by Ed Greenwood
"It's the same place," he whispered again, in bewilderment. "The dark castle."
Amalrys turned to her master in a chiming of chains. Under dark brows, her ice-blue eyes were frowning. "Master, something in Bowrock is thrusting my scryings aside. I was seeing into the velduke's keep without hindrance, but now, just like that, I cannot. Something within leaves me gazing at empty sky, or south out of Galath, whenever I try."
Arlaghaun looked up from the old and heavy metal-bound tome he was studying, preoccupation giving way to uninterest on his sharp-nosed face.
"Deldragon has hired a few lesser mages," the gray-clad wizard mused. "Wherefore it will do you good, Amalrys mine, to wrestle against them a time or two. So try your scryings again, and yet again, for the practice will do you good. And bother me not."
His thin lips shaped a mirthless smile. "After all, there's nothing of consequence the good velduke
can hide from us before he dies."
"Put it down!" Taeauna snapped at Rod, eyes blazing. "Throw it down!"
He regarded her calmly, cradling the heavy thing in his palm as he thought. "No."
He put it in his laedre instead. "Its magic won't help us in fighting, or a siege, but is too useful to just throw away."
Taeauna gave Rod a sharp glare. "You know what'it does?"
"I do now."
"So you are a wizard," Deldragon said softly.
"No," Rod replied, meeting the velduke's ice-blue eyes steadily. "No, I'm not. If you held that horse-head, it would tell you what it does, too."
"Well?" Deldragon asked, holding out his hand.
"No," Rod told him. "Not now. If we survive the siege, yes, but it would be bad for you to touch the thing at this time."
Taeauna was still watching Rod intently. "It showed you something else, didn't it?"
"Yes."
"What?"
Rod looked at her, then nodded his head in Deldragon's direction, and looked a silent question at the Aumrarr.
"Tell us both," she replied quietly.
"1 saw the castle again."
"The castle? Which castle?" She frowned. "What other times have you seen this castle?"
"The castle I saw when the wand touched me. I'd never seen it before then. It's tall and black, and has a thin spire rising out of one corner."
Taeauna went a little pale, drew in her breath sharply, and then asked carefully, "A squared-off tower, with four turrets at its corners, three of them just bulges that rise no higher than the.battlements joining them, but the fourth a cylindrical tower that rises above the turrets for half again their height, then narrows to a smooth needle-pointed spire?"
Rod nodded.
The Aumrarr added grimly, "And this castle has no moat nor outbuildings, and stands in the heart of a green, growing forest. The trees close around it are dead and bare. Yes?"
Rod nodded again.
Stroking his flaxen mustache, Deldragon looked a silent question of his own at Taeauna.
"Yintaerghast," she whispered, in reply. "Lorontar."
Then it seemed to be the velduke's turn to shiver, go pale, and take a step back from Rod.
Amalrys stiffened suddenly, and then erupted into wild spasms, her chains clashing as well as chiming, her honey-blonde hair lashing the air as she jerked her head about, her hands like wriggling claws. Then she slumped over in her chair, head lolling and drooling.
Arlaghaun looked up in annoyance, brown eyes flashing, and closed his book with a sigh. Thoughtfully, he tapped his sharp nose for a moment, then cast a careful spell over his apprentice.
She neither moved nor spoke.
The gray-clad wizard shrugged. Good. No rival mind was infesting hers. Her will must have failed under the strain of fighting to command her scrying-probe through Deldragon's hired defenses.
Such things happened. Such would happen to her again, until enough practice strengthened her mind sufficiently.
Shaking his head, the greatest Doom of Falconfar went back to his book. He'd been working out a cleverly hidden message in a particularly fascinating passage…
Narmarkoun smiled slowly. "Always they forget about me. Arlaghaun the Arrogant-Beyond-Belief and Malraun the Matchless Dolt. Far too powerful to concern themselves even with the notion that someone else just might, might have mastered magic enough to be a match for either of them. And, in time, the greatest wizard of all. Ever."
The tall, blue-skinned wizard shifted on his smooth and shifting bed of ice-cold wenches, their dead bodies responding to his will. They began to caress his scaly body and accept him in, their eternally grinning skulls regarding him with eyes that were no longer there.
