Runelords 06 – Worldbinder – Farland, David

WORLDBINDER

Tor Books by David Farland

 

 

PROLOGUE

Though your heart may burn with righteous desires, your noblest hopes will become fuel to fire despair among mankind.

That which you seek to build will crumble to ash.

War shall follow you all of your days, and though the world may applaud your slaughter, you will come to know that each of your victories is mine. And thus I seal you, till the end of time….

—Asgaroth’s curse upon Fallion

The tree riveted Shadoath as she stalked into Castle Coorm. It was no more than a sapling, perhaps eight feet tall, with a dozen branches spreading wide in a perfect umbrella. But the sight of it smote her at even a hundred yards, urging her heart to melt. Every winding branch was perfect. Every crook of every twig seemed to have been preconceived by an artistic genius before being executed. The leaves were darkest green above, a mellow honey beneath, and looked something like an oak. The bark was the rich golden color of ripe wheat, warm and soothing, inviting to the eye.

Shadoath had seen such a tree once before, countless ages ago, on another world. No, she thought. It can’t be.

But she knew that it was. It wasn’t just how the tree looked. It was how it made her feel. Her eyes wanted to drink it in from the distance. Her arms wanted to embrace it. Her head and shoulders yearned to shelter beneath it. Her lungs ached to breathe the perfumed air that exuded from its leaves. Her eyes longed to lie beneath it and stare up, and dimly she recalled the ancient days, when those leaves emitted a soft golden light during the nights, and those who took pleasure beneath it would peer up through layers of foliage and try to make out the light of distant stars. The sight of its limbs made her yearn for perfection, to be better than she had ever been, to do more than she had ever done, to change for the better.

The tree was dangerous, she knew. Left alive, it would grow and develop, rising up like a mountain, insinuating its branches for miles in every direction. It would silently tug at the minds of men, urge them to become its servants. Left alone, it would do even more. It would silently nurture the souls of men, urging them to become virtuous and perfect.

Every instinct in her shouted, Kill it now! Burn it down!

Only the shock of seeing it stayed her hand.

There were mighty changes going on in Rofehavan. The children born in the past generation were more like Bright Ones from the netherworld than children of the past.

And now the One True Tree had risen again.

She wanted to be sure. She studied the knotty roots coming up from the grass. The tree had been planted in the green at Castle Coorm, in the center of a roundabout. A small rock wall, perhaps four feet tall, surrounded the tree. A fountain rose at the back, water splashing down gray stones from the mouth of a gargoyle. At one time there had been a pleasant rock garden here, rife with flowering vines. A few of them still remained, trumpet flowers of red.

But Shadoath could not look for long. The tree drew her eye, the golden bark rising from the grass, where the small roots were already beginning to splay wide, questing for purchase; the bole of the tree twisting as if in torment; the branches rising up to embrace heaven. Shadoath stood peering at it, and all weariness seemed to leave her, all of her aches and worries. It was as if she laid aside every care, and an upwelling of hope rose inside her, strange longings. The tree is my master, and I am its servant, her body told her.

But a voice whispered inside her, the voice of the tree. “You are my master; how may I serve you?”

An image of their true relationship formed in her mind. Neither was whole without the other, the tree told her. Neither of us should live alone.

Damn, she realized, the young tree has already gained consciousness. Left alone, it would become wise and venerable and forbidding.

There was a rustling sound behind her, one of the guards on the castle wall. Across the courtyard, Warlord Hale was stumping down from the tower, lugging his great weight along as fast as he could. She had almost forgotten that he existed, even though he was the one who had sent the urgent message asking what to do about the damned tree.

“So,” a girl asked, “do you like my tree?”

Shadoath shook her head, let her vision clear, and suddenly spotted the young woman there beneath the tree, squatting cross-legged upon a rock. Shadoath had been so captivated that she hadn’t seen the girl, even though she sat in plain sight, as quiet and motionless as a mushroom. She was some indeterminate age between twelve and sixteen, Shadoath imagined, with hair so pale yellow it was almost white, and eyes as pale as sea foam. Her skin had the greenish cast of one who was wizardborn, and she wore a robe that looked not to have been woven, but to simply have grown around her as roots that interlocked. It was the pale green of new leaves. She bore a staff of golden wood, hewn from the tree itself.

“I love your tree,” Shadoath said.

The girl smiled broadly, stood, and raised a hand, beckoning Shadoath to come forward, to rest beneath its limbs.

Shadoath could hear Warlord Hale pounding down the wooden stairs, his huge bulk an assault upon them. He was nearly to the door of his keep.

Now that her mind had cleared, Shadoath realized why the young wizardess had chosen to plant the tree here in the courtyard of Castle Coorm. It was to honor the last Earth King, Gaborn Val Orden, of course. This had been his residence before he wandered off into the wilderness to die. So the wizardess had brought the tree here in his honor. She wanted to restore him to the people’s memory even as she and her damned tree created a new world order.

Shadoath reached the rock wall, and the young woman stretched down to give her a hand. That’s when Shadoath struck, as quick as the thought touched her.

Shadoath had taken the body of a warrior this time, a pale assassin from Inkarra, with skin whiter than bone, hair the color of spun silver, and pale blue tattoos that covered her arms and legs. Shadoath’s speed was blinding, and her curved dagger bit into the wizardess’s armpit with great force. Shadoath grabbed the proffered hand, for Earth Wardens, as this young wizardess surely was, had great skill at both hiding and healing. Shadoath held on while the young wizardess tried to leap back and buck, like a young deer. She saw the girl’s pleading eyes as warm blood pumped over Shadoath’s hand. Shadoath twisted the blade, and she saw strange visions. Suddenly she seemed to be standing in deep rushes at the edge of a pond while a huge grouse thundered up from the ground. Obviously the vision was meant to startle her, get her to loosen her grip, but Shadoath held on. Suddenly she seemed to be holding a great bear whose vicious fangs were mere inches from her throat. Shadoath drew out her blade, plunged it beneath the young wizardess’s sternum, and let it quest for her heart.

The bear disappeared, and for a moment she saw the wizardess’s true face, her pupils constricted to pinpricks, and she saw an image of the One True Tree as it might be someday, with tens of thousands of people living beneath it, giving it water and food, giving it life, even as it sheltered them from the elements and from the eyes of all enemies.

And then the young wizardess was dead, nothing but a piece of bloody meat gurgling and jerking at Shadoath’s feet.

Shadoath pulled her away from the tree, for she knew that the tree itself had healing powers, and might even be able to raise the newly dead if her body remained beneath its boughs for long.

“Why?” the tree begged.

Shadoath merely smiled secretively as she dragged the bloody girl far across the green. The bloated form of Warlord Hale appeared at the door of the keep, his head towering above those of his guards: he trundled across the cobbled pavement to meet Shadoath.

“Killed ’er, I see?” he said. “Glad you were up to it. I tried it myself a dozen times, but couldn’t seem to get near her, even though she never went more than a dozen yards from that tree. What do ya want me to do with the damned tree now, chop ’er down, burn it?”

Shadoath considered as Warlord Hale babbled on inanely.

“It’s one of those trees, ain’t it? I told the boys it was, a World Tree, just like the old tales. Didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t want to just let it stand—bad for morale. That’s why I sent for you.”

Hale obviously yearned for approval, so Shadoath said, “You did well, sending for me.”

“So, do I chop it down?”

The human spirit would revolt at such a task. It might even break. She doubted that many of Hale’s men could do it. But Hale was far enough gone in the ways of evil that he could hardly be called human anymore.

Shadoath considered. She wanted the tree dead. But there was one thing that she wanted more—Fallion Orden. For nearly a year now, since she had lost the battle at the Ends of the Earth, she had been considering ways to subvert him—or barring that, to destroy him. She had been taking deep counsel with others of her kind, and they had begun to devise a trap. All that they lacked was the right bait. Could this be it? Fallion Orden craved to restore the Earth, make it whole, as it had been before the cataclysm. And the very fact that the One True Tree had been reborn was a sign that the restoration—somehow, beyond Shadoath’s understanding—was moving forward rapidly. Fallion did not know it yet, but he would need the wisdom of a world tree in order to advance his plans. Given that, would not the spirit of this tree call to his? And would not his spirit call to the tree?

And when the two met, would it not be a good time to thwart both of their plans?

“There is good news in the Netherworld,” Shadoath told Warlord Hale as she considered what to do.

“The Queen of the Loci has escaped. The Glories sought to bind her in a Cage of Brilliance, but their powers failed them. They are not as strong as they were in ages past, and we have managed to free her. She is gathering armies more powerful than ever before. Remain true, and your reward shall be great and endless.”

“Glad to hear it,” Warlord Hale said. “I—I am true to you, you know.”

There was malice in his eyes, she saw, and desire. He wanted to give his soul to her, let his spirit become the home of a locus. Because her kind had trained him from youth, he believed that in doing so he would gain a type of immortality, that his soul would be bound into the black soul of the locus, and carried down through time.

He was fit for it, she knew. His soul was a black pit. There was true and monstrous evil in him, and he would be a comfortable abode for a locus. But he yearned to be possessed so badly that she could not resist the urge to deny him this reward.

“Soon,” she promised. “Your time is coming.”

She turned to the tree, regarded it coolly. “Leave it alive for now. I want Fallion Orden to see it.”

1

THE HOMECOMING

I do not know when I first began to dream of healing the Earth. There was so much pain in the world, so much suffering and heartache. It could have been when I was among the Gwardeen. One of our fliers, a small boy of six named Zel, was feeding a hatchling graak, and the great reptile took the boy’s arm. It was an accident, I am sure. But try as I might, we could not staunch the flow of blood, and Zel died in my arms. I remembered thinking, In a better world, I could have saved him. In a better world, children would not have to die this way. It was only three years later that I began to be haunted by a dream of a wheel of fire, a vast rune, and I began to suspect that there was a way to heal our broken world.

—from the journal of Fallion Orden

They came creeping through the woods just before dawn, four of them, weary but resolute, like hunters on the trail of a wounded stag. They halted at the edge of the trees, silently regarding summer fields thick with oats and the brooding castle beyond.

“Castle Coorm,” the leader, Fallion, whispered. “As promised.” The sight of it filled him with nostalgia and soothed his frayed nerves like mulled wine.

The pre-dawn sky still had one bright star in it, and the castle mostly lay in shadows, the limned walls looking soft blue instead of white. There were pinpricks of yellow in the tower windows, and watch-fires burned outside the city gates like blistering gems. The dancing fires, the smell of the smoke, beckoned him. But Fallion merely stood silently regarding the scene. The castle was falling into ruins, but was obviously still inhabited.

He had seen too much devastation, too many ruined cities since his return to Mystarria. The Courts of Tide had been laid waste. Its once-fair streets were now dark lanes, blockaded by gangs that fought like wild dogs to protect their few scraps of food and clothing. The women and children there had a haunted look. They had suffered too much rape, too much plunder.

The sight of it had left Fallion reeling. In a more perfect world, he told himself, the women would wear flowers in their hair, and children would not learn to fear strangers. Upon the death of Fallion’s father, Gaborn Val Orden, assassins from a dozen lands had descended upon Mystarria, hoping to strike down Fallion and his brother. These weren’t ordinary assassins. These were powerful runelords that had taken brawn, stamina, speed, and grace from their subjects, making them warriors that no commoner could hope to withstand. And though Mystarria had been a wealthy country then, with many strong runelords of its own, it could not withstand the sustained onslaughts of such men.

Only by strengthening its forces could it hope to survive, but that required forcibles—magical branding irons that could draw out an attribute from a vassal and then imbue it upon the lord. But there was a dearth of forcibles. The rare blood metal from which they were made was running out. Rumors said that the lords of Kartish, far to the west, were hoarding what little they found, intent on protecting their own realms in the dark times to come.

Chancellor Westhaven, who had been left in charge of Mystarria, had even taken a journey to Kartish, hoping to sway those who had once been allies.

He had never returned. Some said that his mournful spirit could be seen at night in the towers at the Courts of Tide, wandering the hallways, rummaging through the empty lock-boxes in the treasure room. And so Mystarria had been attacked on a dozen fronts, like a great bull taken down by jackals that ripped it apart and gorged themselves while leaving their prey still only half alive. Its treasuries had been looted, its towers knocked down, its farms and cities burned, its lands divided. The Warlords of Internook held the coast, while Beldinook took the east, and Crowthen to the north split the rest. Frankly, after the rapes, the looting, and the murder, Fallion did not see that there was much of a country left worth fighting over.

He eyed the remains of Castle Coorm, dully surprised to see it still intact. The towers of the castle stood, but dark stands of ivy grew up them, looking like rents in the darkness. The eastern-most walls were a decrepit gray, most of the lime having washed away after years of winter storms. A lone bullfrog bellowed amid the placid reeds of the moat.

Fallion held to the shadows. He wore a gray half-cape, fastened with a silver cape pin in the form of an owl, long black hair sweeping back over his shoulders, brown eyes so full of light that they seemed a perfect mirror for the distant fires. A naked blade gleamed silver in his hand. He studied the fires, and for an instant an image came to mind of a vast rune made of flames, encircled by flames—The Seal of the Inferno. It had been almost three years ago that he had first seen it in a dream while staring into the hearth after a midwinter’s dinner. Since then he had begun practicing his skills as a flameweaver, listening to the many tongues of fire, seeking inspiration in sunlight. He knew which direction the seal lay, deep in the Underworld. The wheel of fire haunted him, came to mind a hundred times a day. He could not so much as glance at the sun or even a silver moon without seeing the afterimage of the rune imprinted on his retina.

He had crossed the oceans to find it. Just a couple hundred more miles now, and he would descend into the Mouth of the World, hoping to locate the Seal of the Inferno and repair the damage to it. By mending its defects and binding it to the Seal of Heaven and the Seal of Earth, he hoped to restore balance to the world, to remake it in the perfect image of the One True World of legend. Behind him came Rhianna, following so close at Fallion’s back that she touched him. Her fierce blue eyes looked troubled, and she clung to her quarterstaff as if she was lost at sea and it was the only thing that might save her from drowning.

“I remember this place,” she said, her voice shaky. “I remember…”

She placed a hand on Fallion’s shoulder and just stood. Her flawless face was white with shock, a grimace of pain formed by the slash of her lips.

For nearly a decade, Rhianna had blocked out her memories of this place. But now, Fallion could see, they threatened to overwhelm her.

At her back stood Fallion’s younger brother, Jaz, followed by their foster sister, Talon. Jaz carried a war bow carved from ruddy red reaver’s horn. Talon bore a light saber that some dainty gentleman might have worn for a night on the town, but in her practiced hands, the blade would never be confused for a mere adornment.

“What do you remember?” Fallion asked Rhianna.

Rhianna’s brows drew together in concentration; she recalled racing down a mountain on a force horse that had been richly endowed with runes of brawn and metabolism. Fallion sat in the saddle ahead of her, and she clung to him for dear life. Even then she realized that she was falling in love with him. She remembered thinking him strong and handsome, and she prayed that he would be able to save her. They must have been traveling at eighty miles per hour, for the pines at the margin of the road seemed to fly past. Her heart pounded as if trying to beat its way out of her chest, and in her young mind, she could not imagine that she would live until she reached the castle. Her stomach had ached, and she worried that something was eating her. A strengi-saat had placed its eggs in her womb to hatch, and the young were eating their way out. She remembered it all.

“We were being chased by monsters,” Rhianna said, suddenly planting her staff firmly in the ground. She had been a child back then, with a child’s fears. But for years she had been practicing with weapons, and she was growing dangerous. The staff that she bore now was bejeweled and covered in runes. It had once belonged to the Earth King himself. She grimaced. “Now we’re back, and we’re the monsters.”

Jaz laughed. He always seemed to be light of heart lately. Rhianna had come on this journey because she loved Fallion, because she would throw herself in death’s path to protect him. But Jaz had come because, as he’d said, “I’ve been following him around since I could crawl. I don’t see why I should stop now.”

Jaz said, “I was sure we’d blundered past this place ten leagues back. And look, there are people inside. You think if we beg nicely, they’d part with a mug of ale?”

Jaz sat down and tried pulling off a boot. It had mud inside and came free with a sucking sound.

“People will do astonishing things for money,” Fallion said, “even part with perfectly good ale.”

He turned back to the castle. The long war had taken its toll. A village had once thrived on the hill below, a place named Weeds. A few dozen cozy mud-and-wattle cottages had grown up here with roofs thatched from wheat straw. As a child, Fallion had imagined that they were living things, lounging among the herb and flower gardens, partitioned with rock walls. The homes had been shaded in the long summer by fruit trees.

He regarded the ruins of a cottage on a knoll, and suddenly had a memory from when he was a child of three. In it, his father had come home from his wanderings, and had taken him out into the village among the crowds. Fallion had ridden on his father’s shoulder, until his father stopped beneath a cherry tree on the knoll. There, Fallion pulled the red cherries from the tree, and they were so ripe that they burst at his touch, and juice ran thick down his fingers. He licked it off and picked his fill, all the while begriming his father, he was sure now.

But his father had only laughed with delight.

Fallion remembered riding upon the shoulders of a king, being taller than everyone, looking down upon men that had dwarfed him, wishing that he could be that tall forever. He smiled. It was a good memory, and one of only a handful that he recalled of his father. The journey across the ocean had been worth making just for that.

But no cottages graced the fields anymore. Nothing was left but burned-out remains: their rocky husks down in the distance looked like dead beetles.

