"Stand out of the way," Olondyn snapped at the warriors, "and we three can put enough arrows through the man to slay him. There's only one of her, and we're standing well apart; she can't shield against all of us."
Taeauna smiled thinly. "Tell him, Glorn."
The man with the lantern sighed, and did as she'd asked. "Olondyn, put down your bow. She's awakened the Master's warding; no arrow will now fly anywhere in Malragard. If you loose a shaft, it'll just hang in the air in front of you. Hurled stones and daggers, too; the lot. It's blade to blade or nothing."
"Can we break this magic?"
Gorongor and Glorn shrugged in unison.
"If the Mas—if Malraun is dead, yet the ward lives still, we know not how," Gorongor told them all.
"And 'tis working all around us, the ward," Glorn added. "I can feel it."
"So now what?" the foremost warrior asked, turning to look at Bracebold and Askurr. "We came here to plunder, not fight another battle. Who's to say she can't use other magics of the tower against us?"
"Then she should die," Olondyn said grimly. "That will prevent that particular doom."
"All of you," the man behind Taeauna said quietly, "please hear me."
His words fell into a sudden silence.
Rod cleared his throat, stumbled as he stepped forward, put a hand on the wingless Aumrarr's shoulder for support, and announced, "I couldn't harm you if I wanted to. I'm no warrior— and I'm no wizard, either, and never was. I'm not the Dark Lord. I'm a healer."
There was a sudden murmur from all the warriors facing him, as quickly quelled by those who'd raised it.
"Yes," Rod said wearily, "and there are wounded men here. My healing can be yours—but not if you harm this Aumrarr. If you mistreat her, or me, my curse—the Falcon's Curse—will fall upon you, however dead Tay or I are by then, and your deaths will be swift... and horrible."
Askurr stepped forward, his eyes narrow. "So just how do you heal, if you can't work magic?"
"I can't cast spells, or unleash magic, but I can steer it a little," Rod told him.
"That's a lie," Zorzaerel spat. "I've heard you've worked magic many a time!"
Rod shook his head. "I used enchanted items taken from the three Dooms. Just as any of you could."
Askurr nodded. "That, I will believe. I wondered at some of the tales I heard... just why you did magic the slow, late, and feeble ways you did. So, Lord Archwizard who is no Lord Archwizard, how can we know you aren't carrying a hidden armory of enchanted items on you, right now?"
"My name," Rod replied, "is Rod Everlar. And I swear by the Falcon that I carry no magic."
He held up his hand to quell the murmur of snorts and derisive mutterings, and added, "And I'm prepared to prove it."
Stepping out from behind Taeauna, he started unbuckling and unlacing.
Askurr and Bracebold both made gestures staying the others' weapons, and in silence the men around the fire watched Rod take off his clothes. At the last, he kicked off his boots and held them up so the lantern-beam could shine down inside them, turned them to show the heels, then put them back on. "No magic," he announced.
Askurr nodded. "I'll grant that." He looked inquiringly at the other faces around the fire.
"I believe the man," Roreld announced suddenly. "He could have blasted us all from behind Taeauna, but did not. So I'm thinking he cannot, and is telling us truth."
Rod started to get dressed again.
"Not even a knife," one warrior murmured. "Who walks Falconfar without a knife, unless they've got spells?"
"I had a knife," Rod replied, "but I lost it. I can't even remember now just when. And to answer your question: a fool does." He sighed. "And I am that, many times over."
"Spare us the performance," Narbrel grunted. "You'll be sobbing and imploring us, next. Why, I—"
"We hear you were with Narmarkoun," Bracebold interrupted harshly, "and we know all about wizards riding men's heads, and turning them into slaves. So tell us: what happened to the last Doom of Falconfar?"
"Dead," Taeauna said flatly. "I beheaded him myself."
Bracebold blinked. "Can you prove it?"
The Aumrarr gave him a withering look. "I have no reason to lie about it, Blade of Telchassur. I could, after all, just as easily pretend he was alive and was coming here, then use your fear of his coming to compel you. No, he's dead."
