by Ed Greenwood
"Those are Aumrarr, fool! If you can't tell lorn from women with wings, you shouldn't be up on these walls!"
He ducked aside as a young and achingly beautiful winged woman swooped in low over the ramparts, and winked at him. Hastily he gave her back a wave and a smile.
Lorlarra, flying in Dauntra's wake in a welter of disintegrating dark armor, blew him a kiss. That raised a ragged shout of laughter from the men on the battlements.
One of them called, "Looking for someone handsome?" He struck a pose.
It wasn't hard to tell that the four Aumrarr were peering at every face as they glided along above the walls. Soon fierce and scarred Juskra made a sudden, wordless sound and pointed, and the four winged women converged.
"Friggin' Falcon!" Garfist swore, as dark wings loomed. He grabbed a sword from the man beside him as he turned to Iskarra. "They're coming for us!"
"Of course they are," she said bitterly. "Who else would they be after, in all besieged Bowrock? I know not what we did to anger the Falcon, but I wish most fervently that…"
The man whose blade Garfist had borrowed tried to snatch it back. Garfist hung on to it, offering the man a hard elbow and a harder knee instead. They struggled together as Dauntra and Juskra sped past, plucked up Iskarra by clamping firm hands around each of her bony wrists, her drawn daggers waving vainly, and flapped up into the morning sky.
Lorlarra and Ambrelle slammed right into Garfist, knocking him free of the other warrior and the other warrior's blade, and caught him by the ankles as he rolled helplessly, the men of Bowrock scattering.
A moment later, Garfist was hanging head downward in the air, high over the heart of Bowrock, with two pairs of wings beating hard above him, their owners puffing and panting, and straps and dangling plates of dark armor flailing him across the face. He roared in anger and tried to squirm free, snaring the nearest armor-strap in one hairy fist and tugging, hard.
A wing slammed into the side of his head as his captors lurched, dipping alarmingly.
"Stop fighting us! You'll die if you fall!" Lorlarra gasped, from the other end of that strap.
"Yes!" Ambrelle added severely, through her own tangle of purple-black hair. "Stop struggling; we're rescuing you from all this!"
Garfist let go of the strap, and twisted his neck around until he could glare up at her. "Why?"
"We need hands that can act where we dare not go."
"Go to do what?" Iskarra called, as her pair of Aumrarr brought her near.
"Slay Dooms, rescue Falconfar… that sort of thing."
"I see," Iskarra said weakly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Put them on. Quickly.
The voice in his head was strong and firm, now;
whispering and suggesting no longer.
Rod drew on the gauntlets, halting in alarm for a moment as sudden lightning arced between them, crackling and spitting.
Now get out of the tomb. Hurry.
Rod hurried out of the chill, earthy darkness, out into a vivid purple glow that was already disgorging black-armored warriors. They trotted toward him, raising shields and hefting swords.
Point your fingers and blast them. A vivid image unfolded in his mind of how to unleash the powers of the gauntlets. Kill them all. Do NOT let the finger-beams touch the gate.
Rod pointed his fingers and blasted, hastily moving from one warrior to another. The gauntlets seemed able to spit one pencil-thin crimson beam per finger, if he concentrated on maintaining all the beams he willed into existence, but those beams shot out arrow-straight from his fingertips, and had to be aimed precisely. They melted through armor and flesh alike without pause, slaying almost as fast as he could aim them.
But the Dark Helms were fast, too. They came rushing at him in such desperate haste that Rod was almost forced back into the tomb, and they died so swiftly that they fell in heaps, forming a wall. He hurried along the slope, trying to keep from being literally buried in foes, foes who had plenty of swords and daggers to stab with.
Keep moving. Circle out and around the gate. Don't let any Dark Helms get where you can't see them. You must kill them all.
The finger-beams soon started to fade, reaching shorter and shorter distances, until there came a time when one of them sputtered and failed completely. The face of the foremost onrushing Dark Helm changed from terror to triumph.
Shake the gauntlets off, jump sideways at the last minute, and grab the horn-headed scepter!