The folk in the castle had probably burned the houses so that the monsters would not be able to hide in them. Strengi-saats, the enemy was called in the old tongue, the “strong ones.”

And it was rumored that worse things had begun to haunt the woods. It was rumored that one of them might even haunt Castle Coorm.

“Castle Coorm has become an island, a refuge of stone besieged by a wilderness of trees,” Fallion mused. “Now there’s not a hamlet within thirty leagues.”

“We should know,” Talon groused. “We just floundered through every bog between here and the Courts of Tide.” She crouched, resting on her heels.

Fallion was more leg-sore and hungry than he had ever been. Worse, he had a bad cut on his calf. It wasn’t much, but the smell of congealed blood drew strengi-saats.

He wasn’t sure if he should try to rest here. He had heard a strange rumor of this place, the strangest that he’d heard in his life. It was said that several years past, a woman of Coorm had given birth not to a child, but to a tree—a short, stunted tree with a handful of roots and two gnarled limbs. The tree, it was said, had bark that was a ruddy gold. Fallion wondered at the tale. It was said that the woman’s flesh was green, like one of the wizardborn filled with Earth Powers, and some speculated that her offspring was a “World Tree,” like the One True Oak of legend that had spread its branches wide, giving shelter to all of mankind at the beginning of creation.

Among the peasants, the idea of a woman giving birth to a World Tree somehow did not seem beyond the realm of possibility. After all, since the coming of the Earth King, Fallion’s father, the world had changed. The children born after his coming were stronger than men in times past, wiser and more purposeful, even as the world around them grew stranger and more treacherous. Men were becoming more perfect.

So was evil.

The tree, so the tale went, had been planted in the castle green, where it could be protected and admired, but then a bandit came from the woods, Lord Hale, a man of great power. It was said that he slaughtered the wizardess.

Many had fled from Coorm then, and for years now, there had been no news from the castle. Suddenly, a woman screamed down below.

“What’s that?” Jaz asked. He pulled on his boot, leapt up. It was not the drawn-out wail of someone grieving past loss. It was announced first by grunts and short yelps of pain, shrieks of terror.

“Someone is fighting,” Fallion said.

“Someone is dying!” Rhianna corrected.

From across the fields, at the eastern verge of the woods, a deep snarl erupted, like the sound of thunder on the horizon, followed by the strange bell-like cry of a strengi-saat. In the woods just up the hill, a pair of crows suddenly cried out, “Claw, claw, claw.”

Fallion glanced up. The woods here and been burned back, blackening the great oaks, searing away the brush, leaving the strengi-saats fewer places to hide, Fallion speculated. Up in the nearby trees, he spotted the crows. The birds were half asleep, but they watched the castle as if it were the sprawling carcass of a dying giant.

The woman screamed again, her voice echoing from the castle walls. Fallion, willed his heart to slow, and listened.

The sounds of the scuffle at Coorm came to him with unnatural clarity, as often happened in the mountains on a clear morning.

He wished for more, half-wished that he had taken endowments of hearing or sight from others. Some had offered when he left—the children that had served under him in the Gwardeen, there in the outposts at the Ends of the Earth. But he had declined. It was an evil thing to take an endowment from a man, for if a man gave you his strength, his heart might fail thereafter. Fallion could not bear the thought of using another person that way. Still, he had nearly three hundred forcibles in his pack as part of his inheritance, and if the need was great enough, he knew that someday he might yet have to take endowments. There was a gruff cry, a man shouting, “Damn the wench,” followed by a smack, the sound of a fist pummeling a face. “She bit me.”

The woman’s wail went silent, though she grunted and struggled still.

“Open the gates!” the attacker cried in his deep voice. “Open the damned gates, will you?”

In the hills, strengi-saats roared.

“They’re going to give a woman to the strengi-saats,” Rhianna whispered. The thought horrified her. She found her heart pounding so hard that she was afraid it would burst. The strengi-saats wouldn’t simply eat the woman. Though they were fierce carnivores, with claws like reaping hooks and teeth like scythes, they didn’t simply rend one’s flesh. No, one of the females would rape the woman, inserting a long ovipositor into the woman’s womb so that it could incubate half a dozen leathery eggs.

Then the strengi-saat would drag the woman into the woods, hide her high among the limbs of a tree, and keep her, terrified but alive, until the eggs hatched, and the young ate their way from the woman’s body.

“Fools,” Fallion growled. “What are they thinking? In killing her this way, they only reinforce the numbers of their enemies.”

“Something more heinous is going on here,” Talon concluded. “Perhaps that is what they want—to increase the numbers of the strengi-saats.”

The castle’s gate began to creak open. Talon clutched her blade, which was as long as her arm and two fingers in width.

Fallion studied the sentries along the wall. He could see their shadowed forms, pacing. There were no more than half a dozen. Two were peering down inside the gates, watching whatever struggle was occurring, but the others showed better judgment, and kept their watch still. The castle gate swung out, and a pair of burly guards in chain mail and helms dragged the woman outside, hurled her to the ground. The guards turned, trudged back into the castle, and slammed the gate. Fallion could see a tangle of blond hair on the woman, a white night dress ripped and dirty. She cried in terror and tried to pull her torn dress up, covering her breasts.

She looked forlornly at the gate, went and pounded on it.

“Better run, lass,” one guard shouted from the wall. “In ten seconds, our archers open fire.”

She peered across the darkened fields. There was no shelter out there, only the ruins of a few cottages. An arrow bounced off the ground at her bare feet, and then another. She leapt away from them, gathered her courage, picked up her skirt, and took off running.

West. She was heading west, toward a tall hill where a lip of woods protruded closest to the castle.

“Not that way, silly wench,” Rhianna hissed.

From the western hill, a strengi-saat raised a barking call, one that Rhianna recognized as a hunting cry. The woman stopped in her tracks, spun, and headed east, closer to Rhianna’s direction, racing along a muddy track that looked black among the fields.

Rhianna saw where it would reach the woods, just two hundred yards to the north. With any luck, Rhianna thought, I could meet her there.

But it would be a race, with the strengi-saats hot on the woman’s trail. Rhianna leapt forward, racing through the dark woods.

We’ll have to fight them, Fallion realized, chasing after Rhianna, leaping over a fallen tree, running through a patch of ashes. The morning air was wet and full of dew, thick in his nostrils, muting the biting tang of old ash.

Fallion pumped his legs, driving hard.

In a more perfect world, he thought, a rescuer could run with infinite swiftness. As he raced, crows came awake, squawking and taking flight in the night air, black wings raking the sky.

“The strengi-saats are coming!” Jaz warned, as he and Talon raced up behind Fallion. Out across the field, several large, nebulous shadows moved in from the east. Fallion could not see what lay within them. The strengi-saats drew in the light, deepening the darkness all about them. In the night, in the woods or upon a lonely street, so long as they remained still they would stay hidden, camouflaged among their shadows. But running across the fields, their strange ability did them little good. True, their forms remained indistinct, but their presence was easily detected.

The woman reached the woods just ahead of Rhianna, then halted and dropped to her hands and knees, gasping for breath, looking up to peer about in wide-eyed terror. She glanced in Fallion’s direction but seemed not to see him. It was not until Rhianna’s boot snapped a twig that the woman leapt in terror, rising up with a small branch as her only weapon.

“Don’t be afraid,” Rhianna whispered. “We’re friends.”

Rhianna turned and took a guard position, peering among the trees, her staff at the ready. The young woman stood staring at them all, holding her stick out like a rapier. Apparently she could not believe that anyone would be out here in the forest by night, among the strengi-saats. “Who are you?”

Fallion peered hard. The woman looked to be eighteen or nineteen, a little younger than he. Her face was familiar.

“Ten years is a long time,” Jaz offered. “But not long enough so that I would forget your name, Farion. Your father was a good teacher.”

Farion stood rooted to the ground, shaking. “Jaz?” she said, incredulous, then looked to Fallion.

“Milord?” she cried, dropping to one knee. Tears began to flow freely down her face. “I—we thought you dead. I thought you had died ages ago.”

“We’re sorry to have left,” Fallion said. “Our enemies were too numerous to fight. It had to look as if we were dead.”

“Have you come to take back Castle Coorm? Where’s your army?” she looked back into the woods, as if hoping that thousands of runelords marched at his back.

“There is no army but the four of us,” Fallion admitted.

The words seemed to break Farion’s heart. She sagged to the ground, as if all hope were lost, and just began to sob. Nearby, Fallion heard the rumbling growl of a strengi-saat. Dawn was still minutes away, but it was dark here in the woods. He knew that a fire would keep the monsters at bay. It would also alert the soldiers at Castle Coorm to his presence.

“All is lost then,” Farion muttered. “All is lost.”

“Not all,” Fallion said. “I’ll gather an army soon.”

Farion shook her head. “Lord Hale tried to force me to his bed. I fought him, and he threw me out, as an example to the others. I’m afraid…he’ll make an example of my sister. She is only thirteen.” She looked forlornly to each side of the woods. Then she peered up into Fallion’s eyes. “Please, she’s all that I have left.”

“Damn,” Jaz swore, looking to Fallion, urging Fallion to fight. He added hopefully, “The men on the walls have ashen bows. Mine has a farther reach.”

“So,” Fallion said, “you’ll fire on the guards while I batter down the gate? I think your jokes are getting better.”

The group had not planned to stop at Coorm. They had more urgent business farther on. Now they had to stop, Rhianna realized. They couldn’t leave these women to suffer. A woman alone might live a night or two here in the woods, but the strengi-saats would get her in time. Rhianna knew by the look on Jaz’s face that live or die, he would not leave Castle Coorm without a fight. But Fallion seemed reticent.

What’s wrong with you? Rhianna wondered. We both know what it’s like to be children, to be held in the clutches of an enemy. Don’t you dare walk away from this, Fallion. If you do, I will stop loving you. But Fallion looked to the west longingly, unsure.

He wants to mend the earth, Rhianna thought. The need presses him, and it breaks his heart to hold back, even for a worthy cause. He must weigh the risk that many might die during the time that is lost against the certainty that this one will die.

“All right,” Fallion said at last. “I’ll free your city. But afterward, we will have to redouble our speed.”

Relief flooded through Rhianna. I’m right to love him, she thought.

Fallion kicked some leaves into a pile, knelt over it, and sparked some flint against the hilt of his sword. The leaves were dry in midsummer and caught fire instantly. If Farion thought it strange that they took fire so fast, it did not show in her face. Only relief was revealed there. In moments a fierce little blaze was going.

“Is your father well?” Fallion asked. “I have often missed his counsel.”

“His Dedicates were killed years back,” Farion said. “He lost his wit, his stamina, his metabolism. All of the lore that he once knew, it’s all gone. For a while, Lord Hale made him his fool, but now he is little more than a simpleton for me to care for. He fetches wood and can feed the cats, but he’s no use for aught else.”

Fallion grieved silently. In all of the realm there had not been a man who loved learning half as much as her father, Hearthmaster Waggit. Among the many ruins that Fallion had encountered in the week since his return to Mystarria, this one seemed to sadden him the most.

He peered into the flames for a long moment, and the Seal of the Inferno appeared, like a burning wheel, imprinted upon his retina. He pulled a log onto the fire. The dancing flames seemed to beckon him. Off to his left a shadow moved, perhaps thirty paces from the fire. A strengi-saat. He peered in its direction, and the shadows thickened.

“Jaz,” Fallion warned. He picked up a stick from the fire and hurled it toward the shadow. The twig flipped end over end, hit something and blazed bright, revealing the strengi-saat. It was a large one, perhaps eighteen feet from nose to tail, but had looked smaller as it bellied low to the ground. Its jaws were wide enough to carry a man whole, and its head was leathery and seemed to have scales instead of fur like that found on its back and belly. Ugly black hide stretched over a face as naked as a buzzard’s. It had no ears, only tympanums, round membranes the size of plates, just behind its enormous eyes. It whirled to race away.

Jaz fired. The arrow plocked into the monster’s chest, skewering a lung. Black blood gushed out in a fountain as the strengi-saat roared and began rolling among the pine needles. Rhianna shouted and rushed toward it, her staff at the ready, and the monster leapt away, hoping to escape. It lunged off into the shadows, leaving Rhianna far behind. Fallion knew that it would only find a quiet place to die. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was growing light. In a moment, the bright disk would rise and hang like a shield upon the shoulder of the world. Fallion warmed his hands by the fire, let its energy seep into him for a few moments longer.

For the past year, he had been seeking to master the flameweavers’ arts in earnest. He could feel the energy building inside him, a hidden inferno. When he judged that he could hold no more, he abruptly stood and announced, “Let’s go deal with this Lord Hale.”

 

Far above Fallion a star shone so dimly that it could not be seen, a light so distant that even upon the darkest of nights it was only a hazy malformed speck in the vastness of space, unremarkable, unknown. Fallion had never seen the star, for only those with many endowments of sight could discern it. He had never gazed up from a meadow at night and wondered whether worlds spun in lazy circles about it. He had never dreamt that it might harbor people similar to his. Yet upon that world a young man, not entirely human in form, faced challenges of his own…. 2

UPON A FAR WORLD

When the great Rune of Creation was shattered, the One True World shattered with it into a million million Shadow Worlds, each a distortion of the perfect whole, each diminished. Do men even exist on such worlds? I used to ask. I believed that they must, at least on some of those worlds, for the Bright Ones dwelt upon the One True World, and we are but shadows of them.

How many times had I wondered if upon one of those shadow worlds there was another me, a twisted mockery of what I am, or a shining example of what I might yet become. If I were to walk upon such a world, I wondered, and happen upon my shadow self, would I even recognize myself?

But never did I guess that it would happen in my lifetime. I do not blame Fallion for what he did. None of us could ever have guessed the terrible consequences of what would come.

—the Wizard Binnesman

The Great War was finally near an end, and mankind had lost.

The castle at Caer Luciare was now a last and lonely refuge perched on the sides of a mount. The forbidding wastes below were a rocky tumult. To the north, west and east, the ruins of ancient cities climbed above the scree. The vast oaks that had once refreshed this land were gone, tree and acorn, razed during battles with the wyrmlings, and now the fields boasted little but boulders, weeds, and thistles. Only in a few distant fens could green still be seen.

Refugees had swelled Caer Luciare’s numbers to more than thirty-eight thousand. The High King himself had come after the fall of Gonart, and the Light of Dalharristan had resorted here with his family now for six years. And this past month alone, four hundred good Kartoche warriors with skin whiter than bone had journeyed north to take refuge among Caer Luciare’s ranks.

Everyone said that the warlords were preparing for some fierce assault against the evil that dwelt in the north, at Rugassa.

Had you been walking the tower at Caer Luciare that morning, you might have seen Alun, a young man of nineteen who still seemed far more a boy than a man, down on the green outside the gates amid a swarm of dogs. The hounds around him bayed excitedly at the promise of the hunt, while mastiffs woofed.

Alun knelt with his neck and back bent like a willow frond as he groomed an old hound. Alun was a gangrel, he was, with a crooked nose, stick-like arms, and a head and hands that were too meaty for his body. His leather trousers and red wool tunic were matted with hair and smelled of dog. The dogs looked fierce in their masks and cuirasses of boiled leather, their wicked collars bristling with spikes. Yet the nubs of their tails wagged furiously, belying their fierce appearance. Their tails wagged despite the fact that some of the dogs knew that they would die in this day as the warriors scoured the forest, hunting for wyrmling “harvesters.”

There weren’t enough dogs for the hunt, Alun knew, not enough healthy ones. He had others in the kennels, limping on mangled paws or with bellies ripped open; right now he was preparing to send Wanderlust into the fray.

“What do you say, love?” Alun asked the hound as he combed. He wanted her to look nice, in case she died today.

Wanderlust was old. The black hair on her snout had gone gray. Her joints were swollen, and as Alun held her muzzle, peered into her loving brown eyes, and strapped on a fighting collar, she barely managed a slow wag of her tail, as if to say, “Another battle? I’m so weary, but I will go.”

At first glance, she didn’t look like much of a dog. But Wanderlust was more than a common hound. Her mother was a sand hound, a breed so named for its sandy color, renowned for its good nose. But her father was a brute, descended from three strains of war dog. Wanderlust was almost as large as a mastiff, and she had a warrior’s heart. Even in old age, if she smelled a wyrmling, she would be first to the fray.

Alun put on Wanderlust’s mask, as red as a bloodied skull. He had fashioned it himself, and it reminded him that all too soon there be nothing left of her but a skull. If the wyrmlings didn’t get her, age would. A hound named Thunder rushed up and bayed in Alun’s face. Alun gave Thunder a stern look, warned him to go sit, then Alun twisted over to dig in his big rucksack for Wanderlust’s cuirass. A shadow fell over Alun; he looked up. Warlord Madoc stood above him, a tall man in his forties, astonishingly big-boned and broad at the chest. He was a powerful man, as relentlessly bred for war as any of the dogs in Alun’s care. His bald head was painted in a red war mask, though he had not yet donned his armor. At his back were his twin sons, Connor and Drewish, both eighteen, in masks of blue. Alun drew back reflexively, for Drewish had often kicked him.

“G’day, milord,” Alun said. “Nice day for a hunt.” He nodded toward the wastes. The rising sun sprang above the fog-shrouded vales, staining the mist in shades of rose.

