Arch Wizard

Chapter Fifteen

Hammerhand vipers," the unseen man who'd laughed greeted them. "Welcome to your deaths. You won't last aaaaaaa…" The voice trailed away in a dying, fading moan. "That wasn't necessary," Thalden chided someone. "He was a prisoner, chained to the wall. Probably a Tesmer man, who hates Lyrose as much as we do."

"He was being too loud," came the hissed reply. "What if he'd shouted for guards, hey?" The whisper turned less fierce. "This

poison works fast."

"So keep your blades pointing down, not out," Syregorn said grimly, from somewhere behind Rod. "Now silence, all of you. If this Lord Archwizard is to have any chance of defeating the Doom Malraun and getting the Aumrarr he came for out of here alive, it's best he arrives in Malraun's lap as a surprise-not in a grand confrontation, after all Lyraunt's been roused."

Those words were barely out of his mouth when a Lyrose man in livery came around the corner, head down and hurrying, hands already busy at his codpiece. "Falcon bugger all," he was growling to himself. "Late relieving me, taking his own sweet sated time over telling me a jest I didn't want to hear any-"

His words trailed off forever then, but he'd been doomed since Reld's kissing-sharp dagger had sliced him, on his hurrying way by. He'd never even noticed, and he had time only to gape in wonder at all the unfamiliar armed men in the passage before-still gaping-he started to topple.

Syregorn put out an arm, gathered him in with casual strength, plucked him off his feet, and carried him into the cell where the prisoner now hung silent and dead in his chains.

The warcaptain came back out immediately, shrugging the dead man's Lyrose tabard over his head and slapping Tarth's arm on the way past in an obvious signal. As one-with the usual exception of Rod Everlar-the men of Hammerhold moved to follow Syregorn, striding boldly down the passage as if they had every right to be there.

Rod was marched along with them, Thalden's hand in its usual place where Rod's right shoulder turned into his arm. Most of them had sheathed their poisoned knives, but he suspected the little rolled bundle of cloth Syregorn was carrying in both hands concealed his dagger, held ready in the heart of it. Around them, Lyraunt Castle seemed deserted, and that had all of the Hammerhand knights frowning in suspicion.

Rod thought back over all he'd written about Falconfar, knowing he'd never penned one word about daily life in Lyraunt Castle, but… yes, of course. Guards and the day-servants would be few in the heart of a castle in these wee hours, but there'd be-should be-other servants busy everywhere. Those who cleaned, those in the kitchens who baked and roasted, kitchens that should be not far from the scullery port, and those who laid fires in every hearth. Probably lots of others he couldn't bring to mind just now, too. There was something else, though. An air, an atmosphere that was alert and awake… that was it: awake! The castle felt awake around them. Not "the very stones are watching" magically awake, nor yet the bustle and wakefulness of day, but a tension that hinted they were expected.

Oh, shit.

Ahead, their passage met a cross-passage and ended there. A glow of light was coming from the right, toward the front of the castle, but to the left all was dark. Syregorn waved a quelling hand at the floor, and his knights slowed and started moving quietly. Their warcaptain strode on ahead, with an air of bored unconcern.

Reaching the passage-moot, he turned left without hesitation, took a stride, stopped and smote his forehead as if he'd forgotten something, then turned and came back, shaking his head as if in self-reproach and moving faster.

"Guards under the light," he murmured, "so we go left. Casuallike; no stealth, but keep it quiet.''''

They did that, Rod's back a-crawl with apprehension as he turned in the wake of the rest, expecting shouts and pounding feet from behind him at any moment.

The outcry he was dreading did not come. The Hammerhand knights had followed Syregorn around another corner before he let out his breath in a great sigh-and only then realized he'd been holding it. Ahead of him, some of the other knights were sighing too.

They were crossing through about the midpoint of the back half of the castle, as far as Rod could judge, and all around them was dark silence-that waiting stillness-and closed doors. Again a meeting with a cross-passage, though the hallway they were in continued across it this time, and this time the glow of light was coming from the left.

Syregorn repeated the same little tactic he'd used before, with the same result. They headed to the right, away from the guards, all striding along with apparent unconcern.

"He's trying to remember where the stair up is," Thalden muttered to Rod. "There's one somewhere around here that's not as narrow as the servants' stairs at the back, nor quite as public as the grand staircase in the great rooms at the front. As you might imagine, we don't come strolling through Lyraunt Castle often."

