Dark Lord

CHAPTER ONE

She was crying as she swung the sword. Tears of pain and rage and desperation, as the knights in black armor crowded close around her, their black blades hacking ruthlessly. Sparks flew from her armor as she reeled, driven by one sword blow back into another. They were killing her, she was going to- No! Don't! I won't watch, I- But he could not look away as laughter echoed inside closed black helms, and long white feathers swirled in a swiftly spreading cloud. They're hacking off her wings! The Aumrarr fought on, her shattered armor clanging, as blood stained the snow-white curves above her shoulders. It was hopeless; she was doomed, whether he shouted or cowered. The Dark Helms were too many and too vicious.

She shrieked as a black blade thrust through one wing, and twisted wildly away to meet the biting black steel of another Dark Helm, a cut that tore away an armor plate, lacings and tatters of torn underjerkin spinning with it.

Rod had a glimpse of bare, sweat-slick hip as the winged woman threw herself around at the foe that had wounded her, stabbing upwards with her silver sword.

The Dark Helm stumbled back, hissing in pain, and the Aumrarr's war-steel came out of him dark with blood, to swing-

Too late. Rod winced back into shuddering darkness as two Dark Helms shouted in glee as they brought their blades down and sliced off a wing in a welter of blood-that sent the sobbing Aumrarr to her knees.

In half a breath they were all over her, kicking and stabbing, battering her remaining wing down into bloody ruin. Armor shrieked and clanged in protest as it was hacked from her, her vainly defending sword broke in a whirl of bright spell-sparks against seven black blades, shards flashing… and then it was over. She lay huddled and still, severed armor straps strewn about her, snow-white belly slit open and lifeblood steaming. The Dark Helms spat on her, laughed a farewell, and strolled away.

Leaving Rod staring into her agonized, pleading eyes.

Emerald green eyes, wet with tears, yet not yet dimmed in death, and somehow seeing him, really seeing him…

And Rod Everlar came awake screaming, clawing sweat-soaked sheets as he sat up to stare wide-eyed across the familiar darkness of his bedroom.

His throat was raw. Panting, Rod shook his head, trying to swallow and hoping the silvery chaos dancing in front of his eyes would clear. That had been a bad one.

Hoob.

His dreams of Falconfar were always vivid-he glanced toward the notebook, ready beside the bed-and sometimes held huge dark snakes and other menacing monsters, but this…

"This takes the…"

His voice was a thick croak, and the silver mists wouldn't clear. He shook his head again, and-

Something large, dark and heavy slammed down onto the bed from above. Rod's heart leaped and froze, all at once.

It was on his legs…

Frantically he kicked out, trying to scramble up and back at the same time. There was nothing but bare plaster ceiling overhead, nothing up there that could fall so heavily without half the house falling down. This couldn't be hap-

"Mercy!" the voice sobbed out of the darkness, from very close by. On the bed. "Mercy, Dark Lord!"

The weight on his legs was moving, and panting as hard as he was, and there was something warm and wet…

Rod got his legs out from under the heavy weight at last and grabbed for the flashlight he kept on the floor beside the bed, swinging himself away and up to his feet just as fast as he could.

Light snapped into brilliant being. He whirled, snatching his Olde Excalibur letter opener out of the book he'd left it in and brandishing it as if he were some sort of armored knight instead of a hairy, skinny man wearing only boxer shorts.

The light gleamed off the point of his letter opener, and Rod found himself staring over it and into the pleading emerald eyes and pain-twisted face of the woman from his dream, the blood-drenched stumps of her severed wings jutting up from her shoulders.

She was on her hands and knees on the end of his bed, trembling violently, amid a dark red sea of soaked sheets and dripping, hanging-down innards. Skin whiter than his sheets where it wasn't dark with gore, long black hair tangled and matted… and those eyes.

Her jaw quivered in pain as she gasped, "Dark Lord! Help me!"

