by Ed Greenwood
Talyss nodded. "Aumrarr, according to one of the maids who got a glimpse of them leaving from the battlements. Though how they got past the warning spells, I know not."
Her brother shrugged. "And I care not. The gems are gone—and we'd best be, too, just as swiftly as we can hustle ourselves along. Nareyera isn't the only one looking for us."
"Kin?"
"Of course. Father was so aghast at what Mother told him last night that he couldn't keep his mouth shut."
"For a change," Talyss told the ceiling sardonically. They had both lost count of the number of times Lord Irrance Tesmer had let slip things he shouldn't have—within the family, to servants, and even to foes. "What choice blundering has he set crashing amongst us all this time?"
"The news, first admitted to him by our darling mother in bed last night, that two of their oh-so-close-and-fond Tesmer children weren't sired by father, but by the Master."
"And would the names of those two be Belard and Talyss, by any chance?" his sister asked quietly.
Belard lifted one eyebrow. "You knew."
"I suspected. The Master has always given us far more attention than the others, and it certainly wasn't because our magic is so enthrallingly superior. Maera is strong enough that we should all hear her, and even Nareyera—admit it, Bel—can hold her own against us."
"I fear Kalathgar," Belard replied quietly. "He just might be the only one of us who could outwit the Master."
Talyss nodded. "Let's hope we're halfway across fair Falconfar if he ever tries. Right now, let's be going." She drew a long, heavy eather carry sack into view from behind her long and shapely egs, swung it up onto her shoulder as she stepped past him, and adjusted its baldric across her chest.
Belard turned and reached out to smooth the leather strap where r slid between her breasts. His lingering fingers earned him a smile. "Later, brother mine."
"If there is a later for either of you," a voice said coldly from the doorway behind him.
Belard sighed, even as he stepped past Talyss—who was growing a sharp-eyed frown—and turned.
"Delmark, of course," he said wearily. "Who put you up to this, brother mine? Feldrar? Nareyera?"
"Nar— It matters not. What matters is that no sooner do we earn that the two of you are not true Tesmers at all, you both prepare to flee Ironthorn with as much Tesmer gold as you can carry. Making you not only traitors to your own kin—your half- kin—but thieving outsiders in our very midst."
Delmark's voice was harsh, his face was pale, his eyes glittered, and his sword was out and ready, sharp point leveled at Belard's chest.
Belard rolled his eyes. "Well, now, which is it, Del? Are we kin or not? Common thieves or traitors to the family? Can you spit out a coherent reason at all, or did Nareyera just tell you to rush up here and butcher us as fast as you could run?"
"She has nothing to do with this," Delmark said curtly. "J decide when I draw blade, and why. This is a matter of honor."
He took a careful half-step forward, flicking up the point of his steel in a clear signal that Belard should draw his own sword and defend himself.
"Oh? Whose honor? Mother's? Father's? Isn't it more than a few years too late to be fighting over that? And shouldn't you be seeking out a Doom of Falconfar to pick your quarrel with?"
"Clever words, Bel; always, clever words! Words that're no match for my blade," Delmark snapped. "Defend yourself, or I'll put this steel right through you!"
"You'd have been much wiser to just stride in here and do that, instead of all this snorting and blowing about honor and traitors," Belard replied, turning back to his open, half-filled satchel. "You bore me."
Delmark snarled, and shifted his feet to make ready to lunge. "Men of honor deal with each other face to face."
"Precisely," Talyss said cuttingly, from behind Belard. "But then, your strong sense of honor hasn't yet risen to the notice of any Tesmer I know. Nor is it particularly apparent now."
"You keep out of this," Delmark snapped in reply, not shifting his gaze for a moment from his gently smiling brother. "Slut."
Talyss lifted her left hand, fingers clawing the air in a brief, wriggling pattern—and the air in front of Delmark suddenly shimmered. Then it seemed to flow toward the floor like a silent waterfall.
Delmark gave his sister a look then, and it was a sneer. "You think I came unprepared? Or that you're the only Tesmer who knows a little magic? Narmarkoun taught the rest of us, too. Taught us more than enough to deal with—"
Belard whirled and flung the satchel into his brother's face.
