Falconfar 03-Falconfar (4 page)

"Dead but not dead," Daera told them, "as I am not dead. If you do find Narmarkoun, you should work with him, as allies, against Lorontar's far greater evil. If you cut down Narmarkoun, and then think yourself safe, you will have broken your Archwizard- slaying-sword, and will someday face the Archwizard empty- handed. Darswords will be no refuge, even if Horgul is gone and no armies ever march again. Not with Lorontar the only wizard left in the world."

"So it's time to ally with wizards?" the deep-voiced warrior asked, in slow and heavy disbelief.

Daera lifted her head to stare hard into his eyes, nod, and reply firmly, "It's time. For the good—nay, for the survival—of Falconfar."

"YOU HEARD WHAT happened to Jaklar?" Talyss purred smugly.

"Torn to death by wolves," her brother Belard replied, turning from an open leather shoulder-satchel on the table before him. "Led by Amteira Hammerhand, who could not stop calling on the Forestmother all the while, as they snarled and bit and savaged him to pieces. Ate him alive. A fitting end, I'd say—and I'd say something else, too: the goddess of the Raurklor has changed holy servants. In an impressively bloody fashion, I might add."

His sister nodded, leaning against the door frame of his bedchamber with languid grace. "You're fully informed, as usual. Ready to leave?"

Belard sighed. "Yes, but without the gems I was planning to take with us. It seems someone robbed our dear parents before I could."

Talyss nodded. "Aumrarr, according to one of the maids who got a glimpse of them leaving from the battlements. Though how they got past the warning spells, I know not."

Her brother shrugged. "And I care not. The gems are gone—and we'd best be, too, just as swiftly as we can hustle ourselves along. Nareyera isn't the only one looking for us."

"Kin?"

"Of course. Father was so aghast at what Mother told him last night that he couldn't keep his mouth shut."

"For a change," Talyss told the ceiling sardonically. They had both lost count of the number of times Lord Irrance Tesmer had let slip things he shouldn't have—within the family, to servants, and even to foes. "What choice blundering has he set crashing amongst us all this time?"

"The news, first admitted to him by our darling mother in bed last night, that two of their oh-so-close-and-fond Tesmer children weren't sired by father, but by the Master."

"And would the names of those two be Belard and Talyss, by any chance?" his sister asked quietly.

Belard lifted one eyebrow. "You knew."

"I suspected. The Master has always given us far more attention than the others, and it certainly wasn't because our magic is so enthrallingly superior. Maera is strong enough that we should all hear her, and even Nareyera—admit it, Bel—can hold her own against us."

"I fear Kalathgar," Belard replied quietly. "He just might be the only one of us who could outwit the Master."

Talyss nodded. "Let's hope we're halfway across fair Falconfar if he ever tries. Right now, let's be going." She drew a long, heavy eather carry sack into view from behind her long and shapely egs, swung it up onto her shoulder as she stepped past him, and adjusted its baldric across her chest.

Belard turned and reached out to smooth the leather strap where r slid between her breasts. His lingering fingers earned him a smile. "Later, brother mine."

"If there is a later for either of you," a voice said coldly from the doorway behind him.

Belard sighed, even as he stepped past Talyss—who was growing a sharp-eyed frown—and turned.

"Delmark, of course," he said wearily. "Who put you up to this, brother mine? Feldrar? Nareyera?"

"Nar— It matters not. What matters is that no sooner do we earn that the two of you are not true Tesmers at all, you both prepare to flee Ironthorn with as much Tesmer gold as you can carry. Making you not only traitors to your own kin—your half- kin—but thieving outsiders in our very midst."

Delmark's voice was harsh, his face was pale, his eyes glittered, and his sword was out and ready, sharp point leveled at Belard's chest.

Belard rolled his eyes. "Well, now, which is it, Del? Are we kin or not? Common thieves or traitors to the family? Can you spit out a coherent reason at all, or did Nareyera just tell you to rush up here and butcher us as fast as you could run?"

"She has nothing to do with this," Delmark said curtly. "J decide when I draw blade, and why. This is a matter of honor."

He took a careful half-step forward, flicking up the point of his steel in a clear signal that Belard should draw his own sword and defend himself.

"Oh? Whose honor? Mother's? Father's? Isn't it more than a few years too late to be fighting over that? And shouldn't you be seeking out a Doom of Falconfar to pick your quarrel with?"

"Clever words, Bel; always, clever words! Words that're no match for my blade," Delmark snapped. "Defend yourself, or I'll put this steel right through you!"

"You'd have been much wiser to just stride in here and do that, instead of all this snorting and blowing about honor and traitors," Belard replied, turning back to his open, half-filled satchel. "You bore me."

Delmark snarled, and shifted his feet to make ready to lunge. "Men of honor deal with each other face to face."

"Precisely," Talyss said cuttingly, from behind Belard. "But then, your strong sense of honor hasn't yet risen to the notice of any Tesmer I know. Nor is it particularly apparent now."

"You keep out of this," Delmark snapped in reply, not shifting his gaze for a moment from his gently smiling brother. "Slut."

Talyss lifted her left hand, fingers clawing the air in a brief, wriggling pattern—and the air in front of Delmark suddenly shimmered. Then it seemed to flow toward the floor like a silent waterfall.

Delmark gave his sister a look then, and it was a sneer. "You think I came unprepared? Or that you're the only Tesmer who knows a little magic? Narmarkoun taught the rest of us, too. Taught us more than enough to deal with—"

Belard whirled and flung the satchel into his brother's face.

