Dark Lord

CHAPTER TWELVE

In the darkness of the highest galleries, a lorn perched on carved stone adornments like a statue, watching fellow lorn rend border knights of Galath far below.

Without warning, another lorn struck like an arrow out of the darkness, claws first, wrenching the perched lorn's head around with such swift violence that its neck broke in an echoing instant.

Another two lorn soared up from the gallery below as the dying lorn's body was snatched off its perch by the fatal strike, to take hold of the body and bear it across the throne hall, wings beating within inches of the ceiling, into the other gallery.

The lorn that had done murder did not relinquish its hold, and its razor-sharp claws had nigh-severed the head of its victim by the time it was dragged into the gallery across the hall, still clutching the head.

The head came off by the time the body landed, flopping bloodily down onto bird-dropping-littered stone. The murderer calmly wiped its claws clean on the body, and flew back to the perch where its victim had been. The other two lorn stood wary watch over the body, staring intently for any signs of movement or revival.

Thanks to the violent deaths of the knights and the attention given those passings, none of the men below noticed a thing of what befell above their heads.

'So passes Malraun's spy," Amalrys spat, turning again to her master with those startlingly blue eyes ablaze.

Time for some taming. Again.

Arlaghaun took hold of a fistful of chain and dragged her back against his gray-clad breast, snaring her long blonde hair in his other hand and tugging down, to force her head up and back.

She gasped at the ceiling, arched back and trembling. The chains cut into her softest place, and her neck-manacle half strangled her, but she knew better than to hiss out her pain.

Especially when his thin lips were smiling, and coming down on hers so tenderly.

"Well done, my dearest apprentice," the sharp-nosed wizard murmured. Then, his expression changing not a whit, he cruelly jerked the chain straight up, hard, sawing deep between her legs, heaving her right up off her feet.

When her bare feet returned to the floor, spots of blood dappled it between them, and they came not from where she'd been biting her lips to stifle a shriek. Those blue eyes pleaded with her master.

"Just remember you're my apprentice," Arlaghaun whispered, his eyes like two blazing brown fires. "Mine to show kindness to… and mine to destroy."

"You're falling for her, Arlaghaun," the darkly handsome wizard sneered, sinking back into his grand claw-footed chair with a weary sigh, and wiping the sweat from his face. Listening through ward-spells by means of a deep magic was draining; doing so while linked to two other minds-lorn minds, at that-was utterly exhausting. "And thereby," he added in satisfaction, "building a bridge that will lead to your own doom."

Malraun wiped his face again and lounged back in the chair, swinging his booted feet up, and smiled at the precious vial of the maiden's blood, harvested so daringly and so long ago, anticipating the chance she might become Arlaghaun's apprentice. The fire of his warding-spell raced swiftly around the vial, once, awakening answering glows in the great green tapestries that hung on the walls all around. Nodding in satisfaction, he reached deftly down behind his chair and slipped the vial back into its hiding place under the loose stone.

Only when Amalrys bled monthly, or from a wound, could he awaken his deep spell and "hear," albeit poorly, through her skin. Thanks to Arlaghaun's cruelty, his love of biting and hauling hard on chains in particular, Malraun the Matchless could listen to choice moments of converse fairly often. If fuzzily.

The lorn had been able to hear Arlaghaun speak through his human puppet rather better. Not the lorn he'd left perched so obviously for Arlaghaun to find and destroy, but the two better-hidden ones whose minds he'd been listening through.

The lorn he'd sent to hunt the Aumrarr and her mysterious companion, whom she might well have fetched from some magical otherwhere, and who just might be a minor Shaper, had not returned, and was either dead or in hiding, not daring to return to him. Either way, it had clearly failed.

It was now time for a more direct try, to snatch the man the Aumrarr was guiding, or see him and decide if he was worth no further attention, by using strong magic to burst into Bowrock himself.

Before Arlaghaun did, or all of Galath's sword-swinging armies.

The cold stone room had been dark and deserted for a very long time.

Yet not completely dark, and not completely deserted.

There was the oval of glowing magic on one wall, and there was the dust that lived.

