Ed Greenwood - Arch Wizard

Rod Everlar, a successful author of Cold War action thrillers and fantasy novels set in his imagined world of Falconfar, is astonished one night when Taeauna-one of a race of good winged warrior women he created for his fantasy books-literally falls out of his dreams, onto his bed.

Badly wounded and beset by sinister black-armored warriors known as Dark Helms (created by a computer game manufacturer who purchased the rights to his world), Taeauna pleads with Rod to aid her-and Falconfar.

Rod discovers that the world he thought was created only in his imagination is all too real-and that its people believe he, Rod Everlar, is its Lord Archwizard or Dark Lord, the most powerful of the "Dooms," powerful wizards who can literally change Falconfar with their magic.

Plunged bewilderingly into a Falconfar that is familiar but also dangerously different from his imaginings, Rod finds himself swept into an ongoing civil war in the kingdom of Galath, where one of the Dooms, the wizard Arlaghaun, is goading the King of Galath into establishing absolute tyranny over the Galathan nobles.

For years, the three Dooms-the wizards Arlaghaun, Malraun, and Narmarkoun-have fought each other, in an uneasily balanced struggle wherein none of them could achieve supremacy. Rod's arrival shatters that balance, just as Arlaghaun is on the verge of seizing control over Galath.

There are signs that a long-dead wizard of matchless might, Lorontar-the only Lord Archwizard ever known in Falconfar before Rod-is stirring, somehow still alive (or perhaps not), and seeking to control the living.

At the end of Dark Lord, the first novel of Falconfar, the wizard Arlaghaun is slain in the fortress of Ult Tower. The wizard Malraun appears, snatches Taeauna, and magically whisks her away as his captive, leaving Rod Everlar (laden with magical items from Ult Tower he's snatched up but doesn't understand) raging helplessly, wanting to rescue her but not knowing how.

For what happens next, read on…

The Dark Helms laughed.

They stood at ease, forming a ring in the dark, torchlit stone chamber, hands on hips, not a blade drawn. In their midst, emerald eyes blazing in fury, clad only in manacles attached to a few rattling links of chain, Taeauna of the Aumrarr swung a sword at them.

A sword that skirled and shrieked as it struck-nothing. Empty air as hard as stone, in front of every Dark Helm. Spells shielded them all from her steel, striking it ringingly aside amid sparks as she slashed and swung and panted, sobbing in frustration.

Rod Everlar snarled out his own frustration, standing in front of the magic mirror with the gauntlet that held the orb raised in front of him, fumbling with Klammert's notes.

"Take me there!" he spat, glaring at Taeauna and the Dark Helms, in the mirror before him. She was in a dungeon or a fortress somewhere-a large, bare, stone-lined chamber with iron torch-sconces in the walls, but that room could be anywhere…

"Take me to Taeauna!"

His shout made the orb against his palm quiver, as if it was an egg trying to hatch, and the gauntlet covering it grew a sudden glow. A glow that washed away again in a handful of instants, leaving the gauntlet as dark as ever.

In the mirror, the Dark Helms were advancing, crowding together, their ring tightening around Taeauna, and they were raising their own gauntleted hands.

"Take… me… to… Taeauna," Rod snapped, spacing the words out slowly in fierce determination as he glared hard at the image of the bare, wingless Aumrarr.

They were starting to slap her now, or rather, swinging their hands at her and letting that stone-hard air bludgeon her, driving her back and reeling, the sword clanging out of her grasp. She fell to her knees, crying out in pain-and Rod, trembling with the head-pounding effort of trying to will himself to her, roared out his own wordless rage.

And Ult Tower, around him, flickered and turned golden. The walls, the air…

Everything had a golden hue, as if he was peering through gilded goggles. "Taeauna!" he shouted. "Tay, I'm coming!"

In the mirror, Taeauna's head jerked up, and she stared around, wide-eyed in hope, for all Falconfar as if she could hear him.

Against his palm, the orb suddenly started to burn. Around him, the golden hue blazed up brightly, until he could no longer see the walls, the mirror, the very floor under his feet…

There was nothing under his boots, nothing at all! Though the orb was painfully hot and getting hotter, the air around had acquired a chill and was moving, the faintest of whistles rising past his ears… Was he falling? Hurtling down to his death, smashed on unseen rocks below? It didn't seem as if he was descending…

"Taeauna," Rod snarled, clinging to his last image of her, head lifted in hope, looking around for her. It didn't feel as if he was falling at all. Around him there were no walls now-nothing but a fading golden glow, a radiance as thick as mist that hid his surroundings from him, yet showed him space, empty air, further away from him than the walls of Ult Tower around the magic mirror…

He was rushing along through a great nothingness, as the golden glow around him ebbed into silver; a strained and thinning hue that he could see through now, could see a golden, roiling cloud ahead, a cloud he was rushing to meet at a speed that made him blink and swallow.

He was still swallowing when he raced into the depths of that cloud, surging golden flows of energy that slowed him and thrust against his arrow-swift flight, shoving him and buffeting him… as if in a dream, he became aware that some of the enspelled armor he was wearing had flared into angry radiances of its own, and was melting.

Not a fiery death he could feel-there was no heat at all-but it was shrinking and being clawed away by the golden mists around him, silently leaving his limbs in great spreading holes and gaps as he plunged on. Ahead he could see the torches of the chamber again, hear the faint laughter of the Dark Helms as they clustered closely around Taeauna, chuckles rising in a crescendo as a gasp of pain burst out of her.

"Taeauna!" he cried again, willing himself on. The orb had lost its heat against his skin, and he was slowing… slowing…

Glossy black armor loomed up in front of him, almost close enough to touch. He reached forward, stretching out his arm, straining-and Taeauna's slender, long-fingered hand thrust out between two dark-armored legs, reaching for him, trying to-

The golden radiance surged up in front of him with an audible snarl of power, hiding Taeauna and the Dark Helms and the torches all at once, smashing at his stretching hand… driving it back.

Wincing at the sting in his fingers, Rod shook his bruised hand and thrust it forth again-but the silver mist around him was gone, drowned in angry gold, and he was tumbling, heels snatched above his head and flung back, thrust along in wild and sprawling helplessness, slammed back across uncharted emptiness amid a chaos of angrily-roiling golden fire.

Tumbling crazily over and over, glimpsing momentary rifts and rents in the thundering golden surges, rifts that held silver-shimmering air, tall castles on great fists of rock that floated in midair, bat-winged and hulking beasts with long claws and no heads that waited with arms spread hungrily, and armies galloping with lowered lances through the billowing smoke of dozens of fires… unfamiliar scenes, all, faster and faster until Rod was almost weeping in confusion, his head spinning, and-

It ended as swiftly as it had begun, leaving him standing silently in the damp green depths of what looked to be a trackless, seemingly endless forest. Rod Everlar didn't have to look all around to know he'd never seen it before.