Dark Lord

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Put them on. Quickly.

The voice in his head was strong and firm, now;

whispering and suggesting no longer.

Rod drew on the gauntlets, halting in alarm for a moment as sudden lightning arced between them, crackling and spitting.

Now get out of the tomb. Hurry.

Rod hurried out of the chill, earthy darkness, out into a vivid purple glow that was already disgorging black-armored warriors. They trotted toward him, raising shields and hefting swords.

Point your fingers and blast them. A vivid image unfolded in his mind of how to unleash the powers of the gauntlets. Kill them all. Do NOT let the finger-beams touch the gate.

Rod pointed his fingers and blasted, hastily moving from one warrior to another. The gauntlets seemed able to spit one pencil-thin crimson beam per finger, if he concentrated on maintaining all the beams he willed into existence, but those beams shot out arrow-straight from his fingertips, and had to be aimed precisely. They melted through armor and flesh alike without pause, slaying almost as fast as he could aim them.

But the Dark Helms were fast, too. They came rushing at him in such desperate haste that Rod was almost forced back into the tomb, and they died so swiftly that they fell in heaps, forming a wall. He hurried along the slope, trying to keep from being literally buried in foes, foes who had plenty of swords and daggers to stab with.

Keep moving. Circle out and around the gate. Don't let any Dark Helms get where you can't see them. You must kill them all.

The finger-beams soon started to fade, reaching shorter and shorter distances, until there came a time when one of them sputtered and failed completely. The face of the foremost onrushing Dark Helm changed from terror to triumph.

Shake the gauntlets off, jump sideways at the last minute, and grab the horn-headed scepter!

Rod hesitated for an instant, and felt sickening surges in his arms and legs, forcing him to shake the gauntlets off-sickening because they were being done to him. He was as much a slave as any shackled, flogged unfortunate, but his master was sitting in his head!

The horn-headed scepter proved to unleash cones of ravening fire that could reduce several armored warriors to blackened, tumbling bones in the space of a deeply drawn breath. It was just a little slower at slaying than the gauntlets had been, which would have doomed him if there'd been many Dark Helms left.

However, only a few came trotting through the glowing purple arch now, sporadically, and perhaps twenty were left on the hill, skulking behind the bodies of their dead fellows, trying to get close enough to Rod to rush and hack at him before he could burn them down.

Rod felt sick. The stink of cooked Dark Helms was like burned roadkill, a reek so strong that it was almost choking. Part of him wanted to burn down every last Dark Helm, in Taeauna's name, and part of him was screaming that he was a writer, not any sort of fighter, and certainly not any sort of killer.

Yet here he was, dodging and ducking among the heaped dead, peering at wherever he thought a warrior or two was hiding.

Behind you, fool.

Rod spun around, scepter spewing flame even before he got properly turned. That was what saved him; the ribs beneath the arm that was swinging a sword at his head were boiling away before the blade could get to him, robbing its swing of strength and height so that it was falling free by the time it bounced off his shoulder and tumbled past. Rod crisped that warrior and the three right behind him in frenzied haste, as their sprint carried their collapsing bones almost into him.

And then there were no more Dark Helms, and the gate was pulsing bright purple, flickering and dancing.

Don't even look at the gate; for you, it's a trap. Get back to the tomb door, looking all around as you go.

Rod stumbled over bones and corpses, wondering how it was that flies discovered the dead so quickly, and where they all came from. He looked this way and that, but…

Keep looking around, idiot, the sharp voice snarled in his mind. A moment later, it added: There!

Someone was standing atop the tomb-hill, where there had been no one a moment earlier. Someone with burning brown eyes.

Arlaghaun.

That was all Rod had time to see before a spell burst in the air all around him, washing over him and setting the trampled grass aflame.

He felt heat on his face, heat that should have blistered and then blinded him, that should have scorched his hair off, consumed his flesh, and sent his ashen bones tumbling, but instead washed over him and was gone, leaving him tingling in three places along his belts, where enchanted items had suddenly faded away.

Sacrificed to save him, Rod thought blearily, as the mind-voice shouted at him, Aim the scepter! BLAST HIM!

He obeyed, but Arlaghaun was suddenly-not there. The hilltop was empty again.

