Smiling wryly at that thought, Narmarkoun stood, unrolled the scroll, and nodded at its familiar symbols. Striking a pose and clearing his throat, he carefully cast Lorontar's long-lost spell again, his voice seeming to gather great strength during the incantation, until it was rolling thunderously through the dark vastnesses of Yintaerghast and echoing back to him like the deep roar of a buried titan.
As he finished, notes that had been scribbled at an angle across the lower end of the scroll shone forth brightly. Narmarkoun peered at them with interest. He'd noticed them before, somewhere and some when…
Ah, yes. They must be the work not of Lorontar, who had so boldly and ornately written the spell above them, but of some later, lesser apprentice.
He nodded, resolve hardening. When Malraun was destroyed and his own hold on Falconfar had been secured, identifying and hunting down this scribbler-if the man still lived; Lorontar probably had held little love for those who dared to comment on his magecraft-would be both prudent and entertaining.
Yet enough thoughts of the idle future; if he was to become the only Doom in Falconfar, his entire attention now must be given to the spell he'd just cast so successfully.
Narmarkoun allowed himself a faint smile. This time, he'd focused his casting not on Rod Everlar, but on a vivid scene he'd noticed in Everlar's mind long ago, at his first spying upon the man of Earth. It was a view across a vast gathering of fortresses, tall towers of stone thrusting into the sky like dead mens' fingers or the standing, limbless tree trunks of burned forests. 'Skyscrapers,' Everlar's mind had termed them, which must be an Earth name for these squared, many-windowed towers.
One in particular Everlar had been interested in; a tower darker, smaller, and older-looking than most of the others, where no less than seven 'publishing houses' had offices.
Narmarkoun didn't know all that such a house was, but he knew what noble 'houses' were, in Falconfar. Proud families born to rule, and all too often possessed of too much pride and too little consequence. He also knew that Everlar thought of them as keeping far too much coin for having too little a hand in producing things Everlar wrote: books like spellbooks, but unlike the laboriously copied tomes of apprentices, these were swiftly-created copies-
Was Earth then teeming with wizards? But no, surely not; if such a lack-spell bumbler as Rod Everlar could write books-aye, 'books,' far more than one, over a long stretch of seasons, for so the man's thoughts ran, and surely he couldn't lie to
The spell had been a good one, ablaze with power and bright in focus. Narmarkoun could feel it racing out from Yintaerghast, all Falconfar dimming around and behind him as he kept his thoughts with it. A mighty magic, its weavings more deft and elegant than anything he himself had yet managed, something he could admire and study and trust in. Yet…
Yet this casting was as chancy as the drag of a fishing boat on the Sea of Storms, weighting a line with sacks of stones to make their hook go deep. He'd shunned the mind of Rod Everlar to seek someone else still in this other world, this Earth, whose mind held the same view of a particular city, a view centered on thoughts of the older skyscraper called the Hardy Building, where publishing houses held sway, that Everlar held in his mind.
So his spell was racing on and reaching out, a bright spark slowly falling and dimming in vast darkness, seeking… seeking…
He was in an unfamiliar mind; one he'd never felt before.
A mind that felt warm, yet faint, a mind somehow ale-brown and worldly at first seeming, then the pale green of eager youth as he sank into it. It was not resisting or even noticing him as he drifted down, yet was neither bestial nor addled. A sleeping mind, then.
Asleep and dreaming… of the Hardy Building and the publishing houses there… and thinking of them with excitement.
And dreaming of Falconfar, too!
At first Narmarkoun felt a stab of alarm, a rush of dark foreboding. Before he could mask it, it tainted the mind around him with shadowy apprehension, flowing out through the dream like ripples across a pool that has just received the plunging arrival of a stone.
Narmarkoun's momentary fear softened as he drifted deeper, learning why this sleeper was dreaming of riding hard and fast across Galath with bare and alluring Aumrarr winging low overhead. A sensual dream now darkening into fears of lurking watchers pursuing this Mike as he rode, awaiting the best chance to burst forth and do harm…
This dreamer read and re-read books written by Rod Everlar, whom he thought of as the 'creator' of the 'imaginary' world of Falconfar, a world this dreamer, this Mike, longed to be real.
Yes! Of course the spell would find such a mind, and seize upon it. Now, did this Mike know anything useful? Such as the names of other Shapers, others who wrote books for the houses in the Hardy Building castle?
Again, yes! A tall, lean bearded man with a waxed mustache, named Geoffrey Halsted, who betimes worked together with Mario Drake, a shorter, bespectacled bearded man who breathed out smoke constantly.
There were two other Shapers this Mike had met once, both of whom awed him more than Halsted and Drake. Lean, darkly handsome, dangerous-looking men that Mike thought might really know how to swing swords and calmly kill people, smiling all the while. Loners, not friends who worked together or with anyone. One was named Sugarman Tombs, and wore 'formal suits,' whatever those were, of black over white. The other wore boots and garments that were always black and silver, and was called Corlin Corey. They wrote…
As Mike started to think of various books, in a welter of imagined faces and places, his dreams thinned, and Falconfar fell away, nigh forgotten as he rose toward wakefulness.
No! Narmarkoun hastily lent his own memories of the Galathan countryside to the sleeper, his own remembrances of galloping knights, proud-spired castles, and smiling gowned women-and Mike was with him again, eager to see more, mind flaming with excitement. So much excitement, in fact, that he was soaring toward wakefulness again, and-
The spell faded, very suddenly, leaving Narmarkoun cold and alone in darkness.
He was standing in a dark and empty chamber of Yintaerghast, blinking at a scroll, the warm and excited mind he'd been drifting through utterly gone. Leaving him clinging to four faces, and the names Mike had attached to them. Geoffrey Halsted, Mario Drake, Sugarman Tombs, and Corlin Corey.
His thralls, in time soon to come.
If they were stronger of will and imagination than this Everlar, yet biddable by his own will or his spells, they could be his greatest treasures.
He, Narmarkoun, could dominate their minds, so their writings would change Falconfar in ways large and small, to be what he wanted it to be. To give him rule over it that none could challenge, or would dare to… or in the end, would want to.
Yet to do that he'd have to cast the spell again and again-and the magic of the scroll was now exhausted.
Oh, it still set forth the incantation and displayed the sigils, and so could be used to work a casting. Yet the power Lorontar the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar had bound into those sigils so long ago was gone, consumed in taking him to the distant mind of Mike.
If he wanted to work the spell again, right now, he lacked any means to power it except his own vitality.
The force of life that kept his heart beating, his lungs drawing breath, his thoughts racing, and the strength in his thews.
Narmarkoun hesitated, reluctant to take even a single stride down that road-for wizards who drain their own lives risk much, even when they have no foes, and are safely hidden from the curious and hungry prowling beasts-and then shrugged, struck his pose again, raised the scroll, smiled, and lifted his voice in the incantation.
It took a lot from him, even more than he'd expected, stealing it away with silken skill as his voice rose and his free hand traced the gestures that gathered and shaped power…
It had seemed to take much longer than last time, but the spell was cast. As it raced forth through the void again, Narmarkoun clung to it, vaguely aware that he felt weak and sick, that he was trembling and staggering
