by Ed Greenwood
So he'd missed the whole glowing air thing, or had he? This looked almost as if he'd been arranged, for some sort of ritual.
"Taeauna?" he asked softly.
Silence. He couldn't even hear her breathing.
He put a hand up and took hold of the metal thing on his chest, and was abruptly aware of a reek of smoke and a flash of heat.
Not from it, but inside his head… and linked to it, or caused by his touching it. Yes, definitely. His fingers told him it was cool, his nose told him it smelled of nothing more than metal and possibly a little whiff of long-ago oil of some sort, but his mind was telling him that it had erupted in some sort of intense heat, and something had burned, swiftly and sharply, leaving behind smoke.
Rod sat up, holding the enchanted gewgaw carefully, and peering all around the room. No servants, and no guards. Bars across the insides of the doors, where Taeauna had put them last night, and-
"Jesus!" he spat, flinging the metal thing down and hurling himself forward off the bed, landing hard on his knees and clawing his way across the rugs. "God, no!"
Taeauna of the Aumrarr was as naked as he was, and was lying sprawled and senseless on the floor halfway across the room, face up, and not breathing. Her face looked empty, her eyes blank. And the fingers of her left hand, stretched out toward him, were charred to ash.
"Taeauna!" he cried, touching her cheek. "Taeauna!" Her skin was cold, and when he shook her gently, she moved loosely under his touch, as if he were rocking something empty. She wasn't breathing!
Frantically he tried to remember that CPR course, the mouth-to-mouth business of wiping the plastic dummy with a foul-tasting alcohol wipe… hyperextend neck, mouth sweep with his finger-shit!
There was soot on her tongue; it turned to black slime on his finger when he wiped at it. He'd let her head fall back as he stared at it, and there was more soot now, like black powder, leaking out of her nostrils. She was dead, she must be.
Rod Everlar burst into tears.
He had to do something, had to… Through a watery, blinding rain of weeping he clawed his way across the room, around the room. Where was her goddamned sword?
His dagger! Yes! There, with his clothes, yes, yes!
He snatched it up, raced across the room to her. Slice the palm, the fingers not the palm, so cold and easy, blood welling out red and fast, fingertips dripping…
Get them in her mouth, you idiot, her mouth!
Cursing, he crouched over her while beating his fist with the dagger still clenched in it on the rug. Rod thrust his fingers into that open, slack mouth, rubbing his blood into her tongue, holding the tongue down with his fingers so it wouldn't fall back and block her throat… feeling it well out of him, trickling, trickling; surely, if he could get the blood to flow down her throat…
If she wasn't stone cold dead already, and his precious special healing powers were too late and no good, that is.
His heart leaped; the blue-white glow! The glow! He pulled his fingers out, but found the glow was coming from his palm as it healed itself smoothly; from that open, motionless mouth, nothing.
Feverishly he slashed himself again, twice this time, deep crisscrossing cuts that almost christened the rug before he could get his cupped palm back to her mouth and pour the blood in.
"Tay," he pleaded, trying to curl himself around her cold curves, "live! Live, damn you! Please, please!"
He felt weak and sick; all that blood, flowing out of him. It would pass, this feeling, as soon as he healed. He knew that, but still… still… he was alone in Falconfar, all alone, his life empty, its heart and center gone, just like that. He didn't even know what had happened to her!
"Tay," he sobbed. "Tay…"
She quivered, suddenly, under him. Again, a sudden spasm that shook her. Rod clawed at her. "Tay? Taeauna?"
He could see the blue-white glow in her mouth, rising like fire; she was lapping weakly at his hand now, like a kitten.
Rod's tears blinded him, he gulped and sobbed helplessly, saying her name again and again until she said weakly, "Yes, 'tis me, lord. I'm not likely to forget my name now, with you bawling it over and over. I'll live. I think."
Rod snatched her up into an embrace, frantic to kiss her, to hold her, which was when he became aware that someone was pounding on a door, close by, and sharp womens' voices were calling, "Taeauna of the Aumrarr? Taeauna? Lady of the Aumrarr?"
