Arch Wizard

Chapter Twenty-Five

Brightness roiled and surged all around him, in raging tides Narmarkoun could not fight. Swept away and lost, tumbling and wincing in pain-wracked silence, he could only cling to awareness and endure… if he could…

It must have been only moments, but seemed forever, before the wild, buffeting torrents slowed into a rushing river all thundering in one direction, fear died down with the loss of that crashing chaos, and-through the eyes of another-Narmarkoun saw his first real sight of Earth.

A small, cluttered bedroom, awash in discarded clothes and overflowing ashtrays.

At the heart of it, Mario Drake was now awake, and panting in fear. He'd hurled himself bolt upright in his bed to stare at his own walls until he recognized them. The moment he did, he flung off the covers to turn and claw for a pen and his bedside notepad.

His fingers were fast-too fast-and fumbling. The pen clacked off the wall and the rear of the bedside table and was gone, somewhere underneath things and lost in the darkness.

Sweating and shivering, Drake hissed out wordless frustration and dashed across the room to a desk, to snap on a light and snatch up a pen from a mug of them, and scribble down what he'd seen in his dreams, before his waking thoughts drove him to forget it.

He did this often, though he seldom dropped the pen and had to rouse himself enough to get out of bed. Why, some of his best ideas-the entire plot of Worm Wizards of the Red Star, even-had come out of dreams, had burst into his mind so colorful and stirring that he could remember them still, years later…

Narmarkoun rode that fiercely happy thought like a well-tamed and eager greatfangs, bearing down hard on Mario Drake's sleepy mind, fighting to do… this.

The racing pen slowed, its wielder frowning slightly. What was… He'd never felt this way before. At war with himself, almost. He watched his hand move to stroke through what he'd just written and been so pleased with.

"Exhausted by endless victories, snoring softly atop his bound captive in a bedchamber in conquered Darswords, the wizard Malraun was two battles-perhaps three-away from conquering Galath, and changing Falconfar forever."

Vivid, yes, but wrong. How could he have been so wrong?

It should instead read: "Exhausted by endless victories, snoring softly atop his bound captive in a bedchamber in conquered Darswords, the wizard Malraun never knew that his magic was beginning to fail him. Would henceforth be too feeble, too brief, and too mis-aimed from that moment forth, to ever let him conquer even Galath. The Falcon, or unseen gods, had decided he was not to be the Doom who would change Falconfar forever."

He amended it, writing in swift, firm satisfaction and nodding with every stroke of the pen. Yes. This was right.

Yet his hand was still moving, adding more. "All across Darswords, warriors of his Army of Liberation silently slumped to the ground, dead in an instant, bearing no wounds. Stricken down by the Falcon, men would say, seeing no reason for the deaths they could name. Yet rumors would arise among the paltry handful of survivors that whispered the truth: Malraun's army perished that day from the mighty magic of the foremost Doom of Falconfar, Narmarkoun."

Mario Drake frowned down at his notepad. Who the hell was Narmarkoun?

RAULDRO THE COOK turned sleepily from the cauldron he'd almost nodded off to sleep into, face-forward, his great wooden spoon adrip with the thick brown muck old soldiers liked to call "old boots and dead cat stew."

A loud and sudden metallic crash had just burst upon his ears, from not far behind him.

It had sounded for all the world like someone in full armor slamming down on his visored nose on the cobbled main street or Darswords, then bouncing limply to rest.

And-Falcon spit! — that's just what it was.

As he stared at the sprawled warrior, another pair of soldiers-who'd frowningly turned to see the cause of the noise, just as he had-pitched forward onto their faces, too, the morning quiet broken by more crashes. Then another, and another.

Rauldro gaped. As far as he could see, up and down the street, men were toppling over, for no reason that he could see at all.

Invisible arrows? Nay, for they turned visible when they drew blood, and he could see neither blood nor arrows.

Magic? Well, how could that be, with Malraun the Matchless, greatest wizard in all Falconfar, lording it over Darswords, with this army his own swords of war, besides?

The cook shook his head, utterly dumbfounded. The men lay so still. They looked dead.

