A metal fist dashed him brutally to the floor for his daring, but with a slow, inexorable, grinding groan of metal sliding uneasily down metal, the titan toppled over, crashing onto its side on the tiled floor and bouncing.
Staggering and moaning in pain, his face a mask of streaming blood, the velduke shuffled in beside it, slicing under the helm and then one arm as they bounced up, seeking to sever them from the body.
The blades of his daggers burned like torches. Gasping, he was forced to fling them away as the white fire reached the hilts, but the helm and that arm bounced and clanged free of the construct's body, and the guardian rose no more, its legs and remaining arm thrashing in slow, metal-shrieking futility.
Deldragon stared at Rod over the thing for a moment. Then they hissed at each other in horrified unison, "Taeauna!"
Rod could run much faster than the wounded velduke; he got to her crumpled body first.
There was blood everywhere, in a spreading pool around her, and more of it bubbled from her lips as she tried to speak, pointing up at him with a trembling, dripping finger.
Rod flung himself to his knees beside her, fumbling for his dagger, sliding in her blood and not caring. He had to-had to-
A hand that trembled almost as much as his own, but had a grip like a school workbench vise he'd once foolishly challenged, was suddenly around his wrist.
"Slaying her is hardly the mercy I was intending, man," Darendarr Deldragon snarled in Rod's ear, his hoarse voice managing to sting with both fire and ice at once.
"I'm not… Let go of me!" Rod snapped. "I'm saving her! I hope."
His voice broke on the last words, and he fought not to choke on his own tears, but something- perhaps that-made the velduke let go of him. Rod winced and sliced down, hard, then roared in pain as fire blossomed across his palm.
"Mmm, mmm," Taeauna managed to say, in her need, and together Rod and Deldragon got his bleeding hand to her lips. Rod had cut himself deeply, and there was plenty for her to drink, even if she couldn't manage to suck all that well.
Rod put his other arm around her and held his hand against her tongue; she was like the horses he'd ridden at camp, nuzzling him for sugar cubes. He nodded his thanks to Deldragon and was shocked to see clear awe on the velduke's face.
"Who…" he managed to ask, "Who's the wizard we saw? If this is his tower, what did he do to Ult?"
"That was Arlaghaun," the nobleman gasped, swiping blood off his face with one arm. "Considered by most the real ruler of Galath, and the most powerful of the Dooms."
Taeauna sat back into Rod's arm with a sigh. "My thanks, lord. I'll live. I need more, but let Darr drink of you first."
Rod nodded, but saw that his palm was almost healed. He held it out to the velduke and said, "Cut me. My knife arm is a little occupied."
"With a nice armful of Aumrarr, yes," the noble agreed, reaching to take Rod's dagger gingerly. "This is… Well, I can scarce believe it."
"He's a Shaper, Darr," Taeauna reminded the velduke, as fresh fire sliced across Rod's palm.
Then she turned her head against Rod's chest and added, "Years ago, Arlaghaun managed something magical that allowed him to conquer Ult's mind, and add it to his own. He gained this tower and all of Ult's magic and knowledge. That face we saw for a moment, when his twisted awry, was Ult."
Rod nodded. "I recognized it. So he subsumed Ult…"
He stopped at the expression he saw in Deldragon's ice-blue eyes. No one had ever regarded him with naked, deepening awe before.
Fearfully, Velduke Darendarr Deldragon started to lap at Rod's bleeding palm.
The ring that let him fly over the pit traps was flickering and faltering by the time Arlaghaun reached the high hall where his spell had brought Yardryk and all the rest into the tower. He glared around, almost feeling the two brown flames of his own gaze.
The velduke, the familiar stranger, and the rest were long gone, of course, just as he would be, if he got across this room unscathed. He had spell-tomes and other magics aplenty hidden in a score of places across Falconfar. When he'd had time enough with them, whoever was turning Ult Tower against him would pay for doing so, painfully and in the end fatally. No one must defy a Doom and live.
He spent a shielding spell to shape a huge invisible cylinder of force across this last room, and sped along it.
Halfway across the hall lightnings burst from the mouth of a carved ceiling-boss, bolts crackling as they raked and then curled angrily around the cylinder of force, illuminating and clawing at it, their onslaught making it flicker and darken. They could destroy it, given long enough, but they would not he given that long enough.
Above his sharp nose, Arlaghaun's eyes narrowed; not all of his apprentices knew of that particular magic. There would be time to think on that later. Just now, he could see hidden doors swinging open in the walls of the great hall, and armored figures striding forth. Puny foes, but swift enough to reach the far end of his cylinder, deadly enough to an unprotected man, and numerous enough to overwhelm a lone foe.
Yet they were going to be too late. He was at the end of the cylinder, and willing it to swing away from himself, turning to serve as a great room-spanning ram, to thrust back those running armored automatons. That would win him time to do thus.
The Doom of Falconfar strode up to the tall, ornate oval mirror that adorned one wall, turned it with his fingers, just a little, until he heard the hidden catches click, then slid it aside to reveal the dark, narrow opening behind it. The glass had taken a long time to enchant, so he left it standing open behind him, hoping none of his guardians would shatter it while pursuing him.
Then he was hurrying down the short, curving, narrow way it had hidden, to touch the little glow on the rough stone wall at its end, and leave Ult Tower behind, through one of its most hidden gates.
"Fear my return," he murmured, the metallic shrieks of his armored sentinels shouldering against stone after him, fading as the glowing mists took him, "for I shall be exacting payment for this. And the price will be high."
"He's gone!" Amalrys spat, slamming her hand down on a defenseless crystal in a rattle of protesting chain. "Gone! Falcon take him and break him!"
She glared wildly around at the array of glowing crystals, seeing striding chaos in a dozen chambers of the tower as aroused guardians hastened to do whatever she'd goaded them to. She should calm them and return them to their resting-places, for Arlaghaun had destroyed many of them, and their own misadventures damaged more. Fires were raging in two rooms, and there was wrack and shattered ruin everywhere.
One scene caught her attention; blue eyes blazing, she thrust forward her manacled hands as if to throttle that crystal, the better to stare into its glowing depths.
She was seeing the row of gates out of the tower that all the apprentices knew of, and used often at the master's bidding, and the wide passage before them. Three intruders were sitting there together, in the lee of a riven, still-struggling armored guardian: rhe Galathan noble, the wingless Aumrarr, and the mysterious man who traveled with her.
As Amalrys watched, they rose, blood-spattered but seemingly unhurt, and looked to the gates.
Stop them, a voice thundered in her head, sending her reeling. Send the guardians against them! Let them not escape!
Mind whirling, drooling blood across glowing crystals-Falcon, she'd bitten her own lip, and no wonder, at that mind-thunder! — Amarlys sprang to do just as she was told, hissing commands and slapping crystals and…
Arching back and away from it all in a sudden spasm, control of her own limbs torn rudely from her, as a stronger voice than the first roared, "LET THEM GO. HARM THEM NOT!"