by Ed Greenwood
Narmarkoun's momentary fear softened as he drifted deeper, learning why this sleeper was dreaming of riding hard and fast across Galath with bare and alluring Aumrarr winging low overhead. A sensual dream now darkening into fears of lurking watchers pursuing this Mike as he rode, awaiting the best chance to burst forth and do harm…
This dreamer read and re-read books written by Rod Everlar, whom he thought of as the "creator" of the "imaginary" world of Falconfar, a world this dreamer, this Mike, longed to be real.
Yes! Of course the spell would find such a mind, and seize upon it. Now, did this Mike know anything useful? Such as the names of other Shapers, others who wrote books for the houses in the Hardy Building castle?
Again, yes! A tall, lean bearded man with a waxed mustache, named Geoffrey Halsted, who betimes worked together with Mario Drake, a shorter, bespectacled bearded man who breathed out smoke constantly.
There were two other Shapers this Mike had met once, both of whom awed him more than Halsted and Drake. Lean, darkly handsome, dangerous-looking men that Mike thought might really know how to swing swords and calmly kill people, smiling all the while. Loners, not friends who worked together or with anyone. One was named Sugarman Tombs, and wore "formal suits," whatever those were, of black over white. The other wore boots and garments that were always black and silver, and was called Corlin Corey. They wrote…
As Mike started to think of various books, in a welter of imagined faces and places, his dreams thinned, and Falconfar fell away, nigh forgotten as he rose toward wakefulness.
No! Narmarkoun hastily lent his own memories of the Galathan countryside to the sleeper, his own remembrances of galloping knights, proud-spired castles, and smiling gowned women-and Mike was with him again, eager to see more, mind flaming with excitement. So much excitement, in fact, that he was soaring toward wakefulness again, and-
The spell faded, very suddenly, leaving Narmarkoun cold and alone in darkness.
He was standing in a dark and empty chamber of Yintaerghast, blinking at a scroll, the warm and excited mind he'd been drifting through utterly gone. Leaving him clinging to four faces, and the names Mike had attached to them. Geoffrey Halsted, Mario Drake, Sugarman Tombs, and Corlin Corey.
His thralls, in time soon to come.
If they were stronger of will and imagination than this Everlar, yet biddable by his own will or his spells, they could be his greatest treasures.
He, Narmarkoun, could dominate their minds, so their writings would change Falconfar in ways large and small, to be what he wanted it to be. To give him rule over it that none could challenge, or would dare to… or in the end, would want to.
Yet to do that he'd have to cast the spell again and again-and the magic of the scroll was now exhausted.
Oh, it still set forth the incantation and displayed the sigils, and so could be used to work a casting. Yet the power Lorontar the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar had bound into those sigils so long ago was gone, consumed in taking him to the distant mind of Mike.
If he wanted to work the spell again, right now, he lacked any means to power it except his own vitality.
The force of life that kept his heart beating, his lungs drawing breath, his thoughts racing, and the strength in his thews.
Narmarkoun hesitated, reluctant to take even a single stride down that road-for wizards who drain their own lives risk much, even when they have no foes, and are safely hidden from the curious and hungry prowling beasts-and then shrugged, struck his pose again, raised the scroll, smiled, and lifted his voice in the incantation.
It took a lot from him, even more than he'd expected, stealing it away with silken skill as his voice rose and his free hand traced the gestures that gathered and shaped power…
It had seemed to take much longer than last time, but the spell was cast. As it raced forth through the void again, Narmarkoun clung to it, vaguely aware that he felt weak and sick, that he was trembling and staggering forward blindly across the empty room in Yintaerghast to keep from falling, his arms heavy and ponderous, yet seeming somehow no longer fully part of him…
Find not Mike this time, but one of the four: Halsted, Drake, Tombs, or Corey. Narmarkoun mentally shuffled through the four faces, wondering which of them might be asleep right now, or drowsy, and so provide him easiest entry into their mind.
Not that he even knew if day or night now prevailed across the part of Earth where that city of towers rose. Mike had been asleep, yes, but it did not follow that the sun was down. Even in holds where hard toil was the rule and harder-eyed overseers with whips saw to it remaining so, exhausted night servants slept by day, and slaves dropped and dozed whenever no watchful eye was keeping them at work.
