Dark Lord

CHAPTER TWENTY

I can't believe this!" Garfist Gulkoon said I delightedly, launching himself into a slide.

Shining gold coins parted in two waves before his ample chest as he came slithering down the highest of the bright, golden hills that filled the little room, in a cascade of gleaming wealth, to fetch up against the back wall beside Iskarra in a prolonged and hissing crash. "Bright fancy-tales often talk of rooms full of gold, but this is real!"

"Nice it is, to know your wits still work, Gar, if slowly," his longtime partner replied bitingly, parting the little belly and striking breasts her reunited crawlskin had given her, and raking handfuls of coins inside. "Everyone has to keep their coins somewhere, and this wizard obviously has too many to fit them all into boot heels and moneybelts. I presume you've refilled yours?"

"Uh, well… no," the fat man frowned, settling himself beside her.

"Why not? 1 don't recall you strolling nonchalantly out of a home you'd just plundered all that often. I do recall you running for your life, many a time, with breath running short and swords slicing at your backside. Not much time for picking up coins then, aye?"

"All right, aye, right ye are," Garfist growled, scooping up coins and starting to kick his boots off. Iskarra wrinkled her nose at the smell.

"Right as ye always are, Isk," he added grudgingly, scooping out a leather insole to get at the hollow heel from within. "But can ye believe this? I mean, all this gold, and he just leaves it in an unlocked, unguarded room!"

"Shows you how much gold matters to him, aye? Gar, he rules Galath, even if he doesn't wear the crown. Where the rest of us have to pay for everything, he just takes what he wants. So what's gold to him? And, look you, I'm not so sure 'tis as unguarded as all that; we walked in easily enough, but we haven't tried to get out yet."

Garfist frowned. "This is a trap, ye mean?"

"This is a wizard's tower, I mean. So 'tis full of magic, see? So every second stone in the wall could hurl itself at us or turn into a stabbing sword or fall away to let out some sort of guardian like that armor we watched come together. If you can work that with spells, it seems to me it'd be simple enough for you to make a spell that unleashes a guard like that when a gold coin from this room goes past you, except in the wizard's purse! Or just 'past you,' and he uses some secret way in and out we haven't found yet. There still seems to be fighting going on, so let's bide here a little while. Mayhap someone'll kill the wizard for us!"

"Ye really think so?"

"No, but I'm tired, Gar. Tired of running about. I wouldn't mind a little lounging around on heaps of gold. A little while, only." Iskarra stirred the coins beside her with a bony fingertip. "Something to tell your children about."

"Viper," Garfist growled, "I'm hardly likely to have any brats now, after all the years of-hem- dalliance afore I paired with thee, when I fathered none."

Iskarra gave him a look.

"What? I fathered no brats!"

Iskarra's look didn't change.

Garfist stared at her. "I did?"

Her nod was slow but definite. "Your pander-lasses grew not round with child from the herbs they ate, not from any failing of your seed. Those merchants in Torond, and Srelkar? Their daughters didn't know about those herbs."

"So that's why they've tried to have me downed so many times, for so long," Garfist muttered. "Fart of the Falcon!"

He shook his head and added softly, "Glorking world. So I've sons and daughters, hey?"

"Daughters only, that I know of. Quite a number. They're who I send those clay jugs I make to, with all the fictitious births scratched on them. Handy custom, birthing jugs; make the bases thick enough, and you can hide a dozen-some coins in the clay, with no one the wiser."

Garfist was starting to look aghast.

"Oh, aye," Iskarra told him. "I send them all coins on your behalf, when we have any to spare."

Garfist snorted. "As if we ever do! Why, Viper mine, if we'd coins to spare, we'd not have to still be running about thieving and swindling and hacking at folk. We could be-"

"Sitting on our backsides drinking ourselves into graves, in some fine keep in the forest? Lord and lady of a handful of muddy farms? Would you really sit still for that, Gar? Longer than, say, six nights, or however long it took you to bed all the good-looking lasses, and all the rest of us females who gave you sharp words and scorn? Tell truth, now!"

"Truth?" Garfist turned a face to her that was both earnest and solemn, and said, "Isk, there was a time as I'd not have stopped running or fighting for anyone or anything. But my bones ache, now, and my wind comes hard, and betimes I dream of a Falconfar where no one spends their time stealing or swinging swords as a profession, and there's food enough for all. Wouldn't that be a world, now!"

