Arch Wizard

on his hurrying way by. He'd never even noticed, and he had time only to gape in wonder at all the unfamiliar armed men in the passage before-still gaping-he started to topple.

Syregorn put out an arm, gathered him in with casual strength, plucked him off his feet, and carried him into the cell where the prisoner now hung silent and dead in his chains.

The warcaptain came back out immediately, shrugging the dead man's Lyrose tabard over his head and slapping Tarth's arm on the way past in an obvious signal. As one-with the usual exception of Rod Everlar-the men of Hammerhold moved to follow Syregorn, striding boldly down the passage as if they had every right to be there.

Rod was marched along with them, Thalden's hand in its usual place where Rod's right shoulder turned into his arm. Most of them had sheathed their poisoned knives, but he suspected the little rolled bundle of cloth Syregorn was carrying in both hands concealed his dagger, held ready in the heart of it. Around them, Lyraunt Castle seemed deserted, and that had all of the Hammerhand knights frowning in suspicion.

Rod thought back over all he'd written about Falconfar, knowing he'd never penned one word about daily life in Lyraunt Castle, but… yes, of course. Guards and the day-servants would be few in the heart of a castle in these wee hours, but there'd be-should be-other servants busy everywhere. Those who cleaned, those in the kitchens who baked and roasted, kitchens that should be not far from the scullery port, and those who laid fires in every hearth. Probably lots of others he couldn't bring to mind just now, too. There was something else, though. An air, an atmosphere that was alert and awake… that was it: awake! The castle felt awake around them. Not 'the very stones are watching' magically awake, nor yet the bustle and wakefulness of day, but a tension that hinted they were expected.

Oh, shit.

Ahead, their passage met a cross-passage and ended there. A glow of light was coming from the right, toward the front of the castle, but to the left all was dark. Syregorn waved a quelling hand at the floor, and his knights slowed and started moving quietly. Their warcaptain strode on ahead, with an air of bored unconcern.

Reaching the passage-moot, he turned left without hesitation, took a stride, stopped and smote his forehead as if he'd forgotten something, then turned and came back, shaking his head as if in self-reproach and moving faster.

'Guards under the light,' he murmured, 'so we go left. Casuallike; no stealth, but keep it quiet.''''

They did that, Rod's back a-crawl with apprehension as he turned in the wake of the rest, expecting shouts and pounding feet from behind him at any moment.

The outcry he was dreading did not come. The Hammerhand knights had followed Syregorn around another corner before he let out his breath in a great sigh-and only then realized he'd been holding it. Ahead of him, some of the other knights were sighing too.

They were crossing through about the midpoint of the back half of the castle, as far as Rod could judge, and all around them was dark silence-that waiting stillness-and closed doors. Again a meeting with a cross-passage, though the hallway they were in continued across it this time, and this time the glow of light was coming from the left.

Syregorn repeated the same little tactic he'd used before, with the same result. They headed to the right, away from the guards, all striding along with apparent unconcern.

'He's trying to remember where the stair up is,' Thalden muttered to Rod. 'There's one somewhere around here that's not as narrow as the servants' stairs at the back, nor quite as public as the grand staircase in the great rooms at the front. As you might imagine, we don't come strolling through Lyraunt Castle often.'

'And you never will again,' a calm, sardonic voice remarked, out of the darkness near at hand.

Thalden and all of the nearby knights whirled, daggers flashing out, but there was no one there, despite their hard scrutiny and peerings for concealed doors or spyholes. The voice seemed to have come from empty air.

'Sorcery,' one knight muttered. 'Malraun.'

'No,' Rod told them firmly. 'That wasn't his voice.'

Tarth and Reld both hissed curses under their breaths, and hastened to catch up to Syregorn.

The knights were trotting hard after them before the deep-voiced knight observed sourly, 'Great. Lyrose has another wizard, too.'

'Well,' someone else observed merrily, 'at least our deaths will be interesting.''

'So they will,' the sardonic voice agreed pleasantly, from far behind them. Rod stiffened, but it seemed only he and Thalden had heard it.

And Thalden's response was to dig his fingers into Rod's arm like so many iron-hard talons, and trot the Lord Archwizard along faster.

This was fun.

More fun than he'd had in years, in fact.

Lord Magrandar Lyrose smiled to himself in the darkness, and took his hand off the speaking-sphere. It was time to join his wife and daughter, in case the more violent of the magics the Doom had given him were needed. He was wearing his best black boots and his most dashing new garb-by the Falcon, the mirror had shown him back a fine figure of a man! — and his chased and polished gorget gleamed at his throat.

His fingers strayed to the familiar, comforting lines of that curving triangle of bright chased metal. He never took it off, these days, even to bed with his lady wife and despite her caustic remarks about it. She felt it shouted to all Falconfar that he trusted her not.

He shrugged. What of that? He trusted no one, and hadn't done so for as long as he could remember. Only fools trusted in others.

And only a fool would take off a personal shield enspelled and given by Malraun the Matchless. A shield that would heal Magrandar instantly of all wounds dealt by metal weapons and the ravages of poison-though it did not spare him the agony and debilitation of such hurts, ere it banished them.

Oh, yes, he could handle a few Hammerhand raiders. Even with most of his guards gone from their posts to muster into Pelmard's Irontarl-seizing force. If the cleverness he'd thought up worked, he'd manage it without even spilling much Lyrose blood. Huh. Pelmard would no doubt see to that.

Patting the hilt of his sword and the bracer hidden beneath the splendid cloth on the forearm of his free hand, he hurried out of his study.

This was a most important social engagement. It wouldn't do to be late.

'This way,' Syregorn whispered, and boldly opened the door on the right. The veteran knights kept their stares on the other six closed doors that lined the small, rounded end of the passage, but none of those doors burst open to spew Lyrose knights at them. Syregorn's door led into darkness, and silence-to Rod, that same waiting, listening silence, as tense as a taut bowstring-reigned.

One after another, doing nothing to break that silence, the Hammerhands followed after their warcaptain.

Through the door, into a large open space; a great high hall. A set of doors at one end of it stood just a thumb-width ajar, letting in faint light enough for their eyes, accustomed to gloom, to see two tiers of balconies above, a wide, sweeping staircase ascending to the first of them, tapestries hanging on the walls wherever there were no doors-and there were a lot of doors, all of them in tall, grand pairs.

Except one. It stood open, breaking the only curving stretch of wall that bowed out into the room. This was evidently the base of a tower, because the door opened directly onto a spiral staircase that ascended steeply, entirely filling a cylindrical space beyond. They could tell that much, because faint glows arose from the painted edges of each step.

Right across the room was a gap in the wall, a large open archway rather than a door. It opened into another huge room, so dark that only the nearest end of three long feasting-tables could be seen, stretching away lined with chairs.

The hall itself, if one didn't count the tapestries and four braziers clustered together near the base of the grand staircase, was empty of furniture. Its flat, smooth bare floor was glossy and new-washed underfoot, a small sea of black tiles surrounding the Three Thorns of Lyrose, inlaid in tiles of some lighter hue.