Dark Lord fs-1 Read online

  Rod knew not what to say, and Taeauna had given Velduke Deldragon only tight smiles, and not a word of reply, since their words about other magic the velduke might be-no, almost certainly was-carrying.

  This seemed to alarm Deldragon, who'd tried several times to begin pleasant converse, and was now stroking his flaxen mustache repeatedly.

  "We're well onto my lands now, and very near to my home," he announced, as they started around a high green hill crowned by a banner-fluttering watchpost; a horn rang out from it, and was answered by the war-horns of the knights at the head of the column. "If I've offended you, I desire you to remember this: duty drives us all hard."

  "Certainly, Lord Deldragon," Taeauna said warmly, rescuing Rod from silent helplessness.

  Well, what does one say to such a large, handsome hero of a man? "Hi, I created you, glad you've turned out the way you did?" "You're certainly more impressive in person than how I just described you, in a few overblown sentences?"

  "I am sorry if my reaction has discomfited you in any way," the Aumrarr said smoothly to the velduke riding at her hip. "Your dedication to duty is admirable; one of the rocks that folk must be able to stand upon and trust in, if there is to be any peace in Falconfar. You are quite correct in keeping your secrets and weapons ready but known only to you. I would do the same, were I riding in your saddle."

  Darendarr Deldragon peered closely at her face, those ice-blue eyes intent, seeking any hint of mockery, but Taeauna gave him a real smile and the words, "Lord, I mean what I say. Truly. I am an Aumrarr, remember?"

  "I believe you," the velduke said, matching her smile, "yet feel moved to comment that I have met sisters of yours before, and known both sarcasm and playful deceit to fall from their lips-very prettily, and not without cause, but with the shrewd power to wound nonetheless."

  "Ah. Yes. I can speak in that wise, too, when moved to. I meant rather that Aumrarr deeply understand duty and dedication to it, given how our own lives are spent."

  "Indeed," Deldragon replied, inclining his head politely and leaving Rod settling deeper into safe silence than ever. Then, as they rounded the bend, the velduke swept out his arm grandly and said, "Welcome to Bowrock!"

  Rod Everlar had seen Bowrock before in his dreams-or had he created it, his dreams causing the castle to be? He was going to have to understand that part of things better, and soon-but that first sight of it, soaring white and splendid across a broad green valley, still took his breath away.

  It was huge. A mottled stone city crowning a hill, girt about with tall white stone fortress walls that thrust out into two massive gate-towers to greet the road they were riding down; identical, side-by-side towers that soared straight and bright up into the sky like something out of a fairy-tale, only bigger. Much, much bigger.

  "It doesn't look as if it could ever be taken," Rod mumbled, and saw Taeauna hide a smile as, beyond her shoulder, Deldragon's brows rose.

  "No, it doesn't!" the velduke agreed heartily. "I sit taller in my saddle whenever I ride around this bend and gaze upon it. I was born and reared in Bowrock, and have always known it would be mine. Yet somehow, when looking upon something so grand, one is always aware of those who dwelt before you. In Bowrock, it seems to me that I walk cloaked in the ghosts of my ancestors. Not unfriendly haunts, nor anything I or you or anyone can see and hear; but I can feel them. Always."

  Taeauna nodded as if that was a familiar feeling to her. Rod nodded out of respect and because his mind was busily picturing Deldragon sweeping down staircases with a ghostly escort, streaming out pale and wraith-like behind him like an impossibly long bridal veil…

  More horns sounded, from the tall towers of Bowrock this time, and were answered by the knights riding up ahead. The road went on past the gates, Rod could now see, forking to descend into the valley and to wind through hills and on south and west, to other velduchal lands in Galath.

  The road also broadened, and acquired traffic. Carts were drawn up along its verge, selling everything from remounts and draft-oxen to trinkets, and a lot of heaped greens and root crops. Folk strode back and forth shopping, many of them towing rumbling-wheeled handcarts, but this sea of people parted miraculously to let the knights trot straight through without hindrance or a word spoken.

  And many of the people, as Deldragon rode past, thrust their hands to their chests in some sort of salute, standing tall and gazing at him with respect. The handsome velduke nodded to as many of them as he saw, unsmiling, his head turning this way and that constantly so as to miss no one.

