Falconfar 03-Falconfar

by Ed Greenwood

  Lady Tesmer's eyes flashed delight. "I'd be delighted!"

  Dunshar retrieved his flask, started to hold it out, then hesitated, looking helplessly around his cluttered office for a goblet he hadn't spit into or used as a censer.

  The Lady Tesmer came to his rescue. "Ah! No fears, my lord klarl! My man carries two slake-horns for the trail, if you mind not small quaffs!" She turned to her impassive manservant, and almost immediately whirled back, proffering two tiny cones cut from the tips of beast-horns.

  Dunshar admired them with a smile. Better and better; they were small enough that he'd not diminish his precious nightwine nearly as much as he'd feared he might.

  He poured with delicate skill, and not the slightest hesitation.

  He'd never drunk nightwine while staring into the eyes of a woman who was staring back at him in obvious longing—by the Falcon, he'd never had so beautiful a woman staring at him with longing at all. Somehow the wine tasted brighter, more sparkling, and more warming than ever before. More golden...

  "Wonderful," he breathed as they stood facing each other, lips almost touching.

  "The nightwine is, too," she murmured back, eyes devouring his.

  Klarl Annusk Dunshar smiled at her jest, finding himself amused, proud, and aroused all at the same time—and somehow warm and comforted and safe, too...

  He was vaguely aware of being in his chair again, his face nestled against those warm, soft breasts, and the shapely mouth not far above them murmuring, "The braethear has full hold of him."

  However, he was far beyond wondering what "braethear" might be, or why the manservant muttered back, "Good. Now, as long as none of our bolder kin come trailing along after that locket..."

  "If they do, the trap is more than ready," the Lady Tesmer replied smugly. "Now help me with Lord Dunshar, here. Such a man of Galath."

  Her laughter then was like the merry, mocking tinkling of many bells, at once high and carefree, and at the same time so deafening that Annusk Dunshar slid down and away from it into deepening shadows, wondering why every last man in Galathgard didn't come running to see what was making all the noise, and then turn to take those wonderful breasts for themselves...

  HE WAS...

  He was here. Wherever "here" was.

  Chin-down on cold stone, surrounded by fresh wreckage, the air full of heavy, clinging dust.

  Weird glows flickered and pulsed, here and there through the cloak of dust, silent and tireless radiances that weren't flames... and so, must be magic.

  Magic. That was it!

  Rod Everlar nodded feebly, the floor beneath him cold, and hard.

  An enchanted thing—a lurstar, he remembered—had fallen to the floor of this room and exploded, right in front of him. He'd been... the memories of the wizard Rambaerakh had been flooding through him—

  Memories not his own flared in his mind again; a bearded man shouting, clawing at the air in frantic patterns that trailed fiery lines—but too late, as the man choked and spasmed and went purple and fell away behind his floating tangle of fire...

  A castle of dark stone looming tall and dark on a mountaintop, green fires bursting forth from the windows, hurling folk within to their deaths, then raging higher until the walls cracked and split and the fortress started to fall...

  A woman with love in her eyes, and grief, rushing toward him in a darkened chamber, pleading...

  Rod shook his head violently, slapped himself, and gasped in relief. He'd managed to thrust aside the dead wizard's memories somehow, and was himself again, lying in this shattered chamber in the cellars of Malragard.

  "Light," he mumbled. "Must have light. Can't... see."

  As if that had been a command, magical lights silently flared all around him.

  Rod glared at them and raised himself onto his elbows. He couldn't quite believe that he'd been so close to a blast that scoured the walls bare and cracked the ceiling, and been untouched.

  Or was he? He couldn't feel his legs or his left arm, although he heaved himself up off the stone readily enough.

  He sat up, and put a tentative hand up to his face.

  There was his cheek, and his nose... Everything felt very much as it always had. He was alone—he felt alone, though the memories of too many dead men to count were all in his head, just waiting for a chance to get out—and he felt whole, too. Unhurt.

