Runelords 08 – Chaosbound – Farland, David

Book 1

THE FLOOD

1

SIR BORENSON AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Great are the healing powers of the earth. There is nothing that has been destroyed that cannot be mended .. .

—The Wizard Binnesman

At the end of a long summer’s day, the last few beams of sunlight slanted through the ancient apple orchard outside the ruins of Barrensfort, creating golden streams among the twigs and branches of the trees.

Though the horizon was a fiery glowering, sullen and peaceful, from the deadwood linnets had already begun to rise upon their red and waxen wings, eager to greet the coming night.

Sir Borenson leaned upon the ruins of an old castle wall and watched his daughters Sage and Erin work amid the tallest branches of an apple tree. It was a hoary thing, seeming as old as the ruins themselves, with lichen-covered boughs that had grown to be as thick as many another tree.

The wind had knocked the grand old tree over two summers ago, so that it leaned at a slant. Most of its limbs had fallen into ruin, and now the termites feasted upon them. But the tree still had some roots in the soil, and one great branch thrived.

Borenson had found that the fruit of that bough was the sweetest to grow upon his farm. Not only were the golden apples sweeter than all of the others, they ripened a good four weeks early and grew huge and full. These apples would fetch a hefty price at tomorrow’s fair.

This was not the common hawk’s-day fair that came once a week. This was the High Summer Festival, and the whole district would likely turn out up at Mill Creek, for trading ships had come to Garion’s Port in the past few weeks, bringing spices and cloth from faraway Rofehavan.

The fallen tree left a hole in the canopy of the orchard, creating a small glade. The grass grew lush here. Bees hummed and circled, while linnets’ wings shimmered like garnets amid streams of sunlight. Sweet apples scented the air.

There can be beauty in death, Sir Borenson thought, as he watched the scene.

Erin climbed out on a thin limb, as graceful as a dancer, and held the handle of her pail in her mouth as she gently laid an apple in.

“Careful,” Sir Borenson warned, “that limb you’re on may be full of rot.”

Erin hung the bucket on a broken twig. “It’s all right, Daddy. This limb is still healthy.”

“How can you tell?”

She bounced a bit. “See? It has some spring in it still. The rotten ones don’t.”

Smart girl, for a nine-year-old. She was not the prettiest of his brood, but Borenson suspected that she had the quickest wit, and she was the most thoughtful of his children, the first to notice if someone was sad or ill, and she was the most protective.

You could see it in her eyes. Borenson’s older offspring all had a fierceness that showed in their flashing blue eyes and dark red hair. They took after him.

But though Erin had Borenson’s penetrating blue eyes, she had her mother’s luxurious hair, and her mother’s broad face and thoughtful expression. It seemed to Borenson that the girl was born to be a healer, or perhaps a midwife.

She’ll be the one to nurse me through my old age, he mused.

“Careful with those apples,” he warned. “No bruises!” Erin was always careful, but Sage was not. The girl seemed more interested in getting the job done quickly than in doing it well.

Borenson had wadded some dry grass and put it in the buckets, so that the girls could pack the apples carefully. The grass had tea-berry leaves in it, to sweeten the scent. Yet he could tell that Sage wasn’t packing the apples properly.

Probably dreaming of boys, he thought. Sage was nearly thirteen, and her body was gaining a woman’s curves. It wasn’t uncommon here in Landesfallen for a girl to marry at fifteen. Among the young men at the Festival, Sage could draw as much attention as a joust.

Marriage.

I’ll be losing her soon, too, Borenson thought. All of my children are growing up and leaving me.

Talon, his oldest, was gone. She’d sailed off to Rofehavan more than three months past, with her foster siblings Fallion, Jaz, and Rhianna.

Borenson couldn’t help but wonder how they had fared on the journey. By now they should have made landfall on the far continent. If all was going as planned, they were crossing Mystarria, seeking out the Mouth of the World, beginning their descent into darkness, daring the reavers’ lair.

Long ago, according to legend, there had been one true world, bright and perfect, shining in the heavens. All of mankind had lived in joy and peace, there in the shade of the One True Tree. But an ancient enemy had tried to seize control of the Seals of Creation, and in the battle that ensued, the world shattered, breaking into millions and millions of shadow worlds, each less perfect, each less whole, than that one world had been.

