Falconfar 01-Dark Lord by Ed Greenwood

dead say again the last words they uttered when alive.
    He nodded gravely and handed the open box back. "She died shouting something that'll be useful to us, you think?"
    Taeauna's face was as calm as her voice. Only the fire raging deep in the shadows in her eyes betrayed her fury. "I hope. And no vaugril has yet been at her tongue."
    She turned, took one of the stones, and with slow, gentle care laid it in Marintra's mouth.
    They saw that pale throat quiver, cords standing out anew, and the flesh around her mouth seemed to creep, as if starting to move with slow reluctance. Then the dead mouth filled with dancing sparks, and moved normally.
    The sobbing groan was slow and deep, but its words were quite clear: "Arlaghaun, I die cursing you! By my blood, wizard, may you die a worse death than mine own!"
    The sparks promptly died, and the stone was gone. Marintra went on glaring at no one, but her jaw now hung slack.
    More so as not to have to look at Marintra for any longer, Rod turned to Taeauna. "I guess... we'll be hunting Arlaghaun now... right?"
    Taeauna looked back at him, her face as smooth as stone, and observed quietly, "You're good at guessing things, Lord Archwizard."
    Something in her tone made Rod shiver again.
    Silently, she turned away and walked back into Highcrag.
    The new chains were finer, and tinkled almost more than they rattled when she moved.
    The sharp-nosed man in gray smiled approvingly as she came into his many-shadowed study, the angry fire in his brown eyes ebbing, and she took that as a sign to scramble up from her knees to take and kiss his hand, letting her long, honey-blonde hair trail across it first; she knew he liked that. The web of chains joining her wrists to her ankles chimed, and the spells it bore made it wink and flash in the gloom of the old stone room.
    "You're troubled, master," she murmured. "Can I help? In any way?"
    At another time, her hopeful purr and those ice-blue, almost pleading eyes might have distracted him, but just now the wizard's thoughts
    were ensnared, returning again and again to that strange stirring last night, that flow of force...
    Like magic, but not magic. What was it?
    Something new, something he'd never felt before. Like the fabled storm-dreams of the Shapers, the tumults that led ignorant fools to call the strongest Shaper "Lord Archwizard," when Shapers weren't really wizards at all.
    Whatever it was, he must find it and tame it. His rivals couldn't have failed to feel it, and if one of them came to wield it, he could be doomed as surely as if he'd never mastered a single spell, but proclaimed himself king of all Falconfar with nothing to defend himself but a smile.
    As empty as the smile he was smiling now.
    There were some very artful hiding places in Highcrag, Rod Everlar mused, some hours later. Taeauna knew them all, of course, and was rapidly assembling a pile of small, useful-looking things that seemed too large for their laedlen. When he started to point this out, she reminded him that he still hadn't tried that second sword he was carrying along in her wake. And then she'd gone into a side-chamber and come out with a pair of dark leather thigh-high boots, all laces and feminine points, and tossed them to him with the words, "These should be your size, and far more comfortable than what you're wearing."
    Taeauna was foraging for food, too, but no matter what she sought, she mainly found death. Death and more death.
    Messily slain Aumrarr were everywhere, long limbs draped over chairs and beds and splintered tables. When one corpse shocked Rod into audible disgust, Taeauna threw him a decanter of wine and told him to drink only a single swallow.
    Rod watched her tireless peering and gathering, and wondered when she was going to snap.
    If he was in the way, whenever it happened, he was doomed. She could carve him up in an easy instant, probably without even slowing down in her opening of wardrobes and tossing items onto beds.
    And then, quite