Falconfar 03-Falconfar

by Ed Greenwood

  Turning to face them, she announced crisply, "Too late to keep hidden! We must get down there, ready to fight, just as fast as our legs can take us!"

  Beside her, struggling to his feet, Glorn groaned.

  There were some chuckles. Everyone was already on the move, over the ridge and loping down its other slope.

  THIS WAS A nightmare. A nightmare that went on and on, and that he couldn't wake from or change in the slightest. He was trapped, his head a great cage that everyone else was stuffing their lives into... until he gagged. Retching helplessly as the surging, overwhelming flood went on.

  Rod didn't have time to enjoy the good memories or savor anything—heck, he didn't have time to understand what he was seeing, as the torrent of lives went on and on.

  The floating head of Rambaerakh was holding him up now. butting against his back and shoulders, thrusting him upright as he sagged and shivered, babbling encouragement and threats and anything else it took to keep him reaching out with trembling hands for the next bobbing skull.

  Frightened faces, shrieking as they died; castles burning, flames flaring hungrily; bared flesh by candlelight... the flood of memories raged on, crashing through him no matter how much he whimpered or fought to scream them begone—all that seemed to come out of his trembling mouth was sobs and a soft, wordless keening—as the bobbing bones fell into dust and the swords rang and crashed on the stones at his feet.

  There were only a few skeletons left now, or so it seemed, the line a mere shadow of what it had been. Rod could barely tell—no matter how much he shook his head, it was getting harder and harder to banish the memories jostling behind his eyes. He tried to peer past them, tried to—to... what was he trying to do, again?

  "Bear up, Everlar," the floating head said into his ear. "Almost done. Ye're feeling maze-minded, but it won't last. Minds bury and forget, so they can go on. Ye will go on."

  "Really?" Rod mumbled, reaching forth with a wavering hand for the next skeleton—and wincing, despite himself, as it advanced. " Wonderful."

  "Sarcasm ill becomes ye," Rambaerakh told him tartly.

  "Oh? Going barking insane won't suit me too well, either." Rod started to say more, but it trailed away in less than a breath into helpless babbling, all control over his tongue lost under the vivid onslaught of another set of memories, another parade of loving faces and dying ones, mourning and lust and surging hatred, grand and sordid moments, triumphs and disasters...

  This Helm had killed his own dog in a drunken rage, and regretted it for the rest of his life. Now Rod was going to regret it too. He found himself plunged into the man's, raw-edged tide of sorrow, and swept away from the twinkling lights of all he knew and loved—that is, all that this Helm had known and loved, in life—into a deepening night and a rising gale. The seas rose and his gorge with them, and Rod vomited and wallowed and reeled helplessly in the false remembrance of a storm twenty summers past, and an early blizzard that had come in its wake...

  Another skeleton was approaching, bobbing almost jauntily to loom out of the swirling snows...

  "I did not dream all of this up," Rod told himself grimly. "I only wanted to tell stories that would keep pages turning and readers smiling."

  Obligingly, the skeleton grinned into his face, a rictus of yellowing teeth it always presented to the world... until this instant, as it sighed away into trailing dust before Rod's eyes, leaving the Lord Archwizard blinking at nothing but the dark room—and seeing a fresh tide of memories not his own.

  When it was done, he was crying again, the streaming tears blinding him as he stared and peered, hand held out... but there was no skeleton to touch.

  Nothing but the severed head of the wizard Rambaerakh. floating slowly around to face him.

  "Death," it whispered. "Death at last."

  "GREATFANGS!" GLORN SHOUTED hoarsely, dropping from a run to a face-down skid in the grass.

  "Dung fire!" Esklen cursed, seeing five of the huge beasts descending from the sky to the distant ruin they were sprinting toward. "Down! Down, or we're dead men!"

  "Taeauna," Roreld growled, from where he was sliding to a halt hard by her heels, "what now? Surely we should turn back—"

  "Go, then," was her cold reply. "I'm going on. They're only overgrown lizards with wings—just as we Aumrarr are only women with wings... as I've heard a man of my company tell all warriors who'll listen, more than once."

  Roreld groaned. "I might have known..."

