Dark Lord

so even powerful mages use their spells sparingly. I saw a lesser wizard once, sitting in a chair keeping two magics on his lord from the other end of a market: a disguise and a warding against knives and arrows. He was white and asweat and shaking with weariness.'

'And I'm supposed to be lord of all wizards?' Rod asked incredulously, wiping a hand across his sweat- slicked brow and displaying it to her.

'Your power is different. You dream and transform things no wizard could. Many things, all at once, large and small. Most mages can burn or blast things, or wreak one transformation at a time on a single person or thing.' Taeauna got up, still frowning at the birds. 'And your blood heals.'

'But doesn't regenerate.'

She transferred her frown to him. 'What is 'regenerate?''

'Bring your wings back.'

'Oh. No. At least, I think not.' She looked away, and her frown deepened.

'Do you want me to bleed on your… on where your wings used to be?' Rod took a swift step sideways as he spoke, to where he could see Taeauna's face.

For just a moment, her calmness broke, and her eyes held as much pleading as they had back in his bedroom. There was more hope in them, too.

And then Taeauna shook her head, and her face was a calm mask again. 'Mayhap some day, when Falconfar's need is lesser. I dare not let you throw away your power on me, just one Aumrarr, when so many more may need it, and you may have… limits.'

Rod looked into the fire that had returned to her emerald eyes, and then at her back and shoulders as she turned away and started climbing again, threading her way now between rocks as large as men.

Smooth muscles shifted under worn and ill-fitting leather.

He looked back the way they'd come, down across bare, rolling rocks to seemingly endless forests below and behind.

How did I get into this?

Ten years ago, Rod Everlar had been a writer of successful, if unimaginative, Cold War spy thrillers. Fist of Fire, Hitler's Vengeance, Thunderbolts of Zeus, dozens more. Talk to a few old spies or spy wannabes, read a few quirky SF disaster novels, twist ideas from both together, throw in the square- jawed hero, the femme fatale, and the trusted friend or boss who's really a treacherous double agent, and out came the next one. Bang, bang, bang, if that wasn't too trite an expression.

And then had come the dreams. Dreams of swooping dragons and shouting men with swords, and princesses fleeing in diaphanous gowns who turned into pegasi and even more horrific things in mid-stride. And balconies, and flickering torches, and castles-castles looming dark and purple by night or black and sinister by day… And the woman with wings, the one in armor who staggered toward Rod with four evil princes' swords through her, gasping, 'I die for Falconfar!'

Her eyes, her amber-flame eyes… She had seen him, really seen him, too. And once Rod knew the name Falconfar, the dreams came wild and deep and vivid, one crowding on another, night after night until he was a staggering man by day, so weighed under by sleeplessness and nightmares that he was scarcely alive.

It was an abyss he climbed out of with a single step, one day, when he plucked up a notepad and started writing down what he'd just awakened from, shouting out into his bedroom. The notepad became stacks of notepads, and the stacks turned into binders, and with each page he filled, the dreams were tamed a little more, until they became orderly nightly visits that let him rise again to wakefulness in due time.

Exhausted no longer, but somehow unable to care much about long-hidden Nazis and lost submarine fleets and missile satellites disguised as auto parts, Rod had turned to his notes and crafted a story about Falconfar by stringing together dreams, like a child assembling one of those push-together plastic necklaces. It seemed a trite, even hokey tale, but he shrugged and sent it off to his agent with orders to place it wherever possible, and tried to get back to black helicopters and women in black evening gowns that concealed silencers and little else.

It took him two more books to clear his mind enough to set Falconfar aside, and by then the first one was selling like ice cream on a hot July beach, better than anything he'd ever written before. The clamor for sequels hadn't died down, though the dreams had started to fade; by two summers ago they'd practically disappeared.

Since then, he'd taken care of three of his long-overdue thrillers and plotted the fourth. Holdoncorp's offer for his fantasy world had been staggeringly handsome, and he'd accepted it eagerly, retaining the right to do more Falconfar books just in case. He'd used that right twice, when their blunders had set his teeth on edge enough that he'd strung together a few more bunches of dream-notes around some pointed corrections. Changes that Holdoncorp had of course, calmly ignored, despite the contract.

Making him the Fourth Doom and Dark Lord of Falconfar in the process.

When Rod came around the next boulder, Taeauna's sword was in her hand, and her face was grim.

'Tay? What's wrong?'

The Aumrarr pointed with her sword. More of the flapping black birds were flying past. 'Vaugren. Carrion birds. Many, where there should be none.'

'Gathering to feed after some battle?'

Taeauna sighed. 'Undoubtedly. Dark Helm work, this'll be. I was not the only Aumrarr to be harried. Many of our patrols sounded horns the night I sought the place where I go to dream of you, and… reached you at last.'

'Dream of me? D'you… uh… often dream of me?'

She regarded him coolly. 'All Aumrarr dream of you, Lord Rod Everlar. And pray to you, on our knees. Some devoutly, some, no doubt, mouthing but empty words. Some of us are sworn to bear your child, should you ever appear to us.'

Her tone warned him that she was almost certainly not one of the sisters who'd so sworn. It told him a trifle more; that Taeauna would not welcome any smart comment on the matter, or even any words at all.

Not that Rod was far enough away from dumbfounded, just now, to say anything coherent.

In his mind he was seeing dozens of beautiful winged women in armor, kneeling in little glades and on lonely hilltops in front of pristine hardcover copies of Falconfar Forever, praying to receive his favor. Or his children. Jesus shitting Christ.

'No guards at any of the posts,' Taeauna whispered, her face so white now that Rod could see a fine web of blue veins all over it. 'None.' The birds were a flapping cloud now, wheeling and screeching everywhere.

When Taeauna led the way around the last bend to stand on a ledge looking down on the terraced front gardens of Highcrag, they both knew what they'd see.

A field of the dead, lifeless Aumrarr strewn everywhere, lying broken and dead where they'd fallen in battle.

The Dark Helms had slaughtered them all.

CHAPTER THREE

“Taeauna,' Rod blurted, not knowing what to say but knowing he had to say something.

'Taeauna, I…'

In grim silence Taeauna stepped off the ledge and stalked down into the battlefield, ignoring the angry flapping and cries of disturbed vaugren. Rod hastened to follow, trying to ignore what he was stepping on. He got one good look at a hooked beak tugging at an eyeball, the flesh that held the orb stretching obscenely yet refusing to part company with its eye socket, and hurriedly looked away, swallowing.

The dell reeked like an open latrine, overlaid with the sweet stink of blood. Armored and half-armored Aumrarr lay sprawled everywhere, some of them so hacked apart they resembled the roasts of a publisher's buffet more than women. Wings that should have soared were crumpled and trodden, bloody boot prints marring the white. And there were feathers, feathers everywhere.

Taeauna was peering intently at one body and then at another, searching for something. From time to time