Rod hesitated for an instant, and felt sickening surges in his arms and legs, forcing him to shake the gauntlets off-sickening because they were being done to him. He was as much a slave as any shackled, flogged unfortunate, but his master was sitting in his head!
The horn-headed scepter proved to unleash cones of ravening fire that could reduce several armored warriors to blackened, tumbling bones in the space of a deeply drawn breath. It was just a little slower at slaying than the gauntlets had been, which would have doomed him if there'd been many Dark Helms left.
However, only a few came trotting through the glowing purple arch now, sporadically, and perhaps twenty were left on the hill, skulking behind the bodies of their dead fellows, trying to get close enough to Rod to rush and hack at him before he could burn them down.
Rod felt sick. The stink of cooked Dark Helms was like burned roadkill, a reek so strong that it was almost choking. Part of him wanted to burn down every last Dark Helm, in Taeauna's name, and part of him was screaming that he was a writer, not any sort of fighter, and certainly not any sort of killer.
Yet here he was, dodging and ducking among the heaped dead, peering at wherever he thought a warrior or two was hiding.
Behind you, fool.
Rod spun around, scepter spewing flame even before he got properly turned. That was what saved him; the ribs beneath the arm that was swinging a sword at his head were boiling away before the blade could get to him, robbing its swing of strength and height so that it was falling free by the time it bounced off his shoulder and tumbled past. Rod crisped that warrior and the three right behind him in frenzied haste, as their sprint carried their collapsing bones almost into him.
And then there were no more Dark Helms, and the gate was pulsing bright purple, flickering and dancing.
Don't even look at the gate; for you, it's a trap. Get back to the tomb door, looking all around as you go.
Rod stumbled over bones and corpses, wondering how it was that flies discovered the dead so quickly, and where they all came from. He looked this way and that, but…
Keep looking around, idiot, the sharp voice snarled in his mind. A moment later, it added: There!
Someone was standing atop the tomb-hill, where there had been no one a moment earlier. Someone with burning brown eyes.
Arlaghaun.
That was all Rod had time to see before a spell burst in the air all around him, washing over him and setting the trampled grass aflame.
He felt heat on his face, heat that should have blistered and then blinded him, that should have scorched his hair off, consumed his flesh, and sent his ashen bones tumbling, but instead washed over him and was gone, leaving him tingling in three places along his belts, where enchanted items had suddenly faded away.
Sacrificed to save him, Rod thought blearily, as the mind-voice shouted at him, Aim the scepter! BLAST HIM!
He obeyed, but Arlaghaun was suddenly-not there. The hilltop was empty again.
Run to the tomb, and in, the mind-voice commanded. Look toward the gate as you go.
As if those words had been a stage cue, Arlaghaun appeared out of nowhere, standing just in front of his gate, his hands weaving the empty air in the intricate gestures of a powerful spell.
I THOUGHT so. The mind-voice sounded very satisfied. Fire the scepter at the gate. NOT at the wizard. At the gate.
Clenching his teeth, Rod did as he was told, knowing he had no choice anyway.
Close your eyes!
Rod wasn't quite fast enough. The gate's
explosion not only shook the hill and flung him to his knees atop some very hard armor, to say nothing of the dead man inside it, but it also seared his eyes with a white flash that snatched all Falconfar away. A flash that showed Rod a glimpse of Arlaghaun, arms windmilling wildly, being hurled forward onto his face.
Get into the tomb!
Eyes running, barely able to get up and keep from falling, Rod stumbled and swayed his way around heaps of cooked warriors, seeking the front slope of the hill he'd fled along just moments earlier.
Hurry!
He couldn't see properly through the streaming tears, couldn't-
He stumbled over a dead Dark Helm, his arm slamming down onto rising grass. He had reached the front slope of the tomb. Rod clawed his way along it, trying to hurry, until he found the doorway and fell through it.
Get well in, then turn around. Don't stop hurrying.
Had the voice in his mind sounded sarcastic?
Rod obeyed, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve, the horned scepter warm in his hand.
