Dark Lord

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The chiming OF chains came closer and closer, until it stopped in front of him.

Arlaghaun did not let his sigh show as he looked up from reading the last page of some forty that detailed the crafting of a failed magic, an account written centuries ago by a wizard who'd ended up as a dragon without knowing quite how. He put a hand over the brightest glowing runes to shield his eyes from their dazzle and looked up at his apprentice who was standing in the appropriately subservient pose he'd taught her. Whippings had their uses, it seemed.

They would have another one if she'd interrupted him for no good reason. That was, of course, unlikely; she was his best apprentice, not a fool. He kept his face expressionless, merely raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

"Yardryk, master. The expected debacle. But he has Deldragon and the wingless Aumrarr, too. At least, they're all fighting nigh his gate." Her lip curled. "Which is about to collapse."

Arlaghaun smiled. "Ah, Yardryk. Always so confident as he rushes headlong into his next pratfall. Still, he's too useful to be sacrificed; we should rescue him, I suppose. And the good velduke will have some magic about his person I can seize. If we take him now, he won't have chances enough to waste it all blasting my warriors. Moreover, if we keep Master Mage Brightrising alive, we can send him back to the keep to snatch magic later, with a Darendarr Deldragon I control striding at his side."

Amalrys nodded in her chains, returning his smile, ice-blue eyes dancing.

"Right. Let's have them all." Arlaghaun stood up from his book, turned and then stepped away from it to quell any spillover of magic, stretched his gray-clad limbs, and started to cast an intricate spell.

His apprentice watched him avidly, as always.

He smiled, his brown eyes flashing their usual fire at her, and seeing it returned.

Yes. Strong magic, elegantly unleashed, was the greatest aphrodisiac.

The little pool of water in the dark, wet forest glade glowed with sudden, silent fire that lit the faces of the four Aumrarr bent over it.

"You can farscry like a Doom?" Dark-armored Lorlarra's voice was rough with awe. "Sister, what are you?"

Dauntra gave her a look that seemed to add years to her young and impish beauty. "Just another Aumrarr, sister; no more. But I happen to be a sister who caught the eye of Lord Darendarr Deldragon seven summers back."

"Aha," said Juskra, her scars twisting her knowing smile. "You came to him in the moonlight, hmm? And he could not resist lovemaking in the air, and you starflew him to sleep."

Dauntra's smile was gentler than her scarred sister's. "Yes. Asleep I delivered him back to his bed. He slept as I drew his sword, and shed some of my blood and his, and mingled them together. Ambrelle, you know the spell."

"I do," the oldest Aumrarr said quietly, holding back her long purple-black hair so as to better behold the images moving in the little forest pool Dauntra had let a drop of her blood fall into. "So when you do this, and he happens to be unleashing the magics of that sword at the same time, you can watch his doings and surroundings. For a time."

"Is that what I think it is?" Juskra asked sharply. "That purple fire?"

"If you're thinking it's a gate some wizard created, that's now on the verge of collapsing," Ambrelle replied, with just a hint of a smile, "then yes, it is what you think it is."

"A gate cast by one of the Dooms?"

"Very likely."

"Almost certainly," Lorlarra corrected, an instant before the scene of struggling people in the maw of a flickering purple arc of flames exploded into a bright flash of many vivid hues, clashing and coiling like violently grappling mists.

The four watching Aumrarr cursed.

The pool went dark.

Everyone screamed, falling through the blinding brightness. Eyes wide but seeing nothing, nothing but light so stabbing that it made him sob, Rod Everlar fell endlessly, vaguely aware that others were tumbling with him yet unable to see them, falling…

Falling…

To find smooth stone underfoot, as gently yet as firmly as if he'd always been standing there.

Abruptly, the brightness all around him was gone, fled away to leave behind a few fading, gentle glows that left him blinking.

Eyes watering, shaking his head to try to clear his vision, Rod stared around. He was in some sort ol large stone room, with a high, vaulted ceiling. There were many tall archways in the walls, all of them leading into passages stretching away into various glooms. Set on one wall close at hand, on a stretch that led out to a jutting corner of wall, was a tall, ornate oval mirror, stretching up from the floor taller than a person.

