by Ed Greenwood
"Aye, aye," Gar growled. "I hear ye. Ye're going to stand here and talk me to death-and when Malraun strides in through this door, d'ye think that'll work on him?"
"Idiot," Iskarra hissed, eyes flashing. "How long ago would you've been dead, if not for me?"
Garfist grew a slow grin. "Aye, but I'd've died from that smith dropping his anvil on my head, as I slept after slap-an'-tickle with his three daughters. I'd've greeted the Falcon a happy man."
Iskarra dug just the tips of her fingers into a certain bulge in his breeches, and murmured, "Do all men think only with this?"
"Nay, Snakehips. I make 'em use their own," Gar told her with a grin. Isk rolled her eyes at him, put a silencing finger across his lips, and bent to listen at the closed door again.
Then she straightened, nodded, mimed the motions of him drawing his sword-so he did so, careful to step away from the wall and do it carefully and silently-leaned in again, put her hand on the pull-ring… and drew open the door.
No menace they could see, and no sounds or movements. Nothing. The darkness of the revealed stone passage told them their room must be lit by magic, though the radiance was so faint, and coming from everywhere and nowhere, that they'd not noticed.
Iskarra leaned back into Gar to breathe her words into his ear. "Come, but don't let the door slam behind you, or even shut," she commanded. "We have to move as if a Doom of Falconfar is sitting reading, or dozing, in a room somewhere nearby-a room with an open door."
"We do?"
"Just shut up and humor me, Old Ox. Save your questions-and attempts to think-for later."
"Why?"
Isk answered that hoarse question with a long, cold look, holding it until Gar grew uncomfortable and started to shuffle from one booted foot to another.
"I'll be good, Isk," he whispered, finally.
"See that you are-at least until we're well out of here," she breathed into his ear, and slipped out into the passage.
Almost immediately, one of her hands returned, to beckon Garfist. Moving gingerly, with exaggerated care to keep quiet, he followed out of the door, leaving it open.
The soft light in the room cast a gentle fan of radiance out into the darkness, and he thrust a forefinger twice into Isk's shoulder, and when she turned, pointed at it.
She shrugged, captured that finger, and tugged it gently, signifying he should move onward with her. Lifting his feet carefully to avoid the customary scrape on stone of his boots, he did so.
The passage ran straight, past several closed and featureless stone doors, then became a descending flight of stairs without archway or fanfare, its smooth and featureless ceiling curving to run downward with it.
They went down the steps in slow, careful silence, Isk in the lead. She froze the moment she could see what the stair emptied out into: a large room that held an oval pool of a glowing, deep emerald green oil or water or something that surged and rippled in slow, constant, and silent motion, as if it were alive and lazily thrusting up serpent-like, wriggling spines or backs, large curved claws, and short-lived tentacles that always became tubes that vented out gases with tiny gasps, and then sank back into the oily green life. There was a faint, sharp smell in the air, something like soured wine, and this vinegar-like taint was almost certainly coming from the pool, but.
Isk kept well back from the pool, and moved purposefully to the right, to where she could see a way opening out of the room, into another dark, narrow passage.
Garfist followed, sword in hand but stepping no farther from the wall than he had to. He knew what was making her hasten, because he was starting to feel it, too.
An intense feeling of being watched. A feeling that was coming from the radiant green contents of the pool…
They were almost trotting by the time they reached the passage, and Gar couldn't resist a look back over his shoulder, to make sure no tentacle was arcing up out of the glow to reach after them.
He saw none, but when he turned back again, Isk's face was turned his way and wearing a pale expression that told him, as clearly as if she'd shouted it, that she'd pictured a reaching tentacle too.
The new passage was short and dark and lined with more closed doors, running about a dozen strides ere it turned sharply to the left and became another stair down. The feeling of being watched faded as they followed it down into another room.