"Wizards have risen before," Olondyn offered suspiciously.
Taeauna looked at him. "So they have, but when a Doom or any great wizard is slain, spells they've tied to their lives begin to erupt—castles explode and fires burst from them; you've heard the tales. That happened."
"What of the other two mages? The young strangers?"
Taeauna shrugged. "I know not. We saw them not, the other side of the gate."
"Huh," one of Bracebold's warriors growled. "What if they in truth saw no Narmarkoun, either?"
A voice that seldom spoke startled fellow warriors into listening. "The way I see it," the laconic Tarlund said, "we have a chance at healing for our wounded, we face an Aumrarr—and I don't want to fight an Aumrarr, ever—and a man who says he's not a wizard, whom I've never seen work any magic, and who we have all just seen carries no weapons. If they're telling the truth about Narmarkoun, we should be heralding them as heroes, not talking about slaying them. And we are standing here talking, when I could be sleeping. In life, we must all trust someone, some time... and I trust these two. Who here does not?"
Olondyn opened his mouth to reply, then shrugged and spread his hands in resignation.
Bracebold and Askurr looked at each other, traded shrugs of their own, and lowered their swords.
"Put up your steel," Askurr ordered quietly. "Lord Ar—uh, Rod Everlar? Will you see to our wounded?"
"There are men back on the ridge who are dying but almost certainly not dead yet," Olondyn said quickly.
"He's one healer, bowman. Wear him out, and you kill him, and they still die," Eskeln spoke up, from beside the fire. "The dead are dead, and the dying soon will be. Save his strength for the living."
Olondyn sighed, then waved his hand in surrender. "So do this healing, then. Convince me."
"I'll need a bowl, and a knife."
"What are we, cooks?"
"Every armored man carries a bowl," Taeauna said crisply. "His helm. And I'll lend him my knife, if all of you are too frightened of one honest man to surrender yours."
That earned her some glares, but no blades; it was Tarlund who held out his helm.
Rod smiled his thanks, took it, and went to the men hunched over by the fire, who had kept heads down and silent through all the talking. Then he looked up at Taeauna.
"Malraun's wards—will any part of their magic hamper what I'm trying, d'you think?"
She frowned, then shook her head, then turned to Gorongor, Glorn, Eskeln, and Tarlund, who all shrugged, making it clear they didn't know.
Rod sighed, accepted the knife she was holding out to him, and slashed open his forearm, letting the blood run down and drip off his elbow, into the bowl. Men murmured as he handed the knife back, and Taeauna calmly licked it clean.
Then she knelt down swiftly, putting a firm hand on his wrist to prevent him offering the bowl to anyone, and murmured a few words over it, with bent head. Only Rod was close enough to hear what they were: "Pretend to mutter magic over your blood, now."
Trying to keep his face expressionless, Rod obeyed, and was surprised when the warriors seemed to relax at hearing him do so.
There was pointing and some murmuring at the state of his arm—already healing itself, the gash closing and fading—but Rod ignored it, holding out the bowl to the nearest wounded man and telling him, "Drink. Just a little at first."
The pain-creased face lifted to glare at him. "Drink blood?"
Rod shrugged. "If you want the pain to go away, and your wound with it."
The man stared at him, then drank.
Then sat back with a long, shuddering sigh... and started to smile. "'Tis gone! The pain is gone!"
Olondyn knelt and snatched away the cloak the man had bound around his slashed midriff. The bloodstained leathers showed where the wound had been, clearly enough... but the skin beneath was now whole and unblemished.
"Wings of the Falcon!" Bracebold swore. "Now that's worth a dozen preening wizards!"
Rod took the bowl to the next man.
There was eagerness to drink this time, not suspicion, and the other wounded men were shifting themselves closer, reaching out.
"There's blood enough for all," Rod reassured them wryly. "Just a moment more of pain... just a moment more."
