Runelords 07 – The Wyrmling Horde – Farland, David

 

THE WYRMLING HORDE

DAVID FARLAND

 

To Nichole, Danielle, Forrest, Spencer, and Ben—who have all helped

their dad so much over the years.

 

 

Prologue

RUNES OF COMPASSION

This is Understanding’s House,

I’ve seen these doors before,

Though when or where, I don’t know.

In dusty rooms, like ancient tombs,

I studied endless lore.

For what or why, I don’t know.

Yet soon I learned too much,

Like a child lost in war.

Lost in horrors

I hope you’ll never know.

—A song of Mystarria

In all of his dreams, Fallion had never dreamed with such intense clarity. He dreamed that he was soaring above the Courts of Tide. He was not riding a graak, nor did he wear a magical wing. In his dream Fallion’s arms stretched wide, holding him aloft, like some seagull that hangs motionless in the sky, its wingtips trembling as the wind sweeps beneath them.

Nothing below obstructed his view.

And so he glided over houses where the sweet gray smoke of cooking fires floated lazily above thatched roofs, and Fallion darted above a palace wall, veering between two tall white towers where a guard with his pike and black scale mail gaped up at Fallion in astonishment. Fallion could see each graying hair of the guard’s arched eyebrow, and how the man’s brass pin hung loose on his forest-green cape, and he could even smell the man’s ripening sweat.

Fallion swooped low over the cobbled city streets, where fishermen in their white tunics and brown woolen caps trudged to their dank homes after a hard day working the nets; the young scholars who attended the House of Understanding stood on street corners arguing jovially while sipping tankards of ale, and a boy playing with a pet rat in the street gaped up at Fallion and pointed, his mouth an O of surprise.

“The king has come!” the child cried in surprise, and suddenly the people looked up in awe and rejoiced to see Fallion. “The king! Look!” they cried, tears leaping to their eyes. I must be dreaming, Fallion thought, for never have I seen the world so clearly. There is a legendary stream in the land of Mystarria. Its icy waters tumble down from the snowfields of Mount Rimmon, beneath pines that guard the slopes, along moss-covered floors where huge marble statues of dead kings lie fallen. The stream’s clean flow spills into forest pools so transparent that even at a depth of forty feet every water weed and sparkling red crayfish can be seen. The enormous trout that live there “seemingly slide through the air just by slapping their tails,” and all of them grow fat and to a ripe old age, for no fisherman or otter can hope to venture near in waters so clear. So the stream is called the Daystar, for it is as clear and sparkling as the morning star. And that is how preternaturally clear the dream came to Fallion, as clear as the waters of the Daystar. He longed to continue dreaming forever, but for one thing: the air was so cold. He could feel frost beginning to rime his fingernails, and he shivered violently.

This frost will kill me, he thought. It will pierce my heart like an arrow. And so he struggled to wake, and found himself . . . flying.

The wind rushed under him, cold and moist, and Fallion huddled in pain sharp and bitter. He could feel a shard of steel lodged below his ribcage, like a dagger of ice. Drying blood matted his shirt.

He struggled to wake, and when his eye opened to a slit, it was bright below. The wan silvery light of early morning filled the sky. He could see the tops of pines below, limbs so close that if he had reached out he could almost have touched them.

Where am I? I’m flying above a forest.

In the distance he could descry a mountain—no, he decided, a strange castle as vast as a mountain. It was built into the sides of a black volcano whose inner fires limned the cone at its top and spewed smoke and ash.

All beneath, along the skirts of the volcano, a formidable fortress sprawled, with murderously high walls and thousands of dark holes that might have been windows or tunnels into the mountain. There was no fresh lime upon the walls to make the castle gleam like silver in the dawn. Instead, the castle was black and foreboding. A few pale creatures bustled along the walls and upon the dark roads below, racing to flee the dawn, looking like an army of angry ants. Even a mile away, Fallion could tell that they were not entirely human.

Wyrmlings, he realized.

Fallion shivered violently, so cold and numb that he feared he would die. His thoughts clouded by pain, he struggled to figure out what was happening.

He was not flying under his own power. He was being borne by some great creature. Huge arms clutched him tightly. If a stone gargoyle had come to life, Fallion imagined that it would grip him so. He could hear powerful wings flapping: the wind from each downstroke assailed him. Fallion could not see his captor, but he could smell the arm that clutched him. It smelled like . . . rotten meat, like something long dead.

Fear coursed through him.

I’m in the arms of a Knight Eternal, Fallion realized, one of the dead lords of the wyrmlings. And he began to remember . . .

The battle at Caer Luciare. The wyrmling warriors with their sickly pale skin and bone armor had attacked the mountain fortress, a fortress so different from the one he was going to. The limestone walls of the fortress had been glistening white, as clean as snow, and in the market flowers and fruit trees grew in a riot along the street, while leafy vines hung from the windows.

The wyrmlings had come with the night. The pounding of their thunder drums had cracked the castle walls. Poisoned war darts had pelted down in a black rain. Everywhere there had been cries of dismay as the brave warriors of Caer Luciare saw their plight.

Jaz! Fallion thought, almost crying aloud, as he recalled his brother falling. A black dart had been sprouting from Jaz’s back as he knelt on hands and knees, blood running from his mouth. After that, everything became confused. Fallion remembered running with Rhianna at his side, retreating up the city streets in a daze, people shouting while Fallion wondered, Is there anything I could have done to save him?

He recalled the Knights Eternal sweeping out of dark skies. Fallion held his sword at guard position, eager to engage one, heart hammering as the monster swept toward him like a falcon, its enormous black long sword stretched out before it—a knight charging toward him on a steed of wind. Fallion twisted away from the attack at the last instant, his blade swiping back against the tip of the Knight Eternal’s sword. Fallion had meant to let his blade cut cleanly into flesh, but the Knight Eternal must have veered at the last instant, and Fallion’s blade struck the thick metal—and snapped. As his tortured blade broke, Fallion had felt pain lance just below the ribcage. A remnant of his shattered blade lodged in his flesh. He fell to his knees, blood gushing hot over his tunic as he struggled to keep from swooning.

Rhianna had called “Fallion! Fallion!” and all around him the noise of battle had sought to drown out her voice, so that it seemed to come from far away.

Struggling to remain awake, Fallion had knelt for a moment, dazed, while the world whirled viciously. Everything went black.

And now I wake, Fallion thought.

He closed his eyes, tried to take stock of his situation.

His artificial wings were folded against his back. He did not know how to use them well, yet. He’d worn the magical things for less than a day. He could feel a sharp pain where they were bound tightly, lest he try to escape.

I dare not let the monster know that I am awake, Fallion realized.

Fallion’s sword was gone, his scabbard empty, but he still had a dagger hidden in his boot. If I could reach it, he thought, I could plunge it into the monster’s neck. Fallion was so cold, his teeth were chattering. He tried to still them, afraid to make any noise, afraid to alert the creature.

But if I attack, what then? The monster will fall, and I will fall with it—to my death. His mind reeled away from the unpleasant prospect.

Moments later the Knight Eternal groaned and cursed, as if in pain. They had been flying in the shadow of a hill, and suddenly they were in open sunlight. Fallion’s captor dropped lower, so that he was flying beneath the trees, well in their shadow.

There was a nimbus around them, a thick haze. It gathered a bit.

Of course, Fallion realized, the Knight Eternal is racing against the coming of day. He’s gathering the light around him, trying to create a shadow.

He’s struggling to get me back to the castle before dawn!

They had dropped lower now, and Fallion judged that he was not more than twenty feet above ground. On impulse, Fallion reached for his boot dagger, and by straining managed to reach it, grasping it with two fingers. He tried to pull it free.

Just as suddenly, his captor tightened his grip, pulling Fallion’s arms mercilessly tight. The boot knife fell, spinning away to land on the ground.

The Knight Eternal was crushing Fallion against his chest. It apparently had not even noticed what Fallion was doing. But the creature’s grip was so fearsome that now Fallion had to struggle for a breath. Fallion despaired. He had no other weapons.

Fallion wondered about Rhianna. If she was alive, she would have protected him to the last. He knew that about her at least. No woman was more faithful, more devoted to him, than she. Which meant that like Jaz, she must be dead.

The very thought tore at Fallion’s sanity.

My fault, he told himself. It is my fault that they’re dead. I am the one who brought them here. I’m the one who bound the worlds together.

And as quickly as Fallion had fallen into despair, rage and determination welled up. Fallion was a wizard of unguessable power. In ages past, there had been one sun and one true world, bright and perfect, and all mankind had lived in harmony beneath the shade of the One True Tree. But the great Seal of Creation that governed that world had been broken, and as it broke, the world shattered, splintering into a million million parts, creating millions upon millions of shadow worlds, each a dull imitation of that one true world, each less virtuous, each spinning around its own sun so that now the heavens were filled with a sea of stars.

Now Fallion had demonstrated the skill necessary to bind those shadow worlds back into one. He had bound two worlds together. He had yet to bring to pass the realization of his dream: binding all worlds into one world, flawless and perfect.

But his enemies had feared what he could do, and had set a trap. Fallion had bound his own world with another, as an experiment, and everything had gone terribly wrong.

Now Fallion’s people had been thrust into a land of giants, where the cruel wyrmlings ruled, a ruthless people thoroughly enthralled by an evil so monstrous that it was beyond Fallion’s power to imagine, much less comprehend.

I hoped to make a better world, to re-create the one true world of legend, and instead I brought my people to the brink of ruin.

The Knight Eternal that carried him suddenly rose toward a gate in the castle. Fallion could hear barks and snarls of alarm as wyrmling warriors announced their approach.

Where is the Knight Eternal taking me? Fallion wondered.

The knight swept through an enormous archway and landed with a jar, and then crept into a lightless corridor, carrying Fallion as easily as if he were a child.

Fallion’s toes and fingers were numb. He felt so cold that he feared he had frostbite. He still could not think well. Every thought was a skirmish. Every memory was won only after a long battle. He needed warmth, heat. There was none to be found. There had been no sunlight shining upon the castle. There were no torches sitting in sconces to brighten the way. Instead the Knight Eternal bore him down endless tunnels into a labyrinth where the only illumination came from worms that glittered along the wall and ceiling.

Sometimes he passed other wyrmlings, and whether they were mere servants or hardened warriors, they all backed away from his captor in terror.

Fallion could have used his powers to leach a little heat from a wyrmling, if one had come closer. Maybe the stone is warm, Fallion thought. Maybe it still recalls the sunlight that caressed it yesterday. Fallion could have reached out to quest for the sunlight. But there was a great danger. Fallion was a flameweaver, a wizard of fire. Yet he knew that at least one Knight Eternal had mastered such skills better than he: Vulgnash.

In earlier battles, each time that Fallion had tried to tap into some source of heat, Vulgnash had siphoned the energy away.

Of course, Fallion realized. That is why I am so cold now. The creature has drained me. I am in Vulgnash’s arms.

I must not let him know that I am awake.

Vulgnash had no body heat that Fallion could use. Though the Knight Eternal mimicked life, the monster was dead, and it had no more heat in it than did a serpent.

So Fallion held still, struggled to slow his breathing, to feign sleep, as the Knight Eternal bore him down, down an endless winding stair.

We’re going to the heart of the world.

I will have to attack quickly when the chance comes. A single torch is all that I’ll need. I’ll cause it to flash into light, to consume all of its fuel in an instant, and then draw it into myself. I’ll use its heat to burn my enemies.

After long and long, the Knight Eternal reached a landing and walked out into an open room. The air was fetid, stifling, and smelled slightly of sulfur.

Fallion could hear children whimpering—along with the moan of some man, and the uncontrolled sobbing of a woman. These were not the deep-throated sounds of subhuman wyrmlings. These were the whimpers and cries of his own people, beaten and wounded.

“Help! Someone please help us!” a boy cried in Fallion’s own Rofehavanish tongue. The cries of his people came from a knot at one side of the room.

The Knight Eternal spoke, its voice a growl deeper than a lion’s, and around him came answering growls. Fallion could see nothing through his half-slitted eyes.

So he closed them, and in a way that he had learned as a child, he looked upon the world with his inner eye, the eyes of his spirit, and he saw light.

He could descry the room. Each creature within it could be discerned not as flesh and bone but as a creature of light, with glowing tendrils arcing out in shades of blue and white—like the spines of a sea anemone. These were their spirits, easily discerned, while their flesh showed hardly at all. Bone and muscle seemed to have almost disappeared, becoming a cloudy nimbus. But still their shapes could be seen. Their skin was but a transparent sac, like the skin of jellyfish, and within that sac their spirits burned, giving light.

Fallion was surrounded by wyrmlings. The creatures were far larger than humans, though they were human in form. Each stood nearly eight feet tall, had broad shoulders, and could not have weighed less than four hundred pounds. Many were at least six hundred. The bony plates on their foreheads were topped with stubs that looked as if they would sprout horns, and their canines were overlarge. Their cruel faces seemed to be twisted into permanent sneers.

Wyrmling guards watched at every door, and three dignitaries stood at the foot of a throne. The light within these wyrmlings was very dim. Fallion could see black creatures, fluttering and indistinct, that fed upon their souls—the loci, parasitical beings of pure evil.

Fallion was not surprised by the loci’s presence. His foster sister Talon had warned him that the wyrmlings had been raised to serve the loci. The wyrmlings vied for the parasites, believing that to be infected by a locus granted them immortality. They believed that their spirits were mortal, and could become immortal only once they were subsumed into immortal loci.

Upon the floor sprawled human prisoners, small folk like Fallion—people from his own world. Their innocent spirits shone as bright as stars. There was a mother, a father, and three children. They were roughly bound so that ankles and legs lay bleeding and, in the case of the father, twisted and broken. Upon a dais sat a creature that horrified Fallion. It was not as large as a wyrmling, and not as deformed in the face. Thus, Fallion realized that it was one of the folk of Caer Luciare, who were giants by the standards of Fallion’s world.

So, Fallion decided, it was a man, with long hair. Like the folk of Caer Luciare, who had been bred to war for countless centuries, he did not look entirely human. His face was narrower than a wyrmling’s, and his skull was not as heavily armored. The bony plate on his forehead was not nearly so pronounced, and his canines were not so large.

His raven hair was tied at the back, and his haggard face shaven clean. His skin was rough and unhealthy, and his cheekbones were pronounced, as if he were half-starved. But he was not unpleasing to the eye. Almost, Fallion realized, he was handsome.

It was not his features that horrified Fallion: it was the creature that dwelt within this man. There was a locus feeding upon his bright spirit, a locus so dark and malevolent, Fallion could feel its influence from across the room. Indeed the evil seemed to be sprawling, and the locus was so massive that it could not fit within the fleshly shell of its host. Other loci were often not much larger than cats. But this one was vast and bloated, and it crouched, feeding upon its host’s bright spirit, a spirit so luminous that Fallion could only imagine that the host had been a virtuous man, blameless and honorable—not some wyrmling horror.

The locus’s sprawling gut filled more than half of the room. Indeed it seemed almost like the abdomen of a black widow spider, so huge that the belly dwarfed its head.

Fallion’s captor dropped him to the floor.

In utter darkness, a voice spoke. “Welcome to Rugassa, Fallion Orden.” The voice was deep, too deep to be human. It came from the lord who sat upon the dais. It came from the locus. The creature knew Fallion’s name. “I know that you are awake.”

“You speak my tongue?” Fallion asked.

“I speak all tongues,” the locus said, “for I am the master of all worlds. I am Lord Despair. Serve me, and you shall be spared.”

Only then was Fallion sure where he stood. He was in the presence of the One True Master of Evil, who had tried to wrest control of the Rune of Creation from mankind, and who had shattered their perfect world into innumerable shards.

“I will not serve you,” Fallion said. “I remember you, Yaleen. I remember when I served our people under the One True Tree. You could not sway me with your beauty then; you will not sway me with the horror that you have become.”

Fallion had fought a locus before. Using his flameweaving skills, he’d created a light so bright that it pierced a locus and burned it.

