by Ed Greenwood
That brisk sprint took them down the rest of that passage, around a corner, and into an even darker passage, where Garfist's winded state brought them to a panting halt.
Iskarra sniffed. "Mildew. Well, better than rotten meat and eggs."
Garfist waved such trifles away with one hairy fist. "What made the dratted cart explode, anyway?" he growled.
"Your wits did get scrambled, didn't they?" Iskarra asked sharply, tapping his forehead with one bony finger. "The wizard. Taking care of his man, who might be made to talk."
"Shit. He'll come after us, won't he?"
"Not if he doesn't think we're still alive," Iskarra snapped, tugging open the front of her clothing one more time. "So you are going to wear the crawlskin as a pair of fittingly huge breasts, and become the heftiest washerwoman in all Falconfar, and I'm going back to my skeletal self. And we're just going to have to hope he hasn't left some sort of magic in our minds that will let him find us and rule us at will."
Garfist stared at her. "Oh, shit," he rumbled. "We're right back in it, aren't we? Even worse than fleeing an angry Arlsakran, this is. Running around a keep hoping a skulking wizard doesn't see us while a siege sets in."
Iskarra smiled and shrugged, as the crawlskin rose and wrapped itself high around her bare chest, shaping huge breasts that rose invitingly toward him. "You want to live out your life sitting in boredom, Gulkoon, growling about the adventures of your youth as they fade in your memories? Let's live a little!"
Garfist's hands clamped down on her proffered false flesh, and by those shapely handholds tugged her against him. "Oh, 'tisn't adventurous living I'm so wary of, Viper. 'Tis more the dying that's got me worried!"
"I wish you hadn't put your blade through him," Yardryk snapped, his dark purple eyes sharp with anger. Running his hands nervously through his curly gold hair, he looked down again at the Bowrock servant sprawled on the floor. A bright ribbon of blood was wandering lazily over the stones from the just-slain man's throat to wherever a low spot would make it pool.
"Next time, when I say 'strike him senseless,' I expect a loyal swordsman of the master we both serve to do just that."
"You know magic, wizard," the warrior said curtly, "and I tell you not how to do that. Kindly leave the brawling to me. He was about to scream, and my blade prevented that."
Yardryk sighed and turned away. "Very well," he said curtly.
The warrior watched him, glowering. Arrogant young hightrews!
The least of Arlaghaun's apprentices, but still, one of the Master's apprentices.
Thinking dark thoughts about idiot warriors, Yardryk bent to the satchel he'd carried since he'd teleported them both out of the wagon that he'd just been forced to destroy, throot it, though at least he'd had the pleasure of obliterating a dozen-some of the most eager Bowrock knights, along with it. He undid the clasps, and plucked out two metal spheres. They were smooth, they were heavy, and they more than filled his palms. He turned to the warrior.
"Korryk? I need you to hold these."
The warrior stared at him coldly for a moment, and then strolled slowly forward and took the spheres into his own hands, his every movement a slow, eloquent shout of "you're no better than me" insolence.
Ah, but to be a wizard was to be unloved.
"Thank you,"' Yardryk told him expressionlessly, turning back to his satchel. "Please, for your own safety, take great care to keep the spheres apart."
He wasn't certain how much Korryk knew of the task they were here to do, or how much the veteran could correctly guess. Arlaghaun wasn't in the habit of telling warriors all that much, but then veteran warriors in his service didn't live long enough to be veterans if they were stupid.
Yardryk drew in a deep breath, took the little braziers out of the satchel, and then the little sack of powdered steel-shavings and filings that had once been tempered swordblades; naught else would do-and silently thanked the Falcon that he had no need of flint strikers and kindling and the messy business of blowing on sparks just so. Filings in brazier, will the flame to flare at his fingertip, murmur the words that would make the iron burn readily, touch and step back. One brazier, and then two.
Yardryk made a little show of placing one burning brazier in just the right spot on the floor, stepping back to frowningly survey it, stepping forward to move it a few inches, stepping back again, and finally nodding. Yes.