“Fagh! I grow weary of hunts,” Madoc groused, his tone equally full of fatigue and disgust. He nodded at Wanderlust. “Sending the old bitch out?”

“Aye, milord.”

Warlord Madoc grew thoughtful. “You’re grooming her for her burial. She deserves such honor. But I have a more vital task for her today—and for you, I think.”

“Milord?”

“Master Finnes tells me that your dog has a nose so strong that she can track the trail of a quail a day after it has taken to air—even if it flies over open water.”

“True enough,” Alun said, his heart suddenly pumping, excited to hear that Wanderlust might get a reprieve.

“Then, I need you to track… someone. ”

Alun wondered whom. He had not heard of any criminals that had escaped the dungeons or highwaymen hiding in the wastes. No one dared stray outside the castle these days. “Who, milord?”

“Swear on your eyes and your hands that you won’t tell?”

That was a serious oath. If Alun broke it, Warlord Madoc would require his eyes and hands as payment.

“I’ll nay tell nobody.”

“I want you to track Daylan Hammer.”

“Milord?” Alun asked, surprised. Daylan Hammer was a hero. No, he was more than a hero, he was a legend, not some common criminal to be hunted and spied upon. Tales of his exploits stretched back for centuries. It was said that he was immortal, that in his youth he had traveled to another world, where he had drunk a potion that somehow let him cheat death. Some thought that he might even be from another world. He could not be killed, yet he had a habit of disappearing for decades on end, then showing up again. He had come to Caer Luciare last summer, at the end of the month of Wheat, and had been wintering all season.

“You heard aright,” Madoc said. “Daylan Hammer has a habit of abandoning the hunt, taking off into the wastes alone. There is a pattern to it. If I’m right, he’ll leave the hunt today. I suspect him of foul deeds. I need to know where he goes.”

Alun must have looked worried. At the very least, he did not know how to answer.

“Are you up to the task?” Madoc demanded. “Would you risk the wastes alone, with nothing but that dog?”

“I’m—not afraid,” Alun said. “Wanderlust will warn me if there is any danger about.”

“Do this for me,” Madoc said, “and I’ll make you Master of the Hounds….” He fell silent, letting this sink in. “With the title comes your freedom and a grant of all of the rights owed to a warrior of the clan….”

Alun’s jaw dropped in astonishment. He and his ancestors had lived as serfs for generations. They were the most ill-bred of mankind—the servant caste—made slaves by nature. As a child, Alun had often been told that warlord Madoc would geld him when he got older so that he wouldn’t pollute the blood lines. Alun had never dared to dream of rising above his fate.

But as a warrior of the clan, he would gain the right to own property. He would someday be able to buy himself a fine house instead of sleeping in the kennels among the dogs. He would eat at the warlord’s table and drink the warlord’s wine, instead of eating scraps. He would be eligible to marry a fine woman, a warlord’s daughter. “Master Finnes is growing old,” Madoc explained. “He tells me that you know dogs as well as any man alive, and you will be a great service to the clan. You are ready to move up in this world.”

Alun listened, but worried. Compliments, he found, were like grease on an axle. When applied liberally, they will speed one along on a journey—but soon wear out.

Madoc was offering too much for this one small act of service. There was more going on here than Madoc let on. At his back, Drewish only leered.

Madoc is afraid to his send his own sons to spy on Daylan Hammer, Alun realized. This game is more dangerous than it appears. It’s not just the wyrmlings I have to fear—it’s Daylan himself. If he’s involved in some plot, he might kill to cover it up. That’s what Madoc fears. That’s what he suspects. Indeed, Sir Croft had died under suspicious circumstances on the hunt some four weeks past, off on the trail alone. Now that Alun thought of it, hadn’t someone said that Croft had gone out to search for Daylan Hammer?

But at the time, Alun hadn’t given that a second thought. He’d imagined that Croft was slain by a wyrmling before he found the immortal.

Daylan Hammer seemed to be a virtuous man, wise and brave. He was as handy with a joke or a song as he was with a bow—and after centuries of practice, no one was handier with a bow. Everyone admired him. He was…the kind of lord that Madoc could never hope to be. Is Madoc’s jealousy clouding his judgment? Alun wondered.

“You suspect him of Croft’s death,” Alun said.

Wanderlust inched forward, pressing her muzzle into Alun’s chest, reminding him that she needed her cuirass. Up at the castle gate, hooves thundered on the drawbridge as a pair of warriors issued forth, and in the fields below the castle, a murder of crows began to caw and fly up out of a field of oats. Madoc grinned. “Smart lad,” he said. “There’s more to you than meets the eye. I suspect him of murder, and more. If he is the traitor that I think he is, I’ll tie his hands behind his back and let the headsman take a few swings at him.”

Drewish laughed, “Then we’ll find out just how immortal he really is.”

If I follow Daylan Hammer and find something to accuse him of, what then? Alun wondered. If Madoc succeeds in taking vengeance, for the rest of time people will remember me as the man who betrayed Daylan Hammer.

Madoc seemed almost to read his mind. “It is possible,” he said, “that Daylan Hammer is as fair as he seems. But I have found that it is a rare man who can really be trusted. Every man’s hand seeks his brother’s purse, especially in days like these. And if Daylan Hammer sees some advantage in betraying us…

“I’d send a warrior again, or Connor or Drewish, but you have a chance to succeed where they would fail. If Daylan catches you, you can tell him that you were out hunting for a lost dog. That is, after all, your lot in life, and it would sound feasible that you would go out and hunt for an animal that you love.”

“I think…” Alun said, “that Daylan Hammer is a good man.”

“Good to who?” Madoc asked. “Is he loyal to this kingdom? Of course not. He was born before it was, and it will fade and die long before he does. We are like dreams to him that come vividly in the night and just as soon vanish. I make plans for my lands. My serfs know that we will plant barley in the field for three years, and let it lie fallow for two. But think how Daylan Hammer must scheme. What does he plan for these lands in a hundred years, or a thousand, or in ten thousand?

“More to the point, what will he do to bring those plans to bear? Will you and I suffer for it?”

Alun grunted thoughtfully, stroked Wanderlust on the back. Most likely, he would find that Daylan was guilty of nothing, and by humoring Warlord Madoc, Alun would earn his gratitude. But if Alun discovered anything of import…he’d be well rewarded.

“I’ll do it, milord,” Alun said.

 

As Warlord Madoc and his sons strode across the greens well out of earshot, Drewish asked his father,

“You wouldn’t really grant him clan rights, would you? Mother thinks he should be gelded. He’s more of a cur than any of the dogs that he sleeps with.”

“I’ll keep my end of the bargain,” Madoc said. “I must prove to my people that my word is good. Let him marry a warrior’s daughter, if he can find one who will sleep with him. We’ll send him and his offspring to the head of every battle.”

“What if Daylan discovers what we’re up to?” Drewish asked. “He is a persuasive man. Alun would gladly follow him, I think, right into a kezziard’s maw, if the old man asked it of him.”

“We can trust Alun,” Warlord Madoc said. “Daylan Hammer has no coin to buy the lad, and we’re offering him…more than he could ever dream. He’ll betray Daylan Hammer.”

“How can you be sure?” Drewish asked.

“His dogs,” Madoc replied. “Every day, Alun sends them to their deaths, betraying those that love him best. He’s grown adept at betrayal.”

3

A WARM RECEPTION

In my dreams, it was always the same. I stood in the underworld, and a great wheel of fire was emblazoned before my eyes, the Seal of the Inferno.

There were other Seals, the Seal of Heaven, the Seal of Earth—but those were already mended, or at least, were far along the path.

I stared into the rune. To a commoner it would have looked only like a bowl of fire, tongues of flame in greens and reds and blues, sputtering aimlessly. But to my eyes, I read purpose and meaning in those flames. They whispered to me, telling me their secrets. And I watched how they subsided and reappeared in patterns that could not have been random, and I began to understand. The pain of the world, its despair and torment, was written in those flames. They were bent and tainted, cruel and deformed. I knew that with only the smallest changes, the slightest of twists, I could fix them. And in mending them, I would mend the world.

—from the journal of Fallion Orden

Fallion strode purposefully down the rutted road toward the gates of Castle Coorm. The sun was rising now, a brilliant gold rim of light on the horizon and not a cloud in the sky. Behind him, the others followed.

Each of them bore a torch, though Fallion made sure that his burned the brightest.

“Torch-bearer.” That was Fallion’s name among the flameweavers. Somehow, as he bore the torch toward the castle, he wondered if it was only descriptive, or if it was prophetic. The castle gate was closed, the drawbridge had been raised again. Fallion could see a pair of mallards grabbling in the serene waters of the moat, splashing and preening, while their chicks bobbed about in their wake. But whenever he looked to the drawbridge, he suddenly had a flash of light that pierced his eye, and he saw the Seal of the Inferno, burning inside a ring of fire.

“Look,” Jaz muttered. “There’s the old rock where I used to hunt for that bullfrog. Do you think it’s still there?”

Fallion glanced at the rock, there at the side of the moat, with rushes growing up around it. He smiled at the memory. “Go and see, if you want.”

Jaz laughed. “Hey, can rocks shrink? This whole castle seems much smaller than it used to be.”

The guards atop the castle wall had taken notice of them, raising their bows and nocking arrows, crouching between the merlons atop the castle wall. There were eight archers. One guard raced down into the depths of the castle.

Fallion marched right up to the edge of the moat, where he and his brother had fished as children.

“That will be far enough!” a guard shouted dangerously from the wall. “State your name and business.”

“My name is my own affair,” Fallion said. “I have come to challenge Lord Hale to personal combat, to avenge the honor of this girl, the Lady Farion—and to avenge the honor of the land of Mystarria.”

Fallion heard a gruff laugh and the sound of heavy boots pounding up wooden stairs in the gate tower, just to his left. Lord Hale did not come swiftly. He came in a measured pace, ponderously, thump, thud, thump. By the creaking of wooden steps, Fallion could tell that he must be a hill of a man. But when Lord Hale appeared, leering down over the battlements, Fallion was not sure that he was a man at all.

Lord Hale was huge, nearly seven feet tall and four feet wide at the shoulder. There was no beauty or grace in him. His flaccid jowls were so pale that he might never have spent a day in the sun, and his silver eyes were lifeless and hollow, like pits gouged in ice. He was bald on top, with a circlet of long greasy hair that covered his ears. It seemed to be silver on the ends, but looked almost as if it were rotting at the roots, like a tuft of cotton that has festered in its boll through the winter. But it wasn’t just the man’s hair that seemed to be rotting. There were blotches on his forehead, yellow fungal growths layered over a patch of dirty warts.

He was toad of a man, a festering toad, dying from cankers.

And then there was his expression, his manner. He leaned his fat elbows upon a merlon and peered down upon Fallion with a superior air, and there was such malevolent intent lined upon every inch of his face, that Fallion had seldom seen the like.

It isn’t just his hair that is rotting, Fallion thought. It is all of him. The evil in him is so strong, it’s rotting him away.

Fallion peered at him, through him. He could detect no locus in the man’s soul, no festering evil from the netherworld. But Fallion had learned that not all evil men harbored the parasites. Greed and stupidity alone accounted for much evil in the world.

“I know you,” Hale leered. “I knew you’d come back. I told her, I did. I says to Shadoath, ‘Let me watch the castle here. They always come back.’”

So, Fallion realized, the man worked for Fallion’s old enemy. Hale had manned his outpost for years, and even now perhaps was unaware that the war was over and that Shadoath had lost. The very fact that Hale had come with Shadoath though, gave Fallion pause. And briefly Fallion wondered if Shadoath had returned—if the locus had taken a new body.

Perhaps Hale is not human, Fallion thought. Shadoath had brought fallen Bright Ones and golaths with her from the netherworld, along with her strengi-saats. It was possible that Hale was something other than human, some breed of giant.

Hale studied Jaz, Rhianna, and Talon, gave an approving nod. “So, I knew you’d come back,” he said smugly. “But I didn’t know you’d come back like salmon—to spawn.”

He burst into a round of crude laughter, and some of the archers on the wall followed suit. He plans to kill us, Fallion knew, but he won’t try it yet. He wants to savor the moment, draw it out.

“So, I remember you,” Hale said. “Do you remember me?”

Fallion shook his head. “No.”

“We’ve met before,” Hale said. “I’ll give you a hint. It was on that day you run off.”

Fallion remembered. Lord Asgaroth had brought troops to the castle, surrounded it, and then demanded that Fallion’s mother offer up her sons as hostages.

Fallion himself had stood on the wall and given his answer, commanding the archers to open fire.

“I remember,” Fallion said, not completely sure. “A fat man on a pony, a giant of a target, rushing off. I remember a fleeting thought, ‘How could they miss that one!’”

Lord Hale roared in glee. Oh how he was savoring the moment. Fallion calculated that in an instant, he would command his troops to fire.

So Fallion took the initiative.

“I did not command my men to fire lightly,” Fallion said. “It is a grave thing to take another’s life, even if it must be done to satisfy justice.”

Hale mocked his choice of words. “Oh, it is indeed a grave thing to take a life. Ain’t it lads?”

“I’m sorry now that I must take yours,” Fallion said. “I offer you one last chance. Surrender yourself, and I will be lenient.”

It was a sincere offer, but Hale merely grinned patiently and said, “Come and take my life, if you think you can.”

Fallion raised his hand, as he had upon that fateful day, and called out to Lord Hale’s troops. These were no men that he recognized from the old days when his family held this castle. These were rogues and bandits that had crawled out of the hills.

“You men upon the walls,” Fallion shouted. “I am Fallion Sylvarresta Orden, heir to Gaborn Val Orden, and rightful lord of this realm. I bid you to join in helping restore peace and prosperity to the land.”

He looked toward Lord Hale, and shouted “Fire!” as he made a pulling motion with his fist. None of the archers fired upon Warlord Hale. But then Fallion hadn’t expected that they would. Hale laughed in derision, looked right and left toward his archers. At his glance, the men stiffened, drew their bows to the full. His patience was at an end, Fallion could see. He was tired of playing. In apparent resignation, Fallion said, “If your men won’t obey my command, perhaps the heavens will.”

He raised his hand a second time and shouted “Fire!”

He let go of some the energy that had been stored in him, sent it questing behind him, used it to heat the torches so that they all flared up in an instant.

He gathered that heat and sent it racing through the air. The torches sputtered out as a dozen ashen war bows suddenly superheated and burst into flames. The well-oiled strings and the lacquer made perfect fuel.

At that instant, Fallion’s friends scattered, and Fallion drew a wreath of smoke about him, just in case any of the archers had the presence of mind to try to fire one last shot with the flaming bows. A couple did, muttering curses as the arrows flew. But the sudden flames had spoiled their aim, and the worst that happened was that a fiery arrow blurred past Fallion’s shoulder. Lord Hale barely had time to register his surprise. Perhaps he had not seen the unnatural gleam in Fallion’s eye, or perhaps he had not recognized it as the mark of a flameweaver. Too late he saw his mistake.

Fallion reached into the sky, sent his energy out and used it to gather motes of light from the heavens, as if trapping flies within a web.

From horizon to horizon the skies went black. Then he drew the light toward him in a fiery funnel, an infernal tornado that dropped white hot into his palm.

For half an instant, he let the fire build, and then hurled it toward Warlord Hale. The fireball struck, hitting the warlord’s oily skin, his clothes, and Hale shrieked and tried to bat the flames away. But Fallion only intensified them, sent energy streaming into him so that as an outer layer of hair or skin or fat burned, steam rose from the inner layers, drying them until they caught flame too, then the layer below took fire.

It happened quickly, a few seconds at most, but Fallion burned the man, turning him into a fiery pillar of blackened ash and pain.

Only his eyes Fallion left untouched, so that Hale’s men might see the horror in them. Lord Hale flailed about, shrieking, and then just staggered over the wall and dropped into the moat like a meteor, where his carcass sputtered and fumed in the water.

The guards all dove for cover, lest Fallion target one of them next. Cheers arose from the commoners that Lord Hale had kept as his slaves in the castle, and suddenly there was the pounding of feet on stairs as some of them began rushing the guards, intent on taking vengeance for years of abuse.

Fallion and those outside the castle could do little now except wait for the drawbridge to open. He peered at the bridge, and a Seal of the Inferno blossomed in his mind, a fiery wheel, striking him like a blow.

It seems so near, he thought. The seal must be nearer than I imagined. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to clear his vision. There were screams and the clash of arms coming from the castle. He worried for the peasants who were giving their lives in this battle.

He did not like the brutality, but he could not deny the people their well-deserved vengeance. They hunger for it, Fallion thought, and by the Powers, after the horrors that I’ve seen, I’d like my fill of it myself.

4

TAKING COUNCIL AT TWILIGHT

Better to die a fair death than to live as a wyrmling.

—a saying in Caer Luciare

Dogs can talk, Alun knew, and right now, Wanderlust was telling him that she smelled a wyrmling. Oh, a hound doesn’t speak in words, but their bodies can tell you volumes. Wanderlust stood with her muzzle pointed down a dank trail in the deepest shadows of a swamp, growling far back in her throat. Her tail did not wag, as it would if she only smelled a stag or a bear. Instead, her flanks quivered nervously, and the nub of her tail was as steady as a stone. She turned and looked back at him, imploring with her eyes, asking what to do. If the wyrmling had been near, she’d have taken small leaps backward while peering in its direction. No, the trail was hours old.

“Leave it,” Alun whispered, gripping his short spear. “We’ve got better things to do.” He pointed to Daylan Hammer’s prints in the mud.