Quick as a thought, Fallion reached out with his senses and grasped for the warmth of the wyrmling guards. Their bodies were massive and held more heat than the human prisoners might have. Fallion planned to suck their warmth into himself.

Ghostly red lights fluoresced as heat streamed toward him.

But as quickly as he reached out, he felt a stab of ice lance through him, and his own inner fire raced away, along with the heat that he’d hoped to steal. Ice lanced through his guts.

“Aaaaagh,” Fallion cried as indescribable agony sought expression. He was suddenly swimming in pain, struggling to remain conscious.

Now he knew for certain: the Knight Eternal who stood over him was a flameweaver of consummate skill. It had to be Vulgnash.

Lord Despair said, “If you will not serve me, you shall suffer. How great your suffering will be, you cannot guess. I have tasted such suffering in part, and even I could not bear it.” Lord Despair clapped his hands. A guard brought a single thumb-light into the room, a tiny lantern that might have been carved from amber, with a wick that gave off no more flame than a candle. It allowed Fallion to see, though wyrmlings had to squint away.

The wyrmling guard wore armor carved from the bone of a world wyrm, armor as white and as milky as his warty skin. He strode among five human prisoners, letting the light shine above them so that Fallion could see. The first that he revealed was a child of four, a girl in a humble sacklike dress with golden hair whose face was a mask of purple bruises. Next to her lay a boy of twelve, some farm boy with two broken arms twisted and tied behind his back. Beyond was a woman who was obviously his mother, for they both had the same dark hair. She lay as if lifeless, though her chest rose and fell. Her bloody skirts suggested that the wyrmlings had put her through unspeakable torments.

Next to them was the father, a broken bone protruding through his leg. Last of all was a small boy of two, wrapped in a fetal position, his face a mask of terror.

They’ve captured a whole family, Fallion felt sure. They went into some farm cottage and ripped these poor folk from the lives that they had loved.

It’s my fault, he thought. I’m the one who bound the worlds together.

Some of the prisoners now tried to struggle. The mother looked up around the room at her tormentors with eyes red and glazed from weeping.

“Pain can be a wondrous inducement,” Lord Despair said to Fallion in his deep voice. “And you shall feel wondrous pain. Of all the worlds that you could have bound together, these two offer the greatest possibilities. The tormentors of Rugassa have been perfecting their art for five thousand years. Among all of my shadow worlds, there are no better. And now, because of you, they shall take their art to a higher level, to heights undreamed.”

He’s going to kill the prisoners, Fallion thought. He’ll torture them to death for his own amusement. Fallion had seen such tortures before, when the locus Asgaroth had taken men and threaded poles through them, leaving them skewered but somehow still alive as he raised their racked bodies up for the world to see.

But no torture was forthcoming. Instead, the Knight Eternal growled an order. Another guard came into the room bearing a red pillow.

Upon it were five small rods, each the length of Fallion’s hand and as thick as a nail. Upon the head of each rod was a rune, bound within a circle.

These were forcibles, the branding irons that allowed a Runelord to draw attributes from his vassals so that he could garner their strength and speed, their beauty and wisdom.

Fallion had never tasted the kiss of a forcible. On his world the blood metal that they were forged from was so rare that only the wealthiest and most powerful lords ever owned it. And though Fallion’s father had bequeathed him some forcibles, Fallion had refused to use them for a more important reason: he had not been able to stand the thought of drawing out the wit from a man in order to boost his own intelligence, for in doing so, he would turn that man into a drooling idiot. He could not even think of taking the beauty from some woman, leaving her a hag. He abhorred the thought of draining the strength from some burly peasant, consigning the man to such a state of frailty that his heart might fail at pumping his own life’s blood.

So Fallion had refused to take endowments from his people.

What endowment is Lord Despair going to wrest from these poor folks? Fallion wondered. But that question was dashed by a more significant realization. Since the binding of these two worlds, Fallion had hoped that the wyrmlings would not have discovered the rune lore that would allow the transfer of attributes, for it was only such lore that gave his own small folk the hope of beating the wyrmlings.

In the battle for Luciare he’d seen some wyrmlings running with seemingly superhuman speed, and had worried that they might have taken endowments.

Now, Fallion saw, the wyrmlings did indeed understand such lore, or at least, with the binding of the worlds, they had learned of it.

The guard brought the forcibles, the magical branding irons, to the Knight Eternal that loomed above Fallion. Vulgnash took one, studied it a moment, and then held it close so that Fallion could see. The rune engraved upon it was unknown to Fallion’s people. But after a few seconds he realized that he recognized part of it—a rune of touch.

But there were other runes bound into the forcible, at least two or three others that Fallion had never seen, and suddenly Fallion realized that the wyrmlings not only understood rune lore, their knowledge far surpassed that of his own people.

“What? What is this?” Fallion asked, studying the forcible.

“You shall see,” Lord Despair said.

A wyrmling lord took the forcible and began to chant, a sound deep and soothing, mesmerizing. As he did, the tip of the forcible began to glow hot, like a branding iron that sits among coals, becoming brighter and brighter.

When it shone like a fallen star, he went to the farm woman in her bloody skirts, flipped her over so that Fallion could see her bruised face, and plunged the branding iron between her eyes. The air filled with the reek of singed flesh and burning hair. When the wyrmling pulled the branding iron free, a white light stretched out from the woman’s forehead, like a glowing worm. It elongated, following the forcible as the facilitator pulled it away and twirled the branding iron. The worm of light did not fade, but merely hung in the air, a ghostly presence.

“Wait!” Fallion cried, for the light revealed that the endowment ceremony was working, yet it did so despite the rules that Fallion understood. “She must give her endowment willingly. You can’t just rip it from her!”

In his own world endowments were most often given as an act of love, a gift to a worthy lord from a grateful vassal who hoped, by bestowing the gift, to protect his people. But it was also true that endowments might be coerced. Some lords bought endowments, granting great wealth to those who sold them. Vile lords sometimes devised torments so terrible that the vassal would relinquish an attribute in hope to escape the consequences.

But in all cases, the attribute had to be given by one who had a willing heart. It could not be stripped away like this.

Fallion reeled a bit, struggling to hold on to consciousness. The cold around him was so intense.

“I am taking their pain,” Lord Despair said. “I am taking the whole of it: the pain of their wounds, the torment of their minds, all of their suffering and anguish. Who would not want to give that up? Even in their delirium, their fogged minds scream for release, and thus their endowments are taken willingly.” Fallion peered up at Lord Despair and realized what he intended to do. He would give Fallion all of their torment.

Moments later, the wyrmling wizard bore the forcible to Fallion, and thrust its white-hot tip against Fallion’s cheek.

The kiss of a forcible is said to be sweet, sweeter than any lover’s lips. Perhaps in part, that was because the one who receives an endowment also receives strength or stamina or some other virtue that all humans long for.

Who has not looked upon a great sage and not wished for his wisdom? What woman has not gazed upon that rare beauty that is born with perfect skin and teeth, with shining hair and a glorious figure, and not longed that she had been so endowed from birth?

And it was true that Fallion felt a rush of euphoria that rocked him to the very core. Yet, it was not as it was supposed to be.

It is said that he or she who grants an endowment does so at great cost. When a virtue is ripped from them, it causes indescribable agony, an agony so profound that only a woman who has endured a rough birthing can begin to comprehend it.

As the forcible lightly kissed Fallion’s cheek, he felt the rush of euphoria, coupled with a pain so profound that it ripped a cry from his throat.

His muscles convulsed, and he was thrown to the floor. His back spasmed, as did his stomach, and he began to retch.

He felt the woman’s pain. Not just the physical torment that came from being mauled and raped by wyrmling giants, being torn and bloodied. He felt the heartbreak that had come as her husband and children were forced to watch. He felt her humiliation and despair, a mother’s maddening fear for her own children.

He’d never felt emotions quite so raw or profound. It was as if he were being sucked into a vortex, whirling down into perfect darkness, all of her sadness and torment suddenly blending together with Fallion’s own remorse—Fallion’s pain at losing his brother, of losing Rhianna, his shame at having bound these worlds together in such a way that the wyrmlings were suddenly loosed upon his innocent people. The wyrmlings have perfected torture, Fallion realized as he lay on the floor, vomiting from guilt, wishing for death.

And then one by one, the wyrmlings stripped endowments of pain from each prisoner. Fallion felt the father’s helplessness and outrage and guilt for not having saved his wife, his regret that his children would never reach adulthood, even as the bone protruding from his shin festered and rotted, threatening to leach his life away.

Moments later, Fallion felt an infant’s terror of the giant wyrmlings, her overwhelming sense of helplessness, and the pain where a wyrmling had bitten off her pinky finger. So it went, each child in turn.

Fallion took upon himself each of their fears, their guilt, their loss and longing. As endowments were stripped from the family, the children quit their whimpering and the woman left off her sobbing, each of them falling into silence as they went remarkably numb. And with each endowment, Fallion felt as if he would be overwhelmed one more time. I must not give in, he told himself. I must not let Lord Despair break me. When has Despair tasted such torment? Fallion wondered.

And then his spiritual eyes opened, and he remembered . . .

Yaleen had tried to seize control of the world by bending the Great Seal of Creation to her will, and in the process, she had broken it. The Seal shattered, and suddenly the world splintered into a million million shadows.

Fallion had been there under the great tree, and as the deed was done, he had run out from under the tree and watched with overwhelming dread and awe: it was night, and Fallion watched entire shadow worlds, like phantoms—with their opalescent swirling clouds, and seas of endless blue, and their snow-clad mountains, their fiery sunrises—all exploding and fleeing away in every direction, a continuous succession of worlds, each sending a shock wave through his very bones as it streamed away.

He watched stars forming in the night sky—entire galaxies spawned in an instant, then scattering away as the shadow worlds formed.

The True Tree was uprooted. Mountains crumbled and crevasses opened, swallowing communities whole. Volcanoes roared to life, spewing ash while lightning shrieked at their crowns. The destruction was magnificent.

Hundreds of thousands of people died, while others merely vanished, apparently cast off onto some shadow world.

Nothing like this had ever happened in Fallion’s pure and perfect world. His people had never felt death, never suffered such devastating loss.

And when the deed was done, Yaleen fled.

Fallion was one of the Ael who was sent to find Yaleen and bring her back for judgment. After many days, he caught her.

She tried to use her feminine charms to persuade him to let her go. She begged him and berated him.

But he took her to the White Council.

There had never been need for a punishment like this. There had been no death, no murder in his world. There had been petty thefts by children, and unintended insults. But no one had ever committed a crime so foul.

Fallion knew that Yaleen had not meant to cause such devastation. She had only thought it a childish prank, she insisted, though she was a person of terrible avarice. But her act had such far-reaching consequences, it could not be treated lightly. So a new punishment was devised.

The Bright Ones who were left alive after the fall were devastated—mourning for lost loves, for children that they would never see, for friends that were gone.

So many joined in Yaleen’s torment—not all, for some could not bring themselves to exercise harsh judgment, but each person who desired revenge walked up to Yaleen, and with the tears from their own eyes, traced a rune upon her cheek.

In the past, the rune had been used by lovers, by those who wished to share their deepest and most sacred feelings for one another. It was a rune of Compassion.

It was the same rune that Fallion had seen upon the forcibles.

By granting it, the Bright Ones shared their own grief and loss with Yaleen, heaping it upon her. Some told themselves that they were doing it for her own good, that they were only trying to teach her, lest she continue in her evil ways.

But Fallion knew that it was more than teaching.

And so each Bright One had taken vengeance upon Yaleen, until bitter tears streamed down her face and she fought to break away from those who had once been her friends. She clawed and wailed, while strong men held her.

Slowly Fallion saw a change take place. Where before there had been contrition and sadness in her face, Yaleen hardened and grew angry.

Yaleen quit weeping and fighting, and began to rage at her tormentors and rejoice in what she had done.

The runes upon her cheek were drawn with human tears, and as the tears dried, the sympathetic feelings that Yaleen was subjected to would fade and vanish.

Thousands stood in line to heap their pain upon her, but something in her broke long before her torment was ended. When the punishment was done, there was nothing but hatred left in Yaleen’s eyes.

“I harmed your world by accident,” Yaleen said, “and now you have made me glad of it. You gave me torment, and I will torment you in return. Down countless eons I will hunt you, and rule your world in blood and horror. From now on, you shall call me by my new name—Despair.” An eternity past, Fallion had helped heap abuse upon Yaleen, and now the creature that she had become was returning the deed.

When all five prisoners had fallen silent, Lord Despair leaned forward eagerly. Fallion tried to remain quiet, but his throat betrayed him, and sobs issued from him in rapid succession, each a part cough, part moan.

“Serve me,” Lord Despair whispered, “and I will release you from your pain.” Fallion knew of only two ways that he could be free of such pain. Lord Despair could force it onto another, leaving Fallion an empty husk, emotionless and numb. Or he could kill the Dedicates who had granted their pain, thus breaking the magical ties that bound Fallion to his people. He’ll murder this family, Fallion realized. He’ll do it in front of me and make me watch. He hopes that in time, I will be evil enough to crave such a thing. For when I consent to the shedding of innocent blood, a locus will be able to make its home in me.

No, Fallion realized, Lord Despair wishes more from me than even that. He doesn’t just want to make me a worthy abode for a locus. He doesn’t just want to punish me—Lord Despair hopes that I will become him.

But I will turn the tables. I can never succumb. I can never let him beat me.

“Thank you, Lord Despair,” Fallion said meekly.

“For what?” Despair demanded.

“For freeing these good people from their pain,” Fallion said. “Thank you, for bestowing it upon me.” The rage that flashed across Lord Despair’s face was brief but undeniable. Fallion nearly swooned. He felt on the verge of collapse, but knew that he could show no sign of weakness. He had Despair at a disadvantage. Despair could not kill this family without freeing Fallion from his torment, and so long as Fallion was willing to bear their pain, Despair would be thwarted. And in a strange way, Fallion was indeed grateful that he could suffer instead of these innocents. It is only right that I should suffer, he told himself.

Lord Despair rose from his throne. “You have only begun to feel torment,” he said. “This is but your first taste of the forcible. I have a mountain of blood metal at my disposal, and another shipment will arrive soon.

“You will not thank me, I think, when you have taken another ten thousand endowments. You will not mock me when a whole world’s pain is thrust upon your shoulders. In time, pain will have its way with you, and you will grovel and beg for release, and you will tell me what I want to know.” Only then did Fallion realize that Despair had not even bothered to ask a question.

“By having thrust upon me these people’s pain,” Fallion said, “you only strengthen my resolve. Your works wound the world. It is time that I do away with them.”

Despair scoffed, then turned and strode from the room.

Only then did Fallion give in to the need to succumb. He dropped to the floor, head reeling, barely clinging to consciousness.

1

DANGEROUS NOTIONS

To control a man fully, one must channel his thoughts. You will not have to concern yourself with issues of loyalty once your vassal is incapable of disloyal contemplation.

—The Emperor Zul-torac, on the importance of

reinforcing the Wyrmling Catechism on the youth

Cullossax the tormentor strode through the dark warrens of Rugassa, shoving lesser wyrmlings aside. None dared to snarl or raise a hand to stop him. Instead, the pale creatures cowered back in fear. He was imposing in part because of his bulk. At nine feet, Cullossax towered over all but even the largest wyrmlings. The bony plate that ran along his forehead was abnormally thick, and the horny nubs on his head were larger than most. He was broad of chest, and his canines hung well below his lower lip. All of these were signs to other wyrmlings that he was potentially a violent man. But it was not his brutal appearance alone that won him deference. His black robes of office struck fear in the hearts of others, as did his blood-soaked hands.

The labyrinth seemed alive with excitement. It coursed through Cullossax’s veins, and thrummed through every taut muscle. He could see it in the faces of those that he passed, and hear it in their nervous voices. Some had fear upon their faces, while others’ fears deepened to dread. But some faces shone with wonder or hope, bloodlust or exultation.

It was a rare and heady combination. It was an exciting time to be alive.

