by Ed Greenwood
Rauthgul indeed, damn it!
There was no way they were going to reach the yard before the snake-men caught them, no way! And the burial yard was just that: a yard, an open plot of grass and trees walled on three sides but open to a street that Rod and the Aumrarr would soon be crossing. Or would try to; there remained the little matter of winning the sword-fight that would erupt right in the middle of it, when the snake-men caught up with them.
There were grassy humps in that yard that must be tombs, and little stone houses, too, dark with moss and age; crypts? The trees were old and gnarled giants, and it all might as well have been on the far side of the Falconspires, for all the likelihood Rod Everlar had of ever reaching them alive.
They were going to die here, a handful of minutes from now. He and Taeauna were going to be sliced and hacked apart, butchered very messily by swords Rod hadn't a hope in Hades of stopping.
Dark-armored figures suddenly streamed out of a side alley, hacking and thrusting, and a snake-man went down, making those horrible squalling sounds. Dark Helms!
"Hurry!" Taeauna gasped, clutching at the throat of Rod's tunic, all of her weight hanging from her claw-like fingers. "Lord, hurry! Please!"
Her last word was a sob of pain, as tears came and she shuddered all over, sagging against him.
Rod swore and gasped and got an arm around her, struggling to shift her weight to his hip so he could limp along in clumsy haste.
Swords rang off each other behind them, someone groaned, there was some hissing, and then they were out onto the dust of the street, Taeauna hanging like a dead weight. Surely there'd be Dark Helms pelting this way in a moment or two.
When they reached the grassy unevenness of the burial yard, Taeauna clawed her way up Rod until she was upright and peered into the night gloom.
Trees and crypts and their shadows were all around; Rod glanced back at the battle now going on. There seemed to be more snake-men, yet the Dark Helms weren't retreating. Fighters were sagging down with wounded groans or slumping dead, but the fray wasn't getting any closer. There just might be a chance for…
"That one," the Aumrarr said wearily. "Slide the stone aside."
Rod looked at the dark slab of stone, then at her pain-wracked face, and shook his head in disbelief. It was about the size of a door and as thick as his hand, lying on the ground on a lip of stone blocks set into the grass.
"Let me down," Taeauna whispered, "and move that stone."
Rod did as he was told, leaving the Aumrarr sitting facing the fight back in the alley with her sword across her knees. He tapped the stone with the toe of his boot; it was heavy, all right.
Thrusting his sword into the turf near at hand, he knelt down, put his fingers along the edge of the slab, and heaved.
He managed only to overbalance face-first onto the stone, skidding along on his nose to the accompaniment of Taeauna's ragged, pain-ridden laughter. When he rolled onto his side to glare at her, she was clutching her belly and wincing at the pain of her own mirth.
"Don't…" she gasped. She then put her head on her knees and managed to say, "Don't make me laugh again, please. It hurts so."
"It may astonish you to learn this," Rod growled, as he got up, "but Lord Archwizard Rod ruddy Everlar wasn't trying to make you laugh. I can't move this rauthgulling thing. It must weigh as much as a car!"
"Car?"
"Oh, never mind," Rod snapped wearily, going back to the slab to try again.
"Lord," Taeauna hissed urgently through clenched teeth, "look for a stone among the rest, around the edge, with a slot in it. Put your sword in the slot, and thrust sidewise to the slab. Across, if you take my meaning. Don't twist, or you'll break the sword."
Rod stared at her wordlessly, then shrugged and looked for such a stone. It looked to be right by his foot. "This slot; can it be full of moss?"
"Yes. Very likely."
Rod snatched his sword out of the ground, looked back at the fight, and saw that the snake-men seemed to be down to an agonized handful that the Dark Helms were toying with, stabbing the scaled hides at will. Several Dark Helms had turned from this to start stalking toward the burial yard. They were still some strides away, across the street. Rod thrust his sword into the slot and heaved sideways, toward the slab.
For once in his life, he'd guessed right. There was a moment of stony grating, when not much happened. Then the slab swung aside, moving on some sort of hidden pivot, and leaving him staring down into a hole.
The feeble moonlight showed him stone steps leading down into darkness, then promptly went away as fingers of cloud slid over the moon.'