After accepting the honor of the hunt, Alun had gone to his room and retrieved his leather boots and a light spear. He took no armor, no heavy steel, sacrificing safety for speed. Daylan Hammer was small, but it was said that he could run with the speed of three men.

Catching the immortal’s scent had not been hard. Alun had simply gone to the barracks where Daylan slept and stuck Wanderlust’s muzzle into his bed. From there, the hound easily tracked him through the woods, even though Daylan rode on horseback.

Alun had to race to keep up all morning, but at no time had Daylan Hammer ever gotten more than two or three hours ahead of him.

As Madoc had predicted, Daylan Hammer had broken off from the hunt early. He’d ridden south of the castle for nearly ten miles, through the rocky Hallow Hills and down into the swamps beneath. Then he’d left his horse when the muck got too thick, and set off on foot.

He was traveling fast. Even in a mire he could outrace a commoner, it seemed, especially one who had to worry about making any noise that might alert his quarry. Alders and willows raised their leafy branches all around, and Alun had to make sure not to step on fallen twigs.

Fortunately, Alun had figured out where Daylan Hammer was going. There was a hill not a mile ahead, a small rise where, in some distant past, the ancients had raised a sand-stone tower. Large images had been carved into the inner walls of the stone—likenesses of six beautiful women; thus it was called the Tower of the Fair Ones. Though the wind and rain had ravaged the outer ramparts, the women were still there today, safe and protected. Legend said that it once had been the home to a wealthy merchant who kept his daughters under strong guard, safe from the attentions of ill-bred suitors In fairer times, it had been a popular retreat for lovers.

Alun hurried along through the brush, with Wanderlust silently urging him on. She had never been one for barking much, and Alun had taught her not to bark at all when on the trail of an outlaw. Because the ground was soft and he did not want Daylan Hammer to know that he was being followed, Alun took his path parallel to the hero’s track. As the ground rose, cover became dense. Blackberry bushes tangled among a few evergreens and fern thickets. The water in the nearby swamps was warm, for much of it came from hot springs and geysers high on Mount Luciare, and was diverted through the castle to heat it, even in winter. Because of this, the plants here had an easy winter, and were larger and lusher than in the valleys nearby.

When Alun finally spotted the old tower rising above the woods, he halted. He was only a hundred yards off, and he could see Daylan Hammer there with his back to Alun. The immortal had leaned a log against the tower, which was only about forty feet high, and now was climbing the log, using it to scale the tower wall.

Alun retreated beneath the low branches of an evergreen for cover and lay in the shadows with one arm resting around Wanderlust to keep her quiet.

Daylan Hammer reached the top. The roof had caved in ages ago, and so the immortal merely balanced upon the narrow rock wall. After a moment, he took off his cape and threw it to the ground, then unsheathed his war hammer and let it fall, too.

He relaxed for a long moment, shook out his auburn hair, and just stood, gazing up toward the sun, as if taking his rest, daydreaming.

Daylan Hammer looked like a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties. He was short of stature, even among the poorly bred, but of course was dwarfed by those of the warrior caste. He had a weathered face, his beard cut short. But there was agelessness to his blue eyes, as if he had seen far too many horrors and had loved far too often and had grown weary of life.

Alun wondered what the immortal dreamed about. Perhaps, he imagined, Daylan Hammer had been in love with one of the beauties whose image was housed inside. Perhaps he comes here only to mourn her. As minutes stretched into hours, Wanderlust grew bored of the watch, and soon lay in the shadows of the evergreen, snoring. As the sun began to drop toward the horizon, Alun fell to dreaming himself. There was a chance that he could be freed. And he began to think about what that would mean. Wanderlust whimpered in her sleep. Her paws were in the air, and she waved them just a little. Dreaming of the hunt, of rabbits or harts, Alun figured from her smile.

He could understand dogs. Their body language spoke volumes. Not like women. You can look at a pretty lass and never have an idea what she is thinking, if she is thinking at all. Alun didn’t have a lover, had never even kissed a girl. He had once approached Gil the fishmonger and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, but the man had laughed in his face. “What? An oaf who stinks of dogs wants to marry my daughter what stinks of fish? What malodorous little tadpoles you would spawn!”

The fishmonger’s daughter was nice to look at. She had long brown hair and eyes as solemn as an old hound’s. And she didn’t talk much. That was a fine trait, in Alun’s estimation. He had been teased rudely as a child, and couldn’t bear the presence of gossips or scolds.

Once I become a clansman, he imagined, Gil will bring his daughter by the hand and beg me to marry her.

And what will I say?

“What, you want me to marry your daughter what stinks of fish?”

He’d laugh and turn the man out.

And then I’ll be alone again, he thought.

So if not the fishmonger’s daughter, who will I marry?

There were plenty to choose from—daughters of old warlords who were penniless, daughters of wealthy merchants who would hope to add a title to their fortunes.

Why not marry the best? he wondered.

And suddenly he dared imagine the impossible.

The best. The best would be well bred and wealthy. She would be beautiful to look upon, but she would also be generous and good of heart. She would love him, and not disrespect him for coming from a low breed.

A young woman came to mind. He had never thought of her before, not in that way. Her exalted station had been too far above his. Her name was Siyaddah, and her father was the Emir of Dalharristan. She had spoken to Alun often, for as a young woman she had loved to come to the kennels and play with the new pups, petting them and bringing scraps from the kitchens and bones for the pups to wrestle over. Siyaddah had the brownest eyes, almost as black as her hair. They sparkled when she laughed, and her skin was dark and silky.

She had always treated Alun as more than a slave. She had laughed with him as if he were a friend, and once she even laid her hand upon his arm; highborn women almost never did that. He had wondered if she had feelings for him.

Once my rank is secure, Alun thought, I could ask her father for her hand in marriage. He won’t go for it. But if he said no, what would I have lost?

He strongly doubted that the Emir would say yes. There were rumors that he was saving his daughter, that he hoped to marry her to High King Urstone’s son.

Alun thought, But that will never hap—

A huge shadow fell over him, followed by the pounding of heavy wings. Alun’s heart leapt in his chest. He suddenly felt as a mouse must feel when touched by the shadow of the hawk. He peered up in terror and saw some beast. It wasn’t a drake. This thing had vast translucent wings of palest gold that rippled in the air like sheets moved by the wind.

A wyrmling Seccath! Alun thought, fear rising in his throat. Alun had seen a Seccath only once, nine years ago, when he was but a boy. The High King himself had captured it and brought it to Castle Luciare, where it was stripped of its wings and held prisoner deep in the dungeons, even to this day. The Seccath winged its way straight toward Daylan Hammer, and Alun had the forethought to realize that the immortal had no weapon to protect him.

Just as Alun was about to shout a warning, the Seccath folded its wings and dropped to the tower wall, opposite from Daylan Hammer.

 

“Well met,” Daylan Hammer said.

The wyrmling settled onto the wall. She was a pale-eyed woman with blond hair shaved short and with huge bones. Her neck and forehead were tattooed with cruel glyphs, prayers to Lady Despair. There was no beauty in her that Daylan could see, unless one considered that brutality could be considered comely.

Not for the first time, Daylan considered how decency and innocence were inextricably mingled with a human’s concept of beauty. On almost every world he had visited, in any nation, a person whose face was smooth, childlike—innocent, and compassionate—was considered more beautiful than one who was not. Not so among the wyrmlings.

Indeed, it was believed that the wyrmlings’ ancestors had been human, but they had been bred for war over so many generations that they had evolved into something else. So there was an inbred cruelty and wariness to the woman—a rough and hawkish face, a scowl to the mouth, blazing eyes, and a wary stance, as if she only hoped for a chance to gut him.

Her artificial wings folded around her now, making her look as if she were draped in translucent yellow robes. Behind her, the dying sun hung just above the horizon like a bloody eye. The wyrmling peered at Daylan, cold and mocking in her rage. The wyrmlings could not abide light. It pained their eyes and burned their skin.

Humans feared the darkness, and so they had agreed to meet here now, in the half-light. The sight of her sent a shudder through Daylan. Thoughts of compassion, honor, decency—all were alien to her, incomprehensible. The maggot that infected her soul saw to that.

“Well met?” she asked, as if trying to make sense of the greeting. “Why would it be well to meet me?

Your body trembles. It knows the gaze of a predator when it sees it. Yet you think it well to meet me?”

Daylan chuckled. “It is only a common greeting among my people.”

“Is it?” the wyrmling demanded, as if he lied.

“So,” Daylan said, “you asked for proof that your princess is still alive.”

“Can you name the day she drew her first blood?”

It was a difficult question, Daylan knew. The wyrmlings kept great beasts to use in times of war—the world wyrms. Among wyrmlings, time was measured in “rounds” which lasted for three years—the length of time that it took between breeding cycles for a female wyrm. Each day in a round had its own name. Thus, there were over a thousand days in a round, and if Daylan had to lie, he would have had a slim chance of guessing the right day.

“Princess Kan-hazur says that she drew first blood upon the day of Bitter Moon.” That was all that he needed to say, but he wanted to offer ample proof. “It was in the two hundred and third year of the reign of the Dread Emperor Zul-torac. She fought in the Vale of Pearls against the he-beast Nezyallah, and broke his neck with her club.”

Daylan knew a bit about politics among wyrmlings. As he understood it, the “he-beast” was in fact the Princess’s own older brother. He would have been larger and stronger than her, but the princess claimed that her brother was also less violent, and therefore less “able to lead,” by wyrmling standards.

“Aaaaah,” the wyrmling sighed. “A fine battle it was. Kan-hazur won scars both of flesh and of the heart that day.”

“Yes,” Daylan said. “And now, do we have a bargain?”

5

A LIGHT IN THE HEAVENS

Death never comes at a timely hour.

—a saying of the netherworld

Alun waited for the two to leave—the wyrmling flying back north, while Daylan Hammer climbed gingerly from the wall.

He let Daylan Hammer have a five minute lead, and then hurried for the castle. I’m in a real fix now, Alun decided. It was eleven miles back to the castle, and he’d never be able to make it before dark. The wyrmling harvesters would come out by then. Indeed, the last sliver of sun dipped below the horizon as he began his race, and he knew that he had perhaps a half an hour of light, and there would only the faintest waning moon tonight.

Maybe I’ll get lucky, he thought. The lords have been hunting the harvesters hard. There can’t be many around the castle.

But he had little hope. Wyrmling harvesters butchered humans, taking certain glands that the wyrmlings used for elixirs. Thus, the castle attracted the wyrmlings like wolves to a carcass. So Alun ran, heart pounding, sweat streaming down his forehead, his back, his neck and face. He came up out of the bogs into the wastes and kept to a rocky ravine, the dry bed of creek. The shadows grew long and deep, and he struggled to keep up with Wanderlust. The dog will warn me of danger, he thought—until he rounded a boulder; something large lurched in front of him.

He heard the sound of steel clearing a scabbard, and Daylan Hammer’s boot knife pressed up against Alun’s nose.

“What are you doing?” Daylan demanded. “Why are you following me?” Daylan studied him with a cold eye.

“I, I, I uh, was looking for a lost dog,” Alun explained, coming up with the lie. “Wanderlust here is my favorite.”

The dog growled at Daylan Hammer but didn’t dare attack. Oh, she’d try to take him if Alun so commanded, but Alun knew that if he ordered her to kill, Daylan’s knife could plunge through his eye before the hound could even get a bite of the immortal.

Daylan smiled, sheathed his knife. Apparently he decided the Alun didn’t represent much of a threat.

“You’ve followed me for hours.”

“I didn’t see nothin’!”

“You didn’t see me meet with a wyrmling Seccath?” Daylan smiled at the lie, as if it were nothing.

“No!” Alun insisted.

“Then you’re a terrible spy, and not worth the half of what they’re paying you.”

Daylan sat down on a large rock and patted a spot next to him, inviting Alun to rest. Alun was gasping from fear and exhaustion. Daylan suggested, “Lean your head between your knees. Catch your breath.”

Alun did as he was told, unnerved at the realization that there was nothing he could do to protect himself from a man like Daylan Hammer. “What are you going to do with me?”

“You mean do to you?” Daylan laughed. “Nothing. If I wanted to kill you, I’d leave you here in the waste for the wyrmlings. They’d take a meager harvest from you. But I won’t leave you alone, and I won’t harm you. I just want to know one thing: who sent you?” His tone was mild, affable, as if he were asking what Alun thought of the weather.

Alun sat gasping for a moment. It was no use lying. If he lied, Daylan might leave him for the wyrmlings, and that would be that.

But there was something more to it.

He liked the way that Daylan had asked. When Madoc had come, he’d stood over Alun with his brutish sons at his back, and had taken an intimidating stance. There were subtle threats implied, Alun suddenly realized.

But even when he made the mildest of threats, Daylan didn’t sound serious. Indeed, he was smiling, as if sharing a joke.

“Warlord Madoc,” Alun said at last. “Warlord Madoc sent me.”

“What did he say about me? What does he suspect?”

“He thinks that you’re a traitor, that you killed Sir Croft.”

“Sir Croft got himself killed,” Daylan said. “He followed me, as you did, but he didn’t keep to his cover as well. I didn’t see him, but the wyrmling did. She caught him. By the time I heard Croft’s cries, the harvest had been taken.”

Alun said nothing.

“Did you hear our conversation?” Daylan asked, “Mine and the Seccath’s?”

Alun shook his head. “I was too far away to hear anything. I didn’t dare try to get close.”

“Ah,” Daylan said. “I am trying to make a bargain with the wyrmlings. They have High King Urstone’s son. They’ve held him hostage now for more than a decade. And as you know, we have Zul-torac’s daughter. Zul-torac has forsaken his flesh, and lives only as a shadow now. He cannot spawn any more offspring, and so his daughter is precious to him. I hope to make an exchange of hostages.”

“Prince Urstone is still alive, after all these years?”

“Barely, from what I understand.”

“And is he even human?” Alun asked. “Surely by now they’ve put him in a crystal cage and fit him with a wyrm.”

“He’s resisted the cage, and the wyrm,” Daylan said. “He is still human.” Alun doubted that anyone could resist the cage for so long. It was said that the pains one endured there made a person long for death, long for release. Better to let a wyrm infest your soul, lose your humanity, than to resist. “Through a messenger, I have put questions to him,” Daylan explained, “moral questions that no person infected by a wrym could have answered correctly. The crystal cage destroys most men, but others it only purifies, filling them with compassion and the wisdom that can only come from having endured great pain and perfect despair.”

Alun peered up, hope in his eyes. If Daylan was right, then the prince was the kind of hero that men only hear of in legends.

Daylan Hammer grasped Alun by the wrist. “Old King Urstone is failing. He won’t last much longer than that dog of yours.

“In three days, a thousand of the strongest warriors in Caer Luciare will ride north to attack the wyrmlings, to take back the fortress at Cantular. In seventeen years, no attack so bold has been attempted, for word of such an attack might well drive Emperor Zul-torac mad with bloodlust, and the life of Prince Urstone would be forfeit.

“And so I am trying to negotiate an exchange of hostages—before the attack takes place.”

“But, once we give up their princess,” Alun asked, “won’t the wyrmlings attack Caer Luciare in force?”

“Of course they will,” Daylan said.

Alun didn’t understand. The immortal was giving up their hostage, the only thing that had protected the Caer for more than a decade. If Alun understood him aright, with the hostage lost, the wyrmlings would attack, and by the end of this week, everyone that he knew could be dead.

“This is madness!” Alun shouted. “You’ve gone daft! King Urstone would never agree to such a plan. What do we gain? You are just hurrying our end!”

“The end is coming, whether we like it or not,” the immortal said. “Warlord Madoc has convinced the others to make this assault in an effort to secure the borders. Madoc is a fool who dreams of rebuilding the kingdom. Others are tired of hiding, of watching our numbers dwindle away day by day, and so they hope to die fighting, as warriors will.

“But once Madoc takes Cantular, the prince’s life is forfeit, and Emperor Zul-torac will retaliate. The wyrmling code demands vengeance. They have a saying, ‘Every insult must be paid for in blood.’

Zul-torac’s honor will demand that he hit us hard, even if he must cut his way through his own daughter to do so.”

Alun still didn’t understand. There was no justification for giving up their hostage. Daylan Hammer was making a token gesture, trying to save two lives for what…a week?

“I don’t see any value in trying to save the prince,” Alun said. “If we are all to die, why not just hit them, and let the prince be damned?”

“That’s how Madoc would have it, isn’t it?” Daylan said. Alun realized that he was right. “It sounds courageous, daring. Many lords applaud his courage. But think: what if mankind is not wiped out? What if a few hundred or even thousands of you were able to run off into the wilderness, or hide in the caves beneath Caer Luciare? What then? If the prince dies and Madoc manages to win the battle, who will the kingdom fall to when the High King dies?”

“Warlord Madoc,” Alun said, for the High King had no other heir.

“Madoc himself might not be a bad High King,” Daylan Hammer said. “But what of his sons? To put them on a throne would be a disaster. If Madoc or his sons were to learn of my plan, you know that they would oppose it. They could easily sabotage it. No one would blame them if they put the wyrmling princess to the sword.

“I’m not hoping just to save just our prince, Alun, I’m hoping to save our kingdom, our people.”

A chill wind suddenly swept over the rocks, down from the mountain.

There were too many ifs in Daylan’s argument.