The other brazier he left where it was, hoping Korryk would heed it not. He busied himself over the first one, getting out a dummy wand (a simple stick of wood, not magical in the slightest) to wave is he used his other hand to trace the runes in the in that mattered, murmuring after each the word that would make it take fire and glow, building on the previous runes in a long, faintly humming chain that rose up from the brazier like a column of purple flame.
He walked around it, peering at it as if seeking flaws. Stopping finally on the far side of the shaft of purple magic from the warrior, Yardryk nodded as if satisfied with his work, and commanded, "Korryk, I need those spheres now."
The warrior ambled over in a slow slouch this time, giving a gusty sigh to make it very clear that magic bored him. He thought it was scarcely as useful as a shrewdly swung sword, and for something treated with such wary awe, it seemed to need a lot of help.
Yardryk gave the sullen warrior a tight little smile, and pointed at one rune in the humming column. "This one; I need you to touch that ball to this rune. Gently. Don't worry, nothing bad will happen."
Reluctantly, giving Yardryk a glare that was heavy with suspicion, Korryk rather gingerly extended the sphere.
The column bulged to take it in, for the first time giving the impression that the purple air, or whatever it was, was rushing up and down past the runes, and now rushing around and over the metal ball, too.
By now, a tingling should be rushing through Korryk's arm. Nothing painful or even uncomfortable, but… unusual.
"Do… do I let go of it?" the warrior asked, sounding more wary than sneering. At last.
"No," Yardryk said warningly. "That would be bad."
He stepped forward, drew another rune, and chanted a swift incantation.
For a moment, as Korryk stared up at the rushing purple column, nothing happened.
Then, as swiftly as a striking snake, the column bent over, swooped down from on high toward the second brazier, and swung sideways in its plunge at the last moment to race at the second sphere Korryk was holding. It swirled around the sphere for a rushing moment that left the warrior's arms shuddering and his mouth open in rising fear, and then swooped away, to bury its end in the second brazier.
Yardryk smiled tightly and lifted his hand with the careless indolence of an indulged and haughty emperor.
And the purple snake rose and straightened into a smooth, high archway, rooted in the two braziers, and hauled Korryk off his feet, still clinging to the two spheres that were now embedded in the curving purple arc of magic, well off the ground.
"I-help, Yardryk! I can't let go!"
"No," the wizard replied, almost purring in satisfaction. "You can't."
There was a crackling in the air, a sudden tension and heaviness that shouted silently that something powerful was about to happen.
As the warrior started to kick wildly, thrashing his arms in increasingly frantic attempts to get free, the air along the inside of the purple column started to shimmer, like the air above a raging fire. Within its shimmering, the shadowy dimness of the cellar room split apart like tearing canvas, to reveal a larger, slightly better lit chamber beyond, a cavernous space that was certainly not visible outside the purple arch.
Something was moving in that larger hall, something-no, several somethings-that flapped and glided, flying swiftly nearer…
A trio of lorn, and then another, swooped through the arch and soared up to circle the cellar room of Deldragon's keep. Then they shot out of its doorway, wings raked back, heading elsewhere fast.
More lorn followed, and Dark Helms, too,
a score or more of men in black armor, drawn swords in their hands and visors being swung down into place as they stepped into the gloom of the cellars.
"You see, Korryk," Yardryk said gloatingly, "just as you were ordered by our master to serve me, I was ordered to complete a specific task here: to construct a magical gate between our master's keep and this one. Unlike a tantlar, many living things like lorn and Dark Helms, for instance, can traverse a gate swiftly, at the same time. A tantlar-link can be destroyed very easily, by extinguishing the fire its destination tantlar is being warmed in, or removing that tantlar from the flames. This gate, however, feeds on magic hurled at it, and can even survive these braziers being extinguished or removed; it will only collapse when what powers it is gone. And it's powered by the life force of a living human, or humans."
"No!" the warrior shouted. "Noooo!"
"One such could have been the servant you killed," Yardryk added, with a ruthless smile. "Now, it's going to be you."
He turned his back and walked away, heading for the doorway of the cellar, where the trapped warrior's screams would be less deafening.