They stared into each other's eyes for a long, silent time before his face changed, and he burst out laughing. "Nah! Never happen! Never happen!"

A sudden thunder arose all around them, the clamour and din of many large and heavy creatures moving in haste. From rooms all around them it came, a rushing in one direction that went on and on.

Looking over the heaped coins and out the door of the room, they could just see, in the passage beyond, a motley army of flying lorn, running Dark Helms, and all manner of lumbering monsters, strange metal automatons with blades or pincers for hands and wheels as well as feet. All rushing past as Iskarra and Garfist cowered down together, slowly going pale at the thought of trying to fight past so many guardians.

Coins slid noisily as they trembled, and a metal helm as large as Garfist's middle thrust through the doorway, peering.

Garfist and Iskarra closed their eyes and stayed as still as they could, barely daring to breathe. No man was ever so tall and broad, and no man snuffled so loudly and wetly as it sniffed the air for the scent of humans, but whatever sort of beast it was wore oversized armor of the same design as the Dark Helms.

It seemed like a heavy-booted, hastening eternity to the cowering pair before it snorted in disgust and was gone, joining the headlong hurry.

"Falcon spew!" Garfist hissed. "'Tis coming back, after, to seek us out. I know 'tis! It snorted just as night-wolves do, when they do that. What're we going to do?"

"Stop mewling and dig," Iskarra snapped. "Down right here, down the wall, and see if this room has a door in it like the last three did; the row of empty ones, remember? Then see where it leads."

Nodding like a fool, the panicked ex-pirate elbowed her aside and started scrabbling in the coins, clawing them aside with his hands like a child in a frenzy to recover a favorite lost and buried toy. Almost immediately he let out a shout of triumph, and dug even faster.

"Careful, idiot!" Iskarra snapped. "Bury yourself headfirst and the coins will kill you, never mind about monsters coming back for us. They slide, look you. And if that door opens into this room, forget it! We'll never thrust it open against the weight of all of these."

"Doesn't," Garfist panted, disappearing rapidly deeper amid all the sliding wealth. His ample behind and two well-worn boots were all she could still see of him now; her warnings might just as well have been given to a stone wall.

Garfist managed to do something, and the half-revealed door burst open, away from them, shoved by an enthusiastic flood of coins. With a wordless roar of triumph Gar rode them through the doorway and into-

A sudden, raging glow of magic, roiling up bright and purple.

"Oh, Falcon!" Iskarra cursed wearily. "Where now?"

The gate-magic had already swallowed Garfist, so she shrugged, raked a huge armful of coins down her bodice and grabbed two fistfuls more, kicked off, and slid after him.

Into softly falling mists of blinding brightness, through which she tumbled, so gently that not a coin strayed out past her throat, to…

A hard stone floor somewhere, where she bounced, coins bounding in all directions, some already rolling or clink-slithering, with Garfist rolling over ahead of her with a frown on his face, feeling for his handiest weapon.

They were in a turret room, high in a castle, with disbelieving warriors frowning at them and dropping jaws at all the gold coins that had accompanied them. Grim warriors with crossbows in their arms, standing at windows ready to use them.

A face or two among them looked a little familiar. As another handful of gold coins bounced and rolled out of the front of her ragged garb, Iskarra struggled to her feet, heart sinking, and gasped, "We come in peace! What castle is this?"

"Bowrock," one warrior snarled, bringing his bow around to aim at her breast, so close that the point of its quarrel almost grazed her slight bosom. "Are you wizards?"

"Do we look like wizards?" Garfist demanded sourly from the floor, where he'd paused, quite suddenly, at the appearance of two crossbows thrust right into his face.

"Bowrock," Iskarra groaned. "Is the siege-?"

"Well underway," a warrior told them sourly. "'Raging,' as the minstrels like to say. Look out this window, and you'll see the massed armies of Galath ranged around our walls."

Garfist and Iskarra didn't wait to do that before they began to really curse.

"We cannot prevail against so many!" Taeauna shouted. "Run!"

She caught hold of Rod's arm and raced to the nearest gate, moving so swiftly that even at a dead run, he found himself being dragged the last few strides.

And then shoved into the glowing mists, without pause or word; the tumult of roaring monsters, Taeauna's cry of alarm, and Deldragon's snarled defiance all chopped off abruptly.

"Die, witless warrior!" Lorlarra snarled, twisting a helm in a brutal, ruthless jerk. She felt the man's neck break more than she heard it, and let go, to bat aside a slicing sword and snatch at the next Helm, her dark armor trailing a tangle of slashed straps and plates.

