by Ed Greenwood
And for the first time in years-decades-he was having an adventure. An honest-to-God adventure. If what Taeauna had said about his power was true, he could even heal himself if he got hurt, though he felt no eagerness to let some bowman or knight with a sword test that power. From her brief warning, it seemed as if revealing he was the Dark Lord just might prove very unpleasant.
"You must be tired and hungry," the Lord of Hollowtree said suddenly, his tone a firm dismissal. "Go with Lhauntur. He'll see you both provided for."
He reached for Taeauna's shoulder, as if intending to murmur something more for her ears alone, but she slid gracefully out from under his fingers and said gently, "I thank you deeply, lord. You are as gracious as always."
Rod heard nothing but warmth in her tone, but Eldalar flushed as if she were his mother snapping a firm and well-deserved rebuke at him, and waved them both away abruptly.
As they went out, Warsword Lhauntur's eyes were narrow as he regarded the Aumrarr, but all she said to him was, "I recall days when no hold in Falconfar needed to be wary, and regret that those days are gone."
"As do we all, lady," he replied heavily, as they went back down the dark and curving stair that had brought them to the map chamber. "As do we all."
As they passed the last lantern hanging above the stair, Taeauna turned as swiftly as a striking hawk, laid a warning finger to her lips, then mimed slumber by bending her cheek onto the back of her angled hand, and then repeated the warning finger.
Rod kept his face carefully blank, because the warsword had reached the bottom step and was already turning to watch them.
"This is a good place," he told Lhauntur slowly, trying to sound vague. "I remember a keep like this, but not this one."
The warsword's reply was a noncommittal grunt. He turned away again, and Taeauna flashed Rod another warning look.
This time, he gave her a grim nod.
He was still nodding in the gloom as they went through a half-open door and along a passage hung with old swords and ancient, rusting shields. He was smiling, too.
Oh, yes. I am enjoying myself. The Lord Archwizard of Falconfar has come home. Tremble, dragons! Echo, castles! Die, Dark Helms!
In front of him, Taeauna stiffened as if he'd slapped her across the back. The severed stubs of her wings actually quivered.
And suddenly, Rod Everlar didn't feel like exulting at all. Yes, this was real. Too real.
Taeauna, can you hear my thoughts?
The Aumrarr was walking normally again, and if she could hear what Rod was thinking, she gave no further sign of it.
Oh, damn. What have I gotten myself into?
Into my dreams, of course. But what if they turn into nightmares? What then, over-clever thriller writer?
He traveled the entire length of the next passage, and the next, without coming up with any sort of answer.
Except to discover that he still knew how to shiver.
They ate at a simple table that was evidently the warsword's customary dining place. The fare was some sort of thick, strongly spiced meat stew ladled over oval wooden bowls full of what looked like Cornish hens on skewers. Gray-green, scorched hens. Taeauna ate eagerly, purring with enjoyment, so after a brief hesitation that he hoped Lhauntur wouldn't notice but knew the warsword would, Rod fell to. At least Lhauntur had retied his hands in front of him, and even allowed him about a foot of cord between his wrists. Knives and the two-tined forks had been moved out of reach, though, leaving him with a ladle-like spoon and a pair of whittled wooden tongs. The taste was strange-a little like some spiced eel he'd once sampled-but good. Very good.
Lhauntur's meal was one long stream of interruptions, as grim-looking warriors, some in splendid armor but most in motley garb of leather jacks adorned with ill-fitting metal plates strapped on here and there, clanked up to the warlord for instructions. All of them carefully avoided looking at the two guests, and even turned their faces away so Rod and Taeauna wouldn't overhear the terse murmurs Lhauntur traded with them.
When Taeauna was done, she helped herself to more from the decanter whose contents had made Rod's eyes water with a single swallow, leaned back in her chair, and purred, "Lhauntur, I can't help but notice you've a lot of men under arms. Are you expecting an attack?"
The warsword gave her a hard look. "Samdlor and Raeth are good men, and they both swear you appeared in the lane right out of empty air, but magic or no, if Dark Helms you were fighting, Dark Helms may follow you here."