“Let’s say you’re right,” Alun said. “Let’s say that the lords take Cantular, and the wyrmlings in a fit of rage come and wipe us all out, as seems most likely. Then…what will all of this have accomplished? The sum of all your acts is what, to save one wyrmling princess?” The thought was absurd. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Daylan smiled, and suddenly he looked old and weary and bent. “There is indeed,” he admitted. “I believe that it is time to free the princess. I believe that we should stop using her as a shield, even if there is no hope for our people.”

“How so?” Alun asked, a sudden fear rising in him. Would Daylan Hammer throw away their hostage for nothing?

“No one should be put to such indignity. No life should be so abused. You’ve stolen her freedom, terrorized her, and victimized her. She was but a child when she was captured. Does your weakness as a nation, your cowardice, justify such behavior?”

“They did it to us first,” Alun pointed out.

“They took a warrior captive. Your people took a child. It’s not the same. But even if the acts were equal, does that mean that because the wyrmlings are cruel and craven, you would fall to their estate?

Don’t you realize that that is precisely what they want? The maggots that infect their souls cannot possess your body so long as you remain pure enough, innocent enough. As a people, you cannot let yourselves sink to their level. There is great power in doing what is right, and letting the consequences be damned. It is the safest course, even when the peril appears great, for it is better to lose your life than to throw away your soul.

“Alun, I’m not trying to just free a pair of hostages. I’m hoping to lift this pall of shame that covers Caer Luciare. I’m hoping, in some small way, to redeem this people.”

 

The drawbridge fell open, and all that Fallion saw within the courtyard was the tree, seemingly tall now, nearly thirty feet. Every branch, every twig, seemed to be a wonder, the product of some superhuman artistry.

The villagers, bloody and bedraggled, were crowded around it, shouting in joy, cheering for Fallion, for freedom, their voices seeming to come from a great distance, like a wind rushing above a vast forest.

“Milord,” one old woman shouted, “remember me?” Fallion smiled. He did indeed. She had been a scullery maid in the castle; she had taught him how to cook a pudding.

“And me, milord?” a man cried. It was the cobbler who had given Fallion his pet ferrin as a child. And as the bridge lowered, all of the weight of his journey washed out of Fallion, and he felt renewed—not just rested in mind, but refreshed in spirit.

It was more than the homecoming. It was the tree that influenced him. Now was the time to do things. Now was the time to become a better person, to seek perfection. The urge came to him so clearly it was almost a command.

But as the bridge dropped farther, Fallion began to realize that something was horribly wrong. There was darkness among the branches, a lingering shadow, and the tree had almost no leaves, and those were only on the top-most branches, though it was high summer.

And as he saw the bole of the tree, scarred and blackened by flames, he began to understand why. The bridge dropped, and he saw it now. The tree was surrounded by a circular wall of stone. And within that wall of stones, worms of green flame sputtered and burned, while white-hot sparks shot out from time to time amid a rune of fire. It was the Seal of the Inferno.

The image smote him, went whirling before his eyes, filling his vision. He blinked and turned away, sought to clear his sight, but the image could not be pushed aside. He stood before the Seal of the Inferno, and it forced itself upon him.

Serve me, a voice demanded in the whispering tongue of flames. Give your all to me. Fallion dropped to one knee and held his forearm against his eyes.

It wasn’t supposed to be here. The Seal was supposed to be in the Underworld, linking the Seal of Heaven to the Seal of Earth. By smoothing out its flaws, Fallion hoped to bind the shattered remains of the One True World back into a single whole.

But this thing before him, it was lying naked in the open, like a festering wound. Even with his eyes clenched, the rune thrust itself on his consciousness. You cannot escape, it whispered.

“Fallion?” he heard Rhianna calling desperately. “Fallion, what’s wrong?”

“The Seal,” Fallion shouted. “It’s breached! It—has been sullied, warped. ” He could think of no other way to describe the damage. The rune had been twisted, subverted by some malicious power. It was raging, wanton. It should have been controlled, a shining thing of golden light. All that he saw now was dangerous wreckage.

The same power that had broken the Seals in the beginning did this, he realized—the Queen of the Loci.

“Can you fix it?” Rhianna asked, her voice seeming to come from far away. A tremendous fear welled up in Fallion. The Seal shouldn’t have been here. He knew of no human-born flameweaver who was powerful enough to have re-created the Seal. Only the Queen of all Loci could do that. He worried that she might be near.

In his dreams, fixing it had been so easy. But now, confronted by the abomination itself, he wasn’t sure. Seeking fuel, Fallion reached up into heaven and grasped the light, pulling it down in fiery cords, letting it build.

He opened his eyes, staring into the wheel of fire, searching for its flaws. Shapes began to emerge. To a commoner, it would have only looked like a bowl of flames, endlessly burning without a source, but to Fallion, there was meaning within those shapes. One had to watch, to study the patterns, see where new flames appeared, where old ones died, how they twisted and flickered, how tall they rose. He could read the meanings of their movements if he had enough time to study them. But how much time would it take? Weeks, he suspected. Months. Years. There were runes hidden within runes here, a maze of them. He would have to pace himself, work in short sessions.

Fix the biggest problems first, he told himself.

Blue tongues of flame erupted and spouted seemingly at random, and white phosphorous airs rose and sputtered. He could hear tongues of flame muttering and cursing in torment at how they had been twisted. But those were mere distractions.

A serpentine incandescence burrowed through the rune, emitting sparks. It represents the worm at the world’s heart, he realized. But why is it so large?

He followed its shape backward, saw its tail wrapped around the bole of the golden tree, searing it, even as the worm drew away the light from its branches.

What an abomination! he thought.

Fallion hurled a ball of flame, used its energy to sever the tail that bound the world worm to the One True Tree. There was a crackling sound, a roar of fire, and the shadows fled from around the tree. The flames cursed Fallion, and struck back, like some living thing. A blast of heat surged into him, filling him.

Almost, Fallion burst into flames. The inferno begged Fallion to let go, to leave his flesh behind and become one with Fire, as his master had years ago at the battle for Shadoath’s Castle.

“No!” Fallion shouted, knowing that he had no choice but to fight. The Seal of the Inferno was a deadly puzzle. Either he had to heal it, or it would destroy him.

In his dreams, he had always repaired the rune. The dream came every night, and it had always been the same. The flames spoke with a million tongues. In his dream he tamed them, taught them to speak with only one.

He looked to the field where a bowl of flames should be, and saw the flames. But almost instantly they snuffed out, leaving only two.

For a moment, he knelt with mouth agape, unsure how to proceed. This is where he was to bind the worlds, bring all of them into one. But only two flames remained in this bowl. Each flame flickered and swayed in its own dance.

For long seconds Fallion held still, waiting for the other flames to reappear. The heat continued to build in him, threatening to overwhelm him. He could feel it in the back of his throat. Steam began to rise from his cloak.

Desperate, Fallion lashed out, hurling back the heat that threatened to overwhelm him, and bound the two flames into one.

The fires of the Seal lashed out, roaring toward Fallion, and then died in an instant. Suddenly all that remained was a ring of smoke rising around the golden tree. In the ensuing silence, Fallion found his heart pounding and sweat rolling down his face. There was no voice coming from the remains of the fire. There was no voice in the tree.

“Is it over?” Jaz asked.

All around them, the world seemed to return to normal. Fallion could hear the morning bird song as robins and larks worked the nearby meadows. The rising sun stood golden in the sky. A faint breeze stealing down from the mountains cooled his skin.

And overhead, a great light began to fill the sky.

 

Daylan Hammer fell silent for a long moment, leaving Alun time to ponder his words.

“Can’t, can’t you help us in some other way?” Alun asked. “You visit the netherworld it is said. Surely…there is some weapon that you could lend us?”

“You think that better weapons can save you?” Daylan mused. “You ask for a dangerous thing. I’ve heard tales of entire worlds that have been leveled—all because one like me handed out such weapons to those in need.

“It is forbidden.

“Even if I gave them to you, they could not save you. In time, your enemies would capture them and turn them against you.

“Besides, you have all of the weapons that you need to destroy this world.”

Alun tried to imagine what he could be talking about. Swords? War clubs? “What weapons?”

“Hate,” Daylan answered. “Your people don’t just live under the shadow of the wyrmlings. You have fallen far beneath it. In a generation, there will no longer be any difference between them and you.”

Daylan fell silent, then at last asked, “So, what will you tell Warlord Madoc?”

Alun thought hard. If he told the truth, he might gain his freedom, untold riches. He could marry well and live happily.

And if he lied….

Then Daylan would free Princess Kan-hazur, leaving his people to withstand the full onslaught of the wyrmlings. Prince Urstone would come to rule, hopefully to help any who escaped. Even if my people survive, Alun wondered, will House Urstone ever reward me?

He had never caught the eye of the High King. It seemed too fanciful a notion to entertain. Suddenly there was a bright light in the sky, as if a star had been born. Alun did not become aware of it all at once. Instead, it seemed that for several seconds it became brighter and brighter.

He looked up, and saw a pale disk, as big as a moon. A star is falling, Alun thought. It’s coming right at us.

The light grew brilliant, and suddenly Alun recalled hearing a tale of a meteorite that had crashed into the mountains years ago, filled with iron from the stars. But he realized that anything as big as this would surely smash him when it hit.

 

Fallion peered up at the growing orb. He could see blue—vast seas, and the actinic white of clouds whirling above them. He saw the blush of the morning sun striking clouds at the terminus. He spotted a continent, with a great red desert and snow-topped mountains. He could make out silver veins of rivers, the emerald green of forests, a lake shaped like a kidney.

People around Fallion began to cry out in astonishment and fear, and some threw up their hands to brace for the impact.

 

“What’s that!” Alun shouted, still peering at the coming world. He could not believe that his life was over. He wanted Daylan Hammer to explain the sight away, offer some comfort. He looked at Daylan Hammer, whose eyes were wide with wonder. “It’s the end of the world,” he said as the huge disk suddenly filled the whole sky.

 

“This is the end!” Talon cried.

Fallion stared at the coming world, fear coursing through him like a bolt of lightning, and whispered, “No, my friends, it is only beginning.”

 

The ground trembled and groaned, and a mighty blast raked Alun’s face. There was a fire in the heavens. Wind roared all around him, and tornados of light touched down.

Alun threw up his hands to protect his eyes, and gritted his teeth.

 

Two worlds collided, folding into one. There were no crushing rocks falling from the sky, no vast craters formed, no plasma spewing from the far side of a ruined world.

Instead a rain of atoms fell, sizzling past one another through the vast empty spaces that exist between the nucleus of one atom and another.

To Fallion, the impact felt as if a great wind roared through him. He could feel it pelting him on the head and shoulders, driving through him, and leaving through the soles of his feet. Bolts of static electricity raced everywhere, across the surface of the castle, and there was a rushing sound so loud, accompanied by screams, that it felt like the end of the world.

And suddenly the ground whirled and began to lurch beneath his feet. He could feel a hill rising beneath him, the ground shooting up so fast that his knees buckled.

The walls of Castle Coorm trembled and rolled as if during an earthquake. The east wall bucked, spilling into the moat, and the queen’s tower canted to one side and collapsed. Huge stones surged up through the ground, their faces seeming weathered by centuries of erosion.

Suddenly the atoms sliding through empty space halted, joining together as tightly as a key in the lock of a manacle, according to some pattern laid out in the master rune an eternity in the past. The ground lurched to a halt, and Fallion felt an impact. No blow by a human hand could have been so devastating. It was as if a giant slapped him, sending him into oblivion. 6

A NEW WORLD

When we plow a field to ready it for planting, much is lost. The holes and homes of mice and snakes are torn apart, the struggling roots of last year’s herbs are broken. To me, the mouse and the herb are wondrous things, to be enjoyed and treasured. But we lay them waste—all in the hope of some distant harvest. Thus in making one marvelous thing, regretfully we put an end to another.

—the Wizard Sisel

Fallion woke with a groan, only becoming conscious in slow increments. His eyes fluttered open, but the dust in the air was so thick that he soon had to close them.

Everywhere, the townspeople were screaming for help, and Jaz was shouting, “Fallion, there’s something wrong with Talon!”

Lying still for a second, Fallion tried to collect his strength. He felt half-dead. He was so feeble that he could hardly lift a hand. It was as if he had suffered an endless illness, and only now might be on the way to recovery though he felt as he might just as easily die.

“Fallion? Can you hear me?”

“Coming,” Fallion managed to say.

Fallion looked toward Jaz, could see his dim outline through a haze of dust as thick as any fog, crouching above Talon. Rocks had risen all around, a jumble of them.

Fallion felt so weak, he didn’t know if he could stand, so he summoned all of his strength and tried to crawl toward Talon on his hands and knees, but as he lifted his left hand, he found that a thick vine was latched to the meaty part of his palm.

He tried to pull away, but it hurt too much. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the vine wasn’t latched to his palm—it was growing through it. The trunk of the vine, about a quarter inch in diameter, ran cleanly through the meat of his palm and continued out the other side.

He peered at his palm for half an instant, trying to understand.

Two worlds combined, he realized. And upon those worlds, two living things had occupied the same space.

So a vine grew through him. But what was wrong with Talon?

Dread surged through him as he drew his dagger, hacked through the vine, pulled it out as if it were an arrow, and then clasped his hand and tried to staunch a raging flow of blood. Talon was hurt, Jaz had said. What if she has a bush growing through her, or a tree?

Why did I even bring her? he wondered. He hadn’t needed her. She could have stayed home, found some boy to love. But she’d wanted an adventure.

He peered up, but the dust was too thick to make out Talon. His energy was coming a little better now. He climbed to his feet. The gritty dust got in his eyes, and he had to stagger, half-blind, toward Jaz. By the time that he got there, Rhianna and Farion were circled around, both of them having crawled too, both swearing and uttering curses.

She’s dead, Fallion thought. Our little Talon is dead. He’d always thought of her as a sister, a fierce little sister, and he tried to imagine how he would break the news to Myrrima, their foster mother. Their foster father, Borenson, was a warrior, and he would take it stoutly, though it would break his heart. But Myrrima…she was too tender to bear such news.

As he got close, he rejoiced to see that she was breathing, her chest rising and falling.

“She’s out cold,” Jaz was telling the others.

Jaz looked up, moved back for Fallion to get a better view, and Fallion gasped. Their Talon had changed. At first, he thought that it was only a matter of growth. Talon had always been a diminutive girl, combining her mother’s lithe body and her father’s strength. But she was diminutive no more.

“What do you think?” Jaz asked. “Seven feet tall? Maybe more?”

That looks about right, Fallion thought. And three across the shoulder. She looked as if she weighed a good three hundred pounds, all of it muscle.

Her face remained much the same, or, at least Fallion could still see Talon’s resemblance in it. But it stretched in an odd way. There were two strange humps above her brow, like those on a calf that is about to sprout horns, and her forehead seemed thickened, as if a bony plate had grown there. Her cheekbones were similarly armored. She groaned, opening her mouth as if to curse at some bad dream, revealing incisors that had become over-large.

“What happened?” Jaz asked.

Fallion suspected that he knew. Some other creature must have been standing where Talon was, on that shadow world, and the two of them had become one.

7

THE HUNTER AWAKES

There was a time when the Knights Eternal were Lady Despair’s most fearsome weapon. But as her powers grew, so did the powers of her minions, and the walking shadows, the Death Lords, began to haunt our dreams. With the merging of the two worlds, though, we should have guessed that it was only a matter of time before the Knights Eternal reestablished their dominion.

—the Wizard Sisel

Gongs were tolling in Rugassa, their deep tones reverberating among the rocks in the fortress, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, thundering up from the center of the earth. Upon the toll, Vulgnash awoke in the tower crypt, and with a powerful kick threw off the lid of his coffin. Gripping its sides, he inspected his rotting flesh. His skin had dried, becoming gray and leathery, and his flesh had cracked and wrinkled. Maggots had burrowed trails through his arms. How long, he wondered, since last I walked the earth? He had hoped to remain dead for eternity this time.

But Lady Despair summoned him, and he rose at her bidding. He had promised his service to the Great Wyrm, whether it be in life, or in death, and now he had to answer the call. Besides, he would rather be summoned into the presence of Lady Despair than into that of the Emperor. From the condition of his hands, he imagined that it had not been long. Three years since last he woke, perhaps five, no more.

Yet Vulgnash felt as if he had been pummeled. Every muscle in his body ached; he had seldom felt so weak.

He climbed from the coffin, and stood for a moment, staring down through a tower window. People rushed everywhere a thousand feet below him, like beetles in a dung hill. The fortress was in ruins. Walls of black basalt looked as if they had split during an earthquake. He peered out beyond the city gate, to see if the fortress was under attack, and stared in awe. There was a strange and wondrous change in the land: a forest stood out on the plains before the castle. The plains should have been barren. Last he knew, they were burned twice yearly so that no army could draw near without being seen.

But here was a forest of hoary pine trees that looked to be a thousand years old. And strange birds flew up out of it, like none that he had ever seen before.

How long? he wondered. A thousand years? It can’t be. My flesh would have turned to dust, and I would be beyond the power even of Lady Despair to call.

And now the gongs were sounding, announcing that the Great Wyrm demanded his presence. Vulgnash swore, strode to his closet, and drew on a crimson robe to hide the ruin of his face, then went striding down the stairs, into the great hall.