"I'm not the greatest yet; not even close," he told one skull, as the body attached to it started to stroke him and grind ardently against him, "but already I have achieved far more than either of my oh-so-exalted rival Dooms. Where they fiddle with spells that were old before their grandsires were born, adjusting tiny details of casting and result, I breed greatfangs."
He raised his voice, clenching his scaly fists, and told them proudly, "I augment greatfangs. I tame greatfangs and ride greatfangs and take the shape of greatfangs… and know the love of greatfangs. I can hide in the form of a greatfangs if ever I am beset, and I can steal the loyalties of apprentices without their masters even noticing. Arlaghaun, your precious Amalrys is mine now!"
He frowned and peered around his womblike bedchamber of dark red velvet, but found no answer to what was now troubling him. When he spoke again, his voice had fallen to a thoughtful murmur. "But I wish I knew what mage is protecting Deldragon. Malraun fled from him, Arlaghaun didn't even notice him, Amalrys was casually foiled by him; who is he? Deldragon has coins aplenty to spend among the Stormar, and has spilled more than a few of them on spells and black-bearded, bright-robed spell-hurlers, but I've heard of no wizard among them that has such power, and casual mastery of it."
He reared back from the skull-headed wench embracing him far enough to catch hold of its shapely shoulders, and shake it fiercely. Its jawbone rattled.
"Can another Doom have arisen?" he demanded of it. "Has the fourth Doom come at last, and none of us noticed him?"
Grinning silence was its customary reply, and grinning silence was what it gave him now.
"Well, something's upset them," Iskarra said peevishly. "Just look out there: bees from a kicked-over hive! Now, it can't be Deldragon being foolish enough to make war on someone; he just came back from doing that, and the going then didn't take half this fuss. And he won, didn't he? So there'd be not the urgency, this time."
She pointed a little unsteadily out the cleanest window of the dingy taproom, and waited for the grunt that would tell her Garfist had looked and seen what she'd been watching over his shoulder.
Thirsty from all that talking, and not sure if she'd said everything clearly thanks to all the drink already aboard her, Iskarra shook her head, looked into her almost-empty tankard as if it might hold some inspiration, found nothing promising, and clunked it down on the tavern's dirtiest table again. When would these lasses who danced on tables while hauling off their clothes learn to wipe their boots first?
Garfist grew tired of staring at running knights and frantically trotting drovers and turned back to face her, his own tankard almost invisible in his huge and hairy fist. "I'll tell ye what it is, Isk, dearie. It's a siege they're preparing for, that's what it is."
Iskarra stared at fat old Garfist Gulkoon as if he'd suddenly grown another three heads, all of them beautiful and feminine and eagerly trying to kiss each other, and protested, "But it can't be! We'd've heard! Besides, so would they, out there! You can't march an army around Galath without giving everyone else in the realm more than plenty of warning." She waved one long-fingered, spiderlike hand in the direction of all the bustle out in the street and snapped, "And that is not 'plenty of warning.'"
"Aye, I'll grant ye that. I'll grant ye that." The onetime pirate belched loudly, farted just as thunderously, turned his head
in the direction of the bar, and bellowed, "More ale! And none of yer stingy tankards this time. Bring a keg, man!"
The master of the Gauntlet and Feather was privately of the opinion that the two uncouth, dirty visitors from the South had already taken aboard more than enough ale to rot their insides, and it in turn had already done its work on their brains. Yet they were his only customers, looked to already be past the point of destructive belligerence, and if all they did was spew all over the table, floor, and each other, and then flop face-down in their own mess and start snoring, well, he had maids enough to clean up after that.
Wherefore he called, "Of course, Master Gulkoon! I'll go fetch it," and hurried into the back to get Narjak to help him carry up the oldest, flattest, wormiest keg of soured ale from the cellar. These two must have been too far gone to taste what they were downing six tankards ago.
If Iskarra and Garfist had known the tavern master's opinion of them, or what he was now planning to pour into them, they'd have been neither annoyed nor surprised. Tavern masters were all heartless bastards, and besides, this latest one hadn't judged them far wrong.
