Dark Lord

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The head-sword of the velduke's guard was a tall, stern knight in magnificent armor, whose face had just gone from cold and professional to open-jawed disbelief. "New swords and arrows? You tongue-teasing me?"

"Not yet," Iskarra purred at him, like a Stormar alley-lass.

The knight looked at her weathered face, misjudged her age a trifle, and took her flirtation as a jest.

He grinned, still shaking his head at what fair falcon's fortune had brought him, and said, "Well, good traders, I'll have to ask you to step down and have a sit, yonder; there's ale. We'll unload your wares, go through them, and pay good gold roezels, counted out to you on yon barrelhead-fair market price, as good as you'll get anywhere-when we're done. My men will take your wagon from here."

Iskarra and Garfist climbed down, rather stiffly. They had spent much of the night sitting in a jammed, unmoving line of wagons seeking to enter the keep; dawn had come while they were still outside the gates. The dark cloud left their minds as suddenly as if it had been chopped off by a cook's cleaver, as their boots touched the cobbles of the gloomy keep courtyard. Too weary to be thankful, they started the trudge over to where promised ale waited.

Their wagon was backed to a dock, posts were fitted into sockets in the cobbles and the horses tethered to them, and the wagon doors were swung open. One wagon-guard trotted down from the dock to join Garfist and Iskarra, giving them a "just watch yourselves" look as he arrived and held out his hand for a tankard.

A gang of burly, sweat-soaked men who'd obviously been heaving cargo for most of the day strode wearily forward with some of the velduke's knights, and the gray wagon's load was inspected and brought out onto the dock in an astonishingly short time. Garfist, Iskarra, and the guard carefully refrained from looking at each other as it became apparent that the men of Bowrock had found no wizard, second guard, or false front of stacked crates.

Yardryk, it seemed, was as clever as he thought he was. Thus far, at least.

The head of the guard was as cheerful as if dozens of lasses far younger and more beautiful than Iskarra had just agreed to tongue-tease him for days on end, when he strode up to them and pronounced that their arrows were, "The best I've ever seen, and the blades aren't far behind that, either!"

Bright gold coins were counted out and bagged under the watchful noses of the two scruffy drovers and the wagon-guard, the tall stern knight clapped Garfist on the back like an old friend and pronounced trading with them "a proper pleasure," and they were requested to depart.

The wagon-guard took firm hold of the sacks of coins; Garfist and Iskarra, uncomfortably aware of the watchful eyes of many Bowrock guards, were forced to shrug, exchange glances, and head for the horses without dispute.

Garfist went around back to swing the wagon doors closed, and was unsurprised to find the guard's sword out and raised to menace him.

The guard remembered Iskarra in time to spin around as she slipped through the wagon from the front, but his spellguard against skaekur did him no good at all against the hairpin she kept coated with lursk. He slumped to the ground without hesitation, and Iskarra shrugged and let his head bounce. What need have cruel bastards for brains?

It took her a short, fumbling time to tie the coin-sacks together and drape them over her neck before concealing all under the crawlskin, and a little while longer to drop her breeches and empty her bladder into the guard's half-full wineskin, drop a pinch of one of her powders into it, restopper it, and shake vigorously.

By then, Garfist had searched the man for weapons and found what he'd hoped to find: a dagger engraved with a smith's mark from somewhere else in Galath. He flung the wagon doors wide again and bellowed, "Aid! A spy from Murlstag, sent to harm Bowrock!"

Knights were swarming the wagon almost before Iskarra could get down from it and point back up at it with a trembling hand.

When they shouted questions at Garfist, he pointed with one massive hand at Iskarra. When all eyes were on her, she cried, "Yon guard, inside; we hired him in the market outside the gates of Wrathgard. Paid him good coin, too. And just now, our lawful and honest trade here done, we're securing the ropes inside the wagon to leave, and we catch him hauling out his wineskin and saying he needs to get to a well, somewhere in this keep, before we go! When we tell him that sounds witless, he draws steel on us. So Gar here lays him out a-dreaming, but you'd best take and bind him, and that wineskin, too!"

