by Ed Greenwood
"How... how did you survive at all?"
"Magic. Real magic, man, spells piled deep and true. I laid more on myself than on my Helms... and look at them."
Rod frowned, glanced around in vain, then stared at the bobbing, silent skeletons. "These? These are—were—your Dark Helms?"
"Are again, though there's not enough left of them to be my Helms any more. No, their time is done, and mine too."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning we need ye, Lord Less Than Archwizard."
"To—?"
"Work a little magic for us."
"But..."
"Oh, I'll guide ye, man. Ye don't have to know what ye're doing; if that was a requirement, there's few enough Falconaar who'd ever do anything."
"So what is this 'little magic'?"
"Unbind us."
At Rod's puzzled look the severed head smiled sourly and said, "Malraun the Matchless bound us here, to keep us from marauding through his tower whenever his back was turned, or out across Falconfar. He's dead now—must be, for my Helms to be walking and me to be free to depart my tomb and trade words with thee—but the same spells that keep the very stones of Malragard in place, that he added atop my wards and bindings, also tether us here."
The head drifted a little closer. "So, Rod Everlar, I charge thee to come with us now and do what is needful to unbind us."
"I—"
"We'll not slay thee. Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, if ye care for Falconfar at all, unbind us.”
The shrunken eyes were ablaze, glaring at Rod now from close beyond his own nose.
"Unbind us."
Rod swallowed, trying not to look horrified. The promise not to kill him could be so many empty words; this was, after all—or had been—a wizard. Lying is what wizards do.
And try as he might, Rod could not banish from his mind scenes of bobbing bones swinging swords to hack down ardukes and fleeing farmwives alike, bloodily hewing frightened guards apart and—and Taeauna, alone and beset and going down in a welter of spraying blood and screams of agony...
As he heard their mocking thanks for being so duped, as they cut off his hands and feet to let him bleed to death, and surged forth from wherever he was lying, helpless and doomed. With no one at all left to stop them as they went marauding across all of Falconfar...
TETHTYN HAD LONG ago exhausted the contents of his stomach; there was nothing left in him to spew into the whistling wind. He was cold, shivering, miserable, and barely awake, sinking into dozes time and again and starting awake, usually when an especially chilly gust of wind or a wet cloud engulfed him, or the talons around him tightened.
He didn't want to think about how his life was going to end, when the greatfangs decided to land and needed the claw that was wrapped so thoroughly around him.
Right now, he didn't want to think about anything.
Tethtyn was vaguely aware that the great dragon-like beast above him had flown far and fast, east and south to the coast and one of the smaller ports there—where it had stooped to snatch someone else, in its other foreclaw—then swung briefly out over the open sea before it soared back up into the rolling, wooded uplands behind the Stormar shores. He didn't doubt it could easily have flown higher, and crossed over the towering mountain range that girded southern Galath, but it had turned east again, into lands he barely knew.
Not that he'd ever been anywhere near here, of course; he "knew" these parts from maps. The greatfangs was flying lower now, its wingbeats slower—but they seemed more unhurried than tired. Not that he was much of an expert when it came to greatfangs.
Through the gap between two of the talons encircling him, Tethtyn glanced over at his fellow captive, hanging as motionless and huddled as he was in the monster's tight grip. He couldn't tell if the man—it looked like a man, no older than him, thin where he was big-bellied—was looking back, or even if he was awake.
Nothing much to hold his interest there. He looked ahead again; the greatfangs was certainly flying purposefully, heading for some definite destination, and had gone still lower.
They flashed over a landmark he knew, from the maps: the twin lakes of Sarth and Redgelar, glimmering side by side like the print left in mud by a large cloven hoof. Which meant that the rising ridge beyond—under him now—was the Darserpent, and that hold ahead was Marclaw.
They passed over the green and rolling Marclaw low enough for Tethtyn to clearly see folk gaping up at the greatfangs, and turning to flee.
And left it behind, stump-fenced farms giving way to tall, trail- laced forest again, the greatfangs flying even lower now, treetops rushing up to meet it. It must be about to land.
