Rod looked wildly around, half-expecting Dark Helms or something worse to come gliding out of the shadows to menace him. The room had two doors, one of them obviously opening out onto the passage of many doors, and the other, in the wall across from him, surrounded by bookshelves, connecting this room to some other chamber. Tiny mauve-white lightnings played across the spines of the tomes, in a clear warning that some sort of magic guarded them, killing Rod's rising curiosity in an instant.
Hesitantly he went to the desk, staring hard at it in search of lurking dangers, but finding nothing. Not that he'd probably recognize his doom, in a wizard's tower, until it claimed him…
Avoiding the chair, he leaned just close enough to the desk to pluck away the topmost sheet of parchment, watching to make sure nothing deadly was revealed beneath it. It was blank on both sides, and newly-made, with edges that weren't yet brittle-just a sheet of parchment under his fingertips, no more and no less; not writhing to change shape back into some horrific fanged monster.
Rod hesitated a moment more, than slammed the sheet down on the desk, plucked up the nearest bottle of ink, twisted out its cork with impatient speed, and plucked up the nearest quill. It had been cut sharp, but never used.
Standing over one front corner of the desk, he dipped the quill and started to write, trying to put his will behind the words, thrusting his fear and rising excitement into them.
If he could Shape himself to Taeauna, and away from Syregorn and his men…
A sharp smell arose, and a brief wisp of-was that smoke? Rod scratched and scribbled hard, his pen slicing along like the point of a sharp knife, bright sparks-
The parchment was starting to burn under his racing pen… and the thrilling power that surged through him when he Shaped wasn't… wasn't in him at all!
'Beg for it! Beg for more!' Malraun spat, the riding whip slicing viciously across Taeauna's chest. Panting and sweating, he was riding her hard, lashing her harder and faster as she writhed under him, spreadeagled on the bed and trying to smile between gasps of love and pain. 'Beg, I said!'
'Oh, Master! Oh, Malraun!' she hissed, eyes pleading for more, not for mercy. 'Hurt me!
He snarled in wordless glee, brought his whip back far enough to wipe sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm-and stiffened, incredulous rage flaring in him.
Something was tugging at his ward-spells, somewhere, something hostile that sought to destroy…
In Malragard! Something small and feeble; a hedge-wizard too feeble to emerge alive from where he'd intruded, perhaps, or one of his own guardian creatures, freed somehow from the magics that confined it…
Malraun thrust the warning flarings down deep in his mind, and brought himself back to Darswords, to Taeauna beneath him and this release he so sorely needed.
'No,' he snarled aloud, 'not again! Not
'Lord?' Taeauna dared to ask. He whipped her hard across the mouth by way of reply, giving her a look meant to be a quelling glare.
The leaping fire in her eyes told him she'd seen something else in his look, though; the tenderness he felt toward her. No one else cared about him, except as a foe to be destroyed; no one else welcomed his mistreatment of them. He took her by the throat, leaned down until their noses were almost touching-until the sweat now dripping from him wet her face-and growled, 'It doesn't matter. Only
Her eyes danced with-joy? Something else; glee? Amusement? No, it must be love. She was smitten with him, lost in love for him.
He could still feel the warnings, faint and deeply buried, but cared about them no longer. They were the work of a failure; whatever or whoever was seeking to work magic in the very heart of Malragard was being foiled by his warding-spells even now, and persistence would end-could end-only in being burned to ashes.
Rod sprang back from the desk and watched the scorched paper smolder. Without his quill, its fire swiftly went out, leaving only a burned-through gap across it, a line of nothingness where he'd tried to write words.
Capping the ink bottle with his thumb, he snatched it up, thrust the quill into the same hand, and used his freed hand to open the door into the next room. Which was full of racks of clothing, and even a spine-and hook- studded, weirdly-curving suit of armor on its own stand.
Perhaps it had been the paper, or some spell cast on the study, or nearness to all those magical books…
It might just as easily be something else, but he hadn't a lot of choices. This wardrobe-room had its own door out onto the passage, and-yes! — another connecting door, to another room beyond it.
Rod opened that door as boldly as if Malragard was his own home, and found himself in a room that looked like a honeymoon suite bathroom in some luxury hotel, with marble steps up to a huge, kidney-shaped lounging tub-'spa' they called them, these days-full of warm, rippling, fruit-scented water. A handful of small spheres hung in the air above it, drifting aimlessly about… and flaring into bright-glowing, amber life at his approach.
Rod peered at the water just long enough to make sure no tentacled something was lurking in it or gathering itself to thrust up out of it at him with a watery roar, and then started staring at what really interested him in the room: its two doors. One out onto the passage, and one to a room beyond.
His business right now was with that second one; he swung it open as swiftly as he could, to reveal a luxurious, tapestry-hung bedchamber dominated by a huge fourposter and large, oval-framed pictures on the richly-paneled walls that held bright, moving scenes, like so many television sets tuned to different 'exploring exotic global locales' programs.
Aside from a quick peer inside for Dark Helms or other lurking beasts or guards, Rod ignored the bedroom for now. What mattered was that the door connecting it to the bathchamber was open and could be held that way with the toe of his boot, and that he could write on it with his quill pen, to try Shaping again.
Calmly he dipped the quill, reached down, and started to write. He wanted to start low, in case the ink ran down the door and marred whatever he might try to write below it.
It did, but that hardly mattered. Even faster than on the parchment, his moving quill birthed fire in its wake, flames that flared up vigorously this time, blazing away merrily-and being echoed precisely, Rod saw with utter astonishment, on the bathroom's
He drew his quill back to stare, then tried to write again, watching that other door. Yes. Wherever his pen touched and burned the connecting door he was holding open, the door across the room that linked the bathroom with the passage that held Syregorn and the Hammerhand knights was burning, too, like he was writing on both doors at once, or as if they were carbon copies or linked by some sort of invisible tracing pantograph!
Rod cursed softly, and stopped trying to write. He was likely doomed to fail at Shaping from one end of Malragard to the other, no matter what he wrote on, or with.
Stepping back from the door, he took a long stride into the bedroom, let the still-smoking door swing shut behind him, and looked down at himself.
He wore pouches in plenty of Arlaghaun's mysterious magics, riding all of his crisscrossing belts and baldrics. Beneath and jutting out from between those many smooth bands of tooled leather were the now- hardened blobs and splashes of what had been metal armor. Rod shook his head.
No. He simply knew too little about what he was messing with to have hopes of intending to do something and then managing it. He'd literally be playing with fire, blundering about with magical effects-and unintended consequences-he knew nothing about, and wouldn't solve until too late, when it all blew up in his face.
About all Rod had that still seemed whole and reliable were his boots, the heavy war-gauntlets dangling from where he'd clipped them to one baldric, and one of his swords. It occurred to him that taking any clothing from the wardrobe-room hadn't even entered his mind. Now, he knew why. Without really thinking about it, he'd concluded Malraun would be able to trace him at will if he wore anything of Malraun's, no matter where he might go or how he might try to hide.
Rod sighed, becoming very much a scared and bewildered fantasy writer who didn't even know how to play at being Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, let alone wield the magical might of a Doom.
That was when he noticed that something had silently happened, in the few flashing moments he'd stood
