by Ed Greenwood
"All talk and swagger," Dauntra sneered, flying higher. "Just like all the rest of-"
Something struck her, then. Something silent, that came racing through the air like a vast, invisible wave. Magic, a great unleashing, from… she turned toward where that wave had come from, catching the eyes of Lorlarra, Juskra, and Ambrelle, as they all flew up from the Dark Helms they'd been slaughtering. They, too, turned in the direction of… What lay in just that direction from here?
Ult Tower. Arlaghaun's, now; that lone, distant elder fortress.
"Something's happening, sisters," Dauntra said unnecessarily.
"Something big," Juskra agreed, scratching at her bandages. "I wonder if Oh-So-High-And-Mighty Arlaghaun's grip on Galath is slipping, at last?"
"Come on, sisters mine," Ambrelle said severely, tossing back her purple-black hair as she beat her powerful wings, soaring upwards.
The three younger Aumrarr mounted up into the sky in her wake, the Dark Helm in Dauntra's grip yelling in fear as he saw how high up he was being taken.
"Oh," she said to him, gently and courteously, "I am sorry."
And she let go.
His dying scream hadn't a chance even to get properly going before it ended in a heavy thud. On rocks. Ah, well. It was high time Dark Helms in Galath had a bad day. Or six.
Grinning ruthlessly, the four Aumrarr shook out their wings, put their faces into the wind, and streaked off across the sky.
As she fell out of bright mists, there came a joyful cry from near at hand.
"Tay!" Rod greeted her joyfully, embracing her. "Where's Deldragon?"
Arms tightening around him, Taeauna burst into tears.
"Oh," Rod said, feeling suddenly sick. "Oh, God."
Awkwardly, he tried to comfort her, to stroke her back, only to bump his hands against the stumps of her wings and abruptly abandon the attempt in confusion.
Taeauna's grip was so tight he could barely breathe, and when she rocked back and forth in her sobbings, she took him off his feet on the "back" and slammed him back down on the "forth" as effortlessly as if he'd been one of those cardboard cutouts of people set up in a video rental store. Jesus. Jesus shitting Christ. Or, glorking, wasn't that what Falconaar said? Jesus glorking Christ?
Glorking, indeed. There was a tall black castle right behind Taeauna. Rod lifted his head to look. In a forest, with the nearest trees all dead and bare.
Oh, shit.
A huge, square, massive fortress of stone, with four bulging turrets at its corners, one of them soaring above the rest like a huge black rocket ship. It ended in a needle-pointed spire high, high above them, looking from down here as if it were scratching the tattered white clouds.
"Yintaerghast," he said quietly, and felt Taeauna stiffen in his arms and then turn in his grasp like an angry whirlwind, to stare and then start to curse.
Which was when the air around them glowed, sang, and formed a lattice-work of what looked like massive prison bars, or some sort of large cage for elephants or dragons or the like, and…
Was gone again, the singing dwindling into wild, high shrieking, like someone slashing harp strings with a sword.
Not too far away, someone else spat out an astonished curse.
Rod and Taeauna turned to see who, in time to see the wizard Arlaghaun finish a second spell with a triumphant flourish, his brown eyes blazing, and point at both of them.
Aside from a brief crackling in the air around those two pointing fingers, nothing happened.
"So…" Arlaghaun hissed slowly, glaring at Rod. "You must be the Dark Lord! Well, there's another way…"
The brown flames of his eyes seemed to glow brighter and grow larger. Taeauna's mouth tightened and she drew back her sword to hurl, but Rod grabbed at her wrist. "We'll be needing that. What if he turns it back at us like some sort of arrow?"
The crackling seemed to be inside Rod's head this time, those two angry brown eyes hanging in the middle of his head like glaring dagger-points. Infuriating, violating, but… fading now, into futility.
"Lord Rod?" Taeauna murmured, still clinging to him.
"Yes?"
"Ah. You're still 'you.' Another spell fails."
The anger on Arlaghaun's sharp-nosed face was open and ugly, now.
