Falconfar 03-Falconfar (46 page)

The bowmen ducked out of sight.

"Don't know who the wounded one was, but ye got the wizard," the elder bowman said with satisfaction. "Now, let's be away from here, before anyone comes looking!"

"Kulduth! Kuldutb, you motherless defiler of virgin goats! Know that I, Thalander, am your doom!"

The shout was unnaturally, magically loud, and came rolling down the hall from afar.

Right behind it came a burst of rolling, spitting lightning. Men screamed and writhed in their armor, blue-white fire crawling all over them—but it was a haughty-looking man in purple robes who winced as the lightning closed around a cone of air around him. The cone held briefly as lightning lashed it and the air around it roiled, then collapsed. Kulduth didn't even have time to scream.

Thalander screamed, though, as warriors stabbed into him from all sides. He tottered, spewing blood, and fell limply to the ground.

"Well, 'tis indeed nice to know that virgin goats will henceforth be safe in Falconfar," Garfist Gulkoun rumbled from his perch in the rafters, sounding almost contented.

"Hush," Iskarra murmured in his ear. "We're hiding, remember?"

"Stormserpent!" someone roared, from the press of men below them. "Stormserpent, I'm coming for you!"

"I tremble!" a man in gilded armor called back, almost merrily. "And I, you fat boar of an excuse for a velduke, am coming for you! Forward, men! Forward and carve up yon windbag of a Felldrake for me!"

"Oooh, 'tis as good as a minstrel show," Garfist chuckled. "Wizards and nobles dying right and left—when will it all end?"

THAT'S THE THIRD pitched battle," Iskarra pointed out. "If I this keeps up for another day or so, Galath is going to run out of nobility!"

"Trouble," Juskra snapped, throwing out one long arm to point as something dark and batlike swooped through the cobweb- shrouded crossbeams and angled rafters of the great hall of Galathgard.

"Lorn!" Garfist and Dauntra spat, in unison.

"'Ware! Dark Helms!" Iskarra added, pointing down at the balcony, and the warriors in black armor with closed black visors on their helms.

The Helms that were already looking up at the four occupants of the rafters.

"Get right in to a joint of the rafter," Juskra warned, "and use its upright as a shield. Dauntra and I can fly if we fall, but you two—"

"Thank ye for reminding me!" Gar growled sarcastically. "I was just working my way around to asking ye how many services I'd have to do for the Aumrarr before I was granted wings of mine own, when ye—"

"Gar!" Iskarra snapped, slapping at him. "Watch out!"

The first lorn slashed at them with a sword as it skimmed past, banking away sharply when Juskra leaned out to thrust at it— and as expected, there was a second lorn swooping down at them right behind the first.

The Dark Helms on the balcony started jabbing at Juskra with some overlong pikes, but she was out of reach.

The second lorn darted one way, then the other, Juskra shifting back and forth to keep her sword up and in front of her.

Even before it closed with her, Dauntra had realized what was odd about it, and was clambering along the rafter to join her fellow Aumrarr.

"I know" Juskra had just enough time to hiss at her, before the lorn made one last, darting swoop, changed direction again, and—came to a sudden halt, still straining to reach her.

Its talons melted into a human hand as the two Aumrarr watched grimly, holding their swords out as far from themselves as they could with the heavy weight of the dying lorn spitted on them.

If those fingers touched them, the spell borne on the fingertips would do its deadly work. They braced their swordarms as the lorn that was not a lorn slowly turned back into a slim, long- limbed man. He spewed blood at them as he slid messily off their swords, to tumble down through the air onto the helmed heads of the knights and armsmen packed into the hall below.

"Shapechanged wizard," Garfist growled, peering down. "Wonder which noble sent him?"

"Precisely," Juskra snarled, turning to give Dark Helms a sneer. "We'd best relocate to a quieter rafter. In the next hall, say. Before every balcony we can get down onto is crowded with Dark Helms!"

"I hate Dark Helms," Iskarra said, nodding.

"Come, Gulkoun!" Juskra called, waving a beckoning arm. "Watching nobles butcher nobles is fun, but also foolishness—more than enough foolishness for us. Here comes that first lorn again!"

The flying beast didn't even come close to them this time, with four blades arrayed against it. The moment it was past, they clambered along the rafters, heading down the hall from the balcony of Dark Helms.

"The trick," Juskra explained, as they swung onto an empty balcony, Dauntra striding to the door to look for approaching Dark Helms, "is to keep hidden until the king arrives, and all attention shifts to him."

As if her words had been a cue, the hall rang with a sudden great fanfare, a splendid blaring that made all four of them wince as it echoed deafeningly off around the rafters.

Banners glowing with spell-light were advancing into the hall through the tallest archway, carried by a wedge of men in bright armor. The foremost was the deep blue and silver of the Crown of Galath, and behind it was the red-and-purple of House Brorsavar, flanked by a crimson banner marked with six silver crescents.

"Halamaskar," Juskra murmured. "And there's the lordrake himself, riding right beside Brorsavar. Pah. I don't think much of the company the new King of Galath keeps. I thought he was wise enough to know better."

At that moment, the crown on the head of the aging man riding beside Lordrake Halamaskar began to glow brightly, and he stood up in his stirrups, spread his arms, and said grandly, in a voice made loud and impressive by magic, "Loyal Galathans, I am your king! I—"

Whatever else King Brorsavar might have been going to say was lost forever in a sudden tumult of bright spell-bolts, bursts of magical flame and drifting smokes of various hues, and a hissing onslaught of arrows from all corners of the hall, all converging on him.

