THe sword spat
purple lightning that was mightier than Deldragon's blade. Rod turned away from the cooked, smoking hulk of the crocodile, smiling and shaking his head. He hadn't even tried the scepter yet.
His stomach rumbled again. Hmm. It wasn't likely that an abandoned, half-ruined castle would have pleasant edibles lying around for the taking, and he'd certainly seen none. Nor had he ever heard of or written about any sort of magic sword or wand or anything in Falconfar that conjured up food. It was just one of the things enchanted items didn't do. Blast things, yes, change their shapes, all of that, but not serve forth steaming, filling food.
There were all those half-remembered fairy stories about mud and weeds being turned into mouth-watering food that got eaten, and then the magic wore off and the diners got very, very sick as, inside them, the transformed viands turned back to what they'd been before the magic got at them. That was probably why he'd never written about such things in Falconfar.
The Holdoncorp designers had put little glowing tankards into their games; you touched one (usually at full run, fleeing or charging at monsters), it flashed and vanished, and you were instantly healed and made bright with fresh energy. But somehow, in their games you never actually sat down and ate.
All of which meant that he could wander around this castle collecting these glowing, humming, monster-blasting goodies until he collapsed from lack of food and water. Fairly soon.
He had to get out of Yintaerghast. And find someone who'd feed him instead of killing him, without Taeauna at his side to know what to do, how to pay and speak and all of that. Without her beauty to lower bows and open doors. Taeauna...
No! Rod turned and slammed his fist against the wall, not caring how much it hurt. He was not going to slide back into tears now; he was not!
She was gone, and that was it. Nothing was going to bring her back.
"But I," he promised the silent gloom in a fierce whisper, "am now at war with the wizard Arlaghaun. And every last lorn in Falconfar. I will blast them all. In her name, I will blast them all."
And for that, he would have to give in to the whisperings in his head. The ones that had started the moment he'd touched the sword floating inside the pillar. The ones that were urging him on, right now, to cross this room and pass through the hidden door he could not yet see, and in a chamber beyond do thus and so, to gain an enchanted, hidden circlet and gorget.
Even a Lord Archwizard could never have too many gewgaws that blasted this and set fire to that. Magic wasn't limitless, and there were a lot of lorn.
Not to mention three Dooms who might take a lot of blasting.
Rod gave in to the whisperings. It seemed to him that he trudged around Yintaerghast for a long time, growing increasingly light-headed, dry-throated, and afflicted with rumbling of the innards; and increasingly weighed down with items that glowed and tingled with power, a belt and a baldric bristling with them, plus all the things he was wearing.
There came a time when at last the whispering told him to go back to the castle door he'd first come in by.
He obeyed, and came down the great stair just itching to raise a little scepter of twisted silver metal set with sky-blue gems. The moment it came into his hand, and glowed as if pleased to be selected, the swirling milk-white void outside the door melted away, to reveal...
The starlit darkness of a night lit by a low moon. Rod Everlar stepped out onto the sward half-expecting to find Arlaghaun standing like a statue waiting for him, wearing a cruel smile as lorn rose in clouds from the trees to rend him. Lorn that might well have perched up in those boughs to tear Taeauna's dangling body apart. He felt sick.
Something stirred in him, then. Something colder and firmer than the whisperings, but in the same place. Something that ran up his spine and forced him upright, abandoning his grieving shudderings, to lurch away across the grass until Yintaerghast loomed well behind him.
Then he found himself turning, to face northeast, and running a hand along his belt until his fingers were resting on the carved ivory head of a dagger. It glowed, and Rod was abruptly... elsewhere.
On a bare, high hill above rolling farmland, with the mountains much closer and woods mere dark and distant smudges under the moon.
He tried to gaze all around since this view of Falconfar was beautiful, serene under the stars, but that cold firmness within him-was making him turn slightly, to look at a particular height on the horizon, and reach for the dagger again.
