Falconfar 03-Falconfar (48 page)

Rod clawed his way up, bloody sword in hand and breathing hard, and whirled around.

Arduke Mordrimmar Larkhelm, who'd been creeping up on him with a sword raised to strike, halted warily.

"Taeauna?" Rod called, waving his sword to keep the noble at bay. "Tay?"

There came no reply. Larkhelm sneered.

"Calling for your Aumrarr nursemaid, not-wizard? What a pitiful little figurehead you are! Plaything of the wingbitches, strutting simpleton..."

He feinted with his sword, and Rod desperately sought to parry; the arduke's sword slid past his clumsy blade and almost kissed his throat. Rod frantically leaned away.

"You are no man of Galath," the noble purred, advancing a menacing step and forcing Rod to retreat. "In fact, you are no man.''''

"Ah," Rod replied, rage rising in him, "but at least I'm human. Unlike most of the nobles of Galath."

Larkhelm laughed, feinting again. This time Rod sidestepped and tried a cut of his own. It was turned aside with casual ease. "Ooooh," the arduke grinned at him, "you taunt like my sisters used to—before I ruined and then killed them. Which I believe I'll do to you, not-wizarrr—"

Rod lost his temper and smashed at Larkhelm's blade as if he was wielding an axe. The startled arduke fell back hastily, clawing at his sword with his other hand to keep from dropping it—and Rod tried what he'd seen Taeauna do. He ran past the noble, lashing out backhand from behind.

Larkhelm parried, turning to do so. Rod kept running, circling. The noble was defending now, taunts gone, face tight with determination... and fear. Rod smashed at him again, then danced away before the arduke's counter-thrust could reach him. And in again.

This time, Larkhelm's retreat took him back into Torth's feet, and he stumbled.

Rod rushed in, raining clumsy blows on the noble's swords and arms and face, rage mastering him at last.

"I did not create you for this!" he spat. "You're a Falcon-spitting evil bastard, harming Galath with every swindle and sneer! Die! Die, you—you creep!"

Larkhelm gurgled through the blood streaming down his face, pleading.

Rod swung his sword two-handed, biting through Larkhelm's throat.

The noble toppled over backwards, staring disbelievingly at the ceiling.

Leaving Rod panting for a moment, the last one standing in the gloomy chaos of blood and bodies.

He didn't feel like a hero. He didn't even feel like the victor. Not when his Tay had fallen...

Rod spun and raced to her.

She was sprawled on her back, her chest a lacerated ruin—but rising and falling. Feebly.

Her eyes were closed, her mouth slack, more blood everywhere. Rod crashed down on his knees beside her and sliced open his palm, wincing at the pain. His hand filled with wet stickiness, eerie sky blue glow coming off it like smoke, and he tipped it into her mouth.

She coughed, shuddered, mewled with pain, and coughed again.

Rod looked down at his palm. It was almost whole again already. Impatiently he cut himself again, deeper this time, the pain sickening... and gave her more.

Taeauna's eyes opened.

"Tay?" he cried, bending close to her. "Tay?"

She seemed to be staring at him from a distance, her eyes dull as if a mist hung between the two of them.

"M-more, if you please, Lord," she whispered.

Rod cut his arm this time, carving deeply, gritting his teeth to keep from retching. Blue fire streamed down him and into her greedy mouth, and she seemed to be raising herself by pulling on him, gaining strength as she sucked and swallowed.

"Lord Rod, you have saved me," she told him, sighing with relief. "Again."

Rod nodded at her, managing a smile through a sudden, pounding headache. He felt weak and empty—and when he turned, almost toppled over.

Strong hands caught and held him. Taeauna rose and hauled him to his feet, as strong and supple as ever.

Rod smiled at her again, took a step toward his fallen sword— and stumbled, almost falling.

A hand like iron held him and dragged him upright again.

"Come, my Lord Arch wizard. We must find another way than this."

"Way to where?"

"We need to find a good place to watch from."

"Watch what?"

"You'll see!"

Rod had to be content with that; she'd turned away, kicking Larkhelm's sprawled body as she passed it.

Shaking his head ruefully, he puffed along in Taeauna's wake, admiring—and not for the first time—her shapely behind as she raced away from him.

"BY THE FALCON!" Garfist Gulkoun growled. "What d'ye think we've missed?"

As they came out onto the balcony, bodies were spattering and thudding into the rafters—knights and armsmen and nobles, flung high into the air by spells.

Dozens of lorn were flapping and cartwheeling among them, wings smashed by the collisions, and here and there among the hurtling bodies were Dark Helms. The floor of the hall, below, was an almost continuous maelstrom of explosions and the flashes of spells going off.

Gar, Isk, Dauntra, and Juskra exchanged looks. From the sounds coming from the balconies below theirs and the passages behind them, it seemed that all Galathgard had become a battleground.

Several people came out on the balcony right beneath theirs. Juskra flung out an arm to warn her companions back, and they sank down and fell silent to listen.

"But—but why me? I'm only a klarl, hardly someone of wealth and power enough to—"

"Dunshar, we know that," someone replied firmly. Male, like the klarl; the next speaker was female, her voice melodious and cool.

"Annusk, I value your candor. Your judgment is every bit as sound. If we had the leisure, we would indeed try for a higher- ranking and better-known lord of Galath. I thank you for your concern; you do care for your realm above all else."

"Lady Tesmer, I—I always have, I swear..."