Taeauna was standing right beside him, and she was turning toward Rod, as if to check that he was there.

He saw her eyes measure him, and move on; she was glancing swiftly in this direction and that.

Rod went on doing the same thing. Deldragon stood beyond Tay, glaring around at everything with sharp concern in his ice-blue eyes, and the fat man and Rosera stood beyond him, shoulder to shoulder and looking wary. Over there, in the other direction, was the wounded, golden-haired young wizard, and on the floor, crawling mindlessly away from him like a worm Rod had once watched wriggling up out of a bait-bucket when fishing, was the pink tongue-thing that had enshrouded the wizard's head. To Rod's left stood a tattered handful of lorn and Dark Helms, staring around the hall in as much bewilderment as Rod was.

This place was huge, and solidly built, yet somehow-with its smooth walls, shaped ledges and ridges that framed the archways-far more elegant than the stark stone castle feasting halls he was getting so used to seeing. And it felt old, an age older than they did, despite their crumblings. What was this place?

As Rod turned to look behind him, Taeauna stepped protectively between him and the Dark Helms with her sword ready, murmuring, "Is this the place, lord?"

"What? Oh. No." Rod shook his head sadly. Then he frowned and whispered, "So what place is this?"

"Ult Tower," she said grimly.

Ult Tower; this?

Rod gaped at her. The abode of the wizard Ult?

He stared at the ceiling and then around the room again. Really? The black stone keep in the heart of Galath that the wizard Ult had built and linked to himself magically, stone by stone, so the tower was like his skin, and he could feel what was done to it and see out of it?

Hell, yes, that had been a tale! Vivid, seemed to flow into existence under his fingers as he typed, just as fast as his racing thoughts had taken him; that story, that he'd created Ult Tower for, had been one of his favorites. Still was.

Yes, this could be Ult Tower. He couldn't see any 'black" stone, but any room could be sheathed in smoother, lighter stone. Or be covered in stucco or paint, if it came to that. So if this was Ult Tower, where was Ult?

Across a stretch of empty tiles, facing them, a man was suddenly standing in the room, watching them alertly.

Rod blinked again; that stretch of stone floor had been bare a moment ago.

The man held no sword, nor anything else. He was clad in gray, wore rings that winked with lights of their own, and there were more lights playing along a high collar or curving horn-like thing that swept up from one gray shoulder, the one that didn't have a cloak draped over it. It looked as if the man had grown one leathery, featherless Aumrarr wing that he'd curved toward the way he was facing, and that it had then been cut off, leaving only its fan-shaped root, permanently curved forward. Into something that looked very much like some sort of science fiction-ish weapon; the curve was topped with a row of winking openings that looked like the maws of a fighter plane's wing-cannons.

Obviously a wizard, but not Ult, surely? Rod supposed wizards could make themselves look like anything they wanted to, or perhaps not, because if they could, surely some of them would choose more handsome appearances, to lure the eyes and open the arms of passing lovely ladies. But Rod had always pictured, and written about, Ult as old and short and chubby-cheeked, looking out at the world in a kindly manner over spectacles. A little like a Rockwell Santa Claus without the beard and the overly red nose and cheeks.

This man was taller, rather younger, and well, meaner. Or at least looked to be, by the fire in his dark brown eyes and the twist of his thin lips. He had sharp features, the nose especially, but would have been termed "handsome" in a leather jacket and jeans, swaggering and posing outside a bar. Aside from that firing-horn thing sweeping up from behind his shoulder, he wore dark breeches and a matching tunic, with a half-cloak over them that drooped to cover his behind on their low side, and reached his belt at the highest point in its raked edge. Dark gray, all of it. Shaped eyebrows, razored sideburns running down the curve of his chin, close-cropped hair but dipping to his shoulders at the back. The Dark Helms and lorn were all hastily and silently kneeling to him, and he had an air of command. He looked more like some sort of stylish secret agent than anything else.

And Rod hated him on sight.

He was staring right at Rod, their eyes meeting like swords crossing.

"And just who are you?" he asked, his voice gloating, sparing not an instant of attention for Taeauna or Deldragon.

Rod knew he was reddening. "Who are you?" he snapped back. "And what have you done with Ult?"

