Taeauna didn't take
much time drying herself. She was dressed before Rod was, had retrieved their laedlen from a side-chamber, and was tugging at the bed-furs while he was still sitting on one corner of them, dragging on his boots.
By then, sounds of battle—clanging swords, shouts and screams—-were rising all around them.
"Well, that didn't last long," Rod muttered. "Who do you think's attacking us this time?"
"Whomever Arlaghaun could send or compel to swing swords here," the Aumrarr told him bleakly, tossing him a fur. "They're searching for you."
Rod shook his head. "Have they nothing else to do with their lives?"
"To master more than a few of the lesser spells, one must hunger for ever more magic; ever more power," Taeauna replied. "They see you as the most power to ever come within reach, so they grab for you."
Rod rolled his eyes. The din of battle was growing almost steady, now, coming faintly but steadily through the walls. No one came to their doors, and no servants or anyone else came rushing out of hidden back ways. Yet.
"What's this for?" he asked, holding out the fur. It was so heavy that he needed both hands.
"Put it over your shoulders like a cloak," Taeauna replied, settling a fur around herself and whirling a second atop it.
Rod shrugged his fur on. It was very heavy.
"Tay, how am I supposed to fight, with this—"
"Just shrug it off, lord, right away, if you have to use your sword," Taeauna replied, her tone also telling him to stop playing the idiot.
"Yes, but what am I wearing it for?"
"To keep warm. The cellars will be cold, too cold to sleep comfortably without it."
"The cellars?"
The Aumrarr whirled impatiently to glare at Rod, their noses almost touching, and thrust both laedlen into his hands. Collectively, they were heavy, too.
"Lord Archwizard," she said flatly, "as much as I'd love to debate each and every breath we both take with you, as the days pass around us, we'd best get out of these rooms where many folk may know we were housed, and get into hiding. If the keep is full of warring men, the cellars will be the best place to hide. So come with me, try to stop asking questions, and start looking for lanterns or torches as we go."
Rod nodded. "Yes, Tay."
"And stop calling me... Oh, never mind."
"Yes, Tay."
Sword drawn, she ducked gracefully past him, their hips brushing for the briefest of instants, heading for gloomy side-chambers many of the servants had come out of, upon their arrival.
"What're you looking for?"
"Back ways in and out of here," Taeauna said curtly. "Stay close behind me, keep your sword sheathed until I tell you otherwise, and try to shut up. Lord."
Rod obeyed, quelling a sudden urge to chuckle at her last word. Ah, such respect he was now getting. Just keep quiet and carry the sacks, dolt.
Taeauna found three back ways, all of them concealed by sliding panels behind tapestries. She opened each one a trifle and listened intently to the darkness beyond, closed two of them, and then beckoned Rod through the remaining opening behind her.
The man who'd thought he'd created Falconfar followed her, and found himself in pitch darkness, with cold stone walls close by on either side of him. Taeauna was just ahead and was moving away from him; he hurried to follow.
The second time he ran into her, the Aumrarr captured his hand with her own in the darkness, guided it to her belt, and murmured, "Feel your way along to where the belt crosses my spine... there! Now hold on, right there. If I stop, kindly have the basic wits to stop, too."
The sounds of hard-raging battle were growing louder, everywhere around them, but they seemed to be alone in the narrow passage, and the only sounds they could hear ahead seemed to be the pounding of many boots, of men rushing past them from left to right. The Aumrarr seemed in no hurry to get to that cross-passage, wherever it was; she kept stopping and feeling around, with Rod feeling increasingly like a small boy playing at being a train, as she towed him this way and that in the darkness.
"How can you—?"
"I can't," she hissed. "So I must feel. Whenever we come to where another passage joins ours. Now hush."
They went on, Taeauna trailing her fingertips along one wall, until the sounds of running men seemed very close. Then the Aumrarr stopped, and Rod could feel her reaching, this way and that, tracing the panel at the end of their passage with her fingertips. She seemed to find something, and went still until the running men seemed fewer. When the sound of boots died away altogether, Taeauna thrust gently at the panel, sliding it an inch or so open. Then she stopped, leaning on her sword as if it were a walking stick, head drawn back from the door at an angle, and went still, obviously watching and listening.
