Arch Wizard

Chapter Two

Nothing but dust and grit. Rod rubbed a pinch of it between his finger and thumb, sighed, and let the rising breeze slowly take the rest out of his hand.

Damn. When his hand was empty, he drew the gauntlet back on, anger flaring again. He was useless. As bumbling and fumbling as always… Shaking his head, Rod turned and looked all around.

Trackless forest, in every direction. He looked down carefully at the ground, seeking markings or anything special that would help him find this exact spot again, or show him some evidence that magic had in the past brought more people here than just him.

Nothing. A muck of dead leaves and loose forest loam everywhere, small tree-roots wandering through it all, muddy here and over there… it was the same as everywhere else underfoot that he could see.

Face it, Rod, you're lost.

As bloody usual.

Lost in the heart of some forest he'd never seen before, a real forest. Deep and dark, stretching away in gently-rolling hills that he could barely see through all the trees, as gloomy as Hades in all directions. No proper clearings, the sky above a bright milky overcast so he couldn't even try to tell east from west… oh, he was lost, all right.

No roads, no trace of woodcutters' axes… this forest was old. And by the looks of things, he was highly likely to become "forest prey" for something, once it got dark.

Rod stepped a few paces away from the spot where he'd appeared and looked back at it. No, nothing special. No kindling magic or little glows or… or anything.

Rod sighed. So, Robinson Crusoe, how to keep from walking in circles and getting scurvy?

The trees looked very much the same in all directions. He wished them a naughty word, declaiming it slowly and pleasantly, as he tried hard to think of something, and… chanced upon a thought.

Rivers flow downhill, and eventually to lakes, perhaps the sea, and if he was very lucky, a port or fishing village or something of the sort. And if he was always following a stream, he might zig and zag a lot, but he could hardly walk in circles.

Of course, all the dangerous beasties came to streams to drink, didn't they?

Huh. Dangerous beasties including him.

Not that he could think of anything better to do, even though he stood and tried for a good long time.

So eventually Rod Everlar shrugged, squared his shoulders, peered at the nearest tiny trickle of water under the trees, strode to it, and started following its flow.

He looked back several times, at first trying to keep in his mind what the spot he'd appeared at looked like, in case he needed to find it again. He doubted he could, though, once he'd walked two dozen steps or so.

Then he looked back for another reason: to see if anything was creeping after him.

Always he saw the same thing. Nothing but trees, endless trees.

He'd already descended a surprising amount, though. When he'd been looking down from where he'd first stood in the forest, the land hadn't seemed to slope so much, but… well, it did.

He trudged on.

Sigh. This tramping along in the muck was going to get wearingly old very soon. Not that he need feel lonely. After all, he had such company in his walk: bumbling fantasy writer, great conquering hero, Lord Archwizard, and Dark Lord of all Falconfar. Quite a crowd.

Rod Everlar muttered his favorite naughty word again, and kept on walking.

The tongue ardently thrusting into his mouth was cold, so cold. Narmarkoun felt lust stirring in him again as satin-smooth limbs of his own creation tightened around him, breasts brushed against his, the undead woman kissing him started to moan with need…

Well, of course. She needed his life. She longed and hungered for his warmth and vitality more than anything else in all the world. Already her thighs were locked around his, and one of her icy hands was fumbling for his loins…

Enough. He could indulge himself with scores of his servitors, whenever he wanted to; he had another purpose for this one. Reaching around behind her to capture her far elbow, Narmarkoun tugged firmly, twisting her about and away from being pressed against him, tearing their joined mouths apart.

All he needed was a brief moment. His freed mouth murmured the spell. Then he embraced her even more fiercely, pressing against her hard as the flesh he'd conjured over her bones started to flow and creep.

It was an eerie, eerie feeling. One he never tired of…

All too soon, it was done, and he gently disengaged and stepped back from her. Or rather, "her" no longer.