He clung to the racing magic, cursing silently to himself.
Were this spell to fail now, it might be a long time ere he dared cast it again. He felt weak and sick; it had cost him much-leaving him far weaker than he dared let himself get, when any weakness Malraun got hint of could bring his rival a-hunting Narmarkoun in an instant, slaying spells at the ready.
Images blossomed around him in the void, amid bright racing torrents of wakeful thoughts; the memories and workings of scores of minds, his magic gliding slowly down through them, dimming slightly, descending…
Into a bright sequence of images; the Hardy Building, then an echoing glossy marble chamber with a row of metal cages inset in one wall, behind gliding doors polished smoother than any cell Narmarkoun had ever seen; a metal box, within, that ascended as fast as an arrow sent speeding by a strong bowman; a room with a desk, and smiling women behind it; fat men in garments akin to the dark finery worn by Sugarman Tombs, books with brightly painted covers, of fanciful dragons and impossibly beautiful women and swords that burned with blue fire…
Drake! He was in the mind of Mario Drake, who was dreaming of triumphantly accepting an apology from one of those fat publishing house men in the Hardy Building office, someone called Saul Heldrake, waving fat-fingered hands and exclaiming that he'd never thought The President's Boyfriend Was A Wizard would sell so well-an image that faded quickly, as the mind quickened toward-wakefulness!
Narmarkoun tried to make himself still and dark, to pry at none of the thoughts around him and to think of nothing at all but deep, serene oblivion. The mind all around him soared, but then slowed, dimmed, and drifted down into deeper slumber again.
Trying not to let any of the relief he felt flood out into Drake's mind, Narmarkoun peered cautiously at the nearest memories, seeking to move with them rather than turn to one and then another.
Almost immediately he found a flood of very similar half-remembrances, darkly coiled and tangled like many fists of knotted snakes around the edge between dreaming and wakefulness. Memories of countless brief nightly awakenings, all of them. It seemed Drake was a writer who often came half-awake to jot down what he'd been dreaming about, and kept notebooks handy when sleeping.
That he read when awake, and called on for what he thought of as his "bread-and-butter-makers," his "Howard colliding with Burroughs by way of Lovecraft fantasies."
Well, whatever those were-and Drake seemed mightily pleased by them, and by how many of them he'd penned, down the years-they could only be improved by a little Falconfar.
Narmarkoun drifted a little deeper into the sleeping mind, until he passed through the ongoing drifting restlessness of the man's current dream, and hovered vast and dark beneath it.
Then, surging up into the dreams swiftly and relentlessly, he shared his own vivid memories, and feelings about Falconfar, pouring into Drake's mind vivid scenes of his dead playpretties smilingly yielding to him, the soaring mountains of Galath against a sunrise, flying low and fast over the vast green Raurklor on the mighty back of a hastening greatfangs-and then that same beast, on an earlier day, rising up to tower against a stormy sky, its three heads all opening their great jaws in anger, its eyes aflame…
Drake's mind shrieked, plunged into nightmare and spasming in sheer terror.
Narmarkoun hastily fed out images of the great beasts he tamed and bred that he'd always found splendid and inspiring: a pair of greatfangs he'd nursed and trained, flying off together on their first hunt as he watched them from afar. Huge and terrible in their sleek, majestic dark might, great wings and necks and long, long tails silhouetted against a stormy sky-
Sudden brightness drenched and blinded the Doom of Falconfar, exploding all around his dark knot of self-awareness in the mind he'd invaded, in a wild and surging chaos of shouting fear that swept away all dream-images and threatened to overwhelm Narmarkoun himself. It was going to crash down on him, to sweep him away-
It struck, and he was lost.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Brightness roiled and surged all around him, in raging tides Narmarkoun could not fight. Swept away and lost, tumbling and wincing in pain-wracked silence, he could only cling to awareness and endure… if he could…
It must have been only moments, but seemed forever, before the wild, buffeting torrents slowed into a rushing river all thundering in one direction, fear died down with the loss of that crashing chaos, and-through the eyes of another-Narmarkoun saw his first real sight of Earth.