Four days ago, a huge army had left Rugassa to destroy the last of the humans at Caer Luciare. The attack was to have begun that very night. Thus the hope upon the people’s faces that, after a war that had raged for three thousand years, the last of their enemies would be gone.

But then two days past, everything had changed: a whole world had fallen from the sky, and when it struck, the worlds did not crash and break. Instead, they combined into one whole, a world that was new and different, a world that combined the magics and peoples of two worlds, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Mountains had fallen and rivers had flooded. Ancient forests suddenly sprouted outside the castle gate where none had stood before. There were reports of strange creatures in the land, and all was in chaos. Now reports were coming from wyrmling outposts in every quarter: there was something new in the land—humans, smaller folk than those of Caer Luciare. If the reports could be believed, they lived by the millions in every direction. It was rumored that it was one of their own wizards who bound the world of the wyrmlings with their own.

Such power was cause enough for the wyrmling’s nervousness. But there was also cause for celebration. Within the past few hours, rumors had been screaming through the chain of command that the Great Wyrm itself had taken a new form and now walked the labyrinth, showing abilities that had never been dreamed, not even in wyrmling legend.

Strange times indeed.

The last battle against the human warrior clans had been fought. Caer Luciare had been taken. The human warriors had been slaughtered and routed.

The news was glorious. But the wyrmlings remained nervous, unsure what might happen next. They stood in small knots and gossiped when they should be working. Some were disobedient and needed to be brought back into line.

So Cullossax the tormentor was busy.

In dark corridors where only glow worms lit his way, he searched through the crèche, where the scent of children mingled with mineral smells of the warren, until at last he found a teaching chamber with three silver stars above the door.

He did not call out at the door, but instead shoved it open. There, a dogmatist stood against a wall with his pupils, wyrmling children fifteen or sixteen years of age. Few of the children had begun to grow the horny nubs at their temples yet, and so they looked small and effeminate.

At the center of the room, a single young girl was chained by the ankle to an iron rung in the floor. She had a desk—a few planks lying upon an iron frame. But instead of sitting at her desk, she crouched beneath it, moaning and peering away distantly, as if lost in some dream. She rocked back and forth as she moaned.

She was a pretty girl, by wyrmling standards. All wyrmlings had skin that was faintly bioluminescent, and children, with their excess energy, glowed strongly, while those who were ancient, with their leathery skin, faded altogether. This girl was a bright one, with silky white hair, innocent eyes, a full round face, and breasts that had already fully blossomed.

“She refuses to sit,” said the dogmatist, a stern old man of sixty years. “She refuses to take part in class. When we recite the catechisms, she mouths the words. When we examine the policies, she will not answer questions.”

“How long has she been like this?” the tormentor asked.

“For two days now,” the dogmatist said. “I have berated her and beaten her, but still she refuses to cooperate.”

“Yet she gave you no trouble before?”

“None,” the dogmatist admitted.

It was the tormentor’s job to dole out punishment, to do it thoroughly and dispassionately. Whether that punishment be public strangulation, or dismemberment, or some other torture, it did not matter. Surely, this could not go on.

Cullossax knelt beside the girl, studied the child. There had to be a punishment. But Cullossax did not have to dole out the ultimate penalty.

“You must submit,” Cullossax said softly, dangerously. “Society has a right to protect itself from the individual. Surely you see the wisdom in this?”

The girl rolled her eyes and peered away, as if carried to some faraway place in her imagination. She scratched at her throat, near a pendant made from a mouse’s skull.

Cullossax had seen too many like her in the past couple of days, people who chose to turn their faces to the wall and die. Beating her would not force her to submit. Nor would anything else. He would probably have to kill her, and that was a waste. This was a three-star school, the highest level. This girl had potential. So before the torments began, he decided to try reasoning with her.

“What are you thinking?” Cullossax demanded, his voice soft and deep. “Are you remembering something? Are you remembering . . . another place?”

That caught the girl. She turned her head slowly, peered into Cullossax’s eyes.

“Yes,” she whimpered, giving out a soft sob, then she began shaking in fear.

“What do you remember?” Cullossax demanded.

“My life before,” the child said. “I remember walking under green fields in the starlight. I lived with my mother there, and two sisters, and we raised pigs and kept a garden. The place we lived in was called Inkarra.”

Just like so many others. This was the third today to name that place. Each of them had spoken of it the same, as if it were a place of longing. Each of them hated their life in Rugassa. It was the binding, of course. Cullossax was only beginning to understand, but much had changed when the two worlds were bound into one.

Children like this girl claimed to recall another life on that other world, a world where children were not kept in cages, a world where harsh masters did not make demands of them. They all dreamed of returning.

“It is all a dream,” Cullossax said, hoping to convince her. “It isn’t real. There is no place where children play free of fear. There is only here and now. You must learn to be responsible, to give away your own selfish desires.

“If you continue to resist,” Cullossax threatened, “you know what I must do. When you reject society, you remove yourself from it. This cannot be tolerated, for then you are destined to become a drain upon society, not a contributor.

“Society has the right, and the duty, to protect itself from the individual.” Normally, at this time, Cullossax would afflict the subject. Sometimes the very threat of torment would strike enough fear into the heart of the reprobate that she would do anything to prove her obedience. But Cullossax had discovered over the past two days that these children were not likely to submit at all.

“What shall I do with you?” Cullossax asked.

The girl was shaking still, speechless with terror.

“Who is society?” she asked suddenly, as if she had come upon a plan to win some leniency.

“Society consists of all of the individuals that make up the whole,” Cullossax said, quoting from the catechisms that the child was to be studying.

“But which one of the people makes up the rules?” she asked. “Which one of them says that I must die if I do not follow the rules?”

“All of them,” Cullossax answered reasonably. But he knew that that was not true. The girl caught him in his lie. “The catechisms say that ‘Right acts follow from right thinking.’ ‘But youth and stupidity are barriers to right thinking. Thus, we must submit to those who are wiser than we.’

‘Ultimately the emperor, by virtue of the great immortal wyrm that lives within him, is wisest of all.'” Wyrmling education consisted of rote memorization of the catechisms, not upon learning the skills of reading and writing. The wyrmlings had found that forcing children to memorize the words verbatim trained their minds well, and in time led to an almost infallible memory. This girl had strung together some catechisms in order to form the core of an argument. Now she asked her question: “So if the emperor is wisest, does not the emperor make the rules, rather than the collective group?”

“Some might say so,” Cullossax admitted.

“The catechisms say, ‘Men exist to serve the empire,'” the girl said. “But it seems to me that the emperor’s teachings lead us to serve only him.”

Cullossax knew blasphemy when he heard it. He answered in catechisms: “‘Each serves society to the best of his ability, the emperor as well as the least serf,'” Cullossax reasoned. “‘By serving the emperor, we serve the great wyrm that resides within him,’ and if we are worthy, we shall be rewarded. ‘Live worthily, and a wyrm may someday enter you, granting you a portion of its immortality.'” The child seemed to think for a long time.

Cullossax could not bother with her any longer. This was a busy time. There had been a great battle to the south, and the troops would begin to arrive any day. Once all of the reports had been made, Cullossax would be assigned to deal with those who had not distinguished themselves in battle. He would need to sharpen many of his skinning knives, so that he could remove portions of flesh from those who were not valiant. With the flesh, he would braid whips, and then lash the backs of those that he had skinned.

And then there were people like this girl—people who had somehow gained memories of another life, and who now sought to escape the horde. The tormentors had to make examples of them. Cullossax reached under his collar, pulled out a talisman that showed his badge of office: a bloody red fist. The law required him to display it before administering torture.

“What do you think your torment should be?” Cullossax asked.

Trembling almost beyond control, the girl turned her head slowly, peered up at Cullossax. “Doesn’t a person have the right to protect himself from society?”

It was a question that Cullossax had never considered. It was a childish question, undeserving of consideration. “No,” he answered.

Cullossax would normally have administered a beating then, perhaps broken a few bones. But he suspected that it would do no good. “If I hurt you enough, will you listen to your dogmatist? Will you internalize his teachings?”

The girl looked down, the wyrmling gesture for no.

“Then you leave me no choice,” the tormentor said.

He should have strangled the child then. He should have done it in front of the others, so that they could see firsthand the penalty for disobedience.

But somehow he wanted to spare the girl that indignity. “Come with me,” he said. “Your flesh will become food for your fellows.”

Cullossax reached down, unlocked the manacle at the girl’s foot, and pulled her free from the iron rung in the floor.

The girl did not fight. She did not pull away or strike back. She did not try to run. Instead, she gathered up her courage and followed, as Cullossax held firmly to her wrist.

I would rather die than live here, her actions seemed to say.

Cullossax was willing to oblige.

He escorted the girl from the room. Her fellows jeered as she left, heaping abuse upon her, as was proper.

And once the two were free of the classroom, the girl walked with a lighter step, as if glad that she would meet her demise.

“Where are we going?” the child asked.

Cullossax did not know the girl’s name, did not want to know her name.

“To the harvesters.” In wyrmling society, the weak, the sickly, and the mentally deficient were often put to use this way. Certain glands would be harvested—the adrenals, the pineal, and others—to make extracts that were used in battle. Then the bodies were harvested for meat, bone, skin, and hair. Nothing went to waste. True, Rugassa’s hunters roved far and wide to supply the horde with food, but their efforts were never enough.

“Will it hurt?”

“I think,” Cullossax said honestly, “that death is never kind. Still, I will show you what leniency I can.” It was not easy to make such promises. As a tormentor, Cullossax was required to dole out the punishments required by law without regard to compassion or compromise.

That seemed to answer all of her questions, and Cullossax led the girl now effortlessly down the winding corridors, through labyrinthine passages lit only by glow worms. Few of the passages were marked, but Cullossax had memorized the twists and turns long ago. Along the way, they passed through crowded corridors in the merchant district where vendors hawked trinkets carved from bones and vestments sewn from wyrmling leather. And near the arena, which was empty at the moment, they passed through lonely tunnels where the only sound was their footsteps echoing from the stone walls. Fire crickets leapt up near their feet, emitting red flashes of light, like living sparks. Once, he spotted a young boy with a bag of pale glow worms, affixing one to each wall, to keep the labyrinth lighted.

Cullossax wondered at his own reasons for wanting to show her compassion. It was high summer, and in a few weeks he would go into musth. Already he felt the edginess, the arousal, and the beginnings of the mad rage that assailed him at this time of year. The girl was desirable enough, though she was too young to go into heat.

The girl’s face was blank as she walked toward her execution. Cullossax had seen that look so often before.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, knowing that it was easier if he kept them talking.

“There are so many worlds,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. “Two worlds have combined, and when they did, two of my shadow selves became one. It’s like having lived two lifetimes.” She fell silent for a second, then asked, “Have you ever seen the stars?” Most wyrmlings in the labyrinth would never have been topside.

“Yes,” he answered, “once.”

“My grandmother was the village wise woman at my home in Inkarra,” the girl said. “She told me that every star is but a shadow of the One True Star, and each of them has a shadow world that spins around it, and that there are a million million shadow worlds.”

“Hah,” Cullossax said, intrigued. He had never heard of such a thing. The very strangeness of such a cosmology drew his interest.

“So think,” the girl said. “Two worlds combined, and when they did, it is like two pieces of me came together, making a larger whole. I feel stronger than ever before, more alive and complete. Here in the wyrmling horde, I was driven and cunning. But on the other world, I was learning to be wise, to take joy in life.” She gave him a moment to think, then asked, “What if there are other pieces of me out there?

What if I have a million million shadow selves, and all of them combined into one person in a single breath? What would I be like? What things would I know? It would be like having lived a billion lifetimes all at once. Perhaps on a few thousand worlds, I might have learned perfect self-discipline, and on others I might have spent lifetimes studying how to make peace among warring nations. And if I were combined into one, imagine how whole all of those shadow selves would become.” The thought was staggering. Cullossax could not imagine such a thing. “They say a wizard combined the worlds,” Cullossax said. “They say he is in the dungeon now.” And I wish that I had the honor of being his tormentor, Cullossax thought.

“Perhaps we should be helping him,” the girl suggested. “He has the power to bind all of the worlds into one.”

What good would that do me? Cullossax wondered. Perhaps I have no other selves on other worlds. He was lost in thought when she struck. It happened so fast, she almost killed him. One instant she was walking blithely along, and the next moment she pulled a dagger from her sleeve and lunged—aiming for his eye.

But his great height worked against her. Cullossax dodged backward, and the dagger nicked him below the eye. Blood sprang from the wound, as if he cried tears of blood.

Fast as a mantis taking a cave cricket, she struck again, this time aiming for his throat. He raised an arm to block her swing. She twisted to the side and brought the dagger up to his kidney. It was a maneuver he’d learned as a youth, and he was ready for her. He reached down and caught her arm, then slammed her into a wall.

The vicious creature screamed and leapt at him, her thumbs aimed at his eyes. He brought up a knee that caught her in the rib cage, knocking the air out of her.

Even injured she growled and tried to fight. But now he had her by the scruff of the neck. He pinned her to the wall and strangled her into submission.

It was a good fight from such a small girl—well timed and ruthless. She was not just a victim waiting to go to her death. She’d planned this all along!

She’d lured him into the corridor, waited until they were in a lonely stretch of the warrens, and then done her best to leave him lying in a pool of blood.

Doubtless, she had some plan for escape.

Cullossax laughed. He admired her feistiness. When she was barely conscious, he reached into her tunic and felt for more weapons. All he felt was her soft flesh, but a thorough search turned up a second dagger in her boot.

He threw them down the corridor, and as the girl began to come to, he put her in a painful wristlock and walked her to her death, whimpering and pleading.

“I hate you,” she cried, weeping bitter tears. “I hate the world you’ve created. I’m going to destroy it, and build a better one in its place.”

It was such a grandiose notion—one little wyrmling girl planning to change the world—that he had to laugh. “It is not I who made this world.”

“You support it,” she accused. “You’re as guilty as the rest!” It happened that way sometimes. Those who were about to die would search for someone to accuse, rather than take responsibility for their own stupidity or weakness.

But it was not Cullossax who had created her world. It was the Great Wyrm, whom some said had finally taken a new form, and now walked the halls of Rugassa.

As they descended some stairs, a fellow tormentor who was climbing up from below called Cullossax to a halt. “Have you heard the news?”

“What news?” Cullossax asked. He did not know the man well, but tormentors all belonged to a Shadow Order, a secret fraternity, and had sworn bloody oaths to protect one another and uphold one another and to promote one another’s interests, even in murder. Thus, as a tormentor, this man was a brother to him.

“Despair has taken a new body, and now walks the labyrinth, displaying miraculous powers. As one of his first acts, he has devised a new form of torture, surpassing our finest arts. You should see!” Cullossax stood for a moment, overwhelmed. The Great Wyrm walked among them? He still could not believe it. Obviously, with the binding of the worlds, Despair felt the need to confirm his supremacy. The very thought filled Cullossax with awe. This was a great time to be alive.

“So,” Cullossax teased, “Despair wants our jobs?”

The tormentor laughed at the jest, then seemed to get an idea. “You are taking the girl to be slaughtered?”

“Yes,” Cullossax said.

“Take her to the dungeons instead, to the Black Cell. There you will find Vulgnash, the Knight Eternal. He has had a long flight and needs to feed. The girl’s life should be sweet to him.” The girl suddenly tried to rip free, for being consumed by a Knight Eternal was a fate worse than death. Cullossax grabbed the girl’s wrist, holding her tight. She bit him and clawed at him, but he paid her no mind.

Cullossax hesitated. A Knight Eternal had no life of his own. Monsters like him did not need to breathe or eat or drink. Vulgnash could not gain nourishment by digesting flesh. Instead, he drew life from others, consuming their spiritual essence—their hopes and longings.

Cullossax had provided the Knight Eternal with children before. Watching the monster feed was like watching an adder consume a rat.

In his mind’s eye, Cullossax remembered a feeding from five years ago. Then Vulgnash, draped in his crimson robes, had taken a young boy.

Like this girl, the boy had screamed in terror and struggled with renewed fury as they neared Vulgnash’s lair.

