Arch Wizard

Chapter Twenty-Six

Rod Everlar stopped, the war-quarrel feeling suddenly heavy and awkward in his hands. He was damned if he was going to flee like a scared child-and really, in this house of hidden traps, where did he dare flee to? — but the Hammerhand warcaptain was a veteran swordsman. It would be suicide to try to fight him directly.

So… what to do?

"Syregorn," he asked calmly, "have you been under orders to kill me, all along?"

"Yes," the warcaptain replied gravely, stepping into view through what looked like the solid descending ceiling of the passage, sloping down with the stairs as they went down to the door. Obviously the passage-or some part of it-ran straight on, along the level Rod was standing on. "You or the wizard whose tower we now stand in. Whichever of you survived your spell-battle, after we got the two of you together."

"So why have you disobeyed those orders?"

"I've done no such thing, Lord Archwizard." Syregorn made a sneering mockery of that title.

"Oh? So where," Rod asked, "is Malraun? If there was a spell-battle between us, I seem to have missed it."

"The wizard is obviously elsewhere. Probably with his army. The wizard, I said; it's clear to me now that you're no mage. You can't spell-battle anyone. So there's no longer any need to wait to see who survives a battle that will never happen, before I strike you down."

"Does Lord Hammerhand know you're disobeying his orders?"

Syregorn smiled, hefted his sword, and started to walk toward Rod. Slowly, almost strolling, his eyes alert and ruthless.

"I've not told you all the orders he gave me, and won't. You are, after all, an outlander, not a sworn man of Hammerhold. Yet take whatever comfort you can from knowing that killing you fulfills my orders, not breaks them. You cringing, good-for-naught coward."

It was Rod's turn to smile. "Was that meant to be an insult? It seems to me, I'm afraid, to be a fairly accurate description more than anything else."

"So you admit it? Or is this just a ploy to delay me? Desperate words from a man who has no way of defending himself but to hope he can somehow talk someone to death?"

"Er, pretty much," Rod admitted. "You don't think disposing of me will throw away a weapon Lord Hammerhand could use to finally rule all Ironthorn?"

Syregorn's smile was very thin. "No, I do not."

He was closing in on Rod, slowly and carefully, long sharp sword raised to slay. "Whatever paltry magics you may be able to work are tricks. Little ploys such as I or any man could work, if we ended up with a few treasures enchanted by others in our hands. It will take a lot more than little ploys to defeat Lyrose or Tesmer-just as it will take more than a little ploy to fool me. Outlander, you are a dead man."

"Now who's trying to talk someone to death?" Rod replied, backing slowly away, keeping the quarrel up in front of him like a spear, and making his right elbow slide along the wall to keep himself close to it. He had to stay right against the wall, retracing the way he'd safely come already, in case walking down the middle of the passage landed him in any traps. After all, Malraun had to live in this place, and be able to stroll around it without facing death every few seconds; there must be some fairly simple "safe paths" through rooms and along passages. He hoped.

Syregorn stalked patiently after Rod, smiling a ruthless smile. Rod kept backing away, trying to recall how long this run of passage was.

"So you kill me," he asked the warcaptain, sounding calmer than he felt, "and then what? How are you going to get out of here alive?"

Syregorn shrugged. "Carry you, and use you as a shield. Let the traps savage your body. You won't be that heavy a burden, with some of the unnecessary limbs lopped off."

Rod tried not to shudder. "And if you find yourself facing Malraun?"

"Bargain for my life with all I can tell him-all you told me-of this world you come from, Lord Archwizard; this 'Earth.' A place he can rule. A place he'll need strong arms who know how to swing swords to guard and patrol for him."

"Strong arms like yours?" Rod let his amused disbelief rule his voice, to try to make his question a taunt.

"If men of Earth are like you," the warcaptain observed calmly, "my arm alone might be all that's necessary. It takes little skill to butcher-or cow-bumbling, unthinking children."

The heel of Rod's rearmost foot struck the smooth hardness of a wall, and Syregorn's contemptuous smile widened. Rod had reached the end of the passage; the stair that had led down into it had been narrower. He sidestepped to the left, kicked gently back, and felt the bottom step instead of wall. Waving his foot from side to side until he felt the side-wall of the stair, he backed into the stair.

