with the nearest trees all dead and bare.
Oh, shit.
A huge, square, massive fortress of stone, with four bulging turrets at its corners, one of them soaring above the rest like a huge black rocket ship. It ended in a needle-pointed spire high, high above them, looking from down here as if it were scratching the tattered white clouds.
'Yintaerghast,' he said quietly, and felt Taeauna stiffen in his arms and then turn in his grasp like an angry whirlwind, to stare and then start to curse.
Which was when the air around them glowed, sang, and formed a lattice-work of what looked like massive prison bars, or some sort of large cage for elephants or dragons or the like, and…
Was gone again, the singing dwindling into wild, high shrieking, like someone slashing harp strings with a sword.
Not too far away, someone else spat out an astonished curse.
Rod and Taeauna turned to see who, in time to see the wizard Arlaghaun finish a second spell with a triumphant flourish, his brown eyes blazing, and point at both of them.
Aside from a brief crackling in the air around those two pointing fingers, nothing happened.
'So…' Arlaghaun hissed slowly, glaring at Rod. 'You must be the Dark Lord! Well, there's another way…'
The brown flames of his eyes seemed to glow brighter and grow larger. Taeauna's mouth tightened and she drew back her sword to hurl, but Rod grabbed at her wrist. 'We'll be needing that. What if he turns it back at us like some sort of arrow?'
The crackling seemed to be inside Rod's head this time, those two angry brown eyes hanging in the middle of his head like glaring dagger-points. Infuriating, violating, but… fading now, into futility.
'Lord Rod?' Taeauna murmured, still clinging to him.
'Yes?'
'Ah. You're still 'you.' Another spell fails.'
The anger on Arlaghaun's sharp-nosed face was open and ugly, now.
'So much for ruling your mind,' Taeauna said in Rod's ear. 'It seems, in Falconfar, you are immune to most-perhaps all-magic.'
'So it seems, indeed,' the wizard' sneered, and waved his hand.
Behind him, lorn by the hundreds rose from the trees. Without pause, all of them swooped at Rod and Taeauna.
The Aumrarr spun around, tugging Rod with her. 'Into the castle!' she cried. 'It's our only escape!'
Rod needed no convincing. He put down his head and sprinted across the open sward, managing to run almost as fast as Taeauna.
A shadow fell across them, her shapely behind in front of his right arm turned and flexed, her sword swept up, and he swerved and slowed, to give her room to twist around and hack lorn.
'Keep running!' she shouted into his face, then grunted fiercely as her blade cut deep into a swooping lorn.
Rod heard them crash to the ground together and roll. He kept running.
Behind him Taeauna sobbed for breath, amid the wet and meaty sounds of her sword hacking flesh. When she cursed, a breath later, she sounded closer. Then, abruptly, Rod was plunging through the open castle door into cold gloom beyond.
His racing feet slipped on debris, leaving Rod gliding helplessly across a slick marble floor. Was it gravel? Fallen plaster? Did they have plaster in Falconfar? He slid for a long way before his right foot went out from under him and he crashed down on his backside, coming to a slow and groaning stop amid much dust.
'Tay?' he coughed, wincing, as he rolled over and up to his knees. 'Taeauna?'
He was kneeling in the dimness of a huge, high hall, the open door a window of bright sunlight, and he was alone.
'Taeauna?' he fought his way to his feet and into a slipping, arm-flailing run, back across the great open expanse of rubble-strewn marble to the door.
To blink at the sunlight, and no sign of Taeauna at all, only the wizard Arlaghaun standing triumphantly, arms folded across his chest, with a sky full of wheeling lorn behind him.
Lorn that came rushing down at Rod, diving with talons spread, six-no, seven-no, nine- converging on him.
In sudden terror he tugged at the half-open door, trying to get it closed before they plunged through. It was thrice his height, as thick as he was, and looked as if it hadn't moved in centuries. It moved not for him, feeling as firm as fused stone against his struggles.
Lorn loomed, sunlight blotted out behind them, and Rod turned and fled, tears stinging his eyes.
Tay was gone, taken or torn apart, and he was alone.
Alone in Falconfar, its so-called Dark Lord… Powerless, knowing nothing, and fleeing alone into a haunted castle.
He was not going up the stairs, not going to meet that faceless old man in the chair. He refused to be herded, or to be slain, or to wind up in some chamber with a scepter in a stone that he was supposed to draw forth and hear angelic choirs singing that he was the new Lord Archwizard; or worse yet, the old, old one returned! No, he would not allow any of this to happen!
Rod ran past the stairs going up, and another flight that went down into utter darkness, and through archways into a labyrinth of crumbling, once-grand chambers beyond.
He wasn't quite sure why castles always had these high, echoing rooms, big and cold and seemingly used for nothing more than rushing through like some airport or train station, but they always did.
This wasn't his castle, not something he'd created or written about, but it had been in one of the first Holdoncorp games, back when he eagerly read and reviewed everything they sent him. In the early days, when they'd still bothered to send him things for review. Before he'd realized they ignored his comments and criticisms, despite the contract. Back then, the Dark Helms had been skeletons in black armor, commanded by animated empty suits of black plate armor that had a few showy, menacing magical powers.
In that early game, Yintaerghast had been a vast ruin for players to send their characters into, exploring. They were supposed to kill a few monsters, find a little treasure, and… Oh, yes, try to find a way back out again.
Well, that wouldn't be a problem for him; there was always the front door just a few rooms back that way, standing stuck open, so… Wait a bit, though, there'd been something more.
Something that would explain why no lorn were clawing at him right now, or flying all around these rooms like great bats, and why Arlaghaun wasn't standing gloating over him right now, too.
Rod stopped in a hall where ornate, high-backed loungers had collapsed into heaps of gilded half-wreckage and dust. He had to think, and try to stop panting, and try very hard not to cry.
If Taeauna was gone, she was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing left for him to care about.
There was nothing left for him at all.
He might just as well draw the dagger at his belt and kill himself. If he could, that is, since he was in a world where he healed in mere moments.
Rod shrugged. He'd never liked pain, and lying there enduring it seemed pointless. Not to mention something that Taeauna would have been openly contemptuous of. God, he missed her tart comments and angry snaps at him!
He tried to laugh at that, but it came out as sobs.
His hand went to his dagger.
The wizard with the blazing brown eyes pointed his sharp nose up into the sky and raised his voice, just a little. 'You will stay. If he seeks to come out, keep hidden and let him get a little way from the castle, so he can't run back in time. Then pounce and capture him. If he gets away, all of you-mark me well: every last lorn now here-will pay for it with your lives, and your deaths will not be swift.'
Arlaghaun waited for the lorn encircling him to bow their heads in assent. When all of them had, including the oldest and largest, who commanded the rest, he turned, took a step, and vanished.
