Dark Lord

There was a soft click, and the living Aumrarr went to the frame of an interior doorway and thrust her fingers at it. The doorframe swiveled on hidden pivots, moving top to bottom as a single board, to expose a tall, shallow cavity of many finger-sized niches, most of which seemed to hold keys. She selected two of these, and then bent and took something from the bottom of the cavity.

Rod had just remembered her order to guard their rear, and was turning away. He almost dropped the scabbarded sword she suddenly tossed him, and stood holding it uncertainly until she said, as calmly and as quietly as if she were asking him to pass over a newspaper, 'Swing that once or thrice. 'Tis probably a better length for you than the one I gave you earlier.'

Before he could reply, she added, 'Ah,' in far more interested tones, and plucked something small out of hiding. It looked like the sort of tiny box jewelry store purchases came in, only of smooth-polished wood.

And then she'd slipped past him as smoothly as any snake and was heading out the door again, into the death-filled garden. Rod followed, wanting to ask her what she was doing but wise enough to hold his tongue. For now, at least.

Taeauna headed straight for a body Rod hadn't noticed before amid all the others, an Aumrarr on her knees with both hands thrown up in front of her, her face twisted and her mouth frozen open in a shouting position. There was something unnatural about this corpse; Rod stared at it.

Of course. Twisted like that, and rearing back on its knees, it should have fallen over. Something- magic? — must be holding it up, frozen in its contortion.

'Taeauna…' Rod burst out, because he could keep quiet no longer.

'Tried that blade yet?'

'Tay…'

The woman who'd brought him to Falconfar drew in a deep breath, and then said quietly, 'This was Marintra. One of my closest…'

Her voice trailed away, and without saying more, she turned abruptly and thrust the wooden box into his hands. Rod dropped the sword as he fumbled with it, hissed a hasty apology, and then got it open.

He was staring at two flat, smooth stones. Nondescript beach pebbles, or more likely streambed stones, if they'd come from anywhere around here. Rod touched one of them with his finger, and a tiny swirl of sparks arose from the stone, to fade away almost immediately.

Which meant that these must be the Holdoncorp creations known as speech-stones. Placed on the tongue of a corpse, each of them would work but once, making the dead say again the last words they uttered when alive.

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