Arch Wizard

Chapter Eighteen

Rod Everlar looked up at the moon, serene in a nigh-cloudless sky that was alive with more stars than he'd ever seen before-and then down at the moon-drenched roofs of silent Harlhoh. No dogs barked, no wolves howled, and no nameless night things called. It was very still.

Except for what was bubbling up inside him again, warm threads stirring like reaching fingers. The drug they'd given him earlier…

He reeled, and Thalden flung out an arm to steady him and snapped, "Gorn! The wizard's under attack! Some magic of Malraun's, belike!"

The knights scattered into a ring, swords and daggers out. Their points were thrust toward Rod, not out at the shadows in the garden.

"No," Rod protested weakly. "Whatever you gave me earlier, that made me babble so… it's back."

He sank to his knees before Thalden could shift his grip, and then to a crawling along one of the soft garden paths.

Moss, he thought to himself, suddenly acutely aware of the look and feel of what was under his palms. It's all moss. Thicker and grander than any I've ever seen before…

The garden was all snakelike curved beds, each one different, each a ridge of heaped earth drenched in shrubs and natural-seeming stones and little shade trees, wandering its own way through the ribbons of moss… Rod crawled along the path like a dazed, unsteady babe, as whatever Syregorn had given him returned with a vengeance, rolling like silent surf through his mind.

Its thunders submerged him, and he was only dimly aware that he was talking again, fast and wildly and about anything and everything, the words tumbling over each other as he ranted on-and the knights slowly closed in around him in a looming ring, grim disgust on their faces.

"Strike him senseless," Reld muttered.

"We daren't have him making so much noise, right here next to where a Doom may be sleeping!" Perthus hissed, looking to Syregorn.

"Aye, silence him," Tarth agreed.

The warcaptain held up one hand at them in a clear signal to desist, and ordered, "Pick him up. Gently. Carry him back there, to yon farthest corner, and set him carefully down, where he has space to lie on his back. No talking."

Rod babbled on as they took him carefully under the armpits and around the legs, and lifted. "So then the Aumrarr showed me a greatfangs, dead and stinking, and God it reeked, like all the open cesspits and rock concert vomit put together, so foul that-"

"What about him?" Reld whispered at Syregorn.

The warcaptain's reply was flat and cold. "Magic has prevented me obeying one order from Lord Hammerhand-for this night, at least. I will therefore do my utmost to fulfill his other commandment, and learn all I can from this one who calls himself Lord Archwizard."

"You mean-?"

"I mean I'm going to sit and listen. The rest of you can explore the gardens if you'd like-in pairs, and with at least two of you standing guard over our babbler with me. Oh, and I want someone watching yon door at all times."

"There're only six of us-seven with you, Syre."

"And eight, with this Rod Everlar. I learned to count too, Perthus." The warcaptain's voice was quiet but very dry, and his youngest knight flushed dark red in the moonlight, and said not another word.

Rod did, though. He couldn't help himself, though what he was revealing was embarrassing him into squirming, blushing depths of humiliation. "No magic at all, but Taeauna insists I'm the Lord Archwizard, greatest of the Dooms, and I don't feel heroic, don't feel lordly or that I have any right to tell anyone to do anything. I can't swing a sword, can't hunt, can't even light a bloody fire…"

The moss was just as soft in the deep gloom where two of the garden walls met, and bushes flourished in that corner and on the bed two steps away, across the last, looping-nigh-the-walls path. They lowered Rod Everlar onto his back as gently as if he'd been an honored corpse being laid on an altar. Syregorn sat down beside Rod's head, plucked a long shoot from a nearby bush he evidently recognized, and started chewing on it.

It protruded from his mouth, dancing gently, as he leaned over Rod's face and asked into the helpless, endless flood of words, "So, were you born in Falconfar, Everlar?"

"No no no," Rod found himself saying eagerly. "I was born on Earth, in the real world. In a hospital that's been torn down now, in the usual way, or so I'm told. I don't remember when I was really young, except standing in a garden one summer in the sun, staring at sunflowers as big as my face; they always told me that summer must have been when I was three, and-"

"How did you get from this Earth to Falconfar?"

"Tay-Taeauna came for me, and cried for my help, and the Dark Helms came to finish her off, and she told me to weave a dream-gate, and-and I guess I did. Just as they swung their swords-"

"A dream-gate?"