His words seemed to strike the man like a blow across the face, and the name "Ult" echoed and rolled thunderously around the room, as if he'd shouted it in a voice as deep as stone.

Behind Rod, Taeauna made a sound that was not quite a gasp, and not quite a sob, and the velduke whispered something that was probably an amazed curse.

The gray wizard staggered back, the skin of his face rippling and twisting, and his eyes turned blue, staring pleadingly at Rod and the others. His face twisted and stretched as he shrank away from Rod, spreading into chubby cheeks… for all the world as if Ult was inside him, straining to break free. Then the wizard's jawline returned, wavered, slid away again…

Deldragon aimed his sword and sent a crackling bolt of fire racing at the wizard; it struck empty yet unyielding air just in front of the gray-clad mage, clawed along it, and then surrounded him, rushing tongues of flame that could not touch him.

The force of the flames bent the wizard's body back from the waist and made it shudder at first, but as they watched his face slid back into the semblance they had first seen, he straightened, and his lips twisted into a sneer.

Deldragon cursed, swung his sword so that its flames slashed across the breasts of the Dark Helms and lorn who'd begun drifting toward him, and thrust out his other hand at the wizard, a ring on his forefinger winking brightly.

Nothing seemed to race or fire from it, but the wizard acquired a look of horror, backed away swiftly, and then started to scream.

They saw his gray garments darken and then swiftly start to melt away, and the flesh beneath them receded almost as fast, the mage's shrieks rising with terror as he turned and ran.

Rod thought he got a glimpse of the man's face slipping again, but before the fleeing wizard ducked out an archway and vanished, everyone in the chamber clearly saw bared bones down his fleeing back, as flesh and all melted away. The Dark Helms and lorn, looking rather scorched, fled after him.

So much for that wizard, for the moment at least; what about the other one?

Rod turned sharply to look, and was in time to see the golden-haired young wizard who'd demanded their capture in the cellars stiffen and stop trying to cast a spell with his remaining hand as Rosera sliced into it viciously with her dagger. Severed fingers flew.

Over that mage's screams, Deldragon snarled, "Friends, I must get back to Bowrock!" "There are gates all over this tower, to places all over Falconfar, if the wizard you just started turning to bone hasn't changed them," Rod said, remembering his tales of Ult, "but how we'll find the one for Bowrock, I don't know."

Taeauna stepped between them. "By recognizing what we can see through the gate. So let's hunt out the gates and start looking through them-quickly! If we see the wizard again just get through whatever gate you're standing in front of at that moment!"

"We're with you," Rosera said quickly. The velduke rounded on her.

"Not until you tell me what that is, Rosera," he mapped, pointing at the flesh-pink, ambulatory thing that now looked less like a gigantic tongue and more like a huge inchworm, as it arched and slithered, arched and slithered up her leg. "And what you were up to in my keep!"

The fat man behind Rosera started forward, his face hardening and arms spreading wide.

Deldragon shrugged and raised his sword meaningfully.

Stand back and belt up, ox," the bone-thin woman said quickly. "Leave this to me."

The dagger spun from her hands like flashing lightning.

Past the velduke's ear it went, before he could so much as start to swing his sword her way.

Taeauna raised a pointing hand, and Deldragon spun around instead.

Rosera's dagger was standing forth from the throat of the golden-haired wizard. His dark purple eyes stared back at them in helpless horror, a wand falling from his maimed and bleeding hands.

Then he gurgled, his knees gave way, and he sank toward the floor. Halfway there, magical glows occurred in the air around him, brightening and swirling. As they watched, the dying wizard's body seemed to fade, and the glows claimed it and the wand, before the body could strike the floor, leaving only the dagger to clatter on the tiles.

The velduke whirled back to face the woman who'd thrown it. She was standing just as before, but had just put a wide, falsely merry smile on her face. "Well, y'see, Lord Deldragon," she said brightly, "my name is Iskarra, and 'tis like this…"

"I'll bet," the velduke said dryly.

"How much?" the fat man asked quickly.

Deldragon rolled his eyes, stroked his mustache, and then waved to them beckoningly as he started to stride across the chamber. "Let us walk as we talk. That wizard won't be gone forever, and if we haven't found one of his precious gates and got ourselves through it before he gets back, there'll be no more time for talking, for any of us."

