by Ed Greenwood
A silence fell.
"Tar—Taroarin?" Tresker stammered, daring to break it.
By way of reply, the smiling cooper murmured something under his breath, then lowered his staff into his arms and embraced it like a lover.
It flared with a rose-red glow that raced down his arms and throughout his body. The watching Darsworders saw him close his eyes, gasp, shudder, and throw back his head.
Then the glow was gone, leaving in its wake a body that was taller, more slender, blue-skinned, and bald.
A sharp-eyed man who didn't look like Taroarin at all. Many of the lights winking on the staff in his hands had dimmed, and some of them now went out.
"Men of Darswords," he announced, "I am Narmarkoun. Doom of Falconfar, and the wizard you were so bold as to visit. Behold, you have found me."
He waved one long-fingered blue hand almost lazily, and Daera came walking through the rubble to join him, striding demurely as if she was whole, and her head didn't hang loosely from her neck.
When she reached him, Narmarkoun's hand briefly glowed rose- red, the staff in his other hand winking with the same radiance, and he touched her neck.
As the Darsworders watched, trembling and silent, Daera's lolling head slowly righted itself to stand on her shoulders again.
She stepped into the crook of his arm, Laeveren's baldric still trailing from her neck, and he rested his hand on her hip.
Staff in one hand and gray-skinned woman in the other, Narmarkoun looked around one Darsworder face after another, a grim smile steady on his face.
After he'd stared into all of their eyes, he said calmly, "I require your loyalty, here and now—or your death. And it will be a slow passing, as you lie here for days in helpless torment, every bone in your bodies smashed, the flies and rats and hungry dogs of Harlhoh dining on you at will, while my magic keeps you from sleeping or falling senseless. Which shall it be? Will you kneel to your new lord? Or be struck down where you stand?"
Tresker wavered, then sank heavily to his knees. "Tar— Narmarkoun, I will serve you. Lord Narmarkoun, I am your man."
A great sigh arose from the other Darsworders.
One by one, trembling in terror in the shade of the greatfangs looming over them, the men of Darswords went to their knees to submit themselves to him.
One by one, staring into their eyes, the wizard Narmarkoun surged into their minds, long enough to make them his.
When he was done, Narmarkoun turned, leveled the staff at a point where the flagstones met the base of the nearest wall—and blasted it.
The greatfangs perched there rose smoothly into the air, but the other flying wyrms sat like statues, watching as the smoke cleared, the rubble clattered to a halt... and a new hole was revealed.
"Forward, men of Darswords," Narmarkoun ordered pleasantly, gesturing at the opening with the staff. A few more of its lights had gone out. "Or rather, loyal warriors of Narmarkoun. You sought a wizard's treasures, and that's just what you'll find. For me. So on, and down—and mind the heat of the stones. If my suspicions are right, Malraun's caches of magic will be at least a level deeper than this."
He waved the staff again, watched the reluctant men shuffle forward, and started to hum a happy tune.
NO MEN OR maids screamed in Kathgallart any more. The last cries of dying agony had ended, the greatfangs padding ponderously around a few ramshackle cottages to silence them in a brutal flurry of smashes.
Now the gigantic wyrm lay sprawled at its ease in a field, atop the splintered remnants of the paddock fences, and leisurely swooping its free foreclaw or its long neck into various stalls, to bite and drag forth and chew.
Now it was horses and mules and oxen that were screaming, shrieking as they died, while those not yet dead snorted and kicked at their stalls and stamped their hooves, frightened by the reek of fresh blood and the cries of their kin.
Still clamped bruisingly together in the grip of the greatfangs' talons, Tethtyn and Mori shuddered at the grisly noises and the smells of fear and blood. They could not help but think they vould be next, the moment the last horse had vanished down that huge maw.
And why them? Well, why did anything happen in Falconfar? Fell magic or blind stupid savagery, a wild beast snatching an opportunity to fill its belly.
"Why—" Mori got as far as whimpering, once, before Tethtyn hissed at him and moved his knee urgently. Not that he could harm Mori much, pinioned as he was, or silence him, but Mori understood, and said no more.