“Ah,” Vulgnash had whispered, his wings quivering slightly in anticipation, “just in time.” Then Vulgnash had turned and totally focused on his victim. He seemed unaware that Cullossax was watching.

The boy had cried and backed away into a corner, and every muscle of Vulgnash’s body was taut, charged with power, lest the child try to run.

The boy did bolt, but Vulgnash lashed out and caught him, shoved him into the corner, and touched the child on the forehead—Vulgnash’s middle finger resting between the child’s eyes, his thumb and pinky on the boy’s mandibles, and a finger in each eye.

Normally when a child was so touched, he ceased to fight. Like a mouse that is filled with scorpion’s venom, he would go limp.

But this boy fought. The child grabbed Vulgnash’s wrist and tried to shove him away. Vulgnash seized the boy by the throat with his left hand then, and maintained his grip with the right. The child bit at the Knight Eternal’s wrist, fighting valiantly.

“Ah, a worthy one!” Vulgnash enthused.

The boy tried twisting away. He began to scream, almost breaking Vulgnash’s grasp. There was a world of panic in the child’s eyes.

“Why?” the child screamed. “Why does it have to be this way?”

“Because I hunger,” Vulgnash had said, shoving the boy into the corner, holding him fast. As the boy’s essence began to drain, he shrieked in panic and shook his head, trying to break free of the monster’s touch. All hope and light drained from his face, and was replaced by an endless well of despair. His cries of terror changed into a throaty wail. He kicked and fought for a long moment while Vulgnash merely held him up against the wall.

The Knight Eternal leaned close, his mouth inches from the boy’s, and then began to inhale, making a hissing sound.

Cullossax had seen a thin light, like a mist, draining away from the child into Vulgnash’s mouth. Slowly, the child quit struggling, until at last his legs stopped kicking altogether. When the Knight Eternal was done, he’d dropped the child’s limp body.

The boy lay in a heap, staring up into some private horror worse than any nightmare, barely breathing.

“Ah, that was refreshing,” Vulgnash said. “Few souls are so strong.” Cullossax had stood for a moment, unsure what to do. Vulgnash jutted a chin toward the boy. “Get rid of the carcass.”

Cullossax then grabbed the limp form and began dragging it up the corridor. The boy still breathed, and he moaned a bit, as if in terror.

Grabbing the child’s head, Cullossax had given it a quick twist up and to the right, ending the child’s life, and his torment.

Thus, Cullossax knew how this feeding would turn out. The Knight Eternal would put a hand over this girl’s pretty face, lean in close, almost as if to kiss, and with one indrawn hiss he would drain the life from her. He would take all of her hope and aspiration, all of her enjoyment and serenity. Realizing her fate, the girl fought to break free. She jerked her hand again and again, trying to break Cullossax’s grasp, but Cullossax seized the child’s wrist, digging the joint of his thumb into the ganglia of the girl’s wrist until her knees gave out from the pain.

He wanted to see this new form of torture, so he dragged her to the dungeon.

“Please,” she cried. “Take me back to the crèche. I’ll listen to the dogmatist! I’ll do anything. I promise!” But it was too late. The girl had chosen her fate. She let her knees buckle, refusing to walk any farther. Cullossax dragged the girl now, his fingernails biting into her flesh as she whimpered and pleaded and tried to grab the legs of passersby.

“We don’t have to live like this!” the girl said. “Inkarra does exist!” That gave Cullossax pause. Could it be that there was a land without the Death Lords, without the empire? Could it be that people there lived pleasant lives without care?

For one person to tell of it was madness. For two to tell of it was a fluke. But this girl was the third in a single day. A pattern had emerged.

And then there was the matter of the small folk. Since the change, Cullossax had heard rumors that there might be millions of them in the world.

“Who is the emperor in this land of yours?” Cullossax asked.

“I did not serve an emperor there,” she said. “But there was a great king, the Earth King, Gaborn Val Orden, who ruled with kindness and compassion. He told me when I was a child that ‘the time will come when the small folk of the world must stand against the large.’ He said that I would know when that time had come. Gaborn Val Orden served and protected his people. But our emperor only feeds on his people!”

The name Orden was known to Cullossax. It was a strange name, hard on the wyrmling tongue. As a tormentor, Cullossax was privy to many secrets. Just after dawn a prisoner had been delivered to the dungeon, a powerful wizard named Fallion Orden—a wizard who had been the son of a great king on another world, a wizard who had such vast powers that he had bound two worlds into one. Now the great Vulgnash himself had been assigned to guard this dangerous wizard.

“Where is this realm of Inkarra?” Cullossax demanded.

“South,” the child said. “Their warrens are to the south, beyond the mountains. Let me go, and I can show you. I’ll take you there.”

It was a curious offer. But Cullossax had a job to do.

Down he led the child, past the guards who blocked his way, into the dungeons where light never reached.

The girl struggled, twisting and scratching at his hand, until he cuffed her hard enough so that she went limp, and her struggles ceased.

Her mouth fell open, revealing her oversized canines. Small rubies had been inset into each of them, rubies carved to look like serpents. It was a symbol of her status, as one of the intellectual elite. How far you have fallen, little one, Cullossax thought.

At the outer gates to the dungeons, he took the necklace from around his neck and used the key to enter. At last he reached the Black Cell, the most heavily guarded of all.

Cullossax drew near its iron door, and would have opened it, but a pair of guards blocked him. Cullossax could see through a grate in the door. Inside, a bright light shone. Vulgnash stood in his red cowl and robes, his artificial red wings flapping slightly. He loomed above a small human, a man with dark black hair, and a pair of wings. The ground in the cell was rimed with frost, and Cullossax’s breath came out as a fog when he peered in.

Within the cell stood a wyrmling lord, a captain dressed in black, a man with the papery hands of one who had almost given up the flesh, one who was almost ready to transition to Death Lord. He was holding up a thumb-lantern, examining the wizard Fallion Orden.

There was no sign of this wondrous new torture that the tormentor had told Cullossax about. Cullossax had expected to see some novel contraption—perhaps an advancement upon the crystal cage, the tormentor’s most sophisticated device.

Now the Death Lord spoke softly, his voice almost a hiss.

Cullossax was not supposed to hear, he suspected, but wyrmlings have sharp ears, and his were sharper than most.

“We must take care,” the Death Lord whispered. “Despair senses a coming danger. It is dim, but it haunts us nonetheless. He told me to bring warning.”

“A danger to whom?” Vulgnash asked.

“To our fortress guards,” the captain said. “He suspects that humans are coming, a force small but powerful. They are coming here, to this cell. They hope to free Fallion Orden.”

“Then I will be ready for them,” Vulgnash said.

” We must be ready,” the captain said. “The humans will send their greatest heroes. We must be sure that they are properly received. We have sent for forcibles. When they come, you will need further endowments.”

The Death Lord peered hard at Vulgnash. “You look weak. Do you need a soul to feed upon?”

“I have sent for one.”

The Death Lord laughed softly, a mocking laugh, as if at some private joke. He was laughing at Vulgnash’s victim.

Cullossax stepped back from the iron door, peered down at the girl at his feet. In that instant, he suddenly knew something beyond a shadow of a doubt.

They feed on us, Cullossax thought, just as the girl said. The Emperor Zul-torac, the Knights Eternal, the Death Lords—they care no more for us than the adder does for the rat. We are nothing to them. In his mind, he heard the girl’s question: Doesn’t a person have a right to defend himself from society?

Cullossax had seldom allowed himself such dangerous notions.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a place called Inkarra, somewhere far from here. . . . He tried to imagine a world worth dying for.

It is odd how the mind can snap. After a lifetime of service to the empire, Cullossax suddenly found himself smiling inanely.

What if I denied the Knight Eternal this meal? he wondered, gripping the girl’s limp wrist. They would kill me if they caught me.

And with the thought, it seemed to Cullossax that he no longer had a choice. He turned and began to drag the girl away.

“What are you doing?” a guard demanded. “Bring her back.”

“She’s dead,” Cullossax objected. “I hit her too hard. I’ll bring another.” One of the guards snorted in disgust, a sound that said, I would not want to be you, when Vulgnash learns of your clumsiness, and Cullossax dragged the girl on, sweat streaming from his brow. Sometime as he stalked through the corridors, the girl groaned in pain, then awoke with a snarl, clawing at him in her fury.

He dragged her on, toward the southernmost exit. Up he went, to the very surface, until he reached the gates that blocked the entrance.

Outside, the sun blazed in the sky, horrifying and malignant. It was mid-morning.

“Open the gates,” Cullossax growled at the guards. “I have business outside the fortress.”

“What business?” the guards snarled.

The girl whimpered and fought, trying to break free. She bit his wrist, sinking her canines in.

“This one wants to leave,” Cullossax said. “It pleases me to let her go—and for me to hunt her. Her skin will hang inside the labyrinth’s walls, as a warning to others.”

The guards laughed. With so many people trying to flee the city, it seemed a reasonable idea.

“You’ll let her leave by daylight?” a guard asked.

“The better to burn her eyes out,” Cullossax said. “Then I’ll hunt her by night, while she staggers about, blinded by the sun.”

The guards roared in laughter.

So he let her go.

Gibbering in fear, the girl crawled a few steps, blind with terror and even more blinded by the sun. Then she suddenly found her courage, leapt to her feet, and went sprinting down the road, her hand over her face to shield her eyes as she headed for the forest.

Now Cullossax would wait, and as he waited, he vacillated. He wanted to see this girl’s dream world. But he did not want to get caught. Perhaps it would be better to kill her after all. He could not be sure. With every passing minute, he worried that soldiers would be sent to apprehend him. Cullossax stood with the guards for hours, gleaning the latest news from outside while the sun hit its zenith and then began to fall. Last night the battle had been won against the men of Caer Luciare, they all assured him, and rumor said that the warrior clans had been be wiped off the face of the earth. Such news contradicted Cullossax’s own sources, and the guards had heard nothing about the Great Wyrm taking a new form, demonstrating marvelous powers.

They were only lowly guards, after all, and so knew little of import. But they talked of things that they did know. They spoke at length of how small folk had been discovered in every direction. They’d heard reports from the scouts themselves, and had seen small folk brought through their gate in chains. Huge cities had been found only a hundred miles to the east, and over the past two nights, troops had been sent out to wreak havoc upon the small folk, with the aim of enslaving their men, while eating the women and children.

The small folks’ rune lore was not helping them, the guards assured Cullossax. Already the emperor had mastered their lore and exceeded it, and was sending out his own wyrmling Runelords to do battle. The fortress was emptying, so many warriors had left.

And in their wake, in the high keeps, strange new creatures were taking the wyrmling’s place. For a brief moment, Cullossax worried about this. The fortress was emptying?

He dared wonder how many people he might meet out in the wilds. There would be roving patrols of wyrmlings—and perhaps just as dangerously, there might be bands of angry humans, out for vengeance.

“It is a great time to be alive,” the guards all said. “Surely this is history in the making.”

“Yes,” Cullossax exulted, voicing full agreement. Yet he wondered, why then does it feel like the end of the world?

Because I know that soon my masters will miss me, and learn what I’ve done. Probably, they already have. They will be searching the labyrinth, suspecting foul play. They will find the girl’s knife with blood on it, and might even think me dead.

Up here is the last place they will look, he thought.

But they will look here all the same.

 

2

THE GATE

Put no trust in your fellow men no matter how fair their looks, for every man’s face is a mask that hides terrible malice.

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

As Cullossax awaited his fate, far away upon the plains, the humans of the warrior clans fled their fortress at Caer Luciare, nearly forty thousand people racing through the morning light, heading east through fields of oats that had been burned white by the summer sun, past black-eyed Susans that towered above the straw, their golden petals circling their dark eyes, through thickets of thistles with wilted liver-colored leaves and heads of purple.

The people kept away from the alders and pines along the mountain’s skirts, where wyrmlings might lurk in the shadows. Instead, they blazed a path through fields so dazzlingly bright that the wyrmlings could not follow.

The folk of Caer Luciare could not move swiftly, burdened as they were. Some women carried babes at their breasts or hoisted toddlers on their shoulders. Older children walked, struggling through the tall grass, while the oldest of the folks hobbled about with staffs to keep them upright. Many warriors were wounded, and these had to be borne by their comrades, while everyone who could do so had brought something—food, water, a little clothing. The inhabitants of the castle had long known that they might have to flee, and so were prepared.

But where are we going? Talon wondered, as she stopped to shift a keg of ale that she carried upon her back. She walked beside her aged mother, at least the woman who had raised Talon among the warrior clans, a woman named Gatunyea. Talon’s father had been much the same man in both worlds, a mighty protector of his people. Talon had known him as Sir Borenson among the small folk on one world and as Aaath Ulber among these warriors. And on each world, Borenson had taken a different woman to wife. Gatunyea of the warrior clan was nothing like Myrrima, the gentle wizardess. Gatunyea was a stern woman, heavy-boned and arthritic, with a blunt face and no tolerance for weakness. She had borne her husband two strong sons with features much like his own. They walked beside Talon now, her brothers, age nine and eleven.

But unlike Talon and Borenson, the rest of the family had not merged with their shadow selves when the worlds were bound.

That can mean only one thing, Talon reasoned: they had no shadow selves to merge with. Their counterparts somehow died or were killed before the worlds combined.

But how could that be? she wondered. How can I, the daughter of Borenson and Myrrima on one world, have different parents on another?

Only one answer sufficed. Gatunyea is not my birth mother, Talon realized. She looked over at the woman. Gatunyea had wide cheekbones and a wrinkled brow. So did her sons. Talon had always felt grateful not to have inherited those features, for they would have made her appear more brutish.

“Gatunyea,” Talon asked, “when were you going to tell me that you were not my birth mother?” The aging woman faltered in her step and cast a sideways glance at Talon. She seemed to age three years in the space of a heartbeat.

“Never,” Gatunyea said. She fell silent a moment, and then explained. “You are my daughter. I took you to my breast when your mother died. I nursed you as my own. That is all that matters.”

“What happened to my birth mother?”

Gatunyea shook her head sadly. “She went to hunt for hazelnuts one morning when the clouds were lowering. A wyrmling harvester caught her in the forest. You were a month old. My own husband had been killed in a raid on the wyrmling supply lines months before, a raid that was led by Aaath Ulber. So your father felt . . . responsible for me. I was expecting a child, a son came two days after your mother disappeared, but his cord was wrapped three times around his neck. We managed to free him, but he did not last a day. So your father took me to wife. I am from good stock. He knew that I could bear him the strong sons that our people would need to fight, and I was happy for the chance. It seemed a prudent union.”

Talon’s half-brothers peered up at their mother, their faces a study in surprise.

“Do you love my father?”

“More than life or breath,” Gatunyea said. “That is the way of it. You cannot sleep with a good man for all those years and not grow into one. But I wonder,” she said, glancing off to the horizon, “if he will still love me?”

Talon knew that her father faced a dilemma. His two shadow selves had merged, and on each world he’d had a different wife, a different family. Others in the city were facing similar problems. Which wife would he choose now?

Myrrima, Talon decided. Sir Borenson had more children with Myrrima than Aaath Ulber had with Gatunyea, and their bond was closer. They had fought side by side at war, and thus their relationship was probably deeper than the one that Aaath Ulber had with Gatunyea.

But now that his two selves had bound into one, what would Myrrima and their children think of him? He would be a giant in size, with a bony ridge upon his brow, and overlarge incisors. He would seem a monster.

“He will come to you,” Talon decided. “Father will look more like one of the warrior clan than the small folk. He’ll come to you.”

Talon’s mother let out a small sob, a strange sound. Talon had never heard the stern woman cry. Talon hadn’t known that Gatunyea was even capable of it.

Yet Talon feared that she had guessed wrong and thus given Gatunyea false hope. Talon wondered if her two mothers might share her husband, as women in Indhopal did. But Talon doubted that they could manage it.

The company forged ahead. With each step full heads of grain scattered at Talon’s feet, and the occasional grasshopper rose up on buzzing wings.

So how far can we run with all of these children? Talon wondered.