Fallion, a young flameweaver, said that he knew how to heal the worlds, bind them all into one. Borenson’s older children were accompanying him to the underworld, to the Seals of Creation, to help in his task.

Borenson wrenched his thoughts away. He didn’t want to consider the perils that his children faced. There were reavers in the underworld, monstrously large and powerful. Best not to think of that.

Yet he found it hard lately to think of much else. His children should have landed in Rofehavan. If their ship had made good time, they might soon reach the Seals of Creation.

A new day could be dawning.

“Father,” Erin called, “Look at this apple!” She held up a huge one, flashed her winning smile. “It’s perfect!”

“Beautiful!” he said.

You’re beautiful, he thought, as he stood back and watched. It was his job to take down those buckets that were full.

There was a time a few years ago when he would have been up in the tree with her. But he was getting too fat to climb rotting trees. Besides, the arthritis in his right shoulder hurt. He wasn’t sure if it was the long years of practice with the war hammer or some old wound, but his right arm was practically useless.

“I’m growing, I’m growing old.

My hair is falling and my feet are cold.”

It was a silly rhyme that he’d learned as a child. An old gaffer with long silver hair used to sing it as he puttered down the lanes in the market, doing his shopping.

Borenson heard a sound behind him, a suspicious rustling of leaves.

Barrensfort was not much more than a pile of gray rocks. Two walls still rose sixty feet from some old lord’s tower, a broken finger pointing accusingly to the sky. Once it had been a great fortress, and Fallion the Bold had slept here sixteen hundred years ago. But most of the rocks for the outer wall had been carted off long ago. Borenson’s fine chimney was made from the rounded stones of the old wall.

So the courtyard in the old fortress was open to the sky. In a hundred years the rest of the walls might fall in, and a forest would likely grow over the spot.

But for now, there was only one large tree here, an odd tree called an encampment tree. It looked nothing like the white gums common to the area, but was perhaps a closer relative to the stonewood trees down by the sea. It was large, with rubbery gray bark and tiny spade-shaped leaves. Its limbs were thick with fronds that hung like curtains, creating an impenetrable canopy, and its branches spread out like an umbrella. A good-sized tree could shelter a dozen people.

When settlers had first come to Landesfallen, nearly a thousand years earlier, they had used such trees as shelter during the summers while building their homes.

Unfortunately, Sir Borenson had three such trees on his property, and for the past several years he’d had problems with squatters coming to his land and living in them—particularly during the harvest season. They’d steal his fruit, raid his vegetable garden, and snatch shirts from his clothesline.

Borenson didn’t hate the squatters. There were wars and rumors of wars all across Rofehavan. But he couldn’t allow them to stay on his land, either.

He whirled and crept toward the tree.

It’s probably nothing, he thought. Probably just some rangit or a sleepy old burrow bear.

Rangits were large rabbitlike creatures that fed on grass. They often sought shade during the heat of the day.

A burrow bear was a gentle beast that ate grass and vegetables. It had no fear of mankind whatsoever, and if Borenson found one, he’d be able to walk right up to it and scratch its head.

He went to the tree, swatted aside the long trailing fronds, and stepped beneath the canopy.

There was a burrow bear—its carcass sitting upon a spit, just waiting for someone to light a fire beneath it.

Inside the shadowed enclosure, entire families squatted: mothers, fathers, children—lots of young children between the ages of three and six. There couldn’t have been fewer than twenty people in all.

They crouched, the children with wide eyes and dirty faces peering up at him in terror. The stench of poverty was thick on them.

Borenson’s hand went to his dagger. He couldn’t be too careful around such people. Squatters had attacked farmers before. The road to Sand Hollow had been treacherous all summer.

He half-expected someone to try to creep up on him from behind. Borenson was vastly outnumbered, but he was an expert with the dagger. Though he was old, if it came to a fight, he would gut them to a man.

One little girl who could not have been eight pleaded, “Please, sir, don’t hurt us!”