Run to the tomb, and in, the mind-voice commanded. Look toward the gate as you go.

As if those words had been a stage cue, Arlaghaun appeared out of nowhere, standing just in front of his gate, his hands weaving the empty air in the intricate gestures of a powerful spell.

I THOUGHT so. The mind-voice sounded very satisfied. Fire the scepter at the gate. NOT at the wizard. At the gate.

Clenching his teeth, Rod did as he was told, knowing he had no choice anyway.

Close your eyes!

Rod wasn't quite fast enough. The gate's explosion not only shook the hill and flung him to his knees atop some very hard armor, to say nothing of the dead man inside it, but it also seared his eyes with a white flash that snatched all Falconfar away. A flash that showed Rod a glimpse of Arlaghaun, arms windmilling wildly, being hurled forward onto his face.

Get into the tomb!

Eyes running, barely able to get up and keep from falling, Rod stumbled and swayed his way around heaps of cooked warriors, seeking the front slope of the hill he'd fled along just moments earlier.

Hurry!

He couldn't see properly through the streaming tears, couldn't-

He stumbled over a dead Dark Helm, his arm slamming down onto rising grass. He had reached the front slope of the tomb. Rod clawed his way along it, trying to hurry, until he found the doorway and fell through it.

Get well in, then turn around. Don't stop hurrying.

Had the voice in his mind sounded sarcastic?

Rod obeyed, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve, the horned scepter warm in his hand.

When he got his vision clear enough to be able to see more than watery light and dark, he found himself staring at a rectangle of sunlight. In the distance, that sunlight was falling on a great heap of dead Dark Helms. A gray-robed man was climbing the far side of that heap, rising higher and higher as he gained its top.

It was Arlaghaun. He was looking right at Rod, and smiling.

Rod aimed the scepter, but the voice in his mind said sharply, No. Waste it not. Put it bach in your belt, and draw forth the draeuth.

"The what?"

An image was thrust impatiently open in Rod's mind.

Oh. That strange metal thing he'd been guided to, back in the castle, that looked like a knuckleduster welded to a set of panpipes. Rod slid his fingers through its loop, and drew it out of his belt.

Now the arlaunkh.

"The-?"

A metal rod about the length of his forearm, this one, that curved gently to form a pleasant-to-the-hand grip. He'd been thinking of it as "the big scepter," but-

Right. Point the big scepter straight overhead, and the draeuth down the passage at the doorway outside. You fire them both like THIS. Do so.

Rod obeyed, feeling something that sounded and looked like the beige, many-popping-bubbled foam of a fire extinguisher spraying forth from one, and a cone of similar but white foam from the other.

An instant later, Arlaghaun shouted something triumphant, roiling flame came roaring into the tomb, and its stone-lined ceiling shuddered, cracked, and fell in on top of Rod Everlar.

The flames met the brown ray and wrestled with it, snarling; only a few tongues streamed past to lick at his arms and shoulders. The white ray melted away stones as they fell, burning a circle to the sunlight. So nothing crushed Rod's skull or broke his neck. Stones slammed down around him, though, bruising and wedging him, shattering bones with sudden, sharp pains that made him gasp and then shout.

Keep hold of them both, and keep firing, or you are doomed.

Arlaghaun's flame died away, but Rod could hear him chanting something that sounded like a spell.

Melt away any stone that could fall or slide sideways onto your head, then start blasting them down all around you, to free yourself. Hurry. You MUST free enough space for your arms to reach everything on your belts.

Rod obeyed, watching tons of stone melt away. Whatever Arlaghaun had cast came streaming down the passage again, and again fought the brown ray, beating it back this time almost to Rod's hand.

Aim the arlaunkh-the big scepter-at the ceiling of the passage into the tomb. Bring it down, just as the wizard collapsed the tomb atop you.

Rod obeyed again, and with a slow, thunderous roar, the passage disappeared.

Keep on freeing yourself. Down to your legs, now. Haste matters more than care. If you burn yourself, you'll heal. HURRY.

Arlaghaun was clambering over stones at the front of the tomb now, trying to get closer; Rod could hear them shifting and clattering as the wizard sought to climb up on top of the ruined hill.

