Falconfar 03-Falconfar (15 page)

Hywond had the best shipyards and the largest fishing fleet on all the Shore, and Telchassur was supposed to be old and even wealthier, but neither of them had anything to touch Lord Luthtarl's library. Hy-folk used books as ledgers, writing coin- counts of the moment over the fading words others had written long ago, and Telchassur was a city where tales were told in tapestries and paintings and sculpture, or sung in long, eerie chants, not set down in books.

So Mori was quite content to stay snug in Dlarmarr—not even ducking out of the familiar warm dust and quiet of the library except when he was sent—and read, dreaming of places he would never see. From here, he could look out over the world—if only the world limned so colorfully on the fading maps that covered the top of the Shrouded Table—and know all. It was as good as commanding all.

Not that Mori had the slightest desire to become lord of anywhere, or was in any danger of becoming so. He did want to become locklar of the library, some day, when blind-and-deaf old Urvraunt was carried off by the Falcon. Urvraunt had never been a pleasant man, and as his senses failed and he increasingly needed Mori not just to scramble up ladders and fetch hard-to- reach tomes, but to find the right title among the rows even at chest level, hard by the reading table, his irritability was becoming a constant, snarling thing. Besides, he was beginning to smell— and not just of strong everember wine.

There was something else Mori would gain by Urvraunt's death, someday. The library keys, of course, but more importantly just one of them: the long black key that gave admittance to the Black Chamber. Where the books of magic—the books that lived, some of them, moving around by night, and reportedly even draining those who stole in to peer at them in the hours of darkness to withered old age—were kept.

Just once, when the locklar had been interrupted by a message from Lord Luthtarl, Mori had seen a lone book of magic lying open, and it had been an ordinary-looking, slender tome Urvraunt had sneered at as "poor and paltry enough." Yet the black and red, angular runes that made so many folk ill just by glancing at them had flowed under Mori's gaze and thrilled him, kindling something in his mind. Trying to read them—he took in no more than a line ere Urvraunt had come snarling back into the room— had thrown up vivid, half-glimpsed visions that had kept Mori awake and quivering all that night, and left him aching for more.

He was one of those who could read magic, could wield magic— and by the Falcon, one way or another, he would taste that flowing fire again before he died, and cast spells, and sweep past cowering folk in dark and splendid robes, and be a wizard.

Wizards could change the world.

MASTER ULASKRO," THE locklar greeted him with heavy sarcasm, "it seems the gulls have been relieving themselves all down the windows again. The windows outside my office. 'Do you therefore go out upon the balcony—now—and speedily perform such scrubbings as are necessary to let the sun shine once more unimpeded across my desk."

Mori knew better than to reply with anything except a bowed head and the words, "Of course, Locklar Urvraunt!"

He put all the toadyingly submissive eagerness into them he could, because he knew such a manner pleased rather than irritated the old man—and life ran more smoothly for them both when Locklar Urvraunt was pleased.

Brushes, bucket, and soap flakes were old, familiar friends, and so was the roof-cistern tap. Urvraunt seemed to find a lot of things around the library for his tomekeeper to scrub. In fact, it seemed is if Mori did a lot more maids' work than keeping of tomes.

Not that Mori particularly minded. It set him to seeing new things, getting some fresh air, and making little trips down to shops in Jlarmarr he'd never have seen otherwise. Which brought to mind a certain bakehearth on the steepest part of Orshandul Street, and hshcakes that melted in the mouth with a sauce that... that...

"Tomekeeper Ulaskro," Urvraunt snapped, "you're drooling. Stop standing there dreaming of feasts, boy, and get out there and clean my windows!"

Hastily Mori nodded and obeyed. Oh, so they were "my" windows now, were they? And all these years, he and everyone else in Dlarmarr had been so stone-cold sure that they were Lord Luthtarl's windows. Stiffnecked old toad. Urvraunt, that is, not kindly old Luthtarl. Of course, Luthtarl had been something less than "kindly" down the years, in dealings with pirates—personally gutting them before all his court—and visiting merchants who dared to feud in the streets of Dlarmarr through the daggers of their underlings, and even the haughty lords of Hywond, too—

Mori noticed the sun had suddenly gone out.

Now, storms were wont to strike Dlarmarr suddenly, but there was always a great roaring and moaning of winds, first, and the air turning either sultry-hot or icy, and—

He turned from washing the windows and gaped in utter disbelief.

The largest monster he'd ever seen—a dragon or a greatfangs or something else that had scales and huge raking talons and bat-wings broader than an entire wing of the lord's castle—was looming up over him, blotting out the sky.

Its wings were spread wide, slowing it, but it wasn't a heart-beat away from slamming into the balcony, and the library beyond the balcony.

Which meant that Lord Luthtarl was going to need a new library—and a new tomekeeper, too.

Mori tried to scream, but all that came out was a sob. There was a young man struggling feebly in one of the monster's massive, cruel claws—and the other claw was reaching out for him.

With all his might, Mori swung his bucket of soapy water at the creature's talons. The brush he'd dropped into it bounced off one tree-trunk-sized talon and fell away.

And then he was snatched into the air, a fire in his ribs and all the breath slammed out of him.

Stone shrieked below him as the gigantic creature raked at it, thrusting itself aloft, and Mori saw the balcony and some of the wall above it breaking away and falling, tumbling down into the courtyard he could no longer see. There were great bright gouges in the weathered castle stone.

This thing can shear through stone with its talons.