"In all this tumult," the other man interrupted, "we dare not reach for anyone higher. Take heart, for you just might turn out to be the best king Galath has ever known."

Juskra tapped the others, pointed back the way they'd come, and started crawling, holding her sword with great care to prevent the slightest sound.

Not that she need have worried much. A miscast magic roared up to the rafters in a tower of glowing smoke, and burst half the hall away, sending splinters and shards and roiling dust crashing past the balconies in ear-splitting cacophony.

When they could hear again, several rooms away, Juskra murmured into the ringing heads bent close to hers, "I know those voices. Belard and Talyss Tesmer are here, and coaching their own puppet noble—Klarl Annusk Dunshar—as to how to behave, as they try to put him on the throne."

"Tesmers? From Ironthorn?" Gar rumbled. "Falcon, all the troublemakers are gathering!"

"Which is why," Dauntra told him sweetly, "you’re here."

STRIDING INTO HER chambers in Ironthorn, Maera Tesmer stopped suddenly as something dark and cold uncoiled in her mind. She stiffened, drawing in her breath with a gasp. Lorontar.

It's time.

Trembling, she hastened back to bar her door, then put her back to it, faced the silent rooms, and cast a shielding to end all scrying on her.

It took effect, rolling silently out from her like a wave. Nigh the door to her bedchamber, there came the sudden flare of a spell collapsing, and a faint, momentary whisper, just a snatch of a heartfelt curse.

Smiling, she turned to a lectern and threw back its cloth cover, revealing an old, heavy tome. It held a spell that would enable her to trace her parents' hedge-wizard, if she moved very quickly, and—

No. Gather your magics faster than that. You are now going to disappear from Ironthorn. Swiftly.

Maera stiffened again. "To where?" she whispered.

You'll see.

Maera waited, but the cold voice in her mind said no more.

The silence deepened, and she crossed her chambers and started snatching grimoires and wands and bulging pouches out of hiding places.

Warmth was rising in her, spreading through her limbs. Power. Dark power.

The true Lord Archwizard of Falconfar was awakening.

THEY WERE BOTH panting by the time they reached the top of the stairs. Taeauna reached out, clasped Rod's hand in hers, and towed him to the left, into some ruined rooms Dunshar's workers had not yet touched. Mildew, old animal dung, and a litter of small bones and torn birdnests lay strewn everywhere.

"Good," the wingless Aumrarr said, surveying the wreckage. "Unfinished. We should be able to move swiftly, then."

"Where are we going?" Rod gasped.

"Onward," she snapped back, then added a grin. "As always."

IT WAS A small army, and on foot, but it was moving fast. Warriors in motley armor, with only a handful of knights. Some of those who wore leather war-harness and bore swords were hedge- wizards who had spells ready, but were determined not to look like wizards—or as the king had dryly termed mages, "targets."

Marquel Gordraun Windstrike led the dozen-strong bodyguard of old loyal knights who strode in a ring around two men. One was the King of Galath, and the other was a man in long dark robes, with a face like a hatchet and eyes like angry fires. Half Falconfar could have identified him by the claw badge on the breast of his robes: Orothor Taervellar of the Talons, wizard for hire.

They slew all who defied them, as they advanced through Galathgard, but there were few enough; skirmishes were raging through various far-flung wings of the castle, but the great rooms at its heart were now heaped fields of the dead.

"This next one," King Brorsavar announced calmly, "is what we're looking for. The throne room."

The doors stood open, and a haze of smoke hung heavy in the air. Armor-clad bodies lay everywhere, with here and there a pain- wracked armsman or knight moving feebly amid the gore.

Briskly the king's warriors spread out, ranging through the room. No one still alive looked to be a wizard or a noble of consequence, so they lit torches and set them in wall-brackets, heaved the press of bodies in and around the throne aside—lordrakes, ardukes, and veldukes all lay thickly there—and lifted one man off the throne itself whose backside, by the looks of things, had triggered one last trap, and driven four swordblades right up through him. He—if it had been a he—came away in slabs of meat that trailed bones and intestines, and Marquel Windstrike was nearly sick several times.

Some of the knights set about hammering at the upthrust swords, but Taervellar of the Talons shook his head, waved them away, and cast a spell that turned the metal to a mist that drifted slowly away.

'"Tis safe now of all metal," he announced, cast another spell, and after a moment nodded and added, "And lurking magic, too."

Windstrike looked to the king, received a nod, and turned to point at certain armsmen, who lifted war horns from their belts and blew a long, roaring succession of blasts.

Then they stood waiting.

It did not take long. Running boots could be heard approaching, and occasional clangs of swords glancing off stone, to the accompaniment of curses.

Then noble after noble, wild-eyed and blood-spattered, came panting into the great chamber, bloody swords in hand.

Windstrike waited a little longer, glanced at the king and received another nod, and signaled to the hornsmen again.

The fanfare, this time, was loud and splendid. Amid its rolling echoes, more men came crowding into the room.

The marquel stepped forward. "King Melander Brorsavar hath arrived!" he announced grandly.

Behind him, the smiling man sat down on the blackened, bloodstained throne of Galath and said in a voice both gentle and—thanks to his hired wizard's magic—heard from end to end of the hall, "This, my Great Court, has now begun."

The blood-spattered nobles stared at him open-mouthed for a long and wavering moment.

Then bellowed as one man and charged to the attack.