Arch Wizard

Syregorn did not stride far out across that glossy floor.

'We've been herded here,' he said suddenly, darting hard glances in one direction and then another, all around the hall, as he started around the room, keeping close to the walls. 'This has been too easy-time and again, no servants where there should be, and too few guards. Lure in one direction, herd in another… Lyrose has meant us to come here, to this room.'

'So this would be about the time their archers would come out onto the balconies, casting torches down on our heads to make us targets, and their knights burst in on us through every door,' Tarth said bitterly, as the Hammerhand knights followed their warcaptain around the walls.

They all looked up as they did so, as if expecting all of those things to happen in answer to his words, but the dark silence hung unbroken.

Except in one direction. From beyond the doors that were letting in the light, from where that bright radiance was, nearer the front of Lyraunt Castle, there rose sudden loud voices. Voices that came swiftly nearer, accompanied by a bobbing light that could only be a lantern, and the noisy scrapes of boots scuffing along the floor.

'Every one of them? Why, there must be six-score! Why can't the Master Steward rearrange his own plates? I'm supposed to set up the braziers around the Thorns, and have all the bowls polished before-'

'I don't give the orders, Greth! Just do it-braziers first, mind! — and do it right for once, and mayhap he won't break any bowls over your head, this time! Not that I can even promise that, after what you-'

Greth and his lantern were almost at the doors, bare moments away from thrusting them open and discovering a room full of Hammerhand knights. Syregorn darted for the dark feasting-hall, and his knights hastened at his heels.

As they passed through the arch, there was a white flash, a purple flickering as strange, surging power awakened and gathered them in-power that reached out a long tentacle to englobe and snatch Rod and Thalden, who were still some strides away-and then the air itself swallowed them all.

Stealthy knights or not, every last one of them, the Lord Archwizard included, shouted in alarm.

But by then, of course, it was too late.

The shouts of the Hammerhands were cut off as sharply as if severed by the edge of a descending sword. In the alcove behind the tapestry, mere steps away from the gate that had swallowed the hated foes, Lord Lyrose unhooded the glowstone and smiled an unlovely smile.

His daughter, who had been peering through a gap in the tapestries to make sure the magic of the gate had snatched away all the intruders, turned, nodded reassurance that they were all gone, and smiled a matching smile right back at him.

'So much for that clumsy Hammerhand attack,' he murmured. 'I wonder how many others will come, and how soon?'

Mrythra shrugged. 'What boots it? We'll crush them all.'

Lord Lyrose heard a door open in the distance. His wife, on her way to join him. He seized the moment, before she was within earshot, and could forbid what he was going to order. Ah, suggest.

He leaned forward. 'Daughter mine, Pelmard will be expecting me to ride the high whip-wielding lord over him, in this Irontarl foray. I'd like to hand him another little surprise, and have you do so. Flog him literally, if he dares to flee.'

'Lord and father,' Mrythra replied softly, as she glided to the tapestries to depart before her mother's arrival, 'nothing would give me greater pleasure.'

The moon was shockingly bright; dangling like a heavy grainsack from Juskra, Garfist felt like a brightly-lit archers' target, and said so. Adding with a fierce hiss, 'An' ye could fly a mite higher! That's the third tree ye've dragged me through!'

'The moonlight is precisely why I'm flying this low,' Juskra snarled back at him. 'One of the reasons.'

'Hey? What d'ye mean by that?'

'She means you're fat and heavy, Old Ox,' Iskarra said scornfully, from not far behind him, where she dangled beneath Dauntra on a single leather strap (Garfist was strapped to Juskra's waist by three).

'Not much farther now,' Dauntra said soothingly, as Garfist started to snarl a less than pleasant retort. 'Yon's Lyraunt Castle. So we come in low over the forest, from behind and in the shadow of those tall trees just ahead, then land yonder, in the shadows behind that thick stand, there. Things'd be easier if Lady Lyrose didn't have this love of open, expansive lawns.'

'Oh, aye, the unbroken sward,' Gar muttered. 'And why is that?'

'How would you ever get through a day without that word 'why,' Gulkoun?' Juskra muttered, but Dauntra hissed at her sister and made courteous reply.

'Likely it was to make sure the stink of the moat was gone forever, so ponds and herb-beds were kept far from under her windows,' the fairer Aumrarr said. 'Watch, now; draw up your feet, Gar.'

They skimmed low over-or cracklingly through, in Garfist's case-a last few trees, and descended to the earth in a running, flapping thump and thud of a landing.

Garfist growled wordlessly, but Juskra whirled around and hissed fury back at him, right in his face, as her fingers tore at the leathern thongs that bound them together. 'Gods, how does a man get so fat?' were the last words of her furious whisper.

'Not flying about all Falconfar meddling in the business of others,' he whispered back hoarsely.

'That's true,' Isk put in soothingly. 'We walked.'

Dauntra snorted in mirth, then thrust slender fingers under the noses of Garfist and her sister. 'Drop it, both of you!' She and Juskra were quickly reknotting the leathern thongs, to bind their carry-straps in place around their waists.

'You wait right here,' Juskra hissed at Gar and Isk. 'We'll cause tumult soon, at the foregate-the front gate. Then you go down there, over that little bridge by the pond, into the gardens. That side door should be unlocked; it's how the guards and the maids get out into the garden for their trysts. If anyone sees you, act like a panderer come from Irontarl with a wise one who sees to maids' complaints.'

'Maids have complaints?' Gar growled. 'More than other servants, I mean?'

Isk slapped him, an instant before Juskra gave him a look of withering scorn and snapped, 'When women bleed below, and other things men never want to hear about. Just walk in there as if you belong there, and put the gems where we told you; the castle's simple to get around in. Any proper questions?'

'Just one,' Garfist asked thoughtfully. 'How many of you Aumrarr are still alive?'

'We don't-' Juskra hissed, but Dauntra put a hand on her arm and told her firmly, 'Those who made such rules are all dead, and I'm obeying them no longer, no matter what it costs us in influence.'

She turned to look at Garfist. 'Gulkoun, I know not. All I can be sure of are the two of us, and I think Taeauna is still alive, though whether her wits are her own is another matter. So, three I can be certain of. Perhaps as many as six, or even nine. No more.'

Garfist swore in astonishment.

'So that's why Dyune wouldn't say,' Iskarra murmured.

Both Aumrarr nodded. 'We aren't-weren't-supposed to. So no one would ever suspect how few we were. That's how we managed to wield any influence at all in places like Galath; scaring brawling barons into thinking a flying army could show up, any time, to chastise them.'

'So you're telling us now because we'll likely all be dead before dawn,' Garfist rumbled. 'Well, thankee. Always nice to be sent to death by honest folk.'

And without waiting for a reply, he set off down the hill, toward the little bridge.

The two Aumrarr hissed curses and sprang into the air. Hard and fast to the front of Lyraunt Castle they flapped, to create their promised diversion.

Still bellowing their startled fear into the night, Rod Everlar and the knights from Hammerhold suddenly found themselves-somewhere else.

Somewhere outside, under the bright moon, in a place that by the startled looks on Hammerhand faces all