Arch Wizard

Chapter Thirty-One

Amteira drifted for a long time in dreams laced with the ever-present gentle rustle and earthy smells of the Raurklor. They were cold dreams, full of shivering, and frantic dreams, too, often bursting into desperate running. Barefoot, through the woods, sometimes as a doe, betimes human, and from time to time as stranger things… but always female, always bare-skinned, and always fearful.

Abruptly she came awake, huddled on her side on a bed of blackened stone shards. Lifting her head, she found it to be part of the great boulder she'd prayed on. The rest of it, riven into chunks great and small, lay all around her. She was cold.

Yet even as she stood, shivering, she cared nothing for that discomfort. The Raurklor was all around her, vast and wonderful, and she stared at it in awe, seeing it keenly for the first time.

Many, many smells cradled her and nigh overwhelmed her. The normal smells of a forest, it seemed, but she'd never before really noticed them all. Always, before, one scent-the smoke of a fire, or the sharp tang of bruised piney needles, the rotting-leaf mud of the rain-drenched Raurklor or the simmering growing smell of a hot forest day-had dashed aside all others and been all she really recognized. Now, though…

Abruptly Amteira became aware that her bare skin was now adorned with many patches of moss, and they felt a part of her, not something distasteful she should claw off as swiftly as she could.

More than that; she could feel the air around her through them. Feel it moving far more sensitively than before, every eddy and gust, subtle shifts in warmth and moments of chill.

She stood up, and abruptly knew something else. Turning her head, she nodded, certain of it. There was running water over there, though she couldn't see it-and yonder, too, though much farther off.

She felt part of the woods, now, rather than an intruder in the endless green vastnesses.

What had happened to her? This moss, her smelling and feeling… could this be the Forestmother, answering her prayer?

Amteira, will you serve me, or die?

The great, boomingly-soft voice in her head seemed as dark, tall, and terrible of power as a Stormar wave, about to crash over her and carry her away.

"F-forestmother?" she blurted out, more than a little afraid.

I am more than that, and less, but you may call me that.

"Call you-? Uh, I… I will serve you. If you'll have me."

Good. Welcome. Your first service will be to slay the traitor Cauldreth Jaklar for me. I demand his blood.

Relief flooded through her. "I'll slay him right gladly. Where is he?"

Gone back to Ironthorn. Having called on me to slay you with the wolves of the forest.

"The wolves?"

Abruptly a smoky-gray shadow loomed up over the scattered shards of the rock to regard her with blood-red, unblinking eyes. Its fangs were long, sharp, and many. There was a second shadow, moving sleekly behind it, and a third.

The wolves you shall lead into Hammerhold to rend Jaklar-and bid Hammerhold farewell. Ironthorn is your world no longer. You belong to me now.

Amteira Hammerhand drew in a deep, shuddering breath, bade her dead father a silent farewell, and replied, "Y-yes. Yes, I do. Command me."

Hunt now, and hunt well. Slay for Burrim Hammerhand-and for yourself.

Before Amteira could reply, the snout of a wolf was nuzzling her, its tongue rasping on her hand and thigh.

She looked down into its eyes, and smiled.

They smiled back, turning-just for an instant-leaf-green before they faded again to blood-red. She turned, naked and weaponless, and started running through the forest, heading for where she thought Ironthorn was.

The wolves howled once, eerily, then ran with her, one of them edging ahead to turn her firmly.

She followed, then as a test turned back in the direction she'd first headed, still running hard. All the wolves pressed close in around her, bounding along to nudge her with their noses and flanks, all of them working to turn her this time.

She ran where they led her, barehanded and bareskinned, hunger for the blood of Cauldreth Jaklor growing in her again.

For some reason, she felt very happy.

Rusty Carroll was gasping for breath. When had so many God damned steps been added, between the gleaming glass ground floor of Holdoncorp headquarters and Rear Second, where the Security Office was?

It sure as blazes hadn't felt like this many the last time he'd run up them.

Huh, and when exactly had that been?

Long ago, was all he could recall just now, with a freaking sword in his hand, twenty-some frightened secretaries and managers hurrying up the stairs at his heels-and six lunatic murderers on the loose in the building!

Dark Helms, mind you, who'd come striding in here with a lorn flying backup for them!

He didn't know what he'd do about them, but he did know he had to get back to the office before they went up the stairs-or, bejesus, took the elevators! — and got there first.

To where they could watch every corner of the building, turn off the lights and heat and air in any zone with the flick of switch and a spin of a dial-and lock or unlock any doors they pleased, too.

