by Ed Greenwood
The chaos that ensued was no surprise to anyone—nor was Garfist's capering back and forth along the line of his foes, his sword flicking out to open throats or slash faces as he hastened.
"Always be merry," he sang, "never be glum! Her lips like a cherry, as red as her—"
An armsman sprang down on him from behind with a roar, arms spread to capture and pinion Garfist's sword and dagger, but even as his landing ended the fat man's song in a grunt, it became apparent that the outlander had seen the peril, and at the last instant neatly tucked his sword under his arm to jut up behind him—and gut his attacker.
The armsman fell away, blood spilling out of him. Garfist kicked his way clear without looking back, staggered along the line of tables once more, and with a slash of his sword swept both ankles out from under another armsman who was just gaining a tabletop with a roar of triumph.
The man crashed to the floor, screaming and clutching at his half-severed foot. Garfist trod on his face hard, in a bound that took him back atop the tables, knocked aside another sword, and sprang down into the open space in the midst of his milling foe.
Therein he landed—and not by chance—right in front of Sir Raenor, who shouted a challenge, waving his jeweled blade with a flourish.
The toe of Garfist's boot caught him not in the knight's ornate armored codpiece but just behind it, driving up and in with force enough to launch his foe forward in a wild lunge that allowed Garfist to draw his dagger across the knightly throat with calm precision.
Sir Raenor slumped to the floor and into obscurity, and the surviving armsmen all shouted in alarm—however hated their employer had been, the custom established under King Devaer was clear: when knights or nobles were slain by anyone except a wizard or another noble, their bodyguards or armsmen were held personally accountable for the death—and someone's wild sword- swing sent a flaming lantern off its hook and spinning through the air to crash at the foot of the common room's one drapery, an old, much-patched, and rotten window-cloth that burst into flame.
Garfist and Iskarra had both seen blazes like it often enough to know what fate awaited the Stag's Head. They started sprinting for the front doors, Gar waving his sword wildly to clear himself some running room, and Isk sweeping up her salvaged knives in a bundle, heedless of their edges, so as to have something to hurl at her assailants as she fled.
Halfway to his goal, with armsmen converging on him from all sides, Garfist abruptly stopped, spun around and gutted the nearest man, let the next two run past him in their haste, and slashed open a fourth man's forehead, blinding him with blood streaming into his eyes.
"Isk?" he roared. "Get out!"
"Brilliant idea!" his partner called back, as she raced down the room. "So favored by the Falcon am I, to have a man handy to command me into doing what I would never have thought of, if I'd been all alone!"
The front wall of the room, near the drapery struck by the lantern, was now aflame, and the armsmen entangled in the wreckage by the kitchen were starting to cough and curse.
Iskarra reached Garfist's side, stabbing her way through the knot of men surrounding him, and warned, "Lots of witnesses, Old Ox!"
"Aye, but I'm not leaving men to burn to death," he growled back. "Horrible way to greet the Falcon."
His partner ducked under a thrust and hamstrung the man swinging it in one smooth movement that then brought her bobbing to her feet behind Garfist. She turned her back on him to deal with an armsman trying to run him through from behind, and asked, "So?"
"So we'll have to slit every throat and spit every paunch offered to us," he replied merrily, watching yet another armsman back away and try to flee—only to encounter his own fellows and get cut down.
"You know there're too many to butcher them all," Isk pointed out, as they sidestepped in unison, trying to move closer to the front doors. "Just look—"
The tip of an armsman's sword caught her side and spun her against him, bleeding and gasping—and Garfist decided he didn't have time for his foes, any more. He snatched Isk up like a doll and swung her high around his head, her boots crashing into half a dozen faces, then ran right over the armsman in front of him, trampling him to the ground, and charged for the entrance.
The fat man had to tuck his partner under his arm as he reached those double doors, and twist around to smash the doors open with his shoulder.
He staggered two steps out into the road and dropped her, backing away from the men who'd followed him and swinging wildly at them.
Isk bounced in the dirt with a shriek, scrambled up and cried, "Old king or no king!"