"Taeauna?" Rod turned to the Aumrarr. He could just see the glint of her sword in the returned darkness; it wasn't moving. He stumbled over to her. "Taeauna?"
She was slumped over her blade, silent and unmoving. Great.
Hearing the boots of the Dark Helms crunching on the gravel of the street, Rod sheathed his sword, tucked Taeauna's under his arm, and started tugging the limp, heavy Aumrarr toward the hole. He could move her, but could he get her down those stairs before a Dark Helm diced them both? Darkness didn't seem to much bother them, as far as he could tell thus far.
Huh. Thus far. As if there were going to be any "later" for him to leisurely observe the Dark Helms.
He got Taeauna down the hole by the simple stratagem of tripping on the edge of one of the lip-stones and falling into the unknown, her body tumbling atop his.
The landing hurt, his shoulders and elbow slamming numbingly down on very hard stone, before Rod bumped and slithered sideways down unseen steps to the sound of loud stony grating overhead.
Silence fell. He was lying on his back, on hard and smooth stone, somewhere cold and damp, with Taeauna lying half atop him. His own breathing was loud in his ears, but he could hear none of the faint night sounds of Arbridge, and the faint touch of night breezes was gone. That grating noise must have been the tomb closing.
Had the Dark Helms shut him in here to die slowly in the dark? Or had he hit something in his fall that moved the slab, and the Helms were waiting above it right now, swords poised to stab?
"Happy choices," he said aloud, hearing his words fall into dead and empty darkness.
Well, at least nothing felt broken, and he hadn't clonked his head. Until greeting the slab with his nose, he hadn't even…
Taeauna! God, he must have hit his head to forget her!
She was dying, or dead already, leaving him alone in the dark in a tomb in Falconfar. Some Lord Archwizard and Doom he was! Hah. Doomed, yes, but…
Her sword was lost somewhere in the darkness- he remembered it clattering during his fall-but she was right here. Lying on top of his scabbarded sword, limp and heavy.
He couldn't bear to deliberately slice himself with a sword anyhow. He would have to use his dagger, or one of hers; whatever he could reach. He found her mouth with his fingers, traced the line of her jaw, and trembled at the sudden thought of losing her. His other hand, scrabbling awkwardly up and back along his ribs, found the pommel of his dagger.
He slapped it, to fix in his mind where it was, and began the heaving and wriggling process of getting Taeauna off his other arm without cracking her head on anything, or losing track of her in this pitch darkness.
When he could move both arms, he drew the dagger, reached with his other hand to her mouth again, and found that she still wasn't breathing, but at least her lips were parted. He then put the dagger against the back of his hand, his gorge suddenly rising, and… sliced.
It made him feel sick; he thrust the thumb of his dagger-hand into the warm wetness to make sure he was bleeding, and then put his cut hand to Taeauna's mouth, rolling over to make sure his blood could drip between her lips.
Blue fire kindled on her tongue, and grew like a blue-white candle, showing him her face, blue fire trickling down her throat.
She coughed, convulsed, swallowed, and whooped for air. Then her hands came up and gripped his cut hand like two iron-h
ard gauntlets, forcing him over onto his face as she turned his hand so she could suck… suck greedily, blue fire leaking out around her mouth as she shuddered, twisted, and sucked more.
Only to fall back, panting, letting go of Rod's healed hand. Her eyes were closed, and she moaned.
A moan of pain and… hunger?
The blue glow was fading fast; Rod fumbled with the dagger and stabbed himself through his palm.
"Arrghh!" Jesus, it hurt! God damn!
He found himself sobbing, drenched with sweat and over on his face again on the stone, bright blue ribbons of blood running down Taeauna's cheeks as she sucked at him so fiercely he thought skin and flesh, tendons and all were going to be drawn out of him and down her throat.
Rod's glowing blood slowly pooled on the stone beside his face, flowing outwards to seep down old cracks in the stone.
And the stone suddenly heaved under them!
Taeauna tumbled out of sight, over the edge, and Rod found himself pitching off the tilting slab, too, as a cold and eerie light flooded up into the tomb from below.
