Arch Wizard

Narmarkoun decided it was more than his turn to interrupt. 'Aumrarr legends and certain writings of Stormar seers-the sort who had dream-visions, of old, and wrote them down-tell us there are all manner of these innocents. Falconaar-beasts as well as humans, but for the most part they will be human-who are ignorant of their magical powers but who, if ever awakened, may far outstrip any trained wizard in the hurling of magic. Beings who can feel the flows and webs of magical force, and wield them through sheer instinct, not painstaking experimentation and following the written spell-processes of others.'

'And Ironthorn is one of the places they can easily awaken to mastery of magic, all by themselves.'

'It is. Rod Everlar was one innocent. The Dooms all seek to learn who the others are, so we can destroy them before they ever reach Ironthorn. Yet there is a restlessness in Ironthorn right now, that warns me one of them may have wandered there already.'

'So why are you sending me to Galath and not Ironthorn?'

Narmarkoun eyed his false self thoughtfully, and calmly enunciated the largest lie he'd uttered in a long time. 'Because the magics I used to lend your mind some of my power, so you can cast spells, would burst apart in Ironthorn-rending your wits utterly.'

'And you know this how?'

'I've tried it before.'

Well, after all, one lie often needs to stand on another.

The deepening golden hue of the sunlight told Rod Everlar the day was drawing on.

The sunlight he could see very clearly, ahead, where it came stabbing down through the endless green gloom in a great shaft, to illuminate the first real clearing he'd seen in this great forest.

The stream beside his boots zigged this way and then that, only to plunge right through that clearing; he could see it sparkling in the sunlight. He could also see something moving, up there. No, two somethings.

They were too far away to identify clearly, yet. Two creatures that could fly or at least hop and flutter wings, they looked to be. Creatures that stood upright on two legs when they were on the ground. They were fighting each other, or courting, or-well, facing each other and moving quickly, in some sort of excitement, anyway.

Rod started to run, ignoring the meanderings of the stream for the first time. It was too large to lose now, perhaps a dozen feet wide and knee-deep or more in places. If he ran up its bank, heading for the light, he would have to cross only a few strides of uneven, tree-choked forest before he'd be slithering down its banks again, as its winding brought it back across his path. Clamber along around its curve, then up over the next hump of land, and-

A scream rang out, of rage and pain more than fear. From the clearing, of course. It sounded like a woman.

Rod blinked, dodged around a tree, kicked his way through a rather nasty thornbush-there hadn't been all that many bushes of any sort, in the gloom beneath all these soaring trees, but trust him to find one and blunder right through it-and hastened on.

It hadn't sounded like Taeauna. No, this was someone with a deeper, rougher voice, someone-

Someone who was just a fatal moment too slow with her sword. As Rod came charging up over what proved to be a narrow ridge of land, tripped over a tree-root, and slithered headlong in wet, rotting leaves toward a face-first meeting with the chuckling stream, he saw it all.

The largest lorn he'd ever seen, twice the height of a taller man than Rod Everlar, its barbed tail slashing around to catch the sword of its foe and pluck her off-balance, so she leaned helplessly forward into the reach of its long, thickly-muscled arms. Talons that stabbed into her breast and tightened viciously, forcing out a sob and coughed blood.

That foe was an Aumrarr in dark, well-worn leather armor, her wings slashed and tattered, her face utterly unfamiliar to Rod. He had time to see little more before the lorn pulled the Aumrarr close-and tore out her throat.

Blood fountained, drenching that horned and mouthless skull-face, and the Aumrarr's head flopped over, to dangle at an impossible angle.

Though it had no mouth, the lorn looked like it was chewing.

Then it swallowed.

And then it leaned forward to gnaw her face away.

As Rod Everlar, spewing forth the contents of his heaving stomach, scrambled up from the stream-edge mud and sprinted along the water's edge, around its last curve before the clearing, so he could charge up one more forest slope, crash through more trees, yelling out incoherent fury, and burst out into the bright sunlight to confront it.

The Aumrarr was very dead. There was blood everywhere, and the reek of death was strong.

For the first time Rod realized just how much danger he might be in-and something else, too: he hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to do now.

The lorn lifted its head from the bloody ruin of the Aumrarr's face, and regarded him expressionlessly. Without a mouth, its face a gray skull-like mask, it couldn't do much else, yet somehow Rod felt that it was sneering at him.

This close, he could see how the lorn had been able to bite out an Aumrarr throat without a mouth, then devour her face: a lamprey-like, chewing throat tube drew back out of view, under its jaw. Revealing two saw- edged, curving horns-like giant beetle pincers-that were just emerging from under that same jaw.

Horns that thrust forward again, spreading wide, as the lorn took a step closer to Rod, casually throwing the limp corpse of the Aumrarr over one of its arms. And then another step.

Oh, shit.

Chapter Three

Ironthorn had long been a vale where the cold and careful courtesy of meeting and mingling only in certain neutral places-the market-moots in Irontarl, and at Har's Bridge and Blackstones Hill- kept the three rival lordly families of Hammerhand, Lyrose, and Tesmer from rising to bathe the valley in open red war.

Though vale-folk and traveling traders alike spoke of 'the ever-brawling knights of Ironthorn,' those frays erupted with fists and daggers in the taverns, between a hot-headed few, not from end to end of the valley with armies that slaughtered, pillaged, and burned.

The abiding hatreds of the lordly families had not quite turned them into nest-despoiling fools. Yet.

By grudgingly-forged agreement, underscored by cold graves on all sides of the dispute, the forest around Ironthorn had been deemed a place for hunting stags and boar, not men. Its trails were open to all, and it was understood that men who walked or rode there would leave their armor and their bows at home, and carry nothing more menacing than their everpresent swords, belt daggers, and boar-spears. Stags were to be ridden down and speared, or for the most daring, taken with sword and daggers; arrows were for bustards in the sky above, and vermin-four-legged vermin-in the fields below. Not that bows were much use against Ironthar knights and senior armsmen; no armor was worn in the valley that was not treated with the spells that slowed and then turned aside iron. A strong man could bring a sword to bear on an Ironthar-armored foe, fighting through the magic with teeth clenched in effort, but the bow had not been made that could drive even the mightiest war- quarrel home, through the air, to bite.

Yet despite the ban, this day saw two armed and armored warbands out riding the largest forest trail-the only one where two horses could just pass without touching, if the riders were careful. The trail that wandered through the Raurklor heights from one end of Ironthorn to the other, and beyond. The two forces were riding right toward each other.