Rod carefully moved over to the darkness in the lee of the rest of the panel so he wouldn't be seen; the cross-passage was only dimly lit, but seemed very bright compared to what they'd been groping in. He also let the laedlen gently down to rest on the floor but kept hold of them; carried together in one hand, they were heavy and feeling steadily heavier.
Soon the sounds of more hurrying, approaching boots could be heard, and two armored warriors rushed past. Then another, and a trio.
Taeauna turned, reached for Rod's chin, took hold of it and turned his head so she could whisper in his ear, "Dark Helms, all of them. Coming up from the cellars. Our duty is clear." He felt like a small boy being firmly handled by a disapproving teacher.
"It is?" Rod's mutter was lost in the sounds of more boots; the Aumrarr sighed.
"Yes. We must get down to the keep's well and guard it. They'll try to poison it, to doom all Bowrock, but not yet. Not when there's a chance they can vanquish all, and seize Deldragon's seat. When all of Bowrock rises to arms against them, and they are forced back, and know they must lose, then we must be ready, and cleave to our duty."
"And defend the well, the two of us, against most of an army?" Rod's incredulity made his whisper much louder than he'd intended it to be. "Christ! Is my time here going to be one long series of fights, chases, and running and hiding?"
"Welcome to Falconfar," was her dry rejoinder.
Lantern light glimmered
in the distance. "Who's that?" a deep voice challenged out of the darkness.
"Nyghtshield," the one-eyed baron called back. "Who are you?"
"Lionhelm. Duthcrown, Snowlance, and Pethmur are with me. Welcome to Galathgard."
That last sentence had been decidedly sarcastic, which was a long stride in daring beyond what any noble of Galath had made so loudly at court before. Whether His Majesty was englamored or just sinking into madness, levity had long since ceased to be safe in Galathgard.
So had tarrying there a breath too long, after royal dismissal. Wherefore Galathgard's great halls were now deserted. Not to mention cold, dark, and echoing. They stank of mold and animal leavings. Two gigantic open archways beyond where Baron Nyghtshield stood now was the throne hall, the largest and grandest chamber in all Galath, and if there had been a single lamp lit in it, or fires in its hearths, he would have been able to see and feel it long since.
He strode toward the lantern, and the circle of faces around it. Great lords of the realm, all.
"Huh," he said aloud, as he approached them. "It feels more like we're visiting a tomb than the Court of Galath. Where are all the courtiers? The servants? The bustle, the waiting feast, the errand-riders hastening in and out?"
He knew the answers, of course. They all knew the answers.
The courtiers were all dead, or long since fled. Hungry beasts prowled the halls, Dark Helms dwelt in armed camps in the outlying wings and towers, and the king walked alone.
Mad as a drool-wits.
"Speak not so freely," Arduke Halath Lionhelm replied warningly, his handsome, hawk-eyed face stern. "Galathgard is not so deserted as it seems in these few halls. You'll find fresh blood in many corners; the Helms were probably set to slaying or driving out the monsters, to empty the main rooms for our arrival."
"Grand and grander," Nyghtshield muttered, finding himself suddenly more than impatient with the ordering of Galath by the Mad King. He looked around the ring of noble faces with his surviving eye, and nodded politely to everyone, seeing mistrust and weariness to match his own in every gaze, and outright dislike in some.
There were nine faces in all; while he'd been walking to Lionhelm's lantern from one direction, it seemed other lords had been arriving from other rooms. Lionhelm was the only arduke, but there were three marquels: Blackraven, who was humming to himself as usual, Duthcrown, and gleaming-monocled Mountblade; two klarls, Dunshar and Snowlance; and three barons, loud and fat Chainamund, yellow-eyed Murlstag, and stone-faced Pethmur.
