Hmmph. He had no magic to speak of, and only in wild fantasy books did magic "just conveniently happen" when you needed it. There was, for example, fat hooting chance he could get himself whisked back to Ironthorn-to a guard-filled Lyraunt Castle, and likely death! — just by finding the right spot in the walled garden and waiting for the magic to work again. No; if the teleport magic worked that way, half the Lyrose warriors would have tramped through that garden to die bloodily all over Malragard already, or Malraun would have set up some sort of nasty welcome in his garden, or something like that.
He couldn't go on, unless he wanted to die. So he'd better retrace his steps, right now while he still had some chance of remembering just where he'd put his feet. Back until he got to that bed where the skeleton had been, and the room beyond that, with all the clothes. Make a bed by heaping clothes on the floor and using more to cover himself, go to sleep on it, and try to dream.
If he could shatter Malragard in his dreams, he might be able to destroy it for real, and so break himself a way out.
Or get himself killed when it collapsed.
Rod shrugged. What other hope did he have?
And he had managed to go from his bedroom to Falconfar, the night Taeauna had literally fallen into his life, just by being upset and thinking of Falconfar hard enough. While Dark Helms were trying to kill them both, too.
So… well, if this didn't work, he'd be in the same boat he was in right now, and he could sit and despair, seeing no way out, all over again.
Or he could get lucky, and find something in those rooms he could write on, and with, and do his Shaping thing.
To get Taeauna back, and Falconfar free of wizards forever.
Except one: Rod Everlar, Lord Archwizard of Falconfar.
Well, fatuous that title might be, but it beat being Rod Everlar, unhappy writer. Sitting home alone wondering what was happening in the world he now knew was all too real.
Sitting home alone, without Taeauna.
"Can't…" Garfist Gulkoun huffed, wobbling almost to a halt, "carry ye… much longer… Snakehips."
He promptly turned his ankle on a cobble, and fell headlong-thankfully into a night-shadowed Harlhoh garden. Iskarra flung herself from his arms, covering her face and throat as she rolled. Some folk left sharp stakes and worse in their gardens.
"Gah! Grrr! Hah!" Gar snarled, lashing out around him with his fists at imagined foes.
Thankfully, no one shouted back, and there were no barks or howls. Folk in Harlhoh, it seemed, kept no dogs, and spent their nights behind secure shutters and heavy barred and bolted doors.
Malraun was probably the reason for that.
Iskarra smiled wryly at that thought. She'd never expected to be thankful for the Matchless Doom of Falconfar, even briefly and in passing. She found her feet, got back to Gar, and hissed at him to shut his row, except to tell her if he was all right.
"I am not all right," he growled, lurching to his feet and stamping hard on someone's flowers to see if his ankle would bear him. It held up, though a wet rustling told Isk that the half-seen thar-da bush behind the flowers hadn't. "I inhabit a world ruled by crazed wizards and their minion-monsters. I'm supposed to be happily retired by now, settling into my dotage with young things bringing me sweet meals and snuggling into my arms-"
"A-hem," Iskarra interrupted him meaningfully.
"Oh, lass, lass, worry not!" Gar rumbled, waving one large and hairy hand. "I'll share 'em with ye!"
"Pray accept my deepest thanks," Iskarra told him icily.
Garfist blinked at her. "Isk, what's got into ye? I rescued ye from yon deadly monsters, didn't I?"
Behind them, the garden rose up into a dark and towering mountain, spilling them both off their feet as the ground quivered and then erupted under their boots.
"It seems not," Iskarra panted into her man's face, as she dashed past him, tugging at his arm as she went. "Run!"
"That's all we ever do, it seems," he grumbled mournfully, as he turned, lowered his head, and burst into a surprisingly powerful sprint.
The trio of Dark Helms advanced menacingly, swords ready in their hands-and the three Holdoncorp vice presidents abandoned all notions that these were crazed fans in homemade costumes. Every movement made by the men in black armor told anyone watching that they were killers, cold-eyed fighting men who knew very well how to use their blades, and daily swung them with brutal efficiency.
Vice President Legal Morton Morton Herkimer the Third completed his assessment of the situation, came to his judgment, and acted with his usual brisk efficiency.
He whirled around, jowls quivering, clapped one hand to his face to hold his glasses firmly in place, and was sent flying by a bone-shaking smack from the moving edge of the door he'd planned to flee back through.
On the other side of that door, Rusty Carroll smiled thinly. He'd shoved the massive thing with perfect timing, and was now dragging it to a halt so he could haul it back open again.
Vice President Finance Sheldon Daumark Hollinshed stared at Rusty, his already florid face going fire-engine red. Before he could wave his arms in his favorite windmilling wind-myself-up-into-a-towering-rage-for-maximum-show tactic and boom forth demands and commands, however, a storm of gunfire and shouting erupted behind the Dark Helms.
Mase's Ground Floor Security men had arrived, and were firing at everything that moved, and bellowing at the walls, floor, ceiling, and nearest wastebasket to "Get down! Get down! Get down NOW!"
Three of those everythings were the other three Dark Helms, and a fourth was the lorn.
The lorn, swooping and darting above the cubicles where everyone could see it, was riddled with semi-automatic fire in less time than it took Mase to draw breath to shout again. It flapped, sagged, flapped more weakly, and crashed down heavily inside a cubicle.
The Dark Helms, who figured out how to throw chairs and computers in that same catching-breath moment, and who saw that these new arrivals were a real danger, responded with swift ruthlessness. All manner of objects were hurled, cubicle walls were toppled, and swords and daggers were thrown and thrust with desperate speed.
As bullets laced ceilings and smacked into windows and pillars in all directions, men started screaming in agony, or fleeing-and they weren't men in medieval-style armor.
As he saw one man crash face-down on the floor and slide to sprawled stillness, blood beginning to flow from under him like a lake, the Executive Vice President of Holdoncorp went white. He turned to dash back through the open door into the Inner Sanctum-but one of the three Dark Helms, now facing him from only a few strides away, plucked out a dagger and threw it so deftly that it passed under both of Jackman Quillroque's expensive shoes, and upended him as if he'd been a kids' television cartoon character encountering a banana peel.
He rolled over to sit up in uncustomarily undignified haste, panting in fear-and stopped, staring at two very sharp-looking sword points that were almost touching his nose.
"W-what do you want?" Jackman Quillroque stammered up at the two men behind those swords, his eyes wild behind his half-glasses and his expensive silk tie caught over one hairy ear.
"Who here has worked on Falconfar, or could work on Falconfar?" the tallest Dark Helm boomed, his voice coming eerily out of his full-face helm.
"Uh, well, ah aha, everyone here at Holdoncorp could work on Falconfar. It's one of our foremost properties, a brand known and valued-eeep!"
Jack Quillroque was infamous in industry circles for his "We can break you!" bluster, but a sword swung viciously at your neck is a very telling argument. Moreover, it's an argument that seems unimpressed by, and even impervious to, bluster at all.