The dust that was swirling together now, on the floor in front of that glimmering oval, to form the eyeless planes and curves of a human face, a face that rose up, as if on a building ocean wave, into the shape of a human head.

Fleetingly, before it collapsed back into drifting dust again, that head seemed to be watching the oval.

As the dust settled, it again moved into the outlines of a face, a visage of dust that rose at the forehead end just a little, this time, to regard the magic of the oval.

The oval in which colored shapes moved and talked, showing the young, sneeringly smiling King Devaer of Galath addressing the nobles of the realm in the gloomy throne hall of Galathgard.

Then the oval flashed, and the scene within it was of a tall, gray-clad, sharp-nosed man roughly dragging a nude, manacled woman to him by means of her chains, her very, very blue eyes staring up at him pleadingly.

It flashed again, to show a darkly handsome man in robes slipping a vial into a recess and replacing a stone atop it, then rising to fetch a wand and start to cast a teleport spell.

Quite suddenly, the face collapsed back into a smooth, moving heap of dust. Dust that flowed purposefully across the floor of the deserted room to swirl around a bright metal warrior's gauntlet lying on the floor. As the dust circled it, moving faster and faster until the faintest of hissings could be heard, motes of light blossomed here and there about the gauntlet, winking and glowing. They multiplied into a flickering, pulsing glow, and then, all at once, vanished.

The dust glided to a stop, lying motionless in a ring, as if exhausted.

Then, very slowly, it started to move again, drifting back across the room. Quickening as it returned to the floor in front of the oval, surging up into a heap as it reached where it had been before, a heap that reshaped itself once more into the watching face.

The oval stopped showing an empty chamber that the robed man with the wand had vanished from, flashed, and then displayed a dark stone passage that Dark Helms were running along, black blades drawn.

The dust settled down to watch.

"What say, Isk? Safe to go back to the Stormar ports yet?" the fat man rumbled. "I miss the sea."

"You miss painted lasses and easy thievery, you mean," the bone-thin woman seated beside him on the wagon said tartly. "And having a dozen-some waterlogged scows to escape on, when things, go bad."

"Can't hide on a wagon," the fat man growled, looking around at endless rolling hills and the few poor farms adorning them. "Can't we sell this one?"

"We'd better, before the man we stole it from catches up to us. Then go north again."

"North? But the sea's south of here!"

"And the lands of the Velduke Deldragon, who hates the lord of where we are right now, are north of here. So angry wagon merchants wanting to catch us. will receive no help at all."

The fat man cast a thoughtful look back along the weathered board roof of the wagon, his gaze lingering on the six arrows embedded there.

"North it is, then," he said, and spat on the aromatic behind of the ox just in front of him.

The ox kept right on plodding, and did not respond.

They'd flown this high before, but this time the air was colder, somehow. The fiercest and most scarred of the four Aumrarr faltered in her flying, turning in her customary position at the fore to hug herself; the others saw that Juskra was shivering.

"Once we've done this," she said, absently stroking her bandages, "and shown ourselves to all Galath, what then? With these wings, sisters, we can't exactly hide!"

Dark-armored Lorlarra nodded. "And I'm in no hurry to lose them as Taeauna did. Think you: a life without wings? Now that would be true doom."

"We'd best be ready to flee fast and far, then, sisters mine," Ambrelle warned, her unbound purple-black hair streaming out behind her. "The wizards vying for rule in Galath haven't shown much mercy to anyone."

Below them, Galath was a carpet of lush greens, adorned with ribbons of silver-blue water and a brown, wandering spiderweb of cart-roads and lanes. The four Aumrarr had decided to fly high over the realm, seeking armies on the move, and had just soared over its border.

"What's that?" Dauntra snapped, pointing, her usually impish brown eyes sharp with concern. "Yonder!"

Something was rising from the high, tree-cloaked ridge of Darragh Forest, well ahead of them, in the heart of the kingdom; something like a storm cloud.

Dark, and menacing, and…

"It's coming in our direction," Ambrelle warned, slowing.

"Lorn!" Lorlarra said suddenly. "Those are lorn-thousands of them! And they're coming for us!"