  "That I was listening? Yes, you should have. Let us crawl, men, until yonder wyrms fly off again. They will—you'll see!"

  "I don't doubt it," Gorongor growled, from nearby. "But who'll they be carrying in their claws when they do, hey?"

  " You listen to too many minstrels' tales," Taeauna told him severely. "Drink less, sleep earlier. Maybe even alone, from time to time."

  He gave her a mournful look. "And what price my life then, hey?"

  RAMBAERAKH'S ROTTING, SCAR-CROSSED face was wearing the same grim expression as always, the shrunken and shriveled eyeballs aglow with terrible life.

  "My turn at last, Everlar," the severed head told him quietly, eyes flashing eagerly. "I wanted to stay long enough to see all the Dooms—and Lorontar, too—go down, to outlast them all. Now, though, for the first time in too many seasons to remember, I just want it all to end. Have all I know, wizard with no magic. Have it all—and rescue Falconfar for me. Rescue Falconfar for us all."

  And with that fierce whisper still ringing around the room, it sprang forward, right at Rod's face.

  He shouted, or thought he did, as he felt the wizard's skull shatter against his nose and forehead. Then a deluge of memories choked him in a flood of dancing white fire, that roiled and echoed thunderously inside him, sending him staggering and flailing about blindly...

  The severed head had disintegrated like all the Helms, and Rod neard himself calling Rambaerakh's name again and again.

  There was no reply. Not that it mattered... not that anything in the dim room around him mattered, anymore.

  In Rod's head, real terror and wonder were unfolding, as he saw vhat Rambaerakh had seen and learned what Rambaerakh had earned—sometimes triumphantly, sometimes disastrously—about wielding magic. Across seventy summers he was watching spells go wrong or sizzle forth, their magic maiming or transforming Rambaerakh's foes and rivals. He was Rambaerakh, and he could—

  No. He was Rod Everlar.

  Now he knew a lot about magic, but there was a vast difference ^etween knowing and doing. Unless, of course, he could Shape what Rambaerakh had once cast...

  Rod barely felt the crash as he slammed into one of the shelves, already off-balance and falling. It caught him under the ribs, then under his armpit... he scraped his nose on the shelf-edge as he went down, still wandering in surges of recalled magic, of memories not his own...

  Rod must have hit the floor, but didn't feel it at all. He dimly heard a loud metallic clanging that must have been one of those horned helms striking the floor nearby... and beheld, with calm disinterest, one of the lurstars tumbling in velvety silence toward the stone floor.

  The white fire behind his eyes was joined by a flare of crimson flames in front of him—and in the leaping teeth of that sudden blinding roar all Falconfar went away.

  THERE WAS A sudden, soundless thrill in the air, a prickling of hairs on arms and necks. Before the men of Darswords could do more than stiffen warily and peer about for some mighty magic awakening, all that was left of Malragard rocked beneath their boots.

  The greatfangs shrieked and hurled themselves untidily into the air in a flapping frenzy of haste, screaming in shuddering convulsions of agony that almost tumbled them from the sky.

  Narmarkoun spared their squalling, dwindling forms not even a glance. His head had snapped around to peer in another direction, and down. The men around him could see that he was staring at the flagstones underfoot as if he could see right through them— and was frowning and looking delighted at the same time.r />
  There was a chance Malraun had survived, or had been able to hurl himself into the body of someone else, who had just worked a spell in the cellars of Malragard. There was a better chance that Malraun had taken apprentices, or captured and held mages, unbeknownst to his rival Dooms, and they had just unleashed magic... or that captives or looters incapable of wielding magic at all had blundered into a magical trap, or triggered some guardian spell or other.

  He'd been expecting this. Someone was bound to start trying to hurl Malraun's magic before Narmarkoun could secure this ruin for himself. It could be a formidable foe, or an utter fool stumbling into a trap or ambush Malraun had prepared—or anything in between.

  Which was why these twenty-one men of Darswords around him were going to be so useful. It might cost a few lives to find and deal with the cause of the magic. By the Falcon, it might cost a few lives just to get down through riven Malragard to get anywhere near the cause of this magic.

  "Come," he ordered curtly, pointing with the staff at where a ruined wall turned a corner, away from them all. "That way. You—Merek—to the fore, and lead us all. You'll find a stair on the other side of yon wall, not far."

