Ed Greenwood - Arch Wizard

The Aumrarr traded glances with each other again. Juskra was visibly itching to bury her sword in Garfist, but Dauntra gave her a glare, shaking her head.

"I know where it is," she told Garfist, slowly and reluctantly, "but we've not sought to recover it, yet. That -" She pointed at the mindgem. "-we came seeking first. Dyune was supposed to have hidden it here at Stormcrag and then departed without the two of you-or anyone else-ever seeing her."

"Ever kings scheme, yet the Falcon rends all bright plots awry," Garfist quoted an old ballad archly. "Even, it seems, the clever plans of Aumrarr."

"Enough of this," Juskra snapped, glaring at Iskarra. "Give us the gem, or I'll start cutting large slices off your man, here!"

Garfist grabbed for her sword then, barehanded. She backed hastily away and brought its point up to menace his face and throat.

He gave her an unpleasant grin. "Threaten someone it'll work on. For us, save yer breath. Ye need us, not just yon stone and the skull. Hey?"

Dauntra sighed, shoulders sagging. "Yes."

Garfist gave Juskra a sardonic look, arching one eyebrow. She grimaced in disgust and lowered her blade.

"That's better," he growled. "Now, the two of ye, heed: Isk and I may well be quite willing to aid ye. If ye speak truth, and keep nothing back from us. Ye Aumrarr love to keep secrets, but there's none but us to say ye didn't, hey? If you speak truth, the Falcon might even smile on ye, for once! So speak. We know ye need us, so what we're to do is something no Aumrarr can succeed at. We know 'tis dangerous and urgent, or ye wouldn't be here in the dead of night drawing steel on us. So spill all, lasses! What d'ye need us for?"

"If we tell you," Dauntra said quietly, "the mere knowing leaves you standing in danger."

"Sister, no! " Juskra snapped. "We dare not-"

"You daren't not tell us," Iskarra snapped out, her voice louder than the scarred Aumrarr, and ringing with the iron of command, "or you lose your chance. Either we refuse, you slay us, and you go out into the night with no gem and the need to hunt down more humans who'll aid you-or you tell us all, and we can begin whatever task you need us for. I will not aid and serve captors who hurl us hither and yon like old cloaks and tell us nothing, but I could very well fight alongside someone who trusted me, and treated me as worthy to know what is going on."

Her words rang out into a sudden stillness, as the two Aumrarr turned to lock eyes with each other.

A swift and silent war was fought in a few unfolding moments, through their sharp eyes, and then Juskra tossed her head, sighed loudly, and announced, "Very well. The truth. We, yes, need humans, because the warning-spells on Lyraunt Castle are keyed to rouse the place if any Aumrarr comes within their reach."

"Malraun's spells," Garfist rumbled. Both Aumrarr nodded, so he asked, "And ye need to get into Lyraunt Castle why?"

"To put the skull in… a particular place, therein," Dauntra replied, "and the gem in another specific spot."

Letting the weariness of worn-thin patience sound clearly in his voice, Gar asked flatly, "Why?"

"The Doom you named has created gates-magical ways to and from far places, traversed in a step; waerways, some call them-in the castle," Juskra replied. "Two of them."

"We know what gates are," Isk said softly. "You seek to close them."

Dauntra nodded. "The spells on the skull will disrupt the enchantments of the larger gate, yes. The second, smaller one we believe to be the Doom's secret; his 'back door' if you will. If we can place the mindgem in it, and he later tries to use that way into the Castle, quite likely to find out and fix what happened to his other gate, the powers of the gem will affect him."

Garfist glared at her ere asking patiently, "And do what?"

"Scramble his mind to drooling idiocy, if the luck of the Falcon is with us," Juskra muttered.

"And if it isn't?"

"Enrage him into setting aside his schemes for as long as it takes to come after us, and destroy us," Dauntra said quietly.

Iskarra frowned. "So the gem won't close the gate?"

"No." Juskra grounded the point of her sword on the floor, leaned on its quillons, and sighed, "Yon stone will just sit there in it, waiting for Malraun to get too close."

Garfist nodded. "So, now, where are these gates?"

She fixed him with a hard, direct stare. "Telling you where the larger one lies is a waste of breath if you haven't been inside Lyraunt Castle, until we're flying above it and I can point the right roof out to you. The second one is in a bedchamber at the top of Lyraunt's tallest tower. The bed all but fills that room, and the gate awaits anyone squeezing under the bed, right at the back, by its headboard."

Acquiring the ghost of a smile, the sword-scarred Aumrarr added, "You're too fat to use that waerway, unless you've brawn enough to heave the whole thing up on your back."

"You welcome would-be allies so charmingly," Isk told her sharply.

The reply was a shrug, but Dauntra said, "Juskra, please. Garfist, Iskarra; we need you to be the ones who place the skull and the gem for us. Now."

"Why now?" Garfist asked, suspicion sharpening his voice from its usual growl.

"Because," Juskra told him grimly, "the armies of monsters and mercenaries Malraun has sent flooding across all Falconfar this side of Galath will reach Ironthorn soon enough. Then it'll be too late, and you can die smug and secure, knowing you could have saved the world. But chose not to."

Taeauna smiled up at her Master, there on the hilltop. Looming above her, the gloating Doom threw back his head to laugh at the stars, and compelled his wards-the spells that would turn aside any arrow, hurled weapon, or hard-swung blade the more ambitiously treacherous of his warriors might decide to send his way-to glow more brightly, outlining him in eerie flames that burned nothing and gave off no heat.

He blazed coldly on that blood-drenched hilltop, awakening mutters of awe and wary regard among his warriors. Behold Malraun the Matchless, triumphant in victory. The overconfident fool.

Behind Taeauna's smiling face, too far down in the dark depths of her mind for Malraun's light hold over her to sense, Lorontar chuckled in glee.

Malraun's decision to let his playpretty, this wingless Aumrarr, lead the army was brilliant, of course.

And it was a notion he, Lorontar, had planted in Malraun's head, working with slow, deft patience through Malraun's mindlink with Taeauna. The Matchless One had swallowed the idea as his own without any suspicion… without even beginning to suspect Lorontar's influence.

So, now, if Malraun did depart, with Taeauna in charge, Lorontar would cloak himself even more deeply, and happily exert a little more mind-control over the Aumrarr.

Making her lead the Army of Liberation in an attack on Galath.

That would draw preening little Malraun into a frantic effort to quell the fighting. He would want to salvage some part of this army, after all, and seek to conquer Galath not on the battlefield, but by storming and coercing the mind of its new king. Thus gaining dominion over a Galath as undamaged as possible, not a kingdom ravaged by war or plunged into fresh and ongoing civil strife as this or that ambitious arduke or baron sought the throne.

Yet thanks to Lorontar's deft reminders, worked in one mind here and another there, King Melander Brorsavar of Galath was now protected by the diadem given by the meddling Aumrarr to a long-ago predecessor, to keep the mind of he who sat the Throne of Galath shielded from hostile magics.

Malraun might get an unwelcome surprise or two. If he was foolish enough to bring Taeauna along with him as he sought to master Brorsavar, one of those surprises might be a long, cold length of warsteel plunged up his backside a long and bloody way inside him.