  He stood up, a little unsteadily, and peered through the drifting dust.

  Most of the stone shelves were gone, blasted away in great jagged shards where enchanted things had exploded; it looked like a greatfangs had somehow managed to get just its head into the room, and bite the edges of the shelves. The glows were coming from shattered things of magic, or were playing back and forth between wands or lurstars that had fallen close to each other.

  Rod shook his head. How had he survived? It just wasn't—no. he couldn't believe it. His face had been somewhere about there. and the lurstar just over there...

  He shook his head in disbelief. Now, if the thing had just shattered like glass, maybe, but when it had obviously exploded with sufficient fury to vaporize itself and crater the stone floor beneath, and magic items all over the room had blown apart, too, turning Malraun's arsenal into all these shards and twisted chaos and dying magic and perhaps, just perhaps one or two things he might be able to salvage...

  Well, perhaps there was something to this Lord Archwizard business, after all...

  Salvage, that had been a good idea. Not that he knew the slightest thing about magic, or even how to turn on some of these items, but he could always trade—

  Rod stopped then, and blinked. New memories were crowding into his mind as he stared along the benches, and he realized that he did know something about magic, after all.

  Still not spells. Very probably, if he tried to cast one—even if he somehow found a profusely illustrated Simple Spells For Kids book, or some such, and everything else he needed for a spell, too—stone-cold nothing would happen.

  He wasn't eager to try, either. Instead of "nothing," he might very well manage something. Like blowing off his own hand, or a bystander's head, or the towers off the nearest castle.

  Yet as he looked at what was left of Malraun's things of magic, strewn along the benches—most of them blackened, twisted, shattered, or even melted and run down off the fragmented stone bench in long, tarry streams that had hardened again, like cooling plastic—he could now put names to things. As in: that hadn't just been some sort of magical staff, it was what was left of a Falconstrike.

  And that wand, before its dangerous end had turned into a line of charcoal, had been a Taether's Talons, a weapon that conjured up raking claws out of thin air to rend one's foes.

  These things, too, that looked like long spindles, with a handgrip centred between two tapering ends rather than just one like a wand; these had been mysteries to him before, but he knew what they were now. Very likely because Rambaerakh had known. They were called undluths, and they spewed magic from both points, in long, flowing lines that trailed behind a moving undluth-wielder, and could be used to lash foes or counter their spells, hurled between the wielder and a foe like a dancing, undulating barrier. Undluth-strands could parry enemy magic where nothing else could, luring and clutching at it where a sword or net or shield would be utterly useless against it.

  Which meant he could now at least name what was about to kill him. Well, that was progress of a sort...

  Rod drew in a deep breath, reached out his hand, and firmly took hold of the nearest intact undluth.

  Nothing happened. It proved to be solid, cold, and smooth; touching it caused nothing to blow up, no sparks to spit anywhere, and nothing to boil up in his mind. It was like holding a splendidly carved stick.

  Until a little window seemed to sigh open in his mind, showing him lines of bronze-hued flame spurting smoothly from the points of the undluth, and a word slowly appeared around the window: nressae.

  Well, now...

  Rod shrugged, held the u
ndluth up and carefully out to one side, tilted it so neither of the points were aimed at him, and announced to the room calmly and clearly, "Nressae."

  Bronze fire leaked silently out of the tips of the undluth with no fuss at all, as readily and simply as if he'd turned on a tap.

  "Nressae," he said again—and the fire stopped, the fiery lines hanging down in midair slowly fading back up toward the points of the undluth.

  No, no, they were burning their way back to the points where they'd come from, consuming themselves like a long fuse running to sticks of dynamite in an old movie. As Rod watched, they reached the points and winked out.

  He blinked. A good thing, that; it hadn't crossed his mind until just now that the undluth could have exploded when they reached it, coming from either side, and met.

  No, impossible, his mind told him rather scornfully— Rambaerakh, for all the tea in China—yet someone inside his head, some memory that hadn't belonged to the wizard, had fully expected that result. Probably due to seeing it happen once.

