A small, cluttered bedroom, awash in discarded clothes and overflowing ashtrays.
At the heart of it, Mario Drake was now awake, and panting in fear. He'd hurled himself bolt upright in his bed to stare at his own walls until he recognized them. The moment he did, he flung off the covers to turn and claw for a pen and his bedside notepad.
His fingers were fast-too fast-and fumbling. The pen clacked off the wall and the rear of the bedside table and was gone, somewhere underneath things and lost in the darkness.
Sweating and shivering, Drake hissed out wordless frustration and dashed across the room to a desk, to snap on a light and snatch up a pen from a mug of them, and scribble down what he'd seen in his dreams, before his waking thoughts drove him to forget it.
He did this often, though he seldom dropped the pen and had to rouse himself enough to get out of bed. Why, some of his best ideas-the entire plot of Worm Wizards of the Red Star, even-had come out of dreams, had burst into his mind so colorful and stirring that he could remember them still, years later…
Narmarkoun rode that fiercely happy thought like a well-tamed and eager greatfangs, bearing down hard on Mario Drake's sleepy mind, fighting to do… this.
The racing pen slowed, its wielder frowning slightly. What was… He'd never felt this way before. At war with himself, almost. He watched his hand move to stroke through what he'd just written and been so pleased with.
"Exhausted by endless victories, snoring softly atop his bound captive in a bedchamber in conquered Darswords, the wizard Malraun was two battles-perhaps three-away from conquering Galath, and changing Falconfar forever."
Vivid, yes, but wrong. How could he have been so wrong?
It should instead read: "Exhausted by endless victories, snoring softly atop his bound captive in a bedchamber in conquered Darswords, the wizard Malraun never knew that his magic was beginning to fail him. Would henceforth be too feeble, too brief, and too mis-aimed from that moment forth, to ever let him conquer even Galath. The Falcon, or unseen gods, had decided he was not to be the Doom who would change Falconfar forever."
He amended it, writing in swift, firm satisfaction and nodding with every stroke of the pen. Yes. This was right.
Yet his hand was still moving, adding more. "All across Darswords, warriors of his Army of Liberation silently slumped to the ground, dead in an instant, bearing no wounds. Stricken down by the Falcon, men would say, seeing no reason for the deaths they could name. Yet rumors would arise among the paltry handful of survivors that whispered the truth: Malraun's army perished that day from the mighty magic of the foremost Doom of Falconfar, Narmarkoun."
Mario Drake frowned down at his notepad. Who the hell was Narmarkoun?
RAULDRO THE COOK turned sleepily from the cauldron he'd almost nodded off to sleep into, face-forward, his great wooden spoon adrip with the thick brown muck old soldiers liked to call "old boots and dead cat stew."
A loud and sudden metallic crash had just burst upon his ears, from not far behind him.
It had sounded for all the world like someone in full armor slamming down on his visored nose on the cobbled main street or Darswords, then bouncing limply to rest.
And-Falcon spit! — that's just what it was.
As he stared at the sprawled warrior, another pair of soldiers-who'd frowningly turned to see the cause of the noise, just as he had-pitched forward onto their faces, too, the morning quiet broken by more crashes. Then another, and another.
Rauldro gaped. As far as he could see, up and down the street, men were toppling over, for no reason that he could see at all.
Invisible arrows? Nay, for they turned visible when they drew blood, and he could see neither blood nor arrows.
Magic? Well, how could that be, with Malraun the Matchless, greatest wizard in all Falconfar, lording it over Darswords, with this army his own swords of war, besides?
The cook shook his head, utterly dumbfounded. The men lay so still. They looked dead.
And he hadn't even given them any stew yet.
Narmarkoun grinned savagely, in the depths of Mario Drake's mind. It was time to have his newfound Shaper write something simple yet dramatic that had nothing to do with any Doom of Falconfar, something he could check easily.
Aha.
He bore down on Drake's mind again. Let the dolt write of a certain castle in Galath soaring up into the sky-and crashing back down again in rubble, killing everyone in it. Velduke Deldragon's fair fortress of Bowrock, perhaps. Or, no, it was too splendid; he might want to dwell in it himself, some day. Why not-
Drake's mind darkened around him, and Narmarkoun dashed such thoughts away and reached out into it, to see what was happening and to strengthen his hold over the Shaper's mind.
Yet the darkness came on in a flood, blotting out everything, and he could hear Drake grimly wondering aloud, "What's got into me? It's like there's someone in my mind, making me do things! Write things!"
Falcon! The Earth dolt was aware of him! Then there was nothing but darkness; Drake was gone.
The spell was fading!
There was something cold and hard under him. Flat stone. Narmarkoun blinked up at dim vaulted vastness, smelling a familiar slightly sharp, slightly dusty chill. Yintaerghast. He was lying flat on his back in Yintaerghast.
Feeling weak… drained. He rolled slowly over onto his hip, and sat up. The familiar lonely, empty rooms. Good; at least he wasn't facing a sneering Malraun with an army behind the man.
He felt just as empty, and his hand trembled when he lifted it.
Narmarkoun smiled thinly. No, he was in no condition to be hurling spells. Yet he had to know if he'd been right about Drake, had to-
He moved his raised hand in the few simple gestures, murmured the familiar words, and watched the small, spinning brightness form in the empty air in front of him.
"Darswords." he whispered, too tired to will it silently. "Show me Darswords."
In the heart of his little conjured eye the smallhold sprang into view, from the vantage point where he'd stood long ago and murmured one of the words in the incantation. His eye was looking out over the well where three lanes fanned out from the cobbled main street. As Narmarkoun turned it to peer down one street and then another, he saw dead men sprawled everywhere, and more toppling in mid-stride, here and there, as they fled in fear from the unknown slayer who was striking them down.
" Well, now," he gloated. Hundreds he'd seen, in just these few glimpses. "Well, now!"
The eye was wobbling and dimming already, sinking toward the floor like a gliding soap bubble; he was overtired.
Yet happy. As he let himself sag back down to the floor, into the creeping embrace of slumber, Narmarkoun murmured, "I am the foremost Doom in Falconfar, and now all the world knows it! Flee, Malraun, flee and cower-while you still can!"
He waved his hand feebly, as if banishing his rival, as his conjured eye sank into the floor and was gone.
Behind him, across the darkest wall of that vast and dim chamber, a wry and patronizing smile briefly materialized. It was as long as the largest Stormar ship Narmarkoun had ever sailed on, but the foremost Doom of Falconfar was now snoring, and saw it not.
At Holdoncorp, nobody walked to work. From the front gates with their security booth, in the shadow of the mirror-bright silver company name that loomed in man-high letters atop a little artificial waterfall, it was a good mile along a broad and winding drive through the rolling grassy hills of the company golf course to the parking lot security booth.