Dark Lord

CHAPTER FOUR

They were both on their feet, the Dark Lord and the Aumrarr, striding back and forth in the freshening winds. Huddled against their dismay, they paced among the rocks, back and forth past each other, trying to think.

"So do we just wander the whole world in hopes I'll know this 'right place' when I see it?" Rod Everlar asked incredulously at last, seeing no other possible road. He did, however, picture this "right place" being some jungle-covered ruin slumbering on one continent of Earth while he scoured a busy city on another.

Taeauna whirled to face him. "That's just what we'll have to do!" she said, her voice fierce with sudden resolve. "No matter how long it takes, and no matter how far we must travel! And the reason we'll give to all for our journeying: I'm an Aumrarr guiding you to work off a blood-debt to your family, and you are a man on a death-quest."

These Rod did remember from his writings. The Aumrarr-and only the Aumrarr, as far as he could remember-recognized blood-debts to kin when one of them slew an innocent person through mischance or misunderstanding. A task or service was done, often a rescue or guiding. Death-quests were a widespread Falconfar custom, wherein still-hale elderly folk journeyed to where an ancestor was buried, to arrange to also be buried there. "Aren't I, uh… a little young for a death-quest?"

"You won't look so when I'm done with you," Taeauna replied, giving him a not-so-sweet smile. "Mud rubbed into your face to hide the fire-soot I'll use to draw wrinkles on you, winterleaf in your hair to streak it white, and a kerchief around your head to make you look old and cold, and to keep rain from washing away your wrinkles."

"And where are you going to get a kerchief?"

Taeauna held up one of her blankets, and a dagger.

Rod winced. "Isn't there some other way?"

Taeauna shrugged. "We can burn all we have as a beacon, and lie down here on the rocks to see which of the Three Dooms gets here fastest, to blast us to bare bones."

Rod sighed. "I'll hold the blanket taut, and you cut, okay?"

"Okay," Taeauna replied. Her mimicry of his resigned "why the hell not?" tone was perfect.

Rod hadn't walked this much in a day since he was a teenager, out camping. And he hadn't liked camping that much.

He was tired, he was cold-the breezes were decidedly chilly, up in these hills-and his feet hurt.

Taeauna was still striding along as smoothly and tirelessly as some sort of young acrobat, sleek and supple, ducking and crawling like a wisp of the wind rather than a winded, clumsy, skinning-knees-and-elbows novel writer. Usually she was just ahead of him, but sometimes she turned to look back behind them, then let him pass and followed him with hand on sword, glaring around alertly.

Yet no Dark Helm or monster had come lunging out at them thus far. In fact, aside from tiny, distant vaugren circling lazily high in the sky, they'd seen nothing living that wasn't a plant, all the way.

They soon saw something dead, all right. Their trail led them past the ancient, abandoned ruin of a castle that even the vaugren seemed to shun. Something that stank like old sewage lay rotting inside it, something so large that its ribcage formed arches of bone that towered above their heads as they stalked warily past.

A neck as long as Rod's driveway stretched up a crumbling castle wall, limp and broken, to end in a severed, insect-swarming mess not far from-

"Aughh!" Rod hissed, trying not to vomit. "What's that?"

High above them, crowning the end of a collapsed wall, perched a leathery, many-horned, greenish-brown monstrosity, a little bigger than Rod's body, that looked a little bit like the head of a triceratops Rod had seen illustrated in dinosaur books. If, that is, triceratops had sprouted dozens of dark, corkscrew-spiraling horns, like antelope or mountain goats or whatever, and tusked fangs around a great jaw like an overgrown cane toad or horned devil or-or-

"Its head. This was a greatfangs, when it lived, and that didn't end all that long ago," Taeauna told him, sounding troubled, her sword drawn in her hand. "I know not how it came to be here, in Ornkeep, but…"

Rod was watching her bone-white face. "But you want to," he said, after it became clear she wasn't going to say anymore. "So, do we run like hell, or is it too late for that?"

The Aumrarr shook her head. "Nothing could slay a greatfangs thus except a wizard's spell, or a true dragon; not even another greatfangs has jaws large and strong enough to behead one of its kin." She shook her head again. "I've only seen two dragons in all my days." Looking straight at Rod-a look that laid bare to him just how tremblingly afraid she was-she added, "And I've seen a lot of Falconfar. Come."

And she walked into the ruin without waiting for his reply, heading for one of the stone staircases that ascended.

Gagging at the stink of the great carcass they were passing, Rod scrambled to follow, muttering, "Why are we…? What if this damned wizard is lurking somewhere around here, waiting for us? Shouldn't we just…?"

