Falconfar 01-Dark Lord by Ed Greenwood Read Free Book Online Page B

her voice left Rod shivering as she hefted her new sword again and strode on through the nearest doorway. He looked around the dell, and at more vaugren wheeling hungrily down out of the sky to land in it, and then hurried after her.
    "Watch behind us," she ordered, the moment he was inside.
    They were standing in a high-domed room carved from solid rock, with sunlight shafting down through an oval window high overhead, and dead Aumrarr heaped everywhere. The smell of cooked flesh hung strong and heavy in the air, and several of the twisted corpses were a strange iridescent purple.
    "Wizards' work," the living Aumrarr muttered, peering rapidly here and there, as if hidden foes might rise up to blast them both at any moment. The thought awakened an idea in Rod.
    "Can wizards go invisible?" he blurted.
    "Some know that spell, yes," Taeauna told him, as briskly as one of his long-ago schoolteachers. "It's imperfect, though, unless the mage remains still, and it does nothing about noises like breathing and footfalls. There's no spell-hidden watcher here, if that's what you fear."
    She went to one of the niches in the walls where potted plants cascaded lush, waxy green leaves down into the room, and touched a particular spot in the carved stone lip of the opening. To Rod, it looked no different than any of the other shapes amid the running knotwork design, before or after Taeauna's touch. She bent down again to touch another particular spot, in a second lip carving.
    There was a soft click , and the living Aumrarr went to the frame of an interior doorway and thrust her fingers at it. The doorframe swiveled on hidden pivots, moving top to bottom as a single board, to expose a tall, shallow cavity of many finger-sized niches, most of which seemed to hold keys. She selected two of these, and then bent and took something from the bottom of the cavity.
    Rod had just remembered her order to guard their rear, and was turning away. He almost dropped the scabbarded sword she suddenly tossed him, and stood holding it uncertainly until she said, as calmly and as quietly as if she were asking him to pass over a newspaper, "Swing that once or thrice. 'Tis probably a better length for you than the one I gave you earlier."
    Before he could reply, she added, "Ah," in far more interested tones, and plucked something small out of hiding. It looked like the sort of tiny box jewelry store purchases came in, only of smooth-polished wood.
    And then she'd slipped past him as smoothly as any snake and was heading out the door again, into the death-filled garden. Rod followed, wanting to ask her what she was doing but wise enough to hold his tongue. For now, at least.
    Taeauna headed straight for a body Rod hadn't noticed before amid all the others, an Aumrarr on her knees with both hands thrown up in front of her, her face twisted and her mouth frozen open in a shouting position. There was something unnatural about this corpse; Rod stared at it.
    Of course. Twisted like that, and rearing back on its knees, it should have fallen over. Something— magic?—must be holding it up, frozen in its contortion.
    "Taeauna..." Rod burst out, because he could keep quiet no longer.
    "Tried that blade yet?"
    "Tay..."
    The woman who'd brought him to Falconfar drew in a deep breath, and then said quietly, "This was Marintra. One of my closest..."
    Her voice trailed away, and without saying more, she turned abruptly and thrust the wooden box into his hands. Rod dropped the sword as he fumbled with it, hissed a hasty apology, and then got it open.
    He was staring at two flat, smooth stones. Nondescript beach pebbles, or more likely streambed stones, if they'd come from anywhere around here. Rod touched one of them with his finger, and a tiny swirl of sparks arose from the stone, to fade away almost immediately.
    Which meant that these must be the Holdoncorp creations known as speech-stones. Placed on the tongue of a corpse, each of them would work but once, making the