Borenson glanced at one of the fathers. He was a young man in his mid-twenties with a wife and three little children clinging to him for protection.

By the powers, what can I do? Borenson wondered. He hated to throw them off his property, but he couldn’t afford to let them remain, thieving.

If he’d had the money, he’d have hired the men to work. But he couldn’t support these people.

He said, “I thought it was the borrowbirds that ate my cherries, fool that I am.”

“Please, sir,” the young man apologized. “We didn’t steal anything.”

Borenson shook his head. “So, you’ve just been hunkering down here in my fields, drinking my water and helping get rid of the excess burrow bears?”

Back in the shadows Borenson spotted a young man clinging to a pretty lass. His jaw dropped as he recognized his youngest son, Draken, holding some girl as skinny as a doe.

Draken was only fifteen. For weeks now he had been shucking his chores, going “hunting” each afternoon. Borenson had imagined that it was wanderlust. Now he saw that it was only common lust.

“Draken?” Sir Borenson demanded. Immediately he knew what had happened. Draken was hiding this girl, hiding her whole family.

“It’s true, Father,” Draken said. “They didn’t steal the cherries. They’ve been living off of wild mushrooms and garlic and trout from the river, whatever they could get—but they didn’t eat from our crops!”

Borenson doubted that. Even if these folks spared his crops, he lived on the borders of a small town called Sweetgrass. Surely the neighbors would be missing something.

Draken was clutching his girl with great familiarity, a slim little thing with a narrow waist and hair as yellow as sunlight. Borenson knew that romance was involved, but one glance at the poor clothing of the squatters, the desperation in their faces, and he knew that they were not the caliber of people that he would want in his family.

Draken had been trained in the Gwardeen to be a skyrider, patrolling Landesfallen on the backs of giant graaks. Borenson himself had taught Draken the use of the bow and ax. Draken was warrior-born, a young man of great discipline, not some oaf of a farm boy to sow his seed in the first pretty girl who was willing.

“I thought I taught you better,” Borenson growled in disgust. “The same discipline that a man uses on the battlefield, he should use in bed.”

“Father,” Draken said protectively, leaping to his feet, “she’s to be my wife!”

“Funny,” Borenson said. “No one told me or your mother of a wedding. . . . You’ll not sleep with this tart.”

“I was trying to think of how to tell you—”

Borenson didn’t want to hear Draken’s excuses. He glared at the squatters, and then dismissed them. “You’ll be off my property in five minutes.” He let them imagine the penalty for failure.

“Father,” Draken said fiercely. “They’re good people—from Mystarria. This is Baron Owen Walkin and his family—his wife Greta, his daughter Rain, his sons and their kin.”

Borenson knew the Walkin name. He’d even met a Baron Walkin twenty years ago, an elderly man of good report. The Walkins had been staunch supporters of the king and came from a long line of stout warriors. But these starvelings looked nothing like warriors. There was no muscle on them. The patriarch of the family looked to be at least ten years Borenson’s junior, a thin man with a widow’s peak and fiery red hair.

Could times really be so hard in Mystarria, Borenson wondered, to turn true men into starvelings? If all that he heard was true, the barbaric warlords of Internook had invaded the coasts after the death of the Earth King.

Ten years back, Borenson’s family had been among the very first wave of refugees from Mystarria. He was out of touch with his homeland.

But the latest rumors said that the new overlords were harsh on their vassals, demanding outlandish taxes, abusing women.

Those who back-talked or stood up to the abuse would find themselves burned out of their homes—or worse.

As a baron loyal to the Earth King, Walkin and his kin would have been singled out for retribution.

Borenson suddenly realized just how desperate these people really might be.

“I . . .” Draken fumbled. “Rain here will be a good wife!”

Rain. Borenson made a mental note. His own wife Myrrima was a wiz-ardess who served Water. Borenson thought it no coincidence that his son would fall for a girl named Rain.

He sought for words to voice his disappointment, and one of the poor folk in the group—the matriarch Greta—warned, “Beware what you say about my daughter. She loves your son. You’ll be eating your words for the rest of your life!”