The view of the sprawled, dead greatfangs didn't look any more reassuring from atop the wall, and the stones of that wall, cracked and overgrown with low, creeping plants, literally crumbled underfoot.

Wincing, Rod gingerly followed Taeauna out to the end of the wall. He hoped she hadn't decided she was the last Aumrarr, and she should just hurl herself off it and leave him alone here, up in this whistling wind.

She stopped at the end of the wall, close enough to touch the reeking tangle of sharp, stabbing horns that was the severed head, and stared down at something on the crumbling stone right beside it.

Something that glowed.

Something small, blue-white and bright. Magic, of course.

Rod advanced cautiously to where he could see it properly, and stopped, afraid he might slip and knock Taeauna into all those nasty-looking horns, perhaps to slide messily off into a long, fatal fall down onto the rocks below, and taking him with her.

He "was peering at a small, flat stone, and the glow was coming from a complicated little squiggle that had been drawn on it.

"What is it?" Rod murmured, looking all around. He half-expected a dragon, or a wizard- or a wizard riding a dragon-to suddenly race out of hiding, loom up to tower over them, and roar terribly.

Before it ate them, or crisped them with fiery breath, of course.

Gently, coldly, the wind whistled past.

"We were meant to find this," the Aumrarr told him, kneeling beside it. "It's a wizard's rune. The sign of one of the Dooms. Telling us, or anyone passing this way, who slew this greatfangs, to make the way safe for us. It's a trap, of sorts, too; come no closer."

Rod nodded, only too happy to obey. "So you know who put it here?"

Taeauna nodded without replying. She set down her sacks, rummaged in one of them, and plucked forth two stoppered flasks. Pulling the cork from the larger one, she carefully sprinkled an unbroken ring of brown powder that looked like instant coffee around the stone, tapping the flask with a deft finger to make sure she used not a grain more than she had to. She left no gaps, and spilled nothing on the glowing stone.

Restoppering the flask, she returned it to its laedre, and shook the second, smaller flask.

"What's that?" Rod asked.

"Highcrag magic," she replied curtly, pulling its cork.

Rob rolled his eyes. Oh well, perhaps it was incredibly rude to ask such things in Falconfar…

Taeauna put a finger where the cork had been, upended the flask and then righted it again, held her wetted finger over the stone, and cautiously flicked some of the liquid on her fingertip onto the stone.

Nothing happened.

She waited. Still nothing.

"Safe to touch," she deemed, restowing the flask. "Pick it up."

He looked at her doubtfully, and she almost smiled. "It didn't spit sparks, so it won't do you harm," she explained. "Please pick it up. Touch nothing else."

Rod stepped closer, knelt down, and slowly reached out.

"Don't throw it anywhere, or drop it," the Aumrarr warned. "Just hold it, and in a moment or so I'll ask you to put it back down exactly as you found it, so remember how it was lying."

Rod touched the stone. It felt smooth, cold, and hard; just like a normal stone. He closed his fingers around its edges, still keeping his palm away from it, and lifted it straight up.

The rune flared up into blue-white fire, flooding past his fingers; Rod's hand trembled in a sudden stab of fear.

"Don't drop it!" Taeauna snapped. "Hold tight to it!"

Then suddenly, she was embracing him, her arm around him, bosom against him, and she was shaking, shuddering so hard he had to brace himself to stay upright.

"Put…" she whispered, her eyes flaring as blue as the edges of the glow that was now spilling from Rod's hand, the glow he could feel as a faint, thrilling tingling. "Put it back. Just as it was."

He did so, and the blue-white fire died in an instant, leaving the glowing rune on the stone.

"Rod Everlar," Taeauna whispered into his chest, as fervently as if his name was a prayer. She shuddered against him for several long moments more, and then said briskly, "We should leave this place now. Quickly."

She felt good against him. Emboldened a little, Rod dared to ask, "Are you going to tell me what this, holding the stone, was all about?"

Taeauna looked at him. "It proves you do have the power, here in Falconfar. If we can find the right place to free you, and unleash it."

Unleash it?

The Aumrarr slid deftly out from under his arm, rose, and said, "Let's get gone. I enjoy the smell of dead greatfangs no more than you do."

Rod turned and went.

They trudged down into Arbridge just as the sun was lowering, leaving the cold breezes of the hills behind them. Rod didn't have to do any acting to stagger like an old man unsteady on his feet, with knees and hips that hurt; they did hurt. He'd lost count of the number of times stones had rolled under his feet and he'd slid bruisingly into various rocks that thrust unfriendly sharp points and edges into the track they were following. A goat track, Taeauna had termed it, but it must have been made by goats about the size of house cats, if its narrowest places and crawl-holes were anything to go by.