Delmark staggered back, the weight of the sack bearing his blade sharply to the floor—and Belard sprang across the room like a striking snake, to slap at a small, oval picture on the wall. The picture rattled and with a loud clack the floor under Delmark's boots gave way. The stumbling Tesmer abruptly plunged knee- deep into the floor. Harsh, mechanical sounds promptly arose from beneath it.

Delmark jerked sideways, one leg almost severed by the blade that had snapped across the trap. The blade quivered as it bit deep into bone and sliced on, deep into his other leg.

He'd just started to scream when Belard's fist crashed into his face, snapping his head around like a doll. Delmark slumped into silence, his dropped sword clanging into the shallow trap, blood pooling beneath him.

Belard calmly plucked his satchel and two items that had fallen it—a tankard and a ladle—out of the recess in the floor before they got drowned in gore, and turned to Talyss. "Shall we go?"

Unless you'd care to fight a lot more of our kin all at once," she replied, strolling toward him. "He's wearing his locket, isn't he?"

Before she bent to pluck it from around the sagging Delmark's throat, Belard laid a hand on her arm. "Leave it. They can trace us through it, you know."

Talyss smiled. "I do know. In fact, I'm counting on it."

Belard looked at her, and slowly smiled.

She smiled back at him, beautiful mouth curling smugly, as she viciously on the fine chain around Delmark's throat. It drew blood as it broke, leaving his head lolling loosely.

Belard and Talyss left together, not looking back.

Behind them, the unconscious Delmark jerked and then shuddered as the relentless blade sheared right through one leg, and bit more deeply into the other one.

ROD WAS GASPING for breath now.

How many God-damned stairs did this wizard's tower have? Did this endless flight of steps go down clear through Falconfar, and out into some unknown lands on the far side of the planet?

Or was Falconfar a planet, a sphere in space, at all? He hadn't— At that moment, with the image of the world as a great flat slab of earth and stone with mountains and trees on it—just on the top, or on both sides?—the great jaws behind him closed on a ;irk, half-seen form that must be Malraun.

Gore spurted in a wet spray—and the weight of Lorontar's relentless assault was abruptly gone from Rod's mind.

Blurting out a sob, he staggered, feeling suddenly as light as air. Free!

Happy, even, despite the imminent death sweeping down the stairs after him, crunching the dying wizard's body as it came. Lorontar's invasion of his thoughts had thrust darkness into them, bringing despair in its grim and heavy wake, and now it was— suddenly, so suddenly—gone.

The stair shook under him, and he fell again, tumbling down the hard stone steps in a whirlwind of bumps and bruises. When he landed, he shook his head dazedly, and looked back up behind him.

The greatfangs had bounded aloft again, beating its great sky-filling wings in mighty, ponderous, but steadily quickening sweeps, lifting it up and away. Rod watched something tumble from its working jaws, plummeting to bounce wetly to a stop on the steps just above him.

It was what was left of a man's right arm, bitten off below the shoulder, its fingers spread in a claw of pain. Malraun's arm, by the looks of it.

Rod stared at it numbly, then looked up again. Things had grown dim; the greatfangs was passing over him now, a scaled, leviathan tapering to a tail that could fell castle towers with a single lazy slap. It was chewing, with the same satisfied gusto that Rod had seen at Deldragon's feast table, as his knights worked away on favorite foods.

So Malraun was dead—chewed to pieces, and Lorontar with him. Which meant Taeauna must be dead and gone, too...

So who was making the faint echoes at the very back of his mind?

Someone shrieking, someone far away and swiftly getting farther, someone high-voiced and desperate...

"Taeauna?"

Rod could scarcely believe it, but the moment he gasped out her name, staring at the other five greatfangs sweeping menacingly out of the sky at him, he was certain.

It was Taeauna crying out to him. She was shouting his name.

"Taeauna!" he bellowed back, as loudly as he could, staggering and waving his arms for balance as he turned wildly in all directions, to stare into the distance in hopes of seeing her. "Taeauna? Where are you?"

The cries in his mind were getting fainter. She hadn't heard him, couldn't hear him, of course, was so far away now that—

"Taeauna!" he shouted, so hard and loud that his head rang and his voice cracked into a hoarse, wordless trailing-off. "I'm coming for you!"

As if the most useless Archwizard on two worlds could rescue anyone at all, with wizards and greatfangs everywhere, armies on the march, and—

The second greatfangs, almost as large as the first, was gliding down the stairs at him, its barbed chin brushing the edges of the stone steps, its maw open wide and looming darker and larger by the moment.

Rod Everlar sank into a crouch because he thought he'd fall over if he didn't, and watched it come for him.

Taeauna's voice was gone from his mind now, and—and if he didn't do something Archwizardly and heroic in his next few wreaths, there wouldn't be a Rod Everlar to come for anyone.

And the Dooms, the ruthless sneering God-damned spellhurling Dooms, would win after all.

"THOSE LORN STILL back there?" Iskarra asked quietly.

"Yes," Dauntra sighed, "and we're very soon going to have to -et you down so we can deal with them—or fall out of the sky, too weak to do anything but watch you try to deal with them."

"Hah!" Garfist Gulkoun barked gleefully, from where he hung beneath Juskra, a wingbeat or so ahead, "that's just what we'll ^o! Let me at them! My blade is sharp and my fists swift and r.ard, to be sure! Just let me get my—"

"Rump onto the forest floor, so you can stand up and swagger— and make of yourself a juicy, helpless target for lorn diving fast at you," Juskra interrupted him sharply. "They can fly, remember?"