by Ed Greenwood
"But doesn't regenerate."
She transferred her frown to him. "What is 'regenerate?'"
"Bring your wings back."
"Oh. No. At least, I think not." She looked away, and her frown deepened.
"Do you want me to bleed on your… on where your wings used to be?" Rod took a swift step sideways as he spoke, to where he could see Taeauna's face.
For just a moment, her calmness broke, and her eyes held as much pleading as they had back in his bedroom. There was more hope in them, too.
And then Taeauna shook her head, and her face was a calm mask again. "Mayhap some day, when Falconfar's need is lesser. I dare not let you throw away your power on me, just one Aumrarr, when so many more may need it, and you may have… limits."
Rod looked into the fire that had returned to her emerald eyes, and then at her back and shoulders as she turned away and started climbing again, threading her way now between rocks as large as men.
Smooth muscles shifted under worn and ill-fitting leather.
He looked back the way they'd come, down across bare, rolling rocks to seemingly endless forests below and behind.
How did I get into this?
Ten years ago, Rod Everlar had been a writer of successful, if unimaginative, Cold War spy thrillers. Fist of Fire, Hitler's Vengeance, Thunderbolts of Zeus, dozens more. Talk to a few old spies or spy wannabes, read a few quirky SF disaster novels, twist ideas from both together, throw in the square-jawed hero, the femme fatale, and the trusted friend or boss who's really a treacherous double agent, and out came the next one. Bang, bang, bang, if that wasn't too trite an expression.
And then had come the dreams. Dreams of swooping dragons and shouting men with swords, and princesses fleeing in diaphanous gowns who turned into pegasi and even more horrific things in mid-stride. And balconies, and flickering torches, and castles-castles looming dark and purple by night or black and sinister by day… And the woman with wings, the one in armor who staggered toward Rod with four evil princes' swords through her, gasping, "I die for Falconfar!"
Her eyes, her amber-flame eyes… She had seen him, really seen him, too. And once Rod knew the name Falconfar, the dreams came wild and deep and vivid, one crowding on another, night after night until he was a staggering man by day, so weighed under by sleeplessness and nightmares that he was scarcely alive.
It was an abyss he climbed out of with a single step, one day, when he plucked up a notepad and started writing down what he'd just awakened from, shouting out into his bedroom. The notepad became stacks of notepads, and the stacks turned into binders, and with each page he filled, the dreams were tamed a little more, until they became orderly nightly visits that let him rise again to wakefulness in due time.
Exhausted no longer, but somehow unable to care much about long-hidden Nazis and lost submarine fleets and missile satellites disguised as auto parts, Rod had turned to his notes and crafted a story about Falconfar by stringing together dreams, like a child assembling one of those push-together plastic necklaces. It seemed a trite, even hokey tale, but he shrugged and sent it off to his agent with orders to place it wherever possible, and tried to get back to black helicopters and women in black evening gowns that concealed silencers and little else.
It took him two more books to clear his mind enough to set Falconfar aside, and by then the first one was selling like ice cream on a hot July beach, better than anything he'd ever written before. The clamor for sequels hadn't died down, though the dreams had started to fade; by two summers ago they'd practically disappeared.
Since then, he'd taken care of three of his long-overdue thrillers and plotted the fourth. Holdoncorp's offer for his fantasy world had been staggeringly handsome, and he'd accepted it eagerly, retaining the right to do more Falconfar books just in case. He'd used that right twice, when their blunders had set his teeth on edge enough that he'd strung together a few more bunches of dream-notes around some pointed corrections. Changes that Holdoncorp had of course, calmly ignored, despite the contract.
Making him the Fourth Doom and Dark Lord of Falconfar in the process.
When Rod came around the next boulder, Taeauna's sword was in her hand, and her face was grim.
"Tay? What's wrong?"
The Aumrarr pointed with her sword. More of the flapping black birds were flying past. "Vaugren. Carrion birds. Many, where there should be none."
"Gathering to feed after some battle?"
