by Ed Greenwood
The Aumrarr regarded them both thoughtfully, looking slowly from one to the other, then nodded. "Very well. There's an enspelled gem-we call it the mindgem-that scrambles the minds of wizards who get too close to it. Made long ago, by a forgotten enchanter. It's long been one of the treasures we Aumrarr keep secret-and has always had a tale clinging to it: that it sears the minds of wizards too close to it, until they're dragged back away from it or it's taken away from them, because it's waiting for just one wizard. The right one. The Lord Archwizard. So it could make him like unto a god, able to hurl mountains into nothing at a whim. That's why we guard it."
"And where is it now?" Iskarra asked softly.
Dyune shook her head, her lips tightening in might what have become a mirthless smile.
If, in that moment, she hadn't heard or felt something they could not.
Stiffening, the Aumrarr suddenly moved as swiftly as any striking serpent. Snatching up her weapons from where Iskarra and Garfist had laid them near to hand, she tugged hard on something hidden in her hair, tore forth a fine but now-broken chain that had been looped around both of her ears, and flung it to Iskarra.
Who caught it out of habit, and was still staring at the sparkling gemstone she now held as Dyune sprang out of the window, eluding Garfist's oath-accompanied grab at her, and flew fast and hard up into the night, warsteel ready in her hands.
Chapter Twelve
Garfist hurled himself at the window, but as always, Isk was faster. Like a lightning-swift serpent she was there and pressed to one side of the window opening, to give him ample room to do what she was doing: craning his neck to look sharply up into the night.
The light of the rising moon was strong, despite the countless trees blocking much of it, and they could make out what blotted out so many of the stars overhead.
The huge bulk of a greatfangs hung across the night sky like a vast ceiling-a ceiling that swooped, beating wings so massive that their cleaving of the air could be felt more than heard.
Dyune was swooping all around the vast beast, darting and stabbing, as its fearsome head sought her but turned too slowly to close on her jaws that three dozen Aumrarr could not have filled.
There were other Aumrarr swooping and stabbing too, their wings curling and flapping as they fought to keep too close to it to be easily reached, but just far enough away that it couldn't slam into them in the air, and leave them falling, broken or stunned.
As they watched, one of the winged women got struck glancingly, and tumbled down through the air, that great neck sweeping around to-
"Bright nipples of Nornautha!" Garfist swore, clenching one fist and using his other hand to stab a hairy pointing finger into the night. "That's Dauntra, one o' the wingbitches as brought us here! An' that's Juskra, yon! By the Devouring Worm, all four of 'em!"
"Aptly cursed," Iskarra murmured. "It will devour them, if it can catch them. Hmm. They weren't all that far off all this time, those four, I'll be bound."
She watched the desperate dance in the sky for a few breaths longer, then snapped, "There's someone riding the beast! The third Doom, Narmarkoun, I'll lay you a gleaming gold broon."
"No, I'll lose no coins to ye this night," Gar growled, pounding his fists on the sill in frustration. Almost directly overhead, rolling in the air above the battlements of Stormcrag Castle, the great wyrm twisted, snapping its jaws but just failing to catch a desperately-diving Aumrarr.
They saw the rider on its back shaping air with his hands, in the strange fluid gestures that meant magic was being worked-and then the air in front of those hands blossomed into shadowy shapes that bit and snapped and darted in an echo of the bitings of the huge, arrow-shaped head of the greatfangs. Phantom spell-jaws reached hungrily for the flying Aumrarr, trailing the little winking lights of fresh-spun sorcery, and bit down. Hard.
An Aumrarr reeled in midair, the magic that had savaged her sapping her strength, and fell… and as Gar and Isk watched, hard-eyed, the huge head of the greatfangs swung up to finally catch a darting foe.
Teeth as long as the falling Aumrarr's body closed on the winged woman, blood sprayed in all directions, and severed limbs came tumbling down out of the sky in the wake of that many-fanged, busily chewing head.
Another Aumrarr rushed up to stab at a large and heavy-lidded eye, howling in rage and grief-and the head drew away from her and then thrust back, slamming its snout into her. She spun helplessly away across the sky, wings curling and convulsing, and the great wyrm lunged after her and bit her apart, too.