"Help me into the bed," Taeauna gasped, into Rod's ear, "and throw some furs over me. Don't let anyone in until your hand is whole again. They must not see what your blood does, or half Galath will know you are a Shaper before nightfall, and every Doom, lackspells-wizard, and petty tyrant in all Falconfar will be in here trying to seize you!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The head-sword of the velduke's guard was a tall, stern knight in magnificent armor, whose face had just gone from cold and professional to open-jawed disbelief. "New swords and arrows? You tongue-teasing me?"
"Not yet," Iskarra purred at him, like a Stormar alley-lass.
The knight looked at her weathered face, misjudged her age a trifle, and took her flirtation as a jest.
He grinned, still shaking his head at what fair falcon's fortune had brought him, and said, "Well, good traders, I'll have to ask you to step down and have a sit, yonder; there's ale. We'll unload your wares, go through them, and pay good gold roezels, counted out to you on yon barrelhead-fair market price, as good as you'll get anywhere-when we're done. My men will take your wagon from here."
Iskarra and Garfist climbed down, rather stiffly. They had spent much of the night sitting in a jammed, unmoving line of wagons seeking to enter the keep; dawn had come while they were still outside the gates. The dark cloud left their minds as suddenly as if it had been chopped off by a cook's cleaver, as their boots touched the cobbles of the gloomy keep courtyard. Too weary to be thankful, they started the trudge over to where promised ale waited.
Their wagon was backed to a dock, posts were fitted into sockets in the cobbles and the horses tethered to them, and the wagon doors were swung open. One wagon-guard trotted down from the dock to join Garfist and Iskarra, giving them a "just watch yourselves" look as he arrived and held out his hand for a tankard.
A gang of burly, sweat-soaked men who'd obviously been heaving cargo for most of the day strode wearily forward with some of the velduke's knights, and the gray wagon's load was inspected and brought out onto the dock in an astonishingly short time. Garfist, Iskarra, and the guard carefully refrained from looking at each other as it became apparent that the men of Bowrock had found no wizard, second guard, or false front of stacked crates.
Yardryk, it seemed, was as clever as he thought he was. Thus far, at least.
The head of the guard was as cheerful as if dozens of lasses far younger and more beautiful than Iskarra had just agreed to tongue-tease him for days on end, when he strode up to them and pronounced that their arrows were, "The best I've ever seen, and the blades aren't far behind that, either!"
Bright gold coins were counted out and bagged under the watchful noses of the two scruffy drovers and the wagon-guard, the tall stern knight clapped Garfist on the back like an old friend and pronounced trading with them "a proper pleasure," and they were requested to depart.
The wagon-guard took firm hold of the sacks of coins; Garfist and Iskarra, uncomfortably aware of the watchful eyes of many Bowrock guards, were forced to shrug, exchange glances, and head for the horses without dispute.
Garfist went around back to swing the wagon doors closed, and was unsurprised to find the guard's sword out and raised to menace him.
The guard remembered Iskarra in time to spin around as she slipped through the wagon from the front, but his spellguard against skaekur did him no good at all against the hairpin she kept coated with lursk. He slumped to the ground without hesitation, and Iskarra shrugged and let his head bounce. What need have cruel bastards for brains?
It took her a short, fumbling time to tie the co
in-sacks together and drape them over her neck before concealing all under the crawlskin, and a little while longer to drop her breeches and empty her bladder into the guard's half-full wineskin, drop a pinch of one of her powders into it, restopper it, and shake vigorously.
By then, Garfist had searched the man for weapons and found what he'd hoped to find: a dagger engraved with a smith's mark from somewhere else in Galath. He flung the wagon doors wide again and bellowed, "Aid! A spy from Murlstag, sent to harm Bowrock!"
Knights were swarming the wagon almost before Iskarra could get down from it and point back up at it with a trembling hand.
When they shouted questions at Garfist, he pointed with one massive hand at Iskarra. When all eyes were on her, she cried, "Yon guard, inside; we hired him in the market outside the gates of Wrathgard. Paid him good coin, too. And just now, our lawful and honest trade here done, we're securing the ropes inside the wagon to leave, and we catch him hauling out his wineskin and saying he needs to get to a well, somewhere in this keep, before we go! When we tell him that sounds witless, he draws steel on us. So Gar here lays him out a-dreaming, but you'd best take and bind him, and that wineskin, too!"