Syregorn shook his head. "Enough of this," he remarked pleasantly-and charged.

All the screaming was God-damned deafening.

Rusty Carroll winced more than once as he dodged frantically-fleeing secretaries, who slammed into him and clawed their way past him almost blindly, not even seeing the gun in his hand as they sought to get away.

He caught glimpses, as he struggled through the flood of terrified Holdoncorp staffers, of what they were fleeing. The men in black armor were striding everywhere through the maze of cubicles, smoked glass dividers, potted palms, and brightly-glowing flat-panel monitors-and they were hacking at things indiscriminately as they went.

Glass tinkled and shattered, earth spilled across the floor as hewn plants toppled, and sparks spat here and there as cables were severed. Somewhere a fire alarm went off. Not the incessant ringing it was supposed to emit, but a hiccuping brring-off-brring-off-brring annoyance that made Rusty heartily wish he'd insisted on headphone-style earplugs as part of full-crisis company security uniforms, not just infrared goggles and gas masks.

Neither of which he'd bothered to scoop up before running down here, he remembered, which meant using tear gas on these Dark Helm clowns was out-until he could get back to the security closet where the gas canisters and a dozen masks were stored.

That closet that was clear across the far end of this floor, of course. Put in entirely the wrong place so an architect could give the Senior Brand Overmanager of Strategic Marketing Initiatives who'd engaged his services for the Corporate Headquarters Ground Floor Front makeover a nicer view of the nearest green hillside, a neatly manicured slope across the encircling drive that only a very wildly-hit golf ball might ever roll down…

Snarling under his breath, Rusty ran toward that distant closet. He'd have preferred to keep right along the marble wall, but at least a dozen executives had wangled permission to extend their offices across the back fire route corridor to meet that wall. Of course.

So in three places he had to dodge out from the wall, following the winding passage that left the black marble temporarily behind to run out and along the curved glass fronts of their offices, separating them from mere peons in the company hierarchy. Right now, though, they and said peons were all crammed together in this same passage, shrieking in terror and punching, kicking, and clawing at each other to try to get past. Co-workers as inconvenient obstacles…

Rusty wasn't sure where they all thought they were hurrying to, being as the only ways out that didn't involve going up or down in the building (using the stairs he'd just come down, or the far more palatial adjacent bank of elevators) were straight at the Dark Helms and out the front glass doors, or through one of the locked doors in the marble wall into the luxurious offices of upper management, the Inner Sanctum with its floating-glass-steps rear stair. Unless you were bold enough to make your own exit through a glass wall somewhere-an escape route quite likely to sever heads, arms, or otherwise prove fatal to an unprotected and terrified secretary trying it. Just thinking about that made him wince.

A particularly hard knee nigh his crotch brought him back to the here-and-now with a jolt, and left him facing a rather more immediate truth. Head of Security or not, he was damned cold certain of one thing: these long-haired, well-dressed, uppercrust cubicle mice were all in his way, and determined to scratch, claw, and even bite him to get past him.

And if he hit back at just one of them, just one, he knew the lawsuit that would eventually follow-from whoever he hit, no matter what she'd done to him, or from her next of kin-would ruin his life more thoroughly than-

One of the great electronic locks hummed and clicked, in the black wall right beside Rusty's elbow. Just now, he was hurrying down one of the doglegs in the fire route corridor that swung back to run along the marble for long enough to go around the curved back wall of an office shared by four Executive Graphics Facilitators. Clawing at that glass to halt his rush, he only just had time to hurl himself back, and against the black marble.

So the large, rarely-used 'side door' into the Inner Sanctum, constructed for rolling large pieces of new machinery-such as the monster photocopiers and color plotters-in and out of the executive offices with relative ease, didn't break his nose or toes when it swung open.

It did knock three running, shrieking secretaries flat. Only one of them was still moaning and feebly moving on the floor as three grandly-suited vice presidents, resplendent in gleaming designer shoes and Ivy League ties Rusty happened to know came from institutions they'd never attended, strode out into the tumult, regarded all the running or sprawled and senseless underlings with clear distaste, and demanded of the world at large, in only slightly-varying queries: "What the fuck is going on?"