Garfist bellowed the words a breath later, as strong and slender arms were already reaching down to pluck them aloft—leaving the dozen men of Galath who were bursting out of the inn staring up into the sky in dumbfounded fury.
As flames started to crackle angrily out of the inn behind them, and winged women bore their quarry into the sky, the Galathans found themselves standing in the road with no tankards, no feast, and no one to fight.
One of them spat into the road-dust and snarled, "Pah. Another good evening ruined."
"HAH!" GORONGOR CRIED triumphantly, striking aside a parry and slicing hard into his foe's neck. "That's you done, and down!"
The Darsworder he'd been fighting staggered away and fell, sword clanging to the floor as he tried to stem the fountaining blood. Gorongor turned away.
"That's the last of them," Tarlund grunted, at his elbow. "Except for the wizard himself, of course."
"Huh," Eskeln puffed, clutching at his arm where blood was seeping from between his fingers. "It's always 'except for the wizard, of course.'"
"The blueskin? Where's he gotten to?" Glorn asked them, gasping as he pushed out from under the bodies of two men he'd slain, and trying to wipe their blood out of his eyes.
Tarlund pointed, and they all turned and looked down the room.
The mage was striding away from them, stepping through a conjured door in midair that glowed with the gray light of a stormy day on the far side.
"Oh, Falcon shit," Gorongor whispered wearily, lowering his sword.
Through the magical opening, the warriors could see a lot of cloudy sky, and rising against it several strange, smooth rectangular towers, dark and slender and gleaming. It was an otherwhere none of them knew, or could even guess at from bards' tales.
Another man, the stranger who'd been with the maercrawn, was lurching along right behind the blue-skinned wizard—and as they watched, Taeauna, hissing fiercely, sprang forward to tackle the stranger around the legs, her abandoned sword clattering on the floor in her wake. Her dive took her through the glowing opening.
Which promptly winked out, snatching all three of them away from the watching warriors.
Leaving them in the trap-filled depths of ruined Malragard, staring at empty air where the gray-sky glow had been, and then at each other across the burned bones of the maercrawn and the sprawled bodies of their dead comrades and the warriors of Darsword.
Five men exchanged slow, grim glances. Of the ten who'd come here with Taeauna, they were all that was left.
Old Roreld, and four who'd been part of Malraun's bodyguard. Eskeln, Gorongor, Tarlund, and Glorn.
They stared at each other until Roreld broke the silence.
"Well," he growled, looking at the others sourly, "now what?"
THE BREEZE DIED a little, but the cold remained, and the grass around them was still drenched.
Not that any of it mattered much, with Narmarkoun rolling frantically out from under Rod and hissing out an evil-sounding spell through the old, graying dung decorating his blue nose and cheeks.
He slapped Taeauna across the face as she let go of Rod to grab frantically for the dagger at her belt—and just like that, strain though she might, she couldn't move.
By the Falcon, she could barely breathe. The pain was intense— it felt as if every muscle in her body was going into spasm, each one locking up after the next, relaxing just a trifle
, then clenching again.
Taeauna gasped, or tried to, fighting to draw breath, helplessly frozen with her head up to stare now at nothing but a backyard, as Narmarkoun touched Rod and froze him, too.
The wizard rolled them both over with the murmured words, "Can't have you two dying on me for lack of air. Yet." Then he calmly wiped his face clean on the grass, sat up, looked at the house behind them, apparently saw nothing of immediate interest there, and turned to peer around the yard.
Watching and listening for anyone who might have seen us, Taeauna thought, her eyes fixed on the side of Narmarkoun's intent face.
Breathing was easier—a little—without the weight of her own body pressing down on her lungs, but it was taking all her strength to do it. She wouldn't be doing anything else while this magic lasted.
There was a weight on her right leg, just above the ankle. It must be Rod Everlar's foot, lying across hers. It was as heavy and unmoving as a rock. The only things that were moving, that Taeauna could see, were the racing gray clouds overhead, and the wizard's head, turning this way and that like a hawk's.