And he hadn't even given them any stew yet.

Narmarkoun grinned savagely, in the depths of Mario Drake's mind. It was time to have his newfound Shaper write something simple yet dramatic that had nothing to do with any Doom of Falconfar, something he could check easily.

Aha.

He bore down on Drake's mind again. Let the dolt write of a certain castle in Galath soaring up into the sky-and crashing back down again in rubble, killing everyone in it. Velduke Deldragon's fair fortress of Bowrock, perhaps. Or, no, it was too splendid; he might want to dwell in it himself, some day. Why not-

Drake's mind darkened around him, and Narmarkoun dashed such thoughts away and reached out into it, to see what was happening and to strengthen his hold over the Shaper's mind.

Yet the darkness came on in a flood, blotting out everything, and he could hear Drake grimly wondering aloud, "What's got into me? It's like there's someone in my mind, making me do things! Write things!"

Falcon! The Earth dolt was aware of him! Then there was nothing but darkness; Drake was gone.

The spell was fading!

There was something cold and hard under him. Flat stone. Narmarkoun blinked up at dim vaulted vastness, smelling a familiar slightly sharp, slightly dusty chill. Yintaerghast. He was lying flat on his back in Yintaerghast.

Feeling weak… drained. He rolled slowly over onto his hip, and sat up. The familiar lonely, empty rooms. Good; at least he wasn't facing a sneering Malraun with an army behind the man.

He felt just as empty, and his hand trembled when he lifted it.

Narmarkoun smiled thinly. No, he was in no condition to be hurling spells. Yet he had to know if he'd been right about Drake, had to-

He moved his raised hand in the few simple gestures, murmured the familiar words, and watched the small, spinning brightness form in the empty air in front of him.

"Darswords." he whispered, too tired to will it silently. "Show me Darswords."

In the heart of his little conjured eye the smallhold sprang into view, from the vantage point where he'd stood long ago and murmured one of the words in the incantation. His eye was looking out over the well where three lanes fanned out from the cobbled main street. As Narmarkoun turned it to peer down one street and then another, he saw dead men sprawled everywhere, and more toppling in mid-stride, here and there, as they fled in fear from the unknown slayer who was striking them down.

" Well, now," he gloated. Hundreds he'd seen, in just these few glimpses. "Well, now!"

The eye was wobbling and dimming already, sinking toward the floor like a gliding soap bubble; he was overtired.

Yet happy. As he let himself sag back down to the floor, into the creeping embrace of slumber, Narmarkoun murmured, "I am the foremost Doom in Falconfar, and now all the world knows it! Flee, Malraun, flee and cower-while you still can!"

He waved his hand feebly, as if banishing his rival, as his conjured eye sank into the floor and was gone.

Behind him, across the darkest wall of that vast and dim chamber, a wry and patronizing smile briefly materialized. It was as long as the largest Stormar ship Narmarkoun had ever sailed on, but the foremost Doom of Falconfar was now snoring, and saw it not.

At Holdoncorp, nobody walked to work. From the front gates with their security booth, in the shadow of the mirror-bright silver company name that loomed in man-high letters atop a little artificial waterfall, it was a good mile along a broad and winding drive through the rolling grassy hills of the company golf course to the parking lot security booth.

"Hey, Rusty! Check this out-Monitor Three!"

Sollars's voice was more disbelievingly amused than alarmed, so Rusty finished taking the bite into his meatballs-with-mayo sub that he'd been opening his mouth to take when the usually silent security "eyes" had piped up. Chewing methodically, he strolled over to the control desk.

Sollars was pointing up at one of the long arc of external security monitors, and Rusty prepared himself for viewing an overly fat, pale and unlovely amorous couple rolling around on a blanket on one of the gently-sculpted hillsides, or perhaps two dogs doing the same thing without a blanket.

He was not expecting to see six dark-armored men, visors down and swords drawn, stalking steadily past the eighth hole bunker toward the Holdencorp building.

