Arch Wizard

Chapter Twenty-Two

Malraun the Matchless padded back out of the great hall, teeth clenched. Dark anger was rising within him again, so strong and sudden that it threatened to choke him-and so seethingly futile. He'd searched every last damp corner and gaudy chamber in Lyraunt Castle-long, wearying work it had been, too-and knew that from top to bottom of the fortress, no enemy was lurking. Just cowering maids, cooks, and guards, and the two Lyrose women who now ruled them all. Or would, if they hadn't all fled by the time Maerelle and Mrythra got awake and free of his magic-or been replaced by plundering Hammerhands.

Yet trace or no trace of a foe, someone who loved Malraun the Matchless not at all had been at work here. Witness the talking skull of Orthaunt hovering in the room behind him-and who could have managed to hide such a thing for so long, but a Doom of Falconfar or someone aided by an Archwizard of like power? — and the mindgem. Both waiting in his gates to harm or trap him, two sneering salutes from… whom?

Narmarkoun, most likely. And yet… somehow, this didn't feel like Narmarkoun's work. And if there was one thing Dooms of Falconfar named Malraun had proven to be good at down the years, it was hunches and feelings. Narmarkoun was busily scheming, yes, but what had befallen here in Ironthorn, to the Lyroses and to Lyraunt Castle had been the hand of someone else, some other baleful lurking mind.

Oh, he'd been wise enough not to blunder through either gate, nor try to use any magic at all on all that was left of Orthaunt, despite the skull's cold taunts, and so had suffered not a scratch. More than that, he'd enjoyed smiting and hurling down cattlelike Ironthar here and in Irontarl.

Yet Magrandar Lyrose was gone, and all of Malraun's magic couldn't bring him back. Which meant Ironthorn was as good as lost to this Doom of Falconfar, if he didn't spend far too much time-time he now lacked-steering and supporting these Lyrose women, shaping them into becoming what he needed them to be.

Indulging himself here in Ironthorn this morn had been costly. He'd spent magic out of these wands as if he'd been hurling dry tinder into an already-roaring bonfire, and gained nothing but guesses about who was behind it all, nothing but wind and fancies-and-and-

With a snarl of frustration and rage, Malraun spent more precious power from the wand he liked to use least of all, and took himself back to Darswords in an eyeblink.

He was not quite swift enough to get himself gone before a long, hollow laugh rolled out of the great hall. Cold and mocking mirth, meant for his ears.

By the Falcon, but there'd come a day when he'd enjoy destroying Orthaunt's skull!

Rod sighed, put his hand on the door's pull-ring, and drew it open.

Nothing happened. Silence and darkness reigned, both in the room he was standing in, and in what he could see of what looked like a small, featureless passage stretching past, beyond the door.

"Stay right where you are," Syregorn ordered, pointing his drawn sword at Rod like the wagging finger of a long-ago, hated schoolteacher.

Rod stared back at the warcaptain. "I'm the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar," he said calmly. "Remember?"

"You are a helpless coward, and a fool," Syregorn replied coldly. "Obey me, and we just might escape this place alive. Defy me now, and you doom yourself more surely than you do the rest of us. I'll see to that."

Rod gave the warcaptain his best expressionless look, trying to seem far calmer than he felt. Then he turned and stepped through the doorway into the passage beyond-and vanished along it.

"After him!" the warcaptain snarled, and the knights of Hammerhold boiled through the garden door into Malragard, waving their swords in thunder-booted haste.

Only to lurch to a cursing, baffled halt in the passage. They'd seen the bumbling outlander stride to the right, beyond the inner doorway they'd just come through. He'd gone right down this very passage, that seemed to stretch away from them forever into the night-gloom. Floor, walls, and ceiling, its every surface was studded with closed, identical stone doors.

"Gone" was right. There was no sign at all of Rod Everlar.

Taeauna was gone from the bedchamber, but the bed had been neatly made. On it, three outfits-garments and matching belts and boots-were laid neatly out for him.

By the Falcon, the Aumrarr was a peerless cloak-and-boot maid, too!