His refleshed servitor was now an exact duplicate of himself. Tall, bald, and scaled, the skin blue rather than putrifying gray, his own coldly calm eyes gazing back at him. Just a few more spells to augment the decaying mind inside, to transform the undead woman who'd been embracing him into a false Narmarkoun who walked and talked like the real one.

He smiled. Whoever that was.

The stream wound on and on, snaking this way and that amid the trees. All around him, the forest was deep, green, and beautiful. In other circumstances, Rod Everlar would have been happy to enjoy the gnarled forest giants soaring all around him, the splashes of dappled light here and there in the rare spots where treefalls had opened gaps in the otherwise unbroken leaves overhead.

Could this be the Raurklor? Oldest and largest of the forests of Falconfar, he'd imagined it so long ago, now, that he could only just remember staring at the large expanse of blank white paper beyond Sardray, and deciding it should be a great woodland, larger than any kingdom…

Or had it been here all along, as the great mossy girths of these trees suggested, and he'd only dreamed of something already there? Something that had somehow-Lorontar's magic? — reached out to him, to whisper in his dreams?

Rod sighed.

Whatever, however… what did it matter?

He was lost, and if this was the Raurklor, he'd soon be hunted. Perhaps he was being hunted right now, by something padding along in velvet silence, unseen but watching him. Stalking patiently, and awaiting nightfall to pounce.

The tiny trickle had become a creek some time ago, and was now a stream. He'd instinctively edged a little farther away from its banks, lest it get deep enough to hide something with tentacles that could lunge out at him-

Angrily he banished a mental picture of dozens of little fanged mouths, all on the end of snake-like tentacles, thrusting at him in a hungry cloud…

Damn it! To think of something here might be to make it real!

He had to-had to get out of here, and get to Taeauna!

Who was somewhere else in Falconfar, that stretched away in identical green, tree-choked gloom all around him. A world as vast as the real one. A world it seemed he could alter by writing about it.

Pity he didn't have pen, pencil, or paper, only all these pouches full of gewgaws he didn't know how to use.

Thinking of which…

Rod peered down at himself a little ruefully. It wasn't all that heroic a sight. He looked, well, moth-eaten.

His once grandly-sinister armor was now nothing but a web of half-melted patches of metal, shaped something like the black markings on a black-and-white cow, and he could find nothing that seemed magical about his heavy war-gauntlets.

He'd snatched up a lot of stuff from Ult Tower, though, and not all of it had fallen or melted away with his armor.

He wore baldrics slung over both shoulders, to cross on his chest. Sheathed along them were a few daggers and something that looked like a hooked metal claw with a whip attached to it, plus some tools.

Then there were the belts. Three of them, one bearing only a water-skin and an empty scabbard. Sheathed on the second was a sword of some sort, whose pommel glowed from time to time all by itself. The third belt, now sagging low on his hips, was the one he'd threaded six pouches of various sizes onto.

There were four little thong-drawstring soft leather bags full of what had been glowing, sparkling dust, in the end pouch. The next one along held a fine neckchain-almost certainly jewelry that had no magic at all to it-that he'd hastily clasped through seven finger-rings while racing through Ult Tower. At least five of those rings had been glowing various hues, at the time he'd snatched them from the hands of sculpted Ult Tower figures. Finely sculpted, life-sized bare women, they'd been, their faces carved in the same vacant, disinterested pouts he saw on fashion models strutting down runways in the real world. On television, of course, not in person; Rod Everlar's "real world" wasn't quite that glamorously unreal.

The third pouch was the largest, and it was stuffed full of a chain about a dozen feet long that ended in two ornate bars with runelike symbols graven all over them. He thought he'd seen a similar chain, earlier and somewhere else in Ult Tower, standing stiffly out from a wall like a flagstaff, with garments hanging from it. So perhaps this one could be made to go rigid and defy gravity, too.

The fourth pouch… oh, hell, he couldn't even keep them straight in his mind. Time to find a high spot in the forest, so he could see if anything came creeping up on him-he hoped-and stop for a rest, to go through all this stuff.

He peered around.