To get at Rod Everlar.

Stones were slumping like butter around his ankles now, then just melting away. He could move, though lifting his left leg brought stabbing agony that left him panting and leaning against the stones that were still there.

Fuse those stones together, so they can't shift and trap you. Arlaghaun comes.

The arlaunkh failed quite suddenly, crumbling to dust in his hand.

The black scepter, now, the one with the eye. The eye is its tip, not its handle; the eye should face away from you. The mind-voice was noticeably fainter.

Rod grabbed at the black scepter, almost dropped it, then straightened up, and found himself staring into Arlaghaun's burning brown eyes and soft, thin-lipped smile.

"So, Shaper, we meet at last."

Rod winced. Couldn't someone write better dialogue than that?

He aimed both the draeuth and the eye scepter at the wizard and intoned, "With the fate of all Falconfar hanging in the balance!"

It was Arlaghaun's turn to wince. "Did Lorontar actually say that?"

"Does it bother you, not knowing?" Rod asked, as sweetly and carefully politely as any unhelpful civil servant, and triggered both enchanted items.

Their raging onslaught battered something unseen in front of Arlaghaun's nose so fiercely that the wizard was forced to arch over backwards, away from the magic trying to slam into him.

Arlaghaun took a step back and lost his footing, to be hurled away over the rocks like a rag doll, out of sight down off the hill.

Rod laughed aloud. He hadn't really hurt the wizard, he knew, but it was nice to land a blow on that sneering face. For once.

Move not. Give your leg time to heal; shift your weight onto the other one.

The voice in his mind was back to being a whisper, now.

"Who are you?" Rod dared to ask it. Was it Lorontar, the long-dead Archwizard? Or-

"Lord!" The soft, urgent call was coming from behind him, accompanied by a high, chiming rattle of chain.

Rod whirled, so quickly his leg burned like fire.

"Tay?" he managed to cry, through the pain.

"Lord Rod!" Taeauna was crawling forward over rocks, bare except for metal collars about her throat, ankles, and high on her thighs; collars that were joined with dangling lines of fine chain. "Come quickly! You've wounded Arlaghaun sorely, and so given us time to escape! Come with me!"

No! The whisper in Rod's head was frantic and fierce. It's a lie! A trick! She's Arlaghaun's creature; believe not a word she says!

Rod shook his head as he clawed his way up over the rocks, bruising his knuckles in his haste, still clutching the draeuth and the scepter.

"Taeauna!" he hissed. "Are you… all right?"

"I have been Arlaghaun's thrall," she replied, waving one hand to indicate her bared self, and flick the nearest length of chain. "But if we hurry, now, and you free me…"

No! Whatever you do, don't go with her! The whisper-thin voice in his head was shrieking now. Arlaghaun controls every word that comes out of her mouth! Cleave to her, and you embrace your doom!

"Fuck off" Rod told the voice in his head firmly, and hurried over the rocks to Taeauna.

Mistgates was a strong castle, soaring up like a great lone fang from a hard cliff of purple-gray rock that had stared into winter storms for centuries upon centuries, as defiantly as the face of any grim dwarf. High were its walls, so lofty that it had not one set of battlements, but two: a third of the way up its flanks, a crenelated balcony had been carved out, like the lower jaw of a gigantic dragon, for the use of bowmen seeking to feather targets on the narrow overland road that snaked up through rising rocks to skirt the front gates of the castle.

These days, with the master of Mistgates heeding not the Mad King in Galathgard, and so being shunned by most nobles of the realm and by fearful traders alike, few folk came along that road.

Yet there were travelers on it now, many of them. They wore the best of gleaming armor, mounted knight after mounted knight, their lances like a forest, but a forest bare of leaves for they bore no banners.

At first sight of them from the high battlements of Mistgates, galloping hard along the road that would bring them into the very lap of Velduke Mardrammur Mistryn, horns were winded over the castle, to sound an alarm.

Mistryn was one of the veldukes who did not ride to Galathgard upon the whim and pleasure of King Devaer, and most of Galath had heard by now, with Bowrock under siege, just how much the King of Galath loved veldukes who did not bend their knees to him often.