"Think of Falconfar, she told me. Look at me, but think of Falconfar-and it worked! We went from my bedroom to the road leading up to the keep!"

"Oh? What keep?"

"Hollowtree Keep, of course, up in the hills east of Galath. One of my favorite creations."

'"Creations'? Ah, and what else have you created?"

"Well, ah, Falconfar, and almost everything in it. This place. Ironthorn and the Raurklor and Galath and all."

Someone who wasn't Syregorn snorted in disgust, and Rod became vaguely aware that some of the knights were standing nearby, listening.

"A madman," one of them muttered, to another. "I knew it."

Rod also became aware that the bald warcaptain was fiercely but silently waving his knights away, now, even as he bent closer to Rod to say in a gently soothing voice, "Let's go back to Hollowtree Keep. Why is it one of your favorites?"

"Ah, Syre, shouldn't we be-?"

That low, uncertain voice broke in on them from just above and behind Rod, the opposite direction from the now-retreating knights. It was Reld, and he was jerking his head in the direction of the distant door that led out of the gardens into Malragard.

Syregorn gave that knight a level look. "You're in a particular hurry to die? Alone in the undoubtedly-spell-guarded fortress of a Doom of Falconfar?"

"Alone? But I won't be…" Reld trailed off under the warcaptain's grim glare.

"Ah, but you will be. If you step through that door right now, none of us'll be going with you. Yet if you feel you must, go right ahead-disloyal knight of Hammerhold. We'll tell Lord Hammerhand you died valiantly. And foolishly."

Reld moved his mouth as if he was going to make some sort of reply, but then flushed, closed it again, bowed his head in acceptance, and stepped back into the night.

I know JUST bow he feels, Rod thought, as his own verbal flood flowed on. Humiliated, an idiot, a failure. Some fantasy book hero I'm turning out to be. Wandering along like a dimwit while others do what they like with me, smirk at me, and deem me an utter dolt. And they're right, every last one of them.

He paused for breath, and Syregorn's gentle voice returned. "So that's all you know about the Aumrarr? Well, then, tell me more of what you know of the world you came from, this Earth."

Syregorn was smiling, but the smile never touched his eyes. He went right on with his careful, quiet questions-and helplessly, while fear grew inside him like a cold, awakening worm, Rod obediently babbled on and on about the real world.

The warcaptain wanted to know about everything. What people wore, how they locked their doors at night, how they spent each day.

Of course. Syregorn was learning all about a foe, so be could invade them and swiftly do all the right things to conquer. And I'm telling him, God help me. Shit. Earth was about to become doomed.

The mists faded away, leaving Garfist and Iskarra lying on a cold stone floor in each other's arms.

They were lying at about the center of an empty, plain stone room, in a castle or fortress somewhere, and there was a singing stillness in the air that smelt of magic and emptiness. They were alone… or at least it felt like there was nothing alive nearby.

"Malragard?" Garfist whispered hoarsely. Isk shrugged her wordless reply, then patted at his ribs to signal that she'd like to be free of his tight embrace.

Gar obligingly opened his arms, and she rolled out of them and up to her feet in one supple, eel-like wriggle, to crouch and peer alertly in all directions.

There wasn't much to see. Two doors out of the room, on opposite sides and both closed, and the stillness-and that very faint, high singing sound-hung unchanged.

Isk crept noiselessly to one door, listened, then went and put her ear to the other. Evidently hearing nothing, she beckoned Garfist to join her, and he rolled slowly to his knees and then rose, stifling his usual grunts-and noticed the singing sound dying away as he moved away from where they'd been lying. When he took a step back closer, it grew stronger again.

So the singing sound was Malraun's gate, awake and ready to whisk them back to Lyraunt Castle-and witlessness, trapped by the mindgem.

Bugger all, they'd slammed their door out behind them locked-tight.

Garfist fervently hoped that wouldn't be one of the largest glo rking mistakes of their lives.

Iskarra nodded to tell him she'd noticed the shift in sound, too, and promptly beckoned him to follow her back to the first door she'd listened at.

He shrugged acceptance, and obeyed.

Iskarra flattened herself against the wall beside that door, took hold of his nearest ear the moment he was close enough, and tugged him gently forward until she could whisper right into it, her breath warm and ticklish, her lips brushing his earlobe.

"Stay quiet, Gar, and stick with me. We go slow and try to stay back from anything that could make a noise-and we don't open things until we really have to."