More biting and chewing, the flailing hoof of a dying horse flashing past their eyes... then real silence.
The greatfangs rolled over, and suddenly their ears were battered by a force that also made the talons around them tremble, and the very earth thrum.
So a greatfangs can belch. Loud and hard enough to nigh-deafen men.
The greatfangs rolled again, the talons around the two young men loosening. It was... yes, by the Falcon, it was curling itself up in the ruined paddock like a cat before a warm hearth.
Bloated after its huge feast, no doubt. The talons suddenly fell open, spilling Tethtyn and Mori out into the light and air, on blood- drenched grass under a sky of tattered high clouds and merry fanlight. Rolling hard to get well away from the great claw, they saw the head above them yawn drowsily, great fangs flashing... and then sink down, ignoring them both utterly as they stared at it.
The greatfangs rested its barbed chin on the talons of its other claw, eyelids drooping. The eyes widened again, once—Mori and Tethtyn hardly daring to breathe—and then closed.
They half-opened a long moment later, showing only a crescent edge to silent Kathgallart, then shut again.
It was several long, shallow breaths later when Mori and Tethtyn dared to look at each other.
Whereupon they promptly discovered—possibly at about the same time as the neighboring holds of Marclaw and Indrulspire— that a sleeping greatfangs snores.
The snores echoed from distant mountains. Tethryn Eldurant and Mori Ulaskro stared at each other in the heart of the deafening roar, open-mouthed... and then found themselves giggling, shaking helplessly in high-rising mirth that no one could have heard three paces away amid the all-pervading thunder of the greatfangs.
They were still giggling when something rose up within them and took hold of them, right behind their eyes.
Something that had claws keener and stronger than the black talons of the greatfangs. Something that they somehow knew had come out of hiding in the mind of the greatfangs to drive into both of theirs.
Something that now had hold of them in a grip they could never hope to escape. Lorontar.
Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, age-old and gloatingly patient, a mind mightier than mountains, easily strong enough to dwell in both of theirs at once and hold them in helpless thrall.
A dark sentience that had plunged into the mind of Malraun the Matchless himself, burned it to quivering ruin, then leaped from the doomed wizard to the greatfangs that swept him up in its jaws, and took it over.
Just as it was now residing in the minds of Tethtyn Eldurant and Mori Ulaskro, whom it had selected—had been watching for years— because they had the raw, untempered talent to become great wizards.
Fitting vessels for the greatest wizard in the world. Soon to be the greatest wizard in at least two worlds.
It had boiled forth from the greatfangs now because the great wyrm was a beast of hungers and rages and urges, who felt more than it could think.
Wherefore it had served its purpose, and must now die.
Mori and Tethtyn obeyed with alacrity, because they could do no less. Inside their heads, Lorontar guided them both.
To select suitably sharp fallen fence-rails, large enough for their purpose but not so large that they could not control them. To aid each other in moving these rails to just the right places in the blood-soaked paddock, heft them in unison—and rush forward to pierce both eyes of the sleeping greatfangs at once. Then to keep running hard, driving the shar
pened wood deeper through all the gouting wet gore, deep into the wyrm's brain.
They were hurled high and hard in the creature's wild, convulsive thrashings, its squalling attempts to scream, wild talons slashing air and turf and a nearby tree in futile, blind frenzy.
As Tethtyn and Mori landed wetly on heaped human corpses, slid and rolled to their own separate stops, then found themselves dragged to their feet in unison by the relentless claws in their heads to watch the last feeble thrashings of the wyrm they'd slain.
Then, heedless of the blood all over them, the death underfoot, and the swarming flies, they limped into what was left of Kathgallart's buildings to take cheese and cooked stew, sausages and hardbreads, tearing gowns off sprawled and gnawed goodwives to bundle the rood into, so they could set forth without delay.
It was a long way to Indrulspire, through the deep woods.
Not that Tethtyn and Mori would have the chance to rest, or any desire to, until they reached what they were now seeking.
They could both see it clearly in their minds, around Lorontar's minister smile, though neither had ever been anywhere near Indrulspire in their lives.