Juskra slowed, the better to turn an incredulous face on her sister. "They can't be! Lorn can't see that well, to hunt us at this distance!"

"They don't have to see," Dauntra said bitterly, "when a wizard sees for them, and commands them aloft. Sisters, we must flee!"

"Flee?" Juskra spat incredulously. "I will not! I've had enough, and more than enough, of fleeing and hiding whilst sisters are slain here, there, and everywhere, and the slayers face no harm nor even blame! I-"

"Will die alone here, in the air, then," Ambrelle said sadly. "Torn apart by lorn. To stand with you is to throw our lives away needlessly, achieving nothing, and that avenges or brightens the memory of our dead sisters how?"

"You will all turn back?" Juskra cried, rage making her weep. "And fly away, craven? All of you?"

"All of us," Lorlarra replied sadly.

Juskra turned in the air in a whirl of wings. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. I-"

"No, sister," Dauntra said sharply, "you don't want to believe what you're hearing, which is far different. You want to die here, don't you? To go down fighting!"

"I-no! No! No!"

"Yes," Ambrelle said gently, reaching out for Juskra's arm as her sister burst into a flood of tears that robbed her of coherence. "Come, sister."

The cloud of lorn was much nearer, now, stretching broad and dark across the sky.

Dauntra swooped in under Juskra's wings, on the other side from Ambrelle, and took Juskra's other arm. "Come," she added, rolling over on her side to find air enough to beat her wings without getting tangled in Juskra's broad, resisting ones.

"Sisters," Lorlarra said urgently, "we must away. They're coming so fast."

"Juskra," Ambrelle said firmly, "don't throw your life away just yet. Sacrifice yourself only if it's going to at least bring down a Doom, and make things better for Falconfar."

"And if we find such a chance?" Juskra howled, through her tears.

"Then, sister, we'll rush to die with you," the oldest of the four Aumrarr promised grimly, purple-black hair billowing in a sudden side-gust. "None of us live forever, but like everyone who thinks about such things, I want to die knowing my death achieved something."

"And in the meantime," Dauntra said grimly, her words sounding almost foul when set against her young and striking beauty, "I'm going to slay every Dark Helm and every lorn I can catch alone. Every last one."

Off to their right, in the direction the Dark Helms were running to, there were sudden shouts, and the ring and clang of swords meeting shields and armor and other swords rose to a deafening din.

More Dark Helms rushed past. Taeauna turned and whispered fiercely to Rod, "Lord, stay here."

Then she was out into the passage, sliding the panel almost closed behind her, and gone, darting to the left. Rod stepped forward to stand right where she'd been, nose near the narrow gap so he could look out. Taeauna was down at the corner the Dark Helms had been rounding, presumably on their way up from deeper levels of the cellars. Her shoulder was to the wall, she was crouching, and her sword was out and ready.

More Dark Helms burst around the corner; Taeauna gutted the last one with a perfect thrust through the side-seam of his armor plate, where a row of descending buckles under his arm attached the back to the front.

The other Dark Helms whirled in surprise, stumbling over their own haste. Taeauna slashed open the throat of the nearest one while he was still turning; he fell into the one beside him, slamming the man helplessly into the wall. Taeauna carved a new smile across his eyes before he could move, took out his throat on her return slash, and whirled back to face the corner, just in time to meet the next trio of racing Dark Helms.

They saw the sprawled bodies, and stumbled and swayed trying not to trip over them; Taeauna's blade was in the neck of the nearest one before he even saw her. The other two hacked at her, off-balance and wading in ankle-deep dead warriors, and she managed to batter one's blade aside and bury her sword in his face because his visor was still half-up.

The other one sprang over bodies to reach the wall right beside Taeauna, and swung his sword viciously.

She thrust herself against him like a lover, belly to belly, to get inside the reach of his sword, hooking her leg behind his. When he tried to pull back so as to sword her properly, he crashed over backwards and she pounced, stabbing ruthlessly.

Which meant she was down on hands and knees, with her back to the next Dark Helms, as they came rushing around the corner and started falling over bodies and cursing and reeling aside.