"Slay them, sisters!" scarred Juskra cried, from the other side of the dell. "Slay them all!"

Ambrelle soared into view, large and severe, purple-black hair streaming.

The dozen-some Dark Helms in the dell were crying out in real fear, now. As they turned to offer her raised swords and brandished spears, the youngest of the four Aumrarr swooped in from behind them. As she passed over the warriors, Dauntra rang her mace off a row of Helms as if she were at an anvil, in a great hurry to hammer a shield back into shape.

Seven Dark Helms fell as one, and Juskra whooped in delight.

Lorn were swooping, talons out. Taeauna's back was unprotected, all her will and effort bent on shoving the Shaper through the gate, so Deldragon stroked his flaxen mustache, set his jaw, and stepped in front of her, daggers raised.

"I never wanted to be a hero," he told the lorn calmly through the din of racing monsters and automatons. "I just wanted to do the right thing. For Galath, and for Falconfar. And if that makes me a hero, that's a sad thing, for it means most Falconaar don't want to do the right th-"

His words ended in a grunt of pain, as two lorn smashed aside his daggers and the arms that held them, his bones shattering, to drive their talons deep into his chest. They'd been aiming for his throat, but-Falcon, the pain! — it didn't matter much, did it? Throat or chest, he'd protected the Shaper and the Aumrarr, and now he was dying.

He hadn't expected to fall so swiftly, though. His heart seemed to thunder in his ears as Taeauna turned and saw him. Anguish twisted her face as she reached for him.

"Come!" she cried. "Lord Rod can heal you again! Come!"

But something bat-winged and long-jawed was hurtling right at her, and Deldragon fought his way to his feet, arms flailing, stumbling, and thrust her away, back into the grip of the mists. The glow belled out, reaching for her, and he managed to hiss hoarsely, instead of the gallant farewell he'd intended, "Go! Go and save Falconfar!"

Then the bat-winged monster slammed into the velduke and he was gone, one open and reaching hand the last she saw of him as she stared in horror-and the gate-magic whirled her away.

"Well," the hard-faced commander snapped, "that glorking well looked like magic to me! Empty air one moment, then the pair of you whom I've never seen before, in Bowrock, standing here the next!"

He waved his hand around the small turret room, with its cots and lanterns and chests of smoked fish and cheese. "Look you; do you see a door anywhere here, that we somehow haven't noticed yet? Or figured out a clever enough lie as to what it could possibly open into, the other side of yon wall, that isn't empty air and a long, killing fall down onto the butcher Ulkorth's back shed? Hmm? And if there's no hidden door, only one thing brought the two of you here: magic."

Iskarra put her foot down on Garfist's, hard, to quell the angry rumble that meant he was about to say something imprudent.

"Of course it was magic, lord," she said soothingly. "We deny that not. Yet not our magic. We were prisoners in Ult Tower, and managed to get free when some wizard or other attacked the Doom of Galath, and they started fighting with spells. Blowing the place apart! That's where all these coins came from; we scooped them as we ran."

"So every last one of them could have a spell on it, just waiting to go off, or could turn into a Dark Helm the moment our backs are turned," the commander snarled. The warriors crowded behind him, blocking the turret room's only door, muttered in grim agreement.

"Hold on, now!" Garfist growled, waving one hairy hand. "You-"

His words ended in an "eeep!" as Iskarra's fingers thrust daggerlike into his breeches, driving his unlaced codpiece, beneath, sharply sideways into something tender. More than one warrior of Bowrock chuckled, and a few winced.

"Lord," Iskarra said firmly, "I will be happy, if it wins us both a safe place among you-a place to die fighting here on the walls beside you, if things go darkly-to yield up all our coins into your keeping. If you put them in yonder fish-chest, and set the chest out on the walls where we can all watch it, surely if it bursts apart when the coins turn into scores of Dark Helms, they'll be hurled right off the walls, down onto the heads of those besieging you, yes?"

The commander stared at her in silent thoughtfulness, and Iskarra added firmly, "If we live through this, we can all share the gold. I promise this. Hear me, everyone? Yet, lord, heed me: if I were one of the warriors standing behind you, and I heard my commander say something about there being magic on my pay-coins, and then try to take them, I'd wonder just what else he was going to try. If you take my meaning."

She fell silent to give the warriors time to mutter. They obliged.