  Rod's heart lifted, and he found himself, suddenly and silently, close to tears.

  So this was what it was to be revered and genuinely looked up to. He'd written plenty of fictitious, heart-wrenching scenes down the years, in book after book, but this… this was real. There wasn't a shred of fear in those faces; this was no tyrant coming home and marking who genuflected and who did not. This was real.

  "Jesus," he whispered under his breath, shaking his head in awe. To be so, well, "loved" probably wasn't the right word for it at all, but…

  Then they turned into a huge archway into a narrowing stone chute, a rising cobbled ramp between walls bristling with stark, menacing arrow-slit windows, that led to a second arch.

  Rod glanced up and found himself looking at a forest of massive spikes; rows of portculli just waiting to thunder down, and beyond them, just before the inner arch, a massive wooden scoop or hinged basket full of what Rod thought were ball bearings could be seen. To pour down the ramp and make every foe and their horse fall, yes, but where did Falconaar get ball bloody bearings?

  Not from bis writings, that was for sure… oh. Holdoncorp. Of course. If a trap would be visually fun in a computer game, he'd better assume Falconfar had that trap. And all of its clanking, spiked, blood-dripping, cigar-smoking variants, too.

  So did that mean that ball bearings appeared magically, in smiths' back rooms and castle armories and market stalls? Or that overnight some Falconaar conceived of them, and how to fashion them round and nigh perfect, and awakened driven to make some, and not cease until they were being snapped up all over the Falcon Kingdoms? How did this… what had Tay called it? Oh, yes, "shaping." How did this shaping reaily work, anyway?

  Beyond the inner archway, the way widened into a huge open space where many cobbled streets met. A busy moot was fronted by three guardposts where hard-eyed guards manned crossbows as large as wagons that hurled quarrels larger than the knights' lances. The crossbows were aimed right at the archway, to fire down the throats of anyone trying to storm the castle gates. Beyond, the crowded, many-balconied buildings of the city rose like a dirty gray-brown wall, but one broad street ran on through them, straight and true, rising at its far end into…

  "My home," the velduke said, pointing. At a large, spartan-looking stone keep up on a hill, crowning the highest point of the hill covered by the city, right at the back, beyond all the crowded roofs.

  "Jesus," Rod hissed again, as the knights started the long trot down the avenue. It was one thing to blithely write about tall buildings and crowded cities and reeking dung-wagons, but quite another to ride through the heart of it all gawking around, seeing and smelling and…

  He saw washing hanging from balcony rails, and stout women with weathered faces securing it with wooden pegs bristling from their mouths. He saw scores of men and children trudging or even struggling under the weight of laden caskets and coffers and sacks; the trade in every shop seemed to involve carrying lots of things. And everywhere Rod saw folk pause in what they were doing to glance down at the procession of riding knights, recognize the bareheaded velduke, and straighten to smartly bring their hands to their chests in salute. Jeez, that was impressive.

  He glanced over at Deldragon; as before, the velduke was nodding back to everyone he saw saluting him.

  Flies were everywhere, and horse dung underfoot, though children with scoops or using just their hands and stained old sacks were darting out between horses and
hurrying folk to scoop up the steaming droppings. Rod turned in his saddle to see where one of them-a dirty-faced girl in a rag of a dress-went, and saw her hasten down an alley and in at a door.

  Then they were past, and he could see that alley no more, and the streets were rising and growing broader and less crowded. The houses were grander, now, some of them having little stone walls and arched metal gates enclosing tiny garden-yards, rather than opening directly onto the street. He'd seen nothing that could be called a sidewalk, nor…

  A sudden, strident war-horn fanfare jolted him upright, blinking.

  He was in time to see the knights in front of them parting, turning aside and bringing their horses to head-tossing halts, to let the velduke and his honored guests enter Deldragon's castle first.

  They rode through an arch wide enough for six riders abreast, in a crenelated wall perhaps thirty feet high, into a wide cobbled area in front of a grand door at the top of wide stone steps, with another archway into the gloom of some sort of interior coachyard, beyond.

