"Yes," he said aloud, sighing again. "Looking back, it's hard to see it as anything better than one blundering foolishness after another. I suppose that's one way to describe the career of a reckless hero as well as an utter failure, but… I'm no hero, that's for sure."
He started to pace. "Not that I ever claimed to be a hero or wanted to be a hero. I just wanted to help Taeauna… and right now, to help free her."
He clenched his fists, remembering that moment of thinking of Falconfar so vividly he'd managed to bring himself and Taeauna here… or had he? Could it have been Taeauna, working with him, that managed it?
Well, he had to try. Clenching his teeth as well as his fists, Rod shut his eyes and strained to picture Taeauna in his mind. Her every movement, her smell, her eyes when they looked at him with scorn-and admiration-and amusement-and exasperation, and a dozen other occasions… and the feel of her skin against his when they'd been in that bed together in Bowrock, and…
Rising pain distracted him. Looking down, he saw blood dripping from between his fingers. He'd tightened his fists so hard that he'd driven his fingernails into his palms.
And for nothing. It hadn't worked. He was still here in Malraun's tower. Alone.
Or so he hoped.
Letting out his biggest sigh yet, he flung himself down on the heap of clothes, and tried again to get to sleep.
So he could dream of destroying Malragard and striding across Falconfar like a mighty colossus, smashing castles and Dooms of Falconfar with snarling blows of his fists, and reaching down to pluck up Taeauna, the wingless yet beautiful Aumrarr of Falconfar.
Hoping, as he did, that she'd not spit at him with rage and disgust, and spurn him on the spot.
Silence, and a pale white glow.
All around him, yet far away as he floated, screaming but silent, agonized but numb, staring but blind…
Narmarkoun. He was Narmarkoun, wizard… Doom of Falconfar. And he was in Yintaerghast, chill and empty… yet somehow watchful, all around him…
Yes, he was… he was floating in tangled and torn spells, drifting in midair, their pearly glows the radiance he'd been seeing.
Shieldings, by the looks of their ruination, all bound up around him against one wall of the small, hidden chamber where…
Yes, where spells that must have been cast by Lorontar himself, long, long ago, were still at work on a distant living mind.
He remembered shrieking rage, and being blasted and hurled away by a furious mind that wanted him dead yet barely perceived him, and knew him not.
Yet now he felt… splendid. Not cold or bruised or hungry, not tired, and not hurt in any way. The shieldings-and where had they come from? Magics of Lorontar, left waiting for just such a moment of calamity? — seemed to have spent themselves not only keeping him from the slightest harm, but in healing and renewing him!
He felt marvellous. Narmarkoun swung his feet down, flexing one scaly blue arm and marveling at its fresh, gleaming, new appearance. The moment his boots touched the floor, he was upright and standing calmly amid the shieldings-which were fading away now, and growing dim as they settled toward the floor and vanished before they reached it…
He made no move toward the bright floating image of the brain. It was as alive as ever, magic surging around it and pounding through it in a soundless tumult of power. He shook his head in admiration, and more than a little fear. This could only be the work of Lorontar, and as such it must be older than the oldest Galathan noble lineage, yet it was as powerful, as vibrant, as if it had been cast mere moments ago.
The mind it was keeping conquered was alive and aware and seething at being enslaved, and in the instant he'd tasted its regard it had seemed somehow female… and human but strangely, subtly different than human-or most humans.
A mind that was in Falconfar, and active-not sleeping in some tomb or in the spell-frozen guise of a statue. Active somewhere distant from here, and-he somehow knew, as he gazed on those rushing, humming flows of magic-long under the control of this spell.
It was a mind of power, too. Not necessarily a wizard, but someone who had known and wielded magic enough not to be awed by the very thought of it.
Perhaps, if he-no. He'd been blasted once before, smashed down helplessly in a moment of passing thought. He might well not survive a second contact, if he probed with any determination and gave that captive brain more of a mind-moot to lash out at him through, and longer to do it in.
Best to just withdraw, healed and hale. It was enough to know that Lorontar had left magics behind to control and compel, spells that worked yet, and that held entrapped the mind of some female creature-it could well be a beast rather than human, perhaps a dragon Lorontar had desired as a steed-somewhere in Falconfar. Flight… yes, it was a mind that had known flight. And a mind that had influenced others of its kind, so that by working through it, Lorontar had held a measure of influence over them, too.
Yet he'd best stop thinking about that captive mind, right now, lest he draw its attention again, and taste another, harder, lashing-forth.
Turning his gaze from the glowing image of the brain at the heart of its eternally rushing whirl, Narmarkoun made his way quietly along the wall and out of the little hidden chamber not nearly as cautiously as he'd come in.
Up into a Yintaerghast as quiet and deserted as before, yet seemingly now familiar and welcoming. It seemed now to be his castle, not Lorontar's.
It wasn't that he suddenly knew its every chamber and passage, but rather as if they were forgotten parts of his home, not unfamiliar menacing corners of the most forbidding fortress known to Falconfar.
Hmm. The shieldings must have done this to him. Not just the healing; they'd left something behind in his mind that he was noticing only now that he was away from those rushing flows of magic.
A new spell was emblazoned in his mind. Shining new and unfamiliar among his deepest, oldest memories. A magic he knew had not been there before, one he'd never mastered or cast.
A spell for overcoming and compelling a mind. Like the mind whose control spell was humming and swirling down in the hidden chamber. Or perhaps not. As Narmarkoun peered at it more closely, letting his thoughts follow its workings to see what it was designed to enact rather than just marveling at its unexpected presence and its shining entirety, he perceived that it was a spell for controlling the minds of creatures of Earth, from here in Falconfar.
Though this arm of incantation, here, coupled to the larger spell with yon binding, made it also, when cast thus, into a means of conquering the minds of creatures of Falconfar while they were in the world called Earth.
So it was not a means of walking down a Stormar port street and compelling merchants to thrust all their coins into his hands, or forcing a Galathan noble to surrendering his daughter to a smiling Narmarkoun upon sight. It would work on lorn or Dark Helms he sent to Earth-or the man called Rod Everlar, here in Falconfar.
Yet even with these limitations, it was a wonder.
And best of all, it was his now, burned into his mind so deeply and securely he'd never need a scroll or to read the glyphs set down in a spellbook to cast it. Just thinking it through, letting his mind follow its intricate paths, would be enough. So long as he was conscious, and unharmed enough to remain strong of will from end to end of its casting.
Right now he felt stronger than he'd ever felt before. Brimming with vigor, on the verge of prancing through these empty rooms out of sheer joy at feeling so… alive.
No longer despairing, or longing to get out of this place and back to Closecandle before Malraun caught him here.