Frowning, knights rushed up into the wagon in a thunder of boots and a flashing of swords. Iskarra and Garfist watched them, backing away slowly and casually, until heavy hands fell on both of their shoulders, and they turned their heads to find unsmiling Bowrock guards saying rather coldly, "Our wizard would like you to give him some answers."

"Answers?" Garfist rumbled, eyeing the ring of swordpoints that had suddenly appeared, to encircle his throat.

"To questions he's bound to want to ask," a knight told him, indicating where they'd sat to take ale before. "Why don't we all just sit down and-"

The ear-shattering explosion that erupted behind them just then sent the gray wagon and its unfortunate horses whirling in all directions in many pieces. One of them was large enough to behead Garfist's knight, and the blast itself heaved the cobbles underfoot and hurled Iskarra and some of the smaller guards right in under the wheels of other wagons. Garfist received a blow on the shoulder that sent him spinning like a top, so he had many brief whirlings of time in which to see a variety of spectacular fires erupt amid the other wagons in the courtyard, and watch broken men and the gore spatter across the keep walls and then start to drip back down again.

Where the wagon and all those knights had been, there was nothing, nothing but scorch marks radiating outwards from a shallow pit in the cobbles. An unseen giant had taken a great greedy bite out of the front of the loading dock, and there were cracks in the floor that hadn't been there before.

As Garfist came whirling toward her, spitting a stream of curses as he plunged, bounced, groaned, and came skidding to a stop just the other side of the wagon wheel hard by her head, Iskarra rolled over, her head ringing, and wondered if she'd ever he able to hear anything again.

It seemed the wizard Yardryk was clever enough, after all.

Rod Everlar sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a housecloak embroidered with dancing unicorns-dancing unicorns? In Falconfar? Oh, right, there had been a row of them on the box of the very first Holdoncorp game-and said, "Tay? That's the last servant gone again, I think. You can come out now."

Taeauna smiled and reached up a hand to him; Rod drew in his breath sharply in wonder. It was the hand that had been fingers of ash and bone the last time he'd looked, but now it was whole again, as perfect as if it had never swung a sword or done any rough work, let alone been crisped in magical flames.

He took hold of her offered hand and peered at it closely, running his own fingers over its unblemished softness. "It was the gewgaw, wasn't it? You reached for it, and it burned you?"

"Hush," the Aumrarr murmured. "Be careful. We must speak as if a servant stands over us always, listening to what we say and writing it down. Come to bed."

Rod raised his eyebrows in such stunned astonishment that Taeauna giggled, and put the bed-furs to her mouth hastily to muffle her mirth. Then she lowered them enough to say in mock indignation, "By the Flying Falcon, do men think of nothing else? Really!"

At least, Rod hoped it was mock indignation.

Pointedly keeping the cloak on and wrapped around him, Rod slid in under the furs beside her, muttering, "Your lord obeys your command. So what am I supposed to be thinking about?"

In response, Taeauna ducked down under the furs, crooking her head in a clear signal for him to join her. When they were both entirely under the covers, she threw an arm over him, pulled herself close against him, and whispered, "Move about a little, and moan, as if we're… you know."

"What is this, method acting?"

Taeauna gave him a puzzled frown, and Rod shrugged and tried an amorous moan. The result left her fighting not to giggle again, a struggle she promptly abandoned.

"Tay," Rod murmured patiently, "I love being in bed with you, even if, you know, nothing happens, but like any other guy, I find the teasing gets a little wearing. What is this?"

Her face went serious in an instant, and she nodded. "Lord," Taeauna whispered, "this is the best way for us to talk together frankly, just now. The way you found me, the 'gewgaw,' as you call it; you should know what it does before anything else happens."