The only answer they got was more screams.

"You!" the florid Vice President Finance boomed, pointing at a particular gasping, sprinting young woman. "If you want to remain employed here an instant longer, come here!"

The terrified secretary obviously decided she did not desire to continue employment with Holdoncorp if it meant getting sliced open with a broadsword in the next moment or so, and kept right on running as fast as she frantically could.

So did the panting, one-shoed woman behind her-and right behind her came striding two Dark Helms in armor, visors down, and swords up and hacking at everything handy.

"What's going on? Is this someone's idea of a joke?" the Vice President Legal demanded, jowls quivering. He peered wildly around, then poked his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, as he did every few moments of his waking life.

Again, no one deigned to reply. Rusty was quietly keeping hold of the door, both to hide behind it and to prevent it from swinging closed. The escape route it offered might very soon be urgently needed.

Then the screaming was elsewhere, and fading into distances fast. The secretaries, clerks, and clerical supervisors who normally populated this part of Holdoncorp's Ground Floor Front had all fled, leaving two Dark Helms-with more coming up behind them-striding to meet the three gaping Holdoncorp vice presidents.

Executive Vice President Jackman Quillroque had not reached his exalted position by being indecisive-or slow to confront potential trouble. He had always been tall, loud, and fearless. No waiting for inconvenient results of marketing surveys for him.

"Swords? Dark Helm costumes? Who are you, and just what by all the smoking pits of Hell do you think you're doing? What's going on here?"

Rod Everlar hastily backed up two steps, caught his heel and stumbled on the third, and sat down on the fourth hard and helplessly, his improvised spear clattering from his grasp.

He grabbed for it desperately, managed to snare its end in his fingertips, and looked up-into the grinning face of Syregorn, who'd drawn back his sword for a roundhouse beheading slash, and was now taking a long stride forward, to right at the foot of the steps, to put his entire weight behind his blade.

His boot came down, the floor sank about an inch under it, the beginnings of a look of alarm arose on the warcaptain's face-and the floor sprang up behind him with a sound like thunder.

An iron arm Rod couldn't properly see thrust the flagstones of the floor up and aside like a huge trapdoor. A revealed row of barbed iron spears much larger than the war-quarrel in his hand shot upright with such force that all three of them burst through Syregorn's body-neck, chest, and belly, right through his war-leathers-before the knight could even finish bringing his sword around to hack Rod open.

"Glaaaagh!" Syregorn cried, or tried to, around the blood bursting explosively from his mouth. He stared at Rod in enraged and incredulous agony, then struggled to say, "Gglord Archblughizard-"

Then his stare became fixed, and he said nothing else at all.

As Rod watched, the warcaptain's body sagged, and the sword clanged down out of his hand.

Syregorn went right on staring at nothing, blood trickling down his chin and dripping from him. His slumped body was now hanging from the spears.

Rod Everlar looked away from Syregorn's face, slowly whispered out all the curses he could think of, and tried to stop the spear-quarrel-in his hands from shaking so uncontrollably.

He was alone now in Malraun's tower; every last one of the Hammerhand knights he'd come into Malragard with was now dead. He was on his own.

"So," he mumbled aloud, fear rising in his throat like a sudden hot flame, "what sort of horrible trap will get me?"

A plate-glass wall makes a deafening noise when it shatters. A noise loud enough to drown out and sicken even hardened executives. Holdoncorp was a company both wealthy and young; in its brief history it had always had rising stock, and money to spare to out-lawyer trade rivals, so its vice presidents-however bright and veteran they might consider themselves-were far from truly hardened.

Moreover, the shattering of the front wall brought other shocking sounds flooding to the ears of the vice presidents. Screams and shouted curses from the second truck crammed with Loading Dock Security men, as the lorn darted low at their heads, and nearly caused them to crash into the front wall of the corporate headquarters the way the first truck had. The truck now disgorging dazed and bleeding men in all directions-some of whom barely had time to shout before Dark Helm swords found their throats.

