The knights scattered into a ring, swords and daggers out. Their points were thrust toward Rod, not out at the shadows in the garden.
"No," Rod protested weakly. "Whatever you gave me earlier, that made me babble so… it's back."
He sank to his knees before Thalden could shift his grip, and then to a crawling along one of the soft garden paths.
Moss, he thought to himself, suddenly acutely aware of the look and feel of what was under his palms. It's all moss. Thicker and grander than any I've ever seen before…
The garden was all snakelike curved beds, each one different, each a ridge of heaped earth drenched in shrubs and natural-seeming stones and little shade trees, wandering its own way through the ribbons of moss… Rod crawled along the path like a dazed, unsteady babe, as whatever Syregorn had given him returned with a vengeance, rolling like silent surf through his mind.
Its thunders submerged him, and he was only dimly aware that he was talking again, fast and wildly and about anything and everything, the words tumbling over each other as he ranted on-and the knights slowly closed in around him in a looming ring, grim disgust on their faces.
"Strike him senseless," Reld muttered.
"We daren't have him making so much noise, right here next to where a Doom may be sleeping!" Perthus hissed, looking to Syregorn.
"Aye, silence him," Tarth agreed.
The warcaptain held up one hand at them in a clear signal to desist, and ordered, "Pick him up. Gently. Carry him back there, to yon farthest corner, and set him carefully down, where he has space to lie on his back. No talking."
Rod babbled on as they took him carefully under the armpits and around the legs, and lifted. "So then the Aumrarr showed me a greatfangs, dead and stinking, and God it reeked, like all the open cesspits and rock concert vomit put together, so foul that-"
"What about him?" Reld whispered at Syregorn.
The warcaptain's reply was flat and cold. "Magic has prevented me obeying one order from Lord Hammerhand-for this night, at least. I will therefore do my utmost to fulfill his other commandment, and learn all I can from this one who calls himself Lord Archwizard."
"You mean-?"
"I mean I'm going to sit and listen. The rest of you can explore the gardens if you'd like-in pairs, and with at least two of you standing guard over our babbler with me. Oh, and I want someone watching yon door at all times."
"There're only six of us-seven with you, Syre."
"And eight, with this Rod Everlar. I learned to count too, Perthus." The warcaptain's voice was quiet but very dry, and his youngest knight flushed dark red in the moonlight, and said not another word.
Rod did, though. He couldn't help himself, though what he was revealing was embarrassing him into squirming, blushing depths of humiliation. "No magic at all, but Taeauna insists I'm the Lord Archwizard, greatest of the Dooms, and I don't feel heroic, don't feel lordly or that I have any right to tell anyone to do anything. I can't swing a sword, can't hunt, can't even light a bloody fire…"
The moss was just as soft in the deep gloom where two of the garden walls met, and bushes flourished in that corner and on the bed two steps away, across the last, looping-nigh-the-walls path. They lowered Rod Everlar onto his back as gently as if he'd been an honored corpse being laid on an altar. Syregorn sat down beside Rod's head, plucked a long shoot from a nearby bush he evidently recognized, and started chewing on it.
It protruded from his mouth, dancing gently, as he leaned over Rod's face and asked into the helpless, endless flood of words, "So, were you born in Falconfar, Everlar?"
"No no no," Rod found himself saying eagerly. "I was born on Earth, in the real world. In a hospital that's been torn down now, in the usual way, or so I'm told. I don't remember when I was really young, except standing in a garden one summer in the sun, staring at sunflowers as big as my face; they always told me that summer must have been when I was three, and-"
"How did you get from this Earth to Falconfar?"
"Tay-Taeauna came for me, and cried for my help, and the Dark Helms came to finish her off, and she told me to weave a dream-gate, and-and I guess I did. Just as they swung their swords-"
"A dream-gate?"
"Think of Falconfar, she told me. Look at me, but think of Falconfar-and it worked! We went from my bedroom to the road leading up to the keep!"
"Oh? What keep?"
"Hollowtree Keep, of course, up in the hills east of Galath. One of my favorite creations."
'"Creations'? Ah, and what else have you created?"
"Well, ah, Falconfar, and almost everything in it. This place. Ironthorn and the Raurklor and Galath and all."
Someone who wasn't Syregorn snorted in disgust, and Rod became vaguely aware that some of the knights were standing nearby, listening.
"A madman," one of them muttered, to another. "I knew it."
Rod also became aware that the bald warcaptain was fiercely but silently waving his knights away, now, even as he bent closer to Rod to say in a gently soothing voice, "Let's go back to Hollowtree Keep. Why is it one of your favorites?"
"Ah, Syre, shouldn't we be-?"
That low, uncertain voice broke in on them from just above and behind Rod, the opposite direction from the now-retreating knights. It was Reld, and he was jerking his head in the direction of the distant door that led out of the gardens into Malragard.
Syregorn gave that knight a level look. "You're in a particular hurry to die? Alone in the undoubtedly-spell-guarded fortress of a Doom of Falconfar?"
"Alone? But I won't be…" Reld trailed off under the warcaptain's grim glare.
"Ah, but you will be. If you step through that door right now, none of us'll be going with you. Yet if you feel you must, go right ahead-disloyal knight of Hammerhold. We'll tell Lord Hammerhand you died valiantly. And foolishly."
Reld moved his mouth as if he was going to make some sort of reply, but then flushed, closed it again, bowed his head in acceptance, and stepped back into the night.
I know JUST bow he feels, Rod thought, as his own verbal flood flowed on. Humiliated, an idiot, a failure. Some fantasy book hero I'm turning out to be. Wandering along like a dimwit while others do what they like with me, smirk at me, and deem me an utter dolt. And they're right, every last one of them.
He paused for breath, and Syregorn's gentle voice returned. "So that's all you know about the Aumrarr? Well, then, tell me more of what you know of the world you came from, this Earth."
Syregorn was smiling, but the smile never touched his eyes. He went right on with his careful, quiet questions-and helplessly, while fear grew inside him like a cold, awakening worm, Rod obediently babbled on and on about the real world.
The warcaptain wanted to know about everything. What people wore, how they locked their doors at night, how they spent each day.
Of course. Syregorn was learning all about a foe, so be could invade them and swiftly do all the right things to conquer. And I'm telling him, God help me. Shit. Earth was about to become doomed.
The mists faded away, leaving Garfist and Iskarra lying on a cold stone floor in each other's arms.
They were lying at about the center of an empty, plain stone room, in a castle or fortress somewhere, and there was a singing stillness in the air that smelt of magic and emptiness. They were alone… or at least it felt like there was nothing alive nearby.
"Malragard?" Garfist whispered hoarsely. Isk shrugged her wordless reply, then patted at his ribs to signal that she'd like to be free of his tight embrace.
Gar obligingly opened his arms, and she rolled out of them and up to her feet in one supple, eel-like wriggle, to crouch and peer alertly in all directions.