Ah. There. The stream curving right around it on three sides, so I can't get lost and I'm safe. Unless there's something in that monster tree right in the middle of it.

He tried to peer up through leafy boughs-and shrugged. There could be an army of Dark Helms up there, perched on every branch, and he'd not know until they started pelting him with things. Drawn daggers, for instance.

He winced, clambered up to the high spot, and sat down, instantly creating a tangle of scabbards, sheaths, and loops of leather belt all around himself.

"Hail, conquering hero," he muttered. "Who'll trip over his own underwear next, to the wild applause of the crowd." Now, what was all this stuff?

Well, he rapidly discovered, none of it was labeled. Or particularly obvious.

There was certainly something magical about the sword-it glowed, it made no sound even when he clinked it against some of the tools, and it was far too light to be as hard and, well, made of metal, as it was-but he was darned if he could figure out anything on or about it that could unleash jets of flame, or anything else useful.

One of the daggers bore magic, too. If drawn and waved about and then released, it refused to fall to the ground, but hung motionless in the air, right where he'd let go of it, until he grasped it again.

On an impulse he hung a pouch on it, and it served as a rock-solid peg-stuck into nothing-but try as Rod might, he couldn't get it to do anything else. Maybe it didn't do anything else.

Likewise the powders in the little bags, and the rings. He could make four of the rings glow and tingle just by putting them on, but tapping and rubbing them did nothing, and none of them-unlike in his books-had helpful little words engraved on their inside curves, that could be read aloud to unleash their powers. He didn't leave any of them on his fingers.

The big rune-chain proved to be the one bright spot. It did have words graven on those morningstar-like spike-studded bars at both ends, and when you said one of them aloud, the chain snapped out to a rigid spear-like length that could take all his weight, even jumping and kicking at it-without bending. The other word made it collapse back into a clinking heap of chain again.

Pouch ye fourthe was the one he'd stuffed full of coins. They all looked a bit odd-weird shapes rather than round, for one thing-and certainly didn't bear the names or kingly faces of anything he'd ever written about, but only one of them had an inscription he could read: "Sarbrik."

When Rod said that aloud, the coin started to glow, and got so hot that he had to drop it or sear his fingers. It set the wet leaves underfoot to smoldering, until he hastily scuffed it all out with his boot and kicked the coin onto a rock. By the time he'd been through the last two pouches, it had lost its glow and its heat again.

So he had a firestarter. If he dared carry it.

He decided he did, and put it all alone in pouch five.

Whatever he'd put in that pouch-he had a vague memory of a cluster of gruesome-looking eyeballs, enclosed in a gold-encaged spherical glass or rock crystal egg; eyes that turned and focused on him as he'd stretched out his hand to pluck up the egg-had vanished, all by itself, right through the closed fastenings, leaving behind only a spicy smell.

The sixth and last pouch held two metal bracers-nicely-shaped metal armbands-that ought to be magical, but had no powers that he could awaken. Rod donned them anyway, spent some time shifting things around and tightening belts so he didn't feel in quite such a hopeless tangle, stood up, looked around at the endless trees, and sighed.

So whether or not he'd created Falconfar by writing books about it, or he'd just somehow dreamed about a world that had been there all along, here he was, lost somewhere in it.

Lost and helpless… and increasingly angry.

Nor was he the only one who could change it. He'd foolishly sold it to Holdoncorp, and their busy, bright-eyed computer designers-he always pictured fat, pale young men in food-spattered T-shirts, feet up on pizza-box-littered desks with keyboards in their laps, sneering at him through thick glasses as they rubbed self-consciously at tangled, pitiful attempts to grow beards-had given Falconfar Dark Helms and a lot more sinister wizards and super-powerful lorn and-and dragons, damn it, and-

— and none of this brooding was getting him one step closer to rescuing Taeauna. To finding her first, damn it.

Snatched from him by the wizard Malraun, younger and probably more dangerous than Arlaghaun.

So not only would he have to master all these baubles he was carrying, he'd need several hundred more. And the gods' own luck.

