Arch Wizard

'Oh, ninjas. Why didn't you just say so? Ninjas. Right.'

'I'm serious, damn it!' Rusty found he was gripping the phone in both hands as though trying to strangle it. 'Mase is dead, Sam's dead, most or all of their men are dead too, and-'

The line went dead at the same time as the lights flickered, sparks burst from a nearby wall-panel as its door banged open, and Sollars quavered, his voice rising almost into a scream, 'S-sir? Mister Carroll, sir? I've found the last one!'

Rusty looked up from the security desk to see two spark-spewing ends of a power lead swinging back and forth. The Dark Helm who'd just severed that cable turned from them, shuddering only a little, to stalk slowly across the room toward Rusty, sword raised and ready.

For the first time in nineteen years at Holdoncorp, its Head of Security reached for a holster that held only a billyclub flashlight, and cursed the company's 'No handguns outside of our computer screens' policy.

Lord Irrance Tesmer came awake slowly. He was vaguely aware of a chill-the bedclothes were gone, leaving him bared to the night air-and knew with more pressing certainty that his head hurt.

Clara had snarled something in the night and stormed out of bed-she had, hadn't she? — and…

'Clara?' he mumbled, rolling over. No warm spot, and no heap of covers. His wife was gone.

He got himself hastily upright in bed, rubbing his eyes and trying to quell the prompt, severe blossoming of the ache in his head. 'Clara?'

'I'm here, Ranee.' Her voice was coming from the doorway, and it was sharp with anger.

Lord Tesmer came hastily all the way awake. Something had happened. Something that mattered. Something bad.

'What?' he blurted, looking wildly around for his sword while trying to keep an eye on his wife's face.

She was quivering like a hunting-hound straining to be let off the leash. Barefoot, in a dark gown, black hair loose around her shoulders in a flood, eyes two coals beneath scowling brows as they glared at him. She was furious, all right.

'What's happened?'

Lady Telclara Tesmer folded her arms across her chest. 'Our gems are gone. All three coffers. The sack of coins, too. No alarm raised in the night, and the guards swear no one even approached the gates.'

Tesmer blinked at his wife. 'All the gems? Not the-the tunnel! They must have taken the tunnel!'

She nodded grimly. 'Which means the thief is one of us-or one or more of the children. My crossthreads haven't been disturbed.'

'Clara, I swear I didn't-'

His clumsy protest stumbled into silence under the slicing edge of her look of scorn. 'I'm aware of that, dolt. I sleep with you, remember?'

Irrance winced. 'What about the vaults?'

She lifted one shapely shoulder in a shrug. 'Undisturbed. The guardian snake still asleep, the sprinkled line I left there unmarked. No one's been in there. So, yes, Ranee, we still have coins to our name.' She took a long, slow step forward. 'That's not the point.'

Lord Tesmer winced. 'Which of our children has betrayed us?'

She smiled, a tight grimace that held not the slightest trace of amusement. 'All of them, and often. Neither the servants nor our warcaptains can be certain where any of them are just now, but last reports-'

He nodded wearily. His wife's spies were nothing if not energetic.

'— have Ghorsyn and Ellark still off hunting, some days away; Kalathgar still in that Stormar port busily buying and selling dockside hovels with our coins to make a fortune he can hide before he comes back to tell us how poorly coins fare in Stormar these days; Delmark and Feldrar stealing everything from our loyal citizens that isn't nailed down, including the virtue of their daughters-and wives, too-and Maera still spurning every suitor but seeing how much they'll gift her with, before she turns away.'

'Delmark and Feldrar a-wenching? I thought it was Belard the women all swooned after!'

'That, husband mine, is the real news. It seems much magic was hurled in the forest last night. In the little dell nigh the Imrush headwaters-or rather, what used to be a little dell. Trees in plenty blazed like a brace of feast-torches, I'm told, and the deer are all fled three hills away or more. The result of a little disagreement between our Belard, and our Nareyera, and our little Talyss, too.'

'What? They have that much magic?'

'Irrance, you'd be surprised at what our children have up their sleeves, in their back pouches-and under their codpieces, too. The fire's down to just smoke, now. That's not what matters.'

Lady Tesmer took another step forward. 'What matters, Ranee, is that Bel and Talyss now trust each other enough to rut together.'

Lord Tesmer's jaw dropped. 'What? As husband and wife? Coupling?'

His wife sighed. 'Yes, coupling, but you persist in missing the point. A night of sheathing the flesh-dagger is neither here nor there, even if they are brother and sister. Ranee, they're working together. Scheming. When all of us thought their seething hatred for each other would keep them from ever even imagining such a thing.'

Shaking his head rather dazedly, Irrance Tesmer stumbled out of bed and started to pace. 'Bel and Talyss… Talyss and Bel…'

'Oh, dolt of a lord, will you stop trying to picture them together and leering over it! Try not to think with your night-horn for once, and use your brains!'

Lord Tesmer stopped his striding, gave his wife a glare, and barked, 'So they're scheming together. What of it? That's all our offspring ever seem to do, aye? You've said it yourself, many a time! Why's this pairing so much a cause for alarm? Hey?'

'Irrance,' his wife said gently, 'you've heard all the talk-I know you have-that the Master may have sired some of our children, rather than you.'

Lord Tesmer stiffened. 'You've always told me those rumors were utter lies.'

'So I have, though you've never quite believed me. Well, now it's time for you to hear the truth. Two of our children were sired by the wizard Narmarkoun, and may very well have his power to hurl magic. He may even have secretly trained them to become wizards.'

Lord Tesmer went white. His voice, when he found it, was almost a whisper. 'Their names?'

'Belard. And Talyss.'

Rod Everlar found sleep again at last, or thought he did. Were these not dreams, these scenes of him trotting down from a crumbling rampart in an afternoon mist, into a keep full of snarling, snapping dragons? Or no, narrow-snouted and baleful-eyed dragon heads, all at the end of impossibly-long scaled necks, that writhed and undulated and curved through archway after archway, across a vast and empty-echoing, many-shadowed castle interior, all to meet in some one unseen lower chamber…

Abruptly, Rod was somewhere else. Somewhere he'd seen only once, a sneeringly bold black marble and glass brick of a building, set amid the rolling green hillocks and neat sandtraps of a private golf course. The headquarters of Holdoncorp, gleaming and massive.

He was flying toward it, gliding low over the greens and fairways, and something was flying ahead of him. A lorn, alone and flapping along purposefully, as if on a mission.

Rod sheered quickly away, before it could turn its head and see him. He felt suddenly afraid, a deepening terror he could not explain that left him gasping, and thinking of that black building behind him become a huge abyss, a black maw that was sliding through the parting green hills and fairways to follow him… seeking to devour him, jaws widening into a gulf he could never escape if he foolishly looked back…

He dodged, around he knew not what, finding himself in thickening mists again. Then ducked, hearing the clash of swords and seeing a brief glimpse of grinning skeletons rushing down gloomy castle corridors with unsheathed swords in their bony grips. Then dodged again, in a place of thunderous crashes and tall stone castle towers falling ponderously down to earth, deep groaning rumble after deep groaning rumble, each of them ending in a thunderous, bone-shaking crash…

He was lying on a heap of clothes in a dark room in Malragard, and it was falling, too, leaning toward its gardens and the grass-girt slope outside the garden wall… leaning… leaning…

The bone-shaking crash rattled his teeth this time, and flung him up off the clothes an instant before huge