When they drew apart, to wheel back up into the sky and away, all that was left on the steps was a dark stain, a few fragments of bone, and some scraps of dark cloak small enough to have been the hides of tiny scuttling mice.

"And so I die," a calm voice observed, as its owner turned away from his fading scrying. "Overwhelmed and torn apart by lorn. Well, there are worse deaths, I suppose."

Narmarkoun beckoned one of the most decayed of his dead women with a silent look. As she began her slow crawl across the great hall of his cold castle, and his other dead women parted in front of her like a hastening gray sea, he looked down into the dark and empty eyes of the just-as-dead women entwined around his legs, who were stroking ardently as high as they could reach, and murmured, "There is one being in Falconfar I fear: Lorontar. It is merely sensible to fear Lorontar."

Bony fingers reached his inner thigh. He gently captured them in his grasp, and smiled down at their owner. "Lorontar the true Archwizard of Falconfar, the real Dark Lord. Who now rides the body of the Aumrarr Taeauna, and has a spell-link sunk, like a great hook, deep in the mind of Malraun."

Chill fingers were climbing his other leg, now. He dispensed another smile down into the face of their owner.

"Wherefore it is only prudent, cold ladies, that your lord and master Narmarkoun for now works only through false Narmarkouns and lesser agents, and remains hidden here with you."

The crawling servitor had almost reached him. He turned to face her, and murmured a word that slapped back all of the dead women entwined around him into shuddering, curling retreat.

He had transformed no less than four of his undead women into semblances of himself, and installed them in as many remote tower lairs, just to see if Lorontar paid any attention.