Malraun grinned despite his rage, and snatched up the darkest finery. Clawing his way into it with more haste than elegance, he buckled the belt of wands around his middle, stamped the boots onto his feet, and hurried out of the room.

Morning was nigh gone, but Darswords was quiet rather than bustling. On all sides of him men were slowly gathering wood into corpse-pyres, ignoring more energetic workers: the rats that were scuttling and gnawing, the vaugren tugging at flesh and flapping their wings at each other in scores of half-hearted disputes, and the flies busily buzzing.

These vermin were at work on the dead, of course, who lay everywhere, heaped and sprawled where they'd fallen, or blasted into charred cantles and spatters. Yestereve, there had been more slaughter here than anywhere else the Army of Liberation had fought thus far. Now, most of his weary army was dozing, lounging boots-up idly playing at dice or cards, or slumped asleep in little groups among the dead, wherever they'd been sent on make-work errands.

Malraun's lip curled. Out came a wand he used very seldom, as he peered this way and that, seeking the least-spoiled bowers of the grandest houses, and amid their shade… there!

With a cold and ugly smile, he met the startled eyes of Horgul's most trusted surviving battle-lord, and triggered the wand.

The man's face didn't even have time to slide from startlement into fear before he was lofted straight up into the air, yelling, as the foremost Doom of Falconfar pointed the wand skyward.

Malraun held him there, paying him no attention at all, as he peered about for Taeauna. And spotted her, soon enough, pointing work-crews with barrows this way and that. She was clearing the dead away from the wells, of course, trying to keep what the folk of Darswords drank untainted.

Tae, he thought firmly in her direction, feeling for, and sinking into, the familiar warmth of her mind.

She whirled around, her mind greeting his with its usual dark joy-or at least, paramount joy, for as always that emotion overlaid deeper things Malraun couldn't properly discern-and Malraun gazed into her eyes and summoned the Aumrarr to him without a word.

Taeauna hastened, coming at an eager trot around the heaped dead, threading her way quickly and adroitly through the almost-strolling warriors, and Malraun barely had to nod to get her to reach out a long arm to clutch the shoulder of another battle-lord as she passed.

That swaggering officer spun around to favor her with a sharp-eyed glare, saw Malraun as he turned, lost the glare in cringing fear in a paling instant, and hastened after Taeauna. Good.

Malraun lowered his wand to let the now silent, gray with terror battle-lord back to the ground, folded his arms across his chest, and awaited their arrival.

He was pleased to see even Horgul's brutes weren't utterly stoneheaded; by the time those three leaders of his army had gathered before him, the other battle-lords had noticed, and were hastily converging.

He waited, regarding them all coldly, until all but a handful had found a place to stop and stand in a silent ring around him, fearful eyes fixed on him.

Malraun smiled, just for a moment, and then snapped, "You will begin-right now-to plunder Darswords, burning nothing, and slaughtering only those who repeatedly resist you. Imprison all the rest in yonder barn until we depart. Then eat well; at full dawn tomorrow you will all march to Harlhoh. There I'll see you reprovisioned, for immediate march on Burnt Bones. You will conquer there as you did here, then march on to Ironthorn and serve it the same way. Go, and give orders in all haste; I want to see my soldiers sleeping-sleeping! — no longer!"

His face tightened, rage rising again. Thanks to the skull and the mindgem, he could no longer trust using the gates to "jump" his army from Harlhoh to Ironthorn. A wizard who knew what Malraun the Matchless was intending had obviously discovered the gates and made plans of his own-reducing his Army of Liberation to no swifter a mob of trudging metalhead brutes than any other predictable marauding host.

"You," he told Taeauna, "will come with me. On your knees."

Then he turned away from them all, knowing without looking that she would obey-would already be crawling after him.

All the way back to that bedchamber, where he would take her by the throat, beat her with fists and belt while thrusting pain into her mind, and command her crawling humiliation and obedience repeatedly.