And Pete Sollars would be sitting there with his coffee cold and forgotten in his hand, staring at the forest of monitors and flickering alarm telltales and doing effing nothing. Except maybe shifting from camera to camera to watch them better, as they came to kill him.

Sollars was a nice guy, but he'd never had a swift and original thought in his life. Thinking on his feet was something he just didn't do. He was the other sort of security guy; the stolid, too dull-to-get-bored watcher at his post.

Rusty topped the last step-at last! — stabbed his fingers at the codepad, and flung the heavy metal door open. "Pete! Where are they?"

Sollars swung around in the high-backed swivel chair-the Chief's chair, Rusty's chair-and stared at his boss, looking guilty. "Uh, I-ah-No!"

Rusty saw where Pete's stare was aimed, and flung himself at the floor and toward whatever Sollars was staring at.

Which meant the head of the fire axe came crashing down not through Rusty's skull, but over his diving body-to chip the concrete floor, right through the No-Slip tread coating. Secretaries screamed, and Hank staggered back, face going pale.

"M-mister Carroll?"

"I'm fine. No harm done, Hank!"

Rusty didn't have time for all the apologies; he was up on his feet and running to the monitors, sword in hand. He used it to point to the corridor running west. "Pete, take Hank and get all these ladies into Brain Central! Lockdown drill! Lockdown drill!"

Brain Central was the vault-like computer room not far behind him and one office to the west. It had walls like a battleship, a secure air supply, and its own power generator. It was a safe bet none of those oh-so-haughty managers had ever used such a primitive chemical toilet before, but… it beat having their throats sliced open or a sword thrust through their lovely midriffs, that was for sure.

Sollars was staring at him. "Lockdown? Brain Central?"

"Yes!" Randy roared into Pete's face. "Move!"

A frightened hubbub was rising, behind him-and amid it he could hear the President's unmistakable spluttering. Hank, at least, must be following Lockdown procedures as fast as he could.

He turned, seeing the tall custodian shooing well-dressed women ahead of him like a farmer herding chickens. "Hank?" he called. "Leave me the axe. Get another from the station inside there."

Hank turned his head and nodded, grinning apologetically. He leaned the axe carefully against the wall, then started moving toward the west corridor, spreading his arms wide and murmuring, "Let's go, people. Let's go."

He was sweeping the women-and a few bewildered-looking men in shirtsleeves and bedraggled ties, too, the angrily bewildered President of Holdoncorp among them, his golf putter still clutched in his hands-before him. Good. The fewer people screaming and rushing around to where they could be sliced open or taken as hostages, the better.

Where were those Dark Helms? By the looks of things, Sollars had been enjoying watching Holdoncorp vice presidents get chopped apart-and Rusty couldn't find it in himself to blame him for that-but had been so intent on watching tall, handsome, blustering Executive Vice President Jackman Quillroque plead for his life and loudly try to call various Holdoncorp designers to their dooms via the intercom from desk after desk, that he hadn't kept close watch over the grim Dark Helms to make sure all six of them were still together.

They weren't.

Rusty dialled most of the long row of doors shut before he even started checking monitors. Lock them in little boxes first and foremost, then worry about what to do to them.

Four of them were bullying Quillroque, slicing away clothing as the man blubbered and pleaded. Jack the Mouth was bleeding from somewhere, but Rusty didn't think he was missing any fingers or ears yet.

The other two…

He caught sight of one of them almost immediately, skulking along a corridor that would take him right to the stairs up. Up to this floor, of course.

All that was delaying him was the time it was taking to peer into every cubicle, to make sure no Holdoncorp employee still lived, cowering in hiding. Sword drawn, helmed head thrust forward, the Dark Helm was the very picture of confident menace.

Damn. Rusty looked wildly around, at monitor after monitor. He couldn't see the last of the six at all.

Had Mase or Sam or one of their men actually managed to take out one of the intruders, before getting killed?

Rusty doubted it. "All in," Hank called from behind him, and Rusty heard the heavy Brain Central door clank shut before he could even reply.

He looked around. "Pete?"

"Y-yessir?"

Rusty pointed at the monitors. "Find me the sixth one. Fast."

Two strides took him to the phone, and he found himself ridiculously relieved to hear a dial tone when he slammed it against his ear.

There was no way these Dark Helms could get to the underground fiber optic bundle, to cut it, but he'd been beginning to fear they could do bloody anything.

He pushed the panic button, that got him straight to the police.

"Yo, Rusty! What's up?" The sergeant's voice sounded bored. "Someone steal your corporate headquarters while everyone was on coffee break?"

Rusty sighed. "Derek, this is serious. We're under attack. We have dozens dead. Repeat: dozens of fatalities. Six-"

"Under attack by what? A friggin' army?"