Narmarkoun seemed to satisfy himself that no watchers were nearby, and no alarm was about to be raised. He turned, thrust two of his fingers into the nostrils of the helpless Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, and lifted Rod's head to face his. The Doom's face went curiously blank.
He's plundering Rod Everlar's mind, Taeauna told herself. She dimly felt his thoughts being thrust aside as a ruthless will shoved and probed, ever deeper. She was sensing Rod's mind with her own somehow; something about this spell must be...
The feeling abruptly ended and the wizard let go of Rod, letting him fall back onto the grass. Then Narmarkoun straightened and strode purposefully down the yard.
He soon returned, triumphantly holding up a slim, dark little metal box between his thumb and forefinger and smiling down at Rod. Taeauna could read two of the words on it: "Soothing Lozenges."
What were Soothing Lozenges?
"Just where you remembered," Narmarkoun murmured, "safe in the crack in the back corner fencepost. Which is almost falling down now, it's so rotten. Anyone could have found this. Idiot." He turned the box so it was level, thumbed its sliding lid half-off, drew out a key, and gave it a cold smile.
Then he looked at Taeauna, and his smile sharpened. "Struggle not, Aumrarr. I have plans for you both."
Rod made a thick, incoherent sound, as if he was trying to speak.
The wizard looked back at him, shook his head dismissively, and murmured, "Not so mighty a Lord Archwizard after all. Certainly not much of a keep, this."
Another sound came from Rod, but it made no more sense than the first one.
The wizard smiled down at him almost indulgently.
"Don't run off now," he added mockingly, and strolled out of Taeauna's sight, heading for the house.
She lay on her back staring at the stormy sky, unable to even curse.
IT WAS AN old house, and had real shutters. Someone had drawn and fastened them across the windows, probably to discourage break-ins.
Narmarkoun learned that much from Rod Everlar's mind before he reached the steps up to the back deck. "Steps" was a rather grand term, he thought, for two railless planks leading up onto a platform, all made of mossy, green-tinged wood. On the deck was a round metal table, painted white with streaks of brown rust where the paint was peeling off it, a large pot that looked as if a plant had died in it some time ago, and a rusting black metal bulk on legs that Everlar thought of as "my old grill; long past time to replace it, but I like it, damn it."
The last Doom of Falconfar warily passed the old grill—it looked like something you'd animate into a clumsy but fearsome guardian—and strode straight across the deck to the back door.
Rod's spare house key stuck on the first try, but Narmarkoun knew enough about locks in Falconfar not to force it and break the key off in the lock. He jiggled it instead, and tried again.
Still stuck. He withdrew the key, warmed it in his mouth, then spat on it and tried it again.
This time it worked—whereupon it was the door's turn to stick. Narmarkoun sighed, worked the lock once or twice while thrusting at the door with his knee, then made sure he'd left it unlocked, took the key out, and put his shoulder to the door. Solidly.
He was here to find one thing, before all else: whatever magic this fool Rod Everlar had used—must have used—to make his Shaping reach from world to world. Whether the dolt had known he was using magic or not, he must have been. No one as weak- willed and as utterly ignorant as this Rod Everlar could send Shapings across a good-sized lake, let alone to an otherwhere. A gate must have been involved.
And he wanted it. More than that, he wanted to make sure neither Everlar nor any other bumbling idiot of this Earth happened across it, and did something that might threaten the imminent triumphant rule of the last surviving Doom of Falconfar, over all the Falcon Kingdoms and every desolate part of the wilderlands beyond. Every last dragon-haunted peak and frozen waste of it.
For he was Narmarkoun, the real Lord Archwizard of Falconfar.
Soon that would be truth, not merely a boastful title. Soon he would rule every last lord and lady of Falconfar, not just the Tesmers of Ironthorn.
If, of course, he fared well, in the days ahead. Which meant avoiding mistakes, and doing things right.
He shrugged, unsheathed Taroarin's dagger, and cast a spell he'd not used for years, that would send it floating ahead of him, to strike at any threat. Almost certainly unnecessary, but caution was best. A small mistake avoided, a small thing done right.
