Dark Lord

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was taller than he was, now, and as dark as deep night, looming over him, and flowing soundlessly forward. Swift-rising fear took Rod a step hack from it, and then another, before he swallowed and deliberately stepped forward again. Right into it.

He felt a moment of intense chill. Then there was a sort of sigh, all around him, and he was blinking around at the gloom of the chamber again. The cloak was… gone.

Rod whirled around to see if it had just passed through him, like the sort of ghost that lurked in older movies. In doing so-to find that it hadn't- his gaze dropped down long enough to see the last of its darkness fading away into nothingness, in a ring around his legs. He shivered again. Gods, he felt cold.

Had it… gone into him? Infused him, somehow, with its essence, to poison him or eat him away, or control or just wreck his mind?

Dared he even think such thoughts, if he was the Shaper of Falconfar? Did his thinking of something make it real, or at least more likely?

"Oh, shit," he snapped, exasperated. No Taeauna was standing nigh his shoulder to answer him.

And suddenly he was in tears all over again.

Ult Tower loomed up, vast and tall. Though they were heading for its upper windows, they did not expect to find it unguarded.

They were not disappointed.

The lorn burst out of the window at them, talons reaching for Dauntra's head. The Aumrarr caught hold of one of its feet, then folded her wings upwards and together, becoming in an instant a teardrop plunging to earth. The lorn was jerked helplessly after her. Then Juskra caught hold of its other foot as she swooped past, folding the creature over onto its back. Lorlarra and Ambrelle's boots struck the lorn in this awkward position, diving as fast as they could.

The lorn's spine shattered even before its body was broken around the lip of another, lower window. Dauntra flung it aside so her sisters could streak past, into Ult Tower.

"Ah, sisters," Juskra cried, "it feels good to abandon skulking and running for a bit! 'Tis time to let the wizards worry!"

"Let us hope, sisters mine," Ambrelle called back, as the four Aumrarr burst through, the deserted room and out into a passage beyond, "that they worry for more than a fleeting moment or two, this time. I want to be more than a mere annoyance, casually slain."

"Now that's an epitaph," Lorlarra commented, as they parted to swoop past a stiffly striding titan of spell-animated armor on either side. Its arms ended in bristling fists of bared swords affixed at all angles, but it was too slow to harm them.

The Aumrarr ducked under the arms of another lurching automaton to glide past a grisly assemblage of undead human parts; two naked and rotting men joined together by a long metal frame from which sprouted many waving human arms that were far too short to clutch at the passing sisters.

They ascended to the ceiling again in a flurry of beating wings, slowing as they came out into one of the cavernous halls and found it full of restless guardians and tower creatures.

"Ult had a far-viewing glass in one of the halls," Juskra mused, peering down at some wildly lurching constructions of mismatched limbs and heads that were probably abandoned experiments. "Do you think it's still there?"

"Worth looking for," Ambrelle replied, brushing back an errant lock of her long purple-black hair. "Finding it will save us having to go through room after room, which will take forever, by the Falcon, if all Arlaghaun's creatures are out and active, like these."

A group of lorn came streaking out of a high gallery to pounce on the four Aumrarr and were met with laughter, ready swords, and hard-swung maces.

The first lorn to taste that greeting tumbled toward the floor with a shredded wing, and was diced bloodily by a reaching automaton before it could strike the tiles.

Another two lorn were wounded only slightly, but flapped hastily away, freeing Dauntra and Juskra to strike from behind at the lorn fighting their sisters. Aumrarr blades promptly met in writhing lorn bodies; what fell into the clutches of the waiting automatons this time was dying or dead.

Triumphantly the Aumrarr flew on, ducking around the tallest guardians, until they came out into a hall where Dauntra pointed and said, "There, sisters!"

The mirror, taller than a man, was affixed to a wall on some sort of frame in which it had been slid sideways, to reveal a dark and narrow opening it obviously concealed much of the time.

Scenes were moving in the depths of the glass. The Aumrarr circled, swooped, hacked, and soared aloft again, not tarrying to fight, but wounding and rushing back up out of reach, until they'd sworded guardians enough to clear one end of the hall and win themselves some time to look into the mirror.

They beheld armies massed in front of soaring fortress walls, stones and fiery trees soaring into the air.

"Bowrock! Under siege!" Ambrelle snapped.

"Galath goes on tearing itself apart," Lorlarra said bitterly, trailing the straps and shards of most of her once-magnificent dark armor. "Let's look at other places and things, sisters, before we go racing off to join any frays."