He felt so weak, he needed sustenance; and so as he entered the great hall, where servants went scurrying about in terror, their eyes wide in fright to see him, he grabbed a small girl of eight or nine.

“Your life is mine,” he whispered, then placed five fingers upon her skull—one between her eyes, two upon each of her eyes, and his thumb and pinky finger upon her mandibles. At this touch, the girl’s blood turned to ice water in her veins, and she wet herself. The girl tried to withdraw in terror, but his fingers held to her flesh as if it were his own. Some of the servants that saw groaned or looked away in horror; one cried out the girl’s name in mourning, “Ah, little Wenya!”

With a whispered incantation, the girl’s passions—her longing for life, her hopes and ambitions—and the fire in her soul that drove them were drawn away.

The spell went to work, and the girl’s flesh, rife with water, began to sag and putrefy, even as Vulgnash’s own flesh gained heft and a less unwholesome color.

When he was done, he let the girl fall away, a dry and rotting husk. He felt refreshed, but not refreshed enough. He would need to feed on others before he regained his full strength. But the gongs were tolling, and he had no time for it.

He grabbed a torch from a sconce, then went striding down to the lower levels. Powerful guards cringed in terror as he passed, for they knew what Vulgnash was.

The black basalt tunnels were cracked and broken, and often the passageway was littered with rubble and boulders. Vulgnash waded through or climbed over as the need took him. Is this why she summoned me? he wondered. A mere earthquake? But no, he knew that there must be some greater threat to the realm.

In his weakened state, the race left him drained.

The great fortress of Rugassa was built upon the crown of a volcano, and his spiraling journey downward felt like a plummet. All the while, the gongs grew louder, more insistent, until at last he had gone far enough, and the corridor opened into the audience chamber.

Two others had arrived before him and stood at each side of the chamber like an honor guard, robed all in crimson. Thul and Kryssidia were their names.

She has summoned three of the Knights Eternal, Vulgnash realized, a full quorum. Great need must be upon her.

A platform jutted out above a lake of boiling magma, which heated the room like a blast furnace. Tunnels high up allowed the hot air to escape, while lower vents, one of which sat directly behind the platform, allowed cold air to rush in.

Thus as Vulgnash reached the end of the platform, he found himself at the mouth of the vent, a chill wind whirling all about him, making his blood-red cape flutter like a caged bird. Without the refreshing wind, no mere mortal could have withstood the heat of this place. Even Vulgnash would have succumbed in time. He peered down, hundreds of feet below, into the pool of magma.

“Lady Despair,” Vulgnash cried. “I hear your summons, and obey.”

The lake of magma below him was red hot. Suddenly it boiled madly and the lake began to rise. Molten stone churned, and the level kept rising, until it seemed that the platform itself would be swallowed by magma.

Then the mouth of the great wyrm appeared, rising from the molten flow. She was a hundred yards in diameter, and her mouth, which had five hinges, each jaw shaped like a spade, could have swallowed a small fortress.

She rose up, and magma streamed off of her.

Vulgnash dropped to one knee and bowed until the bony plate on his forehead touched the hot floor. A great rushing voice filled the room. “Speak, Vulgnash. I feel that your mind is clouded by questions.”

Vulgnash dared hardly admit it to himself. He was not used to questioning his master. But he could not hide his thoughts from the Great Mother. The wyrm that was within him spoke to her, revealing his deepest secrets.

“How long?” he asked.

“Four years, since last I summoned you.”

“But…there is a forest growing outside the gates,” Vulgnash objected. He knew that he had to have slept for centuries.

“A great and strange thing has happened,” the wyrm said. “The world is changed, made anew by a powerful wizard, named Fallion Orden. He has combined two worlds into one, his and ours. He is our enemy. He must be dealt with.”

That any one wizard could have such power seemed unimaginable. “You have but to command me, my master, and I will throw myself into battle no matter how fearsome the foe. But…how do we fight such a creature?”

“Have no fear,” the Great Mother said. “I brought Fallion here by design. In his world, his power was great. But in this new world…he cannot withstand you. He is a flameweaver, talented in some ways, but he is only a child in his understanding….”

Vulgnash smiled, his lips pulling back to reveal his overlarge incisors. If there was one thing that he understood, it was the weaving of flames. He had been mastering his skills for millennia. The Great Mother continued. “Take the three into the woods south of the ruins at Caer Golgeata. You will find a golden tree there. Destroy it, root and limb.

“You will also find humans, small in stature, led by the wizard Fallion. Bring him, and prepare his spirit to receive a wyrm.”

Vulgnash knew that powerful enemies sometimes required wyrms of great power to subdue them. Knowing which wyrm was to take him might make a subtle difference as to the type of tortures Vulgnash would use to prepare the victim. “Is there a particular wyrm that I should prepare him for?”

The answer struck Vulgnash with awe.

Lady Despair answered, “I may well possess him myself.”

8

TALON

Life is an endless awakening.

As a child, we awaken to the wonders and horrors of the universe. As young adults we awaken to our own growing powers, even as young love enslaves us. As adults, we awaken to the worry and responsibility of caring for others. Last of all, we awaken to death, And the light beyond.

—High King Urstone

In the tallest tower of Castle Coorm, Fallion kicked open the door to a small room and stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust as motes of dust floated in his view. The room had served as his bedroom as a child, a room for both him and Jaz. But as Jaz said, it had grown smaller over the years.

The room was filled with trash—broken chairs from the king’s hall, a broken wheel from a wagon, various tools with broken shafts—all things that had some worth but needed the tender care of a good wood-wright.

Beneath the litter, Jaz’s bed still remained, but Fallion’s was gone. Gone also were their treasures—the princely daggers that had hung on the wall, the fine curtains that had once hung over the window, the carved and painted animals that Jaz had played with as a child.

Fallion had hoped to find something to remind him of his childhood, but there was nothing. Nor had he found much of worth in Warlord Hale’s chamber. It seemed that everything of worth had long ago been destroyed, sold off, or stolen.

He closed the door, then climbed the stairs to the uppermost tower, where his mother’s far-seers had once kept vigil.

There, upon a mossy roof that was growing weak from rot, he peered out across the altered landscape. Rocks rose up in a tumult, twisted and eerie. It was not as if they had just thrust up from the ground, broken and new. Instead, they looked to have been sculpted by wind and rain over millennia. Their forms were graceful, strange, and utterly out of place.

In the past hours, the dust had begun to settle, and though a yellow haze obscured the heavens, in the distance the ruins of ancient cities could be seen in half-a-dozen directions, their stonework marvelous and otherworldly, and their broken towers soaring high.

Yellow moths of a type that Fallion had never seen fluttered everywhere, clouds of them rising above the forest, apparently unnerved at the vast change.

Fallion felt unnerved, too. The sun was too bright, and rested in the wrong place in the sky. The plants seemed to have a strange metallic tang. A great weariness was on him, sapping his strength. He felt on the verge of collapse, and feared that if he slowed down, if he stopped for even a minute, he would just lie down and never regain the strength to rise again.

Rhianna climbed the stairs behind him, came up to him wordlessly, then just stood stroking his back.

“Has Talon stirred?” Fallion asked.

“Not yet,” Rhianna answered. Talon was still unconscious, resting in the hovel where Hearthmaster Waggit lived. Fallion had come here to search for richer quarters, but Warlord Hale’s room had been a pigsty, full of rotting food and foul odors.

“This is a trap,” Fallion said as he peered out above the woods. “This whole place is a trap. We should leave.”

“Not without Talon,” Rhianna said. “I couldn’t leave her, and neither could you. We’ll have to wait until she’s ready to travel.”

She had been unconscious for hours. Fallion worried that she would die. Certainly, there had been others in the village that had died. One had been crushed under rocks when a wall buckled; others had perished from wounds received in taking the keep. Two elderly men apparently died for no reason at all, except, perhaps, from the shock of the change.

And there were other oddities. Another young man had grown large and distorted, like Talon. He too was unconscious.

Four people had apparently vanished altogether; Fallion suspected that they lay crushed somewhere beneath the rubble. Fallion could hear their sons and daughters even now, down among the castle grounds, calling out their parents’ names in vain.

Another young girl had a large gorse bush grow through a lung during the change and would not make it through the night.

Talon might not make it, either, Fallion knew. Whatever she had become, it might not survive.

“You should go down among the people,” Rhianna said. “There is talk of throwing a celebration tonight.”

“I’m not in the mood to dance or sing,” Fallion said. “They shouldn’t be, either.”

“You saved them,” Rhianna said. “They want to honor you.”

“I didn’t save all of them.”

“Perhaps not,” Rhianna said, “but I heard a woman talking down there. She said that ‘Under Warlord Hale’s rule, we were all dead. But good Fallion has brought us back to life.’ That seemed reason enough to honor you.”

Rhianna took his hand, squeezed it. She wanted to infuse him with the love that she felt, but she knew that it was incomprehensible to him, for the love that she felt was not something that she had learned in her mother’s arms. Her love was deeper, and more profound. She had once given an endowment of wit to a sea ape, and had learned to see the world through its eyes. It had been as devoted to its master as a dog would be. It had adored its master. There were no words to describe the depth of its affection. And now, Rhianna felt that way about Fallion. Only long years of practice allowed her to keep from constantly following him with her eyes, or from stroking his cheek, or kissing his lips. She dared not let him know, for she knew that it was a burden for one to have to bear unrequited love.

“If the villagers want to honor me,” Fallion said after a moment, “tell them to post a heavy guard. And tell them not to wait until tonight. There may be worse things in those woods than strengi-saats now.” He sighed, stood resting with his palms upon the head of a gargoyle for a moment, as if bestowing a blessing, and then when he had regained his strength, said, “I’ll go check on Talon.”

He stalked down the stairway in a foul mood. As he descended, he found himself in darkness, until he came out upon the green. Three women were tending the tree, tenderly wrapping the scars on its bark in tan linen.

A few hours ago, Fallion remembered hearing them cheer as he freed them from Warlord Hale. Unbidden, words came to mind, a cruel voice speaking in a hiss. “Though the world may applaud your slaughter, you will come to know that each of your victories is mine.” In his mind’s eye, he saw his old enemy Asgaroth upon his fine blood mare, a tall man in black, wrapped in shadows. And once again Fallion felt his shirt tear open, felt the words scrawled upon his chest formed from runes of air, like insects marching over his skin.

Fallion bit his lip. A cold certainty was upon him. The crowds had applauded his slaughter not hours ago, when he’d killed Warlord Hale, but the taste of victory was sour.

Fallion gazed at the tree for a long moment. He felt strange in its presence. It made him want to be a better man, and he recalled hearing its voice earlier, its cry for help. But now there was only a deep silence in his thoughts. It was as if the tree were fast asleep.

He hurried down a back street where cobbles had come out of the road, leaving it pitted and muddy. He ducked into Waggit’s hovel, saw Waggit puttering about the hearth, looking here and there, as if trying to decide whether it was time to build a dinner fire. Waggit’s endowments had aged him. His hair had gone silver, and it was long and unkempt. He still had the height of a warrior, but the muscles in his chest and shoulders had grown thin and wasted.

He looked up from the hearth, “Fallion!” he said in glee. “You’ve come home!”

So much had changed over the years, Fallion felt surprised that Waggit even recognized him. Waggit shouted in glee and danced a step. “It’s good to see you, boy!” He leapt across the room, gave Fallion a hug, and burst into tears.

“Good to see you, too, old friend,” Fallion said, taking the proffered hug. And it was. Waggit’s summer jacket was worn and old. To Fallion he felt too thin in the ribs.

“Where have you been—” Waggit asked, “off fighting reavers?”

It was ground they had covered only hours ago, but Waggit had already forgotten. “Nothing so grand, I’m afraid,” Fallion said. “I went sailing to the Ends of the Earth, to Landesfallen.”

“Ah!” Waggit said. “I hope they fed you good.” It was the best reply he could come up with. He stood with head cocked to one side, as if hoping to be of some help.

“I ate well enough,” Fallion said. “Any word of advice today, old friend?”

Waggit peered hard at Fallion with rheumy eyes, his face growing desperate as he tried to recall some tidbit of forgotten lore. His lower lip began to tremble, and he cast his eyes about the room as if searching for something. At last, he merely shrugged, then burst into tears.

Fallion put his arms around the old man. “There now,” he said. “You’ve given me enough wise counsel to last me a lifetime.”

“I…can’t remember,” Waggit said.

“I’ll remember for the both of us,” Fallion said. He hugged Waggit once more, wondering at the cruelty of forcibles.

Waggit had not been born a fool, he once told Fallion. But he had slipped into an icy creek as a child, while fetching water for his mother, and had nearly drowned. After that, his ability to remember was stolen, and he ended up working the silver mines.

But when the reavers attacked Carris, he had fought them with his pick, actually killing a few. For his courage and strength, he had been granted a few forcibles, and with a few endowments of wit and stamina, had made himself a scholar, one of the wisest in the land.

Now the folk who had granted the endowments, his Dedicates, were all dead, and with their deaths, Waggit’s ability to remember had died too, along with the lore that he’d once mastered. Did my father do well or ill, granting him endowments? Fallion wondered. Would Waggit not have been happier to remain a fool than to gain great wisdom and lose it all?

Fallion fought back his sadness and ducked through a curtain into the cozy room where Talon lay upon a low cot. She had grown too large to fit on it.

Jaz had covered her with a coarse blanket, and now he knelt beside her, his shoulders slumped from weariness, so still that he looked as if drawing a breath was almost too great a chore.

“How is she doing?” Fallion asked. “Any change?”

Jaz shook his head slightly.

“There is a chair here in the corner, if you would like it,” Fallion offered. Jaz shrugged. “I know. I was too tired to get up and sit.”

Fallion slumped in the chair.

Jaz did not turn. As he gazed at Talon, his face was lined with grief.

“I thought for sure,” he said softly, “that when you healed the worlds, we’d get cloudbursts of beer, and the meadows would sprout dancing girls as pretty as any flower….”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Fallion said.

“What’s wrong with us? I feel like a burrow bear that’s been pulled out of its hole in mid-winter. I just want to sleep for a few more months.”

“Jaz, we have to go away,” Fallion said. “We have to get out of here, now.”

“What do you mean?” Jaz did not move. He looked as if he was too tired to care.

“That rune, it was a trap. The tree was the bait. Once my mind touched the rune, I knew that I had to mend it or die. But it couldn’t be mended, not really. It was meant to do only one thing, to bind two shadow worlds into one. I didn’t bind all of the worlds into one. I didn’t heal anything. I fear I’ve made things worse.”

Jaz nodded almost imperceptibly, as if he couldn’t muster the energy to care.

“Jaz, no human sorcerer made that rune. It was beyond the power of any mortal to form. I know who made it: our father’s ancient enemy, the Queen of the Loci.”

Now Jaz looked at him, cocking his head just a bit, peering at him from the corner of his eye.

“She’s here, Jaz, somewhere. She knows what I’ve done. She tricked me into doing it.”

“Maybe, maybe she was just testing you,” Jaz suggested. “Maybe she wanted to see if you really could bind the worlds. If the wizards are right, she was never able to do that. If she’d been able to, she’d have bound all of the worlds together into one, under her control.”

“It was a test,” Fallion agreed. “But in passing it, I failed us all.”

Jaz finally drew a deep breath, as if trying to muster the energy to rise.

“Go then, if you must,” he said. “I can’t leave Talon behind. And we can’t let the Queen of the Loci catch you. If she does, we both know what she will try to force you to do—bind the worlds into one, all under her control.”

Fallion hesitated. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Talon, not like this. He wasn’t certain what was wrong with her. Perhaps in the melding, her organs had become jumbled up. Perhaps the creature that lay before him had two hearts and only half a lung. He couldn’t be certain. He only knew that in binding the two worlds together, he had not done it perfectly. There had been mistakes, dangerous errors. The vine that had grown through his hand was just one of them, and the stinging pain and the bloody bandage that he now wore were constant reminders. What if I’d tried binding all of the worlds into one? Fallion wondered. What if those little errors had been multiplied a million million times over?

It would have been a catastrophe. I would have destroyed the world.

Maybe that is why the Locus Queen set this trap—to see what would happen if I succeeded. There was a pitcher of water on the bed stand. Fallion felt thirsty but too tired to take a drink. Still, he knew that his body would need it.

Talon suddenly groaned in her sleep. “Ishna! Ishna! Bolanda ka!” She thrashed from side to side. Her voice was deep and husky.

“What did she say?” Jaz asked.

Fallion shook his head. It was no language that he had ever heard, and he was familiar with several. He wondered if it were just aimless babbling, the ranting that came with a fevered dream. Fallion got up, found a towel on the bed stand, and poured some of the cool water from the pitcher onto the towel.

He knelt beside Talon and dabbed her forehead, held the rag there with one hand and touched her cheek with the other, checking for a fever.

She was definitely warm.

He had been holding the rag on her head for all of thirty seconds when her eyes sprang open wide, filled with terror, and she backhanded him.

Fallion went flying as if he’d been kicked by a war horse.

In an instant, Talon sprang to her feet, as if to do battle, knocking Jaz aside. “Wyrmlings!” she shouted, her eyes darting about the room, trying to take everything in.

“Talon, it’s okay!” Jaz said. “You’re all right! You’re with friends.”