When he got his vision clear enough to be able to see more than watery light and dark, he found himself staring at a rectangle of sunlight. In the distance, that sunlight was falling on a great heap of dead Dark Helms. A gray-robed man was climbing the far side of that heap, rising higher and higher as he gained its top.
It was Arlaghaun. He was looking right at Rod, and smiling.
Rod aimed the scepter, but the voice in his mind said sharply, No. Waste it not. Put it bach in your belt, and draw forth the draeuth.
"The what?"
An image was thrust impatiently open in Rod's mind.
Oh. That strange metal thing he'd been guided to, back in the castle, that looked like a knuckleduster welded to a set of panpipes. Rod slid his fingers through its loop, and drew it out of his belt.
Now the arlaunkh.
"The-?"
A metal rod about the length of his forearm, this one, that curved gently to form a pleasant-to-the-hand grip. He'd been thinking of it as "the big scepter," but-
Right. Point the big scepter straight overhead, and the draeuth down the passage at the doorway outside. You fire them both like THIS. Do so.
Rod obeyed, feeling something that sounded and looked like the beige, many-popping-bubbled foam of a fire extinguisher spraying forth from one, and a cone of similar but white foam from the other.
An instant later, Arlaghaun shouted something triumphant, roiling flame came roaring into the tomb, and its stone-lined ceiling shuddered, cracked, and fell in on top of Rod Everlar.
The flames met the brown ray and wrestled with it, snarling; only a few tongues streamed past to lick at his arms and shoulders. The white ray melted away stones as they fell, burning a circle to the sunlight. So nothing crushed Rod's skull or broke his neck. Stones slammed down around him, though, bruising and wedging him, shattering bones with sudden, sharp pains that made him gasp and then shout.
Keep hold of them both, and keep firing, or you are doomed.
Arlaghaun's flame died away, but Rod could hear him chanting something that sounded like a spell.
Melt away any stone that could fall or slide sideways onto your head, then start blasting them down all around you, to free yourself. Hurry. You MUST free enough space for your arms to reach everything on your belts.
Rod obeyed, watching tons of stone melt away. Whatever Arlaghaun had cast came streaming down the passage again, and again fought the brown ray, beating it back this time almost to Rod's hand.
Aim the arlaunkh-the big scepter-at the ceiling of the passage into the tomb. Bring it down, just as the wizard collapsed the tomb atop you.
Rod obeyed again, and with a slow, thunderous roar, the passage disappeared.
Keep on freeing yourself. Down to your legs, now. Haste matters more than care. If you burn yourself, you'll heal. HURRY.
Arlaghaun was clambering over stones at the front of the tomb now, trying to get closer; Rod could hear them shifting and clattering as the wizard sought to climb up on top of the ruined hill.
To get at Rod Everlar.
Stones were slumping like butter around his ankles now, then just melting away. He could move, though lifting his left leg brought stabbing agony that left him panting and leaning against the stones that were still there.
Fuse those stones together, so they can't shift and trap you. Arlaghaun comes.
The arlaunkh failed quite suddenly, crumbling to dust in his hand.
The black scepter, now, the one with the eye. The eye is its tip, not its handle; the eye should face away from you. The mind-voice was noticeably fainter.
Rod grabbed at the black scepter, almost dropped it, then straightened up, and found himself staring into Arlaghaun's burning brown eyes and soft, thin-lipped smile.
"So, Shaper, we meet at last."
Rod winced. Couldn't someone write better dialogue than that?
He aimed both the draeuth and the eye scepter at the wizard and intoned, "With the fate of all Falconfar hanging in the balance!"
It was Arlaghaun's turn to wince. "Did Lorontar actually say that?"
"Does it bother you, not knowing?" Rod asked, as sweetly and carefully politely as any unhelpful civil servant, and triggered both enchanted items.
Their raging onslaught battered something unseen in front of Arlaghaun's nose so fiercely that the wizard was forced to arch over backwards, away from the magic trying to slam into him.
Arlaghaun took a step back and lost his footing, to be hurled away over the rocks like a rag doll, out of sight down off the hill.
Rod laughed aloud. He hadn't really hurt the wizard, he knew, but it was nice to land a blow on that sneering face. For once.