Taeauna was turning, but there were four swords reaching for her this time, too many for her to ever hope to turn aside. No! Rod Everlar thrust the panel open and burst out into the passage, the heavy laedlen dragging him wildly off-balance at his first step into a helpless sideways stagger that ended in him tripping on a downed Dark Helm and toppling onto that body, hard and ingloriously.

Yet Dark Helms had turned at his arrival, blades swinging around to him, and that had given the Aumrarr all the chance she needed. Black blades were already clattering to the floor as Taeauna darted here and there like some sort of Olympic fencer trying to out-dance an acrobat, and by the time Rod had heaved himself upright again, two throat-slit Dark Helms were falling dead at his feet.

His stomach heaved, and he promptly emptied it, all over them.

Taeauna reached out a long arm as the last Dark Helm she'd been fighting fell over backwards, throat fountaining, and dragged Rod over now-heaped bodies to stand with her against the wall.

She gave him a disgusted look, wrinkling her nose at the smell of his sickness. "The hidden passage where I told you to stay," she said pointedly, gesturing with a sword dark and dripping with fresh blood, "would have been safer. And less upsetting."

"And if something happened to you?" Rod panted, as the Deldragon battle far down the hall rose to fresh heights of frantic hacking and screaming. "I'd be alone, and doomed, and utterly lost. 'Welcome to Falconfar,' indeed."

Taeauna shrugged. "Yes, lord; welcome to Falconfar. Just the way you wrote about it."

"It is not! I never wrote about Dark Helms! They're Holdoncorp's invention!"

"Well, uninvent them, lord. Write with power!"

Rod flung up his hands in helpless exasperation. Unexpectedly, the Aumrarr gave him a wry smile, grabbed one of those waving hands, and used it to tow him around the corner. "Come. We must find that well."

Before he could reply she suddenly staggered, the air around her glowed and sang, and a metal gauntlet appeared, silently and out of nowhere, on her sword hand. Its appearance gently thrust her bloody blade out of her fingers, to clatter to the stone floor.

Taeauna stared at the massive, gleaming war-gauntlet with just as much gaping astonishment as Rod was. Then she let go of him to use her free hand to try to snatch the heavy thing off without success, despite a few moments of hard-panting struggling. The gauntlet just wouldn't budge.

Rod watched all the color drain out of her face. "Where did it come from?" he couldn't help but ask. "Does it feel magical? What's it for?"

"Yes, it feels magical!" the Aumrarr told him, eyes large and dark in a snow-white face. "As for your other questions: I don't know! I don't know!"

Then boots were pounding toward them, out of the darkness of the far end of the passage.

Rod set down the sacks and drew his sword; Taeauna had just enough time to scoop up her blade before five Dark Helms burst into view, and they were fighting for their lives.

Rod flinched back as a sword struck his own blade so hard that his hand went numb. The Dark Helm pressing him stumbled on the edge of one laedre, and Rod hacked desperately at his head, clumsily and sideways, catching the man's helm and wrenching it around.

The warrior screamed through the metal as his ears and nose were torn, and then a second Dark Helm lunged at Rod over the shoulder of the first one. Rod backed away so swiftly he almost fell, and the second Dark Helm fell over the first as the blinded first warrior blundered sideways into his charge.

Rod sworded the backs of both of their necks as hard as he could, feeling his sword bite in. It came back red and dripping, and his stomach lurched again.

He threw up right in the visor-covered face of another Dark Helm, who staggered back in disgust. Taeauna used the space that gave her to dance away from the wall where she'd been frantically parrying three shoulder-jostling foes, and tossed her sword to her free hand to stab around behind a sword-arm, into its leather-covered armpit. Even as that foe sobbed and dropped his sword, another Dark Helm's blade was darting at her. She slapped it aside with the gauntlet, and at the touch of her gage, the metal of that blade melted away into curling smoke.

The Dark Helm stared at the stub of his weapon in astonishment, but Taeauna never slowed; she drove her gauntleted fist in the other direction, into the ribs of the man she'd just wounded.