Talon stood, gasping for breath. At seven feet tall, she dwarfed all of those around her, dwarfed the tiny room. Every muscle in her arms and neck seemed strained, and she took a battle stance. In that moment, she seemed a fearsome warrior, more terrifying than any man that Fallion had ever seen. Her eyes darted about, as if she was trapped in some nightmare. Slowly her vision cleared. She recognized Fallion and Jaz, but merely stood in shock, trying to make sense of the situation.

“It’s all right,” Jaz assured her. “You were only dreaming. You were just dreaming. Do you know where you are?”

Talon peered down at the floor, so far below her, and then peered at her hands, huge and powerful, as if trying to make sense of them. “Am I still dreaming?”

She studied Fallion, who lay on the floor, holding his arm where she had hit him. Fallion remembered being trampled by a bull and taking far less hurt. He tried moving his arm experimentally. He didn’t think that it was broken, but it would be black and blue for weeks.

“No,” Jaz said. “The world has changed. Two worlds are combined, and I guess…you changed with them. We’re not sure what happened….”

Fallion waited for a reaction. He had thought that she would weep for her lost humanity or sit and sulk. Instead, shock and acceptance seemed to come almost at the same moment.

“I see,” she said, peering at her hands as if considering the implications of his words. Then with a sigh she said, “Let’s go see this new world.”

More than anything, this showed Fallion the depth of the change in Talon. Gone was the young woman Fallion had known.

Talon reached down to take Fallion’s hand. He proffered his good hand, but when she grasped it, Fallion cried out in pain. “Not so tight!”

She looked at him in disbelief. “Sorry. I, uh, barely touched you.”

He felt sure that she was telling the truth. He also felt sure that if she wanted, she could tear his arm off as easily as she could rip the wing off of a roasted chicken.

She pulled Fallion to his feet, then stalked out of the room on unsteady legs, as if trying to become accustomed to her new size.

She strode out into the street, went to the gate tower, and by the time she reached it she leapt up, taking the stairs up four at a stride. Then she just stood for a long moment until Fallion caught up.

“Damn,” she whispered when he drew near. “You’ve made a mess of things.”

“What do you mean?” Fallion asked. “Are you ill?”

“Fallion,” Talon said, “I feel great. I feel…better than I’ve ever felt before.” She turned and peered at him. “You’ve done me no harm. In fact, it is the opposite. I feel more…whole, than I ever felt before.”

Fallion understood what she meant, partly. It was said that all of the worlds were but shadows of the One True World, and some wizards suspected that a man might have shadows of himself on each of those worlds.

Somehow, Fallion suspected, he had bound Talon to her shadow self.

“Nightfall is coming,” she said. “The…wyrmlings will come with it. We have to get away, get to safety.”

Fallion couldn’t imagine any place safer than the castle, even in its poor repair. Nor did he know what a wyrmling was. But this world was in ruins. And the wyrmlings were the cause. There is a rule to war. The first rule, Fallion had been taught, was to know your enemy.

“What are wyrmlings?” he asked.

“Giants.”

“Like you?”

“Larger than me,” Talon laughed. “I am human, bred to be one of the warrior clan, large and fierce. My ancestors were bred to be this way, much as you breed dogs of war to increase their size, their viciousness. And though I am larger than a human of feral stock, the wyrmlings are more than a head taller than me, and outweigh me by hundreds of pounds. We are but feeble imitations of the wyrmlings. And we true humans are almost all gone. There are fewer than forty thousand of us left.

“The wyrmlings hunt by night,” Talon explained, “for they cannot tolerate light. They eat only meat, and they worship the Lady Despair.”

“I see,” Fallion said.

“No, not really,” Talon answered. “There’s more to tell, and it will take hours to do so. But first, we must get away from here.”

“Where do we go?”

Talon peered into the distance, closed her eyes in consternation. “I can’t remember…. It’s like a dream. I see the place, but I can’t put a name to it.”

“Then give yourself a moment to wake,” Fallion said.

Talon peered into the distance for a long minute. “Luciare. The fortress is called Luciare.”

“Where is it?” Fallion asked.

Talon closed her eyes, concentrated. She could see her mother and father there. Borenson was much the same in both worlds she decided, but Talon’s mothers were not the same woman at all. How would that work? she wondered. Where is my father—in Luciare, or back in Landesfallen? And what of my sisters and brothers?

She wanted to find them, make sure that all of them were well, that they had survived this transformation. But the world had shifted, and she was on strange ground.

Talon shook her head. “I’m not sure. Everything’s…wrong. I’m not sure I’ve even been here before. She nodded to a distant peak to the south, one with a distinctive hump upon the eastern flank. “That could be Mount Shuneya. That means that Luciare would be west, west by southwest, maybe—a hundred miles, or a hundred and twenty. We can’t make it tonight, or even tomorrow….”

They wouldn’t be able to make it even in four days, Fallion suspected, not with him in his current condition. But he could hear the urgency in Talon’s voice.

He looked up at her and wondered, Why don’t I have a body like hers? Why didn’t I combine with my shadow self?

Instead he felt frail, worn.

This whole place is a snare, Fallion realized. The one who set it couldn’t know for sure when I would come, or even if I would come. But now that the wire has been sprung, the hunter will be upon us. Fallion suspected it, and Talon seemed to feel it in her bones.

“How long before the wyrmlings get here?” Fallion asked.

“They have fortresses nearby, within thirty miles,” she said. “And there might be hidden outposts even closer than that. If the local commanders know to watch this place, they’ll come tonight. Even if Lady Despair has to send assassins from Rugassa, they could be on our trail by dawn.”

So, Fallion thought, a race is on.

“We’ll have to keep under the cover of trees, lie low in the woods during the night, and run through the days….”

“How do you know all of this?” Fallion asked. “How can you be sure?”

A look of confusion washed over Talon’s face, and she shook her head. “My father, the man you know as Sir Borenson, is…Aaath Ulber—High Guard. I…we are Warrior Clan.”

So Fallion felt even more convinced. Talon hadn’t merged with some beast. She had merged with her shadow self, with the woman she had been on this world.

Are all of them so large? Fallion wondered. It would explain the strange ruins, so high and soaring. But no, Talon had been but a girl, and had been diminutive at that. The humans of this world wouldn’t all be so large. He suspected that most would be larger.

I’ve brought us to a land of giants, he realized, giants that have almost been destroyed by the wyrmlings. A sudden fear took him. Whatever was coming, he didn’t think that he could fight it. He’d fallen into a trap. He had been forced to join these two worlds together, and he saw the ruin that had followed. He could not fix what he had done. He had no idea how to un-bind the two worlds. And he suspected that his Queen of the Loci was rejoicing in what he had done. Perhaps the best way to thwart her plan, he considered, is to continue my journey to the Mouth of the World and finish binding all of the shadow worlds all into one.

But he considered the damage he had done, and wondered now at the wisdom of that. If he bungled this further, he could destroy the world, not heal it. And there was a second worry. Perhaps that proposed course of action was exactly what the enemy wanted.

Talon turned to Fallion, gave him a calculating gaze. Then her eyes snapped to Jaz who was still feebly making his way across the courtyard below, too weak to keep pace.

Fallion marveled at the change in Talon. She looked vibrant, energized.

“How soon can we be ready to go?” she demanded.

“I’m ready now,” Fallion lied, feeling too fragile for a forced march. “But you’ve been asleep for hours. We thought that you would die. The question is how do you feel?”

She smiled, showing her overlarge canines. “Never better,” she said, a tone of wonder creeping into her voice. She peered down at her hand again, clenched it and unclenched, as if realizing it was true. “I feel like I could crush rocks in these hands.”

“I think you’re right,” Fallion said. “You nearly crushed me.”

9

THE COUNCIL

A king who is weak and ineffective is a kind of traitor, and bringing such a man down can be an act of patriotism.

—Warlord Madoc

Alun struggled up toward Caer Luciare, his mouth agape.

There were trees everywhere, huge firs on the skirts of the mountain, white aspens along its top. They had grown in an instant, appearing as if in a vision, their shimmering forms gaining substance. He had seen them as he fainted, and when he woke, aching and weary, everything had changed. The sun was still up, marvelously drawn back in the sky, and the hills were full of dust clouds and birds. Daylan Hammer was nowhere to be seen.

Wanderlust had stayed at Alun’s side, and once he got to his feet, the dog set out on Daylan Hammer’s trail again. The dog was able to track him through the thick sod, heading straight for Caer Luciare. But as Alun neared, he peered in stunned silence at the devastation. The fortress was in ruins. The mountain it had rested upon had dropped hundreds of feet in elevation, and with the drop, the whole structure of the mountain had changed. A stone cliff had broken away, exposing tunnels hidden beneath it like the burrows of wood worms in a rotten log.

Steam from the hot pools beneath the castle hissed out of a dozen rents, and the streams above the castle had been diverted. Waterfalls now emptied down the cliffs from three separate tunnels. Everywhere, people were rushing to and fro like ants in a broken nest, and Alun staggered up to the castle in a daze, feeling wearier than he’d ever been.

He worried what would happen if the wyrmlings should attack. With the rents in the fortress, they’d have easy access. It might well be indefensible.

He put Wanderlust in the kennel, made sure that the dogs all had food and water, then went looking for Warlord Madoc.

He found him in the battle room, with the High King and his lords, having a shouting match. Daylan Hammer was there, too, and the Wizard Sisel. High King Urstone looked haggard upon his dais, as much shocked by the devastation as Alun. The Warlords standing in the audience hall appeared angry, as if seeking a target for their frustrations.

“I say we strike now, and strike hard!” Madoc roared.

“And leave ourselves defenseless?” the Emir asked. “There are breaches in our defenses. We need men to repair them, strong men like our warriors, and we need time.” The Emir was a tall man for one of his kind. He was shorter than Madoc, and much narrower of shoulder. But he held himself like a king, and thus seemed to cast a long shadow.

“And if the wyrmlings have such breaches in their defenses,” Warlord Barrest asked, “would it not be the chance of a lifetime? We might break into their prison with ease, and release the prince, and send out assassins against Zul-torac.”

“What weapon would you use to pierce his shadow?” the Emir asked. “Can it even be slain?”

“It can,” Madoc said, “with cold iron and sunlight.”

“That is but a presumption,” King Urstone said. “No one has ever killed a Death Lord.”

The Wizard Sisel said, “I think it is more than a presumption, it is a calculated chance. Sunlight would loosen the monstrous spells that bind his spirit to this world. It should weaken him to the point that he could be slain.”

King Urstone was a bit taller than Warlord Madoc, but narrower at the shoulder. He wore no badge of office. Instead, he wore a shirt of plain chain mail, covered by a brown cape, as if he were but another soldier in the castle. His face was wise and lined with wrinkles, and his beard, which was light brown going gray, made him look wiser still. He said reasonably “Attacking Zul-torac is foolhardy. You can’t reach him. He never leaves the warrens beneath Mount Rugassa. He hides among the shadows with the other Death Lords. You’ll never expose him to light. And if you were to attack, his reprisals would tear our realm apart. Let there be no talk of antagonizing Zul-torac. It is only because we hold his daughter hostage that we have enjoyed what little peace we could find these last few years. So long as Zul-torac lives, we can hope to live.”

The Emir had always been wise in counsel. Now he bent his head in thought. “Even if we tried to strike at the north, we might well find that this devastation—this spell—is but a local affair. It may have no effect upon Rugassa.”

He looked to the Wizard Sisel. “What think you, wizard? Is it a local affair?”

The Wizard Sisel leaned upon his staff and bent his head in thought. His face was burned by sun and wind, with cheeks the color of a ripe apple. His hands and fingernails were dirty from his garden, and his robes looked bedraggled. But he carried himself with dignity despite his ragged attire. He was a powerful wizard, and it was his wards and enchantments that had long helped protect Caer Luciare. All ears bent as he voiced his opinion.

“It is no local affair,” the wizard said. Of them all, only his voice sounded calm and reasonable. “We saw a world fall from the sky, and now the whole world has changed. Grave changes have occurred. I feel it. The earth groans in pain. I can feel it in the soil, and hear it among the rocks. What the cause is, I do not yet know. But this I can say: it is time to prepare for war, not go to war. Did a wyrmling cast this spell—perhaps even Zul-torac himself? If so, he may have known the destruction it would bring. Leaving the castle now, leaving it undefended, would mean that we are playing into the enemy’s hands. And even if it was not a wyrmling who caused this destruction, this spell will rile them. Casting it is like beating a hornets’ nest with a stick. My feeling is that the wyrmlings will strike at us, no matter what.”

“Then it is even more imperative that we take Cantular now,” Madoc said. “By taking the bridge and holding it, we can forestall any attempt at a more serious attack.”

“Your argument is persuasive,” King Urstone said. “Almost, I would ride to war now. If Sisel is right, the wyrmlings will soon be on their way, and my son’s life is forfeit, for I cannot put my love for him above the needs of my people—

“However,” King Urstone continued, “I would have the counsel of Daylan Hammer on this, for he has wisdom gained over countless ages. This spell that is upon us, Daylan—this new world that fell from the heavens—have you heard of the like?” Urstone was an aging man, much worn by his office, and looked as drained as Alun felt. But he was of the warrior caste, and he was a powerful man. Indeed, Alun had never seen the king show a hint of weariness, until now.

Daylan Hammer strode to the center of the audience hall and pulled himself to his full height. Among the warriors, he was a small man, for none of them were less than a foot taller.

“There has never been the like,” Daylan said, “in all of the lore that I know. But upon the netherworld there has been the hope that such a thing would be.”

“A hope?” King Urstone asked in dismay.

“There has been the hope that someone would someday gain the power to bind worlds together.

“Long ago, there was but one world, and one moon, and all men lived in perfect contentment, in perfect peace. There was no death or pain, no deformity, no poverty or war or vice.

“But one went out from among our forefathers who sought power. She sought to wrest control of the world from the others. The control of the world was bound into a great rune, the Seal of Creation. She sought to twist it, to bind it to her, so that she would become the lord of the earth.

“But in the process of twisting it, the Seal of Creation was broken, and the One World shattered into many, into thousands and tens of thousands and into millions—each a world orbiting its own sun, each a flawed replica of that One True World.

“The world that you live upon,” Daylan said, “is but a flawed shadow of that world, like a piece of broken crystal that can only hint at what it once was.”

Daylan Hammer paused, and High King Urstone demanded. “Why have I never heard this lore?”

“It has been lost here upon your world,” Daylan said. “But it is remembered elsewhere, on other worlds.

“There has been a hope, a prophecy, that one among us would gain the power to bind the shadow worlds into one. If so, then I know who has done this. It may be that he has gained that power at last—”

“Or?” King Urstone demanded.

“Or it may be that the enemy has gained such control. Long has she endeavored, hoping to learn how to bind worlds into one. But that skill has eluded her.”

“This is madness,” Warlord Heddick cried. “What proof do we have that any of this is true?”

“If it is proof that you want,” Daylan said, “look inside yourselves. Some of you must feel the change. In the past two hours alone I have heard a dozen people talking of strange dreams, of other lives that they remember. If I am right, many of you have combined with your other self, a shadow self. And our captains tell us that thousands of our people have just vanished. I suspect that they are scattered across the earth, having also combined with their shadow selves. Those ‘dreams’ that you are having are not dreams, they are memories. They are the proof that you seek, and if you question those who have them, you will find that their stories, their memories, corroborate one another. Do any of you have them?”

Several warlords looked dumbfounded. Of them all, Warlord Madoc seemed most affected by Daylan’s words. His face went pale with shock, and he stood, trembling.

The Wizard Sisel bent his head in profound thought and muttered, “This matter…demands attention.”

It was at this moment that Warlord Madoc happened to glance toward the doorway and saw Alun standing there. He smiled secretively, nodded toward Daylan.

Immediately the blood drained from Alun’s face and his heart pounded. He feared that he would be called upon to betray Daylan Hammer, to speak against him here in public, and he was almost as afraid of speaking before the king as he was of dying. He swallowed hard, looked around. Daylan had asked Alun to lie in his behalf. Daylan claimed that his own plans were superior to those of Warlord Madoc.

But were they?

Did Alun dare let the immortal steal off with the Princess Kan-hazur? Did they dare throw aside their shield now, when the castle had burst apart at every seam?

“What do you advise?” King Urstone asked Daylan Hammer.

“I think,” Daylan said, “that the Wizard Sisel speaks wisely. I think that you should look to your defenses, mend the walls of your fortress. It has served you well for many years, and you will need all of your strength to hold it now.”

The king nodded his head in thought, and Alun knew that he was persuaded to keep his troops home. It was the safest course, and to provoke the wyrmlings would be to condemn his son to death. Even after these many years, the king was loath to do so.

“Wait!” Warlord Madoc said, stamping his foot to gain attention. “Your Highness, before we give heed to the counsel of Daylan Hammer, there is something that you should know. Thrice in the past six weeks, he has left the hunt and gone off on his own. Four weeks past, I sent Sir Croft to follow him, and Sir Croft was found dead. Today, I sent young Alun here.”

He turned abruptly. “So, what did you learn?” Warlord Madoc demanded. Alun caught his breath. If he told the truth, the warlords would test to see if Daylan Hammer truly was immortal.

If he lied, it could mean death for everyone else.

And then there was the matter of his reward…

“Daylan Hammer went to the Tower of the Fair Ones. There…he met with a wyrmling—” Alun said. There were howls of outrage from the lords, “Traitor! Death to him!” Instantly the room flew into a commotion.

There was no time for questioning Daylan Hammer. He reached for his saber in a blinding flash, even as he tried to dodge toward the door. The angry lords took this as a sign of guilt. Among commoners, he would have escaped easily.