"Uh-" Rusty caught himself on the verge of saying "hijackers." How do you "hijack" a computer company? An office building?

Right. Terrorists, then.

"Terrorists, six of them, and-"

Rusty paused again, deciding he wouldn't mention the lorn just now. The disbelief was strong and clear in the sergeant's voice; this wasn't the time to give the man any stronger ideas of introducing overworked security chiefs to looney bins.

"Like World War Two commandos," he said instead. "Only with swords."

"Oh, ninjas. Why didn't you just say so? Ninjas. Right."

"I'm serious, damn it!" Rusty found he was gripping the phone in both hands as though trying to strangle it. "Mase is dead, Sam's dead, most or all of their men are dead too, and-"

The line went dead at the same time as the lights flickered, sparks burst from a nearby wall-panel as its door banged open, and Sollars quavered, his voice rising almost into a scream, "S-sir? Mister Carroll, sir? I've found the last one!"

Rusty looked up from the security desk to see two spark-spewing ends of a power lead swinging back and forth. The Dark Helm who'd just severed that cable turned from them, shuddering only a little, to stalk slowly across the room toward Rusty, sword raised and ready.

For the first time in nineteen years at Holdoncorp, its Head of Security reached for a holster that held only a billyclub flashlight, and cursed the company's "No handguns outside of our computer screens" policy.

Lord Irrance Tesmer came awake slowly. He was vaguely aware of a chill-the bedclothes were gone, leaving him bared to the night air-and knew with more pressing certainty that his head hurt.

Clara had snarled something in the night and stormed out of bed-she had, hadn't she? — and…

"Clara?" he mumbled, rolling over. No warm spot, and no heap of covers. His wife was gone.

He got himself hastily upright in bed, rubbing his eyes and trying to quell the prompt, severe blossoming of the ache in his head. "Clara?"

"I'm here, Ranee." Her voice was coming from the doorway, and it was sharp with anger.

Lord Tesmer came hastily all the way awake. Something had happened. Something that mattered. Something bad.

"What?" he blurted, looking wildly around for his sword while trying to keep an eye on his wife's face.

She was quivering like a hunting-hound straining to be let off the leash. Barefoot, in a dark gown, black hair loose around her shoulders in a flood, eyes two coals beneath scowling brows as they glared at him. She was furious, all right.

"What's happened?"

Lady Telclara Tesmer folded her arms across her chest. "Our gems are gone. All three coffers. The sack of coins, too. No alarm raised in the night, and the guards swear no one even approached the gates."

Tesmer blinked at his wife. "All the gems? Not the-the tunnel! They must have taken the tunnel!"

She nodded grimly. "Which means the thief is one of us-or one or more of the children. My crossthreads haven't been disturbed."

"Clara, I swear I didn't-"

His clumsy protest stumbled into silence under the slicing edge of her look of scorn. "I'm aware of that, dolt. I sleep with you, remember?"

Irrance winced. "What about the vaults?"

She lifted one shapely shoulder in a shrug. "Undisturbed. The guardian snake still asleep, the sprinkled line I left there unmarked. No one's been in there. So, yes, Ranee, we still have coins to our name." She took a long, slow step forward. "That's not the point."

Lord Tesmer winced. "Which of our children has betrayed us?"

She smiled, a tight grimace that held not the slightest trace of amusement. "All of them, and often. Neither the servants nor our warcaptains can be certain where any of them are just now, but last reports-"

He nodded wearily. His wife's spies were nothing if not energetic.

"— have Ghorsyn and Ellark still off hunting, some days away; Kalathgar still in that Stormar port busily buying and selling dockside hovels with our coins to make a fortune he can hide before he comes back to tell us how poorly coins fare in Stormar these days; Delmark and Feldrar stealing everything from our loyal citizens that isn't nailed down, including the virtue of their daughters-and wives, too-and Maera still spurning every suitor but seeing how much they'll gift her with, before she turns away."

"Delmark and Feldrar a-wenching? I thought it was Belard the women all swooned after!"

"That, husband mine, is the real news. It seems much magic was hurled in the forest last night. In the little dell nigh the Imrush headwaters-or rather, what used to be a little dell. Trees in plenty blazed like a brace of feast-torches, I'm told, and the deer are all fled three hills away or more. The result of a little disagreement between our Belard, and our Nareyera, and our little Talyss, too."

"What? They have that much magic?"

"Irrance, you'd be surprised at what our children have up their sleeves, in their back pouches-and under their codpieces, too. The fire's down to just smoke, now. That's not what matters."

Lady Tesmer took another step forward. "What matters, Ranee, is that Bel and Talyss now trust each other enough to rut together."

