Arch Wizard

go out into the night with no gem and the need to hunt down more humans who'll aid you-or you tell us all, and we can begin whatever task you need us for. I will not aid and serve captors who hurl us hither and yon like old cloaks and tell us nothing, but I could very well fight alongside someone who trusted me, and treated me as worthy to know what is going on.'

Her words rang out into a sudden stillness, as the two Aumrarr turned to lock eyes with each other.

A swift and silent war was fought in a few unfolding moments, through their sharp eyes, and then Juskra tossed her head, sighed loudly, and announced, 'Very well. The truth. We, yes, need humans, because the warning-spells on Lyraunt Castle are keyed to rouse the place if any Aumrarr comes within their reach.'

'Malraun's spells,' Garfist rumbled. Both Aumrarr nodded, so he asked, 'And ye need to get into Lyraunt Castle why?'

'To put the skull in… a particular place, therein,' Dauntra replied, 'and the gem in another specific spot.'

Letting the weariness of worn-thin patience sound clearly in his voice, Gar asked flatly, 'Why?'

'The Doom you named has created gates-magical ways to and from far places, traversed in a step; waerways, some call them-in the castle,' Juskra replied. 'Two of them.'

'We know what gates are,' Isk said softly. 'You seek to close them.'

Dauntra nodded. 'The spells on the skull will disrupt the enchantments of the larger gate, yes. The second, smaller one we believe to be the Doom's secret; his 'back door' if you will. If we can place the mindgem in it, and he later tries to use that way into the Castle, quite likely to find out and fix what happened to his other gate, the powers of the gem will affect him.'

Garfist glared at her ere asking patiently, 'And do what?'

'Scramble his mind to drooling idiocy, if the luck of the Falcon is with us,' Juskra muttered.

'And if it isn't?'

'Enrage him into setting aside his schemes for as long as it takes to come after us, and destroy us,' Dauntra said quietly.

Iskarra frowned. 'So the gem won't close the gate?'

'No.' Juskra grounded the point of her sword on the floor, leaned on its quillons, and sighed, 'Yon stone will just sit there in it, waiting for Malraun to get too close.'

Garfist nodded. 'So, now, where are these gates?'

She fixed him with a hard, direct stare. 'Telling you where the larger one lies is a waste of breath if you haven't been inside Lyraunt Castle, until we're flying above it and I can point the right roof out to you. The second one is in a bedchamber at the top of Lyraunt's tallest tower. The bed all but fills that room, and the gate awaits anyone squeezing under the bed, right at the back, by its headboard.'

Acquiring the ghost of a smile, the sword-scarred Aumrarr added, 'You're too fat to use that waerway, unless you've brawn enough to heave the whole thing up on your back.'

'You welcome would-be allies so charmingly,' Isk told her sharply.

The reply was a shrug, but Dauntra said, 'Juskra, please. Garfist, Iskarra; we need you to be the ones who place the skull and the gem for us. Now.'

'Why now?' Garfist asked, suspicion sharpening his voice from its usual growl.

'Because,' Juskra told him grimly, 'the armies of monsters and mercenaries Malraun has sent flooding across all Falconfar this side of Galath will reach Ironthorn soon enough. Then it'll be too late, and you can die smug and secure, knowing you could have saved the world. But chose not to.'

Taeauna smiled up at her Master, there on the hilltop. Looming above her, the gloating Doom threw back his head to laugh at the stars, and compelled his wards-the spells that would turn aside any arrow, hurled weapon, or hard-swung blade the more ambitiously treacherous of his warriors might decide to send his way-to glow more brightly, outlining him in eerie flames that burned nothing and gave off no heat.

He blazed coldly on that blood-drenched hilltop, awakening mutters of awe and wary regard among his warriors. Behold Malraun the Matchless, triumphant in victory. The overconfident fool.

Behind Taeauna's smiling face, too far down in the dark depths of her mind for Malraun's light hold over her to sense, Lorontar chuckled in glee.

Malraun's decision to let his playpretty, this wingless Aumrarr, lead the army was brilliant, of course.

And it was a notion he, Lorontar, had planted in Malraun's head, working with slow, deft patience through Malraun's mindlink with Taeauna. The Matchless One had swallowed the idea as his own without any suspicion… without even beginning to suspect Lorontar's influence.

So, now, if Malraun did depart, with Taeauna in charge, Lorontar would cloak himself even more deeply, and happily exert a little more mind-control over the Aumrarr.

Making her lead the Army of Liberation in an attack on Galath.

That would draw preening little Malraun into a frantic effort to quell the fighting. He would want to salvage some part of this army, after all, and seek to conquer Galath not on the battlefield, but by storming and coercing the mind of its new king. Thus gaining dominion over a Galath as undamaged as possible, not a kingdom ravaged by war or plunged into fresh and ongoing civil strife as this or that ambitious arduke or baron sought the throne.

Yet thanks to Lorontar's deft reminders, worked in one mind here and another there, King Melander Brorsavar of Galath was now protected by the diadem given by the meddling Aumrarr to a long-ago predecessor, to keep the mind of he who sat the Throne of Galath shielded from hostile magics.

Malraun might get an unwelcome surprise or two. If he was foolish enough to bring Taeauna along with him as he sought to master Brorsavar, one of those surprises might be a long, cold length of warsteel plunged up his backside a long and bloody way inside him.

Then he could put his Matchless mastery of magic to work trying to save his lifeblood, before it all ran out of him. While a certain not-dead-enough Archwizard of Falconfar tried to put his magic to the task of teaching Taeauna how to cast a spell that would turn her Master's blood to fire in his very veins, and cook him alive from within.

Now, that would be fun.

Above her, still brightly aglow, Malraun looked all about over the night-shrouded carnage of Darswords, eyes boyish-bright with excitement at all the bloodshed, exulting in his victory.

Abruptly his fingers tightened on Taeauna's head, digging in with cruel force to drag her upright. She rose willingly, not to escape the pain but out of ardent desire to please and obey him.

Showing all his teeth in his most hungry smile, Malraun swept the wingless Aumrarr into a tight embrace and bit her throat lightly. 'Do off your armor,' he murmured, releasing her. 'Quickly.'

She unbuckled, wriggled, and shrugged her way clear of warharness in deft, supple haste, but it was still heaped all about her knees when he growled, freed himself, and started to make love to her, brutally, there on the moonlit hilltop in the midst of all the blood-drenched dead.

Embracing him, yielding and urging him on wordlessly with her caresses, Taeauna smiled. She was beneath him, and his ardent kisses were below her chin, so he never saw the smile on her face.

It was the deep, triumphant smile of Lorontar.

Ahead of Rod Everlar there was a brief, almost soundless commotion, a straining and whispering of cloth and boots, and then something that might have been a long, trailing groan under firmly-clamped, muffling hands. Then there came a sort of thud, and a louder scrape of a boot heel being dragged across stone.

One of Syregorn's knights had killed another Lyrose guard, and they were another step closer to setting foot in Lyraunt Castle.

Its walls loomed over them, almost unseen here in the deep darkness beneath these trees, but the moonlight was almost frighteningly bright back behind them, on the lawn that separated Lord Lyrose's fishpond from the scullery port. A side door too small and simple to be called a gate, the port was set deep into the wall. It was tall but narrow, was sheathed entirely in thrice-banded oiled iron, and was about two feet thick, to boot.

Rod doubted Syregorn's men had been stretching tales to impress him; now that they were settled into stone-faced readiness to slay, he doubted this lot would seek to impress their own grandmothers. In any way, and for any reason. They were like foxes padding through the night. Silent and patient, until they were close enough to pounce.