buckskin. She cast a critical eye Rod's way, obviously measuring his height, length of limbs, and girth, and by the time Rod had curiously explored the leather shoulder sacks two young and unsmiling maids dumped into his lap, Taeauna had picked out a paltry pile of simple breeches, clumsy boots, tunics, and cloaks.
The sacks were odd pleated things of clanking buckles and uncured, strong-smelling hide that had an arm- loop and a chest-belt; Rod was obviously supposed to sling his over one shoulder and use the belt around his chest to keep it there. Both sacks held a lot of empty space and a sphere of oily cloth bound closed with a rawhide thong. Undone, one of these proved to be two bowls strapped rim to rim: one of wood and the other a battered and repaired warhelm. Inside the bowls were more cloth bundles: a trio of hard, round-domed loaves of dark bread, two disks of sharp-smelling cheese the size and weight of hockey pucks and the color of old yellow soap, and a tiny twist of oiled cloth with a something brown and gritty in it.
'Thoret,' Lhauntur explained. When Rod gave him a 'what's that?' look, the warsword sighed and added, 'Sauce. Very spicy. Dip your finger in it and smear it on bread or cheese or anything you want to cover the taste of. Stains everything.' He waved at the other sack. 'The other's just the same.'
Rod nodded, wondering what the proper way of saying thanks was, when more servants arrived with skins of water and two old, heavy, serviceable swords. They lacked scabbards, and were smeared with what looked like bacon fat. Each had a close-fitting ring collar just below the quillons that was attached to a long loop of chain.
'The chain goes over your shoulder,' Taeauna explained before the warsword could. 'Now try everything on. If it fits, we wear it or carry it in our laedlen.'
'Laed… These sacks?'
'Those sacks.'
The warsword turned away, obviously hiding a smile, and Rod sighed and went over to the pile.
'What made you choose Hollowtree?' Taeauna asked as they paused for a moment on a height crowned with a tangle of ancient, weathered trees. Behind them, a shoulder of a long, high ridge dotted with what looked like sheep had just taken Rod's last glimpse of Hollowtree Keep from view.
Rod had to catch his breath before he could reply. They'd been climbing steadily since they'd left the wagon road just beyond the last guard post manned by Lhauntur's men, to follow a narrow, winding track up through rising hills. The pace the Aumrarr set had Rod puffing long ago.
She strode along gracefully, alert but with none of the manner of someone expecting trouble, and Rod noticed she'd not once called him 'Lord' or anything like it this morning. It seemed he'd now fallen to the rank of just a bumbling man.
'I… don't know. You asked me to see Falconfar, so I tried to picture my favorite keep, and… Hollowtree it was.'
Taeauna gave him a smile. 'I'm pleased nonetheless. I'm known there, hence our relatively cordial treatment.'
Rod winced. If that was 'relatively cordial,' just how bad would everyday treatment be?
And it's very close to Highcrag.'
'And what is… Oh. Yes. The high stone hold where the Aumrarr dwell. I remember.'
'You should. The sisters will give us shelter, aid, and news. Lhauntur meant to be kind, but,' her face twisted in disgust, 'these swords!'
Rod grinned. 'I've been thinking of mine as a metal club. A greasy metal club. At least it's so dull I can't cut myself when it bounces as we walk.'
Taeauna gave him an amused look, and then glanced up into the sky at a small, high speck-a lone bird, flapping along slowly and doggedly- and frowned at it.
'Will you be able to fly again?' Rod asked, watching it. Taeauna stiffened, and he added hastily, stumbling over the words, 'I mean: can the sisters give you back your wings somehow?'
'No,' the Aumrarr told him softly, coming to a halt and turning to look at him with something- a little flame of anger? Hope? Something else? — in her emerald eyes. 'Not unless you can work a new spell that I've never heard of.'
'Oh,' said Rod apologetically, feeling helpless, and then muttered, 'Wingless forever.'
For a moment they stood silently together, watching another of the clumsily flying birds following the first toward the row of distant, jagged brown mountaintops ahead, and then he asked, 'But why can't you go and charm one of these powerful wizards I heard the men of Hollowtree muttering about, to cast a spell like that on you?'
Taeauna gave Rod a look that blazed with open anger this time. 'Rod Everlar, you must stop thinking of Falconfar being just as it was when you wrote about it. To do otherwise is to doom us both.'
She waved a long, graceful arm back across the rolling wooded hills they'd crossed, to the fields of Hollowtree and distant rocky crags beyond. It was a magnificent view, but Taeauna seemed unimpressed by its beauty just now.
'The splendid forest kingdoms you dreamed and wrote of have changed. Hollowtree should have shown you that. They're now belike a handful of gems scattered in the dirt: they shine still, but have become small, embattled holds menaced by greater darkness around them.'
Rod nodded. 'The Dark Helms.'
'And more than that. We see and fight prowling monsters grown numerous and bold, more than we do the Helms. Yet we fear Dark Helms more, for they're not just ruthless raid-swords. They serve the Four Dooms.' She gave him a twisted smile. 'Or rather, three of those four. The three wizards whose tyranny is daily seen by all who venture within their ever-lengthening reach.'
Taeauna sketched a brief sign in the air in front of her. It looked to Rod curiously like one of his Catholic friends making the sign of a cross to ward off evil.
In its wake, speaking very quickly, Taeauna hissed, 'Remember these names, but speak them seldom if at all: Arlaghaun, Malraun, and Narmarkoun.'
She made the sign again, and then continued more calmly. 'These three wizards are the greatest in power of the known mages of Falconfar, and they are all evil, grasping men. If they did not endlessly make war on each other, we'd all be in their thrall.'
Rod frowned. 'That powerful? The first two I created, and Holdoncorp added the third, so they can't have had all that long to-'
'It doesn't
Rod frowned, trying to remember. 'I made them greedy, and wanting to have absolute control over their own small territories, but what else do they want? Can't they just whisk themselves anywhere, if they just want to snatch gold coins and gems and… and whatever?'
Taeauna smiled thinly. 'Smallholdings no more. And each seeks to gather the most powerful spells and enchanted items from the ruined castles of long-fallen kings, and so rise to rule all Falconfar.'
'And what's stopped them from doing that, besides each other?'
The Aumrarr shrugged. 'Brave men with swords, doing what little they can. Most holds like Hollowtree are ruled by old wolves: hardened warriors who'd be happy to be rid of all magic, and all wizards. Oh, and there's one thing more. Fear of what the fourth and greatest Doom will do, if their deeds awaken him.'
'I don't remember including any sleeping King Arthur under the hill in
Taeauna gave him another crooked smile.
'You.'
'So… are the three wizards watching us now?' Rod asked, much later, when sweat was streaming from him despite the increasingly chilly air, and they were high above the rolling greenery that held Hollowtree, somewhere back below them down there.
Taeauna had finally paused to rest and drink a single swallow of water. She stopped Rod from gulping more of his own with a firm hand, and went back to frowning up at the increasingly frequent flapping black birds. All of the same sort, they seemed to be converging from several directions, and all heading for somewhere not far ahead.
'Mayhap,' she replied, 'but I doubt it. Working magic's tiring-as tiring as running hard, or fighting, I'm told-