Frowning, knights rushed up into the wagon in a thunder of boots and a flashing of swords. Iskarra and Garfist watched them, backing away slowly and casually, until heavy hands fell on both of their shoulders, and they turned their heads to find unsmiling Bowrock guards saying rather coldly, "Our wizard would like you to give him some answers."
"Answers?" Garfist rumbled, eyeing the ring of swordpoints that had suddenly appeared, to encircle his throat.
"To questions he's bound to want to ask," a knight told him, indicating where they'd sat to take ale before. "Why don't we all just sit down and-"
The ear-shattering explosion that erupted behind them just then sent the gray wagon and its unfortunate horses whirling in all directions in many pieces. One of them was large enough to behead Garfist's knight, and the blast itself heaved the cobbles underfoot and hurled Iskarra and some of the smaller guards right in under the wheels of other wagons. Garfist received a blow on the shoulder that sent him spinning like a top, so he had many brief whirlings of time in which to see a variety of spectacular fires erupt amid the other wagons in the courtyard, and watch broken men and the gore spatter across the keep walls and then start to drip back down again.
Where the wagon and all those knights had been, there was nothing, nothing but scorch marks radiating outwards from a shallow pit in the cobbles. An unseen giant had taken a great greedy bite out of the front of the loading dock, and there were cracks in the floor that hadn't been there before.
As Garfist came whirling toward her, spitting a stream of curses as he plunged, bounced, groaned, and came skidding to a stop just the other side of the wagon wheel hard by her head, Iskarra rolled over, her head ringing, and wondered if she'd ever he able to hear anything again.
It seemed the wizard Yardryk was clever enough, after all.
Rod Everlar sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a housecloak embroidered with dancing unicorns-dancing unicorns? In Falconfar? Oh, right, there had been a row of them on the box of the very first Holdoncorp game-and said, "Tay? That's the last servant gone again, I think. You can come out now."
Taeauna smiled and reached up a hand to him; Rod drew in his breath sharply in wonder. It was the hand that had been fingers of ash and bone the last time he'd looked, but now it was whole again, as perfect as if it had never swung a sword or done any rough work, let alone been crisped in magical flames.
He took hold of her offered hand and peered at it closely, running his own fingers over its unblemished softness. "It was the gewgaw, wasn't it? You reached for it, and it burned you?"
"Hush," the Aumrarr murmured. "Be careful. We must speak as if a servant stands over us always, listening to what we say and writing it down. Come to bed."
Rod raised his eyebrows in such stunned astonishment that Taeauna giggled, and put the bed-furs to her mouth hastily to muffle her mirth. Then she lowered them enough to say in mock indignation, "By the Flying Falcon, do men think of nothing else? Really!"
At least, Rod hoped it was mock indignation.
Pointedly keeping the cloak on and wrapped around him, Rod slid in under the furs beside her, muttering, "Your lord obeys your command. So what am I supposed to be thinking about?"
In response, Taeauna ducked down under the furs, crooking her head in a clear signal for him to join her. When they were both entirely under the covers, she threw an arm over him, pulled herself close against him, and whispered, "Move about a little, and moan, as if we're… you know."
"What is this, method acting?"
Taeauna gave him a puzzled frown, and Rod shrugged and tried an amorous moan. The result left her fighting not to giggle again, a struggle she promptly abandoned.
"Tay," Rod murmured patiently, "I love being in bed with you, even if, you know, nothing happens, but like any other guy, I find the teasing gets a little wearing. What is this?"
Her face went serious in an instant, and she nodded. "Lord," Taeauna whispered, "this is the best way for us to talk together frankly, just now. The way you found me, the 'gewgaw,' as you call it; you should know what it does before anything else happens."
Rod moved his arm over her, growled as if in passion, and whispered into her armpit, "So tell me."
Taeauna firmly pushed his head away. "That tickles. Know then, lord, that I awakened before you, and sought the chamberpot. You were then- forgive me-flat on your back and snoring."