"Huh. That's as good a description of my life as any," Askurr said, from close behind him. "Rod Everlar, forgive us our hard words, please. We are... not trusting men."
Rod gave him a smile. "How could you be, with the Dooms at work in Falconfar?"
"Aye, that's right enough." Askurr watched the bowl move down the line, from shaking hand to shaking hand.
"You'll be needing to sleep, I'm thinking."
Rod nodded. "I will. Or I'll likely fall on my face, right soon."
The warcaptain nodded. "We'll work out watches."
BELARD TESMER MADE sure no one was within sight as he used his key.
Slipping through the door and locking it behind him silently, he parted thick overlapping curtains to reach the warm lamplight of the bedchamber beyond, strode to the sideboard and tossed two glowing rings onto the ornate bowl Talyss had set before the mirror. They were still a-drip with blood.
She looked up from the chapbook she was reading. "And whence comes this latest donation? Do they do anything particularly useful?"
"The one hides the face of the wearer behind the seeming of a dragon's snout, upon command, and the other whisks him—or her—across a large room in the blink of an eye."
"The donor will no longer be blinking at anything, I take it?"
"Indeed. Galath may just run out of klarls, at this rate."
Talyss tossed aside her reading, flung back the bedcovers, and spread her arms to him in welcome.
His own name greeted him, freshly written across her bare belly in blood.
Above it, her smile was warm, and her eyes a-twinkle. "Well, then, we'll just have to make new ones, won't we?"
"SO IF THE Dooms are all dead, what then for you?" Roreld's voice was a shade too casual. "Would you be interested in a good life— your own rooms, and food from my table, and coins for garments and what-want-you—in my hold, if you'll work your healing there?"
"I can offer better," Askurr said quickly. "Two swift knife- thrusts, when I get back home, and we can both have grand titles, and several castles each!"
"Telchassur, now," Bracebold growled, as idly as if the thought had just occurred to him at random, "is a great city, a port whose coffers gleam with floods of fresh coins every year, and folk—"
"Will never get to sleep," Taeauna said sharply, holding up her hand like a scolding wife, "if they have to listen to you lot making empty promises all night. Save your words, sirs, until the time is better suited. After all, who knows what you'll find in these ruins? You've chosen your watches; if we're all too tired to stay awake in the morning, one lorn could kill us all at its leisure—and this healer you now value so highly, too!"
Into the abashed mutterings that followed, Rod said firmly, "And my reply to all of your kind offers is this: I'll go wherever my lady Taeauna goes." He gave Taeauna a smile, and she returned it fondly. Above them, Roreld rolled his eyes and grunted, "For this night, we'd best be giving you two a room of your own, then."
"Don't be assuming anything, Roreld," Taeauna told the old warcaptain crisply. "I sleep in my armor. All my armor."
"I assume nothing, Lady Aumrarr," he said quickly, throwing up his hands, his voice ringing with sincerity.
Taeauna favored him with a dark look. "Show us this chamber, then."
Roreld pointed. "Down there, where the wall leans out? There're two rooms, side by side. Glorn, take them there with the lantern, and we'll shift where those on watch stand." Taeauna nodded. "I think I know those chambers. One will do." Glorn led them away, and Roreld and the others all watched. They waited a good half-dozen breaths after the healer and the Aumrarr had disappeared, and Glorn was on his way back to them with the shuttered lantern in hand, before the chuckles started.
Only to falter into shocked silence when an answering chuckle— every bit as filthy as theirs—came back to them from the shattered room.
It sounded like Taeauna.
"THAT'S THE LAST of them," Mori said, peering. "Aye, gone. Not much left of the place but a stone-lined pit and a lot of charcoal." He shook his head at the sagging lines of yellow "POLICE LINE! DO NOT CROSS" tape, now swaying in the quickening breeze. "Weren't they as excited as priests at finding the body, though? Beheaded, yet."
Tethtyn nodded. "They'll be back in the morning. We'd best be gone." He pointed. "I was going to try a spell or two, but look! They're not all gone."