Wise idea, but wedge what?
He could think of nothing suitable he could lay hand on. What was really needed was a stout timber long enough to stand as tall as his chest.
Back in Closecandle, he could snap his fingers and summon such a thing, and with two waves of his hands slice it to the right length if it was too long. Here in empty Yintaerghast…
Narmarkoun stared down into the opening, shrugged again, and dropped down into the shaft. The stones under his feet felt as firm and unmoving as solid rock. He hesitated for a moment, in case the weight of his landing triggered some magic or other to raise them again, but they moved not at all.
After a few breaths of waiting, he turned and ducked down into the small room, where he found no doors, no lurking menaces… nothing but magic, radiating so strongly around the floating object that it beat at him like storm-driven ocean waves. He winced, ducked his head, and shuffled closer, fighting the soundlessly throbbing might that seemed strong enough to drive him to his knees. If all this power was something he could take and use…
He could see what it was at last, close enough now to stare past its wildly flaring glows. It was like trying to see one twig in the heart of a roaring fire, but… he was looking at no ring or dagger or crown, but-a brain!
The brain of a man-or, no, the semblance of one.
Narmarkoun frowned at it, fighting the surging, pounding magical flows to stand motionless so he could peer intently.
He'd seen brains often enough when opening up corpses with his spells, back when he'd been working on mastering undeath. This was no glistening, dripping real brain, floating at about the height of his chest in the heart of this little room. It was an image born of magic, a seeming spun by spells surging into and through a real brain that was somewhere else.
He could see through it, watch the ruby and crimson hues of powerful spells at work as they flooded through it, ebbed, and seethed into it again. The image had the shape of a man's brain on all sides, and the forces shuddering and slamming through it were almost sickening to feel. Not only did he not want to thrust his hand into those powerful magics, he doubted there was anything solid there for him to touch.
Yet he had to know what this brain-or these spells, working on the real brain-did. This might be how Lorontar had controlled Yintaerghast, and if that was so, this might well be his only way to affect its shieldings long enough to get out.
That these were Lorontar's magics, he didn't doubt for a moment. This was nothing he could begin to craft, let alone cast, so it was no work of Malraun's. And these enchantments, for all their briskly flowing energy, were old. They smelled old, they felt old. Old, despite blazing with more power than he'd ever hurled in a single magic…
So reaching out into that with his hands would be folly. Almost certainly fatal folly.
If Lorontar lived yet, reaching out with his mind would likely be just as foolish.
This looked very much like the means by which Lorontar had long and forcibly controlled someone's mind-a mind that still existed, even if the Lord Archwizard was long dead. There were, of course, many who whispered that he lived on still, somehow…
Narmarkoun sighed. This might be his only way out, so he had to know whose mind was linked to these enchantments, who was still controlling them-if anyone-and how to take control of these surging magics.
Or he would probably die in Yintaerghast, alone and despairing, helpless to depart.
Narmarkoun drew in a deep breath, uttered a curse with slow, precise diction, then slowly and reluctantly reached out with his mind, in an inward drifting so slow and cautious that he should be able to snatch his probe back in a trice if-
The first trice told him that there was no "should" in these racing, surging magics.
The second trice told him that the mind that was elsewhere was very much alive, ablaze with long-felt rage and fighting savagely against these magics controlling it.
The third trice was when their minds met, his and the elsewhere one, and that rage blasted into his mind like a bolt of fire.
It was the rage of "Taeauna," he learned, in the fourth trice, just before he, and all Falconfar around him, was hurled away into shrieking oblivion.
On a grand bed in a dark room, a man snored faintly.
Someone was lying under him, spreadeagled and bound that way. She was as bare as the sleeping man, but bruised and bleeding where he was not.
And her eyes had just snapped open, literally flaming in fury.
Taeauna knew just where she was and what Malraun had done to her. She also knew the blundering of his rival Doom had just freed her from Malraun's control.
Worst of all, she knew again who really held her in thrall.
Lorontar. A greater wizard than both of the Dooms working together, who had just reached out from where he'd been hiding in the depths of her mind for so long, to take over that shattered control so smoothly that Malraun the Matchless had not even paused in his snorings. Let alone noticed, even as a shadow in his ongoing happy dreams of forcing himself upon her, that anything was amiss.
She was appalled at how long ago she'd first fallen under his-by the Falcon, how subtle! — sway. Using her as his tool to influence her fellow Aumrarr, to reach out to a Shaper on Earth named Rod Everlar…
Her appalled anger awakened quiet amusement in the mind now gripping hers.
Lorontar smiled at her, in the depths of her mind. As he held her mind in a grasp so strong she could do nothing but his will. Right now he was keeping her still and silent, and hooding the fires of her anger, gently returning her eyes to their usual appearance.
Seething inwardly, Taeauna of the Aumrarr lay silent and helpless under the exhausted and obliviously snoring Malraun.
Rod had spent sleepless nights before, tossing and turning, but he'd never realized just how uncomfortable a bed could be. The cloaks, tunics, and breeches he'd heaped on the floor slid and shifted under him, repeatedly dumping his head low while his feet stayed high. Buttons, pulls, and sewn-on carry-rings galore jabbed at him bruisingly, and the gowns he'd pulled over himself demonstrated a distressing tendency to wait until he was just drifting off to sleep-and then slide, all in a heavy heap, down to bury his face and leave him fighting for air.
It was almost as if Malraun or some impish apprentice left behind by the Matchless Doom was laughing at him and casting one taunting, toying little magic after another to keep him awake, even now that a vast weariness had risen to conquer him.
He could not get to sleep, could not…
What was that?
There had been a stirring sound, or sounds, in the other room. About where the bed was.
Oh, bloody hell-another Telrorna? Did the bed magically spit undead skeletons out, or was there some sort of hidden trapdoor underneath it, that they could come up through?
He grunted his weary way to his feet, and strode unsteadily to the door, to see what was making those faint noises. Before it came for him.
Then he stopped, stared, and chuckled.
Some magic of Malraun's had failed, or faded away-and what did that mean? — and all the cloth and leather on and about the four-poster bed were melting away to nothingness, leaving only a bare bed and a bare and hairy man on it, waking bleary and bewildered.
Onthras blinked at Rod, extended a sleepy hand to point and growl, "L-lord Archwizard? Weren't you s'posed to be-"
Just then a wave of half-seen magic rolled through the air and snatched him away, leaving the bed empty.