Which meant Tethtyn's life was going to end here, in... in... he struggled to recall the map in his head, suddenly furious that he couldn't name the place where he was going to die.
Kathgallart! Aye, that was it. Kathgallart. The place where they bred the horses.
The best horses, the ones lords and knights and the wealthiest merchants paid so much for. It must be a wealthy place, and a big one, too; farms as far as the eye—
The wind rose to a thunderous roar as the wings above him curved and beat against it, the greatfangs shuddering in the air as it slowed with breath-taking speed. They were below the treetops, men were shouting and running, and a paddock full of horses— densely packed, and snorting in alarm as they struggled to turn and run—were dead ahead.
The greatfangs came right down onto them, rearing up at the last as horses surged and screamed under it, its captives held high and clear in its foreclaws as it slammed down, bounced amid a liorrible thudding and crunching of crushed, shattered horses, and slammed down again through a solid-looking fence that vanished like smoke under its bulk. Then it twisted, back-and-forthing itself in the air with awesome strength, dragging one straining wingtip along the ground as it turned—and whipped its tail around in a great slash that hurled broken men high into the air, reduced a front porch to kindling, and brought it facing back the way it had come, where its long neck could lunge to greet the screaming, terrified horses with ready jaws.
Horses bucked and shrieked and fled in all directions, and the greatfangs bit at them and flung out its wings to spill them over on their backs and snapped around to bite at them again. Not to eat, but to take off both forelegs or a head, or tear open a horse's side, to bring it down, helpless, into the churned-up dust.
In the heart of all this blood and pounding hooves, Tethtyn Eldurant found himself set down on the ground almost delicately, the claw opening to leave him behind and then thrusting forward to drive those long dark talons right through three bucking, plunging horses.
The greatfangs turned, shifting sideways with astonishing speed, and before Tethtyn could do much more than shake his dazed head and raise himself on trembling arms to try to crawl, the other claw was upon him, opening to sweep him with breath-dashing force against the other captive—and its talons had closed around them, in an all-too-familiar prison.
"M-Morl," the young face now pressed close against his left hip gulped, after a moment. "And you are—?"
The fight to just breathe was too much of a struggle for Tethtyn to manage either the astonishment he felt or the sudden wild urge to laugh that followed. It took him a while before he could speak at all, and gasp out, "Tethtyn. Tethtyn Eldurant, of Hawksyl."
By then, the greatfangs had bitten down on the three impaled horses, and with blood still spurting amid many horrible crunching sounds, was busily thrusting those dripping but now unencumbered talons into the front of a barn, and tearing through it, shredding wood as if it had been old and brittle parchment. Men fled shrieking in fear as the wall they'd been hiding behind vanished in front of them, or fell in bloody silence, sliced in half by the swift talons. Massive posts and pillars groaned and parted, spilling the roof of the barn forward in an ungainly slide to the earth. The greatfangs had already turned—past another barn, the keep, and what looked like a wagon-shed—to a porched house.
It seemed to know whe
re men were hiding, and tore apart their hiding-places, its eyes flashing in glee. Again men sprinted away in wild terror, and again the talons lashed out to slice and smash them down, leaving them feebly writhing in spreading pools of gore, or sprawled in unmoving silence.
The greatfangs never paused. It turned back to the second barn and tore it open, too, spilling more men and horses in all directions. This time it rose, talons tightening around Mori and Tethtyn, to lunge forward over the sagging ruins of the barn so its long neck could reach the farthest, fastest escaping prey. To let no one and nothing escape. Even a yapping barn dog was silenced.
Without pause the greatfangs turned to Kathgallart Keep, a modest stone tower rising four levels above the ground. Square and unadorned it rose, thick walls pierced by narrow slit windows, the one sign of life a lone, cowering guard crouching behind the merlons of its battlements as if they could somehow hide him.
The greatfangs bit him first.
Then it turned its head away, arms and legs tumbling from its jaws, and drove its scaled shoulder against the stone. Which shivered with dull booming sounds.