Whatever gods there were right now in Falconfar.

"Cue heavy sigh," Rod told the trees around him, as he tramped along-and then stopped, very suddenly.

Had that been a rustling, off to his right?

He peered and listened. Nothing.

After long moments of straining to hear something, he sighed heavily and strode on.

"SO," Narmarkoun asked himself, raising an eyebrow in challenge, "just why is the Raurklor hold of Ironthorn likely to become the most important battleground in all Falconfar, very soon now?"

"If true," his newly-fashioned false self replied, "that's a mystery to me. I'm sure all Galath would assume their kingdom is the most important land in Falconfar in any circumstances, just as the Stormar cities are sneeringly certain all Falconfar trembles before them."

"Indeed," Narmarkoun agreed. "So I'd better tell you."

"Why?"

Narmarkoun blinked. Well, now. The wench's undead mind had a little more sharp steel in it than he'd hitherto suspected. He could hardly tell the blunt truth-so you can yield this lore as a lure to Lorontar or anyone else powerful enough to destroy you, to bring them to Ironthorn and within reach of the traps I've prepared-so tactics would have to suffice.

"Because it's something I know, that's of importance right now, and it should inform your thinking."

A notion dangerous to the rest of his false selves, yet this one could obviously handle it. And all too much more. He'd best cast a few goading spells at the knights in Chainamund, to make them assault Sornspire again, the moment this one was installed there.

Or she just might seek alliances with them, to build herself into a challenge to the real Narmarkoun.

She was wearing a little smile right now that he liked no part of. Sun, stars, and Aumrarr, why was everything so complicated?

"Very well," she asked, "tell me: why is Ironthorn so important? As opposed to any other Raurklor hold, or Galathan castle, or waves wept isle in the Sea of Storms?"

Narmarkoun nodded approvingly. "There are places of magical power in Falconfar. Places that can renew waning magics on swords and wands and the like, or erupt in lightnings and other magical furies if the wrong magic is cast nigh them, or that can awaken magical powers in certain creatures who may not even be aware they possess them."

"Your oh-so-casual tone tells me it's the latter ability of the place that interests you now. So some magical innocents are going to awaken there? Perhaps shifting balances among the Dooms?"

Narmarkoun smiled. "The balances are shattered already."

"Lorontar."

It was not a question. Briefly Narmarkoun considered calling forth all the slumbering magics in his cold castle around them, and utterly destroying this false semblance of himself.

He decided against it. There was danger here, but not failure, yet. A powerful Narmarkoun would last longer against Galath, and do more harm to Lorontar when he at last reached out to slay. If the old Archwizard instead chose to mind-conquer and subvert, Narmarkoun's little trap would be waiting for him, and the harm would be inescapable.

"Indeed," he said again. "Some of those innocents may become Shapers, and thus players in their own right, or-"

"Or the most powerful weapons any Doom could hope to wield against another," his double interrupted.

Narmarkoun made himself nod and smile. "You see it all. Why Ironthorn is so important to the Dooms, and therefore why the strife that matters will soon erupt there."

"Do you know who these innocents are?"

"If I did, would I be just standing here, talking to you?"

"So how-"

Narmarkoun decided it was more than his turn to interrupt. "Aumrarr legends and certain writings of Stormar seers-the sort who had dream-visions, of old, and wrote them down-tell us there are all manner of these innocents. Falconaar-beasts as well as humans, but for the most part they will be human-who are ignorant of their magical powers but who, if ever awakened, may far outstrip any trained wizard in the hurling of magic. Beings who can feel the flows and webs of magical force, and wield them through sheer instinct, not painstaking experimentation and following the written spell-processes of others."

"And Ironthorn is one of the places they can easily awaken to mastery of magic, all by themselves."

"It is. Rod Everlar was one innocent. The Dooms all seek to learn who the others are, so we can destroy them before they ever reach Ironthorn. Yet there is a restlessness in Ironthorn right now, that warns me one of them may have wandered there already."