His breastplate was suddenly gone-just gone-and Taeauna whistled in amazement and slapped the man across his visored face.

An instant later, he was staring at her in pain and fear, bare-headed. She broke his jaw and struck him senseless with her next blow, and then turned back to the warrior whose blade she'd first melted away. The third of the Dark Helms she'd been fighting had already fled back down the passage.

The swordless Dark Helm was backing away, hauling out his dagger. Taeauna glared at him, but took the time to gingerly put her blade back into her gauntleted hand.

It did not melt away; she sighed in relief and headed after the Dark Helm, who kept on backing away, waving his dagger warningly.

Taeauna broke into a sudden run, to catch her foe, and Rod hastily scooped up the laedren and ran after her.

When she caught the man, it was his turn to desperately parry, the dagger bending under the force of her cut. Rod skidded to a stop beside them and used the momentum of his run to bring the laedren looping around like a huge sap, crashing into the Dark Helm's arm and shoulder and sending him staggering. Taeauna sprang at him, clutching, and his greaves, breastplate, and gorget all melted away before he got his dagger up into her face where her waiting gauntlet caught it. The man's moan of fear ended abruptly when Taeauna's punch crushed his throat and bounced his head off the stone floor with brutal force.

"Come on," she gasped at Rod, "or we'll be standing right here all day and night while they come at us. We've got to get to that well!"

"Do you know where it is?" he asked, as they started running again.

"Certainly," Taeauna replied, and pointed at the floor. "That way."

"Thanks!" he responded sarcastically, as they trotted down the passage into steadily deeper gloom, and found the first descending stone staircase. The first flight was bare and empty, but as they turned at the landing, about a dozen Dark Helms came trotting up the steps toward them.

"Don't let any of them get around behind me," Taeauna panted. "Just swing those laedlen!"

So Rod did, timing his first buffeting blow to catch a lunge headed for the Aumrarr. The warrior was strong; Rod's attack just moved his arm and blade aside a foot or so, but it was enough. Taeauna's sword was like a flickering flame among the black blades, and Dark Helms were reeling, clutching at slit throats, and tumbling back down the stairs, driving down the warriors behind them into a stumbling, fighting-for-balance chaos. Rod waded into that with his swinging sacks, making sure off-balance men fell back onto those below. The Aumrarr punched aside swords, destroying them halfway down to the hilts at a touch.

"There are only two!" someone snarled from several steps down. "Stand and fight! Just charge, and hurl them back, and swarm them! Come on!"

Taeauna waded down the steps in the direction of that voice, punching and slapping, then driving her blade home wherever armor vanished. A voice cursed aloud as its owner turned and fled back down the stairs.

That started a rout; suddenly everyone was running, leaving only the wounded and dying behind on the steps. Ruthlessly Taeauna descended from body to body, turning the former into the latter.

Rod did not want to see that bloody work too closely. He hung back, settling the laedlen properly over his shoulder and gingerly wiping the blade of his sword clean on a body clad in leathers that had been under now-vanished armor, that thankfully had its head turned away.

"Come!" Taeauna called at last. "The well, remember?"

Rod sighed and hastened down the steps to join her, carefully skirting the slumped bodies.

The Aumrarr stared up at him consideringly. "You're fine in a fray, but hate the blood the moment you've time to think about it, don't you?"

Rod nodded. "I'm a writer, not a-"

A Dark Helm came running up the stairs, and Taeauna coolly turned, parried the man's blade with her gauntlet, and drove her sword under the edge of his visor and into his throat.

"And I'm an Aumrarr," she said a little sadly. "Perhaps the last one. Killing Dark Helms is what I do, now." Then she shrugged, and added, "Well, 'tis more purpose than some folk have in their lives. Let's find that well."

"And fill it up with blood," Rod murmured to himself. He took care to speak so quietly that she couldn't possibly hear him.

Warsword Lhauntur looked up at the fat trader's cheerful hail. He recognized the man: Reskrul, who came over the mountains from Scarlorn once a year, his mules heavy-laden with tools and buttons and fastenings that the folk of Hollowtree bought eagerly.