Ahead of them, Arvale looked like a great green sward of farms and trees, with the glimmer of winding water at about its midpoint, and beyond it, a line of hills rose again, dark and terrible, as mountains; brown and purple and towering, like the spikes on the back of a sleeping, buried dragon.

Rod found himself nodding and smiling. Why, this would go great in a book.

"There'll be a guardpost," Taeauna murmured, as the rocks gave way to rock-clinging shrubs and creepers, and then to trees, and Arvale opened out green and dark before them. The light was fading fast. "Let me do the talking. You are old and tired, and uncertain of what to say."

"All true," Rod muttered back, and she gave him the briefest glint of a grin as she went on down the widening track, past places where other, larger

tracks meandered down out of high pastures to join it, to a fence of heaped stones and stumps where three men wearing swords and a fourth with what looked like a halberd stepped out into the road to await them.

"You summoned me, master?"

"Indeed." The wizard Malraun was as curt as he was darkly handsome. He needed no magic to make his sleek, taut-muscled body striking to ladies, despite his small size. Nor, though he could be glib, did he need to waste time being polite to anyone. If he wanted a particular lady, his spells commanded their obedience. What cared he if they were screaming inside, so long as their responses were eager and ardent?

And if some of them were every whit as eager to kill themselves after he was done with them, what booted it to him?

He rose from his chair to give the lorn a commanding look, and strolled across the rather bare circular tower room toward it.

"You will fly in all haste, permitting yourself no diversions there or upon your return journey, to find and take the Aumrarr who used magic at Highcrag yesterday, and thereafter went up into the hills. They have probably passed the ruins of Ornkeep by now; I slew a greatfangs that had just begun lairing there yestermorn, to keep a certain Doom from getting his hands on it. Take also the one she's traveling with, and bring them both to me. Alive, if you can, but dead if you must."

The lorn's horned, mouthless skull-face nodded. It spread its batlike wings, snapped its barbed tail, and then froze at Malraun's sharp command, "Disguise yourself! Be the largest of vaugren as you seek Highcrag, and use the semblance of a man thereafter. I want to hear of no wild rumors of lorn flying over the Falcon Kingdoms!"

The lorn's tail switched angrily, but it nodded again, seemed to shiver all over, and sank down onto all fours, its wings and head changing shape as its hide darkened. Giving sudden throat to a vaugril's mournful screech, it sprang out of the open window and away, circling Malraun's dark spired tower once before flapping off into the gathering dusk, in the direction of distant Highcrag.

Malraun did not bother to watch it go. He had far. more interesting concerns than a mere Aumrarr and her toy. His recent intrigues had brought no less than three thrones to the verge of collapse, and he was determined that two of those realms would be his before another moonrise.

They were well beyond the guardpost, tramping down a rutted dirt road between walled gardens- creeper-cloaked walls of stone with the roofs of thatched homes rising beyond them-before Taeauna took her hand off Rod's arm in a silent signal that they were now far enough from the guards to speak freely.

She promptly did. Beginning with a snort, a shake of her head, and the murmur, "Only in Arbridge would they name an inn so."

"The Two Drowned Knights?" Rod grinned. "I thought it amusing, yes."

"Oh? I thank you for the warning," the Aumrarr said tartly.

She'd done all the talking to win them safely past the wary Arbren warriors, and Rod had been only too glad to stand there looking old and in pain and dull-witted, while the guards discussed him with her as if he were a sack of meat or a placidly deaf ox.

There'd been much discussion, thanks to Taeauna's skillful tongue. They'd learned that a Lord Tharlark ruled in Arbridge now, and that he'd been armsmaster to Sir Sahrlor, the dead knight of Artown, and was a hard-bitten warrior who wanted Falconfar to be rid of all magic and wizards. Tharlark no longer dwelt in town, but had taken Tabbrar Castle at the far end of the vale as his abode, once home to the dead Sir Tabbrar.

It seemed that fear ruled Arbridge now, and kept honest folk abed inside their barred and shuttered homes of nights, but just what caused that fear, the guards had not wanted to speak of, beyond warning the Aumrarr and the old man with her not to camp in a field or hay-heap by night, but to hie themselves inside an inn, pay the coin demanded, and stay there until after sunrise.

"So," Taeauna said, as they reached a moot where cobbled streets of close-crowded stone-and-thatch homes and shops opened out all around them, and men hurrying to get indoors cast them suspicious looks. "Behold The Two Drowned Knights. Old sir, do you again bide silent, and let me talk and pay."

