The room behind him was dank and cold, but as he ascended the air grew colder, mountain breezes blowing in the open windows ahead.

Those winds brought shouts, and the occasional ringing clangs of swords striking upon metal. Sornspire was besieged.

Built centuries ago by a man long dead, it was neither a pleasant nor a comfortable home. Wizards never seemed to crave comfort as much as one might think they would-or perhaps they spun comfort out of their spells, and needed only privacy and great masses of stone around them to shield them from rivals and stray spell-blasts.

The man with the staff had never given it any thought, for he was not what he seemed to be. The tall stature of Narmarkoun, Doom of Galath, was not the body he'd worn a season ago. From his bald blue head to his long, blue scaly limbs, bared to the icy winds at every stride as the cloak swirled back from his shoulders, his shape was new.

Not that anyone else in Galath-or all wider Falconfar-cared what Malagusk Sorn's tastes in architecture had been. Least of all these knights of Galath, who'd come all this way up into the most inhospitable peaks of southwestern Galath with their army, to bring death to a wizard in the name of King Melander Brorsavar for the unthinkable crime of ignoring his summons to court.

For years, this remote peaktop keep had been a secure enough hide-hold for Narmarkoun. It overlooked the barony of Chainamund, and fat, blustering, sneering Glusk Chainamund had been terrified of wizards. Not without good reason.

"Lack of good reason," the bald, blue-skinned man murmured now, stopping on the battlements to watch men whose armor was sparkling with frost struggle up between the stone merlons to crash their boots down heavily on the battlement walk, and confront him. "That's what causes all of this unpleasantness."