If Arlaghaun had been telling the truth about how many creatures he was going to send through the gate to overrun Deldragon's keep, those screams might not last all that long.
Gates were hungry things.
"Well," Garfist rumbled, "I don't exactly look like someone even a starving sailor would lust after. I mean, look at this face! Tits can only do so much."
"Yes, but what tits," Iskarra grinned.
He cuffed her playfully across the forehead. "Now we have to steal something that'll do up over them. All this for a bit of food and wine."
"Lantern, don't forget the lantern," Iskarra reminded him, earning herself a sour look from the feminine travesty Garfist Gulkoon had become.
"Look at me!" he snarled, waving two shovel-sized, hairy hands. "Who'm I supposed to fool, eh? I mean, how many blind folk am I likely to meet on my way to the kitchens? Blind folk without hands to feel these-and then the rest of me-with?"
"Gar, don't be surly. We have to eat. The occasional man still looks at me, remember."
"Aye, but… but…" Garfist became aware of Iskarra's dangerous glare and the dagger that had very suddenly appeared in her bony hand, very close to him, and settled for saying, "but there's no safe thing I can say just now, is there?"
"Well, you could say 'Dearest Iskarra, whose body I will worship fervently and often in these days ahead, you are right in all things, always, and of course in this, so how can I best pass myself off is a woman, I who am not worthy to be counted among womanhood no matter how hard I try?' But somehow I doubt you're going to say that.”
"I can't say that," Garfist rumbled. "Ye lost me after 'fervently and often.' I sorta got… got…"
"To thinking about that. Of course." Iskarra's voice dripped with acid. "Things will go much better, Gar dear, if you just stop trying to think and start trying to do what I tell you to do. Whenever you don't, you wind up finding one thing with frightening speed: trouble."
"Found a lantern," Garfist replied sullenly, pointing.
"Good. Go fetch it. Yes, with your front all hanging out like that; if someone sees you, just leer at them, and don't run or look furtive or guilty. And bring the lantern back here. Then we'll talk about finding clothes."
Garfist nodded and trudged off down the passage. Iskarra watched his broad-shouldered figure dwindle toward the distant lantern, hanging from a beam where two passages met, and winced. He looked less like a woman-even a large and lumbering woman-than anything she'd ever seen.
Garfist reached up for the lantern, and then lowered his arm again and peered intently down one of the side-passages. He thrust his head forward, sinking it between his shoulders like a vaugril, and then stalked down the side-passage, slowly and intently, hunting prey.
Iskarra flattened herself against the cold stone wall, wincing. "No, you great stupid ox!" she hissed. "Don't try to get clever. Just get the lantern and get back here. Don't…"
Garfist burst into view around the corner again, running hard, his false crawlskin breasts bouncing up and slapping him in the face with every pumping stride. There was a gutted boar carcass in one of his hairy hands, still trailing the hook it had undoubtedly been hanging from.
Right behind Garfist, and running hard, was a red-faced, snarling cook with a great cleaver flashing in his hand. Followed by another four-no, seven-other cooks and scullions, waving various knives and skewers and pans.
Iskarra whispered every profanity she could think of as she waved to Garfist and then turned and ran.
Deeper into the cellars, where there just might be a place to hide.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fair morn, Lord Deldragon," Taeauna I greeted the velduke gravely, striding up to him. Rod kept a careful pace behind her, as if he were her faithful shadow. "How best can we…?"
Deldragon was wearing a smile as he lifted his hand in greeting and opened his mouth to speak, but his face fell into astonishment and anger as he looked past his two guests, his ice-blue eyes seeming to catch fire. Rod and Taeauna were turning to see what disaster was behind them as he bellowed, "Lorn! Raise the alarum! Lorn in the keep!"
Bowrock knights and armsmen erupted out of passages and doorways by the dozens, and the velduke roared, "Bows! Guard every archer we have, from this moment on! I don't want a single one harmed by lorn, and I want every glorking archer out here and filling these lorn with arrows!"