She tapped a purse heavy with takings from Highcrag, and cast a level look at Rod, who nodded silently. Men gazed eagerly upon the Aumrarr, and seemed happy to get her attention and converse with her; whereas he could have been a dusty piece of familiar furniture, too broken-down to use, and too immobile to need noticing.

Taeauna strode across the street as if she lived in Arbridge, and Rod hastened to follow.

The inn was a tall, square, ugly stone fortress of a building, its ground floor lacking any windows that Rod could see. The Aumrarr thrust open its front door and shouldered her way past several muttering local men, into warmth and feeble lantern light. They fell abruptly silent at the sight of the severed stubs of her wings; Rod shouldered through that silence in her wake, meeting the gaze of no one.

The common room was as dimly lit as Rod had expected, and crowded with dark and massive furniture. It wasn't crowded with patrons, though; only a few folk were seated dining and drinking.

Spiced ale, salty broth, or mulled wine: it all came in the same tall, battered metal tankard, and with the same hand-loaves of coarse, dark rallow-bread. Taeauna ordered the wine for herself and the broth for Rod, and they shared them, passing the tankards back and forth like husband and wife.

Not that any of the locals-almost all of them men in leather and homespun, weary after a day's work-cared if the Aumrarr and the old man were a couple or otherwise. They were too busy leaning forward over their own tankards and excitedly impressing a handful of peddlers and traveling wagon merchants with tales of the latest peril to afflict Arbridge.

The Wolfheads, it seemed, had come to Arvale. And the Snakefaces, too.

As the winter past had begun, ran their talk, Dark Helms had suddenly infested Arbridge. Raiding every few days, searching every barn and cottage and swording everyone who didn't flee fast enough, the Helms had scoured the vale from one end to the other, even appearing in Tabbrar Castle. Always they came "from nowhere," apparently melting out of empty air, menacing crofter and lord alike.

In spring the Dark Helms had suddenly stopped coming. The fear they'd brought, however, hadn't faded one whit. For no sooner had the dark-armored warriors ceased to be seen in Arvale, then a new menace appeared: snake-and wolf-headed men who wore masks of living flesh to appear human, and posed as traders by day, but let slip their masks to prowl the vale and murder Arfolk by night.

For years Arbridge had known few visitors from afar, but the Snakefaces were hidden among a flood of unfamiliar wagon merchants from distant holds and kingdoms, who were suddenly everywhere in Arbridge and Galath, and Tauren and Sardray beyond, too. These merchants sold mirrors, cast metal ewers and decanters, well-made coffers and kegs, saws and hasps and nails, daggers and buckles and cheeses and all manner of things useful and exotic, and bought hides and smoked joints of meat from Arbren.

There had been mages among the traders, too. Not spell-tyrants like the fabled Dooms, but more ordinary folk, both old and young. Bony and fat, I hey worked little charms and wardings, and sold potions to heal the sick and make the uncaring fall in love.

"None of them lasted long," one drover said darkly from nearby, wrapping both of his large and hairy hands around his tankard as if it were a wizard's neck. "The Vengeful saw to that."

Vengeful? Nothing he'd created, Rod was certain. Taeauna was also listening with that slight frown that meant, he was increasingly sure, that she was encountering something new. And troublesome.

"The who?" a wagon merchant asked, rubbing his chin.

The two men of Ar shook their heads and put up their hands in warding gestures, and just in case the merchant was too dense to take the hint, one of them muttered, "Shouldn't have said anything at all; we don't speak of them."

The merchant nodded, but then leaned forward and plucked at the arm of one of the pair, and muttered, "Well enough, I'll not pry. Yet I'd take it kindly if you'd answer me this: I was seeking a woman who owes one of my business partners quite a debt, and was told in Tauren she was slain by the Vengeful. Now, she could well have been a sorceress, from what some have said. Does this sound right to you? These Vengeful; they'd slay a sorceress?"

The Arbren pair glanced around to see if anyone was listening, making Rod glad he'd just looked away from them and was now peering at their reflection in the shiny, unadorned signet ring he always wore on the middle finger of his left hand. Then one of them nodded curtly and emphatically.

"Good," the merchant said, "I can stop wasting time looking for her then."

"So," the drover said to him, "you've come through Tauren? What news? I've a brother lives there…"

"Finish your broth and come," Taeauna murmured to Rod. "And try to look sad and old and exhausted."

"Behold my stellar acting," Rod said wearily, setting down his empty tankard and rising reluctantly and stiffly to follow her. He hadn't walked this much in a day for years.