Folk promptly fled from the keep gates and a back door that led into a walled garden, but the greatfangs was large enough to curl right around the keep and deal with those running through the garden with its jaws, even as its wings and scaled bulk crushed and corralled those issuing from the front. Then it rolled against the keep again, crushing those it had trapped before the gates— and this time, the tower shuddered visibly.
Again it struck... and with a slow rumbling noise the keep swayed, groaned, and gave way, toppling away from the rolling greatfangs in a slow and terrible fall.
The echoes of the crash rang back from nearby hills, and then, amid the rising dust, a silence fell.
A silence broken shortly by agonized screaming.
SOME OF THEM roused at a touch, and others had to be shaken roughly, but every last one of the twenty-two warriors from Darswords came awake cold, stiff, tired, and in a foul temper. There was much groaning and grunting and muttering of curses: n soldier grumbled, "So it's daybreak now? Just how can you tell?"
There was no food, and nothing to make a fire with—and the nly consolation, if it was one, was that their trussed captive kerned to have moved not a muscle. Men gathered to admire her bared behind until Baerold almost regretfully rumbled, "Stop raring and rouse her. Laeveren, you do it. We must be getting on, to find treasure or to get ourselves back out of here. I'm thirsty and hungry, if none of you are, and it's only going to get worse."
There were grudging mutters of agreement, and the men of Darswords started to move. At Baerold's direction, Laeveren took the silently obedient captive to the front of the line, and set Taroarin with Albrun and Tresker to guard the rear.
"Swords out, keep alert, and keep quiet," he barked at them. "If we're all a-chatter, all the time, we warn anyone ahead of our coming, and we can't hear them getting ready to kill us."
"Baerold, 'tis a good thing you're always right," a sour-faced Darsworder spoke up. "Or I'd be getting to hate you about now."
"Aye, it is a good thing," Baerold replied with a glare. "Or you'd have been dead long ago, Norgan. Long before you could even begin to get around to the luxury of hating me."
Norgan started to say something, but Taroarin spoke up from the back. "By the Falcon, let us not fall to arguing with each other now! Start walking. Laeveren, were I you, I'd do off that useless bow-baldric—seeing as you forgot your bow—and put it around the captive's neck like a leash, so she can't lead us into some trap or other and dart off. Then prod her with your sword and get her to lead us to some cavern or other that has treasure—and once we're all rich, she can right swiftly guide us out of this cursed place!"
A chorus of agreement arose, drowning out anything Baerold or Norgan might have said, and trailed off into murmurs of wonderment as Daera turned back toward them, went to her knees before Laeveren, and put back her head to offer her throat to him.
"Gods, I'd not mind having that waiting for me when I got in from the fields!" a farmer said feelingly, not far from Taroarin.
"She's dead, Gorult," another man reminded him.
"Oh? Doesn't smell," the farmer grunted back, as they watched Laeveren rather awkwardly tighten his baldric around the nude woman's throat. "Falcon, Merek, look at her!"
"I am," Merek muttered. "Oh, I am."
Then they were on the move, trudging warily through the caves once more, leather creaking and swords out.
Behind Gorult, Taroarin stiffened. "What was that?" he hissed to Albrun and Tresker, who frowned.
"I heard nothing," old and thin-lipped Tresker replied, as they all turned, blades rising in their hands.
They could see nothing behind them, nothing but the motionless stones. Taroarin silently waved the other two back the way they'd come, and followed behind them, glancing back at the rest of the Darsworders.
Gorult and Merek had just shrugged and turned away from him, and everyone else was heading the other way, on down the passage following the leashed Daera.
Taroarin smiled a tight smile and slowed his advance, falling behind Albrun and Tresker as they peered into darkness behind the band.
He knew they'd soon stop and look back at him, but he only needed a moment to tuck his sword hilt under his arm, turn away from them, make two swift gestures as he turned, and whisper a few words.
Whereupon, ahead of the main group, a bright and fell blue radiance suddenly surrounded Daera. Men shouted in alarm as the magic blossomed—a fire that burned not, but seared their vision—and flashed through the air, expanding to cover them and race on before they could react.