Delmark staggered back, the weight of the sack bearing his blade sharply to the floor—and Belard sprang across the room like a striking snake, to slap at a small, oval picture on the wall. The picture rattled and with a loud clack the floor under Delmark's boots gave way. The stumbling Tesmer abruptly plunged knee- deep into the floor. Harsh, mechanical sounds promptly arose from beneath it.
Delmark jerked sideways, one leg almost severed by the blade that had snapped across the trap. The blade quivered as it bit deep into bone and sliced on, deep into his other leg.
He'd just started to scream when Belard's fist crashed into his face, snapping his head around like a doll. Delmark slumped into silence, his dropped sword clanging into the shallow trap, blood pooling beneath him.
Belard calmly plucked his satchel and two items that had fallen it—a tankard and a ladle—out of the recess in the floor before they got drowned in gore, and turned to Talyss. "Shall we go?"
Unless you'd care to fight a lot more of our kin all at once," she replied, strolling toward him. "He's wearing his locket, isn't he?"
Before she bent to pluck it from around the sagging Delmark's throat, Belard laid a hand on her arm. "Leave it. They can trace us through it, you know."
Talyss smiled. "I do know. In fact, I'm counting on it."
Belard looked at her, and slowly smiled.
She smiled back at him, beautiful mouth curling smugly, as she viciously on the fine chain around Delmark's throat. It drew blood as it broke, leaving his head lolling loosely.
Belard and Talyss left together, not looking back.
Behind them, the unconscious Delmark jerked and then shuddered as the relentless blade sheared right through one leg, and bit more deeply into the other one.
ROD WAS GASPING for breath now.
How many God-damned stairs did this wizard's tower have? Did this endless flight of steps go down clear through Falconfar, and out into some unknown lands on the far side of the planet?
Or was Falconfar a planet, a sphere in space, at all? He hadn't— At that moment, with the image of the world as a great flat slab of earth and stone with mountains and trees on it—just on the top, or on both sides?—the great jaws behind him closed on a ;irk, half-seen form that must be Malraun.
Gore spurted in a wet spray—and the weight of Lorontar's relentless assault was abruptly gone from Rod's mind.
Blurting out a sob, he staggered, feeling suddenly as light as air. Free!
Happy, even, despite the imminent death sweeping down the stairs after him, crunching the dying wizard's body as it came. Lorontar's invasion of his thoughts had thrust darkness into them, bringing despair in its grim and heavy wake, and now it was— suddenly, so suddenly—gone.
The stair shook under him, and he fell again, tumbling down the hard stone steps in a whirlwind of bumps and bruises. When he landed, he shook his head dazedly, and looked back up behind him.
The greatfangs had bounded aloft again, beating its great sky-filling wings in mighty, ponderous, but steadily quickening sweeps, lifting it up and away. Rod watched something tumble from its working jaws, plummeting to bounce wetly to a stop on the steps just above him.
It was what was left of a man's right arm, bitten off below the shoulder, its fingers spread in a claw of pain. Malraun's arm, by the looks of it.
Rod stared at it numbly, then looked up again. Things had grown dim; the greatfangs was passing o
ver him now, a scaled, leviathan tapering to a tail that could fell castle towers with a single lazy slap. It was chewing, with the same satisfied gusto that Rod had seen at Deldragon's feast table, as his knights worked away on favorite foods.
So Malraun was dead—chewed to pieces, and Lorontar with him. Which meant Taeauna must be dead and gone, too...
So who was making the faint echoes at the very back of his mind?
Someone shrieking, someone far away and swiftly getting farther, someone high-voiced and desperate...
"Taeauna?"
Rod could scarcely believe it, but the moment he gasped out her name, staring at the other five greatfangs sweeping menacingly out of the sky at him, he was certain.
It was Taeauna crying out to him. She was shouting his name.
"Taeauna!" he bellowed back, as loudly as he could, staggering and waving his arms for balance as he turned wildly in all directions, to stare into the distance in hopes of seeing her. "Taeauna? Where are you?"