Besides, something was waiting for him in the second room, beyond the tangle of interlocked stone: two eyeballs that floated in the air above a skeletal jawbone and two hands. He could see no skull, nor any other bones, but the floating remains watched him, turning to keep him in view as he struggled through the rubble.

So at last he went where he'd always known he would go: up the grand stairs to the upper floors of the castle. The light grew as he ascended, and he found nothing more sinister on the steps than a line of rusted flakes that had once been a sword; a sword that had not been there in the vision the golden horn had brought upon him, of the old man in the chair whose face he'd never managed to see.

In that vision, Rod's travel up the stairs and through the rooms had been a lightning-swift, flying whirlwind. This time he trudged, but found every room just where and how it had been in the vision.

Instead of turning into the darker rooms that would lead to where the old man had been sitting, Rod turned the other way, into a large chamber whose windows opened onto a view of not the forest outside or waiting lorn, but a bright void of milky white mists. The room was empty except for something dark-a discarded cloak, perhaps-lying on the floor in a distant corner.

There were doors farther along the wall he'd come in through. He headed for them and halfway there, became aware that the thing in the corner was stirring.

He stopped and watched it come for him, flowing over the floor. It didn't seem to be moving fast enough that he couldn't outrun it, but then, he had no idea just how swiftly it could travel. It looked pinkish-white, where it wasn't covered in dark green blotches of what looked like mold. There was something familiar about its shape…

It was about three of his strides away when he saw hairs bristling in it, and knew what it was: a boneless, empty human skin.

Face down, arms trailing behind, rippling as it crept along the stone floor. Somehow he thought it might be female, but how could one be sure?

Rod knew one thing, though, as he stepped sharply to one side and it veered to follow. He didn't like the look of it at all.

His dagger might shred it, but what then? To cut it he'd have to almost touch it, and what sort of horrid life-drinking, poisoning, flesh-melting things could it do to him, if it sprang up his wrist and touched him?

Rod broke into a sudden run, around behind it and toward that row of doors. Would it turn to follow, or just reverse its flow, or fold over on top of itself to come after him-and how fast?

It half-turned, and then folded over, quickly. Not so quickly that it caught up to him, though. Rod hauled open the first door, saw nothing perilous in the little chamber beyond, and that at least two more, larger rooms opened out beyond the little chamber, and was through the door with it slammed behind him in a few lightning-swift instants.

He was panting a little as he stood in the sudden silence, listening and peering. Nothing moved, and he could hear nothing, certainly nothing slithering on the other side of the door.

So he walked carefully around the walls of the little chamber, to the open archway in its far wall, where it gave into a much larger chamber, and stopped to listen and look again.

Several closed doors and an archway opening into a smaller, darker room could be seen. A gallery or balcony stood to his left, looking down into an open area to his right that held only a throne. A throne with a cloak draped over it.

Rod approached it very cautiously. This looked very much like a waiting trap, and what better place to put a trap for fools, but a throne?

There was no way he was going to sit on that stone seat, but he wanted to get a look at it. Was anything written on it? To look properly, he'd have to move the cloak, and was it a cloak? Or was it another shed "seeking skin," like the thing that was lurking just a closed door away?

Rod looked up, in search of ropes or wires or seams in the stone that looked like they might herald a stone block that would crash down. Nothing that looked suspicious, beyond a few cobwebs in the corners. Then he peered around at the walls, looking for holes that might spit darts. None that he could see.

Then he shivered again. Jesus glorking Falconfar on a stick, he was cold! There was something about this place that made the chill creep into your very bones… Or was this something done by that ghostly cloak, melting into him, somehow lurking inside him now?

And what did it matter now, anyway, without Taeauna?

In sudden brisk impatience, Rod strode to the throne, and from behind the seat used his dagger to pluck up the cloak and whisk it away.

Nothing happened. Nothing tumbled out of the cloak as it fell onto the floor, and there didn't seem to be anything unusual about the garment itself; just heavy wool, dyed dark red and lined with dark brown linen of some sort. It was just a cloak, with no hood nor pockets or armholes or even a stitched yoke; just a rectangle of thick, warm fabric with lacings joining two corners to bind them together across the breast of a wearer.

Warm. Oh, how he wanted to be warm. Rod dug his fingers into the fabric, pinching and flexing it with cruel force. It seemed to be mere cloth, not any sort of lurking creature; not that he cared much if it were.

He shrugged, swung the cloak over his shoulders, and laced it up, settling it around himself. It swished around his legs, and he couldn't resist striking a pose.

It didn't smell of mold or feel like it was about to crumble or tear; it felt solid and trustworthy and warm.