As he took her to bed and used her savagely, commanding her to thank him and gasp for more, again and again, even as blood welled out of her-and he slaked his rage in enjoying every moment of it.

For he was the foremost Doom of Falconfar. And by the Falcon, he was going to behave accordingly.

"Gorn," Thalden pointed out unnecessarily, "that door is starting to glow."

"Why, thank you, Thalden," Syregorn replied sarcastically. "Fortunate I am to have such an eagle-eyed knight along with me.

Tarth, Reld: get to it and haul it open, stepping on not one of the doors on the floor on your way to it. Move!"

All six knights of Hammerhold flinched at his sudden roar, and the two he commanded to the door sprang to obey so precipitously that they stumbled and both almost planted boots on the doors underfoot.

They skidded to unsteady halts in front of the glowing door, waving their arms wildly as they clawed at the air to try to reclaim their balance-and in that instant, no less than three other doors along the passage were suddenly glowing, too.

"Syre," Tarth called uncertainly, "look you! Three more, I mark, are-"

"So they are," Syregorn snarled. "Yet I gave you and Reld an order, that you already seem to have forgotten!"

"Ah, aye, yes-" Tarth gabbled, whirling to join Reld, who was hauling on the door-ring in a sudden frenzy.

Whereupon the door exploded in a great gout of blinding light, whirling shards, and wet splatterings that covered the four wincing, cowering knights around Syregorn. Splatterings that could only have been Tarth and Reld. Syregorn glared bleakly down the passage at the remaining trio of glowing doors for a moment, and then snapped, "Thalden, go and look at what's behind where that door was. Perthus, the nearest door that's aglow. Jelgar, the next one. Onthras, the last. Touch no doors, mind, until we know what Thalden's found."

The surviving knights hesitated, then looked into the cold promise of his glare and slunk reluctantly past him and forward, walking slowly and unwillingly.

Thalden was the oldest of the four, but he reached his goal-the scorched and gaping hole where the door that had slain Tarth and Reld had been, which was nearest to Syregorn-first.

With slow, exaggerated caution, he ducked low, stretched himself forward, and peered around the edge of the doorframe.

Then he slumped down in relief, sighed heavily, and announced, "Nothing. An empty room. Dust and bare stone."

The warcaptain nodded. "Perthus? Jelgar? Onthras?" His voice was as calm and drawlingly low as if he'd been calling on them just to keep himself awake.

Perthus reached his door and stood there trembling, face grey-white.

Syregorn idly drew a dagger. They all looked back at him. watching it, and he could see in their faces they knew it was poisoned-and what he intended it for.

Perthus hissed out a curse, and suddenly, spasmodically, wrenched at the ring of his door.

Obligingly, it exploded, with the same blinding, Malragard-rocking blast, and the same wetly fatal result.

A little farther down the passage, Jelgar started to cry.

Without much sense of surprise, Rod Everlar discovered he was trembling with fear. Syregorn meant to kill him, and had probably been under orders to do so all along. He'd seen the cold, clear promise of death in the warcaptain's eyes.

Yes, give the unwelcome outlander the drug to make him babble, learn all you can, then drag him into Lyraunt Castle in hopes he'll blast all the Lyroses to the starry sky and bring the wizard Malraun raging across Falconfar. Perhaps he'll manage to blast Hammerhand's foe down, or weaken the Doom enough that he can be dealt with. Then kill him, if Malraun hasn't already managed it in their spell-duel, or turned him into a frog-or serve Malraun the same way. If this Lord Archwizard out of nowhere is an utter failure, shrug, you face the same Malraun you always did.

All Rod had done was seize a bare moment of freedom to step through the doorway, run along the passage, yank open the first door he came to-less than four strides along a hall menacingly full of doors, like an Escher or Dali nightmare, doors on walls, floor, and ceiling! — and get it closed again, just as quickly as he quietly could.

He'd found himself in silent darkness. A dark room, L-shaped, with walls that started to glow faintly, ale-brown and only where they met the floor, all around him. A room full of tables with what looked like effigies on them: stone images of dead men and women and-and things, strange beast-headed, scaled creatures, all lying on their backs wrapped in shrouds. Or were they petrified corpses? They were incredibly detailed, and peering hard at them without getting too close, Rod couldn't see any tool-marks.