The cries in his mind were getting fainter. She hadn't heard him, couldn't hear him, of course, was so far away now that—
"Taeauna!" he shouted, so hard and loud that his head rang and his voice cracked into a hoarse, wordless trailing-off. "I'm coming for you!"
As if the most useless Archwizard on two worlds could rescue anyone at all, with wizards and greatfangs everywhere, armies on the march, and—
The second greatfangs, almost as large as the first, was gliding down the stairs at him, its barbed chin brushing the edges of the stone steps, its maw open wide and looming darker and larger by the moment.
Rod Everlar sank into a crouch because he thought he'd fall over if he didn't, and watched it come for him.
Taeauna's voice was gone from his mind now, and—and if he didn't do something Archwizardly and heroic in his next few wreaths, there wouldn't be a Rod Everlar to come for anyone.
And the Dooms, the ruthless sneering God-damned spellhurling Dooms, would win after all.
"THOSE LORN STILL back there?" Iskarra asked quietly.
"Yes," Dauntra sighed, "and we're very soon going to have to -et you down so we can deal with them—or fall out of the sky, too weak to do anything but watch you try to deal with them."
"Hah!" Garfist Gulkoun barked gleefully, from where he hung beneath Juskra, a wingbeat or so ahead, "that's just what we'll ^o! Let me at them! My blade is sharp and my fists swift and r.ard, to be sure! Just let me get my—"
"Rump onto the forest floor, so you can stand up and swagger— and make of yourself a juicy, helpless target for lorn diving fast at you," Juskra interrupted him sharply. "They can fly, remember?"
"Aye, lass, aye. I'm not a dullard. How far's this Telphangh place, hey?"
"Never mind that," Isk told him sharply. "Is there a good spot near us, up ahead, where you can land?"
"Hope so," Dauntra replied grimly. "Jusk?"
"Not a good one," Juskra said slowly, "but I believe we're already past waiting for good ones. Shield your face and pull your arms and legs in, fat man."
"Are ye addressing wer"' Garfist asked, in mock anger, even as he obeyed her.
"Nay, I was talking to the small army of fat men I seem to be lugging through the night," Juskra told him with a grim smile. "Hold tight!"
Before he could reply, they crashed through a tangle of branches. She winced—and then groaned aloud as Garfist got caught among them for long enough to yank her over on her side.
Growling, he let fly a lusty kick at an unseen bough, thrusting them free. Juskra wobbled like a drunkard through the sky, hissing curses, almost slamming into the next tree before she righted herself and drew in her wingtips in time to plunge between two thick stands of gallart-tops, and burst through the upper branches of a pine.
In grim silence, Dauntra followed her, keeping higher to spare herself and Iskarra the battering. Juskra was ducking and darting down a narrow, tree-choked cleft between two ridges, somewhere in the heart of the Raurklar, and a wet flatness that might be water—or just might be a bog—could be seen somewhere ahead.
"Here?" Gar growled at the battlescarred Aumrarr above him, waving a hand at it.
"Don't do that," she snapped back at him, as his gesture set them to rocking in the air and turned a smooth banking glide into frantic flapping. "No, not here. I've no wish to try to fight lorn up to my neck in sucking mud."
"So why not—"
"Garfist Gulkoun," Juskra growled fiercely, "shut your endless roar and listen to me. I'm about spent. That ring I gave you? Think of a sunrise, remember? Once it glows, it can strike someone—yes, it works on lorn—senseless at a touch. It won't glow again right away, though, and each time you use it in the same fray, it'll be a little slower to awaken than the last time. Oh, and one thing more: it seems to only work once on someone. So if you send a lorn to sleep, don't try using it on the same lorn a second time. And don't use it on me."
"Oh? Why? Ye'll get upset?"
Juskra rolled her eyes. She couldn't see Gar's grin, but she could hear it in his voice.
"Yes," she replied evenly. "I'll get upset—and we can't have that."
Despite herself, Juskra was grinning as she ducked around a huge old pine tree, misjudged the space beyond—and slammed hard into a gallart-top that had been tall and strong when Highcrag was built.
And was now old, hollow, dead, and the size of a small castle keep.
