Falconfar 03-Falconfar (11 page)

To whatever places lay beyond "away."

Or, no...

Dark fear boiled up in Tethtyn. Lacking air enough to scream, he started to tremble instead.

It wasn't taking him to fabulous new lands. Oh, no. Rather, it was heading straight to wherever greatfangs went to feed on scrawny young underscribes. Fast.

"STAY BACK!" ROD Everlar snapped, trying hard to sound fierce and commanding—and not shriekingly terrified.

Which he sure as damn-it was. He backed away half a step from the skeletons he was facing, before he remembered there were skeletons right behind him, too, and whirled hastily around.

Their brown, crumbling stumps of swords were almost in his face. The weapons were more rust than steel, now, yet looked plenty sharp enough to deal death. By sliding right into the bodies of lone idiots who came blundering into their crypt, for instance.

"Get away from me!" Rod commanded, hearing his voice rising in fear. "I am the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, and I command you—"

Skeletons were evidently unimpressed by Lord Archwizards, or at least by quaking men claiming to be Lord Archwizards.

They were all shuffling toward him now, freeing themselves from the black cobwebs of what looked to have been their shrouds and converging on him in slow silence. They came floating unhurriedly ahead with a curious side-to-side gait, for all the world as if an unseen puppeteer was somewhere above them beyond the solid stone ceiling, making sure all of the bobbing, floating pieces of his marionettes kept together when they moved.

The spindle-light's beam did nothing to them at all, not even causing one of them to slow in caution when he shone it right at its gaping eyesockets, and willed it to get blinding-bright.

"I'll blast you down!" Rod threatened firmly, waving the spindle's light-beam around wildly, and at the same time trying to look at the four other things he'd scooped up without dropping and breaking any more of them in the process.

There was the hexagonal magic stone that he didn't know how to use, or even if it really had any magic at all; what looked like two finger-rings, or perhaps very short lengths of small plumbing pipe, both pierced and joined by a fine chain that ran through those piercings; and two cubes like very large dice, two inches across on a side, that had no markings or number-dots or anything on their sides, and seemed to be made of something hard that was glass-clear in streaks, and opaque blackish metal elsewhere. One of them was slightly larger than the other. No, no markings on either.

Now, just how or what any of these—

Coldness touched him, on his shoulders and hips and arms, and intense cold lanced through him in a gasping instant.

He was right out of time to try to play with his toys.

ROD GROANED, SHIVERING uncontrollably, doubled over and feeling helpless. He was so cold...

Wherever the skeleton's swords touched him, he felt as though he had just been plunged into icy water. It was a cold so harsh that it burned.

He stiffened, hissing in startled pain.

Steel had bitten into the strange sort-of-armor Rod was rearing—into a joint or gap in it, that is—and sliced into the vorn leather padding next to his skin.

They were going to kill him, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do...

He could barely stand. He was shuddering uncontrollably from the utter biting cold, bent double and reeling blindly.

Rod blundered forward doggedly. He kept on clutching the maybe-magic gewgaws to himself, but lashed out wildly with the flashlight-spindle, seeking to smash some of those rusty blades away and maybe into ruin. They looked as if they should disintegrate into rusty flecks and dust.

They did, some of them, as he saw when he slipped and fell on his side. A moment later, a forest of converging swordpoints hung above his face, with more thrusting in to join them, the skeletal arms that wielded them seeming to pass through each other, strings of floating bones that could intersect without getting tangled or harmed—but two of the swords, less rusty than the rest, were being swung at him to cut.

The rest just poked at Rod, almost gently, as if trying to guide him, or warn him to stay down.

Skulls glaring eyelessly at him, a cold barrage of unblinking gazes he could feel...

Clenching his teeth to quell their chattering, Rod tried to get up again. They let him, but their swords gathered in a flicking, stabbing cloud at his arm. The arm holding the gewgaws.

Aha. There was something he had there that they didn't like, eh? Well, then-

He turned sharply away, as suddenly as he could—and gasped as the edge of a blade that was slicing along under what was covering his flank sank through it, just for a moment, and touched skin.

No, cut skin.

Rod shrieked.

If he'd thought he was feeling utter cold before, he now knew better. That sword hadn't gone into him—he might have a shallow cut a few inches long, at best—but the pain! Ohhh, the God-damned pain!

Blindly he staggered, vaguely aware that skeletons must be dancing aside to keep from collisions or impaling him on their swords... Slowly, as he shuddered against the chilling pain— Falcon, but this was a cold that didn't numb, it only bit deeper and deeper!—he became aware of something else, too: the two or three swords slicing at him were cutting away clothing, mainly what was covering his arms and the side of his chest and gut where he was holding those magical gewgaws—they had to be magical; this proved it, or why else would a bunch of skeletons want them so badly?—baring his upper torso strip by strip.

The other swords, the rusting stubs that just poked delicately at him, never boldly enough to pierce, were concentrating on the arm clutching the gewgaws—all but a few that were jabbing at his other hand, the one holding the spindle.

The cold brought Rod to his knees, sobbing for breath, and the volley of needle-like prickings became a hard, swift barrage. In the space it took him to pant out one ragged breath, Rod's arm was so chilled that he found himself grunting in despairing pain, his forehead pressed against the stone floor.

