Arch Wizard

Chapter Thirty

Amteira came awake shivering. Small wonder; she was lying curled up on her side on the great mossy boulder, still wearing nothing at all. Falcon, how long had she been here?

She didn't remember falling asleep, didn't remember anything at all after starting into her prayer…

Knuckling her eyes awake, she sat up-only to have her arm fail her, so she almost fell back to greet the rock with her face.

Wincing, she rolled over on her back, rubbing one arm with the other, flexing both of them, and wiggling her fingers. They were stiff-all of her was stiff-and she found herself shivering. Stars were glimmering overhead through the dark cloak of leaves, and the night air was damp as well as cold. As she rolled over again, Amteira could see her breath for the most fleeting of moments, as a fading, drifting mist caught in the moonlight.

The moon was low, and around her the Raurklor was alive with rustlings and faint, distant hootings and calls. It was full night.

She sat up. Well, so much for her blood and prayer and all. Either there was no Forestmother and Jaklar was a hedge-wizard lying about his holy beliefs and deeds, or the goddess of the Raurklor wasn't disposed to listen to the entreaties of Amteira Hammerhand.

Most likely Jaklar was lying. "Lord Leaf," indeed. He wasn't a priest at all, but a clever fox who knew who to taint with his berries and ground roots, and when and how to sway or slay folk that way, with a few spells to back up his claims of serving a mighty goddess. Leaving Amteira Hammerhand as just one more fool who'd believed him.

There was her war-harness, just where she'd dropped it. She'd best get dressed before something with fangs came along and decided-hold!

What was that?

Where she'd shifted herself off the great mossy boulder, there was a faint glow.

It was coming from a spot smaller than the palm of her hand, amid the old fissures in the stone. It was the moss she'd wet with her blood, fallen from her skin to the rock, shining in moon-silver silence. A small radiance, but a steady one.

She reached out to touch it but drew back before her fingers reached it, and couldn't stop herself from turning about to shoot swift glances out into the dark forest all around her. Glances that saw no skulking men or beasts, nothing but trees and their leaves.

She looked back at the glow, half expecting it to rear up and lash out at her.

So was this some trick of Jaklar's, or is there a Forestmother after all?

The moss hadn't moved or changed. Staring down at it, Amteira decided she should pray again to the Forestmother. Just a few words this time, no more moss and blood. Just to ward off the disfavor of the goddess, if there was a Forestmother.

Considering what she'd just been thinking, it was only prudent. And would take her but a moment, before she'd get her armor back on and think about what she should do next.

"Holy Forestmother," she murmured, thrusting out her hand to put her fingers firmly on the moss.

She caught her breath and almost pulled them back again; the moss was warm where it should have been cold, dry where it should have been damp with dew. The doing of the goddess, or-ah. The heat of her own body. She'd been lying on it, of course, warming it with herself.

Smiling at her apprehension, the last of the Hammerhands sat up straight, looked to the stars and then down at the deepest, darkest trees around her, and firmly began a simple, respectful prayer.

"Forgive me what I have done in harm to the Raurklor and all forests," she whispered. "Guide me in what I should do henceforth. Show me some sign, to make me believe and heed."

The world exploded.

Amteira's ears rang and seemed to split under a great cracking sound, even as the darkness was lost in a blinding white flood of light.

In the whirling silence, she found herself on her back on the rock, staring up at what was crackling down out of the clear and starry night sky.

A lightning bolt as thick as an ancient tree, that was stabbing down into the boulder. The great rock that was shaking under her, a great numbing shuddering that-

Ended in a great shriek of riven stone.

I can hear.

As Amteira thought that, she was hurtling through the air, tumbling over and over amid dark shards of rock.

All of us, being hurled into-what had Jaklar so often said? Oh, yes: oblivion.

In the blinding light rose darkness. Dimly Amteira Hammerhand clung to one fading thought.

So there is a Forestmother.

Velduke Darendarr Deldragon strode along his high battlements, restless and not knowing why. Spread out below him, Bowrock stood tranquil in the moonlight, a light glimmering here and there among its roofs and towers. Modest when considered by an eye that could at the same time gaze upon his castle, yet far more prosperous than most places in Galath-or even the Stormar cities, with their reeking backstreets and grasping, desperate rib-daggers. Gaunt and starved and glaring out at the world with no hope.

