tower as aroused guardians hastened to do whatever she'd goaded them to. She should calm them and return them to their resting-places, for Arlaghaun had destroyed many of them, and their own misadventures damaged more. Fires were raging in two rooms, and there was wrack and shattered ruin everywhere.
One scene caught her attention; blue eyes blazing, she thrust forward her manacled hands as if to throttle that crystal, the better to stare into its glowing depths.
She was seeing the row of gates out of the tower that all the apprentices knew of, and used often at the master's bidding, and the wide passage before them. Three intruders were sitting there together, in the lee of a riven, still-struggling armored guardian: rhe Galathan noble, the wingless Aumrarr, and the mysterious man who traveled with her.
As Amalrys watched, they rose, blood-spattered but seemingly unhurt, and looked to the gates.
Mind whirling, drooling blood across glowing crystals-Falcon, she'd bitten her own lip, and no wonder, at that mind-thunder! — Amarlys sprang to do just as she was told, hissing commands and slapping crystals and…
Arching back and away from it all in a sudden spasm, control of her own limbs torn rudely from her, as a stronger voice than the first roared,
And so it was that the wizard Malraun became directly aware of the wizard Narmarkoun, in the torn and tortured depths of Amalrys's mind. Two furious mind-bolts lashed out as one, each seeking the death of the other… and each fading into futility as the ravaged mind around them exploded.
Amalrys collapsed across the array of scrying-spheres, her eyes two burnt and empty holes.
Smoke curled forth from her ears, mouth, and nostrils as her lips gasped the last thought she'd clung to: 'Arlaghaun, I love you.'
In the passage of Ult Tower where the row of gates hummed and glowed, Rod, Taeauna, and Deldragon turned at sudden rising sounds of thundering haste, to behold a host of clawed, bladed, armored things racing toward them from one end of the passage, and another, similar host hurrying from the other.
Great jaws, closing…
'Falcon!' the velduke cursed in a slow whisper, aghast, as they saw death coming for them.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I can't believe this!' Garfist Gulkoon said I delightedly, launching himself into a slide.
Shining gold coins parted in two waves before his ample chest as he came slithering down the highest of the bright, golden hills that filled the little room, in a cascade of gleaming wealth, to fetch up against the back wall beside Iskarra in a prolonged and hissing crash. 'Bright fancy-tales often talk of rooms full of gold, but this is real!'
'Nice it is, to know your wits still work, Gar, if slowly,' his longtime partner replied bitingly, parting the little belly and striking breasts her reunited crawlskin had given her, and raking handfuls of coins inside. 'Everyone has to keep their coins somewhere, and this wizard obviously has too many to fit them all into boot heels and moneybelts. I presume you've refilled yours?'
'Uh, well… no,' the fat man frowned, settling himself beside her.
'Why not? 1 don't recall you strolling nonchalantly out of a home you'd just plundered all that often. I
'All right, aye, right ye are,' Garfist growled, scooping up coins and starting to kick his boots off. Iskarra wrinkled her nose at the smell.
'Right as ye always are, Isk,' he added grudgingly, scooping out a leather insole to get at the hollow heel from within. 'But can ye believe this? I mean, all this gold, and he just leaves it in an unlocked, unguarded room!'
'Shows you how much gold matters to him, aye? Gar, he rules Galath, even if he doesn't wear the crown. Where the rest of us have to pay for everything, he just takes what he wants. So what's gold to him? And, look you, I'm not so sure 'tis as unguarded as all that; we walked in easily enough, but we haven't tried to get out yet.'
Garfist frowned. 'This is a trap, ye mean?'
'This is a wizard's tower, I mean. So 'tis full of magic, see? So every second stone in the wall could hurl itself at us or turn into a stabbing sword or fall away to let out some sort of guardian like that armor we watched come together. If you can work that with spells, it seems to me it'd be simple enough for you to make a spell that unleashes a guard like that when a gold coin from this room goes past you, except in the wizard's purse! Or just 'past you,' and he uses some secret way in and out we haven't found yet. There still seems to be fighting going on, so let's bide here a little while. Mayhap someone'll kill the wizard for us!'
'Ye really think so?'
'No, but I'm tired, Gar. Tired of running about. I wouldn't mind a little lounging around on heaps of gold. A little while, only.' Iskarra stirred the coins beside her with a bony fingertip. 'Something to tell your children about.'
'Viper,' Garfist growled, 'I'm hardly likely to have any brats now, after all the years of-
Iskarra gave him a look.
'What? I fathered no brats!'
Iskarra's look didn't change.
Garfist stared at her. 'I did?'
Her nod was slow but definite. 'Your pander-lasses grew not round with child from the herbs they ate, not from any failing of your seed. Those merchants in Torond, and Srelkar? Their daughters didn't know about those herbs.'
'So that's why they've tried to have me downed so many times, for so long,' Garfist muttered. 'Fart of the Falcon!'
He shook his head and added softly, 'Glorking world. So I've sons and daughters, hey?'
'Daughters only, that I know of. Quite a number. They're who I send those clay jugs I make to, with all the fictitious births scratched on them. Handy custom, birthing jugs; make the bases thick enough, and you can hide a dozen-some coins in the clay, with no one the wiser.'
Garfist was starting to look aghast.
'Oh, aye,' Iskarra told him. 'I send them all coins on your behalf, when we have any to spare.'
Garfist snorted. 'As if we ever do! Why, Viper mine, if we'd coins to spare, we'd not have to still be running about thieving and swindling and hacking at folk. We could be-'
'Sitting on our backsides drinking ourselves into graves, in some fine keep in the forest? Lord and lady of a handful of muddy farms? Would you really sit still for that, Gar? Longer than, say, six nights, or however long it took you to bed all the good-looking lasses, and all the rest of us females who gave you sharp words and scorn? Tell truth, now!'
'Truth?' Garfist turned a face to her that was both earnest and solemn, and said, 'Isk, there was a time as I'd not have stopped running or fighting for anyone or anything. But my bones ache, now, and my wind comes hard, and betimes I dream of a Falconfar where no one spends their time stealing or swinging swords as a profession, and there's food enough for all. Wouldn't that be a world, now!'
They stared into each other's eyes for a long, silent time before his face changed, and he burst out laughing. 'Nah! Never happen! Never happen!'
A sudden thunder arose all around them, the clamour and din of many large and heavy creatures moving in haste. From rooms all around them it came, a rushing in one direction that went on and on.
Looking over the heaped coins and out the door of the room, they could just see, in the passage beyond, a motley army of flying lorn, running Dark Helms, and all manner of lumbering monsters, strange metal automatons