"So much for ruling your mind," Taeauna said in Rod's ear. "It seems, in Falconfar, you are immune to most-perhaps all-magic."
"So it seems, indeed," the wizard' sneered, and waved his hand.
Behind him, lorn by the hundreds rose from the trees. Without pause, all of them swooped at Rod and Taeauna.
The Aumrarr spun around, tugging Rod with her. "Into the castle!" she cried. "It's our only escape!"
Rod needed no convincing. He put down his head and sprinted across the open sward, managing to run almost as fast as Taeauna.
A shadow fell across them, her shapely behind in front of his right arm turned and flexed, her sword swept up, and he swerved and slowed, to give her room to twist around and hack lorn.
"Keep running!" she shouted into his face, then grunted fiercely as her blade cut deep into a swooping lorn.
Rod heard them crash to the ground together and roll. He kept running.
Behind him Taeauna sobbed for breath, amid the wet and meaty sounds of her sword hacking flesh. When she cursed, a breath later, she sounded closer. Then, abruptly, Rod was plunging through the open castle door into cold gloom beyond.
His racing feet slipped on debris, leaving Rod gliding helplessly across a slick marble floor. Was it gravel? Fallen plaster? Did they have plaster in Falconfar? He slid for a long way before his right foot went out from under him and he crashed down on his backside, coming to a slow and groaning stop amid much dust.
"Tay?" he coughed, wincing, as he rolled over and up to his knees. "Taeauna?"
He was kneeling in the dimness of a huge, high hall, the open door a window of bright sunlight, and he was alone.
"Taeauna?" he fought his way to his feet and into a slipping, arm-flailing run, back across the great open expanse of rubble-strewn marble to the door.
To blink at the sunlight, and no sign of Taeauna at all, only the wizard Arlaghaun standing triumphantly, arms folded across his chest, with a sky full of wheeling lorn behind him.
Lorn that came rushing down at Rod, diving with talons spread, six-no, seven-no, nine- converging on him.
In sudden terror he tugged at the half-open door, trying to get it closed before they plunged through. It was thrice his height, as thick as he was, and looked as if it hadn't moved in centuries. It moved not for him, feeling as firm as fused stone against his struggles.
Lorn loomed, sunlight blotted out behind them, and Rod turned and fled, tears stinging his eyes.
Tay was gone, taken or torn apart, and he was alone.
Alone in Falconfar, its so-called Dark Lord… Powerless, knowing nothing, and fleeing alone into a haunted castle.
He was not going up the stairs, not going to meet that faceless old man in the chair. He refused to be herded, or to be slain, or to wind up in some chamber with a scepter in a stone that he was supposed to draw forth and hear angelic choirs singing that he was the new Lord Archwizard; or worse yet, the old, old one returned! No, he would not allow any of this to happen!
Rod ran past the stairs going up, and another flight that went down into utter darkness, and through archways into a labyrinth of crumbling, once-grand chambers beyond.
He wasn't quite sure why castles always had these high, echoing rooms, big and cold and seemingly used for nothing more than rushing through like some airport or train station, but they always did.
This wasn't his castle, not something he'd created or written about, but it had been in one of the first Holdoncorp games, back when he eagerly read and reviewed everything they sent him. In the early days, when they'd still bothered to send him things for review. Before he'd realized they ignored his comments and criticisms, despite the contract. Back then, the Dark Helms had been skeletons in black armo
r, commanded by animated empty suits of black plate armor that had a few showy, menacing magical powers.
In that early game, Yintaerghast had been a vast ruin for players to send their characters into, exploring. They were supposed to kill a few monsters, find a little treasure, and… Oh, yes, try to find a way back out again.
Well, that wouldn't be a problem for him; there was always the front door just a few rooms back that way, standing stuck open, so… Wait a bit, though, there'd been something more.
Something that would explain why no lorn were clawing at him right now, or flying all around these rooms like great bats, and why Arlaghaun wasn't standing gloating over him right now, too.