Taeauna sighed. "Undoubtedly. Dark Helm work, this'll be. I was not the only Aumrarr to be harried. Many of our patrols sounded horns the night I sought the place where I go to dream of you, and… reached you at last."
"Dream of me? D'you… uh… often dream of me?"
She regarded him coolly. "All Aumrarr dream of you, Lord Rod Everlar. And pray to you, on our knees. Some devoutly, some, no doubt, mouthing but empty words. Some of us are sworn to bear your child, should you ever appear to us."
Her tone warned him that she was almost certainly not one of the sisters who'd so sworn. It told him a trifle more; that Taeauna would not welcome any smart comment on the matter, or even any words at all.
Not that Rod was far enough away from dumbfounded, just now, to say anything coherent.
In his mind he was seeing dozens of beautiful winged women in armor, kneeling in little glades and on lonely hilltops in front of pristine hardcover copies of Falconfar Forever, praying to receive his favor. Or his children. Jesus shitting Christ.
"No guards at any of the posts," Taeauna whispered, her face so white now that Rod could see a fine web of blue veins all over it. "None." The birds were a flapping cloud now, wheeling and screeching everywhere.
When Taeauna led the way around the last bend to stand on a ledge looking down on the terraced front gardens of Highcrag, they both knew what they'd see.
A field of the dead, lifeless Aumrarr strewn everywhere, lying broken and dead where they'd fallen in battle.
The Dark Helms had slaughtered them all.
CHAPTER THREE
“Taeauna," Rod blurted, not knowing what to say but knowing he had to say something.
"Taeauna, I…"
In grim silence Taeauna stepped off the ledge and stalked down into the battlefield, ignoring the angry flapping and cries of disturbed vaugren. Rod hastened to follow, trying to ignore what he was stepping on. He got one good look at a hooked beak tugging at an eyeball, the flesh that held the orb stretching obscenely yet refusing to part company with its eye socket, and hurriedly looked away, swallowing.
The dell reeked like an open latrine, overlaid with the sweet stink of blood. Armored and half-armored Aumrarr lay sprawled everywhere, some of them so hacked apart they resembled the roasts of a publisher's buffet more than women. Wings that should have soared were crumpled and trodden, bloody boot prints marring the white. And there were feathers, feathers everywhere.
Taeauna was peering intently at one body and then at another, searching for something. From time to time Rod heard her moan softly, murmur a name, or whisper a curse, but she never stopped to weep.
He followed along anxiously behind her, looking around often to be sure no Dark Helm or anyone else was creeping up on them, and because he knew not what else to say, he blurted, "Sorry. Oh, Taeauna, I'm so sorry! This must be horrible for you…"
Taeauna did not reply. When she reached the far side of the dell, she caught up a splendid curve-bladed sword-like a Civil War cavalry saber, only without any sort of basket hilt-and hefted it in her hand. Nodding, she found its scabbard and belt, stripped them from the bloody, headless ruin that had once been a fellow Aumrarr, and donned the sword herself. Then she drew herself up and slammed the old sword Lhauntur had given her into a trampled flowerbed with sudden ferocity, leaving it quivering upright.
Without a word she took a long pace to one side, flung up her chin, and then started back across the dell toward the ledge they'd come from, bending and peering, and from time to time reaching down to draw open a pouch, or ro
ll a body up to see what might lie beneath. Her face might have been carved from stone.
"Taeauna? Taeauna, I…"
Her grim search took her into a heap of bodies, and a cloud of vaugren rose to flutter and flap and screech at her. Rod hastened forward, thankful to have something helpful to do, to shoo them away with wild sweeps of his heavy sword. He stumbled on something smooth and slick-a blood-soaked breast, perhaps, though he was trying not to look down-and almost fell on his face into the fly-buzzing innards of a hacked-open Aumrarr ribcage.
He vomited helplessly then, stumbling and retching until he had to use his sword like a crutch, leaning over weakly to empty his stomach long after there was nothing left there to lose.
Taeauna never paused. Her hands were covered in dark, sticky gore as she gently rolled what was left of old friends over and aside to look at other bodies beneath. Searching, always searching. As soon as Rod's dizzy head and aching guts let him walk steadily again, he hurried to catch up to her.