Even before the nearest knight could shout a warning, the velduke whipped around, sword leaping into his hand to precede his turn, and so, without even meaning to, spitted a lorn that was diving at him, claws spread wide and poised to rend.
Taeauna hacked at one of those claws to make sure it didn't fold up around the velduke's blade and rake him as it died; Deldragon struck its other aside himself.
It shuddered and started to curl up in death; as Deldragon shook it off his steel, kicking it toward the floor, the thunder of many hastening boots was heard in the passage the lorn had erupted from. Bowrock knights formed a line of bared steel across the passage even before the first Dark Helms burst into view.
The velduke groaned aloud at their numbers, for the passage looked to be filled for a long way back with a seemingly endless flood of gleaming black armor. "Fall back!" he shouted. "Fight and fall back, fight and fall back to the Warhorn Chamber! We'll make a stand there!"
More lorn swooped at him, over the heads of the surging army of black-armored warriors, and Deldragon pointed his blade at them as if it were a how, whispered something, and then vanished behind a sudden bright blossoming of flame from its tip. In an instant that fire filled the air before him with a roiling sphere of fire, and started to spit forth long tongues of flame.
Those tongues lashed out thrice the length of a lance to sear and sizzle lorn after shrieking lorn, until they circled away from that offered death, squalling. The velduke bellowed, "Men of Bowrock! Get out of the way!" and leveled his sword, even as knights and armsmen scampered aside, aiming it right down the throats of the onrushing Dark Helms.
Who staggered, screaming and writhing, as they cooked in their armor and flames raged among them. The velduke calmly moved his blade back and forth, seeking to immolate as many as he could. Some Dark Helms tried to struggle on into the inferno, but most turned and tried to flee, pushing and even hacking at their fellows behind them.
Yet all too soon, the flames flickered, faltered, spat, coughed, and went out, the velduke's sword going dark.
"Men of Bowrock!" he shouted. "Form a line! Spears to the fore!"
A few of the Dark Helms raced forward to try to surround the velduke, before Bowrock's knights and armsmen could block the way, but Deldragon retreated even as Bowrock spears and hurled shields struck and assailed those few bold foes, and Taeauna stepped forward in front of him like a champion, sword raised.
"Tady of the Aumrarr," Deldragon said approvingly, "again you risk yourself in my batt
le!"
Taeauna shrugged. "I am an Aumrarr; I fight Dark Helms. That blade of yours can't burn every last one of them."
"True," the velduke agreed grimly, as the men of Bowrock clashed with the Dark Helms in front of them. "I can't call up that power many more times ere it's exhausted; I doubt it will last through this siege. Even if I do."
"None of us will survive to see the siege begin if we don't deal with what's in your cellars now," Taeauna warned.
"The well, again?"
"No. The lorn, all these Dark Helms; look at them! This can be no new tantlar, lord. There's a wizard somewhere in your keep who's just opened a gate. And all the armies outside your walls will pour right through it, if we don't destroy it."
Darendarr Deldragon went white and said a very dirty word. His hand shot up to stroke his flaxen mustache, as unnecessarily as always.
"Come!" said Taeauna, clapping him on the shoulder. "Leave the battle here to your knights; someone else can rally them in the Warhorn Chamber. Bring two of your best blades, and show me a way down into the cellars that isn't already full of Dark Helms!" She waved at the passage full of fighting, hacking, and dying men in bright armor and in dark. It was a. hopeless tangle of shouting combatants, heaped corpses, and the sagging or writhing dying.
The velduke stared at her for a moment, shaking his head. Then he bit his lip, whirled around, and bellowed, "Tarsil! Amandur! Belros! To me!"
"Lord, I come!" someone shouted, through the din, and "Lord!" someone else echoed; Rod saw a tall knight pushing through the milling Bowrock knights from one direction, and two armsmen doing the same from another.
The knight got there first. "Lord?"
"Tarsil," Deldragon snapped, "take command here. Try to hold the Helms, and have the archers save their shafts for any lorn they see. If many lorn break past you, or the Dark Helms press, fall back to the Warhorn Chamber and make a stand there. Do it!"