  Uniformed servants were waiting for them on those steps, and grooms to take the reins of their horses, crimson dragons bright on many steel-gray breasts. It was impressive; Rod sat uncertainly in his saddle until Taeauna and the velduke both started to dismount. Then he promptly discovered how stiff and sore his legs were as he tried to do the same and ended up half dismounting and half falling out of his saddle, wincing.

  The horse was led away while he was still limping over to Taeauna, and in a sort of daze Rod found more smartly uniformed servants than he could count bowing low to him in unison and then whisking him up the steps with the Aumrarr at his side. To his confused, wonderstruck look she replied with a wink and a grin, and Rod found himself being smoothly conducted along dark, grandly paneled passages where countless servants averted their stares to bow low, up a grand-bannistered flight of stone stairs to ornate double doors that waiting servants in daggercoats flung wide, and into a suite of brightly lit rooms where the grand procession suddenly ended, leaving him blinking in the sudden stillness.

  "Your rooms, gentles," a grandly liveried servant murmured from behind Rod and Taeauna, as he withdrew, softly drawing the double doors closed again as he bowed and departed behind them.

  More servants stood waiting in the doorways of five-no, six-inner rooms, and now smoothly bowed in unison, and… and…

  Taeauna stepped forward, and then saw something (what, Rod could not tell) and stopped dead.

  She whirled to face Rod, eyes flashing a "be still" warning, and as swiftly spun right back the way she'd been facing, turning her head to look intently around at all the servants. She clapped her hands briskly, and announced, "We thank you very much for your kind attendance, but now most urgently require you all to depart and leave us."

  No one moved.

  The Aumrarr drew herself up and said curtly, "Go. Now. All of you."

  Rod saw heads turning, junior servants looking to those ranked above them. Taeauna saw who they were looking to, and leveled her own cold gaze on those four senior servants.

  They coughed, nodded, and kept their reddening faces carefully expressionless. One by one, they bowed again to Taeauna and then to Rod, and slipped away, the other servants melting away with them.

  Rod tried as hard to keep from looking puzzled, as all of them obviously were; try as he might, he couldn't see anything in all the luxury surrounding him that should spur Taeauna to suddenly act as she was.

  He could see nothing at all alarming or unusual.

  "I dismissed all of you," the Aumrarr said firmly, her voice colder than ever. She raised it a trifle to add, "Including you who watch and listen in the walls. Just go, and tell your master that I ordered your withdrawal. For your own protection."

  Rod shook his head, bewildered. "What-?"

  Taeauna's hand closed on his, quellingly, as she said to the walls around them, "I jest not. Now go."

  Rod heard the slightest of sounds off to his left, and a faint stirring, clear across the room. Then silence.

  "Staying, still?" Taeauna asked, her gaze fixed on just one wall now. "Well, I warned you. Your doom is of your own choosing."

  She turned then and embraced Rod Everlar like a lover, her body melting against his, her lips nuzzling his ear.

  "Is this your 'right place?'" she breathed.

  Rod kissed her jaw just above the chin, and let his lips trail along it to her ear, heart pounding. (Hey! I'm like a suave secret agent, kissing the girl! Not that he could recall many stories where the beautiful Russian lady spy was sporting the stumps of recently clipped wings.) "No," he whispered, as quietly as he knew how. "What's up?"

  Taeauna's arms went up and around his neck, as if in quickening lust, so she could bury her lips in his ear and whisper, "Stay away from yon table for now, and don't look at it with any interest at all. Those are enchanted things, laid out to show Deldragon's spies by your reactions if you're a wizard or not. Whatever you do, don't pick any up, handle them, or take them. Just leave them be; overlook them. They bore you and mean nothing to you. Except that veldukes put some odd decorations in their guest chambers."

  Rod had vaguely noticed a glossy-polished table ahead with a row of small objects on it. He firmly quelled his impulse to turn his head and look at it properly, and settled for moving his mouth to a shapely Aumrarr ear and breathing into it, as softly as possible, "Deldragon's spies? Is he a foe, then?"

  "He's… careful. As all Galathan nobles must be. The careless lords are already dead."

