Arch Wizard

devastation across the Raurklor above them, on the forested heights that looked down on Ironthorn. An eerie glow-flames? — was flickering up there now, and silhouetted against it were tumbled and broken trees that should have towered unbroken up into the starry sky.

It was then that Lord Burrim Hammerhand came up onto the battlements in a growling rush, to glare all around at the surrounding forest as if he held it personally responsible.

'Darlok,' he snapped, knowing without turning to look which of his warcaptains had hastened up the steps after him, 'gather some knights-enough to hurl back three Lyrose patrols-and get up yonder to see what's befallen. If it's some dread spellhurler or other, fill him up with arrows for me. If it's something worse, get word back to me, or get yourself back to tell the tale, just as fast as you can run.'

'Lord,' Darlok agreed with a nod, and plunged back down the stone stair. Hammerhand followed him, slamming one shoulder against the stone as he always did when he came to the archers' bend, and cursing-only to fall silent, aghast, as a guard's shout arose from below: 'Lorn! Lorn in the castle!'

Swearing, Lord Hammerhand hurled himself down flight after flight of stairs, collecting a trotting Tarlkond and almost a score of knights by threes and fours at each floor.

They snatched out their swords when they reached the still-shouting guard, and flung just one question at him: 'Where?'

At the sight of his lord that knight gave off crying his warning and spun around to point down the passage that led to the fore-hall. Hammerhand and the rest were streaming past him almost before he got his arm aimed properly.

'This is Lyrose mischief,' Tarlkond snarled. 'Who else can call down lorn?'

'Tesmer,' another knight gasped.

'Or wizards,' the Lord Leaf snapped darkly, from where he was suddenly panting along beside them, come from out of some dark side-passage or other.

He turned his head to catch Burrim Hammerhand's eye, and said urgently, between gasps for breath, 'We will never see any limits to the evil and the wanton slaughter done by wizards. We must kill them, Lord! Kill them all!'

'Lorn first,' the lord of Hammerhold growled back at him. 'One foe at a time. All the wizards in the world will just have to wait; my swordarm isn't getting any younger.'

Though the moon was well risen and they were both within reach of the soaring highlance canopied bed they were wont to share, Lord and Lady Tesmer were still up and dressed. As the fairest flower of Imtowers had put it to her lord earlier, she was not in the habit of receiving spies-no matter how deeply trusted nor well paid-in her bed-silks. Or less.

The spy, a slender and softly-murmuring man of nondescript looks, had slipped out of the best bedchamber in the castle of Imtowers a bare few indrawn breaths earlier. Presumably he was now hastening back to his scullery in Hammerhold, before his absence might be remarked upon.

He had not borne overmuch news, and the most interesting of what he'd imparted came not from Ironthorn, but from Helnkrist in Helnadar.

It had taken Lord Tesmer, who loved maps but thought slowly when he was aware of his wife's disapproving glare and trying not to meet it, all this time to recall just where the small market-moot town of Helnadar was. On the easternmost edge of the Raurklor, of course; he'd remembered that much the moment he heard the name, but it had taken until now to bring to mind that-unsurprisingly-it straddled the Heln River, where that narrow, winding water flowed out of the forest into Sardray.

Helnkrist was the tower of the fell wizard Narmarkoun, the Doom who bred greatfangs. Until the wizard had slain them all to take possession of that keep, it had been the safehold of a consortium of Stormar merchants-a refuge in the green heart of nowhere they could retreat to in times of war, or retire from their rivals when old age crept into their bones. Well, Narmarkoun had saved them that most feeble of fates.

Now, it seemed, Helnkrist stood empty, the wizard gone.

Gone but not dead. Lord and Lady Tesmer knew that much without exchanging a word.

They were under Narmarkoun's sway, and right now he was just as he had been to them every moment of these last few seasons-a dark, heavy, everpresent, stifling weight in their minds. Watching their thoughts whenever he pleased, steering them when he desired. Yes, the breeder of greatfangs was very much still alive.

Just as they were very much still awake, and conferring together.

'This is not helpful,' Lord Tesmer muttered worriedly, running one hand through his stylishly long, but thinning, hair. 'Malraun's army advances without pause or check. No lorn harry it, no foe can stand against it; the best chance of destroying it would be greatfangs attacks, by night-and what chance of that now, if the Master is a fugitive, wandering and hiding somewhere in the Raurklor? Just when we need him.'

Narmarkoun had told them long ago that Malraun was behind this 'Horgul out of nowhere,' and if Malraun saw into minds as often and as energetically as the Master did…

'Don't be a fool, Irrance,' Lady Tesmer hissed sharply, leaning forward. Her long black hair, unbound for slumber, fell forward off her shoulders like a glossy waterfall. Her dark brown eyes seemed to blaze up into amber coals when she was angry, and they were smoldering now. 'Narmarkoun is no such thing. Malraun's army is certainly something to be worried over-hence my strict orders to the men to withdraw from all frays with Lyrose and Hammerhand-and I know as well as you do that if they arrive in Ironthorn as strong as they are now, we are all doomed. We would be even if you, Burrim, and Magrandar were lovers, and all the Ironthar knights one united and superb army, against the numbers this Horgul leads.'

Lord Tesmer grimaced in disgust and got to his feet, chamber-gown swirling out behind him like a cloak. He was tall and graceful, for all his broad-shouldered brawn, but the years had streaked his hair with white and etched lines of worry across his face. 'Lovers, Clara? Must you say such things?'

'Blood of the Falcon, Irrance, will you stop thinking about trifles? What matters is not a few words of mine that happen to nettle you, but our lives! You've been worrying about what will happen to Ironthorn if Malraun's army comes, among all the countless things you worry about, all this season! Listen to me, Lord of Imtowers, and listen well: the one thing you do not have to worry over is the Master's fate. He is not some fugitive wandering the Raurklor, cowering or hiding. You can feel him in your head as well as I do; does he seem any the weaker? Well?'

'But Chansz-'

'Irrance Tesmer! We do not use his name! Never! Not here, just this once, where no one can hear us, because we never truly know when no one can hear us, do we? Call him 'spy' and and naught else!'

Lord Tesmer put a despairing hand over his handsome face, sighed loudly, and murmured, 'Spy, then. The spy said Helnkrist stood empty-ransacked by the overbold when they found its doors open and nothing living within but birds and rats that had strayed inside before them. As if it had been abandoned in such haste that the Master had owned not time enough to take a thing with him! It follows that all he had time to do was take himself out of there, saving his skin in the face of some great foe! This Archwizard of Falconfar, or Malraun, or someone more terrible!'

'My lord, there is no one more terrible. Now stop babbling like a chamberlass and heed: the Narmarkoun in Helnkrist was not our Master.'

'What?' Tesmer whirled around incredulously.

'Close your mouth, Irrance. You look like a drooljaws village lackwit.' Lady Tesmer's voice was as sharp as her flawless nose and cheekbones, the beauty that still drew Tesmer's eyes and snatched at his breath every time he gazed upon it. Even now, when he stood agape in disbelief.

Her eyes blazed brighter, and he hastily closed his mouth.

Whereupon his wife nodded in satisfaction and informed him firmly, 'The missing Narmarkoun was a false Narmarkoun, a lesser wizard serving our Master and wearing, through magic, the shape and seeming of the Master. A double set there in Helnkrist by the real one.'

'What?' Tesmer's mouth dropped open again.

His lady didn't bother to hide her scorn. 'Irrance, have you paid no attention at all to the Master's words, these last few years-and what can be gleaned from what he does not say?'