Reassuring, even. Rod took a few strides and nodded. Somehow, with the cloak swirling around him, he felt capable. Confident. Right.

Yes, and he should be heading this way, to the blank and empty back wall a good four paces behind the throne. The chill was gone, and he could feel himself relaxing, the tightness in his fingers and shoulders and back, from hunching against the cold, now slipping away…

Yes, here. Why hadn't he known it or felt it before? The wall cracked soundlessly at his approach, parting in a hitherto completely hidden door, that opened inward into darkness beyond, with a strange, brief sound like a jangle of strummed harp strings.

A stray thought told him he shouldn't stride quite so boldly forward into such proverbial pitch darkness, and reminded him that he had in fact been exploring Yintaerghast far more cautiously just a few rooms ago, but somehow, now, it didn't matter. This was the right thing to be doing, the fitting thing, he was where he belonged, expected…

That brought him up short, blinking in the impenetrable darkness. Expected? By whom?

As if that thought had been a cue, the darkness rolled back as if it was a curtain, to leave him staring at… a stool and beyond it a slope-topped writing desk of some glossy-polished wood. There was a huge book open on the desk, a row of glowing inks of various hues in dark metal florette holders set into the top edge of the desk in a row, and… three magnificent quill pens, hovering in a silent, immobile line in midair.

His pens, something was telling him. So this must be his place to be a Shaper. At last, here in front of him.

With no Taeauna to tell, anymore.

His throat closed again, tears rose in him… And in a sudden fury of madly-swirling cloak he was seated at the desk and impatiently plucking one of the quills out of the air, stabbing it into ink, and drawing.

He tried to draw Taeauna's face, tried to capture her staring up at him out of the page, but somehow the faces-he drew dozens across the two blank facing pages, in mad haste, exasperation rising in him-were all real, and vivid, and even seemed to move slightly, whenever he looked away from them. But they were other people's faces. People he'd never seen before. Beautiful women, even Aumrarr, but not Taeauna.

In baffled rage he threw up his hands, drew a big-nosed, bearded dwarf with Norse-like sword and helm and armor, and then put a stone arch behind him, with tentacles reaching through it. Now, his dwarf would need a mace, a dagger or three, and so Rod swiftly drew sheaths belted here, there, and everywhere, straps crisscrossing, and added a shield. With a blazon on it, of course. Hmm, two crossed hammers…

God, he was a lousy artist. What was he trying to do, entertain himself with bad cartoons? Writing was what he did, and writing was what he was good at. Wherefore…

"Korgrath Foehammer was an even surlier dwarf than most," he scribbled, "and this day was not a good day. But then, days for Korgrath seldom were…"

The fresh sentinel trudging forward to begin the next watch nodded to the gruff old dwarf he was replacing. "Anything?"

"Naught."

"Korgrath in a temper?"

"No more'n usual," came the very dry reply, delivered with a knowing look as Auld Orvran lurched on his way. "He might not gnaw your nose off, if you keep to yerself an' far enough away."

Baurgar grinned and went on out through the arch, to join Korgrath Foehammer on the high ledge. It would have been astonishing news if Korgrath wasn't snarly and surly. Korgrath lived his life out in a standing bad temper.

"I'm here," he said in polite greeting, coming around to where Korgrath could see him.

"Get out of my watch-view, dolt," the Foehammer snarled, eyes still fixed on the endless, unchanging vista of brown, needle-sharp mountains thrusting up into the sky. Not even greatfangs were witless enough to come near Stonebold, anymore. "Hard to watch for foes with you standing in the way like a brainless heap of meat."

Baurgar had already started moving aside, silently mouthing Korgrath's all-too-familiar words as they were uttered, until his gaze happened to fall on the Foehammer's shield.

"New blazon, Foehammer?" he asked, startled. This was a change, and Korgrath never changed. The shield looked the same as it had yestereve; the same dents, the same scratches. The arms painted on it were neither new nor bright, yet they were different: a pick shattering a stone in two had become two crossed hammers.

"What foolishness speak you?" Korgrath snapped, glaring at Baurgar and then down at the shield. "I've not…"

He fell silent, staring open-mouthed at the crossed hammers.

Then he looked up at Baurgar again, an unfriendly glare that became something far more dangerous as his eyes narrowed under bristling brows. "Have you dared to work magic here? On watch, before the very gates of Stonebold?"

Baurgar stared steadily back at him. "As if I can afford any magic, let alone wield it! No doing of mine, Foehammer. On the name of my house I swear this."