A small, cluttered bedroom, awash in discarded clothes and overflowing ashtrays.
At the heart of it, Mario Drake was now awake, and panting in fear. He'd hurled himself bolt upright in his bed to stare at his own walls until he recognized them. The moment he did, he flung off the covers to turn and claw for a pen and his bedside notepad.
His fingers were fast-too fast-and fumbling. The pen clacked off the wall and the rear of the bedside table and was gone, somewhere underneath things and lost in the darkness.
Sweating and shivering, Drake hissed out wordless frustration and dashed across the room to a desk, to snap on a light and snatch up a pen from a mug of them, and scribble down what he'd seen in his dreams, before his waking thoughts drove him to forget it.
He did this often, though he seldom dropped the pen and had to rouse himself enough to get out of bed. Why, some of his best ideas-the entire plot of Worm Wizards of the Red Star, even-had come out of dreams, had burst into his mind so colorful and stirring that he could remember them still, years later…
Narmarkoun rode that fiercely happy thought like a well-tamed and eager greatfangs, bearing down hard on Mario Drake's sleepy mind, fighting to do… this.
The racing pen slowed, its wielder frowning slightly. What was… He'd never felt this way before. At war with himself, almost. He watched his hand move to stroke through what he'd just written and been so pleased with.
"Exhausted by endless victories, snoring softly atop his bound captive in a bedchamber in conquered Darswords, the wizard Malraun was two battles-perhaps three-away from conquering Galath, and changing Falconfar forever."
Vivid, yes, but wrong. How could he have been so wrong?
It should instead read: "Exhausted by endless victories, snoring softly atop his bound captive in a bedchamber in conquered Darswords, the wizard Malraun never knew that his magic was beginning to fail him. Would henceforth be too feeble, too brief, and too mis-aimed from that moment forth, to ever let him conquer even Galath. The Falcon, or unseen gods, had decided he was not to be the Doom who would change Falconfar forever."
He amended it, writing in swift, firm satisfaction and nodding with every stroke of the pen. Yes. This was right.
Yet his hand was still moving, adding more. "All across Darswords, warriors of his Army of Liberation silently slumped to the ground, dead in an instant, bearing no wounds. Stricken down by the Falcon, men would say, seeing no reason for the deaths they could name. Yet rumors would arise among the paltry handful of survivors that whispered the truth: Malraun's army perished that day from the mighty magic of the foremost Doom of Falconfar, Narmarkoun."
Mario Drake frowned down at his notepad. Who the hell was Narmarkoun?
RAULDRO THE COOK turned sleepily from the cauldron he'd almost nodded off to sleep into, face-forward, his great wooden spoon adrip with the thick brown muck old soldiers liked to call "old boots and dead cat stew."
A loud and sudden metallic crash had just burst upon his ears, from not far behind him.
It had sounded for all the world like someone in full armor slamming down on his visored nose on the cobbled main street or Darswords, then bouncing limply to rest.
And-Falcon spit! — that's just what it was.
As he stared at the sprawled warrior, another pair of soldiers-who'd frowningly turned to see the cause of the noise, just as he had-pitched forward onto their faces, too, the morning quiet broken by more crashes. Then another, and another.
Rauldro gaped. As far as he could see, up and down the street, men were toppling over, for no reason that he could see at all.
Invisible arrows? Nay, for they turned visible when they drew blood, and he could see neither blood nor arrows.
Magic? Well, how could that be, with Malraun the Matchless, greatest wizard in all Falconfar, lording it over Darswords, with this army his own swords of war, besides?
The cook shook his head, utterly dumbfounded. The men lay so still. They looked dead.
And he hadn't even given them any stew yet.
Narmarkoun grinned savagely, in the depths of Mario Drake's mind. It was time to have his newfound Shaper write something simple yet dramatic that had nothing to do with any Doom of Falconfar, something he could check easily.
Aha.