It lay at the near edge of that hold, overgrown and forgotten in the trees: a certain old and moss-covered tomb... and in its dark depths, a lone casket that held not bones but books of magic.
Tomes that had lain hidden for centuries, their stamped and graven metal pages glowing faintly as they waited for wizards to come.
RAMBAERAKH, SLAYER OF Dragons, regarded Rod balefully, shriveled eyeballs ablaze.
"Well, man? Ye hesitate! Why?"
Rod felt the gentle touches of swords—or the rusting, broken remnants of them—on his shoulders, chest, and back. He did not have to look—hell, did not want to look—to know that grinning skulls would be floating above both his shoulders, facing him with unwinking stares. And that the velvet-soft, yet chill feelings now at the back of his neck—momentary touches, no more—were skeletal fingertips that would move snake-swift to strangle him, if he gave the wrong reply.
Yet he wasn't a good liar. Never had been. The truth was all that came readily to his lips, and...
"Tell me, Rod Everlar!"
Die for truth, not for a lie.
Rod swallowed, ducked his head a little, and blurted, "I—I fear unbinding you will mean you'll slay me, as swift as it can be done, men go hunting all living things across Falconfar, killing everyone and everything. And I—"
He let out a deep, unhappy sigh, then drew himself up and added firmly, "I can't allow that."
"So ho! Decided 'tis time to play Lord Archwizard again, have ye ? Well, now, I can tell ye plain and straight that we intend to kill 10 one, that we'll not do either of the things ye fear—but ye seek proof, don't ye? Trust no floating severed heads this month, aye?"
"A-aye," Rod agreed hesitantly, managing the trembling beginnings of a smile.
"So name thy proof! What will it take to convince ye?"
"I don't know." In exasperation, Rod waved his arms and started to pace, ignoring sudden warning taps from many sword points. The skeletons moved with him, smoothly and precisely. So did the scarred, rotting head.
"I believe you're who you say you are," Rod told it, "and that these are indeed your Dark Helms, or the forerunners of Dark Helms, rather... and I certainly believe you urgently want me to work some sort of magic that you for some reason can't, but... but I don't even know how it is that you know my name, and I'm heartily tired of being lorded over by wizard after wizard since I got here! Why, I..."
"Aye?"
"Nothing. There's nothing you can swear by that I can trust in. Nothing."
"Oh? Not even Taeauna, whom ye seek so desperately? In the name of the wingless Aumrarr ye cherish, and by the Falcon itself. I promise ye—"
"How do you know about Taeauna? Are you reading my mind?"
"Of course, Shaper. How else would I know ye're called Rod Everlar? 'Tis not a name I'm likely to hear, bound down here in the coils of Malraun's spells, now, is it?"
Rod shook his head. "Then you should see why I can't trus: anything you say! You can just read whatever it is I want to hear from my mind and say it to me! Yet now that I know that, I can't—"
"Hold a bit, man, hold a bit! A little calm, a little less shouting and waving the hands about! Some of the dead down here are still asleep, ye know! This reading of minds can work both ways, mind, if I draw aside my mindcloak."
"Mindcloak?"
"Letting ye read my sincerity, even as I read thy memories and the fiercest of thy passing thoughts."
Rod hesitated, trying to stare into those sunken, angry eyes.
"Afraid of stepping into the mind of another wizard? Well, ye should be, of course. I'd hesitate, too, if the last cesspool I'd been wading in was the mind of Malraun the Matchless. And if I didn't want oblivion so sorely."
"That's what this is all about? Suicide? You want to be unbound so you can die?"
"Aye, though I know not this word 'suicide.' I can see in thy mind that it carries fear, that death is bound up in it, and that 'tis a crime—and that ye worry about doing crimes. So what, exactly, is suicide?"
"Taking your own life. It's wrong."
"Well, so 'tis, unless ye spend thy life to save others, or slay great evil, or do much good. Otherwise, thy death is a waste, and the Falcon is displeased. So, know ye, man, that neither Rambaerakh nor his loyal warriors—" The floating head revolved slowly, its moving gaze seeming to make the bobbing skeletons glow wherever it was looking, then regarded Rod once more. "—hold with suicide."