Wherefore the great doors of the castle were firmly closed and barred, after the best-armed and armored Mistryn knights and armsmen-enough to match the approaching knights, and to spare-had issued forth in full battle array, prepared with pikes and caltrops. On the walls above, a long line of archers stood ready.

The knights slowed their mounts as they came up to Mistgates, and drew no swords, but held up empty hands to wave "peace" and then "parley."

A tall man in armor whose painted breast-blazon proclaimed him the personal champion of Mardrammur stood forth to meet them, and called, "You ride in Mistryn lands, and are come to the gates of the House of Mard, and you are many and well armed. Yield unto me your names and purpose!"

The foremost rider doffed his helm, patted the neck of his snorting mount to calm it, and replied, "You know me, Roeglar. I am Samryn, loyal knight of Velduke Bloodhunt, and we before your gates are all now also knights of the King of Galath, His Majesty Melander Brorsavar, who rides with us!"

Roeglar gave him a hard look. "Brorsavar is king, now?"

"Brorsavar is king. Things change in Falconfar, sword-brother."

"That they do. And all too swiftly, these days. That they do."

"Well, have we leave to pass within?" Samryn clapped his hand meaningfully to his sword-hilt.

"I'm thinking, sword-brother. I'm thinking."

"This way," Taeauna gasped, and was gone down behind some rocks with a rattle of chain. "Hurry!"

"Hurrying is all I seem to do, these days," Rod chuckled to himself, following her just as fast as he could.

Don't follow her! the ignored mind-whisper shouted.

Rod found himself plunging face-first down into a cleft among the rocks, where Taeauna waited to catch him.

His weight bore her over on her back, of course, his face cushioned against the softness of her breasts.

"Oh, Lord Rod," she murmured, chains rattling around him as they bounced together, and he tried to mutter apologies. "I have worried about you so!"

"I… I love you!" she added, as he wallowed his way hastily up off her body. He'd been on the verge of daring to kiss her, but those words made Rod blink, hesitate, and then smile.

Which is when she leaned forward and kissed him.

No! Don't do this!

Her lips were warm and sweet and hungry, her tongue thrusting deep into his mouth, rolling and thrusting something that tasted spicy-sweet… Had some Holdoncorp idiot put chewing gum into Falconfar when he wasn't looking?

It tasted pleasant, though…

And it was even nicer to have Taeauna thrusting herself against him, her bare body like silk against him, her mouth making little moaning noises of want and need…

Jeez, this was like a bad sex scene in a film, some sort of porn feature with the woman in chains and… and…

…And why was everything getting so dark?

Dark around the edges… He stared through the dwindling, deepening hole that was left, at Taeauna's eyes… So sad as he stared into them, her mouth still so soft and sweet… Were those tears?

Can't see… Everything going as gloomy as nightfall… That spicy-sweet taste rising again in his mouth…

No! Told you! Doomed! She's Arlaghaun's creature! DOOMED!

Fade to black.

The hand that came down on his wrist was slender and shapely and as strong as unyielding iron.

The stout onetime pirate struggled to free his hand, grunting and sweating and suddenly throwing all his weight behind a shove, followed by a titanic pull.

The delicate-looking hand remained right where it was, but its strikingly beautiful owner put her face very close to his.

Which meant her bosom thrust against him, somewhere just under his chin, soft and yet shockingly firm.

"Garfist Gulkoon," Dauntra of the Aumrarr said pleasantly, "or to use the name you were born with: Norbryn, if you try to steal from me, or any of my sisters, ever again, we shall remove a surplus part of your anatomy. Your right thumb, I think. If you try again, the left one. Then your male member, which I doubt you've been able to properly see for years, without the aid of a mirror, and then your nose. A man looks somewhat strange without a nose. Then we'll start on your fingers. This may perhaps have a detrimental effect upon your future endeavors, but frankly I care not. Now, do we understand each other?"

"Y-yes," Garfist managed to squeak, letting go of the little dagger he'd tried to draw out of her elbow-sheath". Without seeming to hurry in the slightest, she caught it in midair, her large and impish brown eyes never leaving his.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Uh… ah… how is it you know my… cradle name?"