Lord Tesmer's jaw dropped. "What? As husband and wife? Coupling?"

His wife sighed. "Yes, coupling, but you persist in missing the point. A night of sheathing the flesh-dagger is neither here nor there, even if they are brother and sister. Ranee, they're working together. Scheming. When all of us thought their seething hatred for each other would keep them from ever even imagining such a thing."

Shaking his head rather dazedly, Irrance Tesmer stumbled out of bed and started to pace. "Bel and Talyss… Talyss and Bel…"

"Oh, dolt of a lord, will you stop trying to picture them together and leering over it! Try not to think with your night-horn for once, and use your brains!"

Lord Tesmer stopped his striding, gave his wife a glare, and barked, "So they're scheming together. What of it? That's all our offspring ever seem to do, aye? You've said it yourself, many a time! Why's this pairing so much a cause for alarm? Hey?"

"Irrance," his wife said gently, "you've heard all the talk-I know you have-that the Master may have sired some of our children, rather than you."

Lord Tesmer stiffened. "You've always told me those rumors were utter lies."

"So I have, though you've never quite believed me. Well, now it's time for you to hear the truth. Two of our children were sired by the wizard Narmarkoun, and may very well have his power to hurl magic. He may even have secretly trained them to become wizards."

Lord Tesmer went white. His voice, when he found it, was almost a whisper. "Their names?"

"Belard. And Talyss."

Rod Everlar found sleep again at last, or thought he did. Were these not dreams, these scenes of him trotting down from a crumbling rampart in an afternoon mist, into a keep full of snarling, snapping dragons? Or no, narrow-snouted and baleful-eyed dragon heads, all at the end of impossibly-long scaled necks, that writhed and undulated and curved through archway after archway, across a vast and empty-echoing, many-shadowed castle interior, all to meet in some one unseen lower chamber…

Abruptly, Rod was somewhere else. Somewhere he'd seen only once, a sneeringly bold black marble and glass brick of a building, set amid the rolling green hillocks and neat sandtraps of a private golf course. The headquarters of Holdoncorp, gleaming and massive.

He was flying toward it, gliding low over the greens and fairways, and something was flying ahead of him. A lorn, alone and flapping along purposefully, as if on a mission.

Rod sheered quickly away, before it could turn its head and see him. He felt suddenly afraid, a deepening terror he could not explain that left him gasping, and thinking of that black building behind him become a huge abyss, a black maw that was sliding through the parting green hills and fairways to follow him… seeking to devour him, jaws widening into a gulf he could never escape if he foolishly looked back…

He dodged, around he knew not what, finding himself in thickening mists again. Then ducked, hearing the clash of swords and seeing a brief glimpse of grinning skeletons rushing down gloomy castle corridors with unsheathed swords in their bony grips. Then dodged again, in a place of thunderous crashes and tall stone castle towers falling ponderously down to earth, deep groaning rumble after deep groaning rumble, each of them ending in a thunderous, bone-shaking crash…

He was lying on a heap of clothes in a dark room in Malragard, and it was falling, too, leaning toward its gardens and the grass-girt slope outside the garden wall… leaning… leaning…

The bone-shaking crash rattled his teeth this time, and flung him up off the clothes an instant before huge stone blocks crashed down on them.

Rod joined the spreading, blinding dust, falling through it almost gently to slam bruisingly down onto the flood of fallen stone blocks.

He was awake now, and coughing hard, fingers of bright morning reaching out around and past him, and Harlhoh spread out below him, its far-off folk shouting in alarm and fleeing through the streets.

The crashing and shuddering went on, long-unseen spells flaring into sudden visibility in the air as the foundations they'd girded so long cracked, and walls and pillars fell. Rod saw gigantic spider legs writhing and curling in agony, and a falling wall flatten a purple-black hulk in a great spray of purple gore and quivering, convulsing tentacles.

Stone blocks tumbled, a wolf-head shook back and forth and bit at the air in helpless pain ere it sagged from view, and then there was nothing moving but the dust.

"So my plan worked," Rod croaked aloud, standing on the still-shuddering stones and clutching at his bruises, "but almost too well. I dreamed of Malragard falling, and…"

Behind him, another wall fell, hurling him into the air just far enough for his legs to go out from under him, and the landing-on his side and behind-to be wincingly bruising.

He groaned aloud, then rolled over, sat up, and tried to peer around through the dust. There wasn't much to see; there wasn't much left of Malraun's tower.

Thoroughly awake now, Rod Everlar wondered how long it would take the wizard to show up.

After all, that was probably just how long a certain fantasy writer had left to live.