The wyrmlings had taken Caer Luciare, and they also held the fortress at Cantular. The River Dyll-Tandor had flooded after the change, and was all but impassable. And by destroying the bridge at Cantular during last night’s battle, Warlord Madoc had been able to forestall some of the wyrmling invaders, but now it seemed that his heroic deed had also blocked his own people’s escape. I’m glad that Madoc’s dead, Talon thought. I only wish that I could claim a part in his killing. But now, by all accounts, Talon’s people were on something of an island, with waters rushing all around, and only the mountains of the Great Spine to the south.

South, Talon thought, we will have to flee south.

But with women and wounded and old folks and children to slow them, the wyrmlings would harry their retreat.

Perhaps, she considered, there are some narrow mountain passes we can escape through. Certainly, the High King had plotted just such a retreat many times. He and his counselors had huddled over ancient maps for hours, considering what trails to use, where water and shelter might be found, and how best to defend themselves in just such an event. They’d spent months choosing the safest course, and planning for every contingency.

Just as surely, the wyrmlings had plotted how to defeat them.

But now everything was changed. Two “shadow” worlds had combined. Mountains had shifted position. Some had risen and others fallen as the two worlds merged into one. The old maps, the old escape plans, were all but useless.

Still, we have to try, Talon considered.

Talon’s mother and brothers carried food, bundled in blankets. But there were no spare clothes for winter, no food to last them even through a week. Still the refugees trudged through the fields, heading north.

But why? Talon wondered. There was no escape that way.

At midmorning, the Emir Tuul Ra called a halt in a huge meadow. A stream ran through it, and willows sprouted along its banks, so that some could stand in the shade.

Soldiers guarded the bank, lest any wyrmlings be hiding in the trees.

A young man of this world named Alun had been trudging beside Talon all day. Alun was the Master of the Hounds at Caer Luciare. He had but fourteen war dogs left to his credit, and on this morning he let them run. The dogs wagged their stubby tails and raced about in the fields, startling yellow butterflies and winged grasshoppers into flight, woofing at all of the excitement. In their lacquered armor and spiked collars, they looked fierce.

Now Alun sent some dogs east to scout for scents in the brushy thickets along the creek, and others to the west. If a wyrmling hid there, the dogs’ barking would give ample warning. After a brief halt, Talon spotted the Wizard Sisel, Daylan Hammer, and the Emir Tuul Ra off from the main body of the company. The emir’s daughter, Siyaddah, a dark-skinned girl with a doe’s soft eyes, was talking to her father.

Talon could not help but notice that Alun was gazing at her longingly.

Alun was not a huge man. He was a gangrel, thin in the ribs with a misshapen nose, spindly arms, and oversized hands.

Talon had hardly noticed him before. She had been born to the warrior caste, and so he, a mere slave, had not merited attention.

But now that the worlds had merged, a part of Talon suddenly recognized that he was another human being, a person who by birthright should have been treasured and treated with honor. She tried to imagine what his life was like.

Until recently, he had lived a life of hopelessness, never dreaming that he might be allowed to bear children. He had not even hoped that he would be free to buy a home, or to marry. I was born with riches, Talon thought, but Alun had to work for what little he’s got. Only recently had he been accepted into the warrior clan, and rumor said that he had fought like a badger when the clans took the wyrmling fortress at Cantular.

I should give him his due, Talon decided.

“Why don’t you go speak to her?” Talon asked.

“Oh,” he said, “she wouldn’t go for the likes of me.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Talon said. “Siyaddah has a way of seeing through people, gauging their worth. You fought against wyrmlings yesterday, and you acquitted yourself well. Surely saying ‘hello’ to her would require less courage.”

Alun just looked at Talon helplessly, as if she had asked too much of him. Suddenly Daylan waved into the air, and Talon’s foster sister Rhianna came swooping to the ground in front of him, her bright magical wings flashing like rubies in the morning sun. She landed with a jar. Rhianna spoke to Daylan and the emir.

She’d been scouting the trail from the sky, using the wings that she had won last night by defeating a Knight Eternal in single combat.

Rhianna was pretty in her way. She had cinnamon-colored hair and eyes more fiercely blue than any rain-washed sky. Her red hair nearly matched the color of her wings. The tunic and pants that she wore were made of doeskin, the hue of summer fields. But right now her face looked wan and careworn. She did not have Talon’s great size or blunt features.

Talon whispered to Alun, “Come with me. Now’s your chance.”

Talon went to hear Rhianna’s report, while Alun followed in a nervous daze, but before Talon reached the spot, Rhianna rose up from the ground and flew east, flapping furiously. Talon reached the party, and Alun stood beside Siyaddah shyly, as if wondering what to say. After a moment, he mumbled a greeting, and Siyaddah answered more boldly.

Talon left the two to their own conversation, and asked Daylan. “Where is Rhianna going?”

“To warn the small folk of the world,” Daylan replied. “If we can get them to unite against the wyrmlings, we might stand a chance.”

“She’ll never reach help in time,” Talon said. “The wyrmlings will be on our trail by nightfall.”

“There are trails that the wyrmlings cannot follow,” Daylan said mysteriously, and went trundling away. The emir stood watching Rhianna fly off, and then turned to Talon and asked, “Tholna, is it not—daughter of Aaath Ulber?”

“I go by the name Talon, now.”

The emir smiled at that, an odd smile full of concern. “Why go by that name?” Talon had to think before answering. The emir came near, standing just a bit above her. He was not tall. He did not tower above her. Yet his presence was imposing. He was a legend among her people, one of the great heroes of all time. Frequently he had led raids against the wyrmling harvesters that hunted her people, or had raided wyrmling supply trains or destroyed enemy outposts. In his youth, he had led the last of his people on a daring assault on Rugassa itself—and had returned wounded and beaten, the sole survivor.

Most important, Talon’s own father, Aaath Ulber, credited the emir with saving his life in two separate raids.

So he was a legend, and Talon felt both honored and intimidated by his presence. By training, Talon’s shadow self Tholna had been raised to hope to wed such a man, to bear him warrior sons. The hope had been drilled into her from the time she was born, and she found herself excited to be near him. Or maybe, she thought, it is just his animal magnetism that excites me.

The emir was handsome. His dark hair was cropped short and brushed back. His eyes were a brown so deep that they were almost black, and they had a fire in them that smoldered. So Talon found that she struggled for words as she tried to frame an answer to his question. “I suppose that I wish to be called Talon because . . . I am not at all like the Tholna that my friends knew.” The emir seemed intrigued. “Interesting. And how have you changed, my little Talon?” Talon had never spoken to the emir, not above a casual greeting when she had met him while in the company of her father.

“I . . . Tholna was a nothing. She was a breeder, meant only to bear sons to some warrior. Talon is a warrior.”

The emir smiled, obviously amused. “There are women warriors among the small folk?”

“It is not common,” Talon admitted, “but among the Runelords, a person’s gender does not matter much. Forcibles tend to be great equalizers. Besides, my father was the king’s personal bodyguard, and at times we were in great danger, so he taught me everything that he knew.”

The emir nodded appreciatively at that. “The better to protect you. Very well, I shall call you Talon from now on. What does the name mean, in the tongue of the small folk?”

“It is a claw, like that found on a hawk,” Talon said.

“Interesting,” the emir said. “Do you know what the name Tholna means?” Tholna was a common name among girls. “It is an ancient weapon, I’ve heard.”

“Not so ancient. It was often used in Dalharristan, when I was a lad. It had a handle that one could grasp in the hand, with two long hooks attached to it—hooks that protruded on either side of the middle finger. Thus, in ancient Dalharristan, the weapon was called a ‘talon.’

“It is odd, don’t you think,” the emir continued, “that your father would give you the same name on both worlds? It makes me wonder how many other similarities there might be.” The news was indeed intriguing. Talon had been trained in many weapons, but had never even seen a tholna. “Why would I want to pull a foe in close, where he might strike within my kill zone?” The emir seemed mildly surprised by the question, and appreciative of it. “In the close combat of a large battle it was surprisingly effective. It was used only as an off-hand weapon, usually with a parry blade. The tholna could be hooked into the shoulder or leg of an opponent, to throw him off balance. Originally, it was developed by the wyrmlings—used to grasp fleeing humans.”

Talon considered. The parry blade was a short sword with a round guard so large that it was almost as big as a targe. In close combat, where hundreds of men might be fighting at once, the parry blade was an effective stabbing weapon, for it was difficult to avoid an expert blow.

“An interesting combination of weapons,” Talon said. “But I do not think they would be of much use in our war against wyrmlings.”

“No,” the emir said, “which is why they lost popularity.” The company began to move out, and Talon prepared to march with it.

The emir asked, “May I walk with you?”

“Me?” Talon asked. She could not understand why he would want to.

“I need to learn the tongue of the small folk,” the emir said. “I was hoping that you could teach me?” Talon wondered why he did not just ask one of his warriors. Several men among the warrior clans had been bound into one, and thus knew how to speak Rofehavanish. As if divining her thoughts the emir added, “I could ask one of my men, but to tell the truth, you are more pleasant to look upon.” The compliment took Talon off guard and left her feeling weak in the knees. She found the emir attractive. He was a widower, and therefore available. But she had never considered herself worthy of his attention.

Nevertheless, they were both of marriageable age, and among the warrior clans, men and women were taught to wed the strongest possible mate.

The Emir Tuul Ra was older than Talon, but he was blessed with a face and figure that were somehow timeless. He could have been any age between thirty and forty-five. Though he had a daughter just a few months older than Talon, she found him beguiling, and she imagined him to be young. She imagined that he had married as a young teen, as royals often did in his land.

Talon was eighteen years old—a free woman on her world, old enough to select her own husband—and she was considered to be of prime breeding age and stock.

The emir took her elbow gently, and walked beside her in a courtly manner. She smiled shyly, and walked with him, pointing out things—grass, trees, sky, sun—and teaching him their Rofehavanish names.

The emir listened intently and experimented with each word, trying it on his tongue. He turned out to be a marvelously adept student, for in his youth he had been forced to master several languages. More important, he was from the ruling caste in his own land, and thus had been bred for intelligence. Thus, his forefathers had been selected not just to be great warriors, but to be men of sound character and deep wisdom.

They walked along for a pair of hours, Talon trying to match the emir’s faster pace, until at last they reached the front of the column, matching stride for stride. The emir learned with surprising rapidity, and kept demanding to learn more, as if he hoped to master the Rofehavanish tongue in a single day. He feels an onus is upon him, she realized. His every muscle is strung as tight as a bow. He has an entire nation to save, and he thinks that knowing this language might be the key. At Talon’s back, Alun and Siyaddah were lost in their own conversation, and time and again the war dogs came boiling around them all in a pack.

But as they talked, Talon heard one man a few rows behind question loudly, “Where are we going? Ah, this is madness! Who is in charge here?”

She realized that she had been hearing similar grumbles farther off all morning long, and she herself had wondered who was in charge, but the emir’s lessons had captured her attention and taken her mind from the problem.

The emir rounded and called, “Halt! Halt! Everyone gather around!” He leapt up on a fallen tree. The bark had stripped away over the years, so that the bole was bleached whiter than a skull. The Wizard Sisel came to stand at the emir’s back on the right, and Daylan Hammer to his left. Thus, with the emir having some elevation, it felt almost as if they had formed a natural amphitheater. The crowd began to gather around. There was nervousness in the air. Talon found herself backing away, farther into the crowd, hoping to assess its mood.

“There is grumbling among you,” the emir said—loudly, so that he could be heard by all who were pleased to listen. “You are worried, as you should be. You ask, ‘Where are we going?'” At that there were grunts of assent and wise nods. “‘Who leads us now, and by what right?’ ‘Our king is dead. Warlord Madoc is dead. Why are we traveling north, when the way is blocked?'” They were good questions all, Talon knew.

“I will tell you,” the emir said. “No one leads us now.” At that the folks in the crowd glanced from side to side, and some shook their heads. It was a problem that they had never faced before. “Here in our hour of greatest need, no one leads us.”

“You should lead us!” one of the young warlords cried in a husky voice, and there were cheers from many. But almost instantly Warlord Madoc’s sons shouted, “No! No!,” and their supporters chimed in, while others hissed and jeered.

Talon was astonished by the ferocity of their response. The Emir Tuul Ra had always been a man of high station, well liked by the people. But many a peasant shook a fist in the air and adamantly rejected the notion that he should lead.

“Who are you to tell us what to do?” an old woman demanded at Talon’s side. Others cried, “Madoc!

Clan Madoc!”

Old warlords raised their axes in the air and began to chant, “Madoc! Madoc! Madoc!” Talon felt bewildered, and had to wonder why so few would support the emir. In part, she suspected that it was because he was foreign-born and had lost his own war against the wyrmlings. But the people didn’t just seem to be rising up against him. There was genuine support for Clan Madoc. Old Warlord Madoc had been a bold man, it was true, but his character had been flawed. He had gained popularity among the lesser lords by flattering them and offering bribes. If the Madocs took power, many a man would find himself given an office that he was not fit for, shoving aside men who were wiser and better qualified. The resulting upheaval, in this difficult time, would be a disaster. But it wasn’t just secondary posts that Talon had to worry about. Madoc’s sons were not their father’s equal—not in courage, not in battle prowess, not in wisdom or intelligence or cunning. But apparently some of the lords did not care. So long as the bribes continued and undeserved wealth and honors flowed into their hands . . .

“Emir Tuul Ra!” Talon cried. “Emir Tuul Ra!” A few others raised the chant, and some old woman turned to Talon and raged, “Shut your mouth, damn you. You don’t know what you’re saying!” But Talon cried all the louder, and soon tempers were flaring. In some knots, weapons were drawn. It almost looked as if it would turn to civil war.

A great good that will do, Talon thought. The wyrmlings will rejoice to see it. Daylan Hammer whistled loudly, to capture folks’ attention.

The emir held his hands up, begging for quiet, seemingly as baffled by the outcry and clamor as Talon was. He tried to dispel the rising tide of rage. “I do not propose to be your leader,” he said. “I led a nation once, a proud nation that was larger than all of your eastern realms combined. Where is it now? I will tell you: I led it to ruin. The wyrmlings destroyed it.”

Talon wanted to argue. It was not the emir’s fault. Tuul Ra had been but a youth at the time when his father died in battle, and his people had been refugees fleeing the wyrmling horde. The war that destroyed them had been waged for centuries, and Tuul Ra had inherited his defeat. She remembered even as a tot how her father had said that the emir “did a miraculous job of fighting an unwinnable war.” Apparently, others knew the truth, too, for some cried, “No! That is not how it was.” The emir was a hero in Talon’s mind. He had dealt savage blows to the wyrmlings against all odds. He’d captured the wyrmling princess, and thus forestalled last night’s attack for more than a decade. He was such a hero Talon believed that his name would be remembered in the Halls of Eternity. But the emir called the protesters to quiet. “I will tell you who should lead you,” he shouted. “Your prince—Areth Sul Urstone.”

There was silence for a moment. The naysayers had not expected that. Their prince had been taken captive by the wyrmlings years ago, and it was believed that he was still held in the dungeons of Rugassa.

“He can’t lead us,” Connor Madoc shouted, striding from the crowd to confront the emir. “If he’s even alive, what’s left of him—a gibbering shell of a man? The wyrmling torturers will have made a wreck of him.”

“I doubt it,” the emir said resolutely. “All who knew Prince Urstone doubt it. The prince that I knew was the best man that I have ever met. If all men were such as he, there would be no need for prisons or judges or barristers, for there would be no crime. All men would dwell in peace and deal honorably and courteously with one another. All husbands would love their wives, and hold to their wives alone. All children would love and emulate their fathers, for their fathers would be worthy of their love. There would be no need for armies, for there would be no wars.

“Can you imagine what kind of world that would make? So much of our labor is only a waste. We wage an endless war against the evils among us, and it drains our every resource—our time, our wealth, and even our very hope.

“But that’s the kind of man I knew—a good man, a just man. Perhaps he is just a memory. Perhaps you’re right. Maybe he has been tormented beyond all reason, and his mind has gone to waste. He might now be nothing more than a maddened animal, craving his own death.