"And you never will again," a calm, sardonic voice remarked, out of the darkness near at hand.

Thalden and all of the nearby knights whirled, daggers flashing out, but there was no one there, despite their hard scrutiny and peerings for concealed doors or spyholes. The voice seemed to have come from empty air.

"Sorcery," one knight muttered. "Malraun."

"No," Rod told them firmly. "That wasn't his voice."

Tarth and Reld both hissed curses under their breaths, and hastened to catch up to Syregorn.

The knights were trotting hard after them before the deep-voiced knight observed sourly, "Great. Lyrose has another wizard, too."

"Well," someone else observed merrily, "at least our deaths will be interesting.'"

"So they will," the sardonic voice agreed pleasantly, from far behind them. Rod stiffened, but it seemed only he and Thalden had heard it.

And Thalden's response was to dig his fingers into Rod's arm like so many iron-hard talons, and trot the Lord Archwizard along faster.

This was fun.

More fun than he'd had in years, in fact.

Lord Magrandar Lyrose smiled to himself in the darkness, and took his hand off the speaking-sphere. It was time to join his wife and daughter, in case the more violent of the magics the Doom had given him were needed. He was wearing his best black boots and his most dashing new garb-by the Falcon, the mirror had shown him back a fine figure of a man! — and his chased and polished gorget gleamed at his throat.

His fingers strayed to the familiar, comforting lines of that curving triangle of bright chased metal. He never took it off, these days, even to bed with his lady wife and despite her caustic remarks about it. She felt it shouted to all Falconfar that he trusted her not.

He shrugged. What of that? He trusted no one, and hadn't done so for as long as he could remember. Only fools trusted in others.

And only a fool would take off a personal shield enspelled and given by Malraun the Matchless. A shield that would heal Magrandar instantly of all wounds dealt by metal weapons and the ravages of poison-though it did not spare him the agony and debilitation of such hurts, ere it banished them.

Oh, yes, he could handle a few Hammerhand raiders. Even with most of his guards gone from their posts to muster into Pelmard's Irontarl-seizing force. If the cleverness he'd thought up worked, he'd manage it without even spilling much Lyrose blood. Huh. Pelmard would no doubt see to that.

Patting the hilt of his sword and the bracer hidden beneath the splendid cloth on the forearm of his free hand, he hurried out of his study.

This was a most important social engagement. It wouldn't do to be late.

"This way," Syregorn whispered, and boldly opened the door on the right. The veteran knights kept their stares on the other six closed doors that lined the small, rounded end of the passage, but none of those doors burst open to spew Lyrose knights at them. Syregorn's door led into darkness, and silence-to Rod, that same waiting, listening silence, as tense as a taut bowstring-reigned.

One after another, doing nothing to break that silence, the Hammerhands followed after their warcaptain.

Through the door, into a large open space; a great high hall. A set of doors at one end of it stood just a thumb-width ajar, letting in faint light enough for their eyes, accustomed to gloom, to see two tiers of balconies above, a wide, sweeping staircase ascending to the first of them, tapestries hanging on the walls wherever there were no doors-and there were a lot of doors, all of them in tall, grand pairs.

Except one. It stood open, breaking the only curving stretch of wall that bowed out into the room. This was evidently the base of a tower, because the door opened directly onto a spiral staircase that ascended steeply, entirely filling a cylindrical space beyond. They could tell that much, because faint glows arose from the painted edges of each step.

Right across the room was a gap in the wall, a large open archway rather than a door. It opened into another huge room, so dark that only the nearest end of three long feasting-tables could be seen, stretching away lined with chairs.

The hall itself, if one didn't count the tapestries and four braziers clustered together near the base of the grand staircase, was empty of furniture. Its flat, smooth bare floor was glossy and new-washed underfoot, a small sea of black tiles surrounding the Three Thorns of Lyrose, inlaid in tiles of some lighter hue.

Syregorn did not stride far out across that glossy floor.

"We've been herded here," he said suddenly, darting hard glances in one direction and then another, all around the hall, as he started around the room, keeping close to the walls. "This has been too easy-time and again, no servants where there should be, and too few guards. Lure in one direction, herd in another… Lyrose has meant us to come here, to this room."

"So this would be about the time their archers would come out onto the balconies, casting torches down on our heads to make us targets, and their knights burst in on us through every door," Tarth said bitterly, as the Hammerhand knights followed their warcaptain around the walls.