Rod moved his arm over her, growled as if in passion, and whispered into her armpit, "So tell me."

Taeauna firmly pushed his head away. "That tickles. Know then, lord, that I awakened before you, and sought the chamberpot. You were then- forgive me-flat on your back and snoring."

"Nothing to forgive," Rod said, carefully rolling over atop her but keeping his weight on his arms and off of her. Under him, Taeauna deftly rolled onto her front.."Say on."

"The usual glow in the air, and that… that thing appeared, above your chest, about the length of my leg-and don't go feeling along the length of my leg, lord, thank you very much. I climbed back onto the bed and stretched out my hand to catch it as it fell; not to take it from you or pluck it out of the air, hut to shield your chest from it. With those little points it has, and its weight, I saw it as no better than a dagger aimed at your chest. So I tried to catch it."

"And things didn't go well."

"Indeed. It fell, flamed the instant it touched my fingers, and as I let go, it spat lightning at me. You saw what it did, yet we were no more than the thickness of my hand above your chest, and it touched you not; not even one hair is scorched, and yes, I've looked. The bolt went down my arm and into me, and hurled me right off the bed, furs and all, and left me as you found me; wounded unto death."

Rod reached down under the linens and furs on his side of the bed, to where he'd slipped the gewgaw under discussion to keep the servants from seeing it.

Taeauna winced as he brought it up between them in the darkness, to peer at it curiously and turn it over and over in his hands.

"Are you seeing something, now?" she asked softly. "That castle?"

"Yes," Rod muttered. "Yes, and now, for the first time, I feel as if I very much want to go in there."

"Oh, shit," Taeauna whispered. "Oh, Rod."

Sounds were returning in waves, like surf pounding on Stormar shores. Iskarra winced and tried to move her fingers and toes. Thank the Falcon, everything responded, and there were no knife-like stabs of agony.

The dark, pitted curve of a well-traveled wagon wheel was hard by her head, and a stunned or unconscious Garfist was drooling on the other side of it. As she gazed at him, his eyelids fluttered and his lips shaped a disgusted, "Too bloody typical. Always I get the whack. Always."

Iskarra read his lips more than she properly heard those words, but hearing was coming back to her. Yes, it was coming back.

She risked turning her head, looking back to where the gray wagon had been. A few knights were standing looking grimly down at the shallow pit, but most activity and attention was on the fires flickering on other wagons, and the buckets of sand and water being dashed over them.

The courtyard gates had been closed, and there were more hard-eyed knights standing with their shoulders against them. A lot more hard-eyed knights.

She reached out a hand past the curve of the wheel to dig her fingers into Garfist. Who stiffened and rolled over to glare at her.

"Oh. Isk. I can't hear anything, Isk!"

She tapped an imperious and bony warning finger across her lips, then pointed at him and at herself and then upwards, miming a set of steps with her hand, and then pointing up again.

It was time for them both to slip away and up into the keep, before all the tumult died down and they were noticed again.

Thank the Falcon, Garfist was nodding agreement.

As the two roads converged, and the many-bannered armies riding along them drew very close to meeting, one commander gave a signal, and war-horns rang out again. They were promptly answered from the other glittering host.

One last reassuring exchange of "peaceful parley" notes. Good. Arduke Tethgar Teltusk did not allow himself to relax, however. He didn't think even a weasel like Glusk Chainamund would risk treachery after Devaer's stone-cold-simple orders and threats, but one never knew.

The wits one wizard could twist one way, another mage could as easily turn another way, after all.

"Ho, Teltusk!" the fat baron called, from beneath his fluttering, yellow-and-scarlet horned ox-head banners, all joviality in what looked like new silver-bright armor studded all over with great round rivet-heads. "Any sign of Deldragon knights?"

"None," the raven-haired arduke called back, in as affable a tone as he could muster. "I think he's hunkering down inside his best armor and just waiting for us to come a-battering!"