"There's none of that here," he told the night aloud, in almost fierce satisfaction, his words startling one of his sentinels into stepping out of his embrasure to peer along the wall to see who'd spoken.

Deldragon gave the man a nod and smile, pausing in his striding where the moonlight would fall full on his face and front, so he'd be recognized. And so he was; the man gave him a hasty salute and stepped back again.

Deldragon felt his smile widening; he strode forward again, heading for the corner, still far ahead, where this great keep ended and the wall-walk turned down its end wall for a few paces, ere sloping down to a lower, newer hall that ran on to the two turrets all Bowrock liked to gaze upon of nights like this one, when they stood awash in moonlight. He-

Faltered and almost stumbled. Why had his mind been suddenly full of blue skin with scales, skin covering an arm that might have been his own?

What could possibly bring such a scene into his mind, and so vividly? A spell, sent from afar? A whim of the Falcon, or some malicious Stormar god he'd never heard of? A wizard nearby, dreaming?

He knew of no wizards in Bowrock right now, mind, but that stood as nothing beside such a vivid mind-seeing, aye? Most hedge-wizards strode through life grandly proclaiming their magic to all, to make themselves seem mighty where the truth was far feebler, but real wizards-not just the fabled Dooms, but all their apprentices, and the sorcerer-lords across the Sea of Storms, too-could hide what they were, if they cared to.

All contentment gone, Velduke Deldragon stood in the moonlight frowning, wondering what to do. What could he do?

Was this a deliberate warning, or the Falcon's way of alerting him to a hidden menace? Blue scaled skin should tell him something, remind him of someone, but he couldn't-couldn't-had never known, his mind told him coldly.

He stared at nothing, seeing a blank stone wall and emptiness beyond in his mind. The empty field or chamber was its old, old way of telling him he knew nothing at all about something-but the stone wall was how he'd always known he was forgetting something. A broken down, ruined stone wall, under an open sky, but this was inside, a tall and strong barrier in front of his nose.

Something was being hidden from him. By whom, and how, he had no idea, but the very thought frightened him, leaving him shivering.

"Lord?" the sentinel asked hesitantly, from just behind him. "Are you-is aught wrong?"

Deldragon lifted his head, set his jaw, and snapped, "No. Not yet."

He spun around, barely seeing the man, only vaguely aware that his sudden movement had made the man dip his spear menacingly and then hastily raise it again with an apologetic mumble.

Instead, he was seeing himself in bright armor again, riding among the tents of a great encampment. Inspecting an army; his army. His knights were coming forth from the tents to salute him, his men looking up at him with smiles on their faces, all the might of Bowrock arrayed across a great meadow and filling it…

"Yet I know what I must do," he heard himself telling the guard, not really knowing why, and seeing no foe or battlefield. "We must ready ourselves for war. All Bowrock must stand prepared to fight."

The sentinel said not a word, but the moonlight was on his face, and Deldragon could read it well enough.

"Yes," he said wryly, knowing his lips were twisting. "Again."

Rod found himself falling gently down through a red mist, a mist of flowers-flowers? — to stand before a stone gate he'd never seen before, in a misty forest. It was a gate with a fortress behind it, and warm firelight was flooding out around the chinks in the old and ill-fitting wooden doors of that keep. Doors that were suddenly guarded by nude women holding drawn swords. Women bare from the throats down, who had the dark, menacing helmed heads of Dark Helms.

"Who are you?" they challenged him, stepping forward to point their glittering blades at him.

"Rod Everlar," he replied, bubbles flooding out of his mouth. Had they heard him?

"I thought so," the foremost said fiercely, and tore off her helm. It was Taeauna, but she thrust her thumbs under her chin and peeled the flesh up and off, too, in a drifting mist of blood, to reveal-

The mouthless face of a lorn.

The other guards all laughed, and it was the shrill, cruel mirth of women who hated him.

"What is this place? Who's lord here?" he asked quickly, as they all started toward him.