Rod rolled over, fear sudden and icy rising in him. Fingers of bone, trailing tatters of grave shrouding, were curled around the edges of the slab, thrusting it up from beneath. The slab was cracked across in two places, and was beginning to come apart…
"Shit! Oh, God bloody shit!" Rod scrambled to his feet and away, almost weeping those words. He'd never realized they'd fallen onto the top of a huge stone coffin, not the tomb floor, and now… and now…
He pounced on Taeauna, who was lying in a limp heap just two strides away, and shook her, yelling, "Tay! Taeauna! Wake up! What do I do? What do I do?"
She groaned, her eyes still closed, and in a frenzy Rod turned his back on whatever was rising out of the tomb, refusing to look at it, and stabbed at his hand again.
Blood spattered Taeauna's face, then glowed blue once more as he slapped his hand across her mouth and held it there. She made a muffled moaning sound, and moved feebly in his grasp. "Wake up, damn you!" he cried.
Which was when something bony and very, very cold touched Rod Everlar's shoulder.
CHAPTER SIX
Rod's scream was lost in a loud and sudden grating of stone overhead that brought back the moonlight and Arbridge-and a Dark Helm, hastening down the tomb steps, gleaming sword first.
The black-armored warrior's face was hidden behind his helm, but the trembling-in-terror writer saw that helm lift to regard whatever cold and bony thing was behind Rod, pass over Rod with eyes glinting in excitement, and fall on the blue fire of his blood, running down Taeauna's chin as she sucked.
The Dark Helm descended another two steps. Face to face with Rod, he hissed, "So! The Master must know! You are the Dark Lord!"
Her chains chimed and winked again, which meant that she had moved.
"Stop that," the wizard Arlaghaun commanded coldly, not looking up from the thick tome of spells. The symbols moved-by the Shapers, they did! — so pages he'd studied many a time before suddenly revealed new magics…
More chiming, a gasp of pain, and the candles flickered.
He looked up to give his apprentice one of his sharper glares. In the mirror behind her, his reflection glared too: the man in gray with a nose as sharp as a sword, brown eyes blazing and lips thin with anger.
She trembled under his glare, her tear-filled eyes very, very blue beneath sharp black brows. He could smell her cooked flesh. The candles she was holding were filling her palms with hot wax as they melted, but what of that? The strength to ignore pain is vital to casting spells in battle. Perhaps he should affix barbs to her chains, or weave fresh nettles through them, to truly teach her suffering.
She tried to smile at him through her tears. "S-sorry, master."
"You will be," he told her calmly, letting his gaze slowly wander the length of her bared body, to see if shame still made Amalrys blush.
It did, but far more slowly, this time. Perhaps she was getting used to wearing only chains, under the eyes of every Dark Helm who met with him.
Hmm. Time to let the dogs take their pleasure with her? A matter for consideration, certainly, but-
"You are the Dark Lord!"
The cry was faint but clear, rising like a war-shout from the third crystal along of the row of seven under the window.
Arlaghaun stiffened, of course. What wizard wouldn't?
When he whirled to stare at the glow in that sphere's depths, he knew his eyes were flashing, betraying his own eagerness to his apprentice; giving her a tiny weapon at last.
Uncaring, he hurled down the book and strode across the room toward the crystal. He'd waited years for this moment.
In an alley in Arbridge, a dozen Dark Helms turned their heads as one, helms snapping around in unison as they all stared across a street and beyond into a burial yard.
An underground crypt stood open. One of their fellow Dark Helms was crouching over it, but the cry that had sung so loudly in their heads had come from another who must be down inside the tomb.
A few swift, brutal thrusts slew the snake-men they'd been tormenting. Hurrying, the Dark Helms turned and stalked down the alley, heading for the crypt.
"Dark Lord," rose their murmur. "Dark Lord, Dark Lord, Dark Lord.'"
The candle-lantern on the table was almost entirely hooded. Only a thin line of feeble light shone up off the tabletop onto the masked Arbren merchants and shopkeepers huddled around. This cloak of concealment was more by choice than necessity; Lord Tharlark encouraged the Vengeful, as hounds he need not pay, who did his work for him: finding and slaying all wizards.
