Dark Lord

red dust, a collapse into nothingness that raced down the steel in a silent haste so swift and menacing that Deldragon barely had time to fling down the hilt before it reached his hand.

The hilt burst into dust as it hit the floor, and was gone just like that, and all in velvet silence.

Beyond it, a crackling arose in the air, a singing tension that rose in pitch as the armored guardian, wholly bonded together and with sword in hand, took its first tentative step toward them.

Its second stride caused a squeal of metal against metal, yet was smoother, more confident, with none of the swaying of the first. Its third brought it smoothly into the crouch of a veteran warrior, hefting that huge blade from side to side, its reach blocking the passage, walling off any way to the gates beyond.

Everyone cursed.

'What's that thing of magic in your hand?' Deldragon snapped at Rod. 'Something we can use?'

Rod and everyone else stared at Rod's palm where the golden-valved horn was sinking into his flesh, apparently dissolving into him. He shook his head slightly in disbelief; he couldn't feel a thing, not even weight. If he closed his eyes, it felt like his hand was simply… empty.

Empty…

Dared she?

Amalrys stopped in front of the closed, featureless stone door, her eyes like two small but bright blue lamps, shivering in her chains not from being otherwise bare in the cold darkness, but from excitement.

And fear.

Dared she, really? To raise her hand against the man who'd put these chains on her, claimed her so cruelly, lorded it over her daily because he could destroy her at his pleasure?

Dared she lash out at him at last?

Yes, a voice whispered exultingly, deep within her. She laid her hand on the door, trembled as the glow grew around it, and then scraped her bare skin on its opening edge as she slid past a trifle too soon, in her eagerness to get inside.

Far from a woman in chains forcing her way past a door in Ult Tower, a short, slender, and darkly handsome wizard rose from his claw-footed chair in one lithe movement to clench his fists, the better to hurl his will at her.

'Yes,' Malraun breathed, putting all of his fierce will behind that word, feeling the distant Amalrys yield to it and embrace it as her own. 'Yes, little unwitting slave,' he murmured, 'strike down your tormentor at last. Let there be one fewer Arlaghaun in the world.'

As agile as any dancer, still thrusting his way deeper into the mind of Amalrys, he spun around and sprang back onto his chair, bouncing several times until his body was at rest again, his concentration never wavering.

'And if his slaying is beyond you this day,' he remarked almost pleasantly, 'let him taste torment, and be afraid, and be lessened. Aye, see that you humble Arlaghaun the Mighty.'

He smiled, and told the ornately painted ceiling above, 'For increasingly, his swaggering truly bothers me.'

In a dark chamber of slowly dripping water, where every solitary drop plummeting the height of a castle into a patiently waiting pool awakened its own uncaring echo, the tall, blue-skinned wizard Narmarkoun sat alone, as always, and at ease.

Nearby stood the staff he'd been augmenting, upright in the air though there was no hand to hold it there. The cold fires of his spells still flickered up and down its length betimes, reflecting back off his scaled hands.

He smiled.

'Goad her indeed, Malraun, and think yourself her master,' he told the darkness. 'Succeed or not, survive or not. I care not. Her mind is an open door into yours, and you are mine as surely as she is, whenever I care to reach out and take you.

'And then squeeze.'

The watchers saw the gold-hued bauble disappear entirely into Rod Everlar's palm, sinking out of sight beneath his unbroken, unblemished flesh.

With a squeal of grinding metal, the armored guardian took another step forward, blade reaching out menacingly.

Rod Everlar reeled, raised a hand to his head, and fell, toppling onto his face without a sound, to lie in an unmoving heap right in front of the lumbering guardian.

Taeauna rushed to stand over him, sword raised against the reach of the looming guardian. Garfist and Iskarra looked at each other and with one accord spun around and fled back along the passage, leaving Deldragon standing alone where he was, stroking his mustache as he watched the guardian take another ponderous step, and then another.

The velduke seemed to reach a decision. He drew his dagger and snapped at the Aumrarr, 'Get back! Yon guardian will kill you.'

'If it does,' Taeauna told him, her voice trembling on the edge of tears, 'it does. Nothing in all Falconfar matters more than keeping this man alive right now.'

Deldragon stared at her as the guardian took another slow step, and swung its sword that was longer than either of them stood tall, up and back, ready to sweep down and shear through anything less solid than an ox or a stone pillar. Then it paused again, waiting, motionless and expressionless.

The velduke stared up at it, then drew another dagger from his boot and hurried to Taeauna. 'He's a Shaper, isn't he?' he asked quietly, his eyes very blue.

The Aumrarr drew in a deep breath and then let it out slowly, shuddering like a terrified child. Her face was white.

'He's the Shaper,' she whispered. 'Until he dies, and most of Falconfar with him.'

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Whole once more,' Arlaghaun murmured contentedly, striding naked across the room with water dripping from him in a racing flood.

He had to walk briskly away, he knew, and firmly quell what he wanted to do now: take a longing look back at the pool. Its glows would be beckoning, he knew, and that was when it was at its most dangerous. If he slid back into its warm embrace, that was when memories would leave him, unregarded until he later needed them, reached for them, and found them utterly gone.

Which could well be fatal to the friendless, much-feared wizard Arlaghaun, most feared of the Dooms of Falconfar, and rightly so.

He allowed himself a tight little smile as he took down his least favorite cloak to dry himself with, wasting no time in toweling but simply donning it as if he were dry and clad, and wearing it close-clasped around him as he walked on in search of what he really wanted.

His rings and the wandwing, yes, but here on the shelf nearby, his best sword of spells, its blade winking a welcome of sparkling stars to him as he half drew it and then slid it firmly into its sheath again. The pendant that would turn aside blades, and the gorget that would blunt most spells. An unseen dagger that only his questing fingers could confirm still rode in its sheath, to wear up one sleeve, and an archer's bracer that was anything but what it appeared to be, to wear up the other. The slumbering spells it stored flickered into life at his touch.

Yes, these were happy to see him, these familiar magics, loyal and worthy of his trust, his closest friends in Falconfar.

Not that they had many rivals for such a title. Arlaghaun shrugged. When he wanted loving arms about him, he could compel such company; the rest of the time he was spared all of the life-wasting fripperies of pleasing friends, doing things for friends, entertaining friends… Bah! Friends! What use were such leeches, but to drain his wealth and time and power from him, stealing his freedom as surely as they stole a coin-worth here and a coin there?