Arch Wizard

mastery of magic into shaping, reshaping, purifying, and healing their bodies. Does that sound like the same sort of folk who'd need to fly to men by night to rut, just to bear little ones?'

'Hmmph. No. But why say all this, if none of it's true?'

'To spread lies enough to make us see the Aumrarr differently. False lore piled atop false lore, until some of it gets believed. As has been said a time or two before, one lie often needs to stand on another.'

'And sometimes even raise a third as a shield, and make a spear of a fourth,' Garfist rumbled slowly, nodding as he completed the old saying.

'And having swallowed this, we're supposed to believe these great masters of magic lost control over the rest of us when everyone started to learn spells, and we great grunting unwashed, who outnumbered the Aumrarr so greatly, started winning a few battles. Then all the Aumrarr saw we beasts could defeat Aumrarr, and a few of them stood with us to defeat Aumrarr foes and rivals, and… do you believe any of that?'

'No,' Garfist replied flatly. 'Even before that Stormar trader claimed Lorontar was one of these rebel Aumrarr. Nor do I think it glorking matters who did what to whom, centuries upon centuries ago. Too many old tales get used as excuses for what ambitious brutes do to others now.'

He started to prowl again, restlessly. 'I may swindle a man out of a keg here and some coins yonder, but the real villains sit in castles and cry vengeance and rob knights and armsmen and poor steaders just trying to grow enough tharuk to eat of their lives.'

Iskarra nodded. 'Well,' she said briskly, 'it's good to know we, at least, can see all Falconfar's troubles so clearly. Now, if someone else would see clearly enough to put us on some thrones-in Galath, say-everything could get-'

'No,' Garfist growled. 'Oh, no. Everything wouldn't get fixed. Problems are like dirt, or rocks: dig one away, and there's always another underneath. And for us, it's getting our backsides out of this glorking castle-or keeping our necks intact through whatever those four Aumrarr have planned for us. Just so long as whatever it is happens soon. I'm fair going witless, waiting here just talking talking talking, when-'

The pleasant, placid view out that high window of Stormcrag Castle was suddenly blotted out by something large and dark, looming up fast with wings spread.

Wings that flapped hard, to slow a racing flight, exertion that came with a sob of pain. As Garfist swore and grabbed for his dagger and the sword he no longer had, and Iskarra sprang from the table like a restless bolt of lightning, the wings snapped back and their sobbing, gasping owner dived headlong into the room.

Landing heavily, running hard and stumbling, to a hard-breathing halt that became a frantic drawing of weapons.

An angry-looking Aumrarr they'd never seen before stood glaring and panting at Iskarra and Garfist, who stared back at her.

The winged woman was bleeding all down her left front, where her leather tunic had been slashed open by what looked to be several sword-blades, to hang down in gory, dripping folds.

'I know not who you are or how you came to be here,' she hissed, stalking forward a little unsteadily, 'but I know what's going to happen to you now!'

'We're going to die?' Iskarra yawned. 'Again?'

Chapter Six

My, but the Gold Duke loved guards. Guards, guards, and more glittering guards, all of them tall and gleaming in their armor… and all of them bored enough to be really dangerous.

They strolled to and fro, sighing and preening, whirling often to send hawk-like glares down this or that dark passage. They were spoiling for something-anything-to happen, so they could draw their swords to shout and run and hack.

Sweating so hard that it dripped off his nose almost in a steady stream, Alander Thaetult drew back from the cellar-passage corner he'd been peering round to watch the latest selection of ducal guards, and whispered another shadowcloak spell incantation. The air around him dimmed still more, his magic's dark tendrils drifting and swirling.

He shrugged. So what if he looked like a traveling cloud of smoke? He had no intention of ending up as the 'interesting anything' these murderous sword-swingers were seeking.

Malraun's orders had been clear. Reach the Tauren end of the spell-gate as stealthily as possible-no matter how things went, Malraun wanted the Gold Duke to think a lone and perhaps deranged person had passed through his gate, not an invading army or any other sort of threat he had to muster a stronger standing guard to prepare for-traverse it to Burnt Bones if possible, and use the new farspeaking spell Malraun had given him to report everything that happened to the listening Doom.

Gnawing pestilence take him.

Alander didn't want to serve a Doom.

Alander didn't want to skulk through guard-infested cellars.

Heaving himself up out of his chair to answer the bell-pull of 'Thaetult's Useful Magics' was adventure enough for him. He had no dreams of greatness, or even of lording it over an apprentice or two. He was a hedge-wizard, and proud of it. A cowardly and placid master of a paltry handful of spells, quite content to make a modest living casting this and mending that mold-banishing for a coin or two, and occasionally-very, very occasionally-spying on this wayward husband or seeking that stolen heirloom for larger handfuls of coins. No 'adventures,' no travels to far places and skulkings anywhere that had lots of armored men eager to use their swords…

Yes, there'd been shadows drifting through his contentedness. Alander had known his own boredom, vague dissatisfaction with his lot-but when the sleek, darkly handsome little man had appeared so suddenly in the cluttered forechamber that served him as office, spellcasting sanctum, and untidy storage room, and uttered that softly-spoken, calm ultimatum, Alander had discovered that he wanted very much to cling to his comfortable little life.

Which was why he was here in a dank, dark passage deep in the cellars of the Gold Duke's fortress-mansion in Tauren, half a dozen clumsy, spell-hushed murders in his wake, trying to get to the Gold Duke's most closely- guarded secret.

The Yuskel family crypt held not just stone coffins, moldering bones, dust, and forgetfulness… it held the many gold coins and gems popular lore whispered so excitedly of, and guards to watch over them.

It also held the real reason so many armed men were wasting their lives away yawning and sighing down here: the spell-gate.

It was here, all right. He could feel its silent, patient pulse in his blood now, a slow and rhythmic thudding that rolled through him steadily, ever stronger… it was very near.

He fancied he could see its flickering, past this latest group of bored sentinels, a ribbon of gold that split the darkness for an instant here, and an instant there, in time with the deep throbbing that was singing inside him.

Keeping him excited with its song, thrilled despite himself. Alander hated stealth and deceit almost as much as he loathed violence and doing murder. Yet six guards were dead this day by his hand-soon to be discovered and a hue and cry raised at his back, making retreat nigh-impossible. There were eight more guards around that corner, and unless some miracle or other took them away or at a stroke dropped them into blindness or slumber, he was going to have to kill them to get to the spell-gate, and have any hope of escaping the fate Malraun had so calmly promised him.

An especially large droplet of sweat plummeted from his nose and found splattered oblivion on the stones in front of his boots with a 'splat' loud enough to echo.

'What's that?' a guard snarled from around the corner, and Alander drew in a shudderingly deep breath, and-suddenly found himself very calm. This was it.

Killing time.