"So why are you sending me to Galath and not Ironthorn?"

Narmarkoun eyed his false self thoughtfully, and calmly enunciated the largest lie he'd uttered in a long time. "Because the magics I used to lend your mind some of my power, so you can cast spells, would burst apart in Ironthorn-rending your wits utterly."

"And you know this how?"

"I've tried it before."

Well, after all, one lie often needs to stand on another.

The deepening golden hue of the sunlight told Rod Everlar the day was drawing on.

The sunlight he could see very clearly, ahead, where it came stabbing down through the endless green gloom in a great shaft, to illuminate the first real clearing he'd seen in this great forest.

The stream beside his boots zigged this way and then that, only to plunge right through that clearing; he could see it sparkling in the sunlight. He could also see something moving, up there. No, two somethings.

They were too far away to identify clearly, yet. Two creatures that could fly or at least hop and flutter wings, they looked to be. Creatures that stood upright on two legs when they were on the ground. They were fighting each other, or courting, or-well, facing each other and moving quickly, in some sort of excitement, anyway.

Rod started to run, ignoring the meanderings of the stream for the first time. It was too large to lose now, perhaps a dozen feet wide and knee-deep or more in places. If he ran up its bank, heading for the light, he would have to cross only a few strides of uneven, tree-choked forest before he'd be slithering down its banks again, as its winding brought it back across his path. Clamber along around its curve, then up over the next hump of land, and-

A scream rang out, of rage and pain more than fear. From the clearing, of course. It sounded like a woman.

Rod blinked, dodged around a tree, kicked his way through a rather nasty thornbush-there hadn't been all that many bushes of any sort, in the gloom beneath all these soaring trees, but trust him to find one and blunder right through it-and hastened on.

It hadn't sounded like Taeauna. No, this was someone with a deeper, rougher voice, someone-

Someone who was just a fatal moment too slow with her sword. As Rod came charging up over what proved to be a narrow ridge of land, tripped over a tree-root, and slithered headlong in wet, rotting leaves toward a face-first meeting with the chuckling stream, he saw it all.

The largest lorn he'd ever seen, twice the height of a taller man than Rod Everlar, its barbed tail slashing around to catch the sword of its foe and pluck her off-balance, so she leaned helplessly forward into the reach of its long, thickly-muscled arms. Talons that stabbed into her breast and tightened viciously, forcing out a sob and coughed blood.

That foe was an Aumrarr in dark, well-worn leather armor, her wings slashed and tattered, her face utterly unfamiliar to Rod. He had time to see little more before the lorn pulled the Aumrarr close-and tore out her throat.

Blood fountained, drenching that horned and mouthless skull-face, and the Aumrarr's head flopped over, to dangle at an impossible angle.

Though it had no mouth, the lorn looked like it was chewing.

Then it swallowed.

And then it leaned forward to gnaw her face away.

As Rod Everlar, spewing forth the contents of his heaving stomach, scrambled up from the stream-edge mud and sprinted along the water's edge, around its last curve before the clearing, so he could charge up one more forest slope, crash through more trees, yelling out incoherent fury, and burst out into the bright sunlight to confront it.

The Aumrarr was very dead. There was blood everywhere, and the reek of death was strong.

For the first time Rod realized just how much danger he might be in-and something else, too: he hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to do now.

The lorn lifted its head from the bloody ruin of the Aumrarr's face, and regarded him expressionlessly. Without a mouth, its face a gray skull-like mask, it couldn't do much else, yet somehow Rod felt that it was sneering at him.

This close, he could see how the lorn had been able to bite out an Aumrarr throat without a mouth, then devour her face: a lamprey-like, chewing throat tube drew back out of view, under its jaw. Revealing two saw-edged, curving horns-like giant beetle pincers-that were just emerging from under that same jaw.

Horns that thrust forward again, spreading wide, as the lorn took a step closer to Rod, casually throwing the limp corpse of the Aumrarr over one of its arms. And then another step.

Oh, shit.