Iskarra smiled crookedly. "But plenty of 'forever.'"

Arlaghaun sobbed as he lurched against a wall for perhaps the fortieth time. He didn't slow down. He didn't dare slow down.

The fragments of a shattered mirror showed him his own sharp nose and blazing brown eyes at the next wall he fetched up against. He snarled at his own reflection, and staggered on.

He was almost there, now… almost…

Rings flared unbidden on his fingers as he reached the blank wall that their magic would make yield, and fell thankfully through it. Ravaged flesh screamed agony anew as he staggered helplessly sideways, into yet another wall, and tried to curse but could not. The nauseating worm-like squirming in his chest was rising again, choking Arlaghaun with nausea; it meant Ult was fighting him again.

Falcon damn that man, whoever he was!

To name Ult, and goad Ult into rising again, after all these years! Years!

And where was Amalrys, to aid him? Where was she?

The Doom of Galath started running again, sliding his shoulder along the wall, too weak and dizzy to thrust himself away from the stone and not quite daring to, anyway, in case he fell and bared joints failed him. He was close, now, deep in the heart of the tower… Just a few more doors, just a few more…

Two more, now, as his rings flared again and seemingly solid stone melted away before him. Arlaghaun dared to let himself hope again, dared to let out his rage. How by the glorking Falcon could one stranger with two questions-no spells, not even a dagger in his hand; two glorking questions! — reduce him from ruling Galath to fleeing for his life, just like that? And where had Deldragon gotten such a ring? Shards and stars, what else in the way of magic did he have hidden away in Bowrock?

Arlaghaun tugged open a door that no magic he knew of would make open or shift into shadows, raised a hand that flared warningly as a trap-rune blazed up and then faded away again before one of his rings, tore open the last door, flung it shut behind him, rocked in the resulting slam, that must have shaken all Ult Tower-and fell thankfully over the stone lip into waiting relief.

The waters of the pool were warm and heavy, as always, like oil. As he surfaced, already soothed and numbed, Arlaghaun saw the weird lights converging on him, as the pool awakened to his need.

From the dark and distant corners they came, rushing to him, and he groaned in relief as the pain left him, holding his fingers clear of the water so his enchanted rings would do nothing to harm or twist awry the healings of the pool. What was left of his clothes were dissolving; he dragged the wandwing in its harness off his back and slung it over the low rampart, onto the tiles around the pool, and then started plucking off rings and gently tossing them after it.

The pool was sliding into him with a warmth that brought an almost sexual rapture, healing and soothing and banishing taints and aging and poisons… If it wasn't for the memories this most precious of Galathan magics stole, every time, he'd bathe here every night.

Come to think of it, this time there was something he wanted to forget: Ult. Let the pool go on sinking through him. He, Arlaghaun, was going to sink down into himself, too, and rout and shatter all that had once been Ult, once and for all.

He felt the lurking node of thoughts not his own, thoughts racing with renewed hope, with schemes against him. Taking care not to focus on it, and so alert it to his approach, Arlaghaun grinned a savage grin.

Ducking down, he surged closer in his mind, sharpening his will to a sword-keen edge…

Then he burst into the heart of Ult's buzzing thoughts with a savage roar, slashing, burning, rending: pouncing on the shrieking, fleeing light that was Ult.

Claw, slice, sear; ruthlessly lessening Ult here and then there, vanquishing his foe as he should have done years ago, tearing free memory after memory and thrusting them apart in his own mind, so that nothing of the lurking sentience of Ult could cling to them.

It took a long time, but every moment was worth it.

When at last Arlaghaun knew peace of mind and body, he floated in the gentle, shifting glows, immersed and warm, staring at the ceiling overhead. Not for the first time, the thought occurred to him that this most hidden of rooms was of bare, rough stone, as unfinished as a tomb. Now why was that?

Well, he'd just slain the last remnants of the only being who could have given him an answer. He shrugged. Let not curiosity ever become obsession.

"So who is that man?" he whispered to the dark and silent stone. "I'd never seen him before I first glimpsed him at the Aumrarr's side, I know I haven't, yet he looks so familiar."