"So as to not to alert any guards," Garfist whispered.

"Or worse," Isk agreed, her whisper ghost-quiet. "You know how wizards love guardian things. Pillars and lamps and who knows what other sorts of furniture, that all turn into beasts with jaws and claws. Usually right behind you, after you've passed."

"Unnh," Garfist grunted in unwilling agreement, unpleasant memories rising.

"Touch or take nothing that looks valuable until we've agreed on it. Constantly seek ways out and down. We're here to get out unseen, remember, not loot the citadel of Malraun. I'll bet he could trace us, to the deepest caves in the farthest lands of Falconfar, if we took just one coin from here."

"Aye, aye," Gar growled. "I hear ye. Ye're going to stand here and talk me to death-and when Malraun strides in through this door, d'ye think that'll work on him?"

"Idiot," Iskarra hissed, eyes flashing. "How long ago would you've been dead, if not for me?"

Garfist grew a slow grin. "Aye, but I'd've died from that smith dropping his anvil on my head, as I slept after slap-an'-tickle with his three daughters. I'd've greeted the Falcon a happy man."

Iskarra dug just the tips of her fingers into a certain bulge in his breeches, and murmured, "Do all men think only with this?"

"Nay, Snakehips. I make 'em use their own," Gar told her with a grin. Isk rolled her eyes at him, put a silencing finger across his lips, and bent to listen at the closed door again.

Then she straightened, nodded, mimed the motions of him drawing his sword-so he did so, careful to step away from the wall and do it carefully and silently-leaned in again, put her hand on the pull-ring… and drew open the door.

No menace they could see, and no sounds or movements. Nothing. The darkness of the revealed stone passage told them their room must be lit by magic, though the radiance was so faint, and coming from everywhere and nowhere, that they'd not noticed.

Iskarra leaned back into Gar to breathe her words into his ear. "Come, but don't let the door slam behind you, or even shut," she commanded. "We have to move as if a Doom of Falconfar is sitting reading, or dozing, in a room somewhere nearby-a room with an open door."

"We do?"

"Just shut up and humor me, Old Ox. Save your questions-and attempts to think-for later."

"Why?"

Isk answered that hoarse question with a long, cold look, holding it until Gar grew uncomfortable and started to shuffle from one booted foot to another.

"I'll be good, Isk," he whispered, finally.

"See that you are-at least until we're well out of here," she breathed into his ear, and slipped out into the passage.

Almost immediately, one of her hands returned, to beckon Garfist. Moving gingerly, with exaggerated care to keep quiet, he followed out of the door, leaving it open.

The soft light in the room cast a gentle fan of radiance out into the darkness, and he thrust a forefinger twice into Isk's shoulder, and when she turned, pointed at it.

She shrugged, captured that finger, and tugged it gently, signifying he should move onward with her. Lifting his feet carefully to avoid the customary scrape on stone of his boots, he did so.

The passage ran straight, past several closed and featureless stone doors, then became a descending flight of stairs without archway or fanfare, its smooth and featureless ceiling curving to run downward with it.

They went down the steps in slow, careful silence, Isk in the lead. She froze the moment she could see what the stair emptied out into: a large room that held an oval pool of a glowing, deep emerald green oil or water or something that surged and rippled in slow, constant, and silent motion, as if it were alive and lazily thrusting up serpent-like, wriggling spines or backs, large curved claws, and short-lived tentacles that always became tubes that vented out gases with tiny gasps, and then sank back into the oily green life. There was a faint, sharp smell in the air, something like soured wine, and this vinegar-like taint was almost certainly coming from the pool, but.

Isk kept well back from the pool, and moved purposefully to the right, to where she could see a way opening out of the room, into another dark, narrow passage.

Garfist followed, sword in hand but stepping no farther from the wall than he had to. He knew what was making her hasten, because he was starting to feel it, too.

An intense feeling of being watched. A feeling that was coming from the radiant green contents of the pool…

They were almost trotting by the time they reached the passage, and Gar couldn't resist a look back over his shoulder, to make sure no tentacle was arcing up out of the glow to reach after them.

He saw none, but when he turned back again, Isk's face was turned his way and wearing a pale expression that told him, as clearly as if she'd shouted it, that she'd pictured a reaching tentacle too.

The new passage was short and dark and lined with more closed doors, running about a dozen strides ere it turned sharply to the left and became another stair down. The feeling of being watched faded as they followed it down into another room.