Rod stared at her in disbelief, shaking his head without really noticing. This couldn't be happening, this… He must still be dreaming, this must all be part of it…

Dark Lord? "I–I'll-"

I'll what? What the hell would I do, if I were awake?

"I'll get an ambulance," Rod snapped, striding across the room to the phone. Letter opener down, receiver up; an old, ugly rotary, heavy and solid and black, reassuring to hold on to in this crazy drea-

Something silver flashed bright moonlight as it spun past his cheek to thunk solidly into the wall. Something that left severed coils of phone cord dancing in Rod's face, and the dial tone of the heavy receiver in his hand suddenly silent. He whirled to face whatever it was in the direction it had come from, aiming his flashlight like a gun.

Rod found himself looking at the blood-slicked, clenched and trembling hands of the woman on his bed, who promptly cried, "No! No one here must know, or your power will be ended, and with it all our hope! Dark Lord, you must undo the evil you have wrought on us!"

Rod Everlar stared at her, dazedly wondering why he'd never bought a gun, and then wondering what he'd do with one right now, if he had it. She was dying, she should be dead already, and… and women didn't have wings and snow-white skin, and didn't swing swords while wearing armor. Or hurl daggers, either.

Except in Falconfar. In his dreams.

He was going mad, he must be. If he'd drunk anything stronger than soda this week, he'd be blaming this on booze right now. This just couldn't be happening.

Not even in his books did… did women with wings who'd just been gutted and left to die fall onto the beds of lonely thriller writers in the middle of the night. Any night, drunken or otherwise.

Transfixed in the beam of his flashlight, the shuddering Aumrarr sank belly-down on the bed, her strength plainly failing.

"Please," she whispered, eyes desperate, her voice strangely purring. "Please…"

Rod shone his flashlight up at the ceiling-whole and unmarked-and wildly around the room to make sure there was no one else lurking anywhere. Not that it sounded like it. He lived alone, and the creaks and small moans of the old house were familiar things.

This… visitor… was not.

The flashlight showed him a wicked-looking dagger buried in the wall beside his head. Its hilt was dark and wet with blood, but he flung the phone down and seized it unhesitatingly. Grateful to have some sort of weapon, Rod wrenched it out of his wood paneling with some effort; it had bitten deep.

"Dark Lord," the Aumrarr moaned, her voice fainter. She tried to say something else, but it came out as wet, choking sounds.

Rod took a step closer to the bed, waving the dagger. The room smelled of blood, and sweat… and fear.

"Get out," he snarled suddenly, as something wild rose inside him, sharp and sudden. Fear. His own fear. "Get out of my house!"

He lived alone by choice. He didn't want the world thrusting itself into his dreams, didn't…

The woman on the bed moved, but only to sag forward, shards of shoulder-armor clattering briefly. She wasn't going anywhere, she was dying on his bed for chrissakes.

When was this nightmare going to end?

The floor was cold under his bare feet. The moonlight faded as he left the ruined phone behind and strode back to his bed. This was enough!

He was going to wake up, somehow; he was going to leave his imaginary world of Falconfar behind and go watch a… No, no, he was going to read a good book. A book written by someone else, one that had nothing at all to do with wizards and dragons and Dark Helms and the soaring castles of Falconfar. He was…

Coming to a stop, disgusted. Staring up at him, she reeked of blood and urine and… Hell, look at all the blood!

Must wake up, must jolt myself out of this somehow.

Rod reached out an angry hand. "Come on, get up and out of here! Get-"

Matted black hair lashed his fingers. Beyond it her shoulder felt solid. Hard and real… and quivering under his fingers.

He snatched his hand back. "Get out, damn you!"

Her head sank down, night-black hair hiding that pleading face, and she collapsed into sobs.

Rod waved the dagger wildly in the air, feeling very far indeed from being a hero of Falconfar or anywhere else, and wished-God, how he wished- he'd wake up, and leave all this behind.