"Zundarl rules here. We kill you in his name," was the smugly chanted reply.

Zundarl? Who the hell was Zundarl?

Not a name he knew, nothing of his writing, but "hell" was familiar enough. Hell meant a great dark gulf, and despairing shrieking from shattered skulls that still had eyes, staring redly at him as he fell into it, joining the general plunge down to-

Land lightly on his feet, on a high platform of stone, a great slab that shuddered under Rod's boots with the deep, approaching roar of the great winged beast that had just landed. The clap of its great wings set his red cloak-red cloak? Where'd he acquired a red cloak? — to swirling, buffeting him with gusts of wind that made him stagger. Cloak flapping, he hastily drew his sword, and had to thrust it far out into the air, just to hold his balance.

That blade was in his left hand, suddenly, and there was a quill pen in his right, a great white plumed feather larger than any he'd ever seen before, trimmed to a point that dripped dark red blood.

No, streamed dark red blood, in a constant welling that came from nowhere he could see. No feather could hold that much gore…

There was nothing to write on, though, and the monster was turning to regard him, slow and massive, baleful menace in its great gloating eyes even before their gaze found him.

Turning, so huge that its tread and throat-rumbling were shaking the high landing where he stood, sending small shards crumbling off the steps below and tumbling down to…

It was a greatfangs, the largest he'd ever seen, bigger than any dragon, and there were more of its kind-smaller, but each one still easily larger than a castle as they glided past-filling the sky behind it.

The greatfangs was reaching out its huge neck, crashing through a space in the castle in front of Rod that wasn't large enough for it. Its great bony beak of a snout came at Rod like a thrusting dagger, the flaring ridges of the widening head behind all those fangs hurling down stones with an ongoing clatter.

Folk were screaming and running out of the groaning, leaning keep now, as shattered stone-work plunged down around them.

Rod found himself staring in fascination at the forest of upthrust horns atop the head of the greatfangs, the many spines that defend the head of every greatfangs from the closing jaws of larger greatfangs and of dragons.

Staring as it all came nearer… he could do nothing with his bloody pen or his puny sword… the eyes of the greatfangs kindled into the bright glee of the devourer, its forest of fangs parted, and the snout came for him…

Rod came awake shouting.

Or had he cried out? The echoes of something were ringing in his ears, he thought, but Malragard seemed silent and empty around him.

He was sitting upright atop his heap of clothes, sweating, his heart pounding in fear as he stared into the darkness.

Fear… and anger, too, like red coals under it getting ready to flare. He'd not dreamed so vividly and so, so… energetically for years, and never had a dream held so much of the astonishing and utterly unfamiliar.

Malraun. It must be Malraun tampering with his dreams.

Oh, not deliberately, riding his mind and meddling-why bother, when a Doom of Falconfar could so much more easily blast any mind he could enter, or conquer will and thought and memory, to enslave the owner of the mind?

No, this was more, uh, automatic. As if it was happening to him just because he was inside Malraun's fortress, and so within reach of spells the wizard had cast to affect everyone like this.

Rod swiped the back of his arm across his drenched face.

So, were greatfangs flying through the skies above a keep somewhere in Falconfar, or smashing open the front of that fortress to turn and menace a man in a red cloak, who was standing alone on a high stone terrace one moment and gone into empty air the next?

Just because he, a Shaper, the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, dreamed matters stood thus?

Or was he just a sleepy, deluded writer of thrillers and fantasy trilogies who had no real power at all? A bumbler who could do nothing in Falconfar unless some lurking wizard or other worked magic to make things happen, hiding behind Rod Everlar as a cover for their deeds…

Taeauna fought to scream out her rage, but managed only the faintest of gasps. Lorontar's will was a great fist of power against her feeble infant's fumblings, flooding through her and leaving her dazed and helpless.

Flooding through her not to slay or savage, but to soothe.

Caress and cozen not the mind of Taeauna of the Aumrarr, but that of the man sprawled atop her, the wizard who styled himself Malraun the Matchless.

To keep him deeply asleep, no matter what guards came shouting or seeking to shake him out of slumber, as morning came to Darswords.

