Arch Wizard

The man's face didn't even have time to slide from startlement into fear before he was lofted straight up into the air, yelling, as the foremost Doom of Falconfar pointed the wand skyward.

Malraun held him there, paying him no attention at all, as he peered about for Taeauna. And spotted her, soon enough, pointing work-crews with barrows this way and that. She was clearing the dead away from the wells, of course, trying to keep what the folk of Darswords drank untainted.

Tae, he thought firmly in her direction, feeling for, and sinking into, the familiar warmth of her mind.

She whirled around, her mind greeting his with its usual dark joy-or at least, paramount joy, for as always that emotion overlaid deeper things Malraun couldn't properly discern-and Malraun gazed into her eyes and summoned the Aumrarr to him without a word.

Taeauna hastened, coming at an eager trot around the heaped dead, threading her way quickly and adroitly through the almost-strolling warriors, and Malraun barely had to nod to get her to reach out a long arm to clutch the shoulder of another battle-lord as she passed.

That swaggering officer spun around to favor her with a sharp-eyed glare, saw Malraun as he turned, lost the glare in cringing fear in a paling instant, and hastened after Taeauna. Good.

Malraun lowered his wand to let the now silent, gray with terror battle-lord back to the ground, folded his arms across his chest, and awaited their arrival.

He was pleased to see even Horgul's brutes weren't utterly stoneheaded; by the time those three leaders of his army had gathered before him, the other battle-lords had noticed, and were hastily converging.

He waited, regarding them all coldly, until all but a handful had found a place to stop and stand in a silent ring around him, fearful eyes fixed on him.

Malraun smiled, just for a moment, and then snapped, 'You will begin-right now-to plunder Darswords, burning nothing, and slaughtering only those who repeatedly resist you. Imprison all the rest in yonder barn until we depart. Then eat well; at full dawn tomorrow you will all march to Harlhoh. There I'll see you reprovisioned, for immediate march on Burnt Bones. You will conquer there as you did here, then march on to Ironthorn and serve it the same way. Go, and give orders in all haste; I want to see my soldiers sleeping- sleeping! — no longer!'

His face tightened, rage rising again. Thanks to the skull and the mindgem, he could no longer trust using the gates to 'jump' his army from Harlhoh to Ironthorn. A wizard who knew what Malraun the Matchless was intending had obviously discovered the gates and made plans of his own-reducing his Army of Liberation to no swifter a mob of trudging metalhead brutes than any other predictable marauding host.

'You,' he told Taeauna, 'will come with me. On your knees.'

Then he turned away from them all, knowing without looking that she would obey-would already be crawling after him.

All the way back to that bedchamber, where he would take her by the throat, beat her with fists and belt while thrusting pain into her mind, and command her crawling humiliation and obedience repeatedly.

As he took her to bed and used her savagely, commanding her to thank him and gasp for more, again and again, even as blood welled out of her-and he slaked his rage in enjoying every moment of it.

For he was the foremost Doom of Falconfar. And by the Falcon, he was going to behave accordingly.

'Gorn,' Thalden pointed out unnecessarily, 'that door is starting to glow.'

'Why, thank you, Thalden,' Syregorn replied sarcastically. 'Fortunate I am to have such an eagle-eyed knight along with me.

Tarth, Reld: get to it and haul it open, stepping on not one of the doors on the floor on your way to it. Move!'

All six knights of Hammerhold flinched at his sudden roar, and the two he commanded to the door sprang to obey so precipitously that they stumbled and both almost planted boots on the doors underfoot.

They skidded to unsteady halts in front of the glowing door, waving their arms wildly as they clawed at the air to try to reclaim their balance-and in that instant, no less than three other doors along the passage were suddenly glowing, too.

'Syre,' Tarth called uncertainly, 'look you! Three more, I mark, are-'

'So they are,' Syregorn snarled. 'Yet I gave you and Reld an order, that you already seem to have forgotten!'

'Ah, aye, yes-' Tarth gabbled, whirling to join Reld, who was hauling on the door-ring in a sudden frenzy.

Whereupon the door exploded in a great gout of blinding light, whirling shards, and wet splatterings that covered the four wincing, cowering knights around Syregorn. Splatterings that could only have been Tarth and Reld. Syregorn glared bleakly down the passage at the remaining trio of glowing doors for a moment, and then snapped, 'Thalden, go and look at what's behind where that door was. Perthus, the nearest door that's aglow. Jelgar, the next one. Onthras, the last. Touch no doors, mind, until we know what Thalden's found.'

The surviving knights hesitated, then looked into the cold promise of his glare and slunk reluctantly past him and forward, walking slowly and unwillingly.

Thalden was the oldest of the four, but he reached his goal-the scorched and gaping hole where the door that had slain Tarth and Reld had been, which was nearest to Syregorn-first.

With slow, exaggerated caution, he ducked low, stretched himself forward, and peered around the edge of the doorframe.

Then he slumped down in relief, sighed heavily, and announced, 'Nothing. An empty room. Dust and bare stone.'

The warcaptain nodded. 'Perthus? Jelgar? Onthras?' His voice was as calm and drawlingly low as if he'd been calling on them just to keep himself awake.

Perthus reached his door and stood there trembling, face grey-white.

Syregorn idly drew a dagger. They all looked back at him. watching it, and he could see in their faces they knew it was poisoned-and what he intended it for.

Perthus hissed out a curse, and suddenly, spasmodically, wrenched at the ring of his door.

Obligingly, it exploded, with the same blinding, Malragard-rocking blast, and the same wetly fatal result.

A little farther down the passage, Jelgar started to cry.

Without much sense of surprise, Rod Everlar discovered he was trembling with fear. Syregorn meant to kill him, and had probably been under orders to do so all along. He'd seen the cold, clear promise of death in the warcaptain's eyes.

Yes, give the unwelcome outlander the drug to make him babble, learn all you can, then drag him into Lyraunt Castle in hopes he'll blast all the Lyroses to the starry sky and bring the wizard Malraun raging across Falconfar. Perhaps he'll manage to blast Hammerhand's foe down, or weaken the Doom enough that he can be dealt with. Then kill him, if Malraun hasn't already managed it in their spell-duel, or turned him into a frog-or serve Malraun the same way. If this Lord Archwizard out of nowhere is an utter failure, shrug, you face the same Malraun you always did.

All Rod had done was seize a bare moment of freedom to step through the doorway, run along the passage, yank open the first door he came to-less than four strides along a hall menacingly full of doors, like an Escher or Dali nightmare, doors on walls, floor, and ceiling! — and get it closed again, just as quickly as he quietly could.

He'd found himself in silent darkness. A dark room, L-shaped, with walls that started to glow faintly, ale- brown and only where they met the floor, all around him. A room full of tables with what looked like effigies on them: stone images of dead men and women and-and things, strange beast-headed, scaled creatures, all lying on their backs wrapped in shrouds. Or were they petrified corpses? They were incredibly detailed, and peering hard at them without getting too close, Rod couldn't see any tool-marks.

He had seen a door, however, around a corner at the far end of the room, and hurried to it. At any moment Syregorn's knights might yank open the same door he had, and come for him.

His trembling hands fumbled with the ring, but the door opened. The room beyond was already faintly aglow-and it held shelves of books, a desk with a high-backed chair, and-a rack of quill pens, bottles of ink, and stacked sheets of blank parchment!