But he was among warriors, men bred for battle for five thousand years. War clubs were thrown, and he dodged one, took another in the back. It sent Daylan sprawling, and he flashed his saber and neatly sliced the hamstring of Warlord Cowan. Madoc’s son Connor took that moment to lash out with a vicious kick to the head that knocked Daylan Hammer halfway across the room, right into the arms of Madoc himself, who grabbed the immortal and pinned him to the floor with his bulk. There were shouts of “Hold him!” “Grab him!” “Ow, damn!” “Throw him in the oubliette; maybe a swim in the piss will settle him down!”

Soon, half a dozen of the younger warlords each had a piece of Daylan—an arm here, a leg there—and though Daylan thrashed and kicked at them, they went lugging him past Alun, taking him to the oubliette. Alun saw Daylan’s face red with rage and exertion as he passed.

“Alun?” Daylan said in dismay, astonished that the lad had betrayed him. And then the young warlords were gone, dragging their prisoner to the oubliette. The king hunched upon his dais, looking old and bewildered, while the warlords waited upon his word. Alun found himself staggering forward. He wanted to explain what Daylan had done, his reasoning, for he was sure that that would earn Daylan some leniency.

But the very notion that Daylan was conspiring with the wyrmlings proved his treachery as far as the warlords were concerned.

“Uh,” Alun began to say, but a huge hand slapped him on a shoulder, startling him. It was Drewish, leering down at him threateningly.

“Well done,” Drewish whispered. “You will dine at our family’s table tonight. And tomorrow, you will come with us into battle, as one of the warrior clan.”

At the promise of reward, Alun fell silent.

The old king nodded at his men, his face filled with endless sadness.

“Madoc is right. There may never be a better time to attack,” the king said. “For long I’ve hoped to win my son’s freedom, and I’ve listened to Daylan’s counsel. But I can hesitate no longer. The good of my people must outweigh my own selfish desires. Prepare for battle.”

10

A MAN OUT OF FAVOR

Peace can be found in any clime, and any circumstance. He who has learned how to face death and dishonor without fear cannot have his peace taken from him.

—Daylan Hammer

Daylan Hammer struggled against his captors as they bore him to the dungeons. He thrashed and kicked, but even with four endowments of brawn, he couldn’t match the combined strength of the warrior clan. These men had been bred to battle over too many generations and were too large. In fighting them, he only risked breaking his bones.

So he battled them, but at a measured pace. He didn’t want them to guess his true strength. They dragged him to the dungeons.

There were fine cells at the top, places where nobles had been held captive in ages past. Now, only a few scraggly paupers filled the cells. Justice in Caer Luciare didn’t lend itself to long prison stays. A few lashes with a whip for disturbing the peace, a lopped-off hand for stealing, a day in the stocks for questioning a lord’s character—those were the kinds of punishment that were dealt out. The prison was used mainly to hold criminals for a few hours before sentencing.

So Daylan hoped for a nobleman’s cell. But they bore him below, past the torture chamber where tongs and forges and bloodied knives gave mute testimony to past retributions. The Princess Kan-hazur was in a cell near the door. He saw her sitting, dressed in gray rags, her dark hair a ragged mat. She was larger than most of the warriors, topping eight feet, and though she was but eighteen, her long, powerful arms looked as if they could snap a man in half. She growled as the warriors passed, and lunged, grabbing one by the collar and ramming his head into the bars.

Daylan kicked hard then, using the diversion to nearly break free.

But years of confinement had left the princess weak, and within a moment the warrior had her by the hair, twisting her head around until he could get her in a stranglehold.

The warriors carried Daylan past her cell, to a small grate, and Daylan fought fiercely at that point, managing to kick one warrior in the face and loosen a few teeth, just before they shoved him into a foul hole.

He slid down a rough incline perhaps forty feet, before he landed in a pool of feces and urine that was chest-deep.

There was little light in this place. He peered up above, perhaps a hundred feet. Light shone through a few privies. He was below the soldiers’ barracks.

The walls were slick with excrement, the slope far too steep for a man to climb. The dark waters were hot and smelled of sulfur. Obviously, they had trickled in through some crack in the rock from the hot springs that were used to warm the city in the winter. The water was too hot for comfort.

There was a jangle of keys up above as his captors locked the iron grate. Someone laughed and shouted down at him, “Dinner!”

A loaf of bread came bouncing down the slimy slope, to land with a wet plop. Daylan picked it up. It had been old and crusty.

For a long moment he stood, assessing the situation.

The smell was atrocious, but he knew that you could get used to any smell. He had been in some dire places in his life, but nowhere as foul as this.

There was nowhere to sit, nowhere to rest. The cesspool left him only a small space to stand in, perhaps only ten feet across. And he imagined that when he got tired enough, he could try to float. But the excrement in the cesspool had the consistency of quicksand. A layer of water and urine covered the top, perhaps to a depth of four inches, and all beneath that was a sordid stew. To try to rest would be to drown.

Of course, that was what he was here for. That was his torment. He could stand in the muck while soldiers rained their urine down on him, or dropped a foul hail upon him, waiting for days without food or drink, until the High King decided that it was time to fish him out, bring him to his trial, and, hopefully, condemn him to a speedy death.

Or he could choose to rest, and thus to drown.

He tried wading a bit, found that objects that were sharp and hard rolled and shifted beneath his feet—the bones of those who had chosen to drown.

After a few minutes, the sound of the captor’s harsh laughter died away, and he was left to himself. I am supposed to deliver the princess to the rendezvous point tomorrow, he realized. That will take some doing, he thought, emitting a bark of painful laughter. So much had changed in just a few hours. He wondered if the wyrmlings could keep to the bargain now, even if he did manage to deliver her.

He thrashed about, trying to find a comfortable place to stand.

Perhaps if I can climb up to the grate, he thought, I could squeeze through the bars. But the climb looked impossible. Without a rope it was hopeless.

Even endowments of brawn and grace would not let him negotiate that slick slope. I’ll have to dig my fingernails into the rock, he thought, to get any purchase. Maybe then, I could climb out.

But even to try would attract attention. Once news of a captive broke out in the barracks, many a curious eye would be aimed down the privy holes.

That is, until tomorrow, Daylan realized.

The troops were to leave at dawn.

As if to confirm his worries, someone called out from above, “Look, there’s a rat in the pisser.”

“Well then, you know what to do,” a gruff voice laughed.

A steady yellow rain began to fall.

“You men sat at my table,” Daylan shouted up. “Which of my songs or jokes offended you so?”

There was no answer from above.

With no other recourse, Daylan Hammer merely folded his arms, closed his eyes, and tried to remember fairer days.

11

UPON A BED OF STARS

Not even a village idiot will honor a lord of poor character, and any man who builds a noble character—whether he be low-born or high—will find himself honored by all.

—Hearthmaster Waggit

It was with a heavy heart that Fallion left Castle Coorm. There were over a hundred and eighty people left in the castle, mostly impoverished families with grubby children, too little food, and no way to protect themselves.

If Talon was right, they would be in grave danger so long as they stayed in Coorm.

“Leave here,” Fallion warned them. “Stay in the caves beneath the castle tonight. There are boats that can take you out through the underground river in the morning, so that the little ones will not have to walk so far. They’ll carry your food, too. Whatever you do, don’t show your faces above ground tonight. Stay hidden till morning, then make your way north to Ravenspell, or east to the Courts of Tide. There should be people there, greater safety. Travel only by day, and hide yourselves at night.”

He looked at a young boy, no more than three, terrified and vulnerable. His right cheek was bruised, and his eye swollen shut.

Fallion patted his head, whispered some words of encouragement.

In a more perfect world, he thought, children would never know such fear. He wished that he could do more for them. He was tempted to stay behind, lead them to safety himself, but Talon had objected. “If we’re right, you’re the one that the enemy is searching for. Staying with the refugees would only slow you down—and place them in greater danger.”

So Fallion left amid sad farewells, hugging Hearthmaster Waggit and Farion, departing the castle an hour before sunset, taking only his three friends and some food. At the castle gate, Fallion and the others raised their swords in salute, crying out, “Sworn to defend.”

The people cheered, not realizing that the salute carried sad memories for the four. For it was on just such a journey from this castle that they had first sworn their oaths to one another. Fallion took one last longing look at the golden tree, tried to let its form become etched in his memory. For a long moment, he listened, hoping to hear its voice in his mind once again. But there was nothing. Regretfully, he struck out through the meadows, heading toward the mountains to the west. The air was full of the smell of pines, clean and refreshing, and the warm sun beat down on the fields. With every step, Fallion found himself threshing wheat and oats, knocking the full kernels from the stalks. Grasshoppers and honeybees rose up in small clouds as they passed.

Soon his party reached the coolness beneath the woods. Sunshine slanted through the trees, casting shadows, while light played upon motes of dust and pollen in the air. The woods filled with the chatter of jays, the thumping of woodpeckers, the peeps of nuthatches and occasional coo of a mourning dove.

It would have been a perfect walk, if Fallion hadn’t felt so drained. The weariness lingered with him, left him so sapped that he could hardly walk, much less keep up with Talon’s grueling pace. Still, she urged him on.

Jaz often complained, for he was as weary as any, but Rhianna merely kept silent, following at Fallion’s back like a shadow, sometimes whispering encouragement.

The old road to Hay was a road no longer. In this new world, it was filled with rocks and scree, gouged by canyons and blocked by hills. Sometimes along the path, Fallion saw further evidence of the damage done by his spell—trees growing up insanely through boulders, a nuthatch impaled by a tuft of grass, speared through by a dozen small blades, struggling vainly to break free. And he wondered at the damage done to himself. Why am I so weary? He found sweat rolling off of him, a steady sheen, even though the day was cool.

But not all of the “accidents” were bad. As they walked along near sundown, they came upon a vine growing in the shadows of some rocks. It looked like some kind of pea, with a few brilliant white blossoms and it had berries on it—perfectly white berries, like wild pearls, that glowed brightly among the shadows.

Rhianna stopped and peered at them in wonder. “What are these called?” she asked Talon. Talon merely shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen them before, never heard of them—not in either world.”

Fallion could only imagine that two plants had combined, creating something that was better than on either world. Whether the light-berries, as he decided to call them, had ever existed on the One True World, he did not know, but he liked to think that they had.

Rhianna picked a dozen berries, carried them in her palm for a ways. It wasn’t until they stopped that night in a rocky grotto, shielded on three sides by rocks and from above by a huge pine tree, that Fallion came up with a theory for his fatigue. They plunged into the blackness of the grotto, a place that would be decidedly easy to defend from strengi-saats. Jaz threw down his pack, dropped onto a bed of pine needles, and said dramatically, “I’m dead.”

Fallion brushed some twigs off of a mossy bed. A firefly flew up out of a nearby bush, then others began to shine, turning into lights that danced and weaved among the trees. Rhianna laid her light-berries down, but Fallion saw that they were fading. That’s when the realization struck. “Of course you’re dead,” Fallion told Jaz. “And so am I, and Rhianna.”

Rhianna halted, peered at him in the shadows, as did Talon. “All three of us are dead—at least we were on this world.”

“What do you mean?” Talon asked, standing above him like a hulk.

“Talon, you said that humans were almost gone from this shadow world. How many are left?” Fallion asked.

“Thirty-eight thousand.”

“Yet on our world, there were millions,” Fallion said. “Talon I’ve been wondering why you joined with your shadow self, but we didn’t. Now I understand. We have no shadow selves here.”

The others peered at him, and Fallion talked in a rush, thinking aloud. “We were hunted as children, Jaz and I, from before our birth. Rhianna was, too. On this world, our other selves failed to survive. That’s why we feel so…dead.”

There was a long silence. “You’re scaring me,” Rhianna said. She sat down on unsteady legs, nearly collapsing from exhaustion.

“If we died on this world, wouldn’t we remember at least some of our lives?” Jaz asked. “Shouldn’t we remember being children?”

“Does dust remember?” Talon asked.

There was a drawn-out silence as Fallion considered the implications. He wondered if he even had a history on this world. Had he died, or had it been one of his ancestors? Perhaps he’d never been born here.

“Fallion,” Rhianna asked with rising concern. “You came on this quest because you want to heal the world, bind the shadow worlds into one perfect world. But have you considered the possibility that in that world, perhaps none of us would exist?”

“We feel half-dead now,” Jaz said. “Would we die if all the worlds were bound?”

Fallion had no idea.

If I bind the worlds, heal them, Fallion wondered, is it possible that I would be doing it for others, and not for myself?

And what about those unfortunate souls like me? Would I doom them to oblivion? Or would we all live, filling a single world to the breaking point?

He had no answers. But suddenly he realized that he had to stop his quest to mend the worlds. For years now he had felt driven. But now he needed some answers before he could proceed.

“Talon,” he asked. “In the city of Luciare, is there an Earth Warden, a wizard that we can talk to?”

Talon thought for a moment, then nodded. “Sisel is his name. Our warriors are strong, but I think that it is by his powers more than any other that the city has been preserved.”

“Then I must talk to him when we reach the city,” Fallion said.

The party laid down then, Rhianna cuddling up at Fallion’s side. Talon took the first watch. Everyone seemed to be lost in their own private thoughts for a long time, and soon Fallion heard Jaz begin to snore while Rhianna fell into a fitful sleep.

Fallion laid abed that night, under the gloom of the trees, the brief flashing of fireflies nearly the only source of light.

A few stars shone between the branches of the trees. His mother had taught him that stars were only distant suns, and that worlds like his drifted around them. He wondered what the worlds that circled these suns were like, and he wondered if somewhere up there one of his shadow selves might be looking down upon his own world.

Fallion kept an eye on Talon, who merely rested with her back to the rock. There was little chance of them being discovered by wyrmlings, but Fallion had to worry about strengi-saats, and perhaps beasts that he’d never even imagined.

“Tell me stories,” Fallion asked Talon when the others were all asleep, “about your life in the castle, about your father.” He wanted to keep her awake as much as he wanted to hear stories.

“I…don’t remember much,” Talon said softly. “It’s all like a dream, one that you’ve forgotten and then struggle to recall in the morning. I remember things, but they’re so…disjointed.”

“Then tell me what you remember the best.”

And she did.

On this world, Borenson had married a woman, but not Myrrima. She was a woman of the warrior clans, a fit mate, and Borenson had dutifully sired seven children upon her. Talon had been raised in a crèche with the other warrior children, trained to fight. She had been taught her duties as a warrior, and saw breeding as one of those duties. Her father’s rank was so high that she was greatly desired by other men, but few were considered suitable mates. Her father had been consulting the genealogies, trying to decide which man would win her as the prize. Hers had been a grim life, and narrow, Fallion thought. There were no happy childhood memories, unless one counted a score of victories in mock combat—or the slaughter of her first wyrmling at the age of fourteen—as happy memories.

The news saddened Fallion. He had hoped that life on other shadow worlds might be happier than life on his own. At the worst, he thought it would be a distorted reflection, but a reflection nonetheless. He had to look hard to see any similarities between the worlds. The land wasn’t the same. The low hills of Coorm were mountains here, and much else had changed. The warrior clans of Shadow, as he decided to call the other world, hardly looked human.

But the more he considered, the more that he saw that the worlds were alike. There were pine trees and bears on both of the worlds, harts and hares.

He asked about reavers in the underworld, and Talon assured him that they existed. “But the wyrmlings went to war with them a century ago. They don’t pose a threat. Not like they did on our world.”

Perhaps, Fallion thought, but he could not be sure.

“And yet…” Fallion mused. “In both worlds, the plight of mankind is great. My father used his Earth Powers to save millions. If not for him, our world would have been destroyed, as this one has been destroyed.”

Fallion fell silent for a long time.

“So the worlds really are reflections of each other,” Talon mused.

“No,” Fallion said. “I think that they are not reflections so much as distortions, distortions of the One True World. I think a great war is going on there, and few are left among mankind.”

The thought had never occurred to him before, but it felt right. It was said that the Queen of the Loci had tried to seize control of the Great Seals in ages past, and during a battle she had rent them, breaking them.

Fallion had always imagined that the story ended there. But the battle for control still goes on, he thought, upon countless shadow worlds.

Rhianna called out softly in her sleep, “Fallion?”

He glanced back at her, lying beneath the shadows of the pine. She rolled over in her sleep, using her arms as a pillow.

“Fallion,” Talon whispered, “what happened to all of the people on our world? Are they all still alive? Did you bring them all with us?”

Fallion had been worrying about this very thought through much of the evening.

“I believe so,” Fallion said. “Jaz, Rhianna, and I are all half-alive. The folk in Coorm too, though some of the older ones, it seems, could not endure the shock.”

“You don’t sound certain.”

“The problem is,” Fallion said, “in both worlds, this area was a wilderness. There might be millions of people living in Indhopal, but that is a thousand miles away, and until I see them, I can’t be sure.”

“I’ll bet they’re a little confused!” Talon smiled, showing her oversized canines. “Millions of humans on this world again—that will be good news to the folk of Luciare. Father will dance when he learns of it.”

“But will they be worth much, fighting your giants?” Fallion wondered. He knew that they wouldn’t, not if they had only their own strength. “Are forcibles used among the clans?”

Talon shook her head. “Such magic has not been heard of. The three hundred forcibles we brought with us will be a great prize for the clans.”

Fallion started to speak, but Talon reached over and threw a hand over his mouth.