Dark Lord fs-1 Page 5

  He nodded gravely and handed the open box back. "She died shouting something that'll be useful to us, you think?"

  Taeauna's face was as calm as her voice. Only the fire raging deep in the shadows in her eyes betrayed her fury. "I hope. And no vaugril has yet been at her tongue."

  She turned, took one of the stones, and with slow, gentle care laid it in Marintra's mouth.

  They saw that pale throat quiver, cords standing out anew, and the flesh around her mouth seemed to creep, as if starting to move with slow reluctance. Then the dead mouth filled with dancing sparks, and moved normally.

  The sobbing groan was slow and deep, but its words were quite clear: "Arlaghaun, I die cursing you! By my blood, wizard, may you die a worse death than mine own!"

  The sparks promptly died, and the stone was gone. Marintra went on glaring at no one, but her jaw now hung slack.

  More so as not to have to look at Marintra for any longer, Rod turned to Taeauna. "I guess… we'll be hunting Arlaghaun now… right?"

  Taeauna looked back at him, her face as smooth as stone, and observed quietly, "You're good at guessing things, Lord Archwizard."

  Something in her tone made Rod shiver again.

  Silently, she turned away and walked back into Highcrag.

  The new chains were finer, and tinkled almost more than they rattled when she moved.

  The sharp-nosed man in gray smiled approvingly as she came into his many-shadowed study, the angry fire in his brown eyes ebbing, and she took that as a sign to scramble up from her knees to take and kiss his hand, letting her long, honey-blonde hair trail across it first; she knew he liked that. The web of chains joining her wrists to her ankles chimed, and the spells it bore made it wink and flash in the gloom of the old stone room.

  "You're troubled, master," she murmured. "Can I help? In any way?"

  At another time, her hopeful purr and those ice-blue, almost pleading eyes might have distracted him, but just now the wizard's thoughts

  were ensnared, returning again and again to that strange stirring last night, that flow of force…

  Like magic, but not magic. What was it?

  Something new, something he'd never felt before. Like the fabled storm-dreams of the Shapers, the tumults that led ignorant fools to call the strongest Shaper "Lord Archwizard," when Shapers weren't really wizards at all.

  Whatever it was, he must find it and tame it. His rivals couldn't have failed to feel it, and if one of them came to wield it, he could be doomed as surely as if he'd never mastered a single spell, but proclaimed himself king of all Falconfar with nothing to defend himself but a smile.

  As empty as the smile he was smiling now.

  There were some very artful hiding places in Highcrag, Rod Everlar mused, some hours later. Taeauna knew them all, of course, and was rapidly assembling a pile of small, useful-looking things that seemed too large for their laedlen. When he started to point this out, she reminded him that he still hadn't tried that second sword he was carrying along in her wake. And then she'd gone into a side-chamber and come out with a pair of dark leather thigh-high boots, all laces and feminine points, and tossed them to him with the words, "These should be your size, and far more comfortable than what you're wearing."

  Taeauna was foraging for food, too, but no matter what she sought, she mainly found death. Death and more death.

  Messily slain Aumrarr were everywhere, long limbs draped over chairs and beds and splintered tables. When one corpse shocked Rod into audible disgust, Taeauna threw him a decanter of wine and told him to drink only a single swallow.

  Rod watched her tireless peering and gathering, and wondered when she was going to snap.

  If he was in the way, whenever it happened, he was doomed. She could carve him up in an easy instant, probably without even slowing down in her opening of wardrobes and tossing items onto beds.

  And then, quite suddenly, she was plucking at his sleeve and dragging him back toward the rooms where she'd assembled the largest piles of items.

  "We must be well away from here before night falls. Beasts will come that we'll not want to meet; too many of them."

  Rod nodded and hurried after her. A deep anger was rising to choke him, and he felt so sick at what he'd seen that he could barely imagine what Taeauna must be feeling. This was her home; these were her friends…

  Dead, every last one of them.

  "Tae… Taeauna? Is… Are you the last Aumrarr?"

  The wingless woman whirled around so swiftly he shouted in alarm, but all she said was, "I hope not. Not all of my sisters are here. Unless some lie dead in the rocks beyond the gardens that I've not seen yet. I'm not inclined to go looking. Hasten."

  Rod knelt and started scooping items into his laedre, his new boots squeaking. Idly, as he stowed and stuffed, he wondered how ridiculous he looked. There'd been a tall oval of brightly polished metal mounted on the sloping front of a mountainous wardrobe in one of the rooms, pretty close to what was sometimes called a "cheval glass" in some of the arty furniture catalogs that came in the mail, hut he hadn't much wanted to look at himself.

  A mutter of disgust came from close behind him, and one of Taeauna's long arms reached past him into his sack, to pluck something out that he'd just put in there.

  "Taeauna," Rod said then, watching her long fingers emerge with something small and metallic that he couldn't begin to identify, "there are…"

  He didn't know how to say this, but he had to try. "There are things about Falconfar that I hate. Butchery like this. The wizards. The Dark Helms, and the suspicion. If my books-my dreams-can change Falconfar, how? How can I control things, to make just the changes I want?"