Quite suddenly, that arm gave way, the gewgaws bouncing and rolling—and the pokings ceased.

Only to resume all around his spindle-hand, jabbing and drawing back, darting in and jabbing again.

They wanted him stripped of the magic, all of it, but weren't killing him when they so easily could. His neck and throat, now his chest—they could have stabbed right through him, dozens of times, and hadn't.

Yet. Were they just waiting until all the magic was gone from him? Before they all stabbed into him, hilt-deep, and—

Rod shook his head, trying to wave away that grisly image, but it wouldn't go. He was writhing, dying slowly and horribly, impaled on dozens of swords with more sliding in to stab through his tongue and pin it to the back of his throat... then more sliding into his eyes...

He waved the spindle, one last feeble time, before the tip of a blade kissed his thumb so coldly that it spasmed—and his flashlight was gone, clanging off the stone floor with a bell-like ringing as it bounced, bounced again, then skirled to a clinking stop.

And the skeletons stopped.

Rod fell on his face on the cold, dank stone, groaning as the shivers claimed him, slamming through his body in waves that slowly faded away. He was lying alone in the cool silence, aware now of a gentle steady glow off to his right—the spindle, of course— and much fainter glows, that shifted silently and constantly, above him and all around him.

Coming from the skeletons?

He didn't want to look, didn't want to do anything except lie here and wince as the searing cold ebbed into a mere uncomfortable chill, taking stock of his hurts. His side throbbed faintly where it had been cut, and he was undoubtedly bleeding there. He felt tired, bone-tired, which was probably from all the shivering, not to mention the pricking swords...

He lay there until all the pain was gone, hearing nothing but silence, and feeling nothing but the faintest of cool breezes and the endless chill of the stone beneath him against his bare torso.

Then, gently and gingerly, a lone blade pricked his shoulder.

He lay still, though feigning death was probably futile when dealing with skeletons who could probably smell death—and life, too, for that matter.

The blade pricked him again, still tentatively.

He sighed, but didn't move.

Did they just want him to lift his face, so he'd see his doom— and then stab him, right up his nose and out through the back of his head?

The blade pricked him twice. Nudge, nudge.

Oh, all right, damn it. If he wasn't even going to be allowed to die in peace...

Rod rolled over, away from the blade, shoved against the floor cautiously, and sat up. Moving slowly, mindful of the forest of sharp sword tips he'd stared up into before.

Nothing touched him. He opened his eyes.

Skulls were still staring down. Not blinking, of course. Swords were still raised and ready—but when he looked up at the skeletons, they moved those blades in slow unison.

Pointing. The way out of the tomb.

As Rod stared at them, several of the blades turned back to point at him, jabbing toward his chest but not touching it, then swept back to point out the door again.

He was being commanded. Ordered out.

Well, they could slice him into little pieces—perhaps only a few at a time—if he defied them. So he might as well...

Rod found his feet, a little unsteadily, discovering he was still wearing his breeches and boots, but nothing more above his waist except a tattered scrap of leather trailing away from what was left of a leathern cuff and sleeve around his left forearm.

Well, now. If he wasn't so scrawny and stoop-shouldered, and didn't have the beginnings of a pot belly—or did he still have those beginnings, after all of the running and suchlike?—he might look a little like Doc Savage.

A little.

Blades waved, pointing again at the door, and there came the faintest of prickings—two or three of them—in his back.

"All right, all right" Rod growled. "Any chance of just talking to me? Anyone?"

There was, of course, no reply. But then, he hadn't really expected one.

He stepped out of the tomb, back into the passage, wondering if they were just going to let him go, once he was out of their resting-place.

He wondered, too, whether or not he dared whirl around and try to snatch up that flashlight-spindle. It was dark ahead of him.

Dark, but not pitch-dark. All around him, skeletons were glowing. A faint eerie blue, more like a series of half-seen, whisper- thin moving edges than steady lights.

Some of them moved ahead.

Surrounded by his cold and silent escorts, Rod Everlar started walking.

Well, at least he wasn't stumbling at random around the underground roots of Malragard.

He was being herded.

"NO," DAUNTRA GASPED, her wings faltering again. "Too cold. I'm too stiff... must land, get a fire going... warm up."

Hanging in the harness beneath her, Iskarra tried not to sound too alarmed. "Glide lower, then, so we can see a good place to land," she snapped, voice quavering despite herself as Dauntra suddenly lurched sideways in the air.

They wobbled sickeningly for a moment before the Aumrarr caught herself, ducking her head and flapping grimly on.

"No? too cold," Juskra snarled from just behind them, spitting out words through teeth clenched in pain. Her left wing was something less than all right, and Garfist wasn't getting any lighter. At least the great lout had seen sense enough to stop kicking and waving his arms about, and contented himself with hanging in the straps like a lifeless lump, grumbling steadily. Thank the Falcon for small blessings.

"Not too cold," she said again. "Cramping! From not enough to drink... find us water!"

Dauntra nodded, but the nod turned into a shudder—and suddenly the Aumrarr and her burden were falling out of the sky, tumbling helplessly.

Juskra snarled a curse and bent herself into a steepening dive, sculling with her wings to make herself plummet faster. "Spread your arms!" she shrieked. "Spread your glorking arms!"