He had seen a door, however, around a corner at the far end of the room, and hurried to it. At any moment Syregorn's knights might yank open the same door he had, and come for him.

His trembling hands fumbled with the ring, but the door opened. The room beyond was already faintly aglow-and it held shelves of books, a desk with a high-backed chair, and-a rack of quill pens, bottles of ink, and stacked sheets of blank parchment!

Rod looked wildly around, half-expecting Dark Helms or something worse to come gliding out of the shadows to menace him. The room had two doors, one of them obviously opening out onto the passage of many doors, and the other, in the wall across from him, surrounded by bookshelves, connecting this room to some other chamber. Tiny mauve-white lightnings played across the spines of the tomes, in a clear warning that some sort of magic guarded them, killing Rod's rising curiosity in an instant.

Hesitantly he went to the desk, staring hard at it in search of lurking dangers, but finding nothing. Not that he'd probably recognize his doom, in a wizard's tower, until it claimed him…

Avoiding the chair, he leaned just close enough to the desk to pluck away the topmost sheet of parchment, watching to make sure nothing deadly was revealed beneath it. It was blank on both sides, and newly-made, with edges that weren't yet brittle-just a sheet of parchment under his fingertips, no more and no less; not writhing to change shape back into some horrific fanged monster.

Rod hesitated a moment more, than slammed the sheet down on the desk, plucked up the nearest bottle of ink, twisted out its cork with impatient speed, and plucked up the nearest quill. It had been cut sharp, but never used.

Standing over one front corner of the desk, he dipped the quill and started to write, trying to put his will behind the words, thrusting his fear and rising excitement into them.

If he could Shape himself to Taeauna, and away from Syregorn and his men…

A sharp smell arose, and a brief wisp of-was that smoke? Rod scratched and scribbled hard, his pen slicing along like the point of a sharp knife, bright sparks-sparks? No, tiny tongues of flame! — trailing his pen.

The parchment was starting to burn under his racing pen… and the thrilling power that surged through him when he Shaped wasn't… wasn't in him at all!

"Beg for it! Beg for more!" Malraun spat, the riding whip slicing viciously across Taeauna's chest. Panting and sweating, he was riding her hard, lashing her harder and faster as she writhed under him, spreadeagled on the bed and trying to smile between gasps of love and pain. "Beg, I said!"

"Oh, Master! Oh, Malraun!" she hissed, eyes pleading for more, not for mercy. "Hurt me! Hurt me!"

He snarled in wordless glee, brought his whip back far enough to wipe sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm-and stiffened, incredulous rage flaring in him.

Again?

Something was tugging at his ward-spells, somewhere, something hostile that sought to destroy…

In Malragard! Something small and feeble; a hedge-wizard too feeble to emerge alive from where he'd intruded, perhaps, or one of his own guardian creatures, freed somehow from the magics that confined it…

Malraun thrust the warning flarings down deep in his mind, and brought himself back to Darswords, to Taeauna beneath him and this release he so sorely needed.

"No," he snarled aloud, "not again! Not this time."

"Lord?" Taeauna dared to ask. He whipped her hard across the mouth by way of reply, giving her a look meant to be a quelling glare.

The leaping fire in her eyes told him she'd seen something else in his look, though; the tenderness he felt toward her. No one else cared about him, except as a foe to be destroyed; no one else welcomed his mistreatment of them. He took her by the throat, leaned down until their noses were almost touching-until the sweat now dripping from him wet her face-and growled, "It doesn't matter. Only you matter. Your surrender, most of all."

Her eyes danced with-joy? Something else; glee? Amusement? No, it must be love. She was smitten with him, lost in love for him.

He could still feel the warnings, faint and deeply buried, but cared about them no longer. They were the work of a failure; whatever or whoever was seeking to work magic in the very heart of Malragard was being foiled by his warding-spells even now, and persistence would end-could end-only in being burned to ashes.