"Old Ox, we know all about you," Dauntra said, and kissed him.

A moment later she drew back her warm lips from his, smiled again into his incredulous face, and added sweetly, "That's why I'm being so gentle with you. I could have just bitten off your nose and some fingers, and started chewing."

The stone floor was cold and hard and uneven; Rod came awake shivering in the dark.

He was naked, and in some sort of room underground, probably a dungeon cell. He wasn't chained, and there didn't seem to be anyone else sharing the room with him. Or at least, he couldn't hear anyone else breathing but himself.

No Taeauna, no enchanted items, not even the little whispering voice.

There you're wrong, came the faintest of whispers. Fool of fools.

"Lorontar?" Rod asked.

Silence.

"Lorontar?" he asked again, raising his voice. It echoed back to him, and from a great distance away there came a faint, short grating sound.

Then silence again.

"Damn," Rod murmured, sagging back down.

I was right, the tiny voice deep in his head said, so faint he had to strain to hear it at all. Next time, listen to me, and believe. IF you get a next time, Rod Everlar.

"Damn," Rod said, more loudly.

There came no reply, so he lay still in the darkness, and let it swallow him. It was dark enough to suit his mood, at least.

After what seemed like a long time he sighed, got up to his knees, and started crawling forward, gingerly feeling in front of him with outstretched hands. It wasn't long before he came to a wall; he turned left and felt along it, finding the seams of what was probably a door. A little way beyond that was a corner, and it didn't seem to take all that long a time before he'd found his way all the way around the walls of his smallish rectangular room.

He laid back down again and tried to think of the real world, tried to recall things in all their vivid colors, smells, and… and…

Taeauna. Always her face intruded, smiling, lips parting to meet his… Or falling into his bed, that first time he saw her, bleeding and crying out for him, the Dark Helms bursting in on them…

Taeauna, who'd betrayed him. In the grip of Arlaghaun's spells, though, and she'd fought to show him that, at the end, when it was too late. She'd felt sad at his fate.

Where was she now?

For that matter, where was he now?

Well, trapped in Falconfar, that much was certain. Try as he might, he couldn't think strongly enough of the real world, the world of Rod Everlar the writer, to leave this dark, cold place.

He was stuck here, presumably in Arlaghaun's clutches, for who knew how long? Until he died, perhaps, of thirst or the cold. A Shaper made powerless to shape…

Hmm. Perhaps…

He sat up against the wall, and started to sing, moving his hands through the air as if he was drawing some sort of intricate picture.

"Oh, I'm Shaping… shapes to change the world… shapes to make the Falcon fly where the Falcon has never flown before… just Shaping…"

If he could goad the wizard into sending someone to stop him…

He went on singing random nonsense about Shaping until he ran out of words, and then just hummed the notes of his "I'm just Shaping" refrain, over and over again. Waiting. I

There came a metallic crash in the distance, and then footfalls, and a light! A torch, glimmering and bobbing in the distance, showing Rod the door was just there, and had a tiny slot window in it, up high. Too high for him to peer through. No lock or handle or keyhole, no hinges that he could see.

The light grew, moving steadily nearer and nearer. Rod looked quickly around, to see if he'd missed anything in the cell, and to judge its size better. It was just a bare room-no water, no toilet hole, no manacles, nothing-and it was about twenty feet across by about a dozen deep. Just the one door, nothing of interest on the walls, floor, or ceiling…

The torch flared right outside the window, blinding-bright.

Rod hissed in pain and turned his head away. Too late, of course. He heard something scraping momentarily against a stone wall. The torch was being slid into some sort of holder, he guessed.

Then a bar was lifted, wrestled, and set down; a heavy timber, by the sounds of it. The door grated open.

If this had been the climax of a movie, or a crucial scene in some heroic novel, he'd leap to his feet, brain his jailer, and flee to freedom.

Rod sat right where he was, still blinded.

Someone with heavy feet came ponderously into the cell and took him by the throat.

The hand around his throat was huge and horribly strong, and it smelled. Of swamp-water and some sort of rank, underlying musk. Rod blinked, trying to see, and then decided against it.

Whatever this was, it probably wasn't human.