"So," Iskarra asked, "do we all share? Or will you try to sword us, and discover just what other magic we may have picked up in that tower?"

The man's eyes narrowed, and she added quickly, "Magic that guards us as we sleep, that will be unleashed in an instant if you harm us, and that you'll never find."

"You're pretty rauthgulling clever, aren't you?" the commander asked darkly.

"That she is," Garfist growled mournfully. "That she is."

His long-suffering tone roused more chuckles from behind the commander. Who scowled, feeling the weight of his men's regard, then lifted his jaw toward Iskarra as if it were a weapon, and snapped, "You've just told me you both carry magic that can harm us. So I'll need you both down on your backs on the floor, arms and legs spread wide. Bared swords will be held across your throats, and two men with ready bows will stand over each of you, until one of Lord Deldragon's hired wizards inspects you. You agree to this, now, or I'll have my men empty their bows into you both, and all the gold will be ours regardless."

"Inspect us for what?"

"What magic you're carrying, and if you're wizards yourselves."

"And if we're not? Is my offer then acceptable? Your men are listening."

The commander stared into her eyes, and she stared right back into his, as silence fell and deepened. Not a man spoke, or even coughed.

"Your offer is acceptable," the commander snapped, at last, and there was a brief, hastily stifled cheer from behind him.

"Then," Iskarra said sharply, her voice snatching all eyes and attention back onto her, "we shall do as you say."

She calmly unlaced her bodice and pulled her clothing down, baring herself to her waist as a shower of gold coins bounced around her feet, and warriors of Bowrock stared and swallowed.

Her arms and hands were bony, wrinkled, and age-spotted, but her torso and breasts were smooth, unblemished, and magnificent. And aside from an assortment of daggers sheathed here and there on her arms which she slowly and almost contemptuously drew and flung to the floor out of reach, one by one, it was clear she wasn't hiding more coins, or any visible magic, anywhere above her waist.

Iskarra gave the watching warriors a pleasant smile, and said, "Give them the gold, Gar. All of it. Yes, what's in your boots, too."

He stared at her, and then started emptying. More gold cascaded. Then more.

And then, as the watching warriors started to chuckle, even more. By the time he tipped out his codpiece, they were roaring with laughter.

Iskarra watched as her stout partner hopped about, emptying one boot and then the other. He managed to wink in the midst of it all, so briefly she was sure only she saw, to signal to her that he remembered the huge weight of coins still hidden inside her false, crawlskin-endowed belly and breasts. She smiled, and when he was done looked at the commander, hands on hips.

"If you'd like to blindfold us both, so we can't see anyone to cast spells," she said sweetly, "I'll lie down here and taste that swordblade, unless you'd like to examine me further for coins and magic?" She started to undo the belt of her breeches.

Face flaming, the commander said quickly, "That won't be necessary. None of it. Get dressed, woman."

"My name," Iskarra said softly, "is Iskarra. Lord Deldragon, who knows me personally, can vouch for that."

It was the commander's turn to wince.

Only a handful of Dark Helms were still standing; the dell was strewn with the sprawled dead and the downed, faintly groaning wounded. The four Aumrarr were flying around them in a gleeful ring, as they stood huddled back-to-back, swords raised grimly, knowing they were about to die.

"You!" one of them spat at Dauntra, as she swooped close. "Without your wings, you little minx, you'd be on your back in my bed, moaning for my loving! And I'd have my hands around those magnificent-"

"These?" the stunningly beautiful Aumrarr asked eagerly, yielding promise in her large, dancing brown eyes. Striking his sword aside with her own, Dauntra rammed her bosom into his helm, slamming him back against his fellows and sending their reaching blades wild as they fought for balance.

"Well, why don't you?" She caught hold of his helm, planted her boots on two adjacent shoulders, and beat her wings once, good and hard, soaring up into the air with the terrified man shrieking as his own weight slowly tore hair and then an ear off his head, as the helm came off. He caught hold of it with desperately clawing fingers an instant before he would have fallen back atop all the waving swords of his fellows.

"All talk and swagger," Dauntra sneered, flying higher. "Just like all the rest of-"

Something struck her, then. Something silent, that came racing through the air like a vast, invisible wave. Magic, a great unleashing, from… she turned toward where that wave had come from, catching the eyes of Lorlarra, Juskra, and Ambrelle, as they all flew up from the Dark Helms they'd been slaughtering. They, too, turned in the direction of… What lay in just that direction from here?