What a confounded mess, Borenson thought. He dared not let these people stay on his land, yet he couldn’t in good conscience send them off.

If he sent them off, they’d have to make their way into the interior of Landesfallen, into the desert. Even if they found a place to homestead, it was too late to plant crops. The Walkin family had come a long way— just to starve.

Outside in the orchard, Erin called, “Father, I need another bucket!”

“Where are you, Father?” Sage called.

That’s when he was struck.

Something hit Borenson—harder than he’d ever been hit in his life. The blow seemed to land on the back of his head and then continue on through his whole body, rattling every fiber of his being.

White lights flashed in his eyes and a roaring filled his ears. He tried to turn and glance behind him, but he saw no one as he fell. He hit the ground and struggled to cling to consciousness, but he felt as if he’d been bashed by a reaver’s glory hammer.

He heard the squatters all cry out in alarm, and then he was spinning, spinning . . .

Borenson had a dream unlike any other. He dreamt that he was a man, a giant on a world different from his own, and in the space of a heartbeat this man’s life flashed before his eyes.

Borenson dreamt of simple things—a heavy-boned wife whose face was not quite human, for she had horny nubs upon her temples and heavy jaws, and canine teeth that were far too large. Yet he loved her as if she were beautiful, for she bore him stout sons who were destined to be warriors.

In his dream, he was a warrior himself—Aaath Ulber, the leader of the High Guard, the king’s elite forces. His name was a title that meant Berserker Prime, or Greatest of All Berserkers, and like his wife, he was not quite human, for his people had been breeding warriors for two hundred generations, and he was the culmination of their efforts.

He dreamt of nights spent on guard duty on a lonely mountain with only a spear for company, and days hunting for fell enemies in the dank forests, thick with morning fog. He dreamt of raids on wyrmlings: pale manlike monsters that were larger even than he, monsters that fed on human flesh and hid from the sun by day in dank holes. He dreamt of more blood and horror than any man should see in a lifetime.

Last of all, he dreamt that he saw a world falling from the heavens, plummeting toward him like a great star that filled the sky. As it drew near, all around him his people cried out in wonder and horror.

He saw blue water on that world, vast seas and great lakes. He saw the titanium-white tops of giant clouds, swirling in a great vortex. He saw a vast crimson desert, and green lakes and hills. He saw a terminus, a line dividing night from day, and the gloriously colored clouds at its edge— great swaths of rose and gold.

Around him, people were shouting in alarm and pointing into the air. He was on the streets of Caer Luciare, a mountain fortress, and his own daughter was looking up and crying, “This is the end!”

Then the falling world slammed into his.

When he woke, Sir Borenson was still falling. He was lying on the ground, but it was dropping away. He cried out, and all around him the squatters shrieked in fear, too.

He slammed to a halt and his whole body smashed into the ground, knocking the air from his lungs.

Though the skies had been clear, thunder roared in the heavens.

The squatters under the tree were still shouting. The mother of one family begged, “Is everyone all right?”

“Earthquake!” someone said. “It was an earthquake!”

Sir Borenson had never felt anything like this. The ground wasn’t trembling or rolling. Instead, it seemed to have just dropped—perhaps hundreds of feet.

Borenson peered at the group. His heart raced. The ground was wet and smelled of seawater, and his clothes were sopped.

Other than that, he felt somehow disconnected from his body. All of the old aches and pains were gone.

“Father!” Sage shouted. “Father, help! Erin’s hurt!”

Borenson leapt to his feet and stood for a moment, dazed. The dream that he’d had, the dream of Aaath Ulber, cast such a huge shadow in his memory that he felt unsure just who he was.

He blinked, trying to recall where he was. Memory told him that he was on the mountain, on Caer Luciare. If he turned around he would see his girl.

But this was no mountain. He was under the tree.

He glanced at the squatter children in the shadows. Two women and a couple of children seemed to have fainted. A knot of children were trying to revive them, and suddenly one little girl peered up with terrified eyes. She shrieked, and others glanced up at him and followed suit. They fell over themselves in their hurry to back away.

Borenson looked down at the tots, wondering if he had blood on his face, wondering what frightened the children, and it seemed that he looked from too great a height.

