He stared at nothing, seeing a blank stone wall and emptiness beyond in his mind. The empty field or chamber was its old, old way of telling him he knew nothing at all about something-but the stone wall was how he'd always known he was forgetting something. A broken down, ruined stone wall, under an open sky, but this was inside, a tall and strong barrier in front of his nose.
Something was being hidden from him. By whom, and how, he had no idea, but the very thought frightened him, leaving him shivering.
"Lord?" the sentinel asked hesitantly, from just behind him. "Are you-is aught wrong?"
Deldragon lifted his head, set his jaw, and snapped, "No. Not yet."
He spun around, barely seeing the man, only vaguely aware that his sudden movement had made the man dip his spear menacingly and then hastily raise it again with an apologetic mumble.
Instead, he was seeing himself in bright armor again, riding among the tents of a great encampment. Inspecting an army; his army. His knights were coming forth from the tents to salute him, his men looking up at him with smiles on their faces, all the might of Bowrock arrayed across a great meadow and filling it…
"Yet I know what I must do," he heard himself telling the guard, not really knowing why, and seeing no foe or battlefield. "We must ready ourselves for war. All Bowrock must stand prepared to fight."
The sentinel said not a word, but the moonlight was on his face, and Deldragon could read it well enough.
"Yes," he said wryly, knowing his lips were twisting. "Again."
Rod found himself falling gently down through a red mist, a mist of flowers-flowers? — to stand before a stone gate he'd never seen before, in a misty forest. It was a gate with a fortress behind it, and warm firelight was flooding out around the chinks in the old and ill-fitting wooden doors of that keep. Doors that were suddenly guarded by nude women holding drawn swords. Women bare from the throats down, who had the dark, menacing helmed heads of Dark Helms.
"Who are you?" they challenged him, stepping forward to point their glittering blades at him.
"Rod Everlar," he replied, bubbles flooding out of his mouth. Had they heard him?
"I thought so," the foremost said fiercely, and tore off her helm. It was Taeauna, but she thrust her thumbs under her chin and peeled the flesh up and off, too, in a drifting mist of blood, to reveal-
The mouthless face of a lorn.
The other guards all laughed, and it was the shrill, cruel mirth of women who hated him.
"What is this place? Who's lord here?" he asked quickly, as they all started toward him.
"Zundarl rules here. We kill you in his name," was the smugly chanted reply.
Zundarl? Who the hell was Zundarl?
Not a name he knew, nothing of his writing, but "hell" was familiar enough. Hell meant a great dark gulf, and despairing shrieking from shattered skulls that still had eyes, staring redly at him as he fell into it, joining the general plunge down to-
Land lightly on his feet, on a high platform of stone, a great slab that shuddered under Rod's boots with the deep, approaching roar of the great winged beast that had just landed. The clap of its great wings set his red cloak-red cloak? Where'd he acquired a red cloak? — to swirling, buffeting him with gusts of wind that made him stagger. Cloak flapping, he hastily drew his sword, and had to thrust it far out into the air, just to hold his balance.
That blade was in his left hand, suddenly, and there was a quill pen in his right, a great white plumed feather larger than any he'd ever seen before, trimmed to a point that dripped dark red blood.
No, streamed dark red blood, in a constant welling that came from nowhere he could see. No feather could hold that much gore…
There was nothing to write on, though, and the monster was turning to regard him, slow and massive, baleful menace in its great gloating eyes even before their gaze found him.
Turning, so huge that its tread and throat-rumbling were shaking the high landing where he stood, sending small shards crumbling off the steps below and tumbling down to…
It was a greatfangs, the largest he'd ever seen, bigger than any dragon, and there were more of its kind-smaller, but each one still easily larger than a castle as they glided past-filling the sky behind it.
The greatfangs was reaching out its huge neck, crashing through a space in the castle in front of Rod that wasn't large enough for it. Its great bony beak of a snout came at Rod like a thrusting dagger, the flaring ridges of the widening head behind all those fangs hurling down stones with an ongoing clatter.
Folk were screaming and running out of the groaning, leaning keep now, as shattered stone-work plunged down around them.
Rod found himself staring in fascination at the forest of upthrust horns atop the head of the greatfangs, the many spines that defend the head of every greatfangs from the closing jaws of larger greatfangs and of dragons.
Staring as it all came nearer… he could do nothing with his bloody pen or his puny sword… the eyes of the greatfangs kindled into the bright glee of the devourer, its forest of fangs parted, and the snout came for him…
Rod came awake shouting.
Or had he cried out? The echoes of something were ringing in his ears, he thought, but Malragard seemed silent and empty around him.
He was sitting upright atop his heap of clothes, sweating, his heart pounding in fear as he stared into the darkness.
Fear… and anger, too, like red coals under it getting ready to flare. He'd not dreamed so vividly and so, so… energetically for years, and never had a dream held so much of the astonishing and utterly unfamiliar.
Malraun. It must be Malraun tampering with his dreams.
Oh, not deliberately, riding his mind and meddling-why bother, when a Doom of Falconfar could so much more easily blast any mind he could enter, or conquer will and thought and memory, to enslave the owner of the mind?
No, this was more, uh, automatic. As if it was happening to him just because he was inside Malraun's fortress, and so within reach of spells the wizard had cast to affect everyone like this.
Rod swiped the back of his arm across his drenched face.
So, were greatfangs flying through the skies above a keep somewhere in Falconfar, or smashing open the front of that fortress to turn and menace a man in a red cloak, who was standing alone on a high stone terrace one moment and gone into empty air the next?
Just because he, a Shaper, the Lord Archwizard of Falconfar, dreamed matters stood thus?
Or was he just a sleepy, deluded writer of thrillers and fantasy trilogies who had no real power at all? A bumbler who could do nothing in Falconfar unless some lurking wizard or other worked magic to make things happen, hiding behind Rod Everlar as a cover for their deeds…
Taeauna fought to scream out her rage, but managed only the faintest of gasps. Lorontar's will was a great fist of power against her feeble infant's fumblings, flooding through her and leaving her dazed and helpless.
Flooding through her not to slay or savage, but to soothe.
Caress and cozen not the mind of Taeauna of the Aumrarr, but that of the man sprawled atop her, the wizard who styled himself Malraun the Matchless.
To keep him deeply asleep, no matter what guards came shouting or seeking to shake him out of slumber, as morning came to Darswords.
Bound and helpless under him, Taeauna lay silent. Seething, but held in a grip that wouldn't allow her to so much as curse softly.
She'd never thought she'd miss cursing so much.
Iskarra shook her head again, trying not to spew what little was in her stomach. She'd just plunged out of spiraling red mists, a long and sickening fall that had ended-none too gently-in a landing on hard stone battlements in the gray and misty chill before dawn.