The Aumrarr weren't real; they were something he'd invented for Falconfar, a race of warrior-women who did good, flying over the forests of the dream-realm with their long, snow-white wings, taking messages from one hold to another, and fighting wolves and worse.

Hmmph. Since Holdoncorp's game designers had gotten their grubby hands on Falconfar, much worse. The Dark Helms, for one, and…

The dying Aumrarr slid sideways off his bed, dragging his sheets with her. They were now more red than white, and there was a puddle of blood on his mattress.

"Out!" he roared again, waving the dagger as if it were some sort of magic wand that could banish her and her mess, and take him into comforting wakefulness in his favorite chair three rooms away, all at once.

She was now arching and shaking in agony, her sobs as faint and strangled as the mewings of a kitten, but those long, trembling fingers were… were reaching out to clutch him around the ankles!

Rod jerked back. Too late. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and he had to slam his hand down onto the bed, dagger and all, to keep from falling. His knuckles burned, and with a snarl he bent over and grabbed at her shoulders, trying to pluck her away-

Pain. Sharp, stabbing… Finger sliced open on jagged metal. He'd cut himself on her effing armor!

Rod Everlar flung up his hand and stared at the blood and the throbbing wound.

Oh, Jesus Christ. I am awake.

He swayed, shaking his hand as if he could wave his cut away, and shaking his head even harder. This couldn't be happening; this wasn't happening! Dreams just didn't become real like this.

And then the woman at his feet clawed at his leg and curled her shoulder up against him. He flinched away from the sharpness of her torn armor, reeling and almost falling.

And then he was falling, hands waving wildly. Flashlight gone, dagger bouncing onto the bed, sitting down helplessly hard against it as blazing emerald eyes and desperate fingers clutched at him like talons… Her breath was warm and smelled spicy, almost like cinnamon, as her softness glided up his own hairy skin. Rod fumbled to get his feet under himself, to be able to-and then stiffened. Warm, wet lips were sucking at his injured hand!

He tried to yank it away, but her cool, trembling fingers were surprisingly strong as she held him, and where her mouth and tongue touched, there was… icy relief. Pain ebbing swiftly.

There was a sort of glow down there, around her cheeks, as if her mouth was full of dancing blue moonlight that he'd be able to see when she lifted her head.

She did that, eyes very large and dark, and her mouth was briefly full of blue fire.

And Rod's hand tingled. The pain was gone. Gone with the cut and the blood. His fingers were bare, clean, and… whole.

She held them up for him to see better as he curled and flexed them in astonishment.

"Please aid us, Dark Lord," she murmured, the purr stronger and the sobbing sound almost gone. There was still pain in her face, but she seemed stronger, somehow.

She'd been strong enough to overbalance and pounce on him, that much was certain.

"Please. You are Falconfar's only hope, and my only hope, too."

Rod Everlar stared into those anxious, beautiful emerald eyes, and took a deep breath. He managed to sound fairly calm, he thought, as he asked, "Who are you? And what did you just do to me?"

"Lord Archwizard, I am Taeauna, Taeauna of the Aumrarr. I did nothing, 'twas your blood that healed me. And yourself, for you are of Falconfar as surely as I am."

Tay-awna. Taeauna of the Aumrarr, the winged women he'd thought up. Rod knew he was doing a lot of head shaking, but he just couldn't seem to stop finding reasons to do so. Falconfar?

The world he'd dreamed up. Or rather dreamed about, night after night, until the images had grown so vivid that he could recall them end-to-end upon awakening, and write them down.

Falconfar, that rolling land of vast forests and distant snow-tipped mountains where castles rose up from bare hilltops and warriors rode out to hunt stags. And magic worked. And monsters lurked.