Dunshar, a cruel, burly man Nyghtshield had never liked, was glaring at him, as were the barons. Young but white-haired Duthcrown was looking sourly at everyone.
The glimmer of a bobbing lantern shone into the gloom from a side-arch, out of the Hall of Lions. It was borne by a servant using a loft-pole, who strode toward them with measured pace, intoning like a doorwarden, "Behold! Velduke Aumon Bloodhunt, Velduke Melander Brorsavar, and Arduke Tethgar Teltusk are come among you."
"Behold, indeed," Duthcrown grunted. "We all stagger under the weight of titles, I daresay."
"Yet let us cling to this small measure of courtliness," Velduke Bloodhunt snapped, eyes blue and sharp, but his old face gone as gray from the pain the long ride had brought him as the hue of his thinning hair. "It is so very nearly the last vestige left to us." He nodded across the ring of lords in the brighter lighting, and murmured politely, "Lionhelm. Snowlance."
"My lord," the hawk-eyed arduke replied with a nod, and lifted a hand to indicate another archway. "More of us arrive, I think."
Nyghtshield turned to look where Lionhelm was pointing, and saw two tall, muscular men striding out of the darkness. They looked like warriors, and increasingly familiar as they approached, but the baron turned to the servant. "Well?"
The man with the pole-lantern acquired an expression of uncomfortable uncertainty, and looked to Velduke Bloodhunt, who was evidently his master.
"Introduce them," Bloodhunt said shortly.
The servant cleared his throat and announced, "Arduke Laskrar Stormserpent and Arduke Yars Windtalon."
"It seems likely this is all of us, leaving aside the border knights," the other velduke growled. "We should go in."
The servant looked at his master again, who gestured silently in the direction of the throne hall. The servant straightened his shoulders, lifted his lantern, and started to pace in that direction, and the great lords of Galath drifted after him, their chatter dying away.
Arduke Lionhelm, with his lantern, brought up the rear, and Nyghtshield peered through the darkened archways they passed and saw more than one pair of gleaming eyes staring back at him. Oh, yes, Galathgard still had its beasts. He was suddenly glad that his handful of knights was standing in the same stables as the far larger bodyguards of the vuldukes and ardukes.
Until he remembered that the new royal decree that armed underlings remain out in the stables meant their swords were no deterrent to monsters prowling here, in the main chambers of state.
In grim silence the lords of Galath paced through the vaulted halls, boots nigh-silent on the dusty marble, ignoring stains and bones and the rubble of crumbling adornments fallen from on high since their last visit.
When they stepped into the vast throne hall, the pole-lantern's light showed them a little of its high, arched ceiling, and below that the two tiers of dark and deserted high galleries, their archways like so many empty eyesockets in rows of watching skulls. Below the galleries were the rows of little round, shell-like stone balconies stretching down both sides of the hall, supported on their impressive clusters of pillars.
The servant strode to the stone stand that had held pole-lanterns and braziers since his grandsire's great-grandsire's day, and rajsed his pole to slide it down into one of the waiting sockets there.
Whereupon the stone spoke, in a cold and crisp voice that so startled the servant that he nearly dropped the pole. "Depart this place right speedily, and take your light with you."
Lantern swaying wildly, the servant cast one fearful glance at his master, and fled.
The lords looked at Lionhelm, who took his usual place on the tiles. He stood facing the throne, swung open his lantern, and looked back at all of them, a silent look of command riding his handsome, hawk-eyed face. The other lords hurried to their preferred places; the moment they reached them, the arduke extinguished his lantern, plunging them all into near-darkness.
"And who was that, who spoke to your man?" a lord's voice muttered. "Sounded like a woman, not the king. No voice I know, anyway."
The darkness hid old Velduke Bloodhunt's shrug, but he'd barely finished making the gesture when a distant, startled shriek arose from the direction the lantern-bearer had taken—and ended, as abruptly as it had begun.
"Doomblast!" Bloodhunt snapped, blue eyes blazing with anger. "I liked that lantern."