"No! Get away!" the first knight bellowed at his fellows, waving his sword. "Stand not together, to give yon wizard a target for his spells! Knights of Galath, may this day beeeuuurk!"
The dead women were naked and therefore distracting-alluring here and hideous there, where flesh and all had fallen away to lay bare a staring skull above parted lips, or an empty ribcage on one flank where a shapely breast still adorned the other. They were slender women, besides, not battle-trained knights of the realm, and-
When four of them swarmed over a knight at once, not caring in the slightest what his blade bit into in their quick, unfeeling haste to slay him, he went down.
A few of the knights lasted a few struggling steps backwards, slashing and thrusting for all they were worth, and managed to hack down some of the dead women by hewing away limbs. Yet before the man with the staff could unhurriedly turn around again to gaze down his battlements, all of the score or so armored valiants of Galath who'd clambered through the ramparts to stand on these lofty stones had fallen.
The wizard sighed, watching dead women calmly picking up the bloodless remnants of their felled sisters, and asked the cold blue sky above him, "Now, where were my thoughts, before this unpleasant little distraction?"
For the first time ever, it seemed the sky had an answer for such a query. A flight of falcons came pouring down out of it, swooping out from among the line of peaks in the north that had hidden their approach from Sornspire until the proverbial last moment. Gray falcons about thrice the size of the largest falcon Galath had ever seen.
Which meant, of course, they weren't falcons at all.
The tall blue man cursed, spun around, and raced back to the stair, raising his staff in both hands and awakening it to snarl with surging blue tongues of fire.
He hurled his first fire-bolts before he sprang onto the steps-which was about the time the foremost lorn had started to take their real shapes, and come swooping right at him.
Horned, mouthless skull-faces are poorly suited for triumphant laughter or the bellowing of battle cries, but lorn eyes are very good at conveying hunger and glee.
They were doing that now, as he blasted a lorn to ashes and another lorn swerved out and around the tumbling remains to come swooping in, batlike wings folded back, slate-gray head looming, barbed tail cracking as it swerved again at the last instant to rake blue-scaled hands and face with razor-sharp talons.
A second lorn didn't bother to swerve. Even as the blue man silently lost his grip on his staff, mouth open but no cry of pain roaring out, it crashed right into him, plucking the wizard off his feet and dashing him back against the stone steps with spine-shattering force.
Then all the lorn were swooping and tearing, the thin black staff tumbling forgotten down the stair as the slate-gray, struggling cloud tightened around those few steps at the top.
When they drew apart, to wheel back up into the sky and away, all that was left on the steps was a dark stain, a few fragments of bone, and some scraps of dark cloak small enough to have been the hides of tiny scuttling mice.
"And so I die," a calm voice observed, as its owner turned away from his fading scrying. "Overwhelmed and torn apart by lorn. Well, there are worse deaths, I suppose."
Narmarkoun beckoned one of the most decayed of his dead women with a silent look. As she began her slow crawl across the great hall of his cold castle, and his other dead women parted in front of her like a hastening gray sea, he looked down into the dark and empty eyes of the just-as-dead women entwined around his legs, who were stroking ardently as high as they could reach, and murmured, "There is one being in Falconfar I fear: Lorontar. It is merely sensible to fear Lorontar."
Bony fingers reached his inner thigh. He gently captured them in his grasp, and smiled down at their owner. "Lorontar the true Archwizard of Falconfar, the real Dark Lord. Who now rides the body of the Aumrarr Taeauna, and has a spell-link sunk, like a great hook, deep in the mind of Malraun."
Chill fingers were climbing his other leg, now. He dispensed another smile down into the face of their owner.
"Wherefore it is only prudent, cold ladies, that your lord and master Narmarkoun for now works only through false Narmarkouns and lesser agents, and remains hidden here with you."
The crawling servitor had almost reached him. He turned to face her, and murmured a word that slapped back all of the dead women entwined around him into shuddering, curling retreat.
He had transformed no less than four of his undead women into semblances of himself, and installed them in as many remote tower lairs, just to see if Lorontar paid any attention.
The "himself" in Galath had just been torn apart by lorn, and those lorn could only have been sent by Lorontar. Wherefore the Lord Archwizard was hunting for him; he'd been right to set forth his duplicates.
Narmarkoun smiled. He could have spun a spell to pluck up the decaying woman-she was barely more than a lolling skull, two arms, and a crumbling pelvis trailing a few ends of bone-to hang upright in the air facing him. Yet it was easier to just reach down, physically embrace her, and hold her against him while he breathed the spell into her pitiful bones.
Besides, nothing thrilled him more than these silent, chill embraces.
Chapter Two
Nothing but dust and grit. Rod rubbed a pinch of it between his finger and thumb, sighed, and let the rising breeze slowly take the rest out of his hand.
Damn. When his hand was empty, he drew the gauntlet back on, anger flaring again. He was useless. As bumbling and fumbling as always… Shaking his head, Rod turned and looked all around.
Trackless forest, in every direction. He looked down carefully at the ground, seeking markings or anything special that would help him find this exact spot again, or show him some evidence that magic had in the past brought more people here than just him.
Nothing. A muck of dead leaves and loose forest loam everywhere, small tree-roots wandering through it all, muddy here and over there… it was the same as everywhere else underfoot that he could see.
Face it, Rod, you're lost.
As bloody usual.
Lost in the heart of some forest he'd never seen before, a real forest. Deep and dark, stretching away in gently-rolling hills that he could barely see through all the trees, as gloomy as Hades in all directions. No proper clearings, the sky above a bright milky overcast so he couldn't even try to tell east from west… oh, he was lost, all right.
No roads, no trace of woodcutters' axes… this forest was old. And by the looks of things, he was highly likely to become "forest prey" for something, once it got dark.
Rod stepped a few paces away from the spot where he'd appeared and looked back at it. No, nothing special. No kindling magic or little glows or… or anything.
Rod sighed. So, Robinson Crusoe, how to keep from walking in circles and getting scurvy?
The trees looked very much the same in all directions. He wished them a naughty word, declaiming it slowly and pleasantly, as he tried hard to think of something, and… chanced upon a thought.
Rivers flow downhill, and eventually to lakes, perhaps the sea, and if he was very lucky, a port or fishing village or something of the sort. And if he was always following a stream, he might zig and zag a lot, but he could hardly walk in circles.