Falconfar: a realm of wizards and dragons and the Aumrarr. Shaped by his imagination, his dreams. A place that wasn't real, couldn't be real, a world he'd copyrighted for God's sake, and written seven books about, and…

"Dark Lord?" Taeauna asked him, her impossibly white face within easy reach of his arm, its sheen of sweat shining in the moonlight. "You seem… angered. Mind-mazed. Please aid us. I–I am desperate."

Dark Lord. There was that phrase again. What was a Dark Lord? He knew what the Dark Helms were: Holdoncorp's creations, sinister villains, ruthless slayers in black armor. The Holdoncorp game designers had thought up many smaller mischiefs, too, but he knew about them. He knew all about Falconfar.

So what was a Dark Lord, and how had he become one?

He stared into the Aumrarr's gravely anxious gaze, and then around his room. The severed phone, the blood-soaked bed sheets, the sliced-off end of an armor strap that was dangling from Taeauna's shoulder to brush his own gut. He could feel its caress.

He wasn't dreaming. This was all real.

Or he was losing his mind.

His eyes fell to his wrinkled boxer shorts, covered with its familiar greeting of "Hello, Sexy!" as well as spatters of dark, wet blood that wasn't his own. Blood that shouldn't-couldn't-be there. But was.

"Suppose you tell me," he said carefully, "how I became a 'Dark Lord.' And what this evil is, that I've done. Uh, and who 'us' is, that I've done it to. And what you want of me."

The Aumrarr stared at him. "So it's true. One of the wizards has stolen your memories."

"Stolen my-?"

She flinched back from his shout as if he'd thrust one of those black swords right into her, and Rod swallowed whatever he'd been going to shout, waved an angry hand through the air between them as if to clear something aside, and snapped, "Explain. Please."

"Yes, Lord Archwizard," she agreed hastily, sliding sideways off him with more grace than he'd thought any gravely injured person would be able to manage. On her knees, shattered armor dangling from her, she began, "There are not many of us Aumrarr left, for Falconfar has grown darker. There are ever more Dark Helms, the wizards command fearsome beasts to prowl and strike at will, and…"

Rod found himself staring at Taeauna's front, bared almost down to her crotch. He'd seen her intestines spilling sickeningly out of a great gash, but that wound was now gone. Under a darkening smear of drying blood, her stomach was flat and whole.

"How did you…?" he blurted, gesturing almost helplessly at her.

Her eyes grew larger, and fear came back into her face.

"Have you forgotten everything, lord?" she whispered. "Your blood healed me, just as it healed you. You have that power. The wizards have lusted after it for as long as Falconaar can remember."

Rod frowned. "Falconaar? And my blood heals- why? Because I’m 'Lord Archwizard?' Or the 'Dark Lord?'"

Taeauna closed her eyes, sighed so hard she started to tremble again, and then opened them and said patiently, like a teacher instructing a child, "Your writings change Falconfar, and every sage and wizard knows it. We Aumrarr, whom you created, know it. There have been other writers, many others, before you, but their creations are now but dim shadows before the fire of your pen. Thousands upon thousands of people in this, your world, visit Falconfar in their dreams, and their dreaming gives us strength, too, but it is the scribes of this world that anchor and shape us, and you are the strongest of them all. So strong that we Falconaar, the people of Falconfar, call you the Lord Archwizard, where none have been so named before you."

Rod stared at her, and then looked across the room at the bookshelves he couldn't quite see in the gloom, picturing the row of seven books there, with their familiar, vivid covers, and… and he looked back at Taeauna, at this slender, blood-covered and very real woman kneeling in his bedroom, and forced himself to say, "You called me Dark Lord, too. What's this 'evil' I've done?"

"The rise of the Dark Helms," she whispered, sounding suddenly scared again. As if she expected him to hit her. "Ever more monsters, and the drifting spells that twist hares and stags and cattle into things of claws and fangs that come for us. 'Tis said you've gone mad, mad with power, or that the wizards have struck at your mind with their spells. Even the stones sprout fangs, so men dare not climb seeking mushrooms in the caves anymore."