Movies to the contrary, it takes a lot of strength to sever a human head-and a very sharp sword.

It seemed at least one of the Dark Helms had both, and a savage sense of humor besides. He caught up Sam Hooldan's head, now permanently wearing a gaping look of utter astonishment, and threw it hard and high over the cubicle walls.

Where it landed, bounced wetly, landed again, and started to roll. Almost right to the gleaming shoes of Jackman Quillroque, where it gaped up at him in unseeing, utter astonishment too.

The Executive Vice President stared down at it, then lifted his head to look firmly away, jaw set and mouth tight and grim. He was fighting hard to keep from throwing up.

He had been lucky to get this far.

More and more, Malragard seemed like one great trap around him. Rod sat on the stairs in its empty silence, trying not to look at the forever-staring Syregorn, and fancied-or was it more than mere fancy? — that Malraun's tower-fortress was listening to him, waiting for him to do or say something before it pounced.

Leaving him as satisfyingly dead as all the rest of the intruders. Rod swallowed, finding his throat dry with fear, and wondered just what by all Falconfar he was going to do.

Well, not blunder on until he got caught in some trap or other, for starters. Which meant he'd die of thirst or starvation or whatever cruelness Malraun could think up, when the wizard came home-whichever applied first.

Hmmph. He had no magic to speak of, and only in wild fantasy books did magic "just conveniently happen" when you needed it. There was, for example, fat hooting chance he could get himself whisked back to Ironthorn-to a guard-filled Lyraunt Castle, and likely death! — just by finding the right spot in the walled garden and waiting for the magic to work again. No; if the teleport magic worked that way, half the Lyrose warriors would have tramped through that garden to die bloodily all over Malragard already, or Malraun would have set up some sort of nasty welcome in his garden, or something like that.

He couldn't go on, unless he wanted to die. So he'd better retrace his steps, right now while he still had some chance of remembering just where he'd put his feet. Back until he got to that bed where the skeleton had been, and the room beyond that, with all the clothes. Make a bed by heaping clothes on the floor and using more to cover himself, go to sleep on it, and try to dream.

If he could shatter Malragard in his dreams, he might be able to destroy it for real, and so break himself a way out.

Or get himself killed when it collapsed.

Rod shrugged. What other hope did he have?

And he had managed to go from his bedroom to Falconfar, the night Taeauna had literally fallen into his life, just by being upset and thinking of Falconfar hard enough. While Dark Helms were trying to kill them both, too.

So… well, if this didn't work, he'd be in the same boat he was in right now, and he could sit and despair, seeing no way out, all over again.

Or he could get lucky, and find something in those rooms he could write on, and with, and do his Shaping thing.

To get Taeauna back, and Falconfar free of wizards forever.

Except one: Rod Everlar, Lord Archwizard of Falconfar.

Well, fatuous that title might be, but it beat being Rod Everlar, unhappy writer. Sitting home alone wondering what was happening in the world he now knew was all too real.

Sitting home alone, without Taeauna.

"Can't…" Garfist Gulkoun huffed, wobbling almost to a halt, "carry ye… much longer… Snakehips."

He promptly turned his ankle on a cobble, and fell headlong-thankfully into a night-shadowed Harlhoh garden. Iskarra flung herself from his arms, covering her face and throat as she rolled. Some folk left sharp stakes and worse in their gardens.

"Gah! Grrr! Hah!" Gar snarled, lashing out around him with his fists at imagined foes.

Thankfully, no one shouted back, and there were no barks or howls. Folk in Harlhoh, it seemed, kept no dogs, and spent their nights behind secure shutters and heavy barred and bolted doors.

Malraun was probably the reason for that.

Iskarra smiled wryly at that thought. She'd never expected to be thankful for the Matchless Doom of Falconfar, even briefly and in passing. She found her feet, got back to Gar, and hissed at him to shut his row, except to tell her if he was all right.

"I am not all right," he growled, lurching to his feet and stamping hard on someone's flowers to see if his ankle would bear him. It held up, though a wet rustling told Isk that the half-seen thar-da bush behind the flowers hadn't. "I inhabit a world ruled by crazed wizards and their minion-monsters. I'm supposed to be happily retired by now, settling into my dotage with young things bringing me sweet meals and snuggling into my arms-"

"A-hem," Iskarra interrupted him meaningfully.