"No wings?" asked the innkeeper, as he took her coins and pushed a long-barreled key across his desk to her.

"The first part of my punishment," Taeauna almost spat at him, and then pointed at Rod with the key as if it were a dagger. "The second part."

The innkeeper grimaced sympathetically, shrugged, and said, "Through yon arch, turn left, end of the passage. Match the key to the image burned into the door."

The Aumrarr thanked him with a nod, and motioned curtly with her head for Rod to precede her.

As they reached the end of the passage she stopped outside their door, peered hard at the adjacent walls as if expecting them to bristle with hidden doors, and then muttered to Rod, "Forgive my coldness. I must act the right part to keep you from being suspected of being a wizard. As an Aumrarr working off a blood-debt, I'll be expected to guard you, sleeping across the entrance to wherever you slumber."

She unlocked the door and stalked into the room beyond, hunting around it as if expecting Dark Helms under the linens and behind every curtain. A dim, dancing light was coming from a candle-end set in a bowl-shaped rock. There was a single bed, with linens and furs and a scattering of cushions, a large window with shutters and no glass, a larger wooden wardrobe affixed solidly to the wall, and two curtained-off corners of the room: behind one curtain was an ewer of wash water standing in a basin on a shelf, and behind the other stood a chipped chamber pot. The window shutters and the door could both be barred from inside the room, and the Aumrarr set bars into place without delay. Then she flung open the wardrobe doors, which were as large as the door they'd come in by, and thumped the back of its dusty emptiness suspiciously. Solid. Then she checked the floors, ceiling, and walls, tapping and sliding her fingers along the mud bricks and broad boards with a thoughtful frown. The bricks were old and crumbling; her fingertips gouged sand from them that trailed to the floor. Their mortar was firm, though, holding them securely in place.

"Find anything?" Rod asked, at last.

Taeauna rose, looking severe, and hastened to him to put a reproving finger across his lips. "Speak as if you're old," she whispered. "And come and whisper to me, like this, whenever you can. Always assume someone is right outside that window trying to hear us."

"Jesus," Rod hissed, "is this what Falconfar's become?"

"Yes. We sleep in our clothes, with our boots on."

Rod shrugged acceptance, and then stood shaking his head. Oh, he'd had knights fighting all over Falconfar, and fell monsters and nasty wizards, too, but he'd also established beautiful forest glades where faerie magic kept safe everyone inside moonglow rings, and unicorns that galloped through the air to become pegasi, and… and…

He blinked. Taeauna was beckoning him to bed with an imperious finger. Not that she looked as if she had anything romantic in mind, kneeling there atop it fully clothed with her other hand on her sword-hilt, and that stormy frown on her face.

He went to her and whispered, "Yes?"

"Now may well be our only chance to talk freely in Arbridge," she whispered back. "You have been wandering along beside me all day looking lost and upset. I know why, but is there aught you'd like to talk over, lord?"

Rod spread his hands helplessly. "Such as? You can't even name the powerful wizards, if I understand you correctly, and you know as much as I do about this 'right place' of mine, and… and-"

He broke off suddenly, snatching hold of his temper before it flared right out of control, and then hissed, "Yes. Yes, there is something. Tell me more about this part of Falconfar around us. My memory is hazy and it seems everything's been changed around anyway. So we're in Arbridge, a little valley like a trough sliced along the top of a row of hills, right?" "Right."

"And if we could stroll steadily, about a day's walk that way-er, south, more or less-is a castle I hat guards the place where Arvale ends and the road goes up over a little lip and then down the slope of the hills into the pastoral but proud kingdom of Galath, with its many knights and castles. That hasn't changed, has it?"

"The lay of the land, no. Galath, yes."

"Later. For now, if there's still a Galath with borders more or less like the old Galath, tell me the layout of things beyond it."

"Yes, lord. The borders are the same: North of Galath is wild forest; south, too, while it's bounded on the east by the same hills as Arvale lies in, only they rise into mountains as they march on south, across almost all of known Falconfar."

"The Falconspires," Rod said, remembering. He quoted the sentences he usually wrote to describe them: "Where dwell the lorn, above, and the deepclaws, in the caverns below. No one gets over that great stone wall easily."

Taeauna nodded. "Only in the west of Galath, where of old was the land of Emmer, fallen so long its songs now fade, does the land lie open to horse and hoof and cart. The River Ladruar winds there, separating Galath from Tauren, on its long way south to the Sea of Storms. Tauren is a small land of merchants and mercenaries, ruled by the Council of Coins. Walled homes, much wealth and bustle, even more intrigue and gossip."