Gar and Isk saw a third Aumrarr swoop up from beneath the greatfangs to slice and stab at its rider, and-
Brightness burst across the darkness, an explosion that rocked Stormcrag Castle and tore the night sky asunder.
Gar roared in pain, clutching at his eyes, and Isk whimpered beside him. They could see nothing more.
Blindly, they groped for each other, hoping their sightlessness wouldn't last long.
"Lass," Garfist rumbled, as his arms went around a familiar bony shape, that clung to him and nipped at his shoulder lovingly, "I'm thinking we're now the guardians of this mindgem that's waiting for the right Lord Archwizard to come along."
"I'm thinking that, too," Isk whispered, nigh his neck. "Glork. Glork and be-frawling bugger."
A flash of light split the sky above Harstorm Ridge, driving blinded knights on the walls of Hammerhold to curse or cry out. They had scarce clutched at their eyes and shouted for fresh watchers to come up from below when Hammerhand's castle rocked and shuddered under them in the throes of a second great crash.
This one was coming from behind them, and it was moving. As knights pounded up stairs onto the battlements to peer into the night, it groaned on for a long, rending time in which trees shrieked aloud as they were torn apart, snapped like so much kindling, and hurled down amid many smaller crashings. Then it all faded.
The hard-eyed watchers on the walls of Hammerhold saw that something had smashed a path of devastation across the Raurklor above them, on the forested heights that looked down on Ironthorn. An eerie glow-flames? — was flickering up there now, and silhouetted against it were tumbled and broken trees that should have towered unbroken up into the starry sky.
It was then that Lord Burrim Hammerhand came up onto the battlements in a growling rush, to glare all around at the surrounding forest as if he held it personally responsible.
"Darlok," he snapped, knowing without turning to look which of his warcaptains had hastened up the steps after him, "gather some knights-enough to hurl back three Lyrose patrols-and get up yonder to see what's befallen. If it's some dread spellhurler or other, fill him up with arrows for me. If it's something worse, get word back to me, or get yourself back to tell the tale, just as fast as you can run."
"Lord," Darlok agreed with a nod, and plunged back down the stone stair. Hammerhand followed him, slamming one shoulder against the stone as he always did when he came to the archers' bend, and cursing-only to fall silent, aghast, as a guard's shout arose from below: "Lorn! Lorn in the castle!"
Swearing, Lord Hammerhand hurled himself down flight after flight of stairs, collecting a trotting Tarlkond and almost a score of knights by threes and fours at each floor.
They snatched out their swords when they reached the still-shouting guard, and flung just one question at him: "Where?"
At the sight of his lord that knight gave off crying his warning and spun around to point down the passage that led to the fore-hall. Hammerhand and the rest were streaming past him almost before he got his arm aimed properly.
"This is Lyrose mischief," Tarlkond snarled. "Who else can call down lorn?"
"Tesmer," another knight gasped.
"Or wizards," the Lord Leaf snapped darkly, from where he was suddenly panting along beside them, come from out of some dark side-passage or other.
He turned his head to catch Burrim Hammerhand's eye, and said urgently, between gasps for breath, "We will never see any limits to the evil and the wan
ton slaughter done by wizards. We must kill them, Lord! Kill them all!"
"Lorn first," the lord of Hammerhold growled back at him. "One foe at a time. All the wizards in the world will just have to wait; my swordarm isn't getting any younger."
Though the moon was well risen and they were both within reach of the soaring highlance canopied bed they were wont to share, Lord and Lady Tesmer were still up and dressed. As the fairest flower of Imtowers had put it to her lord earlier, she was not in the habit of receiving spies-no matter how deeply trusted nor well paid-in her bed-silks. Or less.
The spy, a slender and softly-murmuring man of nondescript looks, had slipped out of the best bedchamber in the castle of Imtowers a bare few indrawn breaths earlier. Presumably he was now hastening back to his scullery in Hammerhold, before his absence might be remarked upon.
He had not borne overmuch news, and the most interesting of what he'd imparted came not from Ironthorn, but from Helnkrist in Helnadar.