"Good!" Chainamund bellowed, straw-yellow mustache quivering. "Let this be a grand day for battering, then!"

Walking away from the courtyard of wagons down one of the dark stone passages slowly and casually, as if they belonged in the keep, had taken all the nerves Garfist and Iskarra had left to muster. By the time they reached a long, dark, rotting-food-stinking passage somewhere behind the kitchens, they'd been trembling and only too glad to break into a run.

That brisk sprint took them down the rest of that passage, around a corner, and into an even darker passage, where Garfist's winded state brought them to a panting halt.

Iskarra sniffed. "Mildew. Well, better than rotten meat and eggs."

Garfist waved such trifles away with one hairy fist. "What made the dratted cart explode, anyway?" he growled.

"Your wits did get scrambled, didn't they?" Iskarra asked sharply, tapping his forehead with one bony finger. "The wizard. Taking care of his man, who might be made to talk."

"Shit. He'll come after us, won't he?"

"Not if he doesn't think we're still alive," Iskarra snapped, tugging open the front of her clothing one more time. "So you are going to wear the crawlskin as a pair of fittingly huge breasts, and become the heftiest washerwoman in all Falconfar, and I'm going back to my skeletal self. And we're just going to have to hope he hasn't left some sort of magic in our minds that will let him find us and rule us at will."

Garfist stared at her. "Oh, shit," he rumbled. "We're right back in it, aren't we? Even worse than fleeing an angry Arlsakran, this is. Running around a keep hoping a skulking wizard doesn't see us while a siege sets in."

Iskarra smiled and shrugged, as the crawlskin rose and wrapped itself high around her bare chest, shaping huge breasts that rose invitingly toward him. "You want to live out your life sitting in boredom, Gulkoon, growling about the adventures of your youth as they fade in your memories? Let's live a little!"

Garfist's hands clamped down on her proffered false flesh, and by those shapely handholds tugged her against him. "Oh, 'tisn't adventurous living I'm so wary of, Viper. 'Tis more the dying that's got me worried!"

"I wish you hadn't put your blade through him," Yardryk snapped, his dark purple eyes sharp with anger. Running his hands nervously through his curly gold hair, he looked down again at the Bowrock servant sprawled on the floor. A bright ribbon of blood was wandering lazily over the stones from the just-slain man's throat to wherever a low spot would make it pool.

"Next time, when I say 'strike him senseless,' I expect a loyal swordsman of the master we both serve to do just that."

"You know magic, wizard," the warrior said curtly, "and I tell you not how to do that. Kindly leave the brawling to me. He was about to scream, and my blade prevented that."

Yardryk sighed and turned away. "Very well," he said curtly.

The warrior watched him, glowering. Arrogant young hightrews!

The least of Arlaghaun's apprentices, but still, one of the Master's apprentices.

Thinking dark thoughts about idiot warriors, Yardryk bent to the satchel he'd carried since he'd teleported them both out of the wagon that he'd just been forced to destroy, throot it, though at least he'd had the pleasure of obliterating a dozen-some of the most eager Bowrock knights, along with it. He undid the clasps, and plucked out two metal spheres. They were smooth, they were heavy, and they more than filled his palms. He turned to the warrior.

"Korryk? I need you to hold these."

The warrior stared at him coldly for a moment, and then strolled slowly forward and took the spheres into his own hands, his every movement a slow, eloquent shout of "you're no better than me" insolence.

Ah, but to be a wizard was to be unloved.

"Thank you,"' Yardryk told him expressionlessly, turning back to his satchel. "Please, for your own safety, take great care to keep the spheres apart."

He wasn't certain how much Korryk knew of the task they were here to do, or how much the veteran could correctly guess. Arlaghaun wasn't in the habit of telling warriors all that much, but then veteran warriors in his service didn't live long enough to be veterans if they were stupid.