"Be welcome in Hollowtree," he said cheerfully, "and have a tankard. We're just about to ride out on the night patrols. What news?"

"Hah! Big news. Recall a wingless Aumrarr who came through here some days back?"

"I do, indeed."

"Well, seems she laid waste to Arbridge, and went on down into Galath swording barons and besieging castles right and left."

Lhauntur raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "All by herself? That'd be a feat worthy of a god."

"Ah, but she wasn't alone. There's a man traveling with her."

That brought forth snorts of amusement around the warriors' table, and one jesting comment. "He's deadly with a pitchfork, that one!"

"Oh?" Reskrul said happily, pulling himself a tankard. "Well, the traders I met outside Arvale said she slaughtered hundreds forcing her way into Wrathgard, and enslaved poor Tindror!"

He peered around. "Looks like she didn't do all that much damage here."

"We're better fighters than the Galathans," Lhauntur said dryly. "We enslaved her."

Taeauna strode right up to the Dark Helm at the doorway. When his sword came up, she backhanded it aside and thrust her own blade unceremoniously into his throat.

He sagged to the floor, spewing blood, and she stepped inside the room with Rod on her heels.

"The well," she said with some satisfaction, indicating a circle of stone blocks overhung by a stout timber frame sporting two cranks and sets of descending ropes. Six Dark Helms looked up from what looked like a game of dice, rose hastily, drew their swords, and came over to her.

Taeauna stepped around the first one, touched the blade the second one was raising uncertainly to menace her, spun swiftly to slap aside the first warrior's sword that was on its way to plunge into her back, and then fed that warrior her own sword, right through his throat.

She ran around him in a swift circle as she did so, swinging his choking, staggering body between herself and the rest of the Dark Helms. Their charge parted to come around the flailing man and at her from both sides. Taeauna calmly tripped one warrior as she shouted, "Lord!" and then lunged in the other direction, parrying a blade and then melting it to nothingness with a slap of the gauntlet.

Rod swallowed as he ran forward. He was supposed to slit the sprawling warrior's throat, he knew, but winced at the very thought. The Dark Helm still had hold of his sword, and swung it viciously at Rod's ankles, so he hopped over it and brought the laedlen together down on the man's head, hard.

The man shuddered and fell still. By then Taeauna had slain two more, the. one she'd disarmed was sprinting around them all in a wide half-circle, seeking to escape the room, and the last Dark Helm was shouting in fear as Taeauna advanced on him. "Lord!" she called. "Don't let that one get away!"

Rod obediently trotted over to where he'd be in the running warrior's way; the Dark Helm greeted him with a sneer and a wild roundhouse slash that would have severed Rod's head from his body if it had connected. Rod ducked, stumbled, let go of the sacks right against the running man's ankles, and tried to step aside to ready his own sword.

The Dark Helm tripped over the sacks, staggered, and ran into the wall. Bouncing off it, he reeled right into Rod's desperate, teeth-clenched slash that sliced deeply into his neck and left him wobbling unsteadily to the floor, groaning.

Rod tried to be sick again, but there was nothing left in his stomach. He was still heaving when Taeauna strode past to slit the throats of the Dark Helms Rod had fought, giving him a disgusted look as she did so.

"You're going to have to learn to kill without becoming ill," she told him. "Now help me drag this dead meat over to the door. We'll heap them up there to win us time to be ready for the next Dark Helms to show up, and believe me, there will be more."

Rod believed her, even before sudden sounds nigh the doors heralded the arrival of forty-no, something nearer sixty Dark Helms that were crowding into the room before he and Taeauna could shift a single body.

"Get around behind the well," Taeauna ordered, shifting her sword to her free hand so she could flex the fingers of the gauntlet.

"We're going to die here, aren't we?" Rod asked, as he hastened to obey.

"'Tis quite likely," the Aumrarr replied. "Unless you can picture your bedchamber again, very vividly."

"I…" Rod couldn't see anything but the cruel grins of Dark Helms who were moving into the room, walking slowly and carefully, forming a wide arc of armored men as they drew their swords and lowered their visors. So this was it. He was going to die in Falconfar.