Rod felt himself being lifted off his feet and carried, strangling in that grip. Out of the cell, he thought, smelling the torch now, very near.

And then the torch moved, was thrust against him, and held there searingly.

Rod screamed, as loud and as hard as he could and then tried to stop, in horror, as he felt flames being thrust against his mouth.

God, the pain!

Every breath was an agony, every…

He barely noticed when the torch was returned to its wall-holder and he was carried a step back, into the doorway.

He certainly noticed when the creature's other hand slammed one of his forearms against the doorframe.

And then drew away, only to slam back hard, breaking his arm across that stone edge.

Rod screamed again, or tried to.

He went on with that raw sobbing as he was flung to the cell floor, kicked in the ribs until he was over on his back, and then fresh agony, like ice, took the hand on his other arm with him.

Moaning, rocking, Rod tried to see through streaming eyes. One arm was broken, and his other hand was-gone.

It had been chopped off, with one hard and heavy blow from a dripping axe.

A hand that was slimy, olive green, and with fingers the shape of fat carrots took up his severed hand from the floor.

Rod fell back, still trying to scream. The door slammed, the bar was dropped back into place, and the torch was taken away.

His mouth was a cooked ruin, his chest burned deep and raw, and…

Not a word had been spoken to him.

That I can remedy. Heed me henceforth. After all, I told you so.

The tiny voice, so deep in his mind and sounding now so weary and feeble, was scant consolation.

"Keep me sane," Rod told it, or tried to; the words came out more as bubblings than anything else.

Sane? Ha! YEARS too late for that!

Whatever reply Rod's pain-mazed wits might have come up with was lost in a sudden voice purring nigh his ear.

"We'll just see how swiftly you heal, Shaper." It was Arlaghaun, gloating openly. "Of course, just one trial won't suffice. I'll be sending quite a procession of visitors to you. Perhaps even your little chained Aumrarr."

Rod struggled to utter suitable obscenities in reply, but couldn't. So he settled for fainting, instead.

When he awakened, a little later, all the pain was gone. He seemed to have his hand back, and his broken arm felt whole. He was tingling, though, all over.

Then he heard a whooshing sound, as if something was approaching him very rapidly. The air seemed to crackle, with a very high-pitched singing sound, and rose-red radiance surrounded him.

When Rod opened his gummy, encrusted eyes, and turned his head to look at where the magic had come from, he found himself staring through the open cell doorway at a distant robed figure, standing well down a stone passage beyond. It wasn't Arlaghaun, but someone younger. Younger and broader of shoulders and belly, with an unkempt, curly beard like a fringe all around his jaw.

The mage was glaring at him, a little fearfully, and raising his hands to warily cast another spell.

Another trial. Well, magic he could ignore, as it seemed to ignore him. Rod closed his eyes again. Briefly he entertained the idea of rolling to his feet and racing out of the cell, kicking the young wizard where it would hurt most and then running like hell… but no. Arlaghaun would be watching, and that brutal, slimy thing with the green hands was probably the least of the horrors that wizard could send to disembowel or acid-melt or sting or even lay eggs into him, his latest helpless captive.

Yes, Arlaghaun was watching right now.

Rod smiled, just to give the wizard something to think about.

"Wizard," he added, as another spell washed over him, "your doom is now inevitable. I was going to spare you, but now, I think not."

Mere empty words, but perhaps they would worry Arlaghaun, and give him something to try to unearth. Or something else to waste his time on.

Another spell cracked and crackled over him. Rod yawned, and went to sleep again.

"What would you say to me," Velduke Mistryn asked, over their third pouring of wine, "if I said I was seriously debating whether or not to kill you, here and now, and take the crown of Galath for my own?"

"I'm not sure, Mard," King Brorsavar replied quietly, his broad shoulders shifting not at all, neither of his hands heading for a weapon-hilt. "Is it something you feel it's likely you'll say to me?"

Mardrammur Mistryn smiled. "No. No, I don't think so. Not anymore."

After a moment, he added, "I can tell by your face that you're protected against the mranth."

"That and the fact I haven't fallen dead on that face just yet," the king said dryly. "Pity to taint good wine with it, though."

"For Galath, one must make sacrifices."

"Indeed."