Yet the Vengeful dared not relax. Lordlings had turned on even their most faithful hounds a time or fifty before, and in the end Tharlark would, too, if they were any judge of men. He was too full of rage and suspicion, and too swift to draw sword, that one.
Wherefore the Vengeful kept their own suspicions honed sharp; hence this meeting, late at night in an upper room above a shop owned by one of their number.
A man had come to Arbridge, and taken a room for the night at the Drowned Knights. A man no one had heard of, said by his companion to be old, who said little. And that companion was an Aumrarr.
"…and Aumrarr seem always to be near anyone who wields magic," the shortest, fattest masked Vengeful hissed fiercely, tapping the table with his forefinger as if it were a drawn dagger.
"An Aumrarr without wings," one of the men standing in the shadows put in, his voice almost resentful in its puzzlement.
"Aye, what does that mean?"
"Well, someone cut 'em off her, look you!"
"A lover who didn't want her to fly away!"
"The man we're speaking of, to force her to stay near!"
"Bah! Did ye not see the two of them? She could break him into bloody bones with her bare hands, even if she bore no sword! He's a blundering innocent, like a seer or a herb-cook!"
"Or like a wizard," the short man snarled, waving his finger.
A tall, grim Vengeful standing in a corner waved a hand in disgust. "So because he walks with an Aumrarr, that's enough to make him a wizard to you? She told Orstras she was working off a blood-debt, and I'm inclined to believe the winged sisters when they say such things. So, tell me now: if an Aumrarr owed a blood-debt to a babe in arms, you'd suspect the babe of being a wizard?"
"But this one's not a babe. And, aye, if what they say is true, they do owe him a blood-debt. Why? Isn't it likely that the kin of his they killed was deep in magic, somehow? The Aumrarr are fascinated with magic; they seem to smell it, as my hounds nose out scamper-rats, and wherever there's magic, there are Aumrarr, flapping and wheeling and hovering."
"Just like vaugren."
"Just like vaugren, indeed."
"Well," another of the masked men at the back of the room spoke up, "you are all of Arvale; if these two travel on, come morning, they pass off your platter and become a problem for other Falconaar. I'm traveling on to Galath with my wagons, and I suspect they wil
l be, too. I'll watch them, and if your suspicions are correct, do what has to be done."
"I'm bound for Galath, too," the only woman in the room put in, scratching thoughtfully at her mask. "I'll do the same, and as a woman may well learn more from the Aumrarr through friendly chatter than you can with your blade. You know how Aumrarr are with ladies."
There were chuckles. "Aye, we know," the short, fat Vengeful said meaningfully.
The chilling hand on Rod's trembling shoulder thrust him firmly aside and let go; Rod Everlar cowered away, whimpering, "but could not keep from looking at what strode past him.
A skeleton, tall and terrible, its bones black and shimmering with blue fire at every joint, the rotting tatters of a shroud clinging to its limbs as it climbed up two stairs and jabbed one bony hand into the Dark Helm's face-actually into it, blue fire swirling, piercing helm, flesh, and bone alike.
Those skeletal fingers closed together and pulled back, tearing away the front of the man's head, leaving his skull like… like Rod's mailbox, gaping open after he'd pulled all the letters out.
The Dark Helm's body pitched forward, collapsing down the steps, and his fellow Helm rose from crouching over the top steps with a frightened curse, whirling around to flee.
"Stop him!" Taeauna cried feebly. "He must not live!"
The skeleton clambered down a couple steps and bent in one fluid motion, for all Falconfar as if it were a sleek and strong giant serpent rather than a thing of bones, and plucked up the huge stone lid of its coffin. Rod glimpsed an elaborately carved likeness of a warrior in battle, sword raised in victory, above a long and flowery inscription, before the skeleton leaned forward and threw the great slab of stone up the stone stairwell as a warrior hurls a shield, edge-on and spinning, at foes in battle.
It struck the Dark Helm in the back of the neck, smashing him off his feet and up into the air, head almost severed. When man and stone slab crashed on the stairs together, and bounced wetly once, there was little left of the fleeing warrior's head.
As an onrushing crowd of Dark Helms came to a wary halt, Taeauna crawled hurriedly up the steps and plucked up the grisly crushed helm from the broken body under the slab.