Bound and helpless under him, Taeauna lay silent. Seething, but held in a grip that wouldn't allow her to so much as curse softly.

She'd never thought she'd miss cursing so much.

Iskarra shook her head again, trying not to spew what little was in her stomach. She'd just plunged out of spiraling red mists, a long and sickening fall that had ended-none too gently-in a landing on hard stone battlements in the gray and misty chill before dawn.

The battlements belonged to an unfamiliar keep that stood in a narrow green river valley, that was part of a labyrinth of side-vales, somewhere in the vast Raurklor.

She'd seen that much while hurtling down to… here.

Iskarra shook her head, wincing. Everything she looked at swam a little around its edges, and looked a trifle greener than it should. "What did you do to us?"

"Took you through a gate," Dauntra said tartly. "Wizards and high priests aren't the only ones who have a little magic."

"Yours came from something you carry, not a spell," Isk said calmly, trying not to show her horrible queasiness. "I was watching."

Dauntra shrugged, her smile fading not a whit.

"So where are we?" Garfist's grunt, from above and behind Iskarra, was as sour as it was resigned.

"Ironthorn," snapped Juskra, as she flapped her wings hard to slow her plunge-and dropped him the last foot or so onto the battlements. "The other end of it. Tesmer lands."

"This is Imtowers," Dauntra added softly.

Gar's grunt told all listening Falconfar that he was far from impressed.

He lurched to the rampart, looked down, then turned away. No escape there. Not and keep hold of life. He started the long trudge to where the battlements turned a corner, heading for where the hillside loomed and the drop would be less.

A dark shadow glided over him before he was halfway there, landed in his path, and folded her wings rather grimly.

The scarred Aumrarr wasn't in the best of humors. Garfist Gulkoun wasn't the lightest of men, and had the irritating habit, when dangling in the air as a burden, of twisting and kicking just as a side-gust struck. Wherefore her shoulders ached abominably.

"In there," Juskra told him, pointing.

Gar spared the stair-hutch she'd indicated not so much as a glance. He kept right on lumbering along the battlements toward her.

"Garfist Gulkoun," she added, voice sharpening, "that's the way down. Or rather, the only one that doesn't involve your neck-and probably most of the rest of you, too-getting thoroughly broken."

Face set, eyes flickering everywhere but at her as he strode, he gave no sign of having heard her words.

"Those stairs descend past three bedchambers that're very likely unoccupied this night, unless various of the younger Ismers have very swiftly returned from mischief they looked quite happy to be part of, in various elsewheres. The third step below the landing giving onto the main floor lifts up. The catch under it opens a door in the stairwell you'll never find otherwise, into the room where Lord Irrance Tesmer keeps the greater part of his spending-gems. In handy carry-coffers."

The striding man lifted a hand and firmly favored her with a gesture that was both dismissive and decidedly rude, and kept right on coming.

"Garfist," she added warningly.

He did not slow.

The Aumrarr sighed, bounded into the air in a violent clapping of wings that sent him staggering, and landed right behind him. He whirled with an oath, fists coming up, but it took her only a passing moment to slap the side of his neck as he turned.

His eyes went out like two snuffed candles, and he kept right on turning, plunging silently to the floor.

Iskarra darted forward, eyes wild. "What did you-?"

"Hush," Juskra replied soothingly, raising a hand on which a ring was glowing softly. That faint radiance certainly hadn't been there before. "He'll be able to move again very soon. And breathe."

Isk gave her a cold look. "If you've harmed him…"

"Very soon," Dauntra murmured, from just behind her.

The gaunt woman was unmollified. "We faced and fought Lyroses for you; why are you doing this to us?"

The scarred Aumrarr shrugged. "Your work in this isn't done. That which you were intended to affect hasn't yet arisen."

"Can I have that in plain tongue?" Gar growled weakly, glaring up from the flagstones by her feet. "Ye sound like a sly merchant trying to sell a new cure-all-ills ointment! Plain talk, wingbitches! Plain talk!"

"You need not fight, for this one," Dauntra told him, waving at the stair-hutch. "If the Falcon smiles, no Tesmer will even see you."

"Nor any of their guards," Juskra added.