“But I hope for something better. There was a firmness in Areth Sul Urstone that put iron to shame. Never have I known a man of stronger resolve. I believe that he resisted his torturers through these years. I have been told that upon the shadow world, his shadow self was great indeed, and that he was a king beloved of his people more than any other. It is said that even the earth loved him, and granted to him great powers to protect his realm. Thus he was called an ‘Earth King.’

“It is my hope that now that the worlds have combined, he may become such once again. I believe that he still lives, and it is my intent”—Emir Tuul Ra’s voice suddenly turned to a snarl, as if terrible passions had long been building inside and only now fought their way free—”to bring him home!” At that some of the older men cheered and raised their battle-axes and danced in celebration. Some of the older women swiped tears from their eyes.

But Talon felt little. She had never known the prince. He’d been captured when she was just a toddler. Most of the younger generation had never met him.

She had met his shadow self, of course—the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden. But how much like him could Areth Sul Urstone be? Areth Sul Urstone was from a world that had never heard of Earth Kings. The Wizard Sisel hoped that with the binding of the worlds, the Earth Spirit would grant that title to Areth’s shadow self. But Talon wasn’t sure if that would happen.

“What would you have us do,” Drewish Madoc shouted at the emir, “squat here in the field while you plot some mad rescue? We should get going. We should devise some fortification, prepare for battle. The wyrmlings will be upon us after dusk.”

“What fortification would you suggest?” the emir asked. “Shall we dig a trench and build a nice little battle wall? How will that help us, when the wyrmlings took Caer Luciare—one of our greatest fortresses—only hours ago? It would be madness to fight them, and there is nowhere to run.” He jutted his chin toward Daylan. The immortal stood calmly. “But Daylan Hammer has a plan for escape, one that is not without its own risks. I will let him tell you of it.”

Daylan stepped forward a few paces. “As you know, our passage is blocked to the north. With the colliding of the worlds, a great sea is emptying and filling the River Dyll-Tandor. It has flooded to the north and the east, and it is filling the valleys to the west. We cannot escape in those directions. The mountains to the south might seem the only logical choice, but you all know the dangers. The weather there is likely to be harsh, even at this time of year. But there is another danger: with the great change that has been wrought, the mountains themselves will be unstable. Landslides are common enough in the wet season, they will be far more likely now. I do not think we should venture south.

“That leaves only one hope. You folk of Caer Luciare have no memory of how the worlds were formed. Among the wyrmlings it is taught that the Great Wyrm formed the world, and that is half-true.

“But a better world than this existed once, a world so pure and beautiful that your imaginations cannot do it justice. The Great Wyrm tried to seize control of it, and in the battle that ensued, the One True World splintered into millions and millions of lesser worlds.

“Your world is but a shadow of that perfect world, as many of you now know. And these shadows were wrought by Despair.

“But the One World, the netherworld, still remains. It is diminished from what it once was, but it exists. I can open a door into it, if you desire to enter.”

“And who will lead us,” Drewish Madoc demanded, “you?”

“I have no desire to lead these people,” Daylan said.

“Damn you, I think you do!” Drewish growled.

“Please,” the emir said. “Let us not quarrel—I beg you. Let us not choose a leader until after I bring my friend home.”

The Madocs could not easily mount an argument against that, not without seeming churlish. But their expressions showed that they wanted to.

Talon studied Connor Madoc, and inwardly she fumed. Her father had warned her of the danger posed by that man. Dozens of times he had tried to lure her father to his side with petty bribes and flattery. Daylan said, “I must warn you that even the One True World holds its risks. Still, it is much like your world, and you will not have to abide there long. There may be dangers ahead, but compared to the certain destruction that awaits us if we stay here, the risks are worth taking.

“I intend to open a door into that world, and over the next few days you can march at your leisure. In time, I will open another door to this world, and we can enter somewhere far away from here, beyond the knowledge of the wyrmling hordes.”

For an instant, the crowd was stone silent. But they could not remain silent for long. Daylan Hammer was offering hope where only minutes before there had been none, and now Talon whooped in triumph. All of the rest of the people joined into the shout.

“Let us see this world first!” Connor Madoc clamored to be heard above the crowd. Daylan Hammer shrugged in acquiescence, then begged use of a staff from the Wizard Sisel; the wizard complied.

Daylan touched the ground with the tip of the staff, and then swung it into a high arc, as if tracing the path of a rainbow.

When he brought the staff back to the ground, he stood for a moment, muttering an incantation. He raised his staff again and began drawing a rune in the air with its tip.

The air around the company suddenly seemed to harden: that was the only way that Talon could describe it. She could still breathe, but there was a heft to the air, as if it had grown heavy and torpid, like a pudding as it thickens.

The smell of a storm filled the field, and lightning sizzled and popped at the point of Daylan’s staff. Suddenly, it was as if an invisible wall fell away.

One instant, Talon was peering at Daylan and the others, and behind them she could see the white fields of summer, thick with dying thistles and black-eyed Susans. The next moment, it was as if a curtain had opened, revealing something Talon had never imagined.

There was a door in the air, shaped like a rainbow, high and arching, large enough so that several people could march through it abreast.

Beyond the door was a land different from her own. There was a vast glade with grass an emerald green. It was dawn there, or perhaps it only looked like dawn because of the huge trees that blocked the sunlight. A numinous opalescent haze filled the water-heavy air.

Not a mile ahead, at the edge of a small lake, a stand of pine trees rose up impossibly high, as if trees were mountains in that world.

Rich flowers filled the meadow. There were pink posies on the ground, each blossom the size of a child’s fist, and bright yellow buttercups, and bluebells that grew so tall that one could look up into the hollow within their flowers.

Bees droned lazily as they trundled about in the morning air. A sweet scent blew from the netherworld, a perfume of flowers so rich that it threatened to overwhelm Talon, but it was mingled with an earthy scent of rich soil and sweet grass.

But even more than the serenity of the scene before her or the fragrance that blew from the netherworld, the call of morning birds beckoned Talon.

There were larks at the fringe of the meadow singing songs that were more intricate, more complex and variant in tone, than the loveliest song from a flute.

Almost by instinct, Talon longed to be there. She suddenly found herself shoved from the back as someone lunged toward the door. A shout rose from among Talon’s people, and it seemed that they would stampede through the opening and bolt into the netherworld—not from fear but from desire. Daylan Hammer shouted, “Hold! Hold! All of you!” He held the staff at ready, barring the way, as if he would club the first person who tried to get past him.

A woman, a young mother holding her child, stopped in front of him, and a wordless cry of longing rose from her throat.

“Listen,” Daylan said. “All is not as it seems. The world you see is beautiful, yes, but it can also be treacherous. There is perfect beauty there, and perfect horror, too.

“Some who walk through this door will die, I fear.

“Touch nothing until I tell you that it is safe. Keep quiet, lest you attract attention. Do not drink from any stream until I tell you that it is all right. Do not eat anything without asking me first.” There were shouts of agreement to the terms, but still Daylan Hammer barred the way. He looked into the eyes of the women and children, as if to be certain that they understood, that they would heed his warning.

“One last thing,” he said. “There are men on this world. Some of you have heard of them. You call them the ‘Bright Ones.’ Their ways will be strange to you, and their magics may be frightening. You must not anger them. Neither should you quarrel with them, or lie to them, or steal from them.

“They have no desire to harm you, but their conduct to you may seem impossibly harsh.

“Most importantly, they will not welcome you. It is my hope that we will meet none on our journey. And if you happen upon them, and think them cruel, know only that their enemies are far crueler.

“If we are discovered, the Bright Ones will likely banish us back to your world. You will not be allowed to stay. I am opening a door to paradise, but only for a brief moment. You cannot stay forever. Understand this, and enter at your own peril.”

He tried to bar the way for an instant more, but the netherworld beckoned, and with a shout of triumph the woman went charging through the door in the air.

Daylan is wiser than I thought, Talon decided. He has just made himself our king, for no one will support the Madocs so long as they find themselves in a new and dangerous world.

While the crowd streamed through, nearly forty thousand strong, Talon suddenly felt a strange reticence. This is more dangerous than we know, she thought. It may be more dangerous than it is possible for us to know.

3

RHIANNA’S WELCOME

It is only when you know that no one—not family, not friend, nor any force in the universe—cares for you, that you begin to learn the virtue of self-reliance. It is only yourself that you can trust, and only yourself that you must remain true to.

Thus, self-reliance is the Mother of All Virtues—the kind of fierceness, cunning, and unwavering resolve that one must master in order to succeed in life.

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

That afternoon, Rhianna rested on the wind as she soared toward the Courts of Tide, riding thermals of hot air that rose from the plains below.

The sun shone full upon her back, warming her wings. It had not been a full day since she had won them in battle, pulling the magical artifacts from the corpse of a Knight Eternal; she was not used to them yet. She was a fledgling still.

Learning to fly was every bit as hard for her as learning to walk is for a toddler. The journey of more than three hundred miles in a single day had been made only with frequent stops, where Rhianna had fallen in a heap, exhausted. She was dripping sweat from every pore—partly from her exertion, partly from the heat of the day.

But as the day warmed she had discovered currents of air rising along the sides of the hills, and if she held her wings rigid, she could ride those currents like a hawk.

From Rhianna’s vantage point, she could see for miles in every direction.

She had passed this way only a week ago, walking through the pine forests and tramping through fen and field. She knew the landmarks.

But the land had changed. The trees and grass were dying, the edges of leaves were going brown. With the binding of the worlds, all of the world was falling under the wyrmlings’ curse, a blight that killed wholesome plants and would leave only thorns and thistles and the most hardy of gorse. Ancient ruins now rose from the ground everywhere—strange monolithic buildings, broken towers, thick stone walls.

These were ruins from the big folk, the warrior clans that had fled Caer Luciare. Rhianna had not imagined how marvelous their culture had once been.

The remains of great canals crisscrossed the land.

She did not have time to study the wonders. An urgent need was upon her. She had been charged to warn Fallion’s people of the wyrmling threat and see if she could make allies of men who had once been his enemies.

More important, Fallion, the man she loved, had been taken captive to Rugassa. She would need help if she was going to free him.

She had little to bargain with—only a few forcibles, hidden in her pack. But a few, along with the promise of many more, might well be enough.

As she winged toward the Courts of Tide, she marveled at the changes that had taken place there. For a thousand years, the Courts of Tide had been the richest city in all of Rofehavan. Built upon seven islands, the city was surrounded by the waters of the Carroll Sea, and great bridges spanned from island to island.

But now everything was amiss. The ground had risen, leaving fields of rotting kelp and sea urchins to the east of the city. The odor of brine and decomposing fish assailed her. Carcasses from beached whales and a leviathan littered the plains.

Down below, islands had become hills. Ships in the harbor were stranded on dry ground, miles from any shore. Rhianna peered to the east, seeking for a glimpse of the ocean. She could not be certain, but she thought that she saw water far in the distance, twenty or more miles out. But it could have just been vapors rising from what was once the ocean floor.

Swooping into a dive, Rhianna headed for the old palace at the Courts of Tide. It still stood, tall and pristine. Its white towers gleamed in the morning sun. Atop its pinnacles, standards snapped in a sharp breeze—white flags with the red Orb of Internook at their center. Where once there had been alcoves open to the sea, where undines had risen on the waves to take council with ancient kings, Rhianna saw only rocks and ruin. All along the island’s old shore, shanties and fishermen’s huts and old inns leaned precariously, like so much driftwood washed up on the beach.

Children could be seen down below, where once there had been forty feet of water, searching through the remains of tide pools for crabs and urchins, while adults prowled about old shipwrecks, perhaps seeking for lost treasure.

Rhianna banked to her left and folded her wings, dropping toward the main road to the palace. She was two hundred yards out when someone let a ballista bolt fly from the castle wall. She folded her wings, creating a smaller target, and hit the ground hard.

It was a terrible landing. She lost her footing and went tumbling, head over heels. It might have been all that saved her. The marksmen upon the castle wall stopped firing, as one of the men shouted, “I got it! I shot it clean through.”

Others cheered and celebrated.

Rhianna climbed to her knees and cried out, “Parley. I come in peace. I come to speak with Warlord Bairn on an urgent matter, concerning the safety of his borders.”

Bairn was the current usurper squatting at the Courts of Tide. He didn’t really rule the place. The city was becoming a barren ghetto, where gangs fought for food and shelter. He was a mere vulture, picking at the remains of Mystarria.

Only when Rhianna looked up to the castle wall did she notice the bodies. There were three of them, hanging by their wrists in the shadows just below the battlements and just above the drawbridge. Human they were, but not like the small folk. They were the corpses of humans from the warrior clans at Caer Luciare. They had the bony head plates and the nubs of horns at their temples. Two men and a woman hung dead on the castle wall.

Immediately Rhianna knew what had happened. When the worlds were bound, there were some people who lived on two worlds at once, people who had shadow selves. And when the worlds became one, those who lived on both worlds were bound into one person, retaining the memories and skills and abilities of both.

It had happened to her foster sister Talon, and to the Wizard Sisel.

But for reasons that Rhianna could not understand, when the two were bound into one, there seemed to be no pattern as to where they ended up. Talon’s two “selves” had merged at Castle Coorm, though one of her shadow selves had been hundreds of miles away, in Caer Luciare. And Rhianna knew from news at Caer Luciare that Sir Borenson’s two halves must have merged on the far side of the world, for Talon’s shadow father had gone missing from the fortress.

Perhaps one personality dominated the other, and the two halves merged with the dominant personality, Rhianna mused. Or maybe some other factor came into play. Perhaps it was all just dumb luck, random chance.

But these three unfortunate souls had merged here at the Courts of Tide. And because of their strange appearance, they had been killed.

The captain of the guard shouted, “Hold! Don’t move!”

He was a big man, with golden-red hair and leather armor made of sealskin. He didn’t bother wearing a helm.

He eyed Rhianna, curious. He demanded, “What are you?”

“A woman,” Rhianna said. “I come as a friend, bearing a message.” The captain studied her suspiciously. By some instinct, Rhianna flapped her wings slowly, trying to cool herself. This amused the captain, and he leaned over the castle wall, peering down at her, as if to peek down Rhianna’s blouse.

“Never have I seen a dove with bigger wings or finer breasts,” the captain said. Behind him the pikemen and marksmen upon the wall chortled at the jest. “If you are really a woman, prove it.” Anything I say will just be a joke to him, Rhianna realized. She refused to rise to the bait, and just stood glaring at him.

He was dying to find out how she had gotten her wings, and Rhianna was just as determined never to tell him.

“So,” the captain of the guard said at last, “you hope to speak to Warlord Bairn. On what business?” She decided to command his interest.

“A mountain of blood metal has risen within the borders of Mystarria,” Rhianna told him. “I thought that I should warn Bairn to get it, before his enemies do.”

The captain of the guard suddenly straightened and took interest. “Where is this mountain?”

“That is information I will sell—to Warlord Bairn alone.”

The captain’s brown eyes glittered with malice. He raised his hand. “Archers!” he commanded, and suddenly dozens of bowmen rose up from behind the merlons of the castle wall. “Ready arrows.” The archers bent their bows to the full.

The captain studied Rhianna, to see if she’d squirm.

“Kill me,” Rhianna promised, “and Bairn will have you hanging from the city gates before sundown.” The captain considered her threat. He warned the archers, “Don’t let her leave,” then turned and raced from the castle gate.

Rhianna sat down and waited, folding her wings about her. The artificial wings draped over her shoulder suddenly, so that the folds of skin looked like a crimson dress.

The archers held their bows at the ready for long minutes, until their arms grew tired and they went to rest.

Bairn did not summon her to his great hall. Perhaps he feared this woman with wings. So he came to the top of the gate himself, like a king negotiating a siege.

He was a tough-looking man, with dark hair and sharp widow’s peak. He had a broad, cruel face and thin lips. His eyes seemed colorless and looked glazed, as if he had been drinking.