The moonlit hill suddenly held a standing, staring Rod Everlar no longer. He was now two long, teleportational journeys away from Yintaerghast, where a dark, taloned creature flapped bat-like wings to rise off a branch and streak off toward Ult Tower, to warn Arlaghaun.
The wizard with
the sharp nose and the blazing brown eyes was halfway up the long hall before he mastered his temper, and turned abruptly aside to thrust two fingers into the eyes of a statue, to cause the wall behind it to roll back.
"By the Falcon," he whispered softly, seeking to let out a little of the rage still towering in him.
His own guardians had been roused against him. He hated to blast and mangle his own work, but he would hate even more to be injured and then slain by his own hacking, punching automatons. The lorn and Dark Helms would gleefully swarm him if they saw him struggling along, wounded.
Arlaghaun drew on a pair of gauntlets he'd hoped he'd never to have to use, donned a cloak that would enable him to fly as deftly as any lorn, and caught up a staff from behind the door that was taller than he was.
Cloak swirling, he left the hidden room, drew its door closed, whispered a word to the door, and kissed it, to seal it to all creatures save himself.
Then he turned hastily to face the dozen or so marching metal giants that were already headed toward him.
Arlaghaun hefted the staff, smiled a grim smile, and blasted the foremost striding titan to shrieking, tinkling shards. The other guardians kept coming, mindlessly.
He raised the staff and fired again. The largest metal automaton plunged face-first to the floor, its slow topple ending in a thunderous
crash.
Arlaghaun used his cloak to leap and then hover aloft, that he not be hurled off his feet. All around him rang out lesser crashes, as just that fate befell the other guardians.
He let his thin lips form a warmer smile. He would rule in Ult Tower again. Very shortly. Even if it had no guardians left.
Except him.
"It's another of
those nights," one knight in magnificent armor said to another, who'd just arrived to relieve him.
"Where he just sits, staring at nothing and breathing? Like he's empty?"
The first knight nodded sourly, stepped around the new arrival, and strode off down the dark passage that led out of Galathgard.
Across the moonlit courtyard was the gatehouse, and in the gatehouse there was a fire, and smoked meat hanging over the table in front of it, and a great wheel of cheese, and casks and casks of wine, and a bed.
So he hurried. Until he came out into the moonlight, when he couldn't help but stop and stare in amazement at what was blocking his way onwards. And shouldn't have been there.
Barefoot in the ruins, stunningly beautiful in the moonlight, a nude woman was standing waiting for him.
Aye, for
him.
She was looking right into his eyes, and smiling provocatively, her arms spread welcomingly. Pert and saucy, impish...
Beautiful... Falcon, what a beauty! Those breasts, large and night-dark smiling brown eyes, and... He'd just started to notice the wings soaring up behind her shoulders when strong fingers caught hold of his helm from above and jerked it around sideways with brutal force. All the way around.
And then he was beyond noticing anything at all, ever.
"Dauntra," the owner of those strong, scarred hands commented, letting the knight fall into a lolling, lifeless heap. "I get to do the preening and posing next time. You look about as alluring as a carthorse."
"Spare us your preferences, dear," Dauntra replied serenely. "And there isn't going to be a 'next time.' That's the last bodyguard, save for the three who are in there with him until morning."
"Well, I'll be the one who strips down and minces in to distract them, then. You've had your fun."
"How so? You killed him before I could! And before you come up with a jest about my loving the dead, Juskra, just leave off trying, hmm? I've heard them all before, anyway."
"I'm not surprised, sister," Juskra said sweetly. "Here, hold this."
"Am I your dressing-maid, now?"
"Oooh, now there's a calling that suits you. I—"
"Juskra," Ambrelle interrupted severely, "will you shut up? Just get your clothes off and get in there. Lorlarra should be in place by now, and I'll be right behind you." The oldest of the four Aumrarr hefted her sword meaningfully, tossing her magnificent purple-black mane. "And if you stoop to any more such sauce when we're in there, I'll feed this up your backside!"