He glanced at Rod for a moment, and then back at Taeauna. "Wizards wield Dark Helms like the rest of us swing swords. And if the Helms come to Hollowtree, this night or the next, we'll have to be very good at swinging swords. Every one of us."
"If they come, Lhauntur," Taeauna said quietly, "I'll swing a sword right beside you."
"And your goodman, here?" the warsword asked, just as quietly. "What will he do?"
"Wonder if you have a spare hayfork," Rod offered calmly. "I'm getting pretty good at forking Dark Helms."
A hard and sudden silence fell, and Rod felt the back of his neck prickling. He hadn't noticed more armsmen approaching, nor Lord Eldalar with them.
And then Lhauntur started to wheeze as if he were choking, a rattling convulsion that grew and grew until Rod's mouth fell open in alarm, and the warsword slapped the table and burst into an open roar of laughter.
Laughter that spread, all around Rod, and included Taeauna's high, lacy mirth.
Lhauntur shook his head at last, pointed a finger at Rod, and said, "You're not a wizard. You're worse than that: you're a jester!"
There were groans and some chuckles and mutterings, and then the warsword and the Lord of Hollowtree said, more or less in unison, "Untie him."
Someone hastened to do so, at about the same time as a stout and aging maidservant rushed up to Taeauna with a frilly gown in her hands, spread it out down herself, and asked breathlessly, "Will this do? 'Tis all we could find, lady, seeing as you're as tall as…"
The Aumrarr made a face. "Thank you, but no. I'd rather go naked."
"I'd rather you went naked, too," Rod muttered to the table in front of him in little more than a whisper, but Lhauntur heard him and plunged into fresh bellows of laughter.
Which was when the maid screamed, and men whirled and cursed all over the chamber, and Rod lurched around in his seat in time to see what they were all staring at.
High up amid the guttering candle-wheel lanterns overhead in the lofty-beamed hall, a dark, flickering shape had faded into view. To Rod, it looked like the ghostly images that sometimes faded in and out of view on an old black-and-white television set he'd once owned, way back when; there one moment, and gone the next.
It was a Dark Helm, drawn sword in hand and visor down. It hung there silently, peering around the hall from its height, looking at this man and then at that one. Then it turned abruptly away, as if angry, and… was gone.
"Searching for a wizard and finding none," Lhauntur said grimly, giving Rod another glance. "Wake the stable lads. I want runners going around the doubled guard all night through, making sure no one falls without the rest of us knowing."
"I'll fight at your side," Taeauna promised, shooting to her feet.
"You'll stay here, and your friend with you," the warsword replied curtly.
The Lord of Hollowtree put a hand on the Aumrarr's shoulder-he had to reach up to do it-and this time Taeauna left it there. She even leaned back against him and let the old lord murmur something comforting that Rod didn't hear, that brought a brief smile flashing across her face.
Oh, Christ, Rod thought to himself, there's so little I know about Falconfar. And if anything happens to Taeauna, I'll be alone here, and won't even know what mistakes I'm making.
Hmmm. Not so different from life back in the real world, after all.
No Dark Helms came that night, and in the morning Taeauna insisted they depart. The warsword and Lord Eldalar disagreed, but not forcefully enough to entirely hide their reli
ef, even from Rod.
Lhauntur sent maids scurrying in all directions as the man who'd thought, just a day ago-had it been only a day ago? — he'd invented Falconfar, went behind the corner curtain to avail himself of the chamber pot.
Rod had spent the night in this cold stone room. Its only other furnishings were a blanket and a heap of straw for a bed that erupted in squeaking mice when the guard who'd brought him there kicked at and-then trod on it. It wasn't quite a jail cell, but the door had been firmly locked behind him, and Taeauna had slept somewhere else.
He'd kept his robe on because of the cold, and was glad of it when the door rattled open not long after dawn and the Lord of Hollowtree, his warsword, four bristling-with-blades guards and Taeauna had all trooped in, all fully dressed and with the alert faces of folk who'd been up and doing things for hours. Someone had given Taeauna patched and well-worn leather armor that was tight enough to creak, here and there, but hung loosely in other places. Her welcoming smile, however, lit up Rod's morning like the sun.