Yardryk drew in a deep breath, took the little braziers out of the satchel, and then the little sack of powdered steel-shavings and filings that had once been tempered swordblades; naught else would do-and silently thanked the Falcon that he had no need of flint strikers and kindling and the messy business of blowing on sparks just so. Filings in brazier, will the flame to flare at his fingertip, murmur the words that would make the iron burn readily, touch and step back. One brazier, and then two.

Yardryk made a little show of placing one burning brazier in just the right spot on the floor, stepping back to frowningly survey it, stepping forward to move it a few inches, stepping back again, and finally nodding. Yes.

The other brazier he left where it was, hoping Korryk would heed it not. He busied himself over the first one, getting out a dummy wand (a simple stick of wood, not magical in the slightest) to wave is he used his other hand to trace the runes in the in that mattered, murmuring after each the word that would make it take fire and glow, building on the previous runes in a long, faintly humming chain that rose up from the brazier like a column of purple flame.

He walked around it, peering at it as if seeking flaws. Stopping finally on the far side of the shaft of purple magic from the warrior, Yardryk nodded as if satisfied with his work, and commanded, "Korryk, I need those spheres now."

The warrior ambled over in a slow slouch this time, giving a gusty sigh to make it very clear that magic bored him. He thought it was scarcely as useful as a shrewdly swung sword, and for something treated with such wary awe, it seemed to need a lot of help.

Yardryk gave the sullen warrior a tight little smile, and pointed at one rune in the humming column. "This one; I need you to touch that ball to this rune. Gently. Don't worry, nothing bad will happen."

Reluctantly, giving Yardryk a glare that was heavy with suspicion, Korryk rather gingerly extended the sphere.

The column bulged to take it in, for the first time giving the impression that the purple air, or whatever it was, was rushing up and down past the runes, and now rushing around and over the metal ball, too.

By now, a tingling should be rushing through Korryk's arm. Nothing painful or even uncomfortable, but… unusual.

"Do… do I let go of it?" the warrior asked, sounding more wary than sneering. At last.

"No," Yardryk said warningly. "That would be bad."

He stepped forward, drew another rune, and chanted a swift incantation.

For a moment, as Korryk stared up at the rushing purple column, nothing happened.

Then, as swiftly as a striking snake, the column bent over, swooped down from on high toward the second brazier, and swung sideways in its plunge at the last moment to race at the second sphere Korryk was holding. It swirled around the sphere for a rushing moment that left the warrior's arms shuddering and his mouth open in rising fear, and then swooped away, to bury its end in the second brazier.

Yardryk smiled tightly and lifted his hand with the careless indolence of an indulged and haughty emperor.

And the purple snake rose and straightened into a smooth, high archway, rooted in the two braziers, and hauled Korryk off his feet, still clinging to the two spheres that were now embedded in the curving purple arc of magic, well off the ground.

"I-help, Yardryk! I can't let go!"

"No," the wizard replied, almost purring in satisfaction. "You can't."

There was a crackling in the air, a sudden tension and heaviness that shouted silently that something powerful was about to happen.

As the warrior started to kick wildly, thrashing his arms in increasingly frantic attempts to get free, the air along the inside of the purple column started to shimmer, like the air above a raging fire. Within its shimmering, the shadowy dimness of the cellar room split apart like tearing canvas, to reveal a larger, slightly better lit chamber beyond, a cavernous space that was certainly not visible outside the purple arch.

Something was moving in that larger hall, something-no, several somethings-that flapped and glided, flying swiftly nearer…

A trio of lorn, and then another, swooped through the arch and soared up to circle the cellar room of Deldragon's keep. Then they shot out of its doorway, wings raked back, heading elsewhere fast.

More lorn followed, and Dark Helms, too, a score or more of men in black armor, drawn swords in their hands and visors being swung down into place as they stepped into the gloom of the cellars.

