him at court. When Lorontar has been truly destroyed, perhaps."
"Lorontar? Lorontar's been dead for centuries!"
The man with the staff sighed and regarded the glowering knight rather sadly. "If you believe that, Galath has far greater problems than the absence of one reclusive wizard at court."
He turned and strolled away. Some of the knights traded glances behind his back, reached silent accord, and started after him-only to halt in mid-stride when he turned back to face them and added mildly, "I would have thought the absence of a baron to stand in Chainamund's place at court to be of far greater importance to the throne of Galath than my lack of attendance. Or is Melander proposing to offer the barony to me?"
"You?" one of the knights sneered, only to fall silent at a glare from the first knight who'd called out to the wizard.
That knight turned his gaze back to the tall blue man and said simply, "No." Silence fell, and they stood in the cold, faintly whistling mountain wind like statues for long enough that he felt compelled to add, "Three knights administer the barony now, until it should please the king to name a new baron."
The man with the staff nodded, as if he'd already known how matters stood in the barony below, and said almost gently, "And so it goes. Devaer gives way to Melander, yet the knights and nobles of Galath dance the same dances. Obey the royal dance-master, or fall from grace… and life. Have men sworn to the sword truly nothing better to do?"
Leaving that question hanging in the air unanswered behind him, the tall blue man turned back to the stair that had brought him up onto the battlements in an unhurried swirl of his cloak, and walked away from them.
"Wizard!" one of the knights barked. "Halt!"
The tall man gave no sign that he'd heard.
"Wizard! Surrender!" the knight roared.
Beside him, the first knight called sternly, "Throw down your staff and turn back to us, unleashing no magics! In the name of Brorsavar, King of all Galath, I charge-"
"Ah, yes," the tall blue man murmured, never hesitating in his graceful walk. "Charge."
That quiet command brought dead women suddenly streaming up the stair before him in a naked, gray-skinned flood, swords and glaives and wicked gutting-knives in their hands. He grounded his staff and stood still as they raced past him, sprinting stiffly along the battlements at a dead, barefoot run, heading for the knights, who swore various oaths and hefted swords and shields, instinctively drawing together to form a shield-wall.
"No! Get away!" the first knight bellowed at his fellows, waving his sword. "Stand not together, to give yon wizard a target for h
is spells! Knights of Galath, may this day beeeuuurk!"
The dead women were naked and therefore distracting-alluring here and hideous there, where flesh and all had fallen away to lay bare a staring skull above parted lips, or an empty ribcage on one flank where a shapely breast still adorned the other. They were slender women, besides, not battle-trained knights of the realm, and-
When four of them swarmed over a knight at once, not caring in the slightest what his blade bit into in their quick, unfeeling haste to slay him, he went down.
A few of the knights lasted a few struggling steps backwards, slashing and thrusting for all they were worth, and managed to hack down some of the dead women by hewing away limbs. Yet before the man with the staff could unhurriedly turn around again to gaze down his battlements, all of the score or so armored valiants of Galath who'd clambered through the ramparts to stand on these lofty stones had fallen.
The wizard sighed, watching dead women calmly picking up the bloodless remnants of their felled sisters, and asked the cold blue sky above him, "Now, where were my thoughts, before this unpleasant little distraction?"
For the first time ever, it seemed the sky had an answer for such a query. A flight of falcons came pouring down out of it, swooping out from among the line of peaks in the north that had hidden their approach from Sornspire until the proverbial last moment. Gray falcons about thrice the size of the largest falcon Galath had ever seen.
Which meant, of course, they weren't falcons at all.
The tall blue man cursed, spun around, and raced back to the stair, raising his staff in both hands and awakening it to snarl with surging blue tongues of fire.
He hurled his first fire-bolts before he sprang onto the steps-which was about the time the foremost lorn had started to take their real shapes, and come swooping right at him.
Horned, mouthless skull-faces are poorly suited for triumphant laughter or the bellowing of battle cries, but lorn eyes are very good at conveying hunger and glee.