Rod stopped in a hall where ornate, high-backed loungers had collapsed into heaps of gilded half-wreckage and dust. He had to think, and try to stop panting, and try very hard not to cry.
If Taeauna was gone, she was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing left for him to care about.
There was nothing left for him at all.
He might just as well draw the dagger at his belt and kill himself. If he could, that is, since he was in a world where he healed in mere moments.
Rod shrugged. He'd never liked pain, and lying there enduring it seemed pointless. Not to mention something that Taeauna would have been openly contemptuous of. God, he missed her tart comments and angry snaps at him!
He tried to laugh at that, but it came out as sobs.
His hand went to his dagger.
The wizard with the blazing brown eyes pointed his sharp nose up into the sky and raised his voice, just a little. "You will stay. If he seeks to come out, keep hidden and let him get a little way from the castle, so he can't run back in time. Then pounce and capture him. If he gets away, all of you-mark me well: every last lorn now here-will pay for it with your lives, and your deaths will not be swift."
Arlaghaun waited for the lorn encircling him to bow their heads in assent. When all of them had, including the oldest and largest, who commanded the rest, he turned, took a step, and vanished.
Lorn hissed in hatred and distaste, and glared at the spot where he'd stood.
"Patience," the oldest, most battered one-the one whose hide was going purple and not just mottled brown-said to the others, as he turned away. "There will come a day. Oh, yes, there will come a day…"
When he became aware, of the dark, chill room around him again, Rod Everlar knew a lot of time had passed.
He felt… empty. Cried out. He lifted his head to look around, and was instantly aware of two things: something had moved, somewhere in the room, and he remembered something else about Yintaerghast; some Holdoncorp designer who wanted a test of brawn and wits had come up with a story for the castle that made it a prison and robbed those inside of magic.
It was shrouded, or shielded, in some mighty spell laid by a long-dead wizard that twisted the minds of all living creatures who entered the castle. That'd be this Lorontar mage Tay had mentioned; was he the man in the chair, upstairs?
It stripped away all their knowledge of magic: forever? Or just while they were inside? Well, either way, that'd be why Arlaghaun, and all wizards, would dare not enter…
Yes! It took away any magic at work on anyone, so wizards couldn't magically force some poor servant critter inside and expect it to go on obeying them the moment it was through the door.
Then there was that last bit, the prison bit. Well, he could test that himself, right now. All he had to do was find a window.
Apparently, the spell would make all the castle's empty windows look out into a swirling void that didn't allow anyone to leap, fall, fly, or climb out; those who tried just got thrust right back in. Or would that work on him, the immune Dark Lord?
If it did, he might be able to kill himself here, after all.
He'd been turning on his heel, hand on dagger and peering hard, all the time he'd been thinking these thoughts. Seeking any sign of whatever it was that had moved. He was still looking.
He'd looked up, too-twice-in case something was lurking overhead, but the lofty stone ceiling offered nothing more than a peeled, ruined painting and inky black tatters of cobwebs. Motionless tatters.
Rod drew his dagger and started to prowl the room, walking behind the heaps of ruined furniture. Whatever he'd seen, or thought he'd seen, it had been higher than floor level, but of course someone could crouch down.
Or some thing…
Something moved again, in the corner of his eye. Rod whirled around to peer at the shadows there. Nothing.
Angrily he strode in that direction, then abruptly spun all the way around again, hoping to catch something, even if only fleetingly, at the edge of his vision, again.
Again, nothing. There was nothing but the darkness.
Yet he didn't feel alone in the room. He looked around again, walking into the two darkest corners, one after the other, and finding… nothing.
So, was he keeping company with something invisible? Either a monster or some ghost of the castle or… "Well, who'd just gone missing?
"Taeauna?" he asked, trying to make his voice sound calm, as if he were just casually interested. And certainly not afraid.
There was, of course, no reply.
