Dark Lord

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