“It’s all right,” he told them. “I won’t hurt you.”

He raised his hands. They were meaty things, huge and heavy. More importantly, there was a small spur of bone protruding from each wrist, something that no human should have.

His hands were the hands of Aaath Ulber.

He was wearing war gear—metal bands with targets on his wrists, heavy gray mail unlike any forged on his world.

He reached up and felt his forehead—the bony plates on his temples, the nubs of horns above that were more pronounced than those of any other warrior of the clans, and he knew why the children cried in terror.

He was Aaath Ulber and Sir Borenson, both men sharing one enormous body. He was still human, as humans had looked on that other world, but his children and wife here would not recognize him as such.

“Father!” Sage shrieked out in the orchard. She wept furiously.

Borenson turned and stumbled through the curtain of vines.

The world that appeared before him was a disaster.

Strange vortexes whirled in the sky, like tornadoes of light, and thunder crackled in the clear air.

Water covered much of the ground—seawater and beds of red kelp. Crabs scuttled about while starfish and urchins clung to the mud. Bright coral stuck up from a ridge of rocks that hadn’t been in the glade moments ago. Everything was sopping wet.

An enormous red octopus surged over the grass desperately, just up the path.

The walls of the old fortress leaned wildly, and everywhere that he looked trees had tilted.

Sage was under the huge apple tree, weeping bitterly and calling, “Father! Father, come quick!”

Part of that old rotten tree had fallen during the disaster.

Borenson bounded to her, leaping over an enormous black wolf eel that wriggled across the trail.

Sage stood solemnly, looking down at her little sister. Erin had fallen from the tree onto a rotten limb; now she lay with her neck twisted at a precarious angle.

Erin’s mouth was open; her eyes stared up. Her face was so pale that it seemed bloodless. She made little gaping motions, like a fish struggling to breathe.

Other than that, her body was all too still.

In the distance, a mile away, the village bell in Sweetgrass began ringing in alarm.

Sage took one look at Borenson and backed away from him in horror. She gave a little yelp and then turned, fumbling to escape.

Draken had come out from under the encampment tree, and he rushed up to Erin.

He tried to push Borenson away. “Get back, you!”

He was small, so small that his efforts had little effect. “It’s me, your father!” Borenson said. Draken peered at him in shock.

Borenson reached down and tried gently to lift Erin, to comfort her, but felt the child’s head wobble in a way that no person’s should. The vertebrae in her neck seemed to be crushed. Borenson eased her back into place.

If she lives, Borenson thought, she might never walk again.

Erin peered up at him, took in the horror of Borenson’s face, and there was no recognition in her eyes—only stark panic. She frowned and let out a thin wail.

“Stay calm, sweet one,” Borenson said, hoping to soothe her. But his voice came out deep and disturbing—more a bull’s bellow than the voice that Erin was used to. “It’s me, your father.”

In the distance a war horn blew an alarm. It was his wife Myrrima sounding a call from the old ox horn that he kept hung on a peg beside the fireplace. Two long blasts, two short, three long.

It was signal for retreat, but it wasn’t a simple retreat. He was supposed to go somewhere. He had not heard that call in so many years that it took a moment to dredge up its meaning.

Draken was at his side now, reaching down to lift Erin, trying to pull her into his arms. He was just as eager to help the child as Borenson was, just as frightened and dazed.

“Don’t touch her,” Borenson warned. “We’ll have to move her with great care.”

Draken peered at him in terror and disbelief. “What? What happened to you?”

Borenson shook his head in wonder.

In the distance Myrrima shouted, “Erin? Sage? Borenson?” She was running toward them; he could tell by her voice that she was racing through the orchard. “Everyone, run to high ground! Water’s coming!”

That’s when Borenson felt it: a tremor in the earth, a distant rumbling that carried through the soles of his steel boots.

The realization of his full predicament struck him.

On Aaath Ulber’s world there had been no continent where Landesfallen stood—only a few poorly charted islands on the far side of the world.

Borenson had taken meetings with King Urstone many times. The wyrmling hordes had all but destroyed mankind, and some of the king’s counselors advised him to flee to the coast and build ships to carry refugees to the Far Isles.