At first he was alarmed-they looked so purposeful-but then relaxed. There was no way thieves, vandals, or terrorists would walk a mile in this heat; these had to be fans. Crazies, of course, but fans. A free beta preview sampler disk each from the forthcoming Falconfar expansion set should send them happily on their way. Still…

He flipped a switch and leaned forward over the microphone to announce briskly, "Ground Floor Security, Ground Floor Security! Six intruders, south lawn, coming in from the eighth hole. They're dressed as Dark Helms-armor and swords, all of them-so take the tear-gas rifle, and make sure enough of you go to outnumber them. Loading Dock Security, vehicles and your tear-gas, ready for backup."

"Roger that," one voice rapped out of the speakers, in reply.

A moment later, an older voice drawled, "Copy. You're not kidding, are you, Rusty? This isn't just you checkin' to see if we're awake?"

"Negative," Rusty said flatly. "I mean it. Six crazies with swords that sure look real from here."

"Uh-huh. Who's their backup?"

Rusty snorted. "Cut it, Sam, this isn't a joke. They haven't got any backup, of course…"

Yet he hadn't checked, and a good security chief…

He clapped Sollars sharply on the shoulder in a wordless order that set the eye-man to punching buttons and turning magnification and camera-aim toggles like a frenzied spider.

Only to spit out some words of profane astonishment as the feed from Camera South Forty-Six came up on the big monitor, and his finger mashed down a button that brought the flashing sequence of images of empty golf course to an abrupt halt.

"Holy shit!" Rusty gasped, staring at the large screen.

"What?" Sam's voice demanded, over the beeping of a forklift truck backing up along the loading dock.

He was echoed almost immediately by Mase, head of Ground Floor Security. "Rusty, what's all the excitement?"

Rusty shook his head, then bent over the microphone again and snapped, "Sam, Mase, listen up! I am not crazy and this is not a joke. Got that?"

"Copy. Tell us!"

"Well, there's something following the six guys with the swords. Well back, but it's flying. Most of the time, anyway. Keeping to cover, like it's trying to keep hidden, but keep watch on what the six are up to."

"So this isn't just fans, then. This is serious."

"More than serious, Sam." Rusty drew in a deep, unhappy breath, and asked, "You-Mase, you too-have played Falconfar, right?"

The speakers made affirmative noises. Rusty nodded, his eyes never leaving the big monitor, and asked, "So you know what a lorn looks like? The flying faceless things?"

"Yup. Oh now, hold on there, Rusty, you're not expecting us to believe-"

"I don't believe it myself, but I'm seeing it. And I am not shitting you. Repeat: I am not kidding or joking or lying. And it's not some guy in a monster suit, or a clumsy homemade bolts-and-car-parts robot. Unless someone has found a way to send very realistic animated images over these monitors that I haven't heard about-with proper perspective, lighting, the works-there's a lorn out there, flying right at us!"

"Roger. So I bring along the riot rifles, not just the gas gun?"

"No! No, we-yes, damn it, yes. I've seen too many movies to…"

"Rusty." Sam's voice was kindly. "Your mom never tell you movies ain't real?"

"Just do it, Sam!" Rusty shouted. "Now! The Dark Helms'll be at our doors in a minute, and that thing's about two little hillocks behind them!"

"Roger, Rusty. Go eat your sandwich and simmer down. Or have you gulped it already, and washed it down with a little something extra?"

"I have not,'" Rusty roared, "been drinking! Now get going!"

"Roger!" Sam and Mase snapped back in hasty unison. The speakers promptly burped the two loud clicks of their switching off, presumably to snatch up their high-band handphones and run.

Staring at the front lobby monitors, Rusty started swearing. Those swords, and all that glass. The six crazies didn't have to use the front doors. Thanks to his imagination-and yes, all those movies-he could already hear glass shattering everywhere, and all those long-legged, icily elegant secretaries and marketing managers in all their down-front glass box offices screaming and fleeing in all directions.

As Dark Helms with sharp swords in their hands and rape and murder on their minds ran among them.

"Shit," Rusty told the microphone, without intending to, "I need a drink."

Rod Everlar drew in a deep, unhappy breath, then squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and flung open the door.

The passage was almost mockingly empty and silent. So where had Syregorn and his knights gone?

