Falconfar 03-Falconfar (17 page)

A staff that seemed much lighter than it could possibly be, as he hefted it in his hands and its dark twisted metal lit up with small lights of various hues, from end to end. Lights that winked like watchful eyes, or stared steadily and balefully out at the world as Taroarin let fall his sword at his feet, raised the staff over his head in both hands, and said something harsh and unintelligible to his fellow Darsworders.

Flames sprang into life at both ends of the staff, snarling up into angry spheres.

Taroarin pointed down the roofless hall at Laeveren, and murmured something. A moment later, the limp, lolling body of Daera rose into the air and hung out of Laeveren's reach, shapely and gray and lifeless.

Taroarin said something else—and the snarling fires at the ends of his staff flared and burst through the air like bolts of fire-red lightning, faster than the descents of the greatfangs, scorching lines in the air behind them as they flashed across the ruin to smite Laeveren and Baerold.

Both men vanished in pillars of flame, giving one brief shriek before they collapsed and went out, spilling ash to the littered flagstones. No bones were left to tumble with them.

Men who'd run out of places to run stared at the twin pyres in horror, and then slowly, reluctantly, turned to behold their source... and found themselves gaping at Taroarin.

Who beamed at them as the five greatfangs landed with stone- shaking force all around the great roofless hall—beyond its walls, but with force enough to cause one shattered wall to slump forward, dashing a Darsworder to the flagstones, broken and dying even before the tumbling blocks buried him—to pen it in with their great scaled bodies and spread bat-wings, living walls that towered above the broken stone ones, making the hall as secure as a tyrant's prison.

A tyrant like the man standing at the head of the ruined hall, wielding the staff. Not that the men of Darswords yet realized who he was. They were still mindless with fear, and peering up and all around at the looming greatfangs, living mountains whose jaws bristled with fangs each longer than a blacksmith stood tall.

One by one the men who'd dared to go wizard-hunting looked down from their captors and stared, however reluctantly, at the one Darsworder who now stood apart.

Taroarin the cooper.

He held the staff over his head with fresh fires blazing at both its ends, smiled at them from under it, and told them all politely, "Welcome to the great entry hall of Malragard—or what's left of it. The wizard Malraun is fallen, and so are these his creatures, this carrion at your feet. The greatfangs all around you, however, are mine."

A silence fell.

"Tar—Taroarin?" Tresker stammered, daring to break it.

By way of reply, the smiling cooper murmured something under his breath, then lowered his staff into his arms and embraced it like a lover.

It flared with a rose-red glow that raced down his arms and throughout his body. The watching Darsworders saw him close his eyes, gasp, shudder, and throw back his head.

Then the glow was gone, leaving in its wake a body that was taller, more slender, blue-skinned, and bald.

A sharp-eyed man who didn't look like Taroarin at all. Many of the lights winking on the staff in his hands had dimmed, and some of them now went out.

"Men of Darswords," he announced, "I am Narmarkoun. Doom of Falconfar, and the wizard you were so bold as to visit. Behold, you have found me."

He waved one long-fingered blue hand almost lazily, and Daera came walking through the rubble to join him, striding demurely as if she was whole, and her head didn't hang loosely from her neck.

When she reached him, Narmarkoun's hand briefly glowed rose- red, the staff in his other hand winking with the same radiance, and he touched her neck.

As the Darsworders watched, trembling and silent, Daera's lolling head slowly righted itself to stand on her shoulders again.

She stepped into the crook of his arm, Laeveren's baldric still trailing from her neck, and he rested his hand on her hip.

Staff in one hand and gray-skinned woman in the other, Narmarkoun looked around one Darsworder face after another, a grim smile steady on his face.

After he'd stared into all of their eyes, he said calmly, "I require your loyalty, here and now—or your death. And it will be a slow passing, as you lie here for days in helpless torment, every bone in your bodies smashed, the flies and rats and hungry dogs of Harlhoh dining on you at will, while my magic keeps you from sleeping or falling senseless. Which shall it be? Will you kneel to your new lord? Or be struck down where you stand?"

Tresker wavered, then sank heavily to his knees. "Tar— Narmarkoun, I will serve you. Lord Narmarkoun, I am your man."

A great sigh arose from the other Darsworders.

One by one, trembling in terror in the shade of the greatfangs looming over them, the men of Darswords went to their knees to submit themselves to him.

One by one, staring into their eyes, the wizard Narmarkoun surged into their minds, long enough to make them his.

When he was done, Narmarkoun turned, leveled the staff at a point where the flagstones met the base of the nearest wall—and blasted it.

The greatfangs perched there rose smoothly into the air, but the other flying wyrms sat like statues, watching as the smoke cleared, the rubble clattered to a halt... and a new hole was revealed.

"Forward, men of Darswords," Narmarkoun ordered pleasantly, gesturing at the opening with the staff. A few more of its lights had gone out. "Or rather, loyal warriors of Narmarkoun. You sought a wizard's treasures, and that's just what you'll find. For me. So on, and down—and mind the heat of the stones. If my suspicions are right, Malraun's caches of magic will be at least a level deeper than this."

He waved the staff again, watched the reluctant men shuffle forward, and started to hum a happy tune.

NO MEN OR maids screamed in Kathgallart any more. The last cries of dying agony had ended, the greatfangs padding ponderously around a few ramshackle cottages to silence them in a brutal flurry of smashes.