“So that's just how it was, lord," Iskarra said warmly, concluding a long and fanciful tale as to why she and Garfist Gulkoon were in the cellars of Deldragon's keep in the heart of Bowrock.

As they all strode together down yet another long and many-doored passage in this seemingly endless tower, Deldragon regarded her thoughtfully, something impish or merry dancing in the depths of his ice-blue eyes. "I don't believe a word of it," he said, firmly but politely, as he stroked his flaxen mustache. "So tell me something else, instead: what are your intentions now?"

"To take every last bit of magic we can carry from these rooms all around us," Garfist growled, "and get ourselves far away from here. Somewhere in Falconfar, I care not where, that the mage whose tower we're standing in can't find us."

"There is no such place," Taeauna snapped. "Nor can you escape his scrutiny for longer than it takes him to mumble a rather simple spell, if you carry off even one of his things of magic. Your schemes doom you."

Iskarra sighed. "They always have."

"Yet we're still here!" Garfist rumbled triumphantly. "So I think we'll just keep right on scheming, and not listening to folk who have their own reasons for saying us nay for this and that."

Taeauna didn't bother to shrug; she was too busy pointing ahead. "Gates! A row of them!"

As if her words had been some sort of cue, the air brightened into a bright silver-gold shimmer and the passage around them rocked. From out of that shimmering, something small, strange, glowing and golden fell into Rod Everlar's hand. It resembled a miniature coach-horn, only with valves like a trumpet, and three misshapen eyes that winked and glowed with moving, vary-hued radiances.

It was soft, rather than as hard as any other metal object he'd ever touched, and warm, too, and…

That was all the staring at it he was able to manage, as something more sinister caught his eye. Down the passage ahead of him, just this side of the row of distant glows that Taeauna had just pointed out as the way out they were seeking, a warrior's helm-close-faced and menacing, for all that it was empty-was floating slowly down out of the ceiling.

Literally out of the ceiling. Rod saw it emerge from apparently solid stone, sliding down to hang in the air. As if it were watching him, and worn by a man whose stomach was on a level with the tousled top of Rod's head.

Shit. It certainly didn't look friendly; Taeauna and Deldragon were already stepping forward, swords rising.

At least it was just a helm, without arms and shoulders to swing some great big sword.

Something else was emerging out of the solid stone walls on either side of the passage, drifting forth in eerie silence. Arms, or rather hollow assemblies of armor plate to cloak the arms of an absent body, from flaring shoulder-plates to elaborate gauntleted fingertips. A giant's body, by the size of them. They were converging below the helm, where they would probably mate with…

A breastplate and chain-linked assembly of overlapping back plates, now rising in stately silence up out of the floor, to-

"Falcon!" Iskarra spat. "Are we just going to stand and watch it? Hack it to ribbons, or let's run!"

"Now," Taeauna said calmly to the velduke a moment later, as the drifting pieces came to smooth halts, and the air between them seemed to brighten. "Right where they're meeting."

Deldragon didn't bother to nod. Sword-fire streaking from the point of his blade was already lashing the armor where it was drawing together, snarling and clawing at the plates, curling around and between them.

And seeming to harm them not at all.

Leg armor was rising up out of the floor, and a sword as long as a lance was sliding out of the wall, wisps of smoke curling along its deadly-looking blade. Deldragon aimed his sword to blast its hilt with his sword-fire, trying to halt it and prevent it from joining the assembling armor.

He might have been shining a flashlight on the sword, for all the effect it had, and Rod and Taeauna gasped in unison as the sword-fire darkened, faded, seemed to cough and fade… snarled and spat, faded away completely… spat again, and then faded…

"That sounds not good," Garfist growled. Is it…?"

He fell silent. The sword-fire was gone again, and the blade of the velduke's sword was crumbling to rust-red dust, a collapse into nothingness that raced down the steel in a silent haste so swift and menacing that Deldragon barely had time to fling down the hilt before it reached his hand.

The hilt burst into dust as it hit the floor, and was gone just like that, and all in velvet silence.

Beyond it, a crackling arose in the air, a singing tension that rose in pitch as the armored guardian, wholly bonded together and with sword in hand, took its first tentative step toward them.