"You see, Korryk," Yardryk said gloatingly, "just as you were ordered by our master to serve me, I was ordered to complete a specific task here: to construct a magical gate between our master's keep and this one. Unlike a tantlar, many living things like lorn and Dark Helms, for instance, can traverse a gate swiftly, at the same time. A tantlar-link can be destroyed very easily, by extinguishing the fire its destination tantlar is being warmed in, or removing that tantlar from the flames. This gate, however, feeds on magic hurled at it, and can even survive these braziers being extinguished or removed; it will only collapse when what powers it is gone. And it's powered by the life force of a living human, or humans."

"No!" the warrior shouted. "Noooo!"

"One such could have been the servant you killed," Yardryk added, with a ruthless smile. "Now, it's going to be you."

He turned his back and walked away, heading for the doorway of the cellar, where the trapped warrior's screams would be less deafening.

If Arlaghaun had been telling the truth about how many creatures he was going to send through the gate to overrun Deldragon's keep, those screams might not last all that long.

Gates were hungry things.

"Well," Garfist rumbled, "I don't exactly look like someone even a starving sailor would lust after. I mean, look at this face! Tits can only do so much."

"Yes, but what tits," Iskarra grinned.

He cuffed her playfully across the forehead. "Now we have to steal something that'll do up over them. All this for a bit of food and wine."

"Lantern, don't forget the lantern," Iskarra reminded him, earning herself a sour look from the feminine travesty Garfist Gulkoon had become.

"Look at me!" he snarled, waving two shovel-sized, hairy hands. "Who'm I supposed to fool, eh? I mean, how many blind folk am I likely to meet on my way to the kitchens? Blind folk without hands to feel these-and then the rest of me-with?"

"Gar, don't be surly. We have to eat. The occasional man still looks at me, remember."

"Aye, but… but…" Garfist became aware of Iskarra's dangerous glare and the dagger that had very suddenly appeared in her bony hand, very close to him, and settled for saying, "but there's no safe thing I can say just now, is there?"

"Well, you could say 'Dearest Iskarra, whose body I will worship fervently and often in these days ahead, you are right in all things, always, and of course in this, so how can I best pass myself off is a woman, I who am not worthy to be counted among womanhood no matter how hard I try?' But somehow I doubt you're going to say that.”

"I can't say that," Garfist rumbled. "Ye lost me after 'fervently and often.' I sorta got… got…"

"To thinking about that. Of course." Iskarra's voice dripped with acid. "Things will go much better, Gar dear, if you just stop trying to think and start trying to do what I tell you to do. Whenever you don't, you wind up finding one thing with frightening speed: trouble."

"Found a lantern," Garfist replied sullenly, pointing.

"Good. Go fetch it. Yes, with your front all hanging out like that; if someone sees you, just leer at them, and don't run or look furtive or guilty. And bring the lantern back here. Then we'll talk about finding clothes."

Garfist nodded and trudged off down the passage. Iskarra watched his broad-shouldered figure dwindle toward the distant lantern, hanging from a beam where two passages met, and winced. He looked less like a woman-even a large and lumbering woman-than anything she'd ever seen.

Garfist reached up for the lantern, and then lowered his arm again and peered intently down one of the side-passages. He thrust his head forward, sinking it between his shoulders like a vaugril, and then stalked down the side-passage, slowly and intently, hunting prey.

Iskarra flattened herself against the cold stone wall, wincing. "No, you great stupid ox!" she hissed. "Don't try to get clever. Just get the lantern and get back here. Don't…"

Garfist burst into view around the corner again, running hard, his false crawlskin breasts bouncing up and slapping him in the face with every pumping stride. There was a gutted boar carcass in one of his hairy hands, still trailing the hook it had undoubtedly been hanging from.

Right behind Garfist, and running hard, was a red-faced, snarling cook with a great cleaver flashing in his hand. Followed by another four-no, seven-other cooks and scullions, waving various knives and skewers and pans.

Iskarra whispered every profanity she could think of as she waved to Garfist and then turned and ran.

Deeper into the cellars, where there just might be a place to hide.