Ahead of him, probably, if all this time had passed and they hadn't burst into any of the rooms Rod had so fumblingly and cautiously wandered through. Perhaps they'd thought he knew the way out, and would just run as fast as he could toward it. Moving through Malragard, down the hill the fortress descended, to reach a floor or two below where he was now. Maybe.

Yet there was no reason not to believe the unhappy mutterings among the knights that death-spells would dice anyone trying to climb out over the garden walls-and there was no way to blast a hole in any wall, and so step right out of Malraun's trap, except magic that he didn't have and wouldn't know how to use if someone handed it to him. Not to mention that blowing a hole in the side of the wizard's home was more than a little likely to alert Malraun instantly about what had happened-and just where to find the guy who'd just done it.

So, walk along obediently in the death trap it was, and would have to be. Rod turned the way he knew to be away from the garden and-eventually-downwards toward Harlhoh, and the front doors, and started walking. Slowly, reluctantly, and as quietly as he could, avoiding all doors.

So when did he get to rescue the princess, slay a dragon, and accept a triumphal fanfare?

Or at least play the hero with some small degree of competence?

"Lock the doors!" Rusty roared, wondering where the bell Mase and his boys were; they should have been out on the lawn stopping these clowns well away from the building, not nowhere to be seen, as the Dark Helms-looking very much like dangerous thugs, now, and not awed, giggling fans-stalked up to the outer doors. "Lock the fucking DOORS!"

Sollars stared up at him, not knowing whether to be scared white or to grin at hearing Holdoncorp's grayhaired and straight-arrow security chief spitting out curses.

"You're in charge here," Rusty snapped at him as he unbuttoned his holster-and then sprinted away, heading for the service stairs. "Hank," he called to the largest and strongest of the custodians, "get out the fire axe and defend everyone on this floor, if any of those guys come out of the elevator!"

As he burst through the stairwell door and started plunging down flights of steps with wild bounds, the speakers at every landing crackled and came to life. Sollars had flipped a switch.

"Ah, gentlemen, welcome to Holdoncorp." Marie's usually butter-smooth and calmly professional voice sounded a little shaky, and no wonder. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," a deep, helm-bound voice snarled back at her. "Take us to those who know Falconfar."

There followed a loud crash of breaking glass. Amid the tinklings of falling shards that followed, and more than a few swiftly-stifled shrieks, the Dark Helm added in a loud and gloatingly menacing voice, "And mind ye do so quickly."

Rusty hurled himself down another flight of stairs. Quickly.

Rod blundered into the illusion of straight hallway stretching on the hard way; by bringing his foot down on the edge of the unseen descending steps and pitching forward, slamming chest-first down on the steps, and finding himself staring at the slumped corpse of Thalden bent over the giant crossbow quarrel that had torn through his innards and killed him. It was as big as a lance, and Rod realized with a start that a matching war-quarrel had struck the steps just beside Thalden, right about where his own head was now, chipping the stone ere it bounded away up the steps. He'd fallen right past it without even seeing it.

Hastily he got himself up and away from those particular steps. Picking up that quarrel, he used it to probe at the illusory passage, running on its unseen distances. There were side-walls to the steps, and an end wall with a door in it, facing the steps, and that wall ran straight up as high as he could reach; there was no gap or space through which he could move on.

So he either had to go back to the doors behind him, dare any traps Malraun had put on them, and find a way around this deadend… or it wasn't a dead-end, but the way onward, and he had to open that door.

The door through which two oversized crossbow bolts had fired, if that was the right word, one of them fast enough to kill Thalden. The other had missed Syregorn and however many other Hammerhand knights had still been alive when they'd reached this door.

Everlar hefted it in his hand, then gingerly poked its far end through the pull-ring of the door, stood as far away as he could on the stairs, over against the wall on the far side from Thalden's body, and tugged.

The door opened with surprising ease-in well-oiled soft and smooth silence-and an unseen double-bow let go with a crash. Rod saw only blurs as another lance chipped the empty side of the steps and bounded up and on along the passage, while Thalden's body spasmed, arms and head bouncing wildly, as a second quarrel tore into it right beside the first.

