Arch Wizard

damage so much as a scrap of this!'

Isk put a shushing finger to her lips, nodded to signify she'd heard him and agreed, and started down the stairs.

It was another short, straight flight, that at its end turned back under the table that held Malraun's writings, but a level lower, in a straight passage lined with doors, that ran to yet another descending stair.

There was just one thing in this passage, but the sight of it brought Iskarra to an instant halt. Gar, too, stopped the moment he saw it.

They had both seen more than a few hanged men before, dangling from executioners' nooses from high Stormar balconies for the sea-craws and gulls to peck at. This hung the same way, but it was a partial suit of armor, quite possibly with no body inside it, and it was hanging in the empty air from nothing at all; from the silent, invisible force of Malraun's magic rather than a noose.

Its helmed head drooped as if it was dead, unconscious, or asleep, but its gauntlets gripped two drawn swords. It floated motionless, the leggings of the armor having no feet to them and apparently no legs inside them; those empty tubes of buckled-together metal well off the ground, their lowest edges about at the level of Garfist's knees.

It looked suspiciously like a guardian of some sort, that would suddenly awaken to hack at any intruder who came too close. Gar and Isk if they dared step off the stair, for instance.

Yet step forward they must, eventually, or retreat back up through the tower. Would the armor fly after them, and try to strike at them with those swords? Would awakening it raise a magical alarm, to alert Malraun-or other magical guardians-of their presence?

'I hate magic,' Garfist muttered, more to himself than to his lady.

Isk's reply was a shrug-and a bold descent, down the last steps and into the passage.

She kept her hands near her daggers, but held and waved no weapon. Garfist watched, his body tensed to spring at the silently-waiting armor and his sword ready in his hand, but the floating metal never moved, reacting not in the slightest when she slipped warily past it.

It hung there unmoving. Isk reached the far end of the passage and the stair leading down, and beckoned to Garfist to join her.

Warily, arm itching to draw back his sword and give the floating armor a glorking good, hard hack while it was an obligingly unmoving target, he trudged past it, looking back twice to make sure it wasn't stealthily drifting after him and raising its blades.

It never moved.

With a shrug of wary disbelief he joined Iskarra-who promptly brushed his cheek with a kiss, and set off down this new stair, another short flight down into a passage almost a mirror image of the one they'd just traversed. The midpoint of this one held an identical footless, apparently empty floating suit of armor with swords in hand, and led to another stair.

Garfist swore under his breath, coming down the stairs slowly and glancing back at the first suit of armor for as long as he could-only to find himself staring at a second one. He retreated up the stairs a step or two, to peer and make certain the first guardian-for so he firmly thought of them, believing they could be nothing else-was still there. It was.

Two steps down, and there was the second suit of armor. Back up again. The first one floated just where it had been when they'd first laid eyes on it.

He descended all the way, this time, sword up but not slowing, to walk past the second guardian to where Iskarra was waiting in silent, nodding patience at the head of yet another stair. It was longer, descending about twice as far as the previous flights.

'Not like in the tales, this,' Gar whispered to her. 'No tentacles coming out of the walls, yet, nor empty suits of armor hacking at us… not that I'm disappointed.'

'Hold your tongue,' she breathed back, her manner furious. 'We have no idea what might awaken such menaces, but it bids fair to be more likely that silence is safe, than that your suggesting things will keep them from happening.'

'Yer wisdom, Snakehips, overwhelms me,' Garfist growled sulkily. 'As always.'

Iskarra rolled her eyes, tapped him severely on one cheek in a pantomime of a slap, and went on down this new stair. Only to stop again, a few steps from the bottom, and stare all around warily.

Garfist joined her, sword up and stopping three steps up so he could swing it, if he had to, without slicing her.

Together they beheld a room, the largest they'd yet found in Malraun's fortress, that stretched away from them to the by-now-familiar descending stair at its far end. Its ceiling was twice the height of any of the rooms they'd traversed thus far, and at about its center, a podium or railed balcony thrust out from one wall at the height of the skipped floor-level; it was reached by its own stair that clung to the wall and then curved out to join the jutting vantage-point. Aside from its wooden rail, the balcony and its stairs seemed to be made of the same smooth, fused stone as the walls. At one spot, the floor of the balcony rose up into a sloping-topped table or lectern. There were books, one of them spread open, atop that sloping surface.

The room seemed to be the site of an unfinished magic… but had the casting just been interrupted, or was it some slow, long-proceeding project?

Silence reigned. Freshly-carved wooden staves leaned in an untidy bundle against one wall; two of them had already fallen to the floor.

A large white circle had been drawn in the center of the floor, and from its chalk-if that's what it was-a strong, moving glow rose, like an ankle-deep band of dancing sparks. Out from the circle projected curlicues and flourishes drawn in the same glowing substance, the largest of them forming arms that in four-no, five-cases made rings that enclosed runes drawn on the floor in glowing red and gold.

Above that central circle, items hung in the air, glowing with the same white, dancing-sparks radiance as the circle.

A helm, a cloak-spread wide as if pegged out on an invisible rack to dry-and two gauntlets, seemingly placed to await someone standing in the circle donning them. Or perhaps anyone stepping into the circle would awaken spells that would magically thrust the items onto them, like an invisible maid or manservant dressing them.

Something else was hovering in the air above those four motionless items, swirling in the air beside the little balcony. It seemed to be a slowly-turning whorl or point-down cone of tiny lights; dim radiances that looked more like water droplets than sparks. As Isk and Gar peered at them, they seemed to turn a trifle faster, and some of them winked out of existence-or visibility-while others winked in, and faint, gentle chimings arose from them. The point of their cone hung directly above the floating helm.

Iskarra spun around to glare at Gar and whisper fiercely, 'Touch nothing!'

Before he could grumble out a reply she was down off the stair and trotting quietly across the room, keeping well back from all the glowing lines on the floor. Up the balcony stairs she went in a rush, not touching the stair- rail, only to come to a smooth halt on the top step and from there look carefully at the books on the lectern.

She nodded slowly as she read from the open book, then turned and scampered back down the steps without ever setting boot on the balcony. Going to the staves leaning against the wall, she carefully plucked up one of the toppled ones, hefted it in her hand-and then leaned out to gingerly poke at the floating helm, trying to move it.

Three careful prods left her panting with the effort of stretching out her bony frame to its utmost without letting the staff waver down into any sparks, but she'd touched no glowing white lines, and the helm now floated in a new spot, shifted sideways a little more than its own width.

Garfist sighed, and turned on the stair to face back the way they'd come, so he'd be ready if two flying suits of armor silently erupted down on their heads.

'Isk,' he rumbled warningly, 'ye're up to something. And telling me nothing, just as ye usually do. Give. Now.'

'Old Ox,' his longtime partner replied merrily, replacing the staff back on the floor in just the position she'd taken it from, 'Malraun has left these floating things waiting for some time of great need, such as when he's in a big fight and needs to snatch up some timely aid. The cloak to shield him and help him fly without spending a spell to do so. The gauntlets to subsume certain blasting magics normally shot out at the world with wands; he'll be