He bore down on Drake's mind again. Let the dolt write of a certain castle in Galath soaring up into the sky-and crashing back down again in rubble, killing everyone in it. Velduke Deldragon's fair fortress of Bowrock, perhaps. Or, no, it was too splendid; he might want to dwell in it himself, some day. Why not-
Drake's mind darkened around him, and Narmarkoun dashed such thoughts away and reached out into it, to see what was happening and to strengthen his hold over the Shaper's mind.
Yet the darkness came on in a flood, blotting out everything, and he could hear Drake grimly wondering aloud, "What's got into me? It's like there's someone in my mind, making me do things! Write things!"
Falcon! The Earth dolt was aware of him! Then there was nothing but darkness; Drake was gone.
The spell was fading!
There was something cold and hard under him. Flat stone. Narmarkoun blinked up at dim vaulted vastness, smelling a familiar slightly sharp, slightly dusty chill. Yintaerghast. He was lying flat on his back in Yintaerghast.
Feeling weak… drained. He rolled slowly over onto his hip, and sat up. The familiar lonely, empty rooms. Good; at least he wasn't facing a sneering Malraun with an army behind the man.
He felt just as empty, and his hand trembled when he lifted it.
Narmarkoun smiled thinly. No, he was in no condition to be hurling spells. Yet he had to know if he'd been right about Drake, had to-
He moved his raised hand in the few simple gestures, murmured the familiar words, and watched the small, spinning brightness form in the empty air in front of him.
"Darswords." he whispered, too tired to will it silently. "Show me Darswords."
In the heart of his little conjured eye the smallhold sprang into view, from the vantage point where he'd stood long ago and murmured one of the words in the incantation. His eye was looking out over the well where three lanes fanned out from the cobbled main street. As Narmarkoun turned it to peer down one street and then another, he saw dead men sprawled everywhere, and more toppling in mid-stride, here and there, as they fled in fear from the unknown slayer who was striking them down.
" Well, now," he gloated. Hundreds he'd seen, in just these few glimpses. "Well, now!"
The eye was wobbling and dimming already, sinking toward the floor like a gliding soap bubble; he was overtired.
Yet happy. As he let himself sag back down to the floor, into the creeping embrace of slumber, Narmarkoun murmured, "I am the foremost Doom in Falconfar, and now all the world knows it! Flee, Malraun, flee and cower-while
you still can!"
He waved his hand feebly, as if banishing his rival, as his conjured eye sank into the floor and was gone.
Behind him, across the darkest wall of that vast and dim chamber, a wry and patronizing smile briefly materialized. It was as long as the largest Stormar ship Narmarkoun had ever sailed on, but the foremost Doom of Falconfar was now snoring, and saw it not.
At Holdoncorp, nobody walked to work. From the front gates with their security booth, in the shadow of the mirror-bright silver company name that loomed in man-high letters atop a little artificial waterfall, it was a good mile along a broad and winding drive through the rolling grassy hills of the company golf course to the parking lot security booth.
"Hey, Rusty! Check this out-Monitor Three!"
Sollars's voice was more disbelievingly amused than alarmed, so Rusty finished taking the bite into his meatballs-with-mayo sub that he'd been opening his mouth to take when the usually silent security "eyes" had piped up. Chewing methodically, he strolled over to the control desk.
Sollars was pointing up at one of the long arc of external security monitors, and Rusty prepared himself for viewing an overly fat, pale and unlovely amorous couple rolling around on a blanket on one of the gently-sculpted hillsides, or perhaps two dogs doing the same thing without a blanket.
He was not expecting to see six dark-armored men, visors down and swords drawn, stalking steadily past the eighth hole bunker toward the Holdencorp building.
At first he was alarmed-they looked so purposeful-but then relaxed. There was no way thieves, vandals, or terrorists would walk a mile in this heat; these had to be fans. Crazies, of course, but fans. A free beta preview sampler disk each from the forthcoming Falconfar expansion set should send them happily on their way. Still…
He flipped a switch and leaned forward over the microphone to announce briskly, "Ground Floor Security, Ground Floor Security! Six intruders, south lawn, coming in from the eighth hole. They're dressed as Dark Helms-armor and swords, all of them-so take the tear-gas rifle, and make sure enough of you go to outnumber them. Loading Dock Security, vehicles and your tear-gas, ready for backup."