But it had seemed impossible, and the king had worried at what would happen if his people were ever found there, cornered on some desert island.

On Aaath Ulber’s world, this whole continent was underwater, Borenson realized. In the binding of the worlds, the two became one. That’s why there are sea animals here on dry l and—i t wasn’t dry on both worlds. Now the land has fallen. The sea is rushing in to cover it!

“Run!” he shouted to Draken and Sage. “Run to high ground! The sea is coming!”

He peered down at little Erin. He could not move her safely. Nor did he dare leave her here.

He wasn’t sure how much time he had. Minutes? Hours? No, he could feel the land trembling. He might not have even minutes. The sea was rushing toward him in a flood.

We may all be doomed!

The squatters came boiling from under the tree, then stood gaping, gasping and crying in astonishment. Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw—kelp and coral and creatures of the sea all suddenly appearing where once there had been dry ground.

“Run!” Borenson urged them.

The valley here along the Hacker River was long and narrow, a mile or two across.

On both sides of the valley, stark red-rock cliffs rose up. In only a few places could those cliffs be scaled.

“There!” Borenson shouted. “Up that hill!”

The squatters were shrieking, the children yelping in fear. At least one woman was still unconscious, and young men carried her. Others limped about groggily. The men were gathering bags while mothers tried to herd their children.

Draken looked back toward the house. “Shall I save the horses?”

“Save your sister!” Borenson shouted. “Get to high ground.”

The earth continued to rumble, growing louder by faint degrees. Draken grabbed his sister Sage by the elbow and took the girl Rain by the hand. The three rushed off.

It was nearly a mile to the ridge. They’d be minutes running toward it, long minutes climbing.

Borenson looked down at Erin. “Daddy?” she said. Her eyes scanned left and right, unseeing, unable to focus.

“I’m here,” he said. “Mother is coming. You’ll be all right.”

Myrrima had some skills as a healer, as did all water wizards. Her kiss could calm a troubled mind; her stroke could draw away a man’s pain. But Borenson didn’t think that she could mend a broken neck, not in the time that they had.

Perhaps the flood won’t reach us, Borenson dared hope. How far did the land sink? Certainly it won’t all be underwater. We are fifty-two miles from the sea.

He imagined that some sort of balance must have been reached in the binding of the worlds. Perhaps his homeland would only sink halfway into the sea.

He heard his wife crashing through the brush of the overgrown orchard. This part of his land was ill-kept.

“Myrrima,” Borenson bellowed. “Over here!”

She came running a moment later, leaping over a rock covered in coral, rushing between two trees, panting from exhaustion. She wore her deep blue traveling robe over a white tunic and leggings. The years had put a little weight on her, but not much. She did not run fast. No longer did she have any endowments of speed or brawn. The Dedicates who had given her their attributes had all been slain long ago, shortly after they’d fled Mystarria, as had his Dedicates.

Yet as a wizardess she would enjoy a longer life than Borenson, and in the past ten years she seemed not to have aged a year.

Myrrima stumbled to a halt, not even recognizing him. The woman had had the sense to bring his war hammer, throw together a bundle of clothes. Now she backed away with fear in her eyes.

Her body language said it all: Who is this giant, crouching above my child?

“Myrrima,” Borenson said. “It’s me—your husband.”

Wonder and confusion warred in her face. Myrrima peered down at Erin, there gasping for breath, and she seemed to cave in on herself.

“Erin?” she called, daring to scrabble closer. “My little Erin!” Myrrima dropped to her knees, still panting for breath, and kissed Erin’s forehead, then began to stroke her. “My baby! My sweet baby?”

“She fell,” Borenson explained, “in the binding of the worlds.”

“Mother?” Erin called. She peered up, unseeing.

“I’m here,” Myrrima whispered. “I’m here for you.”

There was a protracted silence. Borenson became more aware of the rumbling beneath his feet, the squawking of borrowbirds. The animals felt the danger, too.

“We have to get her to safety,” Myrrima said. She eyed Borenson with distrust. “Can you move her gently?”