  Slowly, staring at him doubtfully, the men of Darswords moved toward the wall.

  Narmarkoun smilingly sloped his staff down and made it spew forth fire, erupting from the flagstones just behind the boots of the slowest Darsworder. The man staggered forward with a startled shout, echoed by the next slowest man a moment later, as another flagstone erupted in shards and flame.

  "Move," the wizard ordered all the warriors, as they stared at him. "Haste is required."

  And he gave them a pleasant smile.

  "We wouldn't want to miss any treasure now, would we? Or tarry so much that something unfortunate befalls us? Hmm?"

  "NO ONE LURKING about?" Zorzaerel growled, looking not at his master-of-scouts, but almost longingly down at the racing creek.

  The veteran scout, his face sour, shook his head in silent reply. Zorzaerel grunted pleased acknowledgement, nodded dismissal to the scout—who returned across the water to fill his own belt- flasks—and sat down heavily on the bank of the stream.

  By the time Askurr arrived beside him, he was already dipping his helm into the flow.

  Askurr drank thankfully. Even in the Raurklor shade, trudging along a trail in full armor is wearying work.

  "So, now," he said with a gasp, once he'd slaked himself, water streaming from his stubbled chin, "whither next? Horgul's dream died with him, and I've no stomach for hacking my way clear through the heart of Tauren without Malraun standing at my side to blast down every self-proclaimed duke who has the hairies to stand up to us!"

  "Well, now, there," Zorzaerel rumbled, raising a finger to wag it. "I've been thinking..." Askurr waited.

  "Aye?" was all he said by way of prompting, when it became clear Zorzaerel really was waiting for leave to say more. "I've no stomach for being led to my slaughter by Malraun's bed-lass no matter how fair on the eyes she may be," the youngest of warcaptains growled, "but if I'm free to skulk and watch and hide—if there're to be wizards hurling lightnings and the Falcon alone knows what else at other wizards, hiding is what we'll be doing most of, hey?—I'm thinking there just may be some spoils, after 'tis all done, worth having."

  "Aye," the master-of-scouts put in sourly, chewing on a water-reed. "All of us, turned to pop-belch frogs. Spoils indeed. We'll go good in the stewpots of whichever's wizard's left."

  Zorzaerel shook his head. "No, not blundering out into the heart of their quarrel, yelling and waving our swords, ripe to be turned into anything. Keeping quiet and hidden, rather, to see what happens. We must see what happens!"

  "Oh?" Olondyn asked incredulously, reaching his own helm down into the creek. "Must? Life gone too quiet for you, Zorz?"

  The youngest warcaptain lifted his head to glower, and waved one finger at the archer. "If Malraun had caged monsters and someone's going to let them out to prowl and breed and eventually show up hungry at my back door, I want to know about it!"

  "You're sure we can't learn all that from a good safe distance away?" someone else asked. "Right here, for instance?"

  "No," Olondyn snapped, not bothering to look up. "We must see what happens at Malraun's tower for ourselves. Would you trust someone else to tell you, true and full? Wizards have more ways than we can count to fool our minds, or take beast-shape, or show us something that's not there. I'm with Zorz; I want to be there, and know."

  "Know that trees and castle stones and little pieces of wizards are raining down on our heads?" Sortrel of Taneth snorted. "What's to know? You been hit so often above yer ears that you can't feel it now?"

  "You're thinking the wizards'll blast each other to blood-spew, and fuddle-headed Tay and her warriors," Askurr said slowly, "leave just one of them still standing for us to take down."

  "Aye," Zorzaerel growled, "and we will take him down, whoever it be. No more wizards!"

  "Aye to that" Sortrel echoed.

  "No more wizards!" Askurr agreed loudly.

  "See for ourselves," someone else muttered.

  "Treasure!" someone else barked, as if in reply.

  "No more wizards," Olondyn and Bracebold of Telchassur thundered.

  "Aye!" Zorzaerel shouted, standing up and waving his helm excitedly, slopping water all over Askurr. "Whichever mage prevails there, we slay or hunt down. Let's be rid of them all!"

  "Now that," the master-of-scouts snapped, "I'll drink to. Pity this is but spring water!"