Korgrath stared into his face for a long and silent time, and then nodded, slowly.

Then he looked down at his shield again. "I believe you. Which means a thing more: I have to say I know not at all how these crossed hammers came to be here."

Then he went pale, and Baurgar went pale with him, as the same thought came to them.

What came out of Korgrath's jaws was a stream of low, fierce, and biting oaths.

What came out of Baurgar's mouth was the murmur, "There's a Shaper at work in Falconfar."

Klammert clawed his way up a wall that seemed to be leaning this way and then that, and allowed himself a groan. "Master?" he mumbled. Arlaghaun had been summoning him…

There was a splitting agony in his head, and sharp stabbing pains in his neck. He groaned again, and clung to the wall. There were some healing magics hidden in a room down that hall, if he was remembering rightly.

Into every life, a little pain must fall. Why, by the Falcon, did it fall into his so abundantly?

Rod's stomach growled suddenly, reminding him of its emptiness. Hmm. How long had he been sitting here?

He looked down at the quill in his hand, and the words he'd just written: "The storm that swept now across the Sea of Storms was a lightning bolt-hurling chaos of flashing, glowing skies and a roiling of waves like so many uncounted storms before it…"

He sat back from the book and blinked. Where was he, anyway? How had he come here?"

He blinked again, and when he next became aware of himself, he was writing something else: "There was a beast that hunted lorn, a great black leathery thing of bat-wings and ripping jaws and three-taloned feet, but for centuries it had slept in its own shape, one more ornamental gargoyle among the rest, on the battlements of Dorn Keep. Now it was awake, and great was its hunger…"

The cloud of lorn streaked toward Bowrock, eager to rage along its battlements plucking off heads and disembowelling knights and armsmen. They hissed jests and sneering comments about the oh-so-proud, yet oh-so-feeble warriors who served Deldragon, and taunted that they wouldn't still be alive to do so by sunset. None of them bothered to fly rearguard or watch with any care; dragons were so rare as to be nigh-mythical, these days, and besides were far too large to approach unseen, and nothing else in all Falconfar was left to defy lorn this high in the skies.

Wherefore the grotesque dark, sinuous thing of many jaws, many pairs of bat-wings, and many claws, all joined together in a disorderly string of bobbing limbs and muscled bulk, rose unregarded from among the dark and endless trees to ascend and follow the lorn. It looked too ungainly to stay aloft, let alone manage any speed through the skies, but its wings carried it with uncanny speed up above the cloud of lorn and into their bright-blinded spot, where looking back would mean gazing into the sun.

And then it really started to fly.

The dozen or so lorn at the rear vanished into those jaws without fuss or outcry. By the time the rest noticed something was amiss, and wheeled to see what it was and give battle, a second dozen had been devoured.

Learning what little they could do against this strange nightmare of a foe cost the lorn a score of their remaining strength.

Learning that they couldn't flee from it by outflying it cost the rest of the lorn their lives.

But then, truly wise lorn have always been a rarity.

So this wasn't godhood, this being a Shaper. Rod Everlar didn't sit down and deliberately decide to write that Arlaghaun's hands, manhood, and head all abruptly fell off, and then sit and watch some great magic instantly make that happen. Whatever he wrote seemed to pour out of him without his having any conscious control over it at all.

So what would happen when he dreamed? Did he reshape Falconfar, or did it whisper instructions to him?

Glorking bloody sh…

Rod shook his head in exasperation, and flipped back through the book. There were all his sketches-heads of beautiful women he didn't even know, though he supposed they were now walking around Falconfar or perhaps even rising from tombs they'd been sadly put in-and the dwarf by the archway, and then page after page of scribbled text. Eight pages in all, so little of the blank book that it scarcely showed as a page-thickness, around the edges.

Rod shook his head and yawned. Whoa, did he feel tired, suddenly. No longer cold, not at all, but bone-weary. So was it all the running and fighting? The grieving? Or was Shaping inherently exhausting?

Or had he just been sitting here for a long, long time, and didn't know it? The moment he'd sat down, a faint, warm glow had started to occur in the air, like lantern light, and it was still there above him, the air amber to golden, as he glanced at it.

He caught himself yawning again, and shook his head. This would never do; if he was going to fall asleep, he needed someplace to lie down that was safe from… creeping shed human skins and… and…

Huh. This room was the safest, most comfortable place he'd found yet in Yintaerghast, and he suspected that if he got off the stool, he'd be wobbling-legged weary, far too tired to even safely walk around the castle, let alone face monsters and traps and Falconfar knew what else…

Rod moved the quill back into position in the line in midair, and let go of it. It floated in the air, rather than falling. Cool.