It had taken Lord Tesmer, who loved maps but thought slowly when he was aware of his wife's disapproving glare and trying not to meet it, all this time to recall just where the small market-moot town of Helnadar was. On the easternmost edge of the Raurklor, of course; he'd remembered that much the moment he heard the name, but it had taken until now to bring to mind that-unsurprisingly-it straddled the Heln River, where that narrow, winding water flowed out of the forest into Sardray.
Helnkrist was the tower of the fell wizard Narmarkoun, the Doom who bred greatfangs. Until the wizard had slain them all to take possession of that keep, it had been the safehold of a consortium of Stormar merchants-a refuge in the green heart of nowhere they could retreat to in times of war, or retire from their rivals when old age crept into their bones. Well, Narmarkoun had saved them that most feeble of fates.
Now, it seemed, Helnkrist stood empty, the wizard gone.
Gone but not dead. Lord and Lady Tesmer knew that much without exchanging a word.
They were under Narmarkoun's sway, and right now he was just as he had been to them every moment of these last few seasons-a dark, heavy, everpresent, stifling weight in their minds. Watching their thoughts whenever he pleased, steering them when he desired. Yes, the breeder of greatfangs was very much still alive.
Just as they were very much still awake, and conferring together.
"This is not helpful," Lord Tesmer muttered worriedly, running one hand through his stylishly long, but thinning, hair. "Malraun's army advances without pause or check. No lorn harry it, no foe can stand against it; the best chance of destroying it would be greatfangs attacks, by night-and what chance of that now, if the Master is a fugitive, wandering and hiding somewhere in the Raurklor? Just when we need him."
Narmarkoun had told them long ago that Malraun was behind this "Horgul out of nowhere," and if Malraun saw into minds as often and as energetically as the Master did…
"Don't be a fool, Irrance," Lady Tesmer hissed sharply, leaning forward. Her long black hair, unbound for slumber, fell forward off her shoulders like a glossy waterfall. Her dark brown eyes seemed to blaze up into amber coals when she was angry, and they were smoldering now. "Narmarkoun is no such thing. Malraun's army is certainly something to be worried over-hence my strict orders to the men to withdraw from all frays with Lyrose and Hammerhand-and I know as well as you do that if they arrive in Ironthorn as strong as they are now, we are all doomed. We would be even if you, Burrim, and Magrandar were lovers, and all the Ironthar knights one united and superb army, against the numbers this Horgul leads."
Lord Tesmer grimaced in disgust and got to his feet, chamber-gown swirling out behind him like a cloak. He was tall and graceful, for all his broad-shouldered brawn, but the years had streaked his hair with white and etched lines of worry across his face. "Lovers, Clara? Must you say such things?"
"Blood of the Falcon, Irrance, will you stop thinking about trifles? What matters is not a few words of mine that happen to nettle you, but our lives! You've been worrying about what will happen to Ironthorn if Malraun's army comes, among all the countless things you worry about, all this season! Listen to me, Lord of Imtowers, and listen well: the one thing you do not have to worry over is the Master's fate. He is not some fugitive wandering the Raurklor, cowering or hiding. You can feel him in your head as well as I do; does he seem any the weaker? Well?"
"But Chansz-"
"Irrance Tesmer! We do not use his name! Never! Not here, just this once, where no one can hear us, because we never truly know when no one can hear us, do we? Call him 'spy' and and naught else!"
Lord Tesmer put a despairing hand over his handsome face, sighed loudly, and murmured, "Spy, then. The spy said Helnkrist stood empty-ransacked by the overbold when they found its doors open and nothing living within but birds and rats that had strayed inside before them. As if it had been abandoned in such haste that the Master had owned not time enough to take a thing with him! It follows that all he had time to do was take himself out of there, saving his skin in the face of some great foe! This Archwizard of Falconfar, or Malraun, or someone more terrible!"
"My lord, there is no one more terrible. Now stop babbling like a chamberlass and heed: the Narmarkoun in Helnkrist was not our Master."
"What?" Tesmer whirled around incredulously.