  Suddenly everyone was up and moving; hoisting packs, settling helms back into place, and stowing bulging water flasks.

  "We're not turning back to Wytherwyrm, are we?" Olondyn demanded disgustedly, looking hard at Askurr in the heart of all this tumult.

  "No, no—we go on. We'll take the Downwagon Trail at Wolfskull Ford, and get to Harlhoh right on Taeauna the Wingbitch's shapely heels!"

  Olondyn nodded, waved an arm to his archers, and tramped across the stream.

  Ahead of him, Bracebold and his men had already set forth. If they wanted to be make Stag Hill before nightfall, and camp somewhere that wasn't deep in the misty bogs of the wolf-haunted heart of the Raurklor, there was ground to cover. Many strides of it.

  THE TOMES HAD been right where their minds had told them to look, the tomb unguarded and overgrown in the deep forest. Seizing what they suddenly hungered for had been swift and easy, no more than a few moments tugging a heavy, grating stone lid aside.

  Now, panting hard over metal pages that glowed and tingled under their eager hands, Mori and Tethtyn were back in the trees, much farther out from Indrulspire than the tomb was, sitting on adjacent stumps at one end of a woodcutters' clearing that didn't look to have seen an axe swung all this season. They were a good long ramble along a narrow log-drag trail distant from Indrulspire, which might be a good thing; they had no idea how much noise and disturbance their magics might cause.

  Lorontar was there, at the back of their minds. They could both feel him, and dimly sense each other's thoughts, too, through a link that could only be him... but the Lord Archwizard, though awake and watchful, was lurking beneath and behind their thoughts, not riding their minds like the conqueror he'd been back in Kathgallart. For now at least, they were themselves.

  Tethtyn supposed they had to be, to truly learn the magic, rather than merely casting it as obedient thralls. He looked up at Mori, and read the same mounting excitement in the Dlarmarran tomekeeper's face as he could feel tingling inside himself, rising insistently, almost chokingly.

  "Translocate," he blurted, an instant before Mori could. They were seeking the same magic, Lorontar was making them want it...

  Mori's face lit up. "Translocation!" he hissed, stabbing a finger down on the glowing blue metal pages in front of him.

  Tethtyn sprang up, turning in the air to face the right way and not miss an instant, as he crouched to look over Mori's shoulder. They peered together at the dark, wandering scri
pt; characters that had been stamped—punched, with anvil, hammer, and dies— deep into the glowing, enchanted sheets of metal. The spell was surprisingly simple, just two words to be spoken aloud as the mind pictured two things: the intended destination and a whirling of forces—thus—and brought them together, thus.

  Blinking and sweating, his magical tome almost falling from his suddenly numb fingers, Tethtyn abruptly found himself on the other side of the clearing, right beside the untidy pile of brush he'd been staring at as Lorontar made him visualize those whirling forces.

  Mori was gaping at him in astonishment—and then was gone, leaving only an empty stump.

  An instant later, he was swearing in delighted incredulity right at Tethtyn's elbow. "This is—this is—"

  "Yes," Tethtyn agreed enthusiastically, the words almost bubbling out of him with glee. "It is!"

  The book quivering in Mori's trembling hands spent two pages exhaustively describing precisely how the forces were supposed to "look" in their minds, and Lorontar was now doggedly marching them through that text, guiding their thoughts from delighted astonishment to ordered thinking, and to visualizing, step by step, moving from an indistinct remembrance of whirling forces to a clear mental image of the whorl of forces he'd put into their thoughts moments ago.

  When those whirling energies were vivid and clear in every detail, the lurking Lord Archwizard firmly put images into their minds of where they'd come from: the trodden twigs and dirt right in front of the two stumps.

  Abruptly, that's where they were again. Right back across the clearing, without taking a single step.

  Translocated, teleported... just like that. They were wizards, or magelings, or whatever one called novices who had already worked magics some hedge-wizards never mastered in long lives full of trying.

  "High... thundering... Falcon," Tethtyn swore aloud, slowly and wonderingly. Could it be this easy?

  Well, they had Lorontar guiding them, to be sure, making them masters of magic swiftly and surely... Lorontar, who must be preparing them for...