The jug of wash-water was icy, and Rod emerged from behind the curtain shivering to find the lord and the guards gone again. Lhauntur, however, stood waving at the bed, and a stream of servants were dumping armfuls of this and that on it.
"Don't stare at yon heap like you've never seen clothes before, goodman," the warsword told him gruffly. "Get dressed in whatever fits. 'Tis yours. There's food coming, too."
Taeauna was already kneeling beside the bed raking through piles of homespun and what looked like buckskin. She cast a critical eye Rod's way, obviously measuring his height, length of limbs, and girth, and by the time Rod had curiously explored the leather shoulder sacks two young and unsmiling maids dumped into his lap, Taeauna had picked out a paltry pile of simple breeches, clumsy boots, tunics, and cloaks.
The sacks were odd pleated things of clanking buckles and uncured, strong-smelling hide that had an arm-loop and a chest-belt; Rod was obviously supposed to sling his over one shoulder and use the belt around his chest to keep it there. Both sacks held a lot of empty space and a sphere of oily cloth bound closed with a rawhide thong. Undone, one of these proved to be two bowls strapped rim to rim: one of wood and the other a battered and repaired warhelm. Inside the bowls were more cloth bundles: a trio of hard, round-domed loaves of dark bread, two disks of sharp-smelling cheese the size and weight of hockey pucks and the color of old yellow soap, and a tiny twist of oiled cloth with a something brown and gritty in it.
"Thoret," Lhauntur explained. When Rod gave him a "what's that?" look, the warsword sighed and added, "Sauce. Very spicy. Dip your finger in it and smear it on bread or cheese or anything you want to cover the taste of. Stains everything." He waved at the other sack. "The other's just the same."
Rod nodded, wondering what the proper way of saying thanks was, when more servants arrived with skins of water and two old, heavy, serviceable swords. They lacked scabbards, and were smeared with what looked like bacon fat. Each had a close-fitting ring collar just below the quillons that was attached to a long loop of chain.
"The chain goes over your shoulder," Taeauna explained before the warsword could. "Now try everything on. If it fits, we wear it or carry it in our laedlen."
"Laed… These sacks?"
"Those sacks."
The warsword turned away, obviously hiding a smile, and Rod sighed and went over to the pile.
"What made you choose Hollowtree?" Taeauna asked as they paused for a moment on a height crowned with a tangle of ancient, weathered trees. Behind them, a shoulder of a long, high ridge dotted with what looked like sheep had just taken Rod's last glimpse of Hollowtree Keep from view.
Rod had to catch his breath before he could reply. They'd been climbing steadily since they'd left the wagon road just beyond the last guard post manned by Lhauntur's men, to follow a narrow, winding track up through rising hills. The pace the Aumrarr set had Rod puffing long ago.
She strode along gracefully, alert but with none of the manner of someone expecting trouble, and Rod noticed she'd not once called him "Lord" or anything like it this morning. It seemed he'd now fallen to the rank of just a bumbling man.
"I… don't know. You asked me to see Falconfar, so I tried to picture my favorite keep, and… Hollowtree it was."
Taeauna gave him a smile. "I'm pleased nonetheless. I'm known there, hence our relatively cordial treatment."
Rod winced. If that was "relatively cordial," just how bad would everyday treatment be?
And it's very close to Highcrag."
"And what is… Oh. Yes. The high stone hold where the Aumrarr dwell. I remember."
"You should. The sisters will give us shelter, aid, and news. Lhauntur meant to be kind, but," her face twisted in disgust, "these swords!"
Rod grinned. "I've been thinking of mine as a metal club. A greasy metal club. At least it's so dull I can't cut myself when it bounces as we walk."
Taeauna gave him an amused look, and then glanced up into the sky at a small, high speck-a lone bird, flapping along slowly and doggedly- and frowned at it.
"Will you be able to fly again?" Rod asked, watching it. Taeauna stiffened, and he added hastily, stumbling over the words, "I mean: can the sisters give you back your wings somehow?"
"No," the Aumrarr told him softly, coming to a halt and turning to look at him with something- a little flame of anger? Hope? Something else? — in her emerald eyes. "Not unless you can work a new spell that I've never heard of."
"Oh," said Rod apologetically, feeling helpless, and then muttered, "Wingless forever."