Now the gigantic wyrm lay sprawled at its ease in a field, atop the splintered remnants of the paddock fences, and leisurely swooping its free foreclaw or its long neck into various stalls, to bite and drag forth and chew.

Now it was horses and mules and oxen that were screaming, shrieking as they died, while those not yet dead snorted and kicked at their stalls and stamped their hooves, frightened by the reek of fresh blood and the cries of their kin.

Still clamped bruisingly together in the grip of the greatfangs' talons, Tethtyn and Mori shuddered at the grisly noises and the smells of fear and blood. They could not help but think they vould be next, the moment the last horse had vanished down that huge maw.

And why them? Well, why did anything happen in Falconfar? Fell magic or blind stupid savagery, a wild beast snatching an opportunity to fill its belly.

"Why—" Mori got as far as whimpering, once, before Tethtyn hissed at him and moved his knee urgently. Not that he could harm Mori much, pinioned as he was, or silence him, but Mori understood, and said no more.

More biting and chewing, the flailing hoof of a dying horse flashing past their eyes... then real silence.

The greatfangs rolled over, and suddenly their ears were battered by a force that also made the talons around them tremble, and the very earth thrum.

So a greatfangs can belch. Loud and hard enough to nigh-deafen men.

The greatfangs rolled again, the talons around the two young men loosening. It was... yes, by the Falcon, it was curling itself up in the ruined paddock like a cat before a warm hearth.

Bloated after its huge feast, no doubt. The talons suddenly fell open, spilling Tethtyn and Mori out into the light and air, on blood- drenched grass under a sky of tattered high clouds and merry fanlight. Rolling hard to get well away from the great claw, they saw the head above them yawn drowsily, great fangs flashing... and then sink down, ignoring them both utterly as they stared at it.

The greatfangs rested its barbed chin on the talons of its other claw, eyelids drooping. The eyes widened again, once—Mori and Tethtyn hardly daring to breathe—and then closed.

They half-opened a long moment later, showing only a crescent edge to silent Kathgallart, then shut again.

It was several long, shallow breaths later when Mori and Tethtyn dared to look at each other.

Whereupon they promptly discovered—possibly at about the same time as the neighboring holds of Marclaw and Indrulspire— that a sleeping greatfangs snores.

The snores echoed from distant mountains. Tethryn Eldurant and Mori Ulaskro stared at each other in the heart of the deafening roar, open-mouthed... and then found themselves giggling, shaking helplessly in high-rising mirth that no one could have heard three paces away amid the all-pervading thunder of the greatfangs.

They were still giggling when something rose up within them and took hold of them, right behind their eyes.

Something that had claws keener and stronger than the black talons of the greatfangs. Something that they somehow knew had come out of hiding in the mind of the greatfangs to drive into both of theirs.

Something that now had hold of them in a grip they could never hope to escape. Lorontar.

Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, age-old and gloatingly patient, a mind mightier than mountains, easily strong enough to dwell in both of theirs at once and hold them in helpless thrall.

A dark sentience that had plunged into the mind of Malraun the Matchless himself, burned it to quivering ruin, then leaped from the doomed wizard to the greatfangs that swept him up in its jaws, and took it over.

Just as it was now residing in the minds of Tethtyn Eldurant and Mori Ulaskro, whom it had selected—had been watching for years— because they had the raw, untempered talent to become great wizards.

Fitting vessels for the greatest wizard in the world. Soon to be the greatest wizard in at least two worlds.

It had boiled forth from the greatfangs now because the great wyrm was a beast of hungers and rages and urges, who felt more than it could think.

Wherefore it had served its purpose, and must now die.

Mori and Tethtyn obeyed with alacrity, because they could do no less. Inside their heads, Lorontar guided them both.

To select suitably sharp fallen fence-rails, large enough for their purpose but not so large that they could not control them. To aid each other in moving these rails to just the right places in the blood-soaked paddock, heft them in unison—and rush forward to pierce both eyes of the sleeping greatfangs at once. Then to keep running hard, driving the sharpened wood deeper through all the gouting wet gore, deep into the wyrm's brain.

They were hurled high and hard in the creature's wild, convulsive thrashings, its squalling attempts to scream, wild talons slashing air and turf and a nearby tree in futile, blind frenzy.

As Tethtyn and Mori landed wetly on heaped human corpses, slid and rolled to their own separate stops, then found themselves dragged to their feet in unison by the relentless claws in their heads to watch the last feeble thrashings of the wyrm they'd slain.

Then, heedless of the blood all over them, the death underfoot, and the swarming flies, they limped into what was left of Kathgallart's buildings to take cheese and cooked stew, sausages and hardbreads, tearing gowns off sprawled and gnawed goodwives to bundle the rood into, so they could set forth without delay.

It was a long way to Indrulspire, through the deep woods.

Not that Tethtyn and Mori would have the chance to rest, or any desire to, until they reached what they were now seeking.

They could both see it clearly in their minds, around Lorontar's minister smile, though neither had ever been anywhere near Indrulspire in their lives.

It lay at the near edge of that hold, overgrown and forgotten in the trees: a certain old and moss-covered tomb... and in its dark depths, a lone casket that held not bones but books of magic.

Tomes that had lain hidden for centuries, their stamped and graven metal pages glowing faintly as they waited for wizards to come.