"Yes," Rod smiled. "A nice touch, I thought; guilds richer than any of the lands around, who hire the best mercenaries and so defend their borders against Galath and Sardray."

"Nice, indeed." Taeauna's voice was so dry as to be almost sarcastic. "As you say, Sardray, grassland of the bow-riders, lies beyond Tauren."

"And beyond that?"

"Roads winding through the great wild forest, linking one smallholding to the next; Hawksyl, Darswords, and Harlhoh are the nearest. It's the way you remember it, lord; only the rulers have changed, as the Dooms extend their sway. Most of this great sweep of northlands is covered by Raurklor, the Great Forest, ruled more by the wolves than anyone."

Rod frowned. "So why, if these wizards lust so much for power, do they spend their time contending up here? Surely, in the crowded hot cities around the Sea of Storms, where I wrote that so many folk were wizards…"

"Magic, lord. Ruins. The powerful old magic lies hidden or is guarded by monsters in ruins, or buried in tombs, here, in the North. In the cities of the South every second soul can work magic, and does, but it is the dregs, the everyday spells of illusion and the passing moment and the tiny effect, not the great might they hunger for. The black-bearded Stormar…"

"With their silks and veils, great dark eyes and dusky skin," Rod completed the quotation. What he wrote became true. Whatever he wrote.

So of course to Falconaar, Rod Everlar would be the ultimate weapon.

And the deadliest tyrant.

"Is there any religion in Falconfar now?"

He certainly hadn't written any into his books.

"There were once temples and priests, long ago, but only our most learned elders and wizards remember them. They came from… earlier pens, and have faded before your fire."

"So do Falconfar pray to anyone? And for anything?"

"Many pray in secret, pleading that all wizards may die, and for deliverance from the Dooms. The worship of Aumrarr you know. Lesser wizards pray, too, for more power and that the Dooms who hunt and oppress them be destroyed."

"Oh? And to who, or rather, whom, do all these enthusiastic secret worshippers pray?"

Taeauna lowered herself from her upright kneeling into a belly-on-the-bed dive forward and reached for his hand. She kissed it, and then looked up the length of his arm at Rod.

"You."

Dark-eyed, the ghostly head rose up out of the coffer that held the gem, and peered into the darkness, head tilted to one side as if it were listening to something. It was bald, yet bearded, a feeble glow in the crypt, and moved in utter silence.

Yet its voice sounded clearly, if a-little thin and distant, when it smiled and said, "At last."

"Right," Rod Everlar said to the beautiful woman on the bed before him. He let out a deep breath, shook his head, and decided he didn't want to think or say more about being treated as a god just now.

"So tell me more of Hawksyl, Darswords, and Harlhoh," he said instead.

Taeauna shrugged as she slowly sat up on her knees once again. "All much the same. A lordling in a keep, ruling and protecting farms that huddle in a cleared scar in the forest. Each on its own road west out of Sardray. Ironthorn, north of Tauren and northeast of Sardray, is larger and closer to us here, and also consists of farms in the forest, but it has three keeps and three rival lords. Hawksyl for years was home to outlaws from other lands who raided passing wagons, until something-probably something sent by one of the Dooms, for the Council in Tauren denies doing so-raided them. Darswords has been deemed haunted for years; it lies in the shadow of Yintaerghast, the tower of Lorontar. And Harlhoh has fallen under the hand of one of the Dooms who has built his tower there." She drew a name in the loose folds of the bed linens. The moment Rod had read "Malraun," she clawed the cloth back into smooth shapelessness again.

"Who," Rod asked, "is Lorontar? I never wrote…"

"No, lord. Lorontar is long, long dead. He was the only Lord Archwizard before you, a great tyrant and first-feared among the Dooms before your pen was ever known to us. So evil was he that the many wizards who seek to plunder his tower all flee from it in haste, and come not back to try again. So strong was he that his spells keep his tower standing still."

She shook her head, grimacing as if recalling a bitter taste on her tongue, and added, "For centuries he did much as he pleased; no one dared oppose or defy him as he worked ever greater and darker magics. There are some who say he never died, though many tales are told of the brave warriors who dared to hew him down, many dying in that strife. Others say he perished but is not gone from Falconfar, existing still as some sort of walking dead."

She shrugged. "He has not been seen for years. I once saw mercenaries in Bhelraohwsyn showing a skeletal hand and arm in a great glass vessel amongst their battle spoils and claiming it as his. 'Twas hacked from him by their swords, they said, that turned to smoke in their hands in the doing, as they took part in his slaying."

Rod nodded. "And they've not been seen again, yes? Nor the bones?"

"Indeed, they have not. These thirteen summers, now."

