The sixth and last pouch held two metal bracers-nicely-shaped metal armbands-that ought to be magical, but had no powers that he could awaken. Rod donned them anyway, spent some time shifting things around and tightening belts so he didn't feel in quite such a hopeless tangle, stood up, looked around at the endless trees, and sighed.

So whether or not he'd created Falconfar by writing books about it, or he'd just somehow dreamed about a world that had been there all along, here he was, lost somewhere in it.

Lost and helpless… and increasingly angry.

Nor was he the only one who could change it. He'd foolishly sold it to Holdoncorp, and their busy, bright-eyed computer designers-he always pictured fat, pale young men in food-spattered T-shirts, feet up on pizza-box-littered desks with keyboards in their laps, sneering at him through thick glasses as they rubbed self-consciously at tangled, pitiful attempts to grow beards-had given Falconfar Dark Helms and a lot more sinister wizards and super-powerful lorn and-and dragons, damn it, and-

— and none of this brooding was getting him one step closer to rescuing Taeauna. To finding her first, damn it.

Snatched from him by the wizard Malraun, younger and probably more dangerous than Arlaghaun.

So not only would he have to master all these baubles he was carrying, he'd need several hundred more. And the gods' own luck.

Whatever gods there were right now in Falconfar.

"Cue heavy sigh," Rod told the trees around him, as he tramped along-and then stopped, very suddenly.

Had that been a rustling, off to his right?

He peered and listened. Nothing.

After long moments of straining to hear something, he sighed heavily and strode on.

"SO," Narmarkoun asked himself, raising an eyebrow in challenge, "just why is the Raurklor hold of Ironthorn likely to become the most important battleground in all Falconfar, very soon now?"