"Sister!" Bared, the fiercest of the four Aumrarr was a mass of crisscrossing sword-scars; her forearms looked like white snakes were tangled tightly around them. Which made her mock-scandalized pose, fingertips at her throat and eyes wide, all the more ridiculous.
The three Aumrarr chuckled together, and Dauntra held out her arms to receive the last of Juskra's war-harness.
Giving her a look, the scarred Aumrarr filled those waiting arms, and then defiantly peeled off her yellowed and stained bandage, and laid that on top of the heap, too.
"Juskra," Dauntra growled softly.
The scarred Aumrarr elegantly put out her tongue in reply.
The King of
Galath muttered something darkly, under his breath, and stirred in his great chair, booted feet sliding along the polished tabletop. The fire crackled unregarded in the hearth.
"Pardon, your majesty?"
King Devaer lifted his eyes to give the knight standing over him an unfriendly look. "I said: I want a woman."
"But majesty..."
"I know, Glaroskur, I know. Not a wench within a day's ride of this crumbling ruin, and I don't fancy the backsides of any of you. But what's the good of being glorking King of Galath, and Lord of the rutting Falcons, too, if I can't have a woman? Go and get me a woman!"
"Majesty?"
"Go to the stables, get on a horse, take Joss and Rakaer with you, find some suitably beautiful woman, bring her back here without taking her yourselves, and bring her to me!"
"But your highn—"
"That was a royal command, Glaroskur!"
The knight regarded him unhappily, then bowed deeply, turned, and marched out.
Devaer sighed in bored exasperation, listening to his bodyguard's boots tramping into the echoing stone distances of cold and empty Galathgard. He hated and feared the touch of Arlaghaun's mind on his, that cold and utter tyranny, yet somehow it thrilled him, too.
And when the wizard who really ruled Galath needed him not, he felt so empty. Bored, listless, lying here in idleness, ready to scream and claw the walls...
The sounds of Glaroskur's boots stopped, and there came a strange but very brief wet, startled, choked-off sound.
The King of Galath frowned. "Glaroskur?"
Silence. He swung his feet down off the table, stood up sharply, shook out his silken sleeves, and bellowed, "Glaroskur?"
"Your majesty," a soft woman's voice said from behind him, "may I serve you, instead?"
Devaer whirled around, clapping his hand to his sword, and felt his jaw drop open. He couldn't help it; couldn't help staring, either.
The nude figure who stood barefoot in the doorway was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen, and by the Falcon, she was an Aumrarr! Not a soft, yielding beauty; but a hard-muscled, sharp-jawed warrior, by her looks, her shapely body covered with sword-scars, a fierceness about her face... but a look of yearning, too, of yielding to him. She was kneeling to him, too, going to her knees more gracefully than any servant lass or highborn lady.
Devaer found his mouth was very dry, and his manhood was stirring urgently. He managed to swallow, and peered wildly around, thrusting a hand up into his lank black hair to adjust his crown without even realizing he was doing so. "Y-you're alone?"
"Quite alone," came the soft answer. "Summoned here by magic. Not meaning to, or even knowing what he did, your knight just blundered through a gate that took him to my bedchamber, far from Galath, and in the same stroke, brought me here. So it seems, as you are deprived of his vigilance, I should... guard your body."
Someone sniggered from the doorway behind him.
King Devaer whirled around again, sword flashing out, but was far too slow to block the two blades flying toward his throat.
Almost severed, his head lolled limply on his shoulders as his life-blood fountained in all directions, and he emptied his bowels and started the slow stagger that would end up on the floor.
Juskra got up off her knees without waiting to see if the body and the head stayed together when they hit the floor. She was too busy scowling. "Is that all the fun you wanted me to have? He wasn't half bad looking, and I was just warming to the task."