This one was empty of everything but a simple, smoothly-finished stone table, and was lit by moonlight streaming in a large window that appeared to be just an arched hole cut through a thick castle wall. There were no bird droppings or any stirring of moving air, though, and a faint tingling sensation built within them as they drew near to it; magic was alive here, and seemingly preventing anything passing through the opening.
Iskarra stopped three careful steps away and peered out into the moonlit night. She could see that they were fairly high up, perhaps half the height of Deldragon's battlements back in Galath. Far too high to jump out of and land alive, even if the window's magic allowed their passage.
A vast forest-the Raurklor, by the looks of it-began not all that far off, and stretched away to join the stars at the straining limits of her eyesight; nearer to the wall, the land fell away to the left in a series of walled, farmed plots, down to the roofs of what looked like one edge of a town. The Raurklor hold of Harlhoh, no doubt.
Isk looked back over her shoulder; Gar was looking out into the night with an irritated expression on his face. When their eyes met, he jerked his chin in the other direction, to where the room emptied into yet another passage, in a clear message: Let's get on with it.
Iskarra nodded, and led the way.
Malragard remained as still and silent as a tomb around them, as if its owner and any servants he might have had abandoned it.
Isk knew, without their trading any words at all over the matter, that Gar felt the same way she did about this silence.
It was bad, and betokened danger to come. Probably soon.
Down the years, Iskarra had learned to trust such feelings, though she often wished she was wrong to have them.
She never had been yet, though, and didn't feel like wagering on her being so, this time.
After all, the Great Falcon did have a sense of humor-and it was not a kind one.
The passage forked almost immediately, one end a short stub lined with closed doors, and the other becoming another short flight of descending steps, to a lone closed door.
Isk went down, listened to the utter silence from beyond the door, then opened it into… another large, moonlit room. Stepping aside so Garfist could see it, too, she gestured silently to indicate he should leave it standing open, too, in case they needed to retreat back this way.
He nodded, and they went on into the brightening moonlight together.
Behind them, by itself, the open door silently drifted closed. Then, with the same utter lack of sound, it started to melt, its shape shifting into… a dark oval, a… great pair of fanged jaws that gaped open, awaiting anyone trying to go back through.
Standing alone in dark Yintaerghast, Narmarkoun beheld not the dark shadows before him, but a bright eye floating in the air, a scene from afar conjured by his own magic.
One side of that scene flared bright like fire, in a continuous struggle against Malragard's wards and shieldings, a battle that blinded his far-seeing if he looked toward the fortress.
Yet he had no interest in looking at Malraun's abode. Not while there was a man lying on his back in the farthest corner of its walled gardens, babbling out all he could say, just as fast as he could.
Since hearing that the fabled Dark Lord had come to Falconfar at last, he'd hungered to know more about this mysterious Rod Everlar's origins.
Now, hearing these babblings, he chuckled in triumph.
At last he had heard enough.
Enough to craft a dream-gate that would reach into this "real world" Everlar came from, this "Earth."
Narmarkoun banished his spying-scene with a wave o
f his hand, strode into the room he'd made ready, and set about casting it.
Why wait? Dooms of Falconfar age just like lesser men.
Besides, he'd always wanted to conquer a world.
He flung up both hands, said a careful word, and felt Yintaerghast tremble all around him.
Then, slowly, here and there, the darkness started to glow. Lorontar's long-sleeping magic was awakening. It would feed and aid his own.
Narmarkoun took up a wand he'd left ready on the table, and said a word to it that its maker had never intended it to obey. It started to burn in his hand, like an impatient candle, its flame spreading out into the air around him. Yintaerghast's tremble became a deepening hum.
The third Doom of Falconfar allowed himself a broad, triumphant smile, and started in on the long and difficult incantations. Though lengthy, the magic was relatively simple, being a lone casting that created a single, stationary effect; the trick would be to imagine this other world vividly enough from what Everlar had said of it, so his gate would reach out to it, and not somewhere in Falconfar.
Intent on his words and the wand burning away to nothingness in his hand, Narmarkoun never noticed what briefly formed on the wall right behind him.