"Uh-huh. And where's this Bell-r-oww-sin place?"

"On the east bank of the Ladruar, where it empties into the Sea of Storms."

Rod frowned, genuinely curious. "Whatever were you doing there?"

"A task of the Aumrarr. A secret task."

Rod opened his mouth to tell her that he'd created the Aumrarr, so she should hardly be keeping secrets from him, and then shut it again without saying anything.

Taeauna smiled at him as if he'd done something very noble, and murmured, "Thank you, lord."

Rod shrugged and proceeded to ask the next of the dozens of small questions that were now crowding into his mind. "The Dark Helms, Tay: what are they? Who commands them?"

"Taeauna, lord. They are warriors. Cruel men in dark armor, who obey the orders given them by the one who sent them: a wizard, almost always one of the Three Dooms. Sometimes their swords or their armor or even their touch imparts fell magic on foes, but that is the doing of their sender, not any power of their own. They are slayers, sometimes battle-veterans, but they are men, no more and no less."

"So this 'appearing out of thin air' business?"

"The wizards translocate them, by teleport and tantlar."

Rod frowned. "Teleport is a word I know and have written in Falconfar tales, but what is 'tantlar?'"

"Before you first wrote that word, and the wizards learned to telep-"

"Wait. Forgive me, Tay-Taeauna, sorry-but are you telling me that when I write about a new spell, it falls into the laps, or the minds, I suppose, of the three wizards? Or all wizards?"

Taeauna spread her hands in a "you're asking we?" gesture. "Sometimes, it seems so, yes. The Dooms, however, are in a race to master the most magic, so as to destroy each other. They can't wait for your next book to hand them all the same new magic; they need to gain magic their rivals don't have. So they experiment, as all lesser wizards do, seeking to craft new spells."

Rod nodded. "Slow and dangerous."

Taeauna nodded, too. "Wherefore they spend much time and effort-and the lives of their underlings: hirelings and monsters and apprentice wizards they promise magic to, in exchange for service-in exploring and plundering tombs and ruins and anywhere else they think the magic of dead wizards, old magic, may lie waiting. That's what all of this conquering holds and subverting lordlings is about: seizing control of places that might yield up magic. Thankfully, scrying magic is weak, so they must send eyes to watch us if they want to see much. More than one hold and all of the larger lands, has seen knifings and larger battles between the spies of one wizard, and the spies of another."

Rod nodded. "I've used that! The plot of…"

Then he waved that thought away impatiently, aghast at the realization that he'd written about those warring agents without ever thinking the characters might be serving shadowy wizards.

"Sorry," he told Taeauna rather tersely. "You were telling me about teleport magic, and tantlar, whatever that is, and I interrupted. Could we go back to… uh… before I wrote the word 'teleport' and the wizards soon after learned a teleport spell…"

"Yes, lord. Before then, the Dooms, and all wizards, had to send someone to a place to work tantlar magic. After, they often teleport that someone, and it remains someone, since they can only teleport one agent at a time."

Rod nodded. "Okay, so what's tantlar, and where did it come from?"

Taeauna shrugged. "I know not; tantlar-work is old. Lorontar is infamous for using it, with his skeletons."

Seeing Rod's baffled expression, she explained. "Lorontar suffered no Dark Helms to fight for him, or stand guard at his tower. He used human skeletons animated and commanded by him to swing swords. There were priests in those days, who went about in cowled robes, and Lorontar's skeletons often used such garb to fool folk until it was too late."

"Charming," Rod grunted. "Okay, so tantlar magic works well with skeletons."

The Aumrarr nodded. "Better than with Dark Helms. The fire, you see…"

"No, I don't see. What fire?"

Taeauna smiled patiently. "Lord, let me explain."

"Er, please do. Sorry."

"Think of a place distant from a wizard; an inn, or a farmhouse, that the wizard wants conquered or searched. Lorontar would send several skeletons, separately, in case they were seen and attacked on the journey by fearful Falconaar. They would move by night, not needing rest nor provender, traveling by day only in wilderlands, otherwise keeping hidden. The Dooms, today, would teleport a Dark Helm instead."

"Right. So one of these skeletons makes it to the inn."

"The skeleton nears the inn, finds a sheltered plaice not easily seen by folk who might raise alarum, gathers kindling and firewood, and starts a fire."

"With flint and steel," Rod ventured, nodding. He'd written of characters doing just that, many times.

"Indeed. A goodly campfire is lit, and the skeleton then drops a metal token into it that the wizard enspelled earlier, and sent with it. This is the tantlar; the fire awakens it. The wizard has a matching tantlar, magically linked to the one in the fire, but still under his hand, far away, where the skeleton set out from."

