Arch Wizard

Aumrarr hilt, took the man in the throat, sending him staggering down to his own hard meeting with the floor.

The great chamber looked even grander from where they were now, racing across its glossy-smooth black tiles, seeking a way out. Yonder was the great arch where Orthaunt's skull hung in the air grinning at them, over there was a pair of double doors that obviously opened into a wide passage heading to the front of the castle, and behind-

The tapestries that they'd seen being plucked aside, earlier, parted again as half a dozen Lyrose warriors- knights? Well, they wore the best darkly-gleaming plate armor Garfist had seen this side of Galath, from head to toe-strode forward into the room. Some of them were unshuttering hand-lanterns as they came, and the others were drawing long, gleaming swords.

Behind them were two menacingly-smiling, grandly garbed people who could only be Lord and Lady Lyrose.

'So two alley-dregs intruders have dared to burst into our home,' the lord purred, 'undoubtedly to steal.' As his wife's sneer became a cruel smile of anticipation, he added softly, 'No need to keep these alive to question. Use your poisoned blades, loyal warriors of Lyrose.'

It was cold in Yintaerghast. The place was a massive stone fortress, yes, with gaping window-holes aplenty in its walls to let the winds whistle through, but the ruined castle of Lorontar wasn't just dank and chilly. Its dark, looming walls and floors held a deeper, bone-numbing, somehow alive cold, that seeped into one's body and sapped alertness and feeling, and… and life.

Narmarkoun grimaced. His lips had long ago tightened into a grim line; even after he'd slain the last lurking beast in the deepest dungeons, and shattered the last clever trap-magic he could find… and long after the magics he'd devised had clearly triumphed over Lorontar's great shield-spell.

He could still feel the silent thunder of that fell and mighty magic all around him. It twisted the minds of all living creatures who entered Yintaerghast, slowly stripping away any magical knowledge-wherefore wizards less brilliant than Narmarkoun dared not enter.

It also, far less slowly, sapped any magics at work on intruders, which freed servitors sent in by wizards from the magics that controlled or saw through them.

Almost as an afterthought, it did one more thing, that made finding a way out of the castle again difficult. It caused all of the castle's empty windows to look out into a swirling void that allowed no creature to leap, fall, fly, or climb out; those who tried were thrust back in again by the suddenly-thickening, surging mists.

Narmarkoun had never witnessed this last effect before now, but then he'd never dared set foot in Yintaerghast before.

So he was immune to Lorontar's greatest magic-and so were his dead playpretties, so pale and silent as they stood yearningly outside the chamber door, watching him-but anyone else who might come to the cold castle in the dead wood would still face its harms.

Which made it the ideal hide-hold, for now, if he could pierce its mists. With Malraun's armies on the march and his own false selves being hunted energetically all over Falconfar, Lorontar's fortress made a great place to hide. And from that hiding, to magically spy from afar on Rod Everlar.

Or he would do, the moment he got the details of this last magic sorted out, and could see through that misty void-that 'otherwhere' that wasn't really gathered around the outside of Yintaerghast, at all-whenever he pleased.

If Malraun hadn't conquered everything else and decided to come exploring Yintaerghast for himself by then.

Ah, well, nothing in life remains the same.

Narmarkoun smiled wryly at no one, and bent his will again to adjusting incantations and the subsumptions of certain herbs and powders, to give himself the means to spy on Rod Everlar as freely as he'd been doing for months, now, before coming to Yintaerghast.

He had already filled several tomes with careful notes about the so-called Lord Archwizard. Who was no wizard at all, but a Shaper, and a naive buffoon at that. Some 'Dark Lord' to quake in terror at!

Yet Everlar was mysterious, and in those mysteries might well lie his own bright future.

Rod Everlar had come from somewhere, a world or place that was not Falconfar. A place where Narmarkoun could take refuge, and build power, and perhaps even conquer, while Falconfar was ravaged in Malraun's ever-widening war.

The army of monsters and mercenaries raised by Horgul, with Malraun standing behind him-and Lorontar quite likely standing behind the unwitting Malraun-had attacked one hold after another, conquering territory in a manner never possible when three strong Dooms stood in opposition to each other.

That uneasy balance had held for too long, as Falconfar had simmered beneath it. Now, with the lid off the cauldron and Malraun charging through the Raurklor, swords were coming out everywhere. City against city on the far southern shores of the Sea of Storms, Galath about to rise into civil strife again, and the new faiths-the Forestmother, and the rest-goading men everywhere to visit fire and sword on each other.

Distressing for a Doom who desired the cold, quiet caresses of the obedient dead, and simply a quiet place to study.

He might have to conquer a world to get those things, yes, but if it was a world as full of dolts as Rod Everlar, how hard could that be?

Chapter Seventeen

Iskarra and garfist stared at the six Lyrose knights advancing in slow, menacing unison, with Lord and Lady Lyrose sneering from behind them. They were tarrying rather than charging, and Isk and Gar could hear why.

The thunder of boots was growing louder down the tower stair, and Lyrose guards were rushing along the balcony Isk and Gar had just traversed, too. Dark-armored and eager, they seemed to have spears in plenty, but no bows. Thank the Falcon for small glorking favors.

Gar bent, plucked up the still-hot sword from the blackened bones of the guard slain by the wizard's skull, and ran to the tower door juggling it and swearing as it scorched his fingers, the charred remnants of its scabbard falling away in his wake.

A spear hissed down at him, and then another-but Orthaunt's grinning skull saw those as attacks, and lashed out with more green-gold fire. Two guards shrieked up on the balcony, and one of them toppled forward over the rail, to hang motionless, head-downwards, as he cooked. No more spears were thrown.

Aside from ducking low and running as far around the curve of the tower wall as he could get from the balcony, Gar paid no heed to any of this. He was too busy hurrying-and then thrusting the burned guard's weapon through the door-rings to try to bar the tower door shut. He doubted one blade could hold back all the guards in the tower and on the balcony, but it might take them some time to break it and force entrance. Oh, they could jump down over the balcony rail, aye, but that wouldn't be a flood he couldn't stand up to, and carve as they landed.

Isk snatched open one of the doors in the wall behind where he'd been standing with her, to try to get out. Discovering a trio of grinning guards waiting in the passage beyond, she flung herself at their ankles and tripped them helplessly forward into the room.

Gar whirled from the tower door in time to see them fall. Snarling, he unshuttered his darklantern.

As Lord Lyrose's bodyguard knights raised shouts, deciding to charge him after all, he flung it-high, hard, and flaming-into the tapestries just above and behind the sneering lord and lady.

Fire flared amid the folds of the old and dusty cloth in an instant. Lady Lyrose shrieked in dismay, Lord Lyrose roared out his anger, and a knight spun around and hurled his sword vainly at the flames.

Orthaunt's skull took that as another attack, and lashed out with another deadly green-gold beam.

As that doomed guard burned, Gar sprinted back to aid Iskarra.

She had already efficiently daggered her three guards as they crashed to the floor, sprawling atop each other. He joined her just as the blades of the foremost rushing bodyguard knights reached her-and the bone-dry