Rod swallowed, but made sure to keep the door held open as he edged along the lance toward its dark opening. He could hear no sounds of reloading, a whirring windlass, or men moving about, beyond the door; the only breathing he could hear was his own. The bow had fired from about there and there, which meant he should be able to keep to the very edge of the doorway and step through without straying into the path of another war-quarrel.

Assuming there were no other little surprises waiting in, say, the doorframe.

Rod shrugged, swallowed, and carefully stepped through the door. He had to trust in his hunches, because they were all he had-and this looked to him like a mechanical trap, not manned and aimed. Unless Syregorn and the others had decided to make it so.

The moment he was in the darkness-a magical band or zone of utter pitch-black blindness, he decided-Rod stopped, lance in hand, and stood still to listen.

No breathing, no stealthy movements nearby that he could hear. Just deepening silence.

So he raised the crossbow quarrel in front of him, holding it in two hands like a quarterstaff, and stepped cautiously forward.

Here cometh the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, with borrowed war-quarrel in hand. Tremble, all, and flee before him.

Two steps took him out of the darkness-it was a magical area, that ended in a wall as smooth as the black-tinted glass he'd seen in the foyers of various luxurious corporate headquarters-and on along a stone passage very similar to the one back beyond the stairs, except that it wasn't crowded with doors in its walls, floor, and ceiling.

A hall that stretched for only a short, straight run before turning into another flight of descending steps. The ceiling bent to descend on an angle with the steps, unmarked and unremarkable stone, and there were two small, closed doors on either side of the passage, just where the steps began.

Trap, Rod thought, eyeing them. But just how did it work, and what was the best way to pass those two doors?

Right beside one of them, he decided, choosing the right-hand one on a whim and walking to it as quietly and alertly as any cat-burglar, the war-quarrel held up and ready.

Use this borrowed spear of mine to bat aside anything that strikes at me out of the doors. Rush past, low and fast, with the quarrel held up like a shield.

He did that, and nothing happened. Save that he almost fell down the stairs beyond, skidding to a teetering halt on the lip of floor they descended from. Gingerly he tapped the topmost step with the quarrel, then shoved on it, hard.

Nothing happened. The stone was hard, solid, and not moving in the slightest.

Cautiously he rapped the wall beside the step, to make sure it didn't erupt with flames or a stabbing blade or anything else.

Nothing. Rod stepped down onto that step, and prodded the next one. Any corner he cut could cost him his life. As usual.

Rusty Carroll reached the door he wanted, flung it wide, and darted out onto the giant glass display case that was the ground floor front. It ended at a wall clad in black marble, right beside him, and he ran along it, down the back row of cubicles, gun in hand.

Where were th-oh.

Screams filled the air, a cubicle wall went over with a crash, and sparks sprayed from a dangling cable as a savagely-swung sword severed a johnny pole at one stroke. From somewhere he heard the unmistakable "pop" and high-pitched singing of one of the older, larger glass computer monitors bursting.

"Women in silk blouses, short skirts, expensive metal spike heels, and elegantly-decorated pantyhose were rushing everywhere, hair wild and eyes wilder.

And there, behind them, came one of the Dark Helms, swinging his sword back and forth as he came, two-handed, like a teenager smashing store displays and not expecting anything to stand in his way. He was chuckling.

Rusty fired at the man's throat. The man staggered, but the bullet whined away, the screams rose even louder from all around, and the Dark Helm neither slowed nor stopped. Instead, he headed straight for Rusty.

Who felt the sudden need for a fire axe.

Rod walked cautiously along a new passage. He'd descended two levels from where he'd met the skeleton, and was wondering how much farther he could go before Malragard ran out of hillside and he found himself in an attic or bedchamber of some house in Harlhoh.

This passage looked like it ended just ahead, in another descending flight of stairs, but he was learning not to trust his eyes. The quarrel, or spear, had saved him from-

"Lord Archwizard," Syregorn's voice greeted him pleasantly, from somewhere ahead. "Left alone, you must trudge through life slowly indeed. I was beginning to wonder if your magic had failed you."