  His mind hurled a severed hand at him, cartwheeling out of the darkness and past his nose fast enough to leave him blinking, trailed by a raw, throat-stripping scream of agony.

  Then it was gone, and he was staring at the silent, reassuringly solid undluth in his hand again.

  Rod shrugged. "Nressae."

  Bronzen fire awakened once more. He watched it blaze for a moment, then drew his hand carefully up and to the right, with the exaggerated sweeping grace of a ballerina, so as to swing those lines of fire up onto the bench around a trio of pulsing, backlashing wands to where a row of burnt staves and scepterlike things lay.

  So ho, he could do this! As deftly as a dancer, that had been...

  The charred things sprang into the air, spitting sparks, at the first touch of undluth-fire. Rod flinched.

  In prompt response, the lines of bronzen flame undulated like a snake, traveling along the battered bench like someone sending waves along a skipping rope. Enchanted items bounded up, spat spectacular showers of sparks, and flew apart—sending thrilling discharges of magic back down along the fires and up his arm.

  Rod was trembling in an instant, caught in the thrumming heart of more magic than he'd ever felt before, power that lifted him right off the floor to hover a few inches above it.

  "Wow!" he gasped aloud, then saw the lines of fire still snaking along the bench, toward a tangle of staves that still looked intact—

  "Nressae!" Rod shouted desperately, hauling back on the undluth, hard.

  Bronze fire danced above the bench, recoiling and lashing, reaching out writhing tendrils toward a staff that almost seemed to stir and then bend to greet them, as if yielding to the pull of a gigantic magnet in a Saturday morning cartoon—and faded back toward Rod, without reaching any of the staves.

  Thank the Falcon.

  Well, he'd certainly be keeping this. It was about time he had something in his hand to deal with evil wizards or veteran warriors— what had one of his history teachers called them, so long ago? Oh, yes, "well-practiced murderers with swords"—and he liked the feel of this. Or rather, he liked the way it made him feel.

  Powerful, dangerous, and capable. For the first time in years.

  Not that he particularly wanted to be dangerous to anyone. He just wanted respect. To be treated like someone it would be dangerous to casually mistreat, thrust aside with scorn, or use as a pawn.

  Yes. Rod hefted the undluth. He'd certainly be taking this with him.

  Which meant he dared not carry any other undluths away from here, or he'd be the one in danger. Undluths did bad things with other undluths carried by the same person.

  Now, how had he known that?

  From one of the memories that had flooded into him, yes, but whose? Who had those bobbing skeletons been?

  Rod frowned, shrugged, and turned to peer at the tangle of staves. He already knew they didn't all look alike, but hadn't yet applied himself to finding out what they did look like.

  Hmm. Not that just looking was going to give him much of a clue as to what each one did. They lacked handy labels, and though they had decorations of a sort, mostly carved collars bordering the smooth handgrip, the style of those borders told him nothing about the intended purpose or powers of the staff. One or two of the borders looked a little like Celtic knotwork. yet formed parallel ridges of different heights, like the flaring decorative bands on Staunton chess pieces.

  So Rod shrugged, took hold of a staff that looked to be about the right height to serve as a walking-stick and that wasn't too badly tangled up with other staves, and pulled it free.

  No revelations rushing into his mind, no stirrings of power in his mind. It was a stick. Smooth, heavy and reassuring in his hand, but still just a stick. Until, he supposed, he said or did the right thing.

  Which he would never ever happen to blindly, mistakenly do. Probably.

  Rod shrugged, lifted the staff and turned it to make sure there were no little inscriptions hidden anywhere on it.

  No. Nothing. There was no way the repeating curves of this border could be letters, or hide words—or even a rune, unless the whole danged thing, all around the curve of the staff, was a symbol. He recalled being taught about an ancient wartime code that used a strip of paper wound around a staff, but there was nothing on this staff that would help tell him if a code like that would work with this staff, and no little cracks in it where pieces of paper—or anything else—might be hidden.