This one was empty of everything but a simple, smoothly-finished stone table, and was lit by moonlight streaming in a large window that appeared to be just an arched hole cut through a thick castle wall. There were no bird droppings or any stirring of moving air, though, and a faint tingling sensation built within them as they drew near to it; magic was alive here, and seemingly preventing anything passing through the opening.

Iskarra stopped three careful steps away and peered out into the moonlit night. She could see that they were fairly high up, perhaps half the height of Deldragon's battlements back in Galath. Far too high to jump out of and land alive, even if the window's magic allowed their passage.

A vast forest-the Raurklor, by the looks of it-began not all that far off, and stretched away to join the stars at the straining limits of her eyesight; nearer to the wall, the land fell away to the left in a series of walled, farmed plots, down to the roofs of what looked like one edge of a town. The Raurklor hold of Harlhoh, no doubt.

Isk looked back over her shoulder; Gar was looking out into the night with an irritated expression on his face. When their eyes met, he jerked his chin in the other direction, to where the room emptied into yet another passage, in a clear message: Let's get on with it.

Iskarra nodded, and led the way.

Malragard remained as still and silent as a tomb around them, as if its owner and any servants he might have had abandoned it.

Isk knew, without their trading any words at all over the matter, that Gar felt the same way she did about this silence.

It was bad, and betokened danger to come. Probably soon.

Down the years, Iskarra had learned to trust such feelings, though she often wished she was wrong to have them.

She never had been yet, though, and didn't feel like wagering on her being so, this time.

After all, the Great Falcon did have a sense of humor-and it was not a kind one.

The passage forked almost immediately, one end a short stub lined with closed doors, and the other becoming another short flight of descending steps, to a lone closed door.

Isk went down, listened to the utter silence from beyond the door, then opened it into… another large, moonlit room. Stepping aside so Garfist could see it, too, she gestured silently to indicate he should leave it standing open, too, in case they needed to retreat back this way.

He nodded, and they went on into the brightening moonlight together.

Behind them, by itself, the open door silently drifted closed. Then, with the same utter lack of sound, it started to melt, its shape shifting into… a dark oval, a… great pair of fanged jaws that gaped open, awaiting anyone trying to go back through.

Standing alone in dark Yintaerghast, Narmarkoun beheld not the dark shadows before him, but a bright eye floating in the air, a scene from afar conjured by his own magic.

One side of that scene flared bright like fire, in a continuous struggle against Malragard's wards and shieldings, a battle that blinded his far-seeing if he looked toward the fortress.

Yet he had no interest in looking at Malraun's abode. Not while there was a man lying on his back in the farthest corner of its walled gardens, babbling out all he could say, just as fast as he could.

Since hearing that the fabled Dark Lord had come to Falconfar at last, he'd hungered to know more about this mysterious Rod Everlar's origins.

Now, hearing these babblings, he chuckled in triumph.

At last he had heard enough.

Enough to craft a dream-gate that would reach into this "real world" Everlar came from, this "Earth."

Narmarkoun banished his spying-scene with a wave of his hand, strode into the room he'd made ready, and set about casting it.

Why wait? Dooms of Falconfar age just like lesser men.

Besides, he'd always wanted to conquer a world.

He flung up both hands, said a careful word, and felt Yintaerghast tremble all around him.

Then, slowly, here and there, the darkness started to glow. Lorontar's long-sleeping magic was awakening. It would feed and aid his own.

Narmarkoun took up a wand he'd left ready on the table, and said a word to it that its maker had never intended it to obey. It started to burn in his hand, like an impatient candle, its flame spreading out into the air around him. Yintaerghast's tremble became a deepening hum.

The third Doom of Falconfar allowed himself a broad, triumphant smile, and started in on the long and difficult incantations. Though lengthy, the magic was relatively simple, being a lone casting that created a single, stationary effect; the trick would be to imagine this other world vividly enough from what Everlar had said of it, so his gate would reach out to it, and not somewhere in Falconfar.

Intent on his words and the wand burning away to nothingness in his hand, Narmarkoun never noticed what briefly formed on the wall right behind him.

The face of Lorontar, first Lord Archwizard of Falconfar and builder of Yintaerghast. It looked down on Narmarkoun, smiled a triumphant smile of its own, then faded away again. Unseen by any overconfident Doom of Falconfar.