So savage was the onslaught that the Lordrake Halamaskar's shielding, where he stood beside the king, flared into a bright pillar of flame, and a dozen or more fully armored knights riding just behind the king were blasted to blackened and twisted remnants atop bucking, headless horses.

The tumult swiftly faded and collapsed into black, oily smoke that sought the floor, leaving everyone staring at Brorsavar.

Or rather, a dead wizard in dark leathers, shattered neck leaving his head lolling brokenly on one shoulder. There was no sign of a crown on the scorched head, and above it, the glows on all the banners winked out.

"Dreel!" an arduke spat disgustedly, looking around at the wizards and archers who'd lashed out at the disguised wizard— all following separate noble orders to slay the King of Galath on sight. "Halavar Dreel! We've been tricked!"

As they all stared, starting to murmur angrily—far above them, Juskra snorted in disgust, shaking her head at all the murderers who were irked because they'd been duped, not ashamed in the slightest of trying regicide—Dreel's corpse melted into an eeriegreen-gray smoke and drifted away, emitting distant shrieks and wails as it dispersed.

Then it was gone—and so was the pillar of flame that had raged beside it. The lordrake sat on his saddle with his wards quite gone, burned away in the storm of spells.

All eyes turned to regard him.

"Don't look at me!" Lordrake Halamaskar shouted desperately, seeing the disgust and fury on many faces. He waved one hand wildly at the dead horse and empty saddle beside him.

"Yon foul mage enspelled my wits!" he cried. "I'm innocent of this! I—Hondreth, hold them off!"

He hauled hard on his reins, turning his rearing horse to flee, and the bodyguard beside him obediently turned his own horse into the space where the lordrake had been. Hondreth's face was as sad as it was despairing—in the brief moments it could be seen.

They were men in armor, no longer shielded by any magics, so they and their horses were barely recognizable shapes when the chaos faded. Blackened husks, feathered with arrows, that collapsed silently on the spot.

"So," Garfist whispered hoarsely, as they ducked down behind the balcony rail, "shall we wager on the necks of nobles? As in. who'll still have theirs, by end of day?"

Dauntra gave him a withering look. "That," she observed disdainfully, "is very bad form."

Beside her, Juskra's scarred face split into a sudden grin. Giving Garfist a wink, she asked, "How much?"

THE MUSIC WAS deafening, the lights a lurid red that lit only the tiny stage, and Tethtyn Eldurant and Mori Ulaskro were glad when a buxom woman in a shimmering dress, with a tiny flashlight in her ample cleavage and a very wide red smile, asked them breathlessly if they were interested in "a private booth" for "something a little extra."

They nodded, not even needing to glance at each other to confer.

"It's a hundred?" the woman asked, a little warily. There was something odd about these two.

Not creepy odd, though, so she gave no signal to the bouncers in dark suits who were nursing watered-down drinks at the bar.

Boldly seizing the hand of the taller, quieter one—Tethtyn—she led the way, turning away from the noise and writhing bodies of the stage, and slowed to brush against him with her hip once or twice.

"Cherry is my name," she told them huskily. " Very Cherry."

They merely nodded politely.

"Are you guys... police?" she challenged them, a little uncertainly, as she led them through a door.

"No," the shorter one said firmly. "Nothing like that."

Alarmed that this might mean they were the opposite of police, she murmured, "Are you here to see... the Man?"

"No," the one whose hand she was holding said with a smile. "We like lasses."

Lasses? Very Cherry managed to quell her slight frown, and led them into the booth.

With the door closed behind them, the pounding din fell off abruptly. The booth was very dimly lit, hiding the none-too-clean state of the thick carpet on its walls and floor. Around the walls marched continuous dark vinyl seating, with a small, round freestanding table at one corner. The seats flared out into a bed of sorts just to the right of the door, with a few rather flat cushions. Towels hung discreetly from wall-hooks beside the bed.

The two men ignored Cherry and the bed with equal single-mindedness, going straight to the table. They sat down on either side of it and faced each other. For all the attention they were giving her, she might not have been there at all.

"Shall I...?" she asked them uncertainly.

"Please," one of the men said politely, then leaned an elbow on the table, put his chin in his hand, and said to the other man, "So most of our spells just don't work—or do odd, feeble things, not what we intend."

"Enough do that we can seize things more or less at will, force some to obey us, and slay if we must," was the reply, "but yes, we cannot trust magic here. We still have much learning ahead of us."

Nutbars. She'd thought so.

On her knees beside one of the men, trying to gently unzip his fly and wondering what sort of guy bought such an expensive suit and didn't bother to take the sale tags off it, Cherry tried not to listen. Sometimes the Man paid her very well to hear very well, but this wasn't one of those times, and...

They went on talking about magic and killing and who held real power in this Earth place, just as nutty as those guys on the sidewalk who shouted that aliens had landed and we must repent now or be doomed, or whatever. However, what she freed from within the zipper and the underwear—soft black silk womens' panties, but a lot of guys were kinky like that—showed her unmistakably that nutty or not, they were just as human as the next guy, and the sort of men who liked women, too.

As it happened, Cherry liked her work and was good at it, and she applied skilled fingers and a soft mouth to the task at hand.

Above her, they were talking about what they should do next, like businessmen. Geez, listening to the guy she was pleasuring, you'd never know from his voice that she was there at all!