around him was gone, drowned in angry gold, and he was tumbling, heels snatched above his head and flung back, thrust along in wild and sprawling helplessness, slammed back across uncharted emptiness amid a chaos of angrily-roiling golden fire.
Tumbling crazily over and over, glimpsing momentary rifts and rents in the thundering golden surges, rifts that held silver-shimmering air, tall castles on great fists of rock that floated in midair, bat-winged and hulking beasts with long claws and no heads that waited with arms spread hungrily, and armies galloping with lowered lances through the billowing smoke of dozens of fires… unfamiliar scenes, all, faster and faster until Rod was almost weeping in confusion, his head spinning, and-
It ended as swiftly as it had begun, leaving him standing silently in the damp green depths of what looked to be a trackless, seemingly endless forest. Rod Everlar didn't have to look all around to know he'd never seen it before.
'The eternal lost one,' he murmured aloud, 'who knows not where he is.'
Most of his armor had melted away, leaving the various belts and baldrics bristling with pouches and scabbards of hopefully magical stuff sagging loosely around him, but he still had his gauntlets.
With a sigh, Rod tugged off the one covering his left hand, and peered at the small, unblemished orb in his unscarred, unseared palm.
'Take me back,' he hissed at it.
Nothing happened.
'Take me to Taeauna,' he growled, glaring at it, bending his will upon it as he'd just been doing.
His head started to pound, and the orb quietly cracked apart and collapsed into sand-like grit in his hand.
The second time the great chamber shook, the blue-skinned man sighed and rose from among the dead women who were caressing him.
'They're going to a lot of trouble over this,' he murmured, as he plucked his greatcloak off the spire of sculpted rock where he was wont to leave it, shrugged it on over his blue scales, and took up a long, thin black staff from where it leaned against the wall. 'I suppose I should be flattered.'
The tall man strolled down the great room unhurriedly, his every movement smooth and elegant, spell- glows awakening around the staff in his hand and chasing each other up and down its length.
He was barefoot on the old, smooth stones, and made almost no sound at all as he walked. More noise arose from the dead wenches-rotted away to bared bone in many places-who clung to him and caressed him as he passed. He patted them and smiled upon them, but slowed not at all, as he headed for a rail-less ribbon of stone steps that climbed one curving end wall of the chamber, heading up to the battlements.
The room behind him was dank and cold, but as he ascended the air grew colder, mountain breezes blowing in the open windows ahead.
Those winds brought shouts, and the occasional ringing clangs of swords striking upon metal. Sornspire was besieged.
Built centuries ago by a man long dead, it was neither a pleasant nor a comfortable home. Wizards never seemed to crave comfort as much as one might think they would-or perhaps they spun comfort out of their spells, and needed only privacy and great masses of stone around them to shield them from rivals and stray spell- blasts.
The man with the staff had never given it any thought, for he was not what he seemed to be. The tall stature of Narmarkoun, Doom of Galath, was not the body he'd worn a season ago. From his bald blue head to his long, blue scaly limbs, bared to the icy winds at every stride as the cloak swirled back from his shoulders, his shape was new.
Not that anyone else in Galath-or all wider Falconfar-cared what Malagusk Sorn's tastes in architecture had been. Least of all these knights of Galath, who'd come all this way up into the most inhospitable peaks of southwestern Galath with their army, to bring death to a wizard in the name of King Melander Brorsavar for the unthinkable crime of ignoring his summons to court.
For years, this remote peaktop keep had been a secure enough hide-hold for Narmarkoun. It overlooked the barony of Chainamund, and fat, blustering, sneering Glusk Chainamund had been terrified of wizards. Not without good reason.
'Lack of good reason,' the bald, blue-skinned man murmured now, stopping on the battlements to watch men whose armor was sparkling with frost struggle up between the stone merlons to crash their boots down heavily on the battlement walk, and confront him. 'That's what causes all of this unpleasantness.'
'Wizard Narmarkoun!' one of the knights called sternly. 'You are summoned by the King of Galath! Will you come with us now, so that this violence can be ended?'
The blue man strolled forward, carrying his staff as if he'd forgotten he was holding it. 'Sir knight, I very much doubt it's in your power to end any violence, anywhere, regardless of what I might do.'
At his approach, the knights all raised their shields nervously. Small metal badges had been crudely hammered onto them, badges that flickered and glowed with magic. Almost certainly they bore spells to ward off anything a wizard might hurl.
'So you defy us?' another knight barked.
The tall blue man regarded him calmly. 'Not yet.'
''Not yet' my left
'Peaceful inhabitants of my castle,' the man with the staff replied, 'who would have done nothing to you if you'd been invited, or spoken the right words of greeting to them.'
'Oh? What words are those?' The knight's bark was as loud and sudden as a sword-thrust. Several of the dead women's swords had thrust points deep into his metal armor, and his broken ribs hurt like godsfire.
'I am come peacefully to speak to Narmarkoun, rightful ruler of this part of Galath.'
''Rightful ruler' my
The wizard shrugged. 'If you lose them both, you'll fall down, you know. 'Rightful' might not be a term familiar to a velduke who made himself king bare days ago, but I have held this castle for longer than the lives of King Brorsavar, his sire before him, and his grandsire before that, and in all that time no one else has ruled these few peaks. Chainamund seemed not even to know they were here.'
'Enough clever words,' the other knight said grimly. 'Will you come with us?'
The tall blue man smiled gently, and shook his head. 'No. Tell the King of Galath I am too busy keeping him alive, in the face of what the
'Lorontar? Lorontar's been dead for centuries!'
The man with the staff sighed and regarded the glowering knight rather sadly. 'If you believe that, Galath has far greater problems than the absence of one reclusive wizard at court.'
He turned and strolled away. Some of the knights traded glances behind his back, reached silent accord, and started after him-only to halt in mid-stride when he turned back to face them and added mildly, 'I would have thought the absence of a baron to stand in Chainamund's place at court to be of far greater importance to the throne of Galath than my lack of attendance. Or is Melander proposing to offer the barony to me?'
'You?' one of the knights sneered, only to fall silent at a glare from the first knight who'd called out to the wizard.
That knight turned his gaze back to the tall blue man and said simply, 'No.' Silence fell, and they stood in the cold, faintly whistling mountain wind like statues for long enough that he felt compelled to add, 'Three knights administer the barony now, until it should please the king to name a new baron.'
The man with the staff nodded, as if he'd already known how matters stood in the barony below, and said almost gently, 'And so it goes. Devaer gives way to Melander, yet the knights and nobles of Galath dance the same dances. Obey the royal dance-master, or fall from grace… and life. Have men sworn to the sword truly nothing better to do?'
Leaving that question hanging in the air unanswered behind him, the tall blue man turned back to the stair that had brought him up onto the battlements in an unhurried swirl of his cloak, and walked away from them.
'Wizard!' one of the knights barked. 'Halt!'
The tall man gave no sign that he'd heard.