Move not. Give your leg time to heal; shift your weight onto the other one.
The voice in his mind was back to being a whisper, now.
"Who are you?" Rod dared to ask it. Was it Lorontar, the long-dead Archwizard? Or-
"Lord!" The soft, urgent call was coming from behind him, accompanied by a high, chiming rattle of chain.
Rod whirled, so quickly his leg burned like fire.
"Tay?" he managed to cry, through the pain.
"Lord Rod!" Taeauna was crawling forward over rocks, bare except for metal collars about her throat, ankles, and high on her thighs; collars that were joined with dangling lines of fine chain. "Come quickly! You've wounded Arlaghaun sorely, and so given us time to escape! Come with me!"
No! The whisper in Rod's head was frantic and fierce. It's a lie! A trick! She's Arlaghaun's creature; believe not a word she says!
Rod shook his head as he clawed his way up over the rocks, bruising his knuckles in his haste, still clutching the draeuth and the scepter.
"Taeauna!" he hissed. "Are you… all right?"
"I have been Arlaghaun's thrall," she replied, waving one hand to indicate her bared self, and flick the nearest length of chain. "But if we hurry, now, and you free me…"
No! Whatever you do, don't go with her! The whisper-thin voice in his head was shrieking now. Arlaghaun controls every word that comes out of her mouth! Cleave to her, and you embrace your doom!
"Fuck off" Rod told the voice in his head firmly, and hurried over the rocks to Taeauna.
Mistgates was a strong castle, soaring up like a great lone fang from a hard cliff of purple-gray rock that had stared into winter storms for centuries upon centuries, as defiantly as the face of any grim dwarf. High were its walls, so lofty that it had not one set of battlements, but two: a third of the way up its flanks, a crenelated balcony had been carved out, like the lower jaw of a gigantic dragon, for the use of bowmen seeking to feather targets on the narrow overland road that snaked up through rising rocks to skirt the front gates of the castle.
These days, with the master of Mistgates heeding not the Mad King in Galathgard, and so being shunned by most nobles of the realm and by fearful traders alike, few folk came along that road.
Yet there were travelers on it now, many of them. T
hey wore the best of gleaming armor, mounted knight after mounted knight, their lances like a forest, but a forest bare of leaves for they bore no banners.
At first sight of them from the high battlements of Mistgates, galloping hard along the road that would bring them into the very lap of Velduke Mardrammur Mistryn, horns were winded over the castle, to sound an alarm.
Mistryn was one of the veldukes who did not ride to Galathgard upon the whim and pleasure of King Devaer, and most of Galath had heard by now, with Bowrock under siege, just how much the King of Galath loved veldukes who did not bend their knees to him often.
Wherefore the great doors of the castle were firmly closed and barred, after the best-armed and armored Mistryn knights and armsmen-enough to match the approaching knights, and to spare-had issued forth in full battle array, prepared with pikes and caltrops. On the walls above, a long line of archers stood ready.
The knights slowed their mounts as they came up to Mistgates, and drew no swords, but held up empty hands to wave "peace" and then "parley."
A tall man in armor whose painted breast-blazon proclaimed him the personal champion of Mardrammur stood forth to meet them, and called, "You ride in Mistryn lands, and are come to the gates of the House of Mard, and you are many and well armed. Yield unto me your names and purpose!"
The foremost rider doffed his helm, patted the neck of his snorting mount to calm it, and replied, "You know me, Roeglar. I am Samryn, loyal knight of Velduke Bloodhunt, and we before your gates are all now also knights of the King of Galath, His Majesty Melander Brorsavar, who rides with us!"
Roeglar gave him a hard look. "Brorsavar is king, now?"
"Brorsavar is king. Things change in Falconfar, sword-brother."
"That they do. And all too swiftly, these days. That they do."
"Well, have we leave to pass within?" Samryn clapped his hand meaningfully to his sword-hilt.
"I'm thinking, sword-brother. I'm thinking."
"This way," Taeauna gasped, and was gone down behind some rocks with a rattle of chain. "Hurry!"