"Close your mouth, Irrance. You look like a drooljaws village lackwit." Lady Tesmer's voice was as sharp as her flawless nose and cheekbones, the beauty that still drew Tesmer's eyes and snatched at his breath every time he gazed upon it. Even now, when he stood agape in disbelief.
Her eyes blazed brighter, and he hastily closed his mouth.
Whereupon his wife nodded in satisfaction and informed him firmly, "The missing Narmarkoun was a false Narmarkoun, a lesser wizard serving our Master and wearing, through magic, the shape and seeming of the Master. A double set there in Helnkrist by the real one."
"What?" Tesmer's mouth dropped open again.
His lady didn't bother to hide her scorn. "Irrance, have you paid no attention at all to the Master's words, these last few years-and what can be gleaned from what he does not say?"
Lord Tesmer closed his mouth hastily, paced across the room as anger rose in him, and snapped at the wall that loomed up in his way, "Of course not. I'm too stupid to do so, of course. You miss no chance to make that abundantly clear."
"Now you are being churlish, like one of the stable lads when he's been caught at something. Tesmer, enough. I need you to be Lord of Imtowers-rightful lord of all Ironthorn-now, and set aside your boy's trifles and learn. Irrance, I need your promise."
Tesmer sighed at the wall. "Of course. You have it." You always do, he added silently, as he turned to stride back across the room, slowly and bitterly, still not looking at his wife. You ask for it often enough.
"Irrance, look at me!" Lady Tesmer snapped, like a swordcaptain hurling an order at a disobedient spearboy.
And, Falcon take him, he looked.
Right into her coldest, most satisfied smile. The one that had trapped and fascinated him all these years.
"Heed," she repeated, almost gently, holding him with her eyes. Little flames were leaping in them, by the Falcon. "The real Narmarkoun dwells in Closecandle, in the westernmost Raurklor. He has several false selves, all underlings who serve him-so that Malraun and other foes can watch and betimes smite them, whilst our Master goes about his work unregarded and free of their attacks and meddlings."
Tesmer blinked at her in real amazement. "What is Closecandle, and why have I not heard of it? It's not on any of my maps!"
"And well do you love and trust your maps, my lord." Scorn was clear in Telclara Tesmer's voice again, but it was soft, almost affectionate. "Know you that Closecandle is neither a castle nor a wizard's tower. It is a mountain, reshaped and hollowed out by the Master's magic. How could you hide breeding greatfangs in anything smaller?"
"A mountain." Tesmer shook his head, and then mimicked her voice: "And how would you hide a mountain?"
"Amid other peaks, of course," his wife said sweetly. "The Howlhorns."
He frowned, seeing in his mind that part of his best map where the westernmost reaches of the vast Raurklor gave way to the Howlhorns range, mountains so named for the constant Howling Winds that roared through them. "So remote," he protested. "No roads, no…"
"There are no roads leading to it, and no settlements near it," Lady Tesmer confirmed crisply. "It looks like… a mountain. Very much like the other peaks all around it. And now you know perhaps more than you should know."
The Lord of Imtowers stiffened. "More than I-? Lady, I thought you were my wife."
"I am your wife, Irrance, and we are equals. Yet I seem to have managed to keep secrets, and you cannot even keep yourself from blurting out the name of a common spy. See that you guard this secret rather better. Or it won't be my rebuke you'll have to fear."
Lord Tesmer stiffened again, recalling the utterly cold eyes of the Master-and the dead, ice-cold wenches that had been caressing him and massing menacingly behind him, some of them grotesque rotting things and some of them almost all the way gone to walking skeletons. Not just the fleshless skulls among them had been grinning in endless, ruthless promise. He swallowed, and said quickly, "Tell me more of these false Narmarkouns. I–I should know such things."
"I suppose you should, at that. Do you recall Sornspire from your maps?"
"In southwestern Galath, in the mountains… of the barony of Chainamund. A wizard's tower. Built by the mage Malagusk Sorn, who's been dead for centuries. Abandoned, I thought."
Telclara nodded. "Until the Master installed a false self there."
Lord Tesmer found himself remembering that chilling gaze again, the blue and scaly skin… he managed not to shudder. "Tell me more."