Ed Greenwood - Arch Wizard

"But Chansz-"

"Irrance Tesmer! We do not use his name! Never! Not here, just this once, where no one can hear us, because we never truly know when no one can hear us, do we? Call him 'spy' and and naught else!"

Lord Tesmer put a despairing hand over his handsome face, sighed loudly, and murmured, "Spy, then. The spy said Helnkrist stood empty-ransacked by the overbold when they found its doors open and nothing living within but birds and rats that had strayed inside before them. As if it had been abandoned in such haste that the Master had owned not time enough to take a thing with him! It follows that all he had time to do was take himself out of there, saving his skin in the face of some great foe! This Archwizard of Falconfar, or Malraun, or someone more terrible!"

"My lord, there is no one more terrible. Now stop babbling like a chamberlass and heed: the Narmarkoun in Helnkrist was not our Master."

"What?" Tesmer whirled around incredulously.

"Close your mouth, Irrance. You look like a drooljaws village lackwit." Lady Tesmer's voice was as sharp as her flawless nose and cheekbones, the beauty that still drew Tesmer's eyes and snatched at his breath every time he gazed upon it. Even now, when he stood agape in disbelief.

Her eyes blazed brighter, and he hastily closed his mouth.

Whereupon his wife nodded in satisfaction and informed him firmly, "The missing Narmarkoun was a false Narmarkoun, a lesser wizard serving our Master and wearing, through magic, the shape and seeming of the Master. A double set there in Helnkrist by the real one."

"What?" Tesmer's mouth dropped open again.

His lady didn't bother to hide her scorn. "Irrance, have you paid no attention at all to the Master's words, these last few years-and what can be gleaned from what he does not say?"

Lord Tesmer closed his mouth hastily, paced across the room as anger rose in him, and snapped at the wall that loomed up in his way, "Of course not. I'm too stupid to do so, of course. You miss no chance to make that abundantly clear."

"Now you are being churlish, like one of the stable lads when he's been caught at something. Tesmer, enough. I need you to be Lord of Imtowers-rightful lord of all Ironthorn-now, and set aside your boy's trifles and learn. Irrance, I need your promise."

Tesmer sighed at the wall. "Of course. You have it." You always do, he added silently, as he turned to stride back across the room, slowly and bitterly, still not looking at his wife. You ask for it often enough.

"Irrance, look at me!" Lady Tesmer snapped, like a swordcaptain hurling an order at a disobedient spearboy.

And, Falcon take him, he looked.

Right into her coldest, most satisfied smile. The one that had trapped and fascinated him all these years.

"Heed," she repeated, almost gently, holding him with her eyes. Little flames were leaping in them, by the Falcon. "The real Narmarkoun dwells in Closecandle, in the westernmost Raurklor. He has several false selves, all underlings who serve him-so that Malraun and other foes can watch and betimes smite them, whilst our Master goes about his work unregarded and free of their attacks and meddlings."

Tesmer blinked at her in real amazement. "What is Closecandle, and why have I not heard of it? It's not on any of my maps!"

"And well do you love and trust your maps, my lord." Scorn was clear in Telclara Tesmer's voice again, but it was soft, almost affectionate. "Know you that Closecandle is neither a castle nor a wizard's tower. It is a mountain, reshaped and hollowed out by the Master's magic. How could you hide breeding greatfangs in anything smaller?"

"A mountain." Tesmer shook his head, and then mimicked her voice: "And how would you hide a mountain?"

"Amid other peaks, of course," his wife said sweetly. "The Howlhorns."

He frowned, seeing in his mind that part of his best map where the westernmost reaches of the vast Raurklor gave way to the Howlhorns range, mountains so named for the constant Howling Winds that roared through them. "So remote," he protested. "No roads, no…"

"There are no roads leading to it, and no settlements near it," Lady Tesmer confirmed crisply. "It looks like… a mountain. Very much like the other peaks all around it. And now you know perhaps more than you should know."

The Lord of Imtowers stiffened. "More than I-? Lady, I thought you were my wife."

"I am your wife, Irrance, and we are equals. Yet I seem to have managed to keep secrets, and you cannot even keep yourself from blurting out the name of a common spy. See that you guard this secret rather better. Or it won't be my rebuke you'll have to fear."

Lord Tesmer stiffened again, recalling the utterly cold eyes of the Master-and the dead, ice-cold wenches that had been caressing him and massing menacingly behind him, some of them grotesque rotting things and some of them almost all the way gone to walking skeletons. Not just the fleshless skulls among them had been grinning in endless, ruthless promise. He swallowed, and said quickly, "Tell me more of these false Narmarkouns. I–I should know such things."

"I suppose you should, at that. Do you recall Sornspire from your maps?"

"In southwestern Galath, in the mountains… of the barony of Chainamund. A wizard's tower. Built by the mage Malagusk Sorn, who's been dead for centuries. Abandoned, I thought."

Telclara nodded. "Until the Master installed a false self there."

Lord Tesmer found himself remembering that chilling gaze again, the blue and scaly skin… he managed not to shudder. "Tell me more."

"Irrance, in truth I know only three places: Sornspire, Telnkrist, and Mrelgates."

"Mrelgates," Tesmer said sharply. "In the Taur Waste." The swampy eastern arm of the Rauklor where he'd never been; a dismal, mist-shrouded place. He knew Mrelgates as a fortified merchant's manor, so remote that it must have been built where it was to squat atop a gem-mine, or a lode of gold, or to hide a veritable herd of slaves. "Why there?"

His wife shrugged. "The Master does not tell me such things. I know only that his forces took it by storm. Perhaps he was riding greatfangs, and wanted to give them some experience of striking from the sky under his command."

Tesmer nodded. "Yes, I can see that. You know only these three places, you said; he has others, with a false Narmarkoun dwelling in each?"

"So I believe."

The Lord of Imtowers started to pace again, anger gone but fresh worry rising in him, instead. "Yet if he has so many false selves, why did he not quell all these tales of his destruction by having one of them appear with thunder and hurled spells, to make all Falconfar think him stronger than Malraun?"

"He's trying to feign dead, for some reason," Lady Tesmer replied firmly. "Perhaps until Malraun overreaches himself, somehow."

"But if Malraun's armies come here…"

"We flee or die," Lady Tesmer said crisply. "Unless Narmarkoun awakens in our heads to compel us to do one or the other-or something else-our fates will be in our own hands. Which means the sooner we plan how we'll escape Ironthorn alive, the better!"

Lord Tesmer winced. "Flee? Leaving the gem-mines and…"

"Dead men can't gloat over gems," Telclara Tesmer told him sharply. "And though I doubt you've noticed, Irrance, live Falconaar women are seldom foolish enough to gloat over anything. Doing so always seems to goad the gods, or fate, or greedy neighbors to come and take whatever we're gloating about away from us. Along with our lives, usually."

Lord Tesmer winced again.

His sword still drawn, Darlok led the way.

The eerie glows that had lit up the hilltop were now feeble, dying things, but flames-real flames, not strange magical radiances-were flickering here and there among the fallen, splintered trees.