Narmarkoun had told them long ago that Malraun was behind this "Horgul out of nowhere," and if Malraun saw into minds as often and as energetically as the Master did…
"Don't be a fool, Irrance," Lady Tesmer hissed sharply, leaning forward. Her long black hair, unbound for slumber, fell forward off her shoulders like a glossy waterfall. Her dark brown eyes seemed to blaze up into amber coals when she was angry, and they were smoldering now. "Narmarkoun is no such thing. Malraun's army is certainly something to be worried over-hence my strict orders to the men to withdraw from all frays with Lyrose and Hammerhand-and I know as well as you do that if they arrive in Ironthorn as strong as they are now, we are all doomed. We would be even if you, Burrim, and Magrandar were lovers, and all the Ironthar knights one united and superb army, against the numbers this Horgul leads."
Lord Tesmer grimaced in disgust and got to his feet, chamber-gown swirling out behind him like a cloak. He was tall and graceful, for all his broad-shouldered brawn, but the years had streaked his hair with white and etched lines of worry across his face. "Lovers, Clara? Must you say such things?"
"Blood of the Falcon, Irrance, will you stop thinking about trifles? What matters is not a few words of mine that happen to nettle you, but our lives! You've been worrying about what will happen to Ironthorn if Malraun's army comes, among all the countless things you worry about, all this season! Listen to me, Lord of Imtowers, and listen welclass="underline" the one thing you do not have to worry over is the Master's fate. He is not some fugitive wandering the Raurklor, cowering or hiding. You can feel him in your head as well as I do; does he seem any the weaker? Well?"
"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?"