Its second stride caused a squeal of metal against metal, yet was smoother, more confident, with none of the swaying of the first. Its third brought it smoothly into the crouch of a veteran warrior, hefting that huge blade from side to side, its reach blocking the passage, walling off any way to the gates beyond.

Everyone cursed.

"What's that thing of magic in your hand?" Deldragon snapped at Rod. "Something we can use?"

Rod and everyone else stared at Rod's palm where the golden-valved horn was sinking into his flesh, apparently dissolving into him. He shook his head slightly in disbelief; he couldn't feel a thing, not even weight. If he closed his eyes, it felt like his hand was simply… empty.

Empty…

Dared she?

Amalrys stopped in front of the closed, featureless stone door, her eyes like two small but bright blue lamps, shivering in her chains not from being otherwise bare in the cold darkness, but from excitement.

And fear.

Dared she, really? To raise her hand against the man who'd put these chains on her, claimed her so cruelly, lorded it over her daily because he could destroy her at his pleasure?

Dared she lash out at him at last?

Yes, a voice whispered exultingly, deep within her. She laid her hand on the door, trembled as the glow grew around it, and then scraped her bare skin on its opening edge as she slid past a trifle too soon, in her eagerness to get inside.

Far from a woman in chains forcing her way past a door in Ult Tower, a short, slender, and darkly handsome wizard rose from his claw-footed chair in one lithe movement to clench his fists, the better to hurl his will at her.

"Yes," Malraun breathed, putting all of his fierce will behind that word, feeling the distant Amalrys yield to it and embrace it as her own. "Yes, little unwitting slave," he murmured, "strike down your tormentor at last. Let there be one fewer Arlaghaun in the world."

As agile as any dancer, still thrusting his way deeper into the mind of Amalrys, he spun around and sprang back onto his chair, bouncing several times until his body was at rest again, his concentration never wavering.

"And if his slaying is beyond you this day," he remarked almost pleasantly, "let him taste torment, and be afraid, and be lessened. Aye, see that you humble Arlaghaun the Mighty."

He smiled, and told the ornately painted ceiling above, "For increasingly, his swaggering truly bothers me."

In a dark chamber of slowly dripping water, where every solitary drop plummeting the height of a castle into a patiently waiting pool awakened its own uncaring echo, the tall, blue-skinned wizard Narmarkoun sat alone, as always, and at ease.

Nearby stood the staff he'd been augmenting, upright in the air though there was no hand to hold it there. The cold fires of his spells still flickered up and down its length betimes, reflecting back off his scaled hands.

He smiled.

"Goad her indeed, Malraun, and think yourself her master," he told the darkness. "Succeed or not, survive or not. I care not. Her mind is an open door into yours, and you are mine as surely as she is, whenever I care to reach out and take you.

"And then squeeze."

The watchers saw the gold-hued bauble disappear entirely into Rod Everlar's palm, sinking out of sight beneath his unbroken, unblemished flesh.

With a squeal of grinding metal, the armored guardian took another step forward, blade reaching out menacingly.

Rod Everlar reeled, raised a hand to his head, and fell, toppling onto his face without a sound, to lie in an unmoving heap right in front of the lumbering guardian.

Taeauna rushed to stand over him, sword raised against the reach of the looming guardian. Garfist and Iskarra looked at each other and with one accord spun around and fled back along the passage, leaving Deldragon standing alone where he was, stroking his mustache as he watched the guardian take another ponderous step, and then another.

The velduke seemed to reach a decision. He drew his dagger and snapped at the Aumrarr, "Get back! Yon guardian will kill you."

"If it does," Taeauna told him, her voice trembling on the edge of tears, "it does. Nothing in all Falconfar matters more than keeping this man alive right now."

Deldragon stared at her as the guardian took another slow step, and swung its sword that was longer than either of them stood tall, up and back, ready to sweep down and shear through anything less solid than an ox or a stone pillar. Then it paused again, waiting, motionless and expressionless.

The velduke stared up at it, then drew another dagger from his boot and hurried to Taeauna. "He's a Shaper, isn't he?" he asked quietly, his eyes very blue.

The Aumrarr drew in a deep breath and then let it out slowly, shuddering like a terrified child. Her face was white.

"He's the Shaper," she whispered. "Until he dies, and most of Falconfar with him."