Under the goad of his thought, the dagger floated into the gloom ahead, point first, and he strode after it.
He moved cautiously, but expected to meet no one. The air was stale, hanging heavy and silent, the house dark and dusty. It felt empty, long deserted.
Books, books everywhere... There were bookshelves in every room, and books stacked atop them, and in untidy piles in front of them, and on chairs beside them, littering the place as if it was the home of an old, befuddled wizard.
No one would have so many books but a mage, or someone hoping to find magic hidden in books. Perhaps Everlar had succeeded, and what he sought was in one of these small, dim, cluttered rooms, hiding in the semblance of a book. Everlar's mind had told him there was nothing to be found, that there was no magic—or hadn": been, until a wounded Aumrarr had fallen onto his bed, with Dark Helms right behind her—but that meant nothing.
Less than nothing. This Rod Everlar was simply too stupid to recognize magic for what it was. Something must be augmenting his feeble Shapings, to make them reach to other worlds... He just had to find it.
"DUNSHAR, A FEW of us are displeased by what we've been hearing of your progress here in Galathgard," the burly man in the shining armor and magnificent scarlet cloak growled, as he shouldered his way past the stammering klarl. "King Brorsavar is going to be here much sooner than you think, and right on his heels will come all the rest of us; there's not a knight in Galath that wants to miss old Bror's first royal court. Yet I hear you've not even yet rebuilt the kitchen chimneys, nor readied so much as a single bedchamber, and frankly, some of us are beginning to think you're just not the man for the—" He blinked. "And just who by the Falcon are you?" Velduke Mespur Hallowhond had rather been looking forward to humbling Klarl Annusk Dunshar, whom he'd never liked much. He had not expected to stride into an inner chamber and find a waist-down-naked—though undeniably beautiful, fair of face and, er, limbs—lass, reclining at ease on a lounge that by its size and magnificence could only have been meant for the royal backside. A doxy, moreover, who now had the effrontery to incline her head to him in regal greeting—for all the world as if she thought herself his equal! As she regarded him, her slight smile held not the slightest trace of fear at all.
"This is the Lady Talyss Tesmer, of Ironthorn," Klarl Dunshar said stiffly, hurrying around Hallowhond to interpose himself between the glowering velduke and the
serenely smiling woman on the lounge. "Who has come here to—"
"To be your bedpretty, by the looks of things," the velduke grunted. "I know, I know, the pressures of such hectic work, all the demands on you and the hardships of luring good masons out here into this monster-haunted wilderlands with too little coins to entice them. Good thing you managed to find coins enough to pay her, now, isn't—"
Dunshar's dagger-thrust was low, brutal, and swift. He tugged his blade viciously upwards, right in under Hallowhond's ribs, ere he pulled it out and stepped back to let the noble crash to the floor.
The klarl paled, mouth falling open as he stared down at the fallen velduke, aghast. "What have I done?"
"I'm wondering the very same thing," Mespur Hallowhond snapped, scrambling up and drawing his sword. "Very stupid of you, Dunshar. Fatally stupid, in fact. But then, if you'd had any brains, you'd have expected any velduke riding across Galath right now, what with all the troubles, to be magically protected against swords and daggers."
Sword raised, Hallowhond advanced menacingly on the stumbling klarl. He set himself to lunge, but abruptly reeled and toppled, crashing onto his face, sword clattering from his hand.
There wasn't much left of the back of the velduke's head.
Belard Tesmer looked at the blood-drenched stone block in his hands, sighed, then let it fall almost regretfully onto the bloody mess it had caused. "Shoddy mason-work. The curse of every hasty rebuilding job. Such an unfortunate accident."
He bent down, his dagger hissing out, and cut off one of Hallowhond's fingers, sporting a ring that had begun glowing.
"So much for magical protection," he murmured. "If we must speak of fatally stupid behavior, my lord velduke, ignoring a mere servant standing behind you as you draw your sword and start to threaten folk with it is a striking example."
He calmly tossed away the bloody finger, then held up the dripping ring. "Useful little trinket. Talyss?"