By then, she was almost back at the ledge, and tugging another curved sword out of its scabbard. She peered critically at the blade, hefted the weapon, and then slammed it back into place, wiped her hands on the tunic of the corpse she was robbing, and set to work on buckles.
When Rod came scrambling up to her, she thrust the sword at him, scabbard and belt and all, without even looking his way. The moment his hands gingerly closed on it, she tugged at his Hollowtree sword, almost dragging him into a face-first fall. Hastily he gave it to her, and she stalked on for a few more paces, past a body sitting against rocks whose familiar face made her sigh, and planted the heavy blade upright, just as she'd done with the first one.
As she stepped silently to one side, to begin another grim journey across the garden of the dead, Rod moved with her. "Taeauna, I'm-I just want to tell you… I'm so sorry…"
Her newly acquired sword flashed up out of its scabbard and past his nose so fast Rod did nothing but blink at its passing flash and dazzle.
"Dark Lord, be still!"
Taeauna's face was still a web of blue veins, and silent tears were running down her face like water. Those emerald eyes might have been the points of two swords, above a chest that was heaving, but there was no trace of a sob in the harsh voice that snapped, "You didn't do this; spend no breath apologizing for it. Just bide with me in silence, and don't stand in my way when I see my next Dark Helm."
As she stalked past, bending to look at two Aumrarr who lay curled up around each other, broken swords in their hands and agony twisting dead and now eyeless faces, Rod frowned.
Dark Helms. There were no fallen Dark Helms anywhere in the gardens that he could see. He looked down to where the gardens ended and rocks began, and then back the other way, at the open doors in the mountainside that presumably led into the chambers where the Aumrarr really lived, or bad really lived, but… no black-armored men lying anywhere. Not one.
He started to look more closely among the dead, trying to see if perhaps a man lay among the blood-drenched women. Some of the Aumrarr had been wearing dark leather armor, and the closer he looked, the more beautiful faces and graceful limbs he saw-and gore. Flies, everywhere flies, and those damned birds walking stiff-legged, to peck and stab and tear away…
Rod shuddered and turned away, gorge rising. Even with his eyes closed, he could see a particular Aumrarr face, slack and still with insects crawling on it, but still achingly beautiful. It was staring pleadingly up at him, looking so much alive that he'd almost reached down a hand to… to the severed head whose body, wherever it lay among all the torn and twisted carrion, wasn't within three or four of his strides. No matter how much he shook his head, he couldn't look away from those eyes. Brown, not the fierce emerald of Taeauna's, and never blinking…
"I've seen enough," Taeauna said from beside him, almost tenderly, "and more than enough. But we must go in. There are… things I must see to."
Rod swallowed, trying to banish a beseeching brown stare, and then opened his eyes and said hoarsely, "Taeauna, there're no Dark Helms here. D-did they somehow fight well enough that none of them died?"
Taeauna's face was calm again, and her eyes were dry, but there was a shadow in her gaze that hadn't been there before. "You don't know what Dark Helms truly are, do you?"
Rod blinked. "Uh, evil men in black armor," he said slowly, "whom wizards can control."
"Yes," she agreed bleakly. "Even beyond death." She pointed, and Rod looked and saw the curled fingers of a. black gauntlet beneath the distractingly bared hip of a dead Aumrarr. Then she pointed again, and Rod stared at blood-covered black shards for some time before he realized that he was looking at the shattered remains of a black warhelm, its visor twisted up among them like a set of false teeth turned on edge.
Taeauna took a step past Rod, touching his arm with her pointing finger, and then indicated a row of rocks that marked one lip of a tiered garden bed. On the largest stone lay a black hilt, and from it, where the blade of a dagger should have been, stretched a smoke-scar, a scorch mark that ended abruptly, without a point.
"Some of their blades bear spells," Taeauna told him gently. "When broken, they burn away to nothing. A very painful passing, if such steel is inside you."
"So… this means…?"
"A wizard was here." The Aumrarr turned, strode a few steps toward the head of the garden and the open doors waiting there, and then stopped to point again.