Borenson let out a little wail of frustration. His giant hands were so powerful, yet so uncouth. They were ill-suited for such delicate work.

“Can you hold back the water?” he begged.

Myrrima shook her head in defeat.

Borenson worried that nothing that he could do would save the child. Perhaps he could not even his save his family. How tall would the waves be? Forty feet tall, or four hundred?

Myrrima shifted the child slightly, lifting her just enough so that Borenson could slip his fingers beneath Erin. As gently as he could, he slid one palm beneath the child’s body and another beneath her head.

With great care he lifted. The girl seemed so small in his arms.

I am of the warrior clan, a voice whispered in his mind. This child weighs nothing.

It was Aaath Ulber’s voice.

Borenson put one arm beneath Erin, like a board, and began to carry her as swiftly and as delicately as he could.

The grass was wet, the ground uneven. Strange sea creatures dotted the land—enormous crabs creeping about with claws ready, rays gasping for air. Colorful coral rose up in shades of tan and bone and red, all surrounded by clumps of summer grasses.

Borenson hurried, trying not to jar his daughter, careful not to slip. He kept glancing to the ground then back to Erin’s small face, contorted as it was as she struggled to stay alive.

Is she even breathing? Borenson wondered. He watched her chest rise a little and then fall again.

Yes, she breathes.

Up ahead, Owen Walkin’s people lumbered along. All of them moved slowly, painfully, as if some great illness had befallen them.

Suddenly, Borenson felt as if he were watching them from outside his own body. The people looked small and puny. “Run, you feral dogs!” he roared.

People of such low breeding don’t deserve to live, he thought.

It was not a thought that would ever have presented itself to Sir Borenson.

Aaath Ulber was talking.

Though the others were weak Borenson felt strong, stronger than either he or Aaath Ulber had ever been. In some ways, he felt as if something vital had always been missing and now he had found it.

He reached the river, which had gone strangely muddy. A pair of giant rays were flapping about. The water was not deep this time of year, nor was it swift. But the rounded stones beneath the surface were slick.

Borenson sloshed through, Myrrima at his side, and made it more than halfway before he slipped.

He caught himself, but Erin’s little head swiveled to the right.

“Aaaagh!” Myrrima gave a cry, then reached out and tried to hold Erin’s head securely in place. They attained the far bank, raced up wet stones. A patch of slick red kelp hindered him, but he finally made it to the base of the ridge.

The squatter families ahead toiled up the long slope. The ground trembled mightily now. The flood was coming.

Borenson marched boldly, passing the squatters, holding Erin as securely as he could. He studied Erin’s face; she gasped for breath. Her complexion was as white as a pearl, her skin seemingly translucent. He could make out the tiny veins and arteries that colored her skin, blue and red. Her pupils had constricted to pinpoints.

She’s in shock, he realized. She’s strangling for lack of air.

There was no way to save her. Perhaps all of his efforts had been in vain. Yet he clung to hope.

With giant strides he passed through the clot of squatters, surged uphill. The air filled with a distant roar and birds squawked.

He’d climbed three hundred feet. He peered to the east and saw a gray cloud in the distance—a haze of dust and spray.

He had to get higher. With a burst of speed, he charged uphill, cuddling Erin, trying to hold the life inside her.

At last he reached the ridgetop and peered toward the sea. Just to the west lay Sweetgrass, its village bell ringing wildly. The whole earth was roaring, and beyond the town a massive wave surged through Hacker River Valley.

The squatters, Myrrima, and Borenson’s children trudged up, their faces stark with shock and amazement; they stopped next to Borenson and peered at the rushing waters.

The sea came far more swiftly than Borenson would have imagined. This was not some puny wave making its way along a sandy beach.

It roared—a sound that shook the world in a continuous boom as if all the thunder that had ever been suddenly voiced itself at once.

The ground was trembling now, and loose stones began to bounce down from some red-rock cliffs above. Borenson glanced up fearfully, but none of the stones came near.

The valley spread below, and Borenson had an eagle’s view of the river snaking along, the green fields to either side. He could see his own pleasant home with its newly thatched roof and barns, with his sheep and cattle in his pens, and his yellow dog Mongrel standing out in front of the house, woofing at the confusion.