Someone was shouting and pointing, from a tower nearby. "Greatfangs! Falcon deliver us! A greatfangs! It's snatched someone.

A greatfangs. Winging its way strongly out over the Sea of Storms, now, rising higher, its tail lashing the air behind it.

Still fighting to try to breathe, Mori turned his head enough to see the man gripped in the monster's other claw. Their eyes met.

No comfort there, only despair.

They were both doomed.

The floating head acquired a peculiar expression—a mixture of dismay, a little disgust, a hint of incredulity, and a certain grudging respect—as it regarded Rod Everlar. "So ye admit it. Ye don't know the first thing about magic at all."

"No," Rod admitted, wondering if he'd just made the worst mistake of his life. "I just write about it. Making things up as I go along."

"Falcon. Well, at least ye know how to speak plain truth. That's more than most every wizard I've ever known could bring himself to do."

Rod shrugged, smiled, and spread his hands. "I've not met all that many wizards, but I wouldn't—couldn't—trust any I did meet."

"Oh? And just who have ye met?"

Rod drew in a deep breath. "Well, all the Dooms: Arlaghaun, Malraun, and Narmarkoun. And Lorontar, too. Oh, and there was a wizard in Wrathgard, and another—one of Arlaghaun's apprentices, I think—who conjured a gate in the cellars of Bowrock, and—"

"Enough. Well, now ye've met another. I am Rambaerakh, Slayer of Dragons."

Rambaerakh fell silent, beaming. Rod, feeling awkward, blurted, "Oh."

"Well, I see ye really did speak truth. Ye do know nothing about magic at all."

Rod managed a lopsided smile. "I was supposed to be impressed, learning who you are, I take it?"

"If by 'impressed' ye mean 'awed,' yes, ye were. I built this tower around and above us, and for many seasons ruled a kingdom from it. Rauryk, 'twas called. The Realm of Tall Trees."

"The Raurklor?"

"The Raurklor. Alone I slew a score of dragons—one at a time, of course, save for that night above Har Rock when two wyrms took wing against me. I created the first Dark Helms. Not that sneering pretender Lorontar, who killed wizards he got drunk and took their magic for his own, one after another, until the rest of us noticed—and then killed enough wizards more that we finally saw fit to seek him out. I ruled here, until I got just careless enough to make one mistake too many—guarding too much against Lorontar and mages he had his hands up the backsides of, and not against others. Which was when Malraun wrested my Dark Helms from me, hurled them against me until I was forced out of this tower, and there in the fields beset me with spells until dragons found me and took their revenge on me for their slain kin. Leaving me like this."

"Torn apart?"

"Torn, eaten, burned, and clawed. These aren't sword-scars below my chin."

"How... how did you survive at all?"

"Magic. Real magic, man, spells piled deep and true. I laid more on myself than on my Helms... and look at them."

Rod frowned, glanced around in vain, then stared at the bobbing, silent skeletons. "These? These are—were—your Dark Helms?"

"Are again, though there's not enough left of them to be my Helms any more. No, their time is done, and mine too."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning we need ye, Lord Less Than Archwizard."

"To—?"

"Work a little magic for us."

"But..."

"Oh, I'll guide ye, man. Ye don't have to know what ye're doing; if that was a requirement, there's few enough Falconaar who'd ever do anything."

"So what is this 'little magic'?"

"Unbind us."

At Rod's puzzled look the severed head smiled sourly and said, "Malraun the Matchless bound us here, to keep us from marauding through his tower whenever his back was turned, or out across Falconfar. He's dead now—must be, for my Helms to be walking and me to be free to depart my tomb and trade words with thee—but the same spells that keep the very stones of Malragard in place, that he added atop my wards and bindings, also tether us here."

The head drifted a little closer. "So, Rod Everlar, I charge thee to come with us now and do what is needful to unbind us."

"I—"

"We'll not slay thee. Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, if ye care for Falconfar at all, unbind us.”

The shrunken eyes were ablaze, glaring at Rod now from close beyond his own nose.

"Unbind us."

Rod swallowed, trying not to look horrified. The promise not to kill him could be so many empty words; this was, after all—or had been—a wizard. Lying is what wizards do.

And try as he might, Rod could not banish from his mind scenes of bobbing bones swinging swords to hack down ardukes and fleeing farmwives alike, bloodily hewing frightened guards apart and—and Taeauna, alone and beset and going down in a welter of spraying blood and screams of agony...

As he heard their mocking thanks for being so duped, as they cut off his hands and feet to let him bleed to death, and surged forth from wherever he was lying, helpless and doomed. With no one at all left to stop them as they went marauding across all of Falconfar...

TETHTYN HAD LONG ago exhausted the contents of his stomach; there was nothing left in him to spew into the whistling wind. He was cold, shivering, miserable, and barely awake, sinking into dozes time and again and starting awake, usually when an especially chilly gust of wind or a wet cloud engulfed him, or the talons around him tightened.

He didn't want to think about how his life was going to end, when the greatfangs decided to land and needed the claw that was wrapped so thoroughly around him.

Right now, he didn't want to think about anything.

Tethtyn was vaguely aware that the great dragon-like beast above him had flown far and fast, east and south to the coast and one of the smaller ports there—where it had stooped to snatch someone else, in its other foreclaw—then swung briefly out over the open sea before it soared back up into the rolling, wooded uplands behind the Stormar shores. He didn't doubt it could easily have flown higher, and crossed over the towering mountain range that girded southern Galath, but it had turned east again, into lands he barely knew.