Juskra moaned in pain as she crashed through a dozen lichen- cloaked, long-dead branches and into the main trunk beyond, winding her and smashing something small in her left wing—and shattering the rotten trunk in an explosion of dead-dry wood.
Garfist's cursing, as he crashed along in her wake, ended in helpless coughing and choking as he breathed in a cloud of wood dust, and the air around them echoed with the dull snap of the trunk breaking right through and the rest of the tree starting to topple on them from above, breaking apart as it came.
Which was a good thing for the startled Dauntra and Iskarra, who flew right into it all with identical startled shrieks.
Already beyond the tree they'd destroyed, Juskra and Garfist were tumbling helplessly through a sharp tangle of other branches that broke loudly as they fell. Juskra was too breathless and pain-wracked to say anything, her wings snagging and tearing and snagging again, and Garfist was strangling as he fought to breathe.
The lorn diving after them would have smiled in triumph, if they could have. Not having mouths to smile with, they did it with their eyes.
As they swooped down, jostling each other in their haste to reach their quarry first, and personally do the killing.
IT WAS NO USE. He couldn't Shape with greatfangs after greatfangs sweeping down on him, blotting out the sky, couldn't concentrate—
Shaking his head, anger rising, Rod Everlar threw himself sideways and up a few steps, rolling and curling up into the hard stone corner where a step met the side-wall.
The talon that had just stabbed out to slice him open from throat to crotch sliced the air above his shoulder and swept past, its owner hissing out its anger like a deafening, castle-sized kettle.
Rod cowered down, hugging the stone, and felt rather than saw the huge bulk pass over him, the tail of the irritated greatfangs lashing the steps above him, shattering them and showering him with rubble. He risked a glance up the stair—and saw the next two beasts swooping down the stairs at him.
They were much smaller than the first two—which meant that they were as long as a dozen horses, each, and their jaws would have to bite him in half to swallow him. Which they looked more than capable of doing.
The one that was in the lead was already angling over to one side as it flew, so it could come along the step he was cowering on rather than across it, and simply scoop him up with fang and talon. Bite, bite, chew, chew, and that'd be it. No more Rod Everlar, no more Archwizard of Falconfar, no more... anything, for him.
Spitting out a curse, he sprang to his feet, whirled around, and started running down the endles
s steps again, barely aware that the fifth and smallest greatfangs was circling high in the sky above, and that the largest of them was disappearing into clouds in the distance. Presumably with Malraun and Taeauna in its belly. There was no sign of either of them, and her cries had been moving farther and farther from him so fast...
Below him, farther down the steps, the greatfangs that had missed eviscerating him let out a roar—and started lashing out with its tail and talons like a dog digging in sand, smashing what was left of the walls of Malragard right around it.
As if that had been a signal, the two smaller greatfangs swerved in opposite directions to wreak mayhem on the stones of Malragard, too, and the last, smallest greatfangs plunged down out of the sky to join them.
As Rod watched, mouth open in astonishment, the five greatfangs swarmed angrily over Malraun's tower, tearing open roofs, tumbling walls, and shredding the contents of the rooms with great raking sweeps of their talons.
Had Narmarkoun worked some sort of commandment into these monsters, to make them destroy the abode of his rival Doom? Or was he somehow sending them orders right now?
Whatever the reason, Rod doubted he'd be spared forever; if they got done reducing the tower to rubble while he was still standing here on this stair, they'd likely come for him again.
So where, with the roofs of Harlhoh yonder—a small village with plenty of folk cowering, pointing and running in it; fellow targets to lure greatfangs talons, all of them—and tilled fields stretching everywhere else to the dark and distant line of the surrounding Raurklor, could he go? Or hide?
Deep in the forest would be best, but there was no way he could outrun five of the beasts, across all that farmland.
The alternative was to find rubble, hunker down in it, and hope by the Falcon that he didn't end up crushed or buried alive, if the huge flying beasts kept at it after leveling the tower, reducing Malragard from rubble to gravel.
The largest of the remaining greatfangs whirled, in a sinuous rwisting of its scaly bulk that Rod wouldn't have believed possible if he hadn't seen it, to hook its talons under the roof of the lower levels of the tower, and tug as it flew overhead.