  Any velduke's castle has many rooms, not all of them grand or well used, and the personal keep of Darendarr Deldragon was no exception. There were dozens of dark stone rooms on the damp southern side of its cellars that had been left to the rats and dust for years, and in one of them now, the air suddenly started to glow.

  The glow grew, becoming many small points of light that silently spiraled around each other. They whirled ever-faster, rising up from the floor into a tall, thin column, spinning and… suddenly coalescing into a young, alert-looking man in robes who clutched a large and bulging sack.

  Taerith Saeredarr peered all around, turning quickly to look in all directions for signs that anyone else was about. Seeing nothing but darkness, now that the glow that had delivered him had faded, and hearing nothing but his own breathing, he put the sack on the floor, held it there with one hand, and pivoted again, more slowly, listening very carefully this time.

  Nothing.

  Leaving the sack, he went to where he knew the door was. It stood open with only more darkness beyond; he looked and listened again.

  Silence stretched, and Taerith slowly relaxed. It seemed there was no life nearby; possibly there was no one on this level of the cellars at all, just now.

  Which was ideal. He returned to his sack and raked a heap of kindling out onto the floor, surrounding it with sticks and framing it with two small logs. Leaving the rest of the firewood in the sack and pushing it aside to stand as a barrier of sorts between the flames he was going to make and the door, Taerith drew forth a flint and a steel striker from behind his belt buckle, and set to work fire-starting.

  He got sparks almost immediately, into his waiting, bone-dry tinder. He let it smolder until it caught, fed it more kindling, and then blew on it at just the right moment. His fire flared.

  His hand went again to his belt, and drew forth a small metal token shaped like a coin. Twigs were snapping, now, and smoke began to rise as his blaze quickened. Taerith dropped the tantlar carefully into the heart of it and stepped back, drawing a dagger so he could cast a manydaggers spell if a Deldragon knight or servant burst into the room.

  Then he waited, heart racing. Fear was raging in his dry mouth and pounding innards, but he had been an apprentice to Arlaghaun long enough to fear his master far more than intruding into a castle whose folk would probably seek to slay him on sight.

  The fire freshened, building into a small, steady snapping of sparks and streaming of flame, smoke driftin
g out and away, stealing from the room out into the passage beyond.

  And something ghostly started to appear in the air above the little fire. Shoulders, a helm-covered head… that head turning to glare, a raised sword slowly melting into view…

  Faint and distant sounds arose, from far beyond the passage outside the door, and Taerith's head jerked up. Fast, thump-thump-thump sounds; someone in boots, running. No, several someones!

  Getting closer fast. Deldragon's guards, for all the coins in Galath. Smoke does have a smell that carries…

  Taerith raised the dagger in one hand, kissed it and then kissed his other hand, lifted that hand with the fingers curled just so, and waited.

  They'd not use bows, not indoors, in such small, dark rooms. Wherefore he could afford to wait until just the right moment.

  Which was… now!

  A knight burst into the room, lantern waving wildly in hand, sword out and seeking the fire.

  Taerith cast the spell, his first murmured words bringing the man's head snapping around to stare at him. The knight charged and Taerith stepped carefully away from the wall and fed him a stream of phantom daggers, blades of magical force flashing out like half a dozen arrows fired nose-to-tail to thud home in the man's throat arid face, shredding it into a red cloud and tatters of flesh.

  The headless body ran on, stumbling, and Taerith kept walking, striding aside to let the dead knight collapse into the spot where he'd been standing.

  The Dark Helm above his fire grew solid, muttered a curse, and hopped hastily out of the flames as Taerith made his daggers loop around the walls of the room, to await another foe.

  Another foe came, and then another; two Deldragon knights burst through the doorway, waving their swords. They shouted a challenge to the Dark Helm and charged, even as a second Helm started to appear in the fire.

  "Tantlar magic!" one of them shouted, and clawed a horn from his belt. Its call came out as a weak, wavering blurting as Taerith sent all of his flying daggers arrowing into the knight's neck from behind, almost severing his head. The other knight felled the Dark Helm and rushed at Taerith who fled along the wall, willing his conjured daggers to strike.