Ult Tower. Arlaghaun's, now; that lone, distant elder fortress.

"Something's happening, sisters," Dauntra said unnecessarily.

"Something big," Juskra agreed, scratching at her bandages. "I wonder if Oh-So-High-And-Mighty Arlaghaun's grip on Galath is slipping, at last?"

"Come on, sisters mine," Ambrelle said severely, tossing back her purple-black hair as she beat her powerful wings, soaring upwards.

The three younger Aumrarr mounted up into the sky in her wake, the Dark Helm in Dauntra's grip yelling in fear as he saw how high up he was being taken.

"Oh," she said to him, gently and courteously, "I am sorry."

And she let go.

His dying scream hadn't a chance even to get properly going before it ended in a heavy thud. On rocks. Ah, well. It was high time Dark Helms in Galath had a bad day. Or six.

Grinning ruthlessly, the four Aumrarr shook out their wings, put their faces into the wind, and streaked off across the sky.

As she fell out of bright mists, there came a joyful cry from near at hand.

"Tay!" Rod greeted her joyfully, embracing her. "Where's Deldragon?"

Arms tightening around him, Taeauna burst into tears.

"Oh," Rod said, feeling suddenly sick. "Oh, God."

Awkwardly, he tried to comfort her, to stroke her back, only to bump his hands against the stumps of her wings and abruptly abandon the attempt in confusion.

Taeauna's grip was so tight he could barely breathe, and when she rocked back and forth in her sobbings, she took him off his feet on the "back" and slammed him back down on the "forth" as effortlessly as if he'd been one of those cardboard cutouts of people set up in a video rental store. Jesus. Jesus shitting Christ. Or, glorking, wasn't that what Falconaar said? Jesus glorking Christ?

Glorking, indeed. There was a tall black castle right behind Taeauna. Rod lifted his head to look. In a forest, with the nearest trees all dead and bare.

Oh, shit.

A huge, square, massive fortress of stone, with four bulging turrets at its corners, one of them soaring above the rest like a huge black rocket ship. It ended in a needle-pointed spire high, high above them, looking from down here as if it were scratching the tattered white clouds.

"Yintaerghast," he said quietly, and felt Taeauna stiffen in his arms and then turn in his grasp like an angry whirlwind, to stare and then start to curse.

Which was when the air around them glowed, sang, and formed a lattice-work of what looked like massive prison bars, or some sort of large cage for elephants or dragons or the like, and…

Was gone again, the singing dwindling into wild, high shrieking, like someone slashing harp strings with a sword.

Not too far away, someone else spat out an astonished curse.

Rod and Taeauna turned to see who, in time to see the wizard Arlaghaun finish a second spell with a triumphant flourish, his brown eyes blazing, and point at both of them.

Aside from a brief crackling in the air around those two pointing fingers, nothing happened.

"So…" Arlaghaun hissed slowly, glaring at Rod. "You must be the Dark Lord! Well, there's another way…"

The brown flames of his eyes seemed to glow brighter and grow larger. Taeauna's mouth tightened and she drew back her sword to hurl, but Rod grabbed at her wrist. "We'll be needing that. What if he turns it back at us like some sort of arrow?"

The crackling seemed to be inside Rod's head this time, those two angry brown eyes hanging in the middle of his head like glaring dagger-points. Infuriating, violating, but… fading now, into futility.

"Lord Rod?" Taeauna murmured, still clinging to him.

"Yes?"

"Ah. You're still 'you.' Another spell fails."

The anger on Arlaghaun's sharp-nosed face was open and ugly, now.

"So much for ruling your mind," Taeauna said in Rod's ear. "It seems, in Falconfar, you are immune to most-perhaps all-magic."

"So it seems, indeed," the wizard' sneered, and waved his hand.

Behind him, lorn by the hundreds rose from the trees. Without pause, all of them swooped at Rod and Taeauna.

The Aumrarr spun around, tugging Rod with her. "Into the castle!" she cried. "It's our only escape!"

Rod needed no convincing. He put down his head and sprinted across the open sward, managing to run almost as fast as Taeauna.

A shadow fell across them, her shapely behind in front of his right arm turned and flexed, her sword swept up, and he swerved and slowed, to give her room to twist around and hack lorn.

"Keep running!" she shouted into his face, then grunted fiercely as her blade cut deep into a swooping lorn.

Rod heard them crash to the ground together and roll. He kept running.