They all looked up as they did so, as if expecting all of those things to happen in answer to his words, but the dark silence hung unbroken.

Except in one direction. From beyond the doors that were letting in the light, from where that bright radiance was, nearer the front of Lyraunt Castle, there rose sudden loud voices. Voices that came swiftly nearer, accompanied by a bobbing light that could only be a lantern, and the noisy scrapes of boots scuffing along the floor.

"Every one of them? Why, there must be six-score! Why can't the Master Steward rearrange his own plates? I'm supposed to set up the braziers around the Thorns, and have all the bowls polished before-"

"I don't give the orders, Greth! Just do it-braziers first, mind! — and do it right for once, and mayhap he won't break any bowls over your head, this time! Not that I can even promise that, after what you-"

Greth and his lantern were almost at the doors, bare moments away from thrusting them open and discovering a room full of Hammerhand knights. Syregorn darted for the dark feasting-hall, and his knights hastened at his heels.

As they passed through the arch, there was a white flash, a purple flickering as strange, surging power awakened and gathered them in-power that reached out a long tentacle to englobe and snatch Rod and Thalden, who were still some strides away-and then the air itself swallowed them all.

Stealthy knights or not, every last one of them, the Lord Archwizard included, shouted in alarm.

But by then, of course, it was too late.

The shouts of the Hammerhands were cut off as sharply as if severed by the edge of a descending sword. In the alcove behind the tapestry, mere steps away from the gate that had swallowed the hated foes, Lord Lyrose unhooded the glowstone and smiled an unlovely smile.

His daughter, who had been peering through a gap in the tapestries to make sure the magic of the gate had snatched away all the intruders, turned, nodded reassurance that they were all gone, and smiled a matching smile right back at him.

"So much for that clumsy Hammerhand attack," he murmured. "I wonder how many others will come, and how soon?"

Mrythra shrugged. "What boots it? We'll crush them all."

Lord Lyrose heard a door open in the distance. His wife, on her way to join him. He seized the moment, before she was within earshot, and could forbid what he was going to order. Ah, suggest.

He leaned forward. "Daughter mine, Pelmard will be expecting me to ride the high whip-wielding lord over him, in this Irontarl foray. I'd like to hand him another little surprise, and have you do so. Flog him literally, if he dares to flee."

"Lord and father," Mrythra replied softly, as she glided to the tapestries to depart before her mother's arrival, "nothing would give me greater pleasure."

The moon was shockingly bright; dangling like a heavy grainsack from Juskra, Garfist felt like a brightly-lit archers' target, and said so. Adding with a fierce hiss, "An' ye could fly a mite higher! That's the third tree ye've dragged me through!"

"The moonlight is precisely why I'm flying this low," Juskra snarled back at him. "One of the reasons."

"Hey? What d'ye mean by that?"

"She means you're fat and heavy, Old Ox," Iskarra said scornfully, from not far behind him, where she dangled beneath Dauntra on a single leather strap (Garfist was strapped to Juskra's waist by three).

"Not much farther now," Dauntra said soothingly, as Garfist started to snarl a less than pleasant retort. "Yon's Lyraunt Castle. So we come in low over the forest, from behind and in the shadow of those tall trees just ahead, then land yonder, in the shadows behind that thick stand, there. Things'd be easier if Lady Lyrose didn't have this love of open, expansive lawns."

"Oh, aye, the unbroken sward," Gar muttered. "And why is that?"

"How would you ever get through a day without that word 'why,' Gulkoun?" Juskra muttered, but Dauntra hissed at her sister and made courteous reply.

"Likely it was to make sure the stink of the moat was gone forever, so ponds and herb-beds were kept far from under her windows," the fairer Aumrarr said. "Watch, now; draw up your feet, Gar."

They skimmed low over-or cracklingly through, in Garfist's case-a last few trees, and descended to the earth in a running, flapping thump and thud of a landing.

Garfist growled wordlessly, but Juskra whirled around and hissed fury back at him, right in his face, as her fingers tore at the leathern thongs that bound them together. "Gods, how does a man get so fat?" were the last words of her furious whisper.

"Not flying about all Falconfar meddling in the business of others," he whispered back hoarsely.

"That's true," Isk put in soothingly. "We walked."