He took hold of it, waved it around, and put it back in the air again. It floated serenely, as before.

He smiled at it… and that was the last thing he remembered doing…

Dust drifted across a dark floor in Yintaerghast, gathering into a serpentine line whose drifting hiss was so soft that an awake and warily alert warrior would not have heard it, let alone someone cozened by enchantment, who was now slumped over an open book at a writing desk, snoring gently.

The dust went on gathering unhurriedly, until it had built into a heap about the height of a large man's fist. Then it stirred, swirling into the air in a slow and silent spiral that outlined the ghostly figure of a tall, thin, bearded man who towered over the sleeping Rod Everlar, growing slowly more solid.

The face that watched the sleeping writer was at first just an oval with hints of two eyesockets, then something that had a nose, a long, strong nose, with bristling black brows above, and a bald pate above that…

A soft smile was clear upon that face long before it had features enough to tell an observer who'd been alive for centuries-had there been any such entity present-that the dust had taken on the semblance of the long-dead Lord Archwizard of Falconfar.

Red eyes, burning with power. The eyes of Lorontar, the builder of Yintaerghast, called by some the Smiling Tyrant.

Then the dust slowly sank down again, for undead shadows skulk best when they keep hidden from those they stalk. The dust scattered and faded, still smiling.

The guardians were gathering in such numbers-striding, rattling, and flying down every passage to the hall, and coming yet-that Dauntra and Juskra were now panting as they fought. The beautiful Aumrarr and her fierce, scarred sister were almost too winded from their hewing to gasp, "Lorlarra! Aid! We grow weary, and they tire not! Still they come!"

Dark-armored Lorlarra had just turned from the mirror to fly up and answer their plea, hefting her mace in one hand and her bright blade in the other, when Ambrelle, who was still staring into the depths of the glass, cried out, "Sisters mine! Let us tarry here no longer. I've found something far more desirable to slay than nigh-mindless enchanted minions. Come! To the gates!"

She soared up on high, but each of the younger Aumrarr swooped down and past the mirror to see for themselves before they rose to join her in a flapping, excited cloud, taking up the cry, "To the gates! To the gates!"

Through guardians large and small, seeking battle or lying defeated, the four winged women raced, seeking a good gate to plunge through.

Rod Everlar found himself abruptly back in front of the writing desk, blinking. He'd been striding through the castle like a conqueror, parting walls at a touch and causing pillars to swing open by his very approach, to yield up to him glowing swords and gauntlets, wristlets and scepters, and-and something he didn't know the name of, that he'd been holding up and staring at a moment ago…

Dreaming. He must have been dreaming. So none. of those beautiful glowing things were real. He was sure the items were magical. He sighed sadly; beautiful glowing things never were real, were they?

Or were they? Were the dreams this castle's way of telling him where its treasures were hidden?

Magic had been at work on him from the moment he'd first stepped inside Yintaerghast.

Excitedly Rod slid off the stool-finding himself just a little stiff-and strode out of that hidden chamber, pausing apprehensively only for a moment when its walls closed up again behind him. In the dreams, he'd walked past the throne and across its room, and a pillar had yawned open to offer him a scepter floating above a sword.

In front of him, a pillar opened to do just that. Shaking his head in bemusement, Rod took hold of both floating items without hesitation, feeling tinglings crawling up his arm from their power.

He hefted the sword, and the tingling rose into almost a song.

"Wow," he murmured, feeling power course through his arms. "Rod Everlar, dragon slayer."

A wall across the room opened, and something yellow-eyed and baleful slunk in. It looked something like a crocodile, and it was big. As it waddled purposefully toward him, Rod backed uncertainly away.

This certainly hadn't been in the dream.

In a room in Ult Tower far from battling guardians, a tall and handsome man stood before a glowing mirror, sound asleep. Far away across Falconfar, on the other side of that glow, a Doom was watching approvingly. A scaly, blue-skinned Doom.

"Whole again, entirely healed," the wizard Narmarkoun murmured. "And my pawn, though you'll know it not until the right time comes, and I force you to do my bidding. You may thank me."

"My… deepest… thanks," the sleeping man mumbled, his words evoking gentle chiming that told Narmarkoun the spell was done, and the mind-link sealed.

Still asleep, the healed man turned from the mirror and lurched stiffly across the room, awakening just as the gate that would take him to Bowrock claimed him.

After all, it wouldn't do for Velduke Darendarr Deldragon to march into his own besieged home fast asleep and snoring.