Arch Wizard

'Holy shit!' Rusty gasped, staring at the large screen.

'What?' Sam's voice demanded, over the beeping of a forklift truck backing up along the loading dock.

He was echoed almost immediately by Mase, head of Ground Floor Security. 'Rusty, what's all the excitement?'

Rusty shook his head, then bent over the microphone again and snapped, 'Sam, Mase, listen up! I am not crazy and this is not a joke. Got that?'

'Copy. Tell us!'

'Well, there's something following the six guys with the swords. Well back, but it's flying. Most of the time, anyway. Keeping to cover, like it's trying to keep hidden, but keep watch on what the six are up to.'

'So this isn't just fans, then. This is serious.'

'More than serious, Sam.' Rusty drew in a deep, unhappy breath, and asked, 'You-Mase, you too-have played Falconfar, right?'

The speakers made affirmative noises. Rusty nodded, his eyes never leaving the big monitor, and asked, 'So you know what a lorn looks like? The flying faceless things?'

'Yup. Oh now, hold on there, Rusty, you're not expecting us to believe-'

'I don't believe it myself, but I'm seeing it. And I am not shitting you. Repeat: I am not kidding or joking or lying. And it's not some guy in a monster suit, or a clumsy homemade bolts-and-car-parts robot. Unless someone has found a way to send very realistic animated images over these monitors that I haven't heard about-with proper perspective, lighting, the works-there's a lorn out there, flying right at us!'

'Roger. So I bring along the riot rifles, not just the gas gun?'

'No! No, we-yes, damn it, yes. I've seen too many movies to…'

'Rusty.' Sam's voice was kindly. 'Your mom never tell you movies ain't real?'

'Just do it, Sam!' Rusty shouted. 'Now! The Dark Helms'll be at our doors in a minute, and that thing's about two little hillocks behind them!'

'Roger, Rusty. Go eat your sandwich and simmer down. Or have you gulped it already, and washed it down with a little something extra?'

'I have not,'' Rusty roared, 'been drinking! Now get going!'

'Roger!' Sam and Mase snapped back in hasty unison. The speakers promptly burped the two loud clicks of their switching off, presumably to snatch up their high-band handphones and run.

Staring at the front lobby monitors, Rusty started swearing. Those swords, and all that glass. The six crazies didn't have to use the front doors. Thanks to his imagination-and yes, all those movies-he could already hear glass shattering everywhere, and all those long-legged, icily elegant secretaries and marketing managers in all their down-front glass box offices screaming and fleeing in all directions.

As Dark Helms with sharp swords in their hands and rape and murder on their minds ran among them.

'Shit,' Rusty told the microphone, without intending to, 'I need a drink.'

Rod Everlar drew in a deep, unhappy breath, then squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and flung open the door.

The passage was almost mockingly empty and silent. So where had Syregorn and his knights gone?

Ahead of him, probably, if all this time had passed and they hadn't burst into any of the rooms Rod had so fumblingly and cautiously wandered through. Perhaps they'd thought he knew the way out, and would just run as fast as he could toward it. Moving through Malragard, down the hill the fortress descended, to reach a floor or two below where he was now. Maybe.

Yet there was no reason not to believe the unhappy mutterings among the knights that death-spells would dice anyone trying to climb out over the garden walls-and there was no way to blast a hole in any wall, and so step right out of Malraun's trap, except magic that he didn't have and wouldn't know how to use if someone handed it to him. Not to mention that blowing a hole in the side of the wizard's home was more than a little likely to alert Malraun instantly about what had happened-and just where to find the guy who'd just done it.

So, walk along obediently in the death trap it was, and would have to be. Rod turned the way he knew to be away from the garden and-eventually-downwards toward Harlhoh, and the front doors, and started walking. Slowly, reluctantly, and as quietly as he could, avoiding all doors.

So when did he get to rescue the princess, slay a dragon, and accept a triumphal fanfare?

Or at least play the hero with some small degree of competence?

'Lock the doors!' Rusty roared, wondering where the bell Mase and his boys were; they should have been out on the lawn stopping these clowns well away from the building, not nowhere to be seen, as the Dark Helms-looking very much like dangerous thugs, now, and not awed, giggling fans-stalked up to the outer doors. 'Lock the fucking DOORS!'

Sollars stared up at him, not knowing whether to be scared white or to grin at hearing Holdoncorp's grayhaired and straight-arrow security chief spitting out curses.

'You're in charge here,' Rusty snapped at him as he unbuttoned his holster-and then sprinted away, heading for the service stairs. 'Hank,' he called to the largest and strongest of the custodians, 'get out the fire axe and defend everyone on this floor, if any of those guys come out of the elevator!'

As he burst through the stairwell door and started plunging down flights of steps with wild bounds, the speakers at every landing crackled and came to life. Sollars had flipped a switch.

'Ah, gentlemen, welcome to Holdoncorp.' Marie's usually butter-smooth and calmly professional voice sounded a little shaky, and no wonder. 'Can I help you?'

'Yes,' a deep, helm-bound voice snarled back at her. 'Take us to those who know Falconfar.'

There followed a loud crash of breaking glass. Amid the tinklings of falling shards that followed, and more than a few swiftly-stifled shrieks, the Dark Helm added in a loud and gloatingly menacing voice, 'And mind ye do so quickly.'

Rusty hurled himself down another flight of stairs. Quickly.

Rod blundered into the illusion of straight hallway stretching on the hard way; by bringing his foot down on the edge of the unseen descending steps and pitching forward, slamming chest-first down on the steps, and finding himself staring at the slumped corpse of Thalden bent over the giant crossbow quarrel that had torn through his innards and killed him. It was as big as a lance, and Rod realized with a start that a matching war- quarrel had struck the steps just beside Thalden, right about where his own head was now, chipping the stone ere it bounded away up the steps. He'd fallen right past it without even seeing it.

Hastily he got himself up and away from those particular steps. Picking up that quarrel, he used it to probe at the illusory passage, running on its unseen distances. There were side-walls to the steps, and an end wall with a door in it, facing the steps, and that wall ran straight up as high as he could reach; there was no gap or space through which he could move on.

So he either had to go back to the doors behind him, dare any traps Malraun had put on them, and find a way around this deadend… or it wasn't a dead-end, but the way onward, and he had to open that door.

The door through which two oversized crossbow bolts had fired, if that was the right word, one of them fast enough to kill Thalden. The other had missed Syregorn and however many other Hammerhand knights had still been alive when they'd reached this door.

Everlar hefted it in his hand, then gingerly poked its far end through the pull-ring of the door, stood as far away as he could on the stairs, over against the wall on the far side from Thalden's body, and tugged.

The door opened with surprising ease-in well-oiled soft and smooth silence-and an unseen double-bow let go with a crash. Rod saw only blurs as another lance chipped the empty side of the steps and bounded up and on along the passage, while Thalden's body spasmed, arms and head bouncing wildly, as a second quarrel tore into it right beside the first.

Rod swallowed, but made sure to keep the door held open as he edged along the lance toward its dark opening. He could hear no sounds of reloading, a whirring windlass, or men moving about, beyond the door; the only breathing he could hear was his own. The bow had fired from about there and there, which meant he should be able to keep to the very edge of the doorway and step