Rod nodded again, seeing where this was going.

"Any creature induced to touch the wizard's tantlar can then be transported across Falconfar in an instant, to the tantlar in the fire, by a far lesser spell than a teleport. So the wizard can cast many tantlar spells, and send dozens, even scores, of creatures swiftly to a distant tantlar."

"I should use this in a book," Rod muttered. "I could…" He stopped as fear flared on Taeauna's face, and said quickly, "Right. I see why arriving in a fire could harm skeletons less than living men, who have feet that burn, in boots that burn."

"Yes. The tantlar can be retrieved from the fire without ending the magic, though the chance of sending more warriors is instantly ended, but when that fire goes out, all of the transported creatures, alive or dead, no matter where they are, get magically 'snatched back' to the first tantlar, or the wizard's tantlar. Along with everything they're wearing, carrying, or holding that isn't alive, and is smaller than they are."

"Hmm. What if someone doesn't want to go back?"

"They have to cast a spell to sever the link. I don't know what such magics are called, or how they are worked, but I know they have been worked. So enraging the Dooms, in both cases, that they teleported new agents to the spot, to bring other searchers by means of another pair of tantlar, and hunted down the wayward apprentice… it was one of their apprentices, seeking to escape, in both cases."

Rod shook his head, feeling as wary as Taeauna looked. "I see. I also see that what 1 don't know about Falconfar is going to get me killed, if I'm not careful."

"I will defend you with my life, lord," the Aumrarr hissed at him fervently. "You are Falconfar's last hope!"

"Your last hope, you mean," Rod murmured, smiling to try not to alarrg her further. "Falconfar doesn't know I'm even here. Thank God."

"What is this 'God?'"

"Never mind. Just something I curse by. So are all wizards evil?"

Taeauna hesitated. "All wizards are… dangerous. Their power makes them impatient for more, and they can easily become evil."

"But magic isn't evil; you Aumrarr use magic, and are good. I know you are, I…"

Rod fell silent. It felt wrong, somehow, to say, "because I created you that way." He wasn't going to get to the verge of saying so again, if he could manage it.

Something like gratitude flashed through Taeauna's eyes before she nodded solemnly and replied, "Magic is but a sword. The wielder does good or ill, not the blade, unless the blade is a shapechanged wizard or beast, free to think, and can work on the minds of those who bear it."

Rod rolled his eyes. "I never thought I'd end up thinking that I wrote too much about Falconfar. Right, tell me more about Galath. That's where we're going, isn't it?"

"Yes," Taeauna said slowly, eyes almost imploring, "because that's the land you've written most about, and so thought most about, wherefore, I'm hoping…"

"That this 'right place' that will bring back my memories is somewhere there." Rod seemed to be doing a lot of nodding. "Well, I hope so. I always liked Galath, and dreamed most about it, and wrote more about it than anywhere else in Falconfar. It was a little like England, to me."

"England?"

"Well, not the real England, but how I imagined England in the time of knights and castles, when I was young and saw Robin Hood movies and-"

"Robbing…?"

"Never mind. Tell me about Galath. It's still all those happy folk on their sundappled farms, each village with its castle up on the hill, wherein dwell all those crusty old nobles with their soup-strainer mustaches and monocles and galloping hunts, right?"

Taeauna sighed. "No longer, lord. Galath is too large and powerful for any of the Dooms to conquer; whenever one tries, the other two join forces to defeat him. All three have been harshly taught this lesson by the others, so they no longer try. Instead, stepping around each other save when their spies happen to come within dagger-reach, they have been busily plundering the many castles of the realm for magic, slaughtering nobles to do so."

"Christ," Rod snarled. "Now I want to have a pen in my hand that can transform Falconfar!"

"More than that; the royal family is all but slain entire."

"The Rothryns? 'All but?' So who's left?"

"Well, some are fled, or gone into hiding, but it's hard to hide from a Doom unless you truly go far and never return, abandoning all trace of heritage and privilege; most of those have been found and killed. Then, quite openly, Lordrake Rarcel and Lordrake Bellomir, the brothers of the king you knew, and all the princesses, then Queen-"

"The king I knew," Rod said bitterly. "So they got Arbrand, too."

"Yes, lord. Last summer, in Terth Forest. Prince Keldur, soon after. So now.all the Rothryns have been murdered except King Devaer."

"Oh," Rod said. "The youngest son, the one I cast as the weakling and wastrel." He sighed, and then shrugged and said, "Well, at least there still is a king."

Taeauna nodded. "The Mad King."