The Mouths of Stone. More Holdoncorp mischief, like the Dark Helms. Almost all the monsters would be their work, too. In his books, a monster was met, fought, and killed. Only in the computer games did beasts sprout in endless numbers, springing up to menace no matter how fervently players slew them.

Rod looked toward the door and said something rude, spitting out the words slowly and deliberately. The room that held his computer-and the Holdoncorp games-was down a hallway beyond the door.

He'd hated what Holdoncorp had done to Falconfar, hated it enough to reverse and lessen some of their misdeeds in his later books, but their relentless rush to turn his quaint, cozy little world of forests and castles into a few enclaves of desperate knights trying to hold off Hitlerian hosts of marching Dark Helms had soured him on the whole world. Besides his dreams and the odd entry in his notebook, these days he seldom thought or wrote about Falconfar. He'd gone back to the grim-jawed thrillers of spies and missiles and gunfire in the night that sold so head-shakingly well, and…

"Lord?" that soft, purring voice came again, hesitantly. "I came seeking you because we need you. Falconfar needs you. If you turn me away now, the darkness will soon drown us all."

Rod stared almost helplessly at the woman kneeling before him in her slashed and bloody armor. "I… Taeauna, I'm having a hard time believing any of this. I mean…"

He waved empty hands, clawing the air as if he could snatch some sort of answer out of it, but didn't really expect to. Then he started to say more, but knew not what, and settled for shaking his head in helpless dismissal.

Falconfar darkening, just like the real world around him. Society ever grimmer, lawsuits and terrorism and pollution, dire warnings of oil and everything else running out…

Falconfar had been his dream of what he wanted to see. What his dreams showed him, over and over again, bright and beautiful. Glorious skies of magnificent dawns and sunsets above fairytale castles that crowned grassy heights among vast, rolling forests, dragons flying lazily by at a safe distance…

He stared at the woman on her knees before him. Those emerald eyes, grave and anxious, never left him.

Taeauna, she'd called herself. Taeauna of the Aumrarr. She was slender, graceful, and probably taller than he was if she stood up, even without her wings. He'd felt her weight, her touch, even had her blood on him. Right now-he glanced down-it was drying, dark and sticky, on his legs and his underwear. He could smell her. She was real. Falconfar was real.

And suddenly, Rod Everlar very much wanted to see those castles, bright in the morning. And gold at sunset, as soft purple dusk stole in over battlements, and torches and lanterns were lit.

He didn't much want to see Dark Helms, or meet an angry dragon or wizard, but wasn't he a wizard, by Taeauna's reckoning? Couldn't he change things with a wave of his hand?

Christ, he must be going crazy.

He shook his head again, turning away, but those castles wouldn't go out of his mind.

Falconfar.

What if it was real?

Rod realized his heart was leaping with eager excitement, like when he was young and looked forward to Christmases and camps… and girls. Before he'd discovered just how cruel real women could be.

"Taeauna," he began slowly, starting to turn around again. And swallowing.

He wanted to see Falconfar for himself more than he'd ever wanted anything before.

And he was suddenly afraid this was a dream, and he'd turn and find his bedroom dark and empty, with no blood and no Taeauna. And he'd still be alone.

As alone as he'd been for so many years now, with his family and close friends all dead, losing himself in his writing, laughter and companionship something glimpsed only in books and romantic movies.

Green eyes caught and held his, and snared his breath as well.

Almost angrily he looked away from her, at the bed. Still swimming in blood. Christ, he'd be in trouble if anyone got in here and saw that.

So much blood. He shook his head and peered more closely at Taeauna. Her severed wings, of course, were still missing. "You're sure you're healed? Completely?"

She shrugged, and it was the easy movement of one who feels no great pain. "I feel well enough, lord. Your blood is pure power."

Rod smiled incredulously. "Will it work on me, too?"