"But—"
"Pah! This oblivion we seek is not suicide! Our lives were torn from us years upon years ago! We have been dead and beyond dead for more seasons than ye can count! Rail at us not of crimes and guilt and morals! Man, we ache to be alive again, but cannot, so ache all the more to seeing and talking with and being near those who are! Ye cause us pain right now, by being here and being alive!"
Rod tried to step back, but the points of swords gathered behind him in an unyielding wall.
"I—" He swallowed. "I'm sorry."
The grizzled, much-scarred head bobbed rapidly up and down, as if in exasperation.
"Man, man, be'not sorry! 'Tis the dead who have time and cause to be sorry! Just waste not the life ye have!"
Rod stared into those sunken, burning eyes. "Show me your mind," he said quietly.
The wizard's floating head rose and drifted nearer, closer than it had ever been before, until it was hovering right in front of Rod, their noses almost touching. Not that Rambaerakh had all that much of a nose left.
"See, man. See..."
Rod quelled a sudden urge to giggle. That hollow voice had uttered the exact words used by a femme fatale to entice her lover into her arms, in an old and very bad movie he'd seen once on late- night television—and in the same low-pitched, earnest manner.
Then he seemed to slide forward and down, down through those burning eyes and into cavernous darkness beyond, all thoughts of giggling gone in his wake...
He was in a place of labyrinthine, crazily-tilting passages, all dark blue and purple against black, with tattered drifting shadows everywhere and thick pillars too smooth to be stone.
So this was what a dead wizard's mind looked like.
One who wasn't afire with the need to destroy you...
Rod was gliding along, slowly and uncertainly, seeing nothing but passages and pillars, and hearing nothing at all. If there was proof here he was supposed to see, there was no sign of it at all. not even—
The wall beside him seemed to ripple and billow like a black curtain. Sudden dread rose in him, as he pictured an unseen horror straining at the barrier, ready to lunge out at him...
The curtain faded away, leaving a slender man in black, ankle- length robes facing him. A man whose head was severed from his shoulders, and floated above them. It was a head Rod recognized, of course.
"Rambaerakh, Slayer of Dragons," he greeted it calmly
, and the floating head bobbed in a polite nod.
"At your service," it replied, "Behold what you came to see."
The darkness fell away, and Rod now seemed to be standing on nothing at all, with bright shards looming above and beneath him. each showing a different scene, like so many windows into films that were all playing at once. It resembled what he'd imagined a satellite television control room must be like, all—
His gaze was caught and held by the image of a breathtakingly beautiful woman, welling up on his right, from below. He felt a surge of affection for her, then all the love in the world; he was fighting to stare at every last inch of her looming face through a sudden waterfall of tears as that love turned to despairing grief. Then her face was gone, melting into a yawning skull surrounded by her flowing hair, with a spade tossing loose dark soil onto it...and as it all fell away behind him, another face was looming, a man with an infectious, lopsided smile, and Rod found himself grinning, too, in friendship this time, just in time for that smile to become a scream, and flames to roar through the head and leave it a blackened skull, collapsing into bone shards and revealing another woman, younger and even more beautiful than the first, beyond. Love danced within him again, leaping to the fore once more and leaving him sobbing...
On his knees on cold stone, within a ring of lowered, rusted blades, with a severed head hovering above him.
"Ye're out again, Everlar," it told him, almost kindly. "Did ye see enough?"
Rod managed to nod, through his tears. He felt so desolate, so...
"I've lost many," Rambaerakh murmured. "Too many to go on. So have we all, my Helms and I. We're too tired to go marauding across the Raurklor, let alone Falconfar. Unbind us, and let us rest at last."
"Oblivion?" Rod asked dully. "Just... nothing?"
"Not quite," the wizard's head replied, smiling a crooked smile. "Thy releasing of us will accomplish one thing. One last revenge. Spending our passing doing something, after all."
"Revenge on whom?"
"On Lorontar. Who intends to school younglings in wizardry, and return here riding their bodies to hold the great magics he knows are hidden here. Magics we can rob him of, and give the roundation of all his gloating plans a good shake—perhaps, just perhaps, one that will shatter them and bring them tumbling down."