“Name yourself,” he demanded. He was wearing a cloak of black, and as he casually leapt up and sat upon a merlon, he suddenly reminded Rhianna of a huge black vulture worrying over a corpse.

“Rhianna,” she said, “Rhianna Borenson.” She did not want to use her real name, and so she used the name of her foster father.

“Borenson . . .” he said. “That name is known to me.”

“My father was once guardsman to the Earth King,” she said. “He held forth at this very castle.”

“You have his red hair,” Bairn mused. That was true enough, though she was not blood kin to Borenson. Still, it was a name that commanded respect.

“I’ve come to give you warning,” Rhianna said. “There is a new danger in the land—a type of giant, called wyrmlings.”

“We have found some,” Bairn said, nodding toward the dead folk on his walls. “They are responsible for this . . . mess.” His eyes roved across the armor, taking in the fields of rotting kelp below them. Rhianna didn’t know if she should argue. Warlord Bairn was known to be a brawler, and took offense when none was intended.

More important, she needed Bairn to help save Fallion—the man who was truly responsible for the mess.

“The wyrmlings are larger than these,” she said, jutting her chin toward the dead. “These poor folks are humans, or what passed for human upon the shadow world.

“But wyrmlings stand a head taller, and are broader at the shoulders. Their skin is whiter than bone, and their eyes are like pits of ice. They cannot abide the daylight. They eat only flesh. They think that human flesh is as good as any other.”

“So,” Bairn said, “these humans were their enemies? Or were they seen merely as food?”

“Sworn enemies,” Rhianna said.

“What are the wyrmlings’ numbers?” Bairn asked, like any good commander.

“Millions,” Rhianna said. “They command strange magics. Their lords and emperors are wights, and no common weapon can kill one. My mother, the Lady Myrrima, is a water wizard, and had blessed my own weapons, and so by luck I slew one of their Knights Eternal, a creature more dead than alive. I took my wings from it.”

With that, she unfolded her wings, and raised them in the morning light. Until that instant, she suspected that Bairn had not been willing to believe her. But he could not deny the evidence of his own eyes.

“You say that they have blood metal?” he asked.

“A mountain of it,” she affirmed. “When the two worlds were bound, the mountain rose from the plains. Upon that other world, the folk had little use for it. Now it is a treasure untold.” Warlord Bairn got a cunning look. “Why would you tell me all this—you the daughter of the vaunted Sir Borenson?”

Rhianna considered a lie, but settled on a half-truth. Somehow, she could tell that this was not going well.

“He loved this land, these people. He would not want to see them harmed. You could be a powerful ally in the coming wars.”

Bairn seemed to think a moment. “You would have us go to war against giants—giants at war with the men of their own world? Why should we unite with the smaller humans? Perhaps there is some way that we could make the wyrmlings our allies?”

“Haven’t you heard me? They eat human flesh. They have a mountain of blood metal. They . . . at best they would make you their slaves, though I think they’d prefer to make you a meal.” That seemed to satisfy Bairn. He stood straighter, looking less like a vulture.

“And where is this mountain? My captain said that you planned to name your own price for it.”

“First, we must see if you will meet my price,” she said.

Bairn snorted, as if this was but a formality. He would give anything for a mountain of blood metal. “What is it that you want?”

Rhianna did not like the look of him. He glanced away to the north and south. He acted as if he were too busy to waste his time with her, but she suspected that he feared to look her in the eye.

“There are two men held captive in the wyrmling stronghold. When you get the blood metal, I want you to take endowments, break into the wyrmling stronghold, and set my friends free.”

“Let me get enough endowments,” Bairn said, “and I’ll slaughter the lot of these giants for you. Then you can walk into the wyrmling dungeons and set your friends free yourself.”

“Agreed,” Rhianna said, but she still felt uneasy.

“Now,” Bairn asked, “where is this mountain of blood metal?” Rhianna feared to tell him the truth. She wanted to see what he would do once he got the information. So she devised a ruse.

If he is an honorable man, she decided, I can tell him the truth later.

“It is hidden beneath a wyrmling stronghold, on the slopes of a volcano, eighty miles northwest of the city of Ravenspell.” She had just given him directions to Rugassa. If he followed them, he’d lead his men to battle against the entire wyrmling horde.

He smiled warmly, and then glanced to the captain of his guard. “Kill her,” he said dismissively. Bairn turned to leave just as the captain of the guard raised and dropped his hand, signaling the archers to fire.

Rhianna was ready for them. She whirled to the right and leapt over the bridge as arrows and ballista bolts plinked onto the paving stones beside her.

She plummeted fifty feet before she opened her wings, catching the wind. She veered beneath the bridge and skimmed above rocks that had been submerged just three days ago, and now were covered with white barnacles and colorful starfish.

She flapped her wings and went soaring away, using the bridge above her as a shield. Arrows plunked above her, raining down on the stone bridge, snapping on impact. The archers had done their best, but had not been able to get a clean shot.

Now their chance was gone, and Rhianna flew beyond their range.

She felt saddened by the warlord’s betrayal. She had hoped to make an ally, and instead had found only an enemy. He would take his men to war against the wyrmlings, of that she felt sure. He couldn’t afford to ignore the risk.

But who will help me now? she wondered.

Rhianna consulted a mental map. There was nothing left of Mystarria to save. The warlords of Internook had taken the coast. Beldinook had taken the west, while South Crowthen claimed the middle of the country. Gaborn’s realm was no more. There was little to save, little worth fighting for. So where else should I go? Rhianna wondered. Beldinook was now the most powerful nation in all of Rofehavan, with its fine armor, strong lancers, and heavy warhorses. The castles and fortresses of Beldinook had been spared in the past war. But Beldinook was a sworn enemy of Mystarria and its ruler, Allonia Lowicker, would not be willing to help rescue Fallion Sylvarresta Orden, a scion of Mystarria.

Rhianna considered flying to Heredon.

It had once been the queen’s home, and it too was rich with steel and people, but it had fallen under the shadow of South Crowthen.

Where else can I look for help? she wondered.

Fleeds, the land of the horse clans.

The land of my youth, she thought. Her mother had been born in Fleeds. Rhianna’s grandmother had been queen. For a short time, Rhianna had been raised there. Her time in Fleeds had been the happiest time of her life.

Fleeds was not rich in steel, but a powerful Runelord had little need for such defenses. Fleeds did not have great fortifications, but the women of Fleeds had great hearts. And they had loved and honored the Earth King. They would respect his son.

Home, she told herself. I’m going home.

With that, she flapped her wings, banked to her left, and soared up from under the bridge, into the open sky. Eagerly she flew to the west, into a setting sun that gleamed like a white pearl as it settled into an opalescent haze.

4

THE STRANGER WITHIN

When lions feast, the timid get what they deserve—nothing.

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

In the wyrmling keep at Rugassa, Areth Sul Urstone was a stranger in his own body. He walked and talked, but it was another’s will that moved him, and it was another person’s words that were spoken, another’s emotions that he felt. The Great Wyrm, Lord Despair, had taken control. Areth Sul Urstone felt like a mouse, trapped and cornered in some king’s great hall, watching as the ponderous affairs of state rolled by.

Lord Despair stood in the uppermost bell tower while the stars drifted on a warm wind above. The day had passed, and it was nearly midnight.

Gazing up at the stars, Despair saw not piercing lights that smote his heart with their beauty—but only the scattered bits of his longed-for empire.

Despair reached up as if to gather the stars in his hand. For so long they had remained outside his grasp. But now, now he could almost touch them.

Areth watched the gesture, felt Despair’s longing, but Areth could not quite comprehend Despair’s turbulent thoughts, his undying hatred, his far-flung plans.

Now Despair peered down at his minions toiling in his fortress, hundreds of yards below, admiring their greatness.

Enormous rookeries had been built high upon the sides of the volcano to house his otherworldly graaks. Wranglers were trying to get one of the enormous creatures into its new home, but it spread its massive black wings and reared back, pulling one of its handlers to its death.

Already doors to half a dozen shadow worlds had been opened, and soon reinforcements would arrive from all over, creatures that the wyrmlings had never dreamed of.

First I must consolidate my hold upon this world, Despair knew, and then I can take the others. Yet he did not exult in his power.

All day Despair had felt uneasy, experiencing a strange and growing sense of alarm. Danger is coming to the fortress, the Earth warned. Yet the warning did not come in coherent words. Rather it was an emotion, an instinct that nudged him to action and niggled his mind. Danger is coming. Send your people to safety.

Lord Despair had used Areth’s awakening Earth Powers to “choose” certain wyrmling lords, creating a bond with them, allowing him to sense when they were in danger and warn them. Not only did Despair sense danger to some of his lords now, he knew what they had to do.

“Flee,” the Earth whispered. “Tell them to flee.”

But Areth Sul Urstone, overwhelmed by another’s will, could do nothing. He could not warn the doomed lords, for Despair now dominated him completely, and Despair refused to send the lords to safety. I will act when the time is ripe, Despair whispered his own reassurance to the Earth. None that I have chosen shall be lost.

Lord Despair had devised a different way to save his people. He had won the battle for Caer Luciare. Already, Despair’s servants were digging blood metal from a hill near the fortress, and by dawn the first shipment would be rushing to Rugassa. Once it arrived, he would grant massive endowments to his men, and prepare a trap for those who attacked.

I will so arm my people that they will be undefeatable, Despair told himself. But he could not be certain of that. Despair could not sense the source of the danger. He imagined that Runelords were coming, most likely some powerful lords that had been routed from Caer Luciare. Such men would pose a great danger. They would come in a few hours perhaps, or a day. He could not be sure when they would arrive. He only sensed the danger the way that one can feel the coming of a storm even when no clouds darken the horizon.

Lord Despair spun, and orders leapt from his mouth: “Send word to the emperor,” he told the captain of the guard. “I want a giant graak dispatched to Caer Luciare to retrieve our first shipment of blood metal ore. I want that ore at first dusk tomorrow.”

“Yes, O Great Wyrm,” the guard said.

Despair considered next how he would get his Dedicates. It did not make sense to take endowments from wyrmlings. He would need them to fight his war.

No, he thought, I must garner endowments from my would-be enemies.

Almost as an afterthought he said, “There shall be no more harvesting of the small folk for a time. The horde has enough meat for now.”

The captain seemed surprised. “You’ll spare them, show them mercy? Don’t they present a danger?”

“Letting them live is not the same as showing mercy,” Despair explained patiently. “I’ll want prisoners, lithe women to give endowments of grace, cunning men to lend me their wit. I’ll need folk with strong vision and hearing. But most of all, I’ll want those with great beauty and those with fine voices.”

“My lord?” the captain asked, for he was as yet untrained in the art of stripping endowments from his enemies.

“There are tens of millions of small folk scattered across the earth,” Despair explained. “They outnumber us, and so, as you say, they present a danger.

“But I will force them to love me. I will command their devotion.” The captain of the guard nodded. He’d do Despair’s bidding, but there was still no understanding in his eyes.

That did not matter. In time, the dull creature would comprehend what Despair was plotting. The captain turned away, to carry the message.

“Ah, one last thing,” Despair said. “Tell them to set apart the strongest of the small folk alive, along with the smiths and jewelers. We can use them to work the mines by daylight and make our forcibles. Thus our slaves shall forge their own collars.”

“Yes, Great One,” the captain said, and he rushed from the parapet. Despair stood beneath stars a moment longer, wishing for them, his heart still heavy with alarm. He could not tell when the attack would take place. Tomorrow, the day after?

It had been almost a full day since the Knight Eternal Vulgnash had brought Fallion Orden to the keep. The young wizard should have had time to heal.

Despair told his guards, “Take me to the dungeons, to the Black Cell.” And they began the journey down the winding stairs and into the labyrinth. The labyrinth had not gotten its name by chance. Most of the wyrmlings in Rugassa had only a cursory knowledge of their surroundings. They had sleeping quarters, a place to work, and perhaps a nearby arena or alehouse to furnish some diversions. That is all that a person really needs in life, Lord Despair believed. The wyrmlings were functional, productive. They did not need to know what existed beyond their cramped lives.

So few of them knew what existed upon the surface. They were told horror stories of a bright sun that would burn out their eyes, or of fierce creatures that could swallow wyrmlings whole. Of all these enemies, mankind was always held to be the greatest threat.

Thus, the wyrmling lords were not seen as slave masters, but as saviors.

Now with the great change there was unrest in the warrens. Some wyrmlings had bound with their shadow selves from Fallion’s world. They knew not to trust the wyrmling catechisms, and many of them were trying to escape.

But how could they leave the labyrinth if they could not find a door out?

Even now, Despair’s servants were spreading misinformation so that the “bound” wyrmlings would fall into traps. Those who were caught—well, the battles in the arenas for the next few weeks promised to be quite entertaining. There is something especially exhilarating in watching a comrade fight for his life. Yet some of the bound wyrmlings escaped.

After half an hour, Despair reached the Black Cell. Vulgnash sat on the floor next to the young wizard. The room was cold as death.

When Vulgnash heard his master coming, he leapt to attention, fanning his red wings out wide. The jailors hurried to open the door, letting Despair into the cell.

“How is our young friend?” Despair asked.

“Not well,” Vulgnash replied. “His wound became infected. I burned away the pus, and had to use a tong to pull a shard of metal, a broken sword, from his torso. It would be well if our wizard slept, but with the endowments of pain that he has taken, he cries out and writhes in his sleep. There is no escape from his torment.

“So I have taken to keeping him cold, so close to death that he knows nothing. I’m giving him time to heal.”

“Warm him,” Despair said. “Let him feel his torment for a while. Bring him to a stupor.”

“Great Wyrm,” Vulgnash said, bowing a bit and cringing, “he is too close to death.”

“He is young and strong. I have known him through many lifetimes. This one can resist death well. Revive him, just a little.”

Vulgnash stood above Fallion for a moment, with his left hand raised, palm downward, and unleashed a wave of warmth. It hit Lord Despair like a blast of hot wind from the desert. The heat’s effect upon Fallion was instantaneous. The young wizard gasped in pain as he neared consciousness, then lay groaning, huddled in a fetal position.

Despair stepped forward, used the toe of his boot to roll Fallion onto his back. Lord Despair had lived through millions of lifetimes upon millions of worlds, and deep was his lore. The fleeting folk of this world had no idea who they were dealing with.

He spat upon Fallion’s dirty forehead, anointing him with his own inner water. Then he leaned forward and peered into a drop of spittle, using it as a lens, and let his focus go deep, through flesh and bone, into Fallion’s mind, and from there into his dreams.

Fallion imagined himself to be in his bedroom, far across the sea. The room was small and cluttered, with a pair of cots against each wall. It was dark in the room, blackest night. A chest of drawers leaned against the far wall, covered in sand-colored rangit furs. A collection of animal skulls adorned the top of the bureau—weasels and burrow bears, a dire wolf and a fossilized toth. These were all lit by the thinnest rays of starlight.

Fallion shouted to his brother Jaz, “You left the window open again! It’s freezing.” Sure enough, as if conjured by Fallion’s outburst, bits of snow began to swirl through an open window above the chest of drawers; tiny flakes of ice sifted into the bedroom, blanketing the skulls and furs. Fallion was suffering various pains in his arms and legs, the pains he had taken upon him in his endowment ceremony. He was in so much pain, he could not understand why. His mind was muddy, his thoughts unclear. He wondered if he had been hurt.

“Jaz, come close the window,” Fallion begged, nearly weeping tears of frustration. With a mental push, Despair entered the dream.

He darkened the room, so that it was pitch black, even the thin starlight fading into gray. He chose a form, the form of someone that Fallion loved: a girl, he saw in Fallion’s mind—his foster sister Rhianna.

She entered the room shyly, as if coming to a tryst.

“Fallion,” she asked. “Are you awake?” She tiptoed across the room and closed the window.

“Rhianna?” Fallion asked. “What happened? I’m hurt. I’m hurting everywhere.”

“Don’t you remember?” Despair asked in Rhianna’s soft voice. “You fell. You slipped down a rocky slope and hit your head.” In a pitying tone she asked, “Wake up, sweet one. We have much to do today.”

“Wha—?” Fallion begged. “Wha?”