"You bitch!" Baerold bellowed, across the cavern. "What have vou blundered into? Laever—"
The terrified Laeveren wasn't listening. Even as he hauled on his ?aldric hard enough to break Daera's neck and snatch her off her reet, bright blue fire flared around them all.
Fire bright enough that the cavern all around the Darsworders was gone, everything was gone but blue star-shot fire, fire that—
—Faded as swiftly as it had come, leaving all the men of Darswords blinking at—at—
Sky overhead, and unfamiliar surroundings, the roofless ruins and tumbled rubble of a stronghold. Greatfangs were wheeling overhead and, espying the dumbfounded men, turning almost iazily to swoop down...
Norgan screamed, and suddenly everyone was screaming and trying to run, sliding and falling in all the scattered stones and corpses—the bodies of monsters, raked and bitten open and lying n sticky, fly-swarming lakes of blood.
The frantically running Darsworders saw a sprawling web of dead, splayed tentacles, a curled-up, frozen chaos of spider legs as iarge as a wagon, and great wolf-like heads on long necks, whose severed tongues trailed into the dust and rubble underfoot.
They did not have time to see more as they panted past, scattering in all directions, heading for—for—
The sun vanished, blotted out by the descending greatfangs, the first two hulks each as long as the main street of Darswords...
Men howled and wet themselves and ran blindly in terror.
All except three men. Laeveren was weeping openly in terror and trying to hide under the body of Daera, that he'd draped across himself. Baerold was crouched flint-eyed against a corner vhere two walls met, sword in hand as he peered this way and that, seeking somewhere to run to and hide in.
And Taroarin, wearing a smile that did not belong to him, was striding to where two dented, riven grand entry doors sagged open and plucking a misshapen staff from the great black hinges of one door.
A staff that seemed much lighter than it could possibly be, as he hefted it in his hands and its dark twisted metal lit up with small lights of various hues, from end to end. Lights that winked like watchful eyes, or stared steadily and balefully out at the world as Taroarin let fall his sword at his feet, raised the staff over his head in both hands, and said something harsh and unintelligible to his fellow Darswor
ders.
Flames sprang into life at both ends of the staff, snarling up into angry spheres.
Taroarin pointed down the roofless hall at Laeveren, and murmured something. A moment later, the limp, lolling body of Daera rose into the air and hung out of Laeveren's reach, shapely and gray and lifeless.
Taroarin said something else—and the snarling fires at the ends of his staff flared and burst through the air like bolts of fire-red lightning, faster than the descents of the greatfangs, scorching lines in the air behind them as they flashed across the ruin to smite Laeveren and Baerold.
Both men vanished in pillars of flame, giving one brief shriek before they collapsed and went out, spilling ash to the littered flagstones. No bones were left to tumble with them.
Men who'd run out of places to run stared at the twin pyres in horror, and then slowly, reluctantly, turned to behold their source... and found themselves gaping at Taroarin.
Who beamed at them as the five greatfangs landed with stone- shaking force all around the great roofless hall—beyond its walls, but with force enough to cause one shattered wall to slump forward, dashing a Darsworder to the flagstones, broken and dying even before the tumbling blocks buried him—to pen it in with their great scaled bodies and spread bat-wings, living walls that towered above the broken stone ones, making the hall as secure as a tyrant's prison.
A tyrant like the man standing at the head of the ruined hall, wielding the staff. Not that the men of Darswords yet realized who he was. They were still mindless with fear, and peering up and all around at the looming greatfangs, living mountains whose jaws bristled with fangs each longer than a blacksmith stood tall.
One by one the men who'd dared to go wizard-hunting looked down from their captors and stared, however reluctantly, at the one Darsworder who now stood apart.
Taroarin the cooper.
He held the staff over his head with fresh fires blazing at both its ends, smiled at them from under it, and told them all politely, "Welcome to the great entry hall of Malragard—or what's left of it. The wizard Malraun is fallen, and so are these his creatures, this carrion at your feet. The greatfangs all around you, however, are mine."