Dauntra snorted in mirth, then thrust slender fingers under the noses of Garfist and her sister. "Drop it, both of you!" She and Juskra were quickly reknotting the leathern thongs, to bind their carry-straps in place around their waists.

"You wait right here," Juskra hissed at Gar and Isk. "We'll cause tumult soon, at the foregate-the front gate. Then you go down there, over that little bridge by the pond, into the gardens. That side door should be unlocked; it's how the guards and the maids get out into the garden for their trysts. If anyone sees you, act like a panderer come from Irontarl with a wise one who sees to maids' complaints."

"Maids have complaints?" Gar growled. "More than other servants, I mean?"

Isk slapped him, an instant before Juskra gave him a look of withering scorn and snapped, "When women bleed below, and other things men never want to hear about. Just walk in there as if you belong there, and put the gems where we told you; the castle's simple to get around in. Any proper questions?"

"Just one," Garfist asked thoughtfully. "How many of you Aumrarr are still alive?"

"We don't-" Juskra hissed, but Dauntra put a hand on her arm and told her firmly, "Those who made such rules are all dead, and I'm obeying them no longer, no matter what it costs us in influence."

She turned to look at Garfist. "Gulkoun, I know not. All I can be sure of are the two of us, and I think Taeauna is still alive, though whether her wits are her own is another matter. So, three I can be certain of. Perhaps as many as six, or even nine. No more."

Garfist swore in astonishment.

"So that's why Dyune wouldn't say," Iskarra murmured.

Both Aumrarr nodded. "We aren't-weren't-supposed to. So no one would ever suspect how few we were. That's how we managed to wield any influence at all in places like Galath; scaring brawling barons into thinking a flying army could show up, any time, to chastise them."

"So you're telling us now because we'll likely all be dead before dawn," Garfist rumbled. "Well, thankee. Always nice to be sent to death by honest folk."

And without waiting for a reply, he set off down the hill, toward the little bridge.

The two Aumrarr hissed curses and sprang into the air. Hard and fast to the front of Lyraunt Castle they flapped, to create their promised diversion.

Still bellowing their startled fear into the night, Rod Everlar and the knights from Hammerhold suddenly found themselves-somewhere else.

Somewhere outside, under the bright moon, in a place that by the startled looks on Hammerhand faces all round him, Rod knew wasn't Ironthorn at all. They'd stepped through a magical gate, of course. Not one he'd ever written about, but he was beginning to realize that his books seemed to be more about bringing kingdoms and mountain ranges into being, here, and not the finer details. Even if he'd been the only Shaper ever to work on Falconfar, it seemed the sweep and strivings of everyday Falconaar life set about changing little things, the moment you'd lifted your pen, or your fingers from the keyboard.

The moment your Lord Archwizardly back was turned…

They were standing in a moonlit walled garden, at the base of a soaring castle keep larger, grander, and newer than any Ironthar fortress. The garden seemed to occupy the crest of a long hill that dropped away in the bright moonlight down to a small village. It was a Raurklor hold, by the familiar trees making up the seemingly endless forest all around. That slope was a long series of tilled fields outlined by hedge-walls of heaped stumps and boulders.

Syregorn and the oldest knight were both looking disgusted and hissing out curses.

"You know where we are?" Tarth asked him.

The warcaptain nodded. "I've been here before, on Hammerhand business. This is the hold of Harlhoh, hard-riding days distant from Ironthorn along none-too-safe forest trails."

He turned and waved disgustedly at the soaring tower whose garden door seemed to be the only way out of their enclosure, bar clambering up the stone walls. "Which makes this the tower of Malragard, abode of the wizard Malraun."

It was Rod's turn to curse bitterly, and he did so.

When he ran out of colorful things to say, Syregorn was standing close to him, and wearing a grim smile.

"So, Archwizard," the warcaptain asked softly, "when will you blast down this fortress, and Malraun the Matchless with it?"

Rod swore again, clumsily repeating himself. As he saw faces go hard and unfriendly all around him, he broke off and snapped, "Get me some parchment! And ink, and some quills, and a lamp and something flat and smooth to write on! Then you'll see some blasting down of things, I promise you!"

The knights exchanged puzzled glances. "Don't sound like the ballads much, do it?" Tarth asked Reld.

"Never does, when you're in it," came the laconic reply, as Reld stared through Rod Everlar as if the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar was some sort of earthworm he'd just fished out of his soup. "Never does."