  In the lengthening silence that followed, her other hand took hold of his shoulder, and turned him gently.

  "Lord Archwizard," Taeauna of the Aumrarr whispered, tears glimmering in her emerald eyes as they faced each other nose-to-nose, "I… I don't know."

  They spent that night high in the mountains, huddled together in a crevice. Both were wrapped in their own blankets, which did little to make the rocks they were lying on less sharp and unyieldingly hard. Taeauna used a sling made of the sword belts she'd brought from Highcrag to bind the rolled blankets together around her shoulders, and with this crude aid, pulled large stones into the mouth of the crevice, to partly wall it closed.

  "Wolves?" Rod had asked, as he chinked the big stones by wedging little ones around them, as he was instructed.

  "Worse," she'd told him tersely, and he hadn't felt like asking further. Taeauna had used something from Highcrag that was like a tall metal tankard-only it was as tall as the length of her forearm-to scoop up water from a mountain spring. That and a few berries eaten in grim silence had been their supper, and immediately after that Taeauna had gone to relieve herself and then returned to curtly order him to do the same. He'd been startled, returning to the crevice, to see her standing atop the rocks above it with her sword drawn, obviously having watched over him, but she said not a word as they secured the last rocks in place to wall themselves in, and rolled into their blankets.

  Taeauna had fallen asleep almost immediately, but started to whisper names and weep softly. Rod had lain beside her staring up into the darkness, wondering if he should reach out to comfort her, and sleep had been a long time coming for him.

  He'd come awake suddenly, later, when the darkness outside the gap-studded wall of rocks was absolute, and something with an unpleasant smell, a low and rumbling growl, and long claws that scratched on stone had nosed around just outside.

  It had thrust a snout-at least, Rod assumed it was a snout, though it was too dark to see a thing-between two of the stones they'd wedged, and Taeauna had calmly and silently thrust her sword deep into it, held firm to her steel as it shrieked and clawed wildly at the stones, sending some of them tumbling down her body and bouncing off Rod's blanketed shins, and then gone right back to sleep again.

  Her soft weeping awakened him again, later, but when he'd put out a
tentative hand to touch her shoulder comfortingly, the cold steel of the flat of her blade had slapped his wrist firmly, and she'd said quietly, "No, Dark Lord."

  "Sorry," Rod had whispered into the darkness, drawing his hand hastily back into the meager warmth of his blankets. She'd made no reply.

  And now it was morning, and colder than ever, and he was blinking as his breath drifted past his nose like mist, and Taeauna's emerald eyes were regarding him with something like contempt and something like pity.

  "Lord Archwizard, reporting for duty," Rod tried to joke.

  Her face might have been carved from stone, it remained so expressionless, as she slapped his stiff and aching crotch with the back of her hand and ordered, "Relieve yourself. I'll stand guard. We have much country to walk this day."

  He did sorely need to empty his bladder, and rolled out of his blankets into the frigid morning air wincing and shivering. "Much country? Where are we heading?"

  "Arbridge," she said flatly.

  Rod dimly remembered Arbridge as a pleasant little vale with a castle at one end, a town at the other, and a stream winding through it with farms and little woodlots everywhere. He'd written about a bridge midway along the farm-filled valley where two feuding knights had fought a battle to the death, both drowning in the stream after they'd gone off the bridge tangled together and stabbing each other.

  The knight from the castle fights the knight from the town, and no one wins. He'd liked the story, a wrinkle on the old, much-used "making a last stand guarding the bridge" tale. As far as he could recall, he hadn't ever returned in his writings to look at the aftermath for Arbridge.

  Which meant, of course, it could be anything now.

  A road wandered down the vale, from the town to the bridge and from bridge to castle, and gone up over the hills to other places at both ends, places he couldn't rightly remember just now.

  "Why Arbridge?"

  "'Tis the fastest way to get down into Galath."

  Ah. Now Galath he remembered. One of his creations he was most fond of-if he'd really created anything in this world. A splendid forest kingdom of knights and ladies, old gruff monocled dukes with huge mustaches and pretty ladies riding at their sides, and sinister, oh-so-politely-warring nobles who did each other dirty with poisoned daggers and honeyed words, trying to snatch real power away from a decadent royal family.

  "Galath. Yes," he said, smiling.

  Taeauna gave him the coldest look she'd yet favored him with, and said, "You'll find it much changed, Lord Archwizard."

  Rod looked at her, feeling more than a little helpless. "Taeauna, what have I done to… to…"

  "Earn my displeasure? Nothing. I am not angered with you, lord."

  "Then why-?"

