Arch Wizard

happened to find some of Lorontar's magic, and used it to win free of Yintaerghast.

So it was time to go looking. Seeking however the cleverest wizard in all Falconfar would hide things from his apprentices, enemy wizards, and intruding thickskulls who came marauding with swords in their hands and theft and butchery in their hearts.

Wall-sconces that turned, as levers-if there'd been any wall-sconces. Steps in stairs that could be lifted up or pushed down or slid side-wise. Stones in the side-walls of archways, that moved to let someone into a passage hidden in the thickness of the wall…

Narmarkoun looked around him, swallowed a groan, and started tapping, tugging, and prodding.

Falcon defecate, but Yintaerghast held a lot of archways.

As Rusty sprinted up the stairs, more than a few frightened Holdoncorp managerial secretaries at his heels, the security loudspeakers spaced up along the wall above crackled into life.

'Just… just what do you want?' Executive Vice President Quillroque's voice was so distorted by gurgling terror that it was almost unrecognizable.

'We serve a master who seeks sole control over the Great Transforming Magics some of you here have been wielding over Falconfar,' came the flat reply, echoing coldly out of a colder metal helm.

'You what?'

'Those in this fortress who bind things in Falconfar, making matters befall by their commands, must be eliminated.'

'Killed?'

'Ah, that word at least you grasp! Deliver them to us!'

'Them?'

'Those who control Falconfar. You are a lordling here, are you not? They serve you?'

'Uh, ah, they serve Holdoncorp, and I–I can give them orders, yes, but-'

'Then order them to assemble here before us. Or die.'

'But-but-you'll kill them!'

'You comprehend at last. My words have been clear enough, so your wits must be weak indeed, lordling. Go give your orders, or we'll demonstrate our impatience. The smallest fingers on both your hands, first. Then your nose. Then ears and more fingers.'

'You're mad! And if I refuse?'

'We kill everyone.'

It only took twelve archways before Narmarkoun found it. His hunch had been right: try down low. No passage in the thickness of the wall, only a loose stone that could be slid out to reveal a massive metal lever, mottled black with age despite the enchantments he could feel around it. It was upright.

He pulled it down without hesitation. A grinding sound ensued, as the floor in the next archway, across the room, dropped down out of sight. He looked cautiously in all directions before walking to the hole to look down, expecting hurled missiles, unleashed guardians, or something.

Nothing but heavy silence. With a shrug he stopped a good two paces away and peered at the hole. Stone walls, and a faint, flickering glow from below.

He took a step closer, and peered again. A small stone chamber, under the floor of the one he'd been walking in, the glow coming from something small and round floating in midair at the center of it. No other doors, no way in but a crawl-hole in one side of the shaft, revealed when the floor had dropped. Wedge something between the dropped stone and top edge of that hole to keep it all open, so he couldn't get entombed in that little room if it rose again?

Wise idea, but wedge what?

He could think of nothing suitable he could lay hand on. What was really needed was a stout timber long enough to stand as tall as his chest.

Back in Closecandle, he could snap his fingers and summon such a thing, and with two waves of his hands slice it to the right length if it was too long. Here in empty Yintaerghast…

Narmarkoun stared down into the opening, shrugged again, and dropped down into the shaft. The stones under his feet felt as firm and unmoving as solid rock. He hesitated for a moment, in case the weight of his landing triggered some magic or other to raise them again, but they moved not at all.

After a few breaths of waiting, he turned and ducked down into the small room, where he found no doors, no lurking menaces… nothing but magic, radiating so strongly around the floating object that it beat at him like storm-driven ocean waves. He winced, ducked his head, and shuffled closer, fighting the soundlessly throbbing might that seemed strong enough to drive him to his knees. If all this power was something he could take and use…

He could see what it was at last, close enough now to stare past its wildly flaring glows. It was like trying to see one twig in the heart of a roaring fire, but… he was looking at no ring or dagger or crown, but-a brain!

The brain of a man-or, no, the semblance of one.

Narmarkoun frowned at it, fighting the surging, pounding magical flows to stand motionless so he could peer intently.

He'd seen brains often enough when opening up corpses with his spells, back when he'd been working on mastering undeath. This was no glistening, dripping real brain, floating at about the height of his chest in the heart of this little room. It was an image born of magic, a seeming spun by spells surging into and through a real brain that was somewhere else.

He could see through it, watch the ruby and crimson hues of powerful spells at work as they flooded through it, ebbed, and seethed into it again. The image had the shape of a man's brain on all sides, and the forces shuddering and slamming through it were almost sickening to feel. Not only did he not want to thrust his hand into those powerful magics, he doubted there was anything solid there for him to touch.

Yet he had to know what this brain-or these spells, working on the real brain-did. This might be how Lorontar had controlled Yintaerghast, and if that was so, this might well be his only way to affect its shieldings long enough to get out.

That these were Lorontar's magics, he didn't doubt for a moment. This was nothing he could begin to craft, let alone cast, so it was no work of Malraun's. And these enchantments, for all their briskly flowing energy, were old. They smelled old, they felt old. Old, despite blazing with more power than he'd ever hurled in a single magic…

So reaching out into that with his hands would be folly. Almost certainly fatal folly.

If Lorontar lived yet, reaching out with his mind would likely be just as foolish.

This looked very much like the means by which Lorontar had long and forcibly controlled someone's mind-a mind that still existed, even if the Lord Archwizard was long dead. There were, of course, many who whispered that he lived on still, somehow…

Narmarkoun sighed. This might be his only way out, so he had to know whose mind was linked to these enchantments, who was still controlling them-if anyone-and how to take control of these surging magics.

Or he would probably die in Yintaerghast, alone and despairing, helpless to depart.

Narmarkoun drew in a deep breath, uttered a curse with slow, precise diction, then slowly and reluctantly reached out with his mind, in an inward drifting so slow and cautious that he should be able to snatch his probe back in a trice if-

The first trice told him that there was no 'should' in these racing, surging magics.

The second trice told him that the mind that was elsewhere was very much alive, ablaze with long-felt rage and fighting savagely against these magics controlling it.

The third trice was when their minds met, his and the elsewhere one, and that rage blasted into his mind like a bolt of fire.

It was the rage of 'Taeauna,' he learned, in the fourth trice, just before he, and all Falconfar around him, was hurled away into shrieking oblivion.

On a grand bed in a dark room, a man snored faintly.

Someone was lying under him, spreadeagled and bound that way. She was as bare as the sleeping man, but bruised and bleeding where he was not.