The face of Lorontar, first Lord Archwizard of Falconfar and builder of Yintaerghast. It looked down on Narmarkoun, smiled a triumphant smile of its own, then faded away again. Unseen by any overconfident Doom of Falconfar.
Chapter Nineteen
The large, brightly moonlit room ended in a matched trio of windows and another stair down. To get to them, Garfist and Iskarra had to walk the length of a long stone table that hac large pages of untrimmed parchment laid out neatly along it. They gave these only brief, cautious glances, mindful of all the old tales of curse-spells erupting to afflict those who gazed upon the wrong runes.
Old tales those might be, and wildly grown in the telling as such stories always were, but all old tales were born of something, and…
Isk's eyes were keener, and she was in the lead, so it was she who spun away from the table to catch hold of Garfist, half-turn him away from the parchments, and murmur in Garfist's ear, "Yon's a boastful little history-unfinished, of course-of the great deeds of Malraun the Matchless. I saw mention of his glorious victories-seemingly several, by the Falcon! — over the hated Arlaghaun, to say nothing of Malraun's triumphs over Stormar lords who foolishly defied him, Galathan knights too stupid to surrender to a mage, and upstart wizards and petty rulers in many a Stormar port."
Garfist grinned mirthlessly. "This is Malragard, all right. An' proclaim me unsurprised at what its master has written. Snakehips mine. Self-delusion and spinning grand fantasies would seem to be vital skills to mastering wizardry, aye?"
"Indeed," Iskarra whispered, waving at him to speak more quietly. "Yet reading that drivel doesn't make me sneer at him or count myself lucky I'm not crazed enough to become a mage. It makes me want even more to get out of here-speedily, and right now."
"The stairs," Garfist whispered hoarsely, bowing to her and gesturing as floridly at them as any powdered and face-painted Stormar palace servant might do, to visiting nobility, "await ye."
Iskarra made a face at him, and stalked soundlessly toward them. At their head she spun, pointed accusingly at him, then at the parchments, then shook her head grimly.
Gar rolled his eyes. "'Tis coin as might tempt me, lass, not some unfinished fancy of a book! Nor do I think he'd pause in hunting us down for anything, were we to take or damage so much as a scrap of this!"
Isk put a shushing finger to her lips, nodded to signify she'd heard him and agreed, and started down the stairs.
It was another short, straight flight, that at its end turned back under the table that held Malraun's writings, but a level lower, in a straight passage lined with doors, that ran to yet another descending stair.
There was just one thing in this passage, but the sight of it brought Iskarra to an instant halt. Gar, too, stopped the moment he saw it.
They had both seen more than a few hanged men before, dangling from executioners' nooses from high Stormar balconies for the sea-craws and gulls to peck at. This hung the same way, but it was a partial suit of armor, quite possibly with no body inside it, and it was hanging in the empty air from nothing at all; from the silent, invisible force of Malraun's magic rather than a noose.
Its helmed head drooped as if it was dead, unconscious, or asleep, but its gauntlets gripped two drawn swords. It floated motionless, the leggings of the armor having no feet to them and apparently no legs inside them; those empty tubes of buckled-together metal well off the ground, their lowest edges about at the level of Garfist's knees.
It looked suspiciously like a guardian of some sort, that would suddenly awaken to hack at any intruder who came too close. Gar and Isk if they dared step off the stair, for instance.
Yet step forward they must, eventually, or retreat back up through the tower. Would the armor fly after them, and try to strike at them with those swords? Would awakening it raise a magical alarm, to alert Malraun-or other magical guardians-of their presence?
"I hate magic," Garfist muttered, more to himself than to his lady.
Isk's reply was a shrug-and a bold descent, down the last steps and into the passage.
She kept her hands near her daggers, but held and waved no weapon. Garfist watched, his body tensed to spring at the silently-waiting armor and his sword ready in his hand, but the floating metal never moved, reacting not in the slightest when she slipped warily past it.