For a moment they stood silently together, watching another of the clumsily flying birds following the first toward the row of distant, jagged brown mountaintops ahead, and then he asked, "But why can't you go and charm one of these powerful wizards I heard the men of Hollowtree muttering about, to cast a spell like that on you?"
Taeauna gave Rod a look that blazed with open anger this time. "Rod Everlar, you must stop thinking of Falconfar being just as it was when you wrote about it. To do otherwise is to doom us both."
She waved a long, graceful arm back across the rolling wooded hills they'd crossed, to the fields of Hollowtree and distant rocky crags beyond. It was a magnificent view, but Taeauna seemed unimpressed by its beauty just now.
"The splendid forest kingdoms you dreamed and wrote of have changed. Hollowtree should have shown you that. They're now belike a handful of gems scattered in the dirt: they shine still, but have become small, embattled holds menaced by greater darkness around them."
Rod nodded. "The Dark Helms."
"And more than that. We see and fight prowling monsters grown numerous and bold, more than we do the Helms. Yet we fear Dark Helms more, for they're not just ruthless raid-swords. They serve the Four Dooms." She gave him a twisted smile. "Or rather, three of those four. The three wizards whose tyranny is daily seen by all who venture within their ever-lengthening reach."
Taeauna sketched a brief sign in the air in front of her. It looked to Rod curiously like one of his Catholic friends making the sign of a cross to ward off evil.
In its wake, speaking very quickly, Taeauna hissed, "Remember these names, but speak them seldom if at all: Arlaghaun, Malraun, and Narmarkoun."
She made the sign again, and then continued more calmly. "These three wizards are the greatest in power of the known mages of Falconfar, and they are all evil, grasping men. If they did not endlessly make war on each other, we'd all be in their thrall."
Rod frowned. "That powerful? The first two I created, and Holdoncorp added the third, so they can't have had all that long to-"
"It doesn't take long, if no one has magic enough to stop you. Oh, they're not nearly as tyrannical and clever-witted as some of the olden-day mages of legend, yet that may be because they strive constantly, one against the other, each seeking to ensure the other two rise not to supremacy."
Rod frowned, trying to remember. "I made them greedy, and wanting to have absolute control over their ow
n small territories, but what else do they want? Can't they just whisk themselves anywhere, if they just want to snatch gold coins and gems and… and whatever?"
Taeauna smiled thinly. "Smallholdings no more. And each seeks to gather the most powerful spells and enchanted items from the ruined castles of long-fallen kings, and so rise to rule all Falconfar."
"And what's stopped them from doing that, besides each other?"
The Aumrarr shrugged. "Brave men with swords, doing what little they can. Most holds like Hollowtree are ruled by old wolves: hardened warriors who'd be happy to be rid of all magic, and all wizards. Oh, and there's one thing more. Fear of what the fourth and greatest Doom will do, if their deeds awaken him."
"I don't remember including any sleeping King Arthur under the hill in my Falconfar," Rod grunted. "So who's this fourth Doom?"
Taeauna gave him another crooked smile.
"You."
'So… are the three wizards watching us now?" Rod asked, much later, when sweat was streaming from him despite the increasingly chilly air, and they were high above the rolling greenery that held Hollowtree, somewhere back below them down there.
Taeauna had finally paused to rest and drink a single swallow of water. She stopped Rod from gulping more of his own with a firm hand, and went back to frowning up at the increasingly frequent flapping black birds. All of the same sort, they seemed to be converging from several directions, and all heading for somewhere not far ahead.
"Mayhap," she replied, "but I doubt it. Working magic's tiring-as tiring as running hard, or fighting, I'm told-so even powerful mages use their spells sparingly. I saw a lesser wizard once, sitting in a chair keeping two magics on his lord from the other end of a market: a disguise and a warding against knives and arrows. He was white and asweat and shaking with weariness."
"And I'm supposed to be lord of all wizards?" Rod asked incredulously, wiping a hand across his sweat-slicked brow and displaying it to her.
"Your power is different. You dream and transform things no wizard could. Many things, all at once, large and small. Most mages can burn or blast things, or wreak one transformation at a time on a single person or thing." Taeauna got up, still frowning at the birds. "And your blood heals."