Behind him Taeauna sobbed for breath, amid the wet and meaty sounds of her sword hacking flesh. When she cursed, a breath later, she sounded closer. Then, abruptly, Rod was plunging through the open castle door into cold gloom beyond.

His racing feet slipped on debris, leaving Rod gliding helplessly across a slick marble floor. Was it gravel? Fallen plaster? Did they have plaster in Falconfar? He slid for a long way before his right foot went out from under him and he crashed down on his backside, coming to a slow and groaning stop amid much dust.

"Tay?" he coughed, wincing, as he rolled over and up to his knees. "Taeauna?"

He was kneeling in the dimness of a huge, high hall, the open door a window of bright sunlight, and he was alone.

"Taeauna?" he fought his way to his feet and into a slipping, arm-flailing run, back across the great open expanse of rubble-strewn marble to the door.

To blink at the sunlight, and no sign of Taeauna at all, only the wizard Arlaghaun standing triumphantly, arms folded across his chest, with a sky full of wheeling lorn behind him.

Lorn that came rushing down at Rod, diving with talons spread, six-no, seven-no, nine- converging on him.

In sudden terror he tugged at the half-open door, trying to get it closed before they plunged through. It was thrice his height, as thick as he was, and looked as if it hadn't moved in centuries. It moved not for him, feeling as firm as fused stone against his struggles.

Lorn loomed, sunlight blotted out behind them, and Rod turned and fled, tears stinging his eyes.

Tay was gone, taken or torn apart, and he was alone.

Alone in Falconfar, its so-called Dark Lord… Powerless, knowing nothing, and fleeing alone into a haunted castle.

He was not going up the stairs, not going to meet that faceless old man in the chair. He refused to be herded, or to be slain, or to wind up in some chamber with a scepter in a stone that he was supposed to draw forth and hear angelic choirs singing that he was the new Lord Archwizard; or worse yet, the old, old one returned! No, he would not allow any of this to happen!

Rod ran past the stairs going up, and another flight that went down into utter darkness, and through archways into a labyrinth of crumbling, once-grand chambers beyond.

He wasn't quite sure why castles always had these high, echoing rooms, big and cold and seemingly used for nothing more than rushing through like some airport or train station, but they always did.

This wasn't his castle, not something he'd created or written about, but it had been in one of the first Holdoncorp games, back when he eagerly read and reviewed everything they sent him. In the early days, when they'd still bothered to send him things for review. Before he'd realized they ignored his comments and criticisms, despite the contract. Back then, the Dark Helms had been skeletons in black armor, commanded by animated empty suits of black plate armor that had a few showy, menacing magical powers.

In that early game, Yintaerghast had been a vast ruin for players to send their characters into, exploring. They were supposed to kill a few monsters, find a little treasure, and… Oh, yes, try to find a way back out again.

Well, that wouldn't be a problem for him; there was always the front door just a few rooms back that way, standing stuck open, so… Wait a bit, though, there'd been something more.

Something that would explain why no lorn were clawing at him right now, or flying all around these rooms like great bats, and why Arlaghaun wasn't standing gloating over him right now, too.

Rod stopped in a hall where ornate, high-backed loungers had collapsed into heaps of gilded half-wreckage and dust. He had to think, and try to stop panting, and try very hard not to cry.

If Taeauna was gone, she was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing left for him to care about.

There was nothing left for him at all.

He might just as well draw the dagger at his belt and kill himself. If he could, that is, since he was in a world where he healed in mere moments.

Rod shrugged. He'd never liked pain, and lying there enduring it seemed pointless. Not to mention something that Taeauna would have been openly contemptuous of. God, he missed her tart comments and angry snaps at him!

He tried to laugh at that, but it came out as sobs.

His hand went to his dagger.

The wizard with the blazing brown eyes pointed his sharp nose up into the sky and raised his voice, just a little. "You will stay. If he seeks to come out, keep hidden and let him get a little way from the castle, so he can't run back in time. Then pounce and capture him. If he gets away, all of you-mark me well: every last lorn now here-will pay for it with your lives, and your deaths will not be swift."

Arlaghaun waited for the lorn encircling him to bow their heads in assent. When all of them had, including the oldest and largest, who commanded the rest, he turned, took a step, and vanished.

Lorn hissed in hatred and distaste, and glared at the spot where he'd stood.