It hung there unmoving. Isk reached the far end of the passage and the stair leading down, and beckoned to Garfist to join her.
Warily, arm itching to draw back his sword and give the floating armor a glorking good, hard hack while it was an obligingly unmoving target, he trudged past it, looking back twice to make sure it wasn't stealthily drifting after him and raising its blades.
It never moved.
With a shrug of wary disbelief he joined Iskarra-who promptly brushed his cheek with a kiss, and set off down this new stair, another short flight down into a passage almost a mirror image of the one they'd just traversed. The midpoint of this one held an identical footless, apparently empty floating suit of armor with swords in hand, and led to another stair.
Garfist swore under his breath, coming down the stairs slowly and glancing back at the first suit of armor for as long as he could-only to find himself staring at a second one. He retreated up the stairs a step or two, to peer and make certain the first guardian-for so he firmly thought of them, believing they could be nothing else-was still there. It was.
Two steps down, and there was the second suit of armor. Back up again. The first one floated just where it had been when they'd first laid eyes on it.
He descended all the way, this time, sword up but not slowing, to walk past the second guardian to where Iskarra was waiting in silent, nodding patience at the head of yet another stair. It was longer, descending about twice as far as the previous flights.
"Not like in the tales, this," Gar whispered to her. "No tentacles coming out of the walls, yet, nor empty suits of armor hacking at us… not that I'm disappointed."
"Hold your tongue," she breathed back, her manner furious. "We have no idea what might awaken such menaces, but it bids fair to be more likely that silence is safe, than that your suggesting things will keep them from happening."
"Yer wisdom, Snakehips, overwhelms me," Garfist growled sulkily. "As always."
Iskarra rolled her eyes, tapped him severely on one cheek in a pantomime of a slap, and went on down this new stair. Only to stop again, a few steps from the bottom, and stare all around warily.
Garfist joined her, sword up and stopping three steps up so he could swing it, if he had to, without slicing her.
Together they beheld a room, the largest they'd yet found in Malraun's fortress, that stretched away from them to the by-now-familiar descending stair at its far end. Its ceiling was twice the height of any of t
he rooms they'd traversed thus far, and at about its center, a podium or railed balcony thrust out from one wall at the height of the skipped floor-level; it was reached by its own stair that clung to the wall and then curved out to join the jutting vantage-point. Aside from its wooden rail, the balcony and its stairs seemed to be made of the same smooth, fused stone as the walls. At one spot, the floor of the balcony rose up into a sloping-topped table or lectern. There were books, one of them spread open, atop that sloping surface.
The room seemed to be the site of an unfinished magic… but had the casting just been interrupted, or was it some slow, long-proceeding project?
Silence reigned. Freshly-carved wooden staves leaned in an untidy bundle against one wall; two of them had already fallen to the floor.
A large white circle had been drawn in the center of the floor, and from its chalk-if that's what it was-a strong, moving glow rose, like an ankle-deep band of dancing sparks. Out from the circle projected curlicues and flourishes drawn in the same glowing substance, the largest of them forming arms that in four-no, five-cases made rings that enclosed runes drawn on the floor in glowing red and gold.
Above that central circle, items hung in the air, glowing with the same white, dancing-sparks radiance as the circle.
A helm, a cloak-spread wide as if pegged out on an invisible rack to dry-and two gauntlets, seemingly placed to await someone standing in the circle donning them. Or perhaps anyone stepping into the circle would awaken spells that would magically thrust the items onto them, like an invisible maid or manservant dressing them.
Something else was hovering in the air above those four motionless items, swirling in the air beside the little balcony. It seemed to be a slowly-turning whorl or point-down cone of tiny lights; dim radiances that looked more like water droplets than sparks. As Isk and Gar peered at them, they seemed to turn a trifle faster, and some of them winked out of existence-or visibility-while others winked in, and faint, gentle chimings arose from them. The point of their cone hung directly above the floating helm.