“The binding of worlds,” Rhianna begged. “Remember? You promised to tell me how it was done. You said that it was so hard. You asked for my help.”

Fallion moaned and tried to look around. But the thin light and his own pain defeated him. He peered at Rhianna for all of half a second before his eyes rolled up, showing only the whites, and he turned his head away in defeat.

“The binding of worlds,” Rhianna begged. “You promised. You said that you would show me how? So much depends on us!”

“Wha?” Fallion cried out in real life, not in his dreams. He made a gagging sound. His voice was thick from disuse, or perhaps from lack of water.

“Would you like a drink?” Rhianna asked in Fallion’s dream. “I have some sweet wine.”

“Please,” Fallion begged.

Rhianna reached out, and in the way of dreams, a purple flask appeared in her hands. She took it to Fallion, sat on the bed beside him, and let him sip. He peered into her eyes longingly, and Despair ratcheted up Rhianna’s scent, so that the sweet smell of her hair mingled with the sweet wine, each lending the other potency. She leaned close to Fallion, forcing him to become aware of her curves, her desire.

Lord Despair leaned back, his focus drifting between Fallion’s dream and the real world. He wanted Fallion’s thoughts to clear, and needed to free him from some of the pain. He reached out and placed a finger upon each side of Fallion’s back, just below the first vertebra, placing pressure in a way that had been learned on many worlds. By pinching the nerve he dulled Fallion’s pain. Nor did he want Fallion to think too clearly, so with his left hand he placed a thumb upon Fallion’s carotid artery, just enough to slow the flow of blood to Fallion’s brain. The lack of oxygen would soon leave Fallion’s head spinning.

In his dream, Rhianna poured her sweet wine down Fallion’s throat. Fallion opened his mouth like a robin’s chick, hoping for a worm. Rhianna fulfilled the lad’s needs.

When the flask was empty, Fallion lay moaning from ghost pains. He had taken endowments of compassion, and now his Dedicates were in the torture chambers, receiving torments on Fallion’s behalf. Some had been put into crystal cages. Others had been dismembered, losing hands or toes or worse. Despair gloated.

The boy had the nerve to thank me for giving those endowments, Despair thought. I wonder how he enjoyed feeling bits of flesh ripped from his body.

Despair knew that those who suffered such acts of mayhem agonized most of all. It was not the physical pain that tormented them so much as the mental anguish, a sense of being un-whole for the rest of their lives.

The tormentors had been ordered to strip certain prisoners of various body parts, until Fallion imagined himself to be only a stump of a person.

Let him thank me then, Despair thought, a small smile forming on his lips.

“Why are you smiling?” Fallion asked Rhianna in his dream. The stupefied boy’s head had begun to reel, and he imagined that the wine was dulling his pain.

“I smile because I love you so,” Rhianna said softly. “Now, my love,” she whispered, “about the binding of worlds. You promised, remember? You promised to tell me how it was done?” Of course no such promise had been tendered, but the unconscious mind does not track such things well. Besides, Fallion’s head was reeling, and Lord Despair was counting upon Fallion’s stupor to aid in the deception.

“What?” Fallion cried, still wincing and shaking from unseen ailments.

“The binding of worlds? How did you do it?”

“It’s . . . it’s easy,” Fallion said. “So easy, once you see it.” That shocked Despair right out of the dream.

It was easy to bind the worlds?

Despair had always imagined that it was complex, that it would require great cunning, followed by lengthy preparation and exhaustive steps—major magical routines that were broken into dozens of subroutines. He had tried every easy solution, but the truth was that the Seals of Creation baffled him in their complexity.

He dove back into the dream.

“Yes, yes,” Rhianna said. “I know that it’s easy for you. You’ve said that before. But you’re wiser than you give yourself credit for—much wiser.

“Come,” Rhianna begged, “to the Seal. Come show me how it is done.” And in the way of dreams, she took his hand in the darkness and led him outside the front door of his father’s cabin.

There in the yard, in the clear spot where the chickens scratched in the grass by day, beneath a white gum tree, the Seal of the Inferno lay upon the ground, a great circle of ghostly green flames dancing upon the lawn.

Blinking in surprise, Fallion stared at it.

Fallion swallowed, opened his mouth, and started to speak.

Despair leaned forward, straining to hear, lest he miss a single syllable.

“I . . . something’s wrong. There’s something wrong here.” He peered at the Seal as if studying it. Despair had made the Seal the way that he remembered it. But in his dream, Fallion stumbled around the thing, peering at flames, listening to the hiss and roar that they created, as if baffled.

“Things are out of place,” he said, confused.

“Perhaps a few,” Rhianna said. “Show me how to bind the world.” Fallion stammered, “You just—you . . .”

He wetted his tongue, then frowned in concentration for an instant—an instant too long. He whirled and peered at Rhianna, the light of dancing fires shining in his eyes, and peered not at the girl, but into her soul.

So powerful was Fallion’s gift that Lord Despair was laid naked.

Suddenly Fallion’s eyes flew open and he peered at Despair, his glazed eyes focusing on him, and shouted, “No!”

I almost had him, Despair realized. For a moment, I had him. But the opportunity had passed. Despair turned and nodded to Vulgnash; the Knight Eternal stretched forth his hand, drawing the heat from the room until Fallion curled up again in a fetal position, his teeth chattering and every muscle trembling from cold, as he plummeted into a deep, deep slumber.

Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Areth Sul Urstone watched the whole scene unfold, sickened and horrified at what Despair was plotting.

5

THE HUNTERS

Every soul, from the greatest warrior to the smallest child, has immense worth in the sight of the Great Wyrm. The Great Wyrm has made us stewards over each other, and that is why we must never let our fellows escape.

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

Cullossax had felt anxious throughout the evening. He’d known that he would be missed, and that eventually his fellow tormentors would come looking for him.

Often he had to fight the impulse during the day to flee out into the light. At last, when the shadows grew long enough to indicate that the day was almost gone, Cullossax bade farewell to the lowly guards, took an iron javelin, and ran after the girl, giving chase. Her path was easy to follow.

The girl had headed into the forest, witless with terror and blinded by light. With every step her heels had gouged into the thick humus that lay like a blanket under the pines.

Cullossax had seldom been outside the fortress, but he had been taught a bit about tracking, for it was a skill that tormentors were called upon to use even within the labyrinth.

The air was fresh, and soon the forest filled with night sounds—the scurrying of mice among the remains of leaves, the buzz of insects, the querulous peeps of birds, the songs of crickets and cicadas. The air smelled sweet. Cullossax could not recall the last time he’d tasted fresh air. The stars came out, blinding points of light so silver-bright that they left an afterimage when he squinted up at them.

Soon, he knew, he would have hunters on his trail, but Cullossax felt resigned to his fate, happy. He was no stranger to death. He’d dealt it out time and time again, and had always known that his turn would come.

With a light heart, Cullossax ran, chasing after a girl, heading for a land that might be no more than a child’s dream. . . .

After long hours, Cullossax still plunged through the pine forest, lost in the chase. His heart pounded a steady rhythm as his legs stretched wide. Greasy sweat streamed down his forehead and face, and stained his tunic with a V down his back. His thirst made him wish for pools of water. But his mind barely registered these things, for his eyes followed the torn sod in the starlight where his quarry had run.

Unthinking, he leapt over a fallen fir tree, and ducked beneath the boughs of another. In the brush to his right, he heard the snort of a stag. He stood for a moment, heart racing, as he wondered what the sound might portend. He had been outside the fortress only twice in his life, and then not for more than a night. He knew little about wild creatures. Then the stag went bounding away, and he saw it between the trees. His stomach growled at the thought of fresh flesh.

He could not let himself be distracted. With every long stride, he knew that he drew closer to the girl. She was young and small, and would not be able to keep up this pace forever. But in the back of his mind, Cullossax worried. He was hunting, but by now he would also be hunted. He should have checked in with his master hours ago. He would be missed, and eventually the story of what had happened would unravel.

The best of his own kind would hound him. No one could exact vengeance like a tormentor of the Bloody Fist. The punishment exercised upon one of their own kind, one who had shamed them and brought their reputation into question, would be harsh indeed.

In Rugassa, torture was not just a science, it was an art. Cullossax pondered long and hard, but was certain that he could not imagine what they would do to him.

They would torture him in public, of course, and the tormentors would vie for the honor of inflicting the most horrific insults upon his body.

In time they would let him die. That at least was certain. It was not a question of how long Cullossax would live, but a question of how long he would suffer before they let him die. He wondered which of the torturers would come after him, and that gave him pause. There were stories of a new kind of magic in Rugassa. The emperor’s elite troops had been drawing attributes from the lowest of the slaves—strength, speed, bloodlust. These new warriors could run faster than a common man, and longer.

Cullossax wondered what he would do if he had to face such a warrior.

And then there was Vulgnash himself. Cullossax had taken food from a Knight Eternal. That kind of insult was unheard of.

Cullossax only hoped that Vulgnash could not be spared to lead the chase.

For most of the night Cullossax ran through hills, through a land of seemingly endless forests. Sometimes he had scrambled up hills where aspen trees spread their white branches in the moonlight, gleaming like bones, and other times he descended into vales filled with oak and ash.

But always there was the forest, and Cullossax hoped that if Vulgnash gave chase, the trees might hide him from above.

The midsummer’s air hardly cooled during the night, and as Cullossax neared a stream, he finally found the girl.

She was lying in the ferns and moss beside the water’s edge, curled in a fetal position. When she heard Cullossax draw near, she yelped in panic, then began crawling toward the brook, shaking so badly from fear that she could not stand.

Cullossax ran to her. The iron javelin was heavy in his hand, and he could have pierced her if that had been his intent.

“No, please!” she whimpered. “Let me go.”

Cullossax laughed, not because he enjoyed her fear but because there was something so odd about her. She had a softness that was pure and innocent and completely unlike anything he had seen. No wyrmling had such a soft heart.

As he laughed, the girl struck. She suddenly leapt up and lunged, aiming a sharp stick at his heart. Cullossax grabbed her arm and wrestled the weapon away. It was not hard. She was young, and the long chase coupled with her own fear had weakened her. A simple head butt made her swoon.

“I have not come to kill you,” Cullossax said. “I’ve come to help you.”

“I—don’t understand.”

“I could have fed you to Vulgnash,” he said. “I should have. And for my audacity, I may yet die. But I chose to let you live.” He nodded south. “How far to this Inkarra?”

“Beyond the Great Spine,” she said.

Cullossax bit his lower lip. Three hundred miles at least, maybe four. A warrior, running, might make it in three nights. But Cullossax was a tormentor, and was not used to such exertion. Neither was the girl.

“Can you run?” he demanded.

The girl dropped her head. No.

Some primal instinct warned him to hurry. He grunted, grabbed the girl, and threw her over a shoulder.

“Then rest.”

He jumped into the brook and splashed downstream. His wyrmling brothers had strong noses, he knew, and he hoped to throw them off of his track. After a few hundred yards, he turned back the way that he had come, and then began a zigzag path heading east.

The land in that direction was dropping away, and as it neared dawn the sound of morning birdsong began to fill the air. Larks twittered and jays ratcheted.

He found himself on a small hill, peering down into a meadow. Miles away, he could see a line of alders. The stars had all faded from the sky, and the sun would be up soon. Bits of cloud on the horizon were bloody red.

The girl stared toward the sky, a curious look on her face.

“What do you see?” Cullossax asked, worried that she had spotted a sign of their enemies.

“The sunrise, it’s beautiful this morning,” she said. “There are colors in the clouds—faintest blue along the edges, and palest gold in the sky.”

Blue and gold were words that he had never heard before. She had to use Inkarran words to describe these colors.

“You see colors,” he asked, “like the humans do?”

“Yes,” she admitted, “ever since the joining of the worlds. That is how I know that this is not all just some simple madness.”

By now, his shoulder ached and his legs were failing. “Can you run yet?” he asked the girl.

“Yes,” she said.

He set her down and pointed east. “We must reach those trees before sunrise. It will be a race. Can you make it?”

She grunted, the wyrmling sound for yes, and they were off. They sprinted through the tall grass. Rabbits bounded away from their trail and finches flew up out of the thistles.

The sun began to crest the horizon, a cruel red light looming upon the edge of the world. The sight of it brought tears of pain to Cullossax’s eyes.

But the tree line was just ahead, promising shade and protection from the sun. Cullossax ran until he felt as if his heart would burst, and the girl began to fall behind. He grabbed her wrist and pulled, urging her to greater speed.

The sun was a blinding orb ahead of them, and Cullossax averted his eyes, threw an arm across his face, and tried to ignore the pain.

At last he staggered into the cool shadows of the woods. The girl threw herself to the ground well inside the tree line, and Cullossax stood for a moment, grabbing his knees, as he hunched in pain, gasping for breath.

He glanced back along the trail that they’d taken, saw how the bent blades of summer wheat betrayed their path. In the distance, two miles back, three wyrmling warriors gave chase, loping down out of the hills.

Cullossax halted for an instant, studied them. They were running with incredible swiftness. Speed, he realized. They’ve taken attributes of speed. He did some mental calculations. It would have taken an hour or two for anyone to notice that he’d gone missing, another hour to figure out where he’d gone.

I should have had a great lead on them.

But these men moved faster than normal wyrmlings, twice as fast, perhaps three times. They’d taken endowments of speed, and probably of strength and stamina as well.

I cannot outrun them, Cullossax realized. And I cannot hope to slay all three of them. Yet as they raced down from the hills and reached the edge of the distant field, the rising sun smote them. They peered along the trail. They could not see him here, hidden in the shadows. They threw their hands up, trying to shelter their eyes.

At last, in defeat, they turned away and trudged back up into the hills, into the trees, to find some shadows deep enough where they could hide from the sun for the day.

It was with just such a hope that Cullossax had run to the east. No wyrmling could withstand such burning light.

He hid there in the shelter of the woods, and sat for a long moment, thinking. The girl lay gasping for breath.

“Do you have a name?” he asked. It was not an idle question. Many young wyrmlings of the lower castes were not permitted names. They had to be earned.

“Ki-rissa,” she said. “Kirissa Mentarn.”

“That is not your wyrmling name. It is an Inkarran name?”

She nodded. Cullossax frowned at the odd gesture, and she grunted yes, to appease him.

“Kirissa,” he said. “There are soldiers on our trail. They’ve been granted strength and speed by the new magic. Have you heard of it?”

“The rune magic? I know of it. It came from the other world.”

This admission made Cullossax wonder what other helpful things she might recall.

“The soldiers trailing us are fast. We won’t be able to outrun them. So we must outsmart them.”

“All right,” she said. She put on a studious face.

“They know which way we’re running,” he said. “So we must change directions. Instead of going south, we should go east or west. And we must take time to cover our trail, and hide our scent. We must hide it perfectly. To do less, is to die.”

“All right,” Kirissa agreed.

Nearby a squirrel began to give a warning chatter. Cullossax halted for a moment, listening, but realized that the squirrel was warning others away from him.

“One last thing,” he said. “We must leave now. We can’t afford to rest through the day. Those who hunt us are moving too fast. But the days are long, and the nights are short. It may be that if we can get far enough ahead of the Bloody Fist, they will lose our trail in the dark, and we will be safe.”

“We will go sunblind,” Kirissa argued, her face paling from fear.

“Close your eyes and hold on to my hand, if you must,” Cullossax said. “I will watch for the both of us.” He did not say it, but if he tried to walk in the open sun for long, he was the one who would go sunblind. At that point, she would have to leave him.

Kirissa stared for a long moment and finally asked, “Why are you doing this? You were supposed to be my tormentor.”

Cullossax wanted to answer, but when he opened his mouth, he could think of nothing to say. He had no dreams. It wasn’t as if he’d secretly longed for escape his whole life. Nor did it have to do with her. Kirissa was not quite old enough to mate. He had no lust for her, no desire to possess her. Even now, he imagined that he could strangle her if he wanted. Yet he admired those who fought against their own executions. How had her Earth King put it, “The time will come when the small folk of the world must stand against the large”?