This time, she was indicating a sister who sat against a low stone wall, arms spread wide in agony, the flesh of her chest melted and drooping like the wax of a burned candle.
"Magic did that," Taeauna added coldly. "And the one who cast it took away his fallen, to bind pieces of ravaged bodies together into men once more and send them shuffling out again to do his bidding another day, dead and beyond dead, rotting inside their armor. 'Tis the armor that truly moves them, not the muscles within. The day a mage improves the spells so a thrust that slays a living man will fail to stop an undead Dark Helm is a day that will doom most folk still alive in Falconfar. "
Something in her voice left Rod shivering as she hefted her new sword again and strode on through the nearest doorway. He looked around the dell, and at more vaugren wheeling hungrily down out of the sky to land in it, and then hurried after her.
"Watch behind us," she ordered, the moment he was inside.
They were standing in a high-domed room carved from solid rock, with sunlight shafting down through an oval window high overhead, and dead Aumrarr heaped everywhere. The smell of cooked flesh hung strong and heavy in the air, and several of the twisted corpses were a strange iridescent purple.
"Wizards' work," the living Aumrarr muttered, peering rapidly here and there, as if hidden foes might rise up to blast them both at any moment. The thought awakened an idea in Rod.
"Can wizards go invisible?" he blurted.
"Some know that spell, yes," Taeauna told him, as briskly as one of his long-ago schoolteachers. "It's imperfect, though, unless the mage remains still, and it does nothing about noises like breathing and footfalls. There's no spell-hidden watcher here, if that's what you fear."
She went to one of the niches in the walls where potted plants cascaded lush, waxy green leaves down into the room, and touched a particular spot in the carved stone lip of the opening. To Rod, it looked no different than any of the other shapes amid the running knotwork design, before or after Taeauna's touch. She bent down again to touch another particular spot, in a second lip carving.
There was a soft click, and the living Aumrarr went to the frame of an interior doorway and thrust her fingers at it. The doorframe swiveled on hidden pivots, moving top to bottom as a single board, to expose a tall, shallow cavity of many finger-sized niches, most of which seemed to hold keys. She selected two of these, and then bent and took something from the bottom of the cavity.
Rod had just remembered her order to guard their rear, and was turning away. He almost dropped the scabbarded sword she suddenly tossed h
im, and stood holding it uncertainly until she said, as calmly and as quietly as if she were asking him to pass over a newspaper, "Swing that once or thrice. 'Tis probably a better length for you than the one I gave you earlier."
Before he could reply, she added, "Ah," in far more interested tones, and plucked something small out of hiding. It looked like the sort of tiny box jewelry store purchases came in, only of smooth-polished wood.
And then she'd slipped past him as smoothly as any snake and was heading out the door again, into the death-filled garden. Rod followed, wanting to ask her what she was doing but wise enough to hold his tongue. For now, at least.
Taeauna headed straight for a body Rod hadn't noticed before amid all the others, an Aumrarr on her knees with both hands thrown up in front of her, her face twisted and her mouth frozen open in a shouting position. There was something unnatural about this corpse; Rod stared at it.
Of course. Twisted like that, and rearing back on its knees, it should have fallen over. Something- magic? — must be holding it up, frozen in its contortion.
"Taeauna…" Rod burst out, because he could keep quiet no longer.
"Tried that blade yet?"
"Tay…"
The woman who'd brought him to Falconfar drew in a deep breath, and then said quietly, "This was Marintra. One of my closest…"
Her voice trailed away, and without saying more, she turned abruptly and thrust the wooden box into his hands. Rod dropped the sword as he fumbled with it, hissed a hasty apology, and then got it open.
He was staring at two flat, smooth stones. Nondescript beach pebbles, or more likely streambed stones, if they'd come from anywhere around here. Rod touched one of them with his finger, and a tiny swirl of sparks arose from the stone, to fade away almost immediately.
Which meant that these must be the Holdoncorp creations known as speech-stones. Placed on the tongue of a corpse, each of them would work but once, making the dead say again the last words they uttered when alive.