They made their livings largely from thievery, these days. Wherefore their presence here in Bowrock, where they'd fetched up after a hasty flight from justice in three Sea of Swords ports. This was certainly the unlikeliest place for anyone to seek them.
The persistence of that Arlsakran merchant had really surprised them both. After all, the man had fourteen daughters; couldn't he spare the best-looking three to a life of tavern dancing and pleasuring men, rather than staying home digging daily in the mud of the family farm and pleasuring their father nightly, all in the same gigantic, groaning bed? And he'd looked too fat to chase anyone through three cities, too!
Almost as fat as Garfist himself: a onetime pirate who'd promoted himself to forger when his girth made him too slow for deckfights, then a hiresword all over the lands east of the Spires, thereafter a panderer for a long time, and now a thief. He was still covered with a pelt of the same thick red hair, all over, that had adorned him since his youth, but in the years since he'd lost almost all of his teeth, and broken his shovel-sized hands so often that they looked like gauntlets of spiky bone, calluses, and corded veins.
Iskarra "Vipersides" might look as fat as Garfist, but her bulk was all magical crawlskin, not her own itching hide. Under it, she was the skinniest, boniest living person Garfist had ever seen; all warts, wrinkles, and gray skin, she looked like a withered corpse, not a woman. Not that he hadn't tasted her favors a time or two; a man has needs, after all. And she did know spices-and poisons, and antidotes-better than anyone he'd ever met, besides being uniquely gifted for thievery.
Years back, somewhere way out east, she'd stolen her crawlskin: the magically preserved, semi-alive skin of a long-dead sorceress. It melded to her own hide when she wanted it to, and held the shape she gave it, so she could be all hips and breasts a man would hunger for, or as stout as Garfist, or barely larger than her own naked hide-and-bones. It could also part when she wanted it to, allowing her to reach in and hide gems and coins and other stolen things in leather bladders she strapped to herself. Right now it was carrying a surprising number of coins, all folded in flesh so they wouldn't clink together. It could even turn into a long fleshy rope or worm, and reach farther than her arm could, turning like a snake and clutching at her bidding. Without it, she was as skinny as a lance and as desirable as a corpse.
Best of all, she liked Garfist, and he liked her, and they trusted each other; something neither of them had dared to do with anyone else for years and years.
Iskarra's looks were slipping, but her face still had some of the dark-eyed beauty that had caught men's eyes when she was younger, and her body was wrapped in enough clothing to fool them. And that profane mouth still had the skills of a Stormar pleasure-lass.
To say nothing of her wits and fearlessness, that both outstripped Garfist's own. And were both good things, when one was stealing magic.
Here in Bowrock, houses seemed full of enchanted gewgaws and even the occasional battle-wand. Moreover, many of them seemed to have been turned inactive, and left in the keeping of folk who didn't even know they were magical. Garfist and Iskarra could scarce believe their good fortune, and hadn't yet dared to snatch much.
Yet the only wizards they'd thus far seen in Bowrock were strutting Stormar alley-mages, who knew a few tricks, four or five real spells, and how to make and peddle "charms" and enchanted oils that might or might not do what they claimed to do.
"Grow us a really striking bosom, old Viper mine," Garfist rumbled now, reaching across the table. "I need to remember how to fondle."
Iskarra gave him a disgusted look, and dealt his hand a half-hearted slap. "No biting," she snarled. "Like last time."
Garfist tried to chuckle, but it erupted into a choking snort that quite spoiled his leer, so he settled for thrusting one great paw of a hand into the open front of her leather bodice, and squeezed.
She gasped and shuddered, half-closing her eyes and moving under his hand with her lips caught in her teeth, moaning as if in need, and then stuck out her tongue at him, made a rude sound, and snapped, "Where's that ale? Are they all out back pissing into a keg to fill it for us, then?"
"D'wanna stay here for the night? I think they rent rooms, Isk."
"Not if you're going to try to crawl on top of me. My love for being crushed is fading." Iskarra belched loudly, and then winced. "Gorge rising, throat afire," she croaked. "Get them to bring that glorking ale!"