"Nothing to forgive," Rod said, carefully rolling over atop her but keeping his weight on his arms and off of her. Under him, Taeauna deftly rolled onto her front.."Say on."
"The usual glow in the air, and that… that thing appeared, above your chest, about the length of my leg-and don't go feeling along the length of my leg, lord, thank you very much. I climbed back onto the bed and stretched out my hand to catch it as it fell; not to take it from you or pluck it out of the air, hut to shield your chest from it. With those little points it has, and its weight, I saw it as no better than a dagger aimed at your chest. So I tried to catch it."
"And things didn't go well."
"Indeed. It fell, flamed the instant it touched my fingers, and as I let go, it spat lightning at me. You saw what it did, yet we were no more than the thickness of my hand above your chest, and it touched you not; not even one hair is scorched, and yes, I've looked. The bolt went down my arm and into me, and hurled me right off the bed, furs and all, and left me as you found me; wounded unto death."
Rod reached down under the linens and furs on his side of the bed, to where he'd slipped the gewgaw under discussion to keep the servants from seeing it.
Taeauna winced as he brought it up between them in the darkness, to peer at it curiously and turn it over and over in his hands.
"Are you seeing something, now?" she asked softly. "That castle?"
"Yes," Rod muttered. "Yes, and now, for the first time, I feel as if I very much want to go in there."
"Oh, shit," Taeauna whispered. "Oh, Rod."
Sounds were returning in waves, like surf pounding on Stormar shores. Iskarra winced and tried to move her fingers and toes. Thank the Falcon, everything responded, and there were no knife-like stabs of agony.
The dark, pitted curve of a well-traveled wagon wheel was hard by her head, and a stunned or unconscious Garfist was drooling on the other side of it. As she gazed at him, his eyelids fluttered and his lips shaped a disgusted, "Too bloody typical. Always I get the whack. Always."
Iskarra read his lips more than she properly heard those words, but hearing was coming back to her. Yes, it was coming back.
She risked turning her head, looking back to where the gray wagon had been. A few knights were standing looking grimly down at the shallow pit, but most activity and attention was on the fires flickering on other wagons, and the buckets of sand and water being dashed over them.
The courtyard gates had been closed, and there were more hard-eyed knights standing with their shoulders against them. A lot more hard-eyed knights.
She reached out a hand past the curve of the wheel to dig her fingers into Garfist. Who stiffened and rolled over to glare at her.
"Oh. Isk. I can't hear anything, Isk!"
She tapped an imperious and bony warning finger across her lips, then pointed at him and at herself and then upwards, miming a set of steps with her hand, and then pointing up again.
It was time for them both to slip away and up into the keep, before all the tumult died down and they were noticed again.
Thank the Falcon, Garfist was nodding agreement.
As the two roads converged, and the many-bannered armies riding along them drew very close to meeting, one commander gave a signal, and war-horns rang out again. They were promptly answered from the other glittering host.
One last reassuring exchange of "peaceful parley" notes. Good. Arduke Tethgar Teltusk did not allow himself to relax, however. He didn't think even a weasel like Glusk Chainamund would risk treachery after Devaer's stone-cold-simple orders and threats, but one never knew.
The wits one wizard could twist one way, another mage could as easily turn another way, after all.
"Ho, Teltusk!" the fat baron called, from beneath his fluttering, yellow-and-scarlet horned ox-head banners, all joviality in what looked like new silver-bright armor studded all over with great round rivet-heads. "Any sign of Deldragon knights?"
"None," the raven-haired arduke called back, in as affable a tone as he could muster. "I think he's hunkering down inside his best armor and just waiting for us to come a-battering!"
"Good!" Chainamund bellowed, straw-yellow mustache quivering. "Let this be a grand day for battering, then!"
Walking away from the courtyard of wagons down one of the dark stone passages slowly and casually, as if they belonged in the keep, had taken all the nerves Garfist and Iskarra had left to muster. By the time they reached a long, dark, rotting-food-stinking passage somewhere behind the kitchens, they'd been trembling and only too glad to break into a run.