Shit, he could stand here forever! Enough of this foolishness. Stride out of the room, then turn to see if anything followed. If it didn't, all the better, and if it did, he'd at least be facing it and could get this over with. Now, there was the arch he'd come in through, so wide it took up almost one entire side of the room. There was a smaller arch in yonder wall, and a closed door in the center of that wall; the first normal-sized door he'd seen in Yintaerghast thus far.
So, which?
Back out the way he'd come, for now, Rod decided instantly. He'd best look around all the large, open rooms on the ground floor first, before he started going through any doors, and ended up lost.
There was no hurry, after all. He wasn't going anywhere fast, because he didn't dare step out into the forest at night, and by day, well, there were no doubt lots of lorn perched in the trees all around, ordered to stay and wait for him to emerge.
Rod cast a last look all around the room and made for the door, dagger held ready. If there was one thing he had left to do, it was to find that wizard and kill him for what he'd done to Taeauna. It wasn't as if somehow he could find his way back home, to the real world, since he hadn't the faintest flipping idea of how to even begin doing that.
It had to be him, this Arlaghaun the Doom of Galath, who'd done something to Tay.
Rod got to the door, whirled around one last time to look at the usual nothing, and froze.
There was something, all right. About a dozen feet away from him, and drifting silently closer.
A black cloak, with a cowl, hanging in the air in the shape it would have if someone were wearing it, the cloak on their shoulders and their head looking right at him as they wore that hood up over it.
Rod swallowed. Icy fear? Oh, yeah…
He knew the dagger in his hand was trembling as he raised it, point thrust right at the thing.
Its slow, steady drift toward him didn't slow.
"W-who are you?" Rod asked, trying to sound calm but firm. Even in his own ears, his voice came out like a young child's high, shrill squeak.
There was no reply from the empty cowl, as the silent thing moved menacingly forward, rising a little as if to engulf him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was taller than he was, now, and as dark as deep night, looming over him, and flowing soundlessly forward. Swift-rising fear took Rod a step hack from it, and then another, before he swallowed and deliberately stepped forward again. Right into it.
He felt a moment of intense chill. Then there was a sort of sigh, all around him, and he was blinking around at the gloom of the chamber again. The cloak was… gone.
Rod whirled around to see if it had just passed through him, like the sort of ghost that lurked in older movies. In doing so-to fin
d that it hadn't- his gaze dropped down long enough to see the last of its darkness fading away into nothingness, in a ring around his legs. He shivered again. Gods, he felt cold.
Had it… gone into him? Infused him, somehow, with its essence, to poison him or eat him away, or control or just wreck his mind?
Dared he even think such thoughts, if he was the Shaper of Falconfar? Did his thinking of something make it real, or at least more likely?
"Oh, shit," he snapped, exasperated. No Taeauna was standing nigh his shoulder to answer him.
And suddenly he was in tears all over again.
Ult Tower loomed up, vast and tall. Though they were heading for its upper windows, they did not expect to find it unguarded.
They were not disappointed.
The lorn burst out of the window at them, talons reaching for Dauntra's head. The Aumrarr caught hold of one of its feet, then folded her wings upwards and together, becoming in an instant a teardrop plunging to earth. The lorn was jerked helplessly after her. Then Juskra caught hold of its other foot as she swooped past, folding the creature over onto its back. Lorlarra and Ambrelle's boots struck the lorn in this awkward position, diving as fast as they could.
The lorn's spine shattered even before its body was broken around the lip of another, lower window. Dauntra flung it aside so her sisters could streak past, into Ult Tower.
"Ah, sisters," Juskra cried, "it feels good to abandon skulking and running for a bit! 'Tis time to let the wizards worry!"
"Let us hope, sisters mine," Ambrelle called back, as the four Aumrarr burst through, the deserted room and out into a passage beyond, "that they worry for more than a fleeting moment or two, this time. I want to be more than a mere annoyance, casually slain."
"Now that's an epitaph," Lorlarra commented, as they parted to swoop past a stiffly striding titan of spell-animated armor on either side. Its arms ended in bristling fists of bared swords affixed at all angles, but it was too slow to harm them.