"Oh, lass, lass, worry not!" Gar rumbled, waving one large and hairy hand. "I'll share 'em with ye!"

"Pray accept my deepest thanks," Iskarra told him icily.

Garfist blinked at her. "Isk, what's got into ye? I rescued ye from yon deadly monsters, didn't I?"

Behind them, the garden rose up into a dark and towering mountain, spilling them both off their feet as the ground quivered and then erupted under their boots.

"It seems not," Iskarra panted into her man's face, as she dashed past him, tugging at his arm as she went. "Run!"

"That's all we ever do, it seems," he grumbled mournfully, as he turned, lowered his head, and burst into a surprisingly powerful sprint.

The trio of Dark Helms advanced menacingly, swords ready in their hands-and the three Holdoncorp vice presidents abandoned all notions that these were crazed fans in homemade costumes. Every movement made by the men in black armor told anyone watching that they were killers, cold-eyed fighting men who knew very well how to use their blades, and daily swung them with brutal efficiency.

Vice President Legal Morton Morton Herkimer the Third completed his assessment of the situation, came to his judgment, and acted with his usual brisk efficiency.

He whirled around, jowls quivering, clapped one hand to his face to hold his glasses firmly in place, and was sent flying by a bone-shaking smack from the moving edge of the door he'd planned to flee back through.

On the other side of that door, Rusty Carroll smiled thinly. He'd shoved the massive thing with perfect timing, and was now dragging it to a halt so he could haul it back open again.

Vice President Finance Sheldon Daumark Hollinshed stared at Rusty, his already florid face going fire-engine red. Before he could wave his arms in his favorite windmilling wind-myself-up-into-a-towering-rage-for-maximum-show tactic and boom forth demands and commands, however, a storm of gunfire and shouting erupted behind the Dark Helms.

Mase's Ground Floor Security men had arrived, and were firing at everything that moved, and bellowing at the walls, floor, ceiling, and nearest wastebasket to "Get down! Get down! Get down NOW!"

Three of those everythings were the other three Dark Helms, and a fourth was the lorn.

The lorn, swooping and darting above the cubicles where everyone could see it, was riddled with semi-automatic fire in less time than it took Mase to draw breath to shout again. It flapped, sagged, flapped more weakly, and crashed down heavily inside a cubicle.

The Dark Helms, who figured out how to throw chairs and computers in that same catching-breath moment, and who saw that these new arrivals were a real danger, responded with swift ruthlessness. All manner of objects were hurled, cubicle walls were toppled, and swords and daggers were thrown and thrust with desperate speed.

As bullets laced ceilings and smacked into windows and pillars in all directions, men started screaming in agony, or fleeing-and they weren't men in medieval-style armor.

As he saw one man crash face-down on the floor and slide to sprawled stillness, blood beginning to flow from under him like a lake, the Executive Vice President of Holdoncorp went white. He turned to dash back through the open door into the Inner Sanctum-but one of the three Dark Helms, now facing him from only a few strides away, plucked out a dagger and threw it so deftly that it passed under both of Jackman Quillroque's expensive shoes, and upended him as if he'd been a kids' television cartoon character encountering a banana peel.

He rolled over to sit up in uncustomarily undignified haste, panting in fear-and stopped, staring at two very sharp-looking sword points that were almost touching his nose.

"W-what do you want?" Jackman Quillroque stammered up at the two men behind those swords, his eyes wild behind his half-glasses and his expensive silk tie caught over one hairy ear.

"Who here has worked on Falconfar, or could work on Falconfar?" the tallest Dark Helm boomed, his voice coming eerily out of his full-face helm.

"Uh, well, ah aha, everyone here at Holdoncorp could work on Falconfar. It's one of our foremost properties, a brand known and valued-eeep!"

Jack Quillroque was infamous in industry circles for his "We can break you!" bluster, but a sword swung viciously at your neck is a very telling argument. Moreover, it's an argument that seems unimpressed by, and even impervious to, bluster at all.