Garfist growled in agreement, swung himself around, and heaved himself upright. The movement was heralded by great creakings from the stout chair beneath him.
The deserted taproom of the Gauntlet and Feather heaved and rolled for a moment under his boots, like the deck of a ship in heavy seas, but he was used to that, and just kept striding, reaching the door beside the bar at about the same time as the master of the house and a sweating Narjak started through it with a full keg between them.
Garfist scooped it out of their shared grasp with one hand, and bore it away back to his table with a satisfied purring sound, leaving Narjack open-mouthed in awe, and gaping, a moment later, when the decaying woman at the table stood up eagerly and held out an empty tankard, her bodice fell open, and he could swear he saw the nipple of one bared breast grow a tiny hand and tug the bodice back up. The tavern master hastened along in the keg's wake, anxious to prevent spillage when it was tapped, or utter disaster if it got dropped.
Garfist sat down with the keg in his lap, as if it was a giggling tavern maid, and roared, "Where're all yer other patrons, friend? All upstairs bouncing the beds? Or are they out there running around in the streets like all the rest? Ye'd think there was a siege coming, the way they're preparing!"
The tavern master managed a weak smile.
"W-well, as a matter of… aha… fact, there, ah, is."
Garfist looked up and dropped his own jaw onto the keg beneath it. "Well, shit me! Who're the belligerent would-be conquerors?"
"Ah, well… almost all of the Lords of Galath, they say. They're not here yet, mind."
The tavern master half expected the two drunkards to explode into profanity and swaying, doomed attempts to hasten out of his establishment and flee the city.
He did not at all expect Garfist to slap the table, grin broadly, and growl, "Well, that's grand! Always wanted to be lord of somewhere, and sounds like some vacancies're going to open up soon. Lord Garfield Gulkoon of Galath; has a ring to it, don't ye think?"
The tavern master of the Gauntlet and Feather prided himself on being a seasoned, unflappable professional, and proved it to himself then and there. He managed to entirely quell his strong and instant impulse to shudder.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The soup was wonderful, a rich broth thick with onions and the leavings of many spit-roasted fowl. Taeauna and Rod both ate heartily until they were more than full; Rod was amused to find that Aumrarr belched and groaned
and sat back in chairs holding their bellies just like everyone else did.
They'd expected their summons to the velduke's table would mean sitting at a long table in a lofty and echoing hall feasting with a lot of haughty people, but instead they'd been shown into a cozy, book-lined study with a magnificent map of Falconfar on the wall that Rod spent a long time studying.
The room had no guards or servants or anyone but the two of them in it, and held books on shelves all around the walls, and a littered desk that had a lone dagger floating point-down in the air over it. ("Guard-blade," Taeauna had murmured. "Don't go anywhere near yon desk, even if papers blow off it by themselves.") It also held a table with four stout chairs drawn up around it. The soup had been served to them at the table, along with lemon-scented drinking water, a fragrant-smelling fresh loaf of bread, a sharp saw-knife to cut it with, and a bowl of garlic butter to spread on it. Rod could remember few meals as good, in all his life.
They'd sat over the remains of the repast until the last heel of the bread was quite cold, and Rod was fighting back yawns and wondering when a servant would appear to guide them back to their bed in those distant guest chambers.
"Shouldn't we…?" he got as far as asking Taeauna.
Her response was a sharp look and a firm, "Patience."
As if that had been a cue, a bookshelf swung open and Velduke Deldragon strode in, stroking his flaxen mustache. He nodded a silent greeting to them, his ice-blue eyes seeming somehow dull and washed out, and scaled the helm under his arm into a corner where it thudded down on a cushion Rod hadn't noticed before.
Suddenly the room was full of silent, deftly hastening servants, bringing a housecloak, wine and a platter of goblets and sugared nuts, and steaming platters of roasted meat. Just as suddenly, they were all gone again, and Velduke Deldragon was wearily forking meat running with red juices onto his plate and saying, "Lady of the Aumrarr? This is choice young stag; I smoke and hang my own."
"I'd love some, Darendarr," Taeauna said gently, "but let me carve and serve. You look tired."