  "I am enraged, lord. Enraged with whichever of the wizards stole your memories from you, furious with the wizard who slew all my sisters at Highcrag, and-" "Aria-"

  "Speak not his name! Idiot!" "Uh. Sorry. Ah, shouldn't that be 'Lord Idiot?'" Taeauna stared at him for a moment, all the color gone from her face. Then suddenly she rushed forward and flung her arms around him, laughing and weeping at once, so wildly and fiercely that in a hectic instant Rod found himself winded, on his back on the stones, being tugged this way and then that in iron-strong arms as she rocked back and forth.

  After what seemed like a long time, her laughter gave way to sobs, and then a sniffle or two. Then she pushed herself up off him, and looked away into the cold morning breeze.

  "I wish you hadn't said that. 'Tis in my mind, now; I might slip and call you 'Lord Idiot Archwizard' in the company of others." There was just a hint of what might have been a chuckle in her voice.

  "And that plain-tongued honesty would be bad how, exactly?"

  Taeauna turned her head slowly to regard him, not smiling. "You are different from other wizards. From every other wizard I've ever met. You're… soft where they are hard. Gentle where they are savage. A willful fool where they are haughty and threatening. A-"

  "Bumbling idiot where they are capable rulers," Rod interrupted her, adding a wry smile. Taeauna sighed, and looked away again. Rod leaned forward to touch her shoulder with one forefinger. "Tay, I-"

  "Taeauna."

  "Sorry, Taeauna. Uh, Taeauna… I'm sorry I'm not the world-striding godlike cloaked wizard you probably hoped I'd be, able to set things right the moment I set foot in Falconfar."

  He felt the stones beside him with his other hand, feeling the coarse, tufted grass between them, and shook his head. "I still can't quite believe I'm here, in this imagin… In this place I never knew was real. But I'm glad I am. And I want to help, however clumsy I am."

  He looked around, at other ridges and higher peaks in the distance, and at the great green valleys on either side of the row of hills they were perched atop, groping for the right words. Taeauna was watching him, her eyes on his, waiting in patient silence.

  He drew in a deep breath, and said in a rush, "I don't mind being guided by you; in fact, I'd be lost without you and don't want you so much as out of my sight. Yet I… I don't want to just stumble along not knowing why we're going to this place or that place. I–I need to know."

  The Aumrarr nodded. "Forgive me, lord. It was wrong of me not to have spoken of this with you sooner. I was waiting for a moment of ease, in Highcrag, and then…"

  Though her face remained calm, she drew in a ragged breath before adding, "I dared my life to reach you because I was losing it anyway. You were there, dreaming of me, so close. My spilled blood and resolve were enough to open a Way between us. Your power is all mighty, even in your dreams, even when you… know not what you do. You are Falconfar's only hope."

  Rod grimaced. "Not to place any pressure on me, or anything like that."

  Taeauna shrugged. "I am desperate. I would do anything with you, or," she lowered her voice to a murmur, but kept her eyes on his, "to you, to save Falconfar. You are the only sword I know of, to smite the Dooms. Ach; the other three Dooms, I mean."

  Rod spread his hands. "Very grand. Stirring, even. But what does my having all this power really mean? I've read fantasy novels aplenty where innocent good guys-and gals-blunder along, saved by their own predestiny, to the end of the book, and then suddenly know the Right Thing To Do, and destroy the Dark…" His voice trailed away as he realized what he was starting to say.

  "Dark Lord," Taeauna said for him, with a little smile. "Yes. Our Falconfar legends say the same, many times over. Yet I believe you won't be an ignorant innocent when you face the Dooms, if you can reach the right place before you meet with them. Going to that place will break the spell on you, and your memories will return."

  "And then?" Rod felt a stirring of excitement within him, a deep, crawling energy that he'd never felt before. This was all so much wishful talk, wasn't it? And yet… and yet…

  "When your memories are restored, you should be able to write with power, so your pen can swiftly change Falconfar back to what it should be. Restore we Aumrarr, destroy the wizards and their Dark Helms, make mages who are simply local dabblers in magic and monsters rare beasts rather than nightly prowlers nigh-everywhere. Return wars to disputes that erupt betimes, not the ceaseless warfare that has become the daily lives of all Falconaar."

  Well, that was easily said. Write what, exactly? Who was to say it would work? Or if his pen could really affect things, what exactly should he write? What if his changes begat consequences that were worse? Or that he didn't even know about, until it was far too late…

  Yet in his mind, he was already seeing himself writing the words "No more Dark Helms" on parchment with a quill pen, then watching all of them instantly fade away into empty, collapsing armor and then dust, clear across vast Falconfar.

  Enough. Time enough to burn that bridge once he was standing on it. Keep to the specifics, the next step here and now. "What is this 'right place?'"

  Taeauna looked very solemn. "I know not," she whispered, "which is why we'll wander after we're away from Hollowtree and Highcra
g. But you will know it. In your dreams."

  "B-but… I don't remember my dreams! Not since I got here!" Rod protested, staring at her.

  Taeauna stared back at him.

  "Oh, shit," she said savagely. As all the color drained out of her face, and bleak despair rose into her eyes.

  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."