  His father's perennial gruff Christmas morning question: "What? No instructions?" rose into Rod's mind, and he smiled wryly. Shrugging, he turned to look for a rod, or a lurstar, or a wand, to take along, too.

  One of each, no more, one part of his mind was warning him.

  Yet an instant later, someone else's memories showed him men trudging along with bundles of wands bound at their belts, and six or seven staves lashed together and slung across their backs in baldric-carriers.

  Rod shook his head, grinned, and decided to look thoroughly all over the room, pick up everything that he really liked the look of, make sure nothing so much as brushed against anything else, rig up some practical way of carrying everything, and take it all. After all, he doubted he'd be coming back.

  In fact, a restless part of him wanted him to get going, to get out of this scorched and battered room without delay. There wasn't really much left of Malraun's arsenal of magic, all crowded and gleaming and neatly arranged along the shelves as he'd first seen it. He was looking at an aftermath, and what little wreckage had survived.

  Some of it for not much longer, by the looks of the awakened wands whose pulsing, arcing magics were still wrestling weirdly with each other and getting feebler. Most looked like they'd just go dark, fading away into spitting and then silent exhaustion, but a few looked angrier; more dangerous, as if they'd explode rather than fading. Perhaps that was behind his growing restlessness.

  "Begone," he murmured, selecting a wand he liked the look of. "Begone."

  He thrust it through his belt, judging the slightly bulbous ends— both of them flared the same way, both of them carved with squiggly grooves that might mean something significant, or might be mere decoration—would keep the thing from falling to the ground unnoticed, as he walked. Then he saw a lurstar, uncracked among a group of broken ones, and took it, too, thrusting it through his belt nigh his other hip. Which left him with no hands free, if he was going to carry the staff and the undluth and let none of them touch each other.

  Right. Magic he hadn't time to master—even if he could. Time to go.

  As if that decision had been some sort of silent signal, staves and wands and lurstars awakened, all over the room, kindling into insistent, pulsing glows—and Rod's head was flooded with memories not his own. Striding out of this very chamber and along the passage ahead—not rubble-strewn and collapsed, but lit by a neat row of flickering torches. Meeting with powerful robed men. Wizards. Regal and feared—and rightly so.

  One turning to face
him, in a high-collared robe of maroon, hair and beard flecked with white, with great dark eyes... Lorontar.

  He shivered, although it was only a memory, and was almost wildly glad when the figure was gone and others stood in its place; younger, darker men robed in green and sky-blue and brown. Lorontar's foes, these, though they were all dangerous in their own ways, too, wizards with no one to govern them and little to recommend them save that they had banded together to stand against Lorontar.

  Dead now, most of them, and the rest gone into hiding. A secret society of sorts, hiding all over Falconfar and in places beyond, behind dozens of hidden gates. The Moon Masked, they were called, for their ability to cloak their faces with pearly radiance like moonlight.

  They survived still, whoever had provided this memory was sure. Yet he—not Rambaerakh, so it must have been one of the skeletons—also knew they had not been seen or heard from in the lifetime of any living Falconaar he knew of, and that many— priests and sages and Aumrarr—believed the Moon Masked gone forever, done with Falconfar and with their struggle against Lorontar.

  Rod shook his head to put such distracting thoughts aside—not now, this room was about to blow apart, or something or someone was headed here to investigate the first blast—and headed out of the room, along the passage.

  Not that he knew his way around Malragard all that well. He had a vague idea that he had to turn around, and ascend a floor, to get to ground level and to the parts of the tower he knew.

  Which were chock-full of Malraun's nasty little traps.

  Right. Burn that bridge when we get to it. Right now, hurry. So turn left here, and—

  Rod came to an abrupt halt, hefting the undluth in his hand— and was very glad he was holding it.

  Something had been coming to investigate the magical explosion. But this...