Iskarra put her hands on her hips, disbelief large on her face. "You want their riches," she said almost primly, "and daren't risk your own precious necks going down in there to steal it. So the traps are? And the guards?"

"There are none," Juskra said flatly. "Nor do we need their riches; we wingbitches have always had more than enough coin to buy the best spies. Which is why we know there are spells waiting all down that stair that will cry out when Aumrarr-or lorn, for that matter-come too close. Hence your present usefulness."

"Tesmers shorn of their ready wealth," Dauntra added calmly, "are Tesmers looking over their shoulders for thieves, or assassins following where the thieves came in knowing so much. They are also Tesmers now lacking coin enough to work certain mischiefs better not promoted. Whereas Garfist and Iskarra enriched are… Garfist and Iskarra enriched."

Garfist shook his head. "Were either of ye priests, in younger days?" he asked sourly, finding his feet unsteadily and not shaking off the swift assistance of his lady. "Such verbiage!"

"I can be blunter," Juskra said with the faintest of smiles, her voice dry. "Both of you are thirsting hard to be free of us and everyone else who's been chasing you and forcing you to do this and that. You want food, rest, and riches."

Garfist and Iskarra both nodded.

Juskra held up her hand to show them her ring again; the glow had quite fled from it. She drew it off and put it carefully into Garfist's hand. "You awaken it by thinking of a vivid sunrise. It should work twoscore times more. It belonged to an Aumrarr who's now too dead to feel the lack of it. I give it to you freely."

He glared down at it, then lifted his glare to her. "So just what're ye playing at, hey?"

"If you do this thieving for us," she replied, "and come back up these stairs, we'll fly you safe out of here. To a ruin-an Aumrarr wingbitch ruin no others dare approach, though none of us are left to guard it now-where we can all rest. Then come the next day, aloft again and on to an inn in Galath we know, where you can have all the food and drink you want, and no one will ask who you are or who you may be running from. Safe we'll take you, just as I've promised; no treachery and no lies."

Dauntra nodded, and the battlescarred Aumrarr spoke again.

"We'll swear this by any bindings you desire; we want to know you as friends, henceforth."

"Because ye'll be needing us again, in time to come," Gar growled.

Juskra did smile, this time. Sweetly. "Of course."

The mountain shuddered again, a deep, teeth-jarring rumbling that was loud and long. As its din deepened, rocks as large as human heads came crashing down in a hard rain from above, amid the usual dust and grit.

None of Narmarkoun's undead shrieked or cried out. Without the Master to empower them to do otherwise, they remained mute.

Yet their agitation was clear to each other by the ways they stiffened and hastened to vantage points in the great open interior of Closecandle, to peer in all directions to try to see what was happening.

Solid stone rocked beneath them, under heavy blows. In the great central well-shaft where Narmarkoun was wont to ride his greatfangs up into the chill mountain sky or come plunging down out of it to thunderous landings, a jutting balcony cracked off the wall and fell. One of the Master's favorite playpretties clung silently to its sheared-off fragment of railing, staring all around in wild despair, as she plunged to shattering oblivion below.

Another balcony cracked and crumbled away, spewing smaller stones down the shaft. Then, quite suddenly, there was no room for more stone to fall down that great opening, as huge scaled bodies burst into view from below, thrusting upwards wedged together and struggling, each one furious to get to the light first. Huge claws raked the ancient stone walls as if they were made of butter, and wings strained to find space enough to unfurl.

The eldest and strongest of the greatfangs suddenly prevailed, clawing its way up the surging body of the rival it was wedged against. Kicking off from its rival's head, it took wing in a great bound up the shaft.

Wings clapped wind in their wake, a blast of air that made a great roaring bellow of exultation ring deafeningly around the shuddering shaft as the greatfangs tasted freedom, climbing fast into the sky.

The second greatfangs raced up the shaft after it, and then the third, as Narmarkoun's undead watched.

Not knowing what to do, with the Master absent and sending no commands, they stood mute and helpless, doing nothing more than staring, as every last greatfang soared up out of Closecandle and flew away.

All in the same direction, long necks stretched out in raging haste.