"Patience," the oldest, most battered one-the one whose hide was going purple and not just mottled brown-said to the others, as he turned away. "There will come a day. Oh, yes, there will come a day…"

When he became aware, of the dark, chill room around him again, Rod Everlar knew a lot of time had passed.

He felt… empty. Cried out. He lifted his head to look around, and was instantly aware of two things: something had moved, somewhere in the room, and he remembered something else about Yintaerghast; some Holdoncorp designer who wanted a test of brawn and wits had come up with a story for the castle that made it a prison and robbed those inside of magic.

It was shrouded, or shielded, in some mighty spell laid by a long-dead wizard that twisted the minds of all living creatures who entered the castle. That'd be this Lorontar mage Tay had mentioned; was he the man in the chair, upstairs?

It stripped away all their knowledge of magic: forever? Or just while they were inside? Well, either way, that'd be why Arlaghaun, and all wizards, would dare not enter…

Yes! It took away any magic at work on anyone, so wizards couldn't magically force some poor servant critter inside and expect it to go on obeying them the moment it was through the door.

Then there was that last bit, the prison bit. Well, he could test that himself, right now. All he had to do was find a window.

Apparently, the spell would make all the castle's empty windows look out into a swirling void that didn't allow anyone to leap, fall, fly, or climb out; those who tried just got thrust right back in. Or would that work on him, the immune Dark Lord?

If it did, he might be able to kill himself here, after all.

He'd been turning on his heel, hand on dagger and peering hard, all the time he'd been thinking these thoughts. Seeking any sign of whatever it was that had moved. He was still looking.

He'd looked up, too-twice-in case something was lurking overhead, but the lofty stone ceiling offered nothing more than a peeled, ruined painting and inky black tatters of cobwebs. Motionless tatters.

Rod drew his dagger and started to prowl the room, walking behind the heaps of ruined furniture. Whatever he'd seen, or thought he'd seen, it had been higher than floor level, but of course someone could crouch down.

Or some thing…

Something moved again, in the corner of his eye. Rod whirled around to peer at the shadows there. Nothing.

Angrily he strode in that direction, then abruptly spun all the way around again, hoping to catch something, even if only fleetingly, at the edge of his vision, again.

Again, nothing. There was nothing but the darkness.

Yet he didn't feel alone in the room. He looked around again, walking into the two darkest corners, one after the other, and finding… nothing.

So, was he keeping company with something invisible? Either a monster or some ghost of the castle or… "Well, who'd just gone missing?

"Taeauna?" he asked, trying to make his voice sound calm, as if he were just casually interested. And certainly not afraid.

There was, of course, no reply.

Shit, he could stand here forever! Enough of this foolishness. Stride out of the room, then turn to see if anything followed. If it didn't, all the better, and if it did, he'd at least be facing it and could get this over with. Now, there was the arch he'd come in through, so wide it took up almost one entire side of the room. There was a smaller arch in yonder wall, and a closed door in the center of that wall; the first normal-sized door he'd seen in Yintaerghast thus far.

So, which?

Back out the way he'd come, for now, Rod decided instantly. He'd best look around all the large, open rooms on the ground floor first, before he started going through any doors, and ended up lost.

There was no hurry, after all. He wasn't going anywhere fast, because he didn't dare step out into the forest at night, and by day, well, there were no doubt lots of lorn perched in the trees all around, ordered to stay and wait for him to emerge.

Rod cast a last look all around the room and made for the door, dagger held ready. If there was one thing he had left to do, it was to find that wizard and kill him for what he'd done to Taeauna. It wasn't as if somehow he could find his way back home, to the real world, since he hadn't the faintest flipping idea of how to even begin doing that.

It had to be him, this Arlaghaun the Doom of Galath, who'd done something to Tay.

Rod got to the door, whirled around one last time to look at the usual nothing, and froze.

There was something, all right. About a dozen feet away from him, and drifting silently closer.

A black cloak, with a cowl, hanging in the air in the shape it would have if someone were wearing it, the cloak on their shoulders and their head looking right at him as they wore that hood up over it.

Rod swallowed. Icy fear? Oh, yeah…

He knew the dagger in his hand was trembling as he raised it, point thrust right at the thing.

Its slow, steady drift toward him didn't slow.

"W-who are you?" Rod asked, trying to sound calm but firm. Even in his own ears, his voice came out like a young child's high, shrill squeak.

There was no reply from the empty cowl, as the silent thing moved menacingly forward, rising a little as if to engulf him.