Rod sprang back from the desk and watched the scorched paper smolder. Without his quill, its fire swiftly went out, leaving only a burned-through gap across it, a line of nothingness where he'd tried to write words.

Capping the ink bottle with his thumb, he snatched it up, thrust the quill into the same hand, and used his freed hand to open the door into the next room. Which was full of racks of clothing, and even a spine-and hook-studded, weirdly-curving suit of armor on its own stand.

Perhaps it had been the paper, or some spell cast on the study, or nearness to all those magical books…

It might just as easily be something else, but he hadn't a lot of choices. This wardrobe-room had its own door out onto the passage, and-yes! — another connecting door, to another room beyond it.

Rod opened that door as boldly as if Malragard was his own home, and found himself in a room that looked like a honeymoon suite bathroom in some luxury hotel, with marble steps up to a huge, kidney-shaped lounging tub-"spa" they called them, these days-full of warm, rippling, fruit-scented water. A handful of small spheres hung in the air above it, drifting aimlessly about… and flaring into bright-glowing, amber life at his approach.

Rod peered at the water just long enough to make sure no tentacled something was lurking in it or gathering itself to thrust up out of it at him with a watery roar, and then started staring at what really interested him in the room: its two doors. One out onto the passage, and one to a room beyond.

His business right now was with that second one; he swung it open as swiftly as he could, to reveal a luxurious, tapestry-hung bedchamber dominated by a huge fourposter and large, oval-framed pictures on the richly-paneled walls that held bright, moving scenes, like so many television sets tuned to different "exploring exotic global locales" programs.

Aside from a quick peer inside for Dark Helms or other lurking beasts or guards, Rod ignored the bedroom for now. What mattered was that the door connecting it to the bathchamber was open and could be held that way with the toe of his boot, and that he could write on it with his quill pen, to try Shaping again.

Calmly he dipped the quill, reached down, and started to write. He wanted to start low, in case the ink ran down the door and marred whatever he might try to write below it.

It did, but that hardly mattered. Even faster than on the parchment, his moving quill birthed fire in its wake, flames that flared up vigorously this time, blazing away merrily-and being echoed precisely, Rod saw with utter astonishment, on the bathroom's other door, long strides away!

He drew his quill back to stare, then tried to write again, watching that other door. Yes. Wherever his pen touched and burned the connecting door he was holding open, the door across the room that linked the bathroom with the passage that held Syregorn and the Hammerhand knights was burning, too, like he was writing on both doors at once, or as if they were carbon copies or linked by some sort of invisible tracing pantograph!

Rod cursed softly, and stopped trying to write. He was likely doomed to fail at Shaping from one end of Malragard to the other, no matter what he wrote on, or with.

Stepping back from the door, he took a long stride into the bedroom, let the still-smoking door swing shut behind him, and looked down at himself.

He wore pouches in plenty of Arlaghaun's mysterious magics, riding all of his crisscrossing belts and baldrics. Beneath and jutting out from between those many smooth bands of tooled leather were the now-hardened blobs and splashes of what had been metal armor. Rod shook his head.

No. He simply knew too little about what he was messing with to have hopes of intending to do something and then managing it. He'd literally be playing with fire, blundering about with magical effects-and unintended consequences-he knew nothing about, and wouldn't solve until too late, when it all blew up in his face.

About all Rod had that still seemed whole and reliable were his boots, the heavy war-gauntlets dangling from where he'd clipped them to one baldric, and one of his swords. It occurred to him that taking any clothing from the wardrobe-room hadn't even entered his mind. Now, he knew why. Without really thinking about it, he'd concluded Malraun would be able to trace him at will if he wore anything of Malraun's, no matter where he might go or how he might try to hide.

Rod sighed, becoming very much a scared and bewildered fantasy writer who didn't even know how to play at being Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, let alone wield the magical might of a Doom.

That was when he noticed that something had silently happened, in the few flashing moments he'd stood gazing and thinking.

A few steps away from him, the bed was no longer empty.