"In Falconfar, any wounds that befall you will swiftly heal," the Aumrarr replied, leaning forward with her eyes shining in sudden hope, "but in this world, the swords of the Dark Helms can slay you easily."

As if her words had been a signal, there came a deafening clash of cymbals.

Rod was staggering dazedly back before he realized that the ringing shriek had been made by his bedroom window, bursting into the room in a shattering spray of shards, driven by a thrusting black-bladed sword!

Taeauna ducked under its point as swiftly as a striking snake, to snatch her dagger from the bed.

Rod shouted wordless fear as more windows broke somewhere down the hall. Black-helmed knights were hacking at his window frame, trying to chop the muntins aside so they would have room enough to climb in.

"They mean to slay us both, lord!" Taeauna shouted from beside the bed. "We must hie to Falconfar!"

Rod gaped at her. His taxes were due, and on Monday his editor was sure to call, and…

"I can't!" he started to shout, as there came a splintering crash from the far end of the house, and Taeauna bounded up from the floor, shattered armor clanging. A forest of black blades reached vainly for her amid snarls of anger, and gauntleted fists beat at the windowsill.

"Lord, we must, or we'll die!" She clutched his upper arms fiercely, her fingers like claws, and those emerald eyes blazed into his. "Falconfar needs you!"

Booted feet were thundering, far down the hall. Rod looked helplessly at the doorway, and then at a Dark Helm trying to climb through his missing window, armored shoulders splintering and gouging a way through the frame, and shouted, "How?"

Taeauna's smile was like a flame. "Open a dream-gate, as we did to get me here! Think of one place in Falconfar just as hard as you can. See it, dwell on what you see and feel and smell, and keep on doing that, no matter what the Dark Helms do!"

And she whirled away from him to snatch a bookshelf too heavy for him to budge away from the wall, and flung it to the floor. It crashed down, books spilling in a thunderous wave, just as the first Dark Helm raced through the doorway. Tripping on the flood of toppled books, the black knight staggered and stumbled, and Taeauna was on him like a pouncing cat, driving her dagger through the slit in his visor and wrenching his sword out of one massive gauntlet almost in one motion.

Rod's bed cracked under the hard-booted landing of the first Dark Helm through the window. Taeauna whirled around, her gaze like green flames, and shouted, "Close your eyes, lord! Watch not me, but see Falconfar!"

There was a second black knight in the hall, and a third, but Rod shut his eyes and thought of his favorite castle, thrusting up into the morning sky atop its grassy hill. The one with the great gnarled trees shading the winding lane that led up to it, to where tall, silver-armored knights with long war-horns in their hands stood guard in the sunlight, gazing out over a peaceful valley…

There were crashes, and the loud skirl and clang of steel ringing on steel very close by. Rod heard Taeauna grunt with effort, and then there was a ringing crash, the clanging thud of someone in armor falling heavily, and the skitter of glass sliding underfoot.

He was just about to open his eyes, expecting a black blade to come racing at him, when the Aumrarr laughed merrily just beside his ear, and cried, "For Falconfar!"

Blue-edged silver fire suddenly flickered around him, and the scene of the castle seemed to rush up larger and brighter before him. "Hollowtree Keep!" Taeauna said delightedly.."Lord, take us there!"

And her arms were around him, a sharp edge of armor clawing at Rod's bare shoulder and the blood-and-sweat scent of Taeauna all around him. The light at the edges of his vision was more blue than silver now, and a hurrying wind was roaring through leaves. Trying to ignore everything else, Rod peered hard at the castle gates-where the knights were now standing up, and looking in his direction.

Suddenly he was stumbling and staggering, barefoot in the dusty lane, stubbing his foot on a tree root and almost falling, with Taeauna laughingly holding him up. The wind in his face smelled of cow dung and green, growing things, and the bright knell of a war-horn rose into the air.

And behind him, where it was darker, half a dozen black blades crashed together in the empty air of Rod Everlar's bedroom, where he and Taeauna had been standing moments before.