His neighbors’ homes lay east and west. He saw the Dobbit family rushing about near their cottage, Farmer Dobbit racing to free his livestock, seeming only now to recognize the danger.

Old widow Taramont, half blind and crippled by age, was puttering at the door to her home, calling for help.

Farther west, townsfolk were stirring. A young girl raced down the road beside the river; dozens of folks were charging behind her, hoping to outrun the great wave.

Then the sea came.

The flood surged into the valley and followed the course of the Hacker River as it snaked through the hills. A wall of water two hundred feet high blasted through the canyon, thundering over the village, crushing houses, Borenson’s barn, sweeping neighbors away.

It crashed into the ruins of the old fortress, knocking down stone walls that had stood for sixteen hundred years.

The sea ripped up trees and sent them rumbling in a wall before it. Borenson saw flashes of pale bodies, victims of the flood, mingled among the ruins.

The water thrashed below, raising a fine mist that wetted Borenson in a muddy rain. Then the wall hurried on, filling up the valley as the sea sought its new bounds, creating a long irregular inlet.

A rainbow formed in the mist above the ruin, a cruel joke of nature.

For a long moment Borenson searched for signs of life. The water was filthy, as dark as loam. Bits of bark and even whole trees came bobbing to the surface, along with patches of thatch roof.

He waited breathlessly to hear someone shout for help, to see a pale body thrashing in the dark waves.

But nothing moved down there—not so much as a wet cat. The weight of the water had crushed the townsfolk, snuffing out their lives as completely as if they were but the tender flames of candles.

It seemed forever that he stood rooted to the ground.

Borenson recognized what had happened. Fallion had done it! Fallion had bound two worlds together—the world of Borenson and the world of Aaath Ulber.

For some reason when the worlds had combined, Borenson and Aaath Ulber combined, too. Yet he wondered why none of the others around him had been similarly transformed.

It was said that other people lived on shadow worlds; it was as if when the One True World splintered, the folk of the One True World had splintered too.

It was believed by some that every man was therefore incomplete and had shadow selves upon far worlds.

Borenson had always thought it idle speculation.

But somehow in the binding Borenson had bound together with Aaath Ulber, his “shadow self.” Two men, each living his own life upon a different world, had fused into one body.

The notion was staggering. He didn’t have time to comprehend it. He couldn’t even begin to fathom the implications.

He wondered why Fallion had bound only two worlds. Why not all of them? Why not bind a million, million worlds all at once, and re-create the perfect world of legend?

Perhaps it’s an experiment, Borenson imagined. Fallion is testing his powers.

He worried. If Fallion had bound two worlds together, then that meant that he had already made it to the Lair of Bones deep in the Underworld.

Considering the devastation that Fallion had wrought here, what must Fallion be going through now? Borenson wondered. There might have been cave-ins in the tunnels. They might have filled with water.

For all that Borenson knew, Fallion and his friends were all dead.

If this binding had been a trial, it had gone horribly awry. Chances were that the experiment might never be repeated.

Only then did the magnitude of the destruction begin to sink in. Here in Landesfallen, the vast majority of the people lived in cities along the coast, while a few others lived in river valleys like this one.

If we had been on the coast, Borenson realized, we’d all be dead.

Without my crops, he considered, we may be dead anyway.

Young Draken peered at the crashing waters and spoke some words that Borenson had not heard in many long years. “The Ends of the Earth is not far enough. . . .” He turned and glanced at his father. “Do you think he knew?”

The boy was referring to the warning that the Earth King had uttered when he died, the words that had sent Borenson fleeing to Landesfallen. At Garion’s Port, fifty miles to the west of here, two huge stones flanked the bay, stones called the Ends of the Earth. And upon his death, the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden had warned Borenson that the Ends of the Earth were not far enough. Borenson had known that he had to flee inland.

Had Gaborn sensed this flood? Borenson wondered. Could he have known what would befall us, ten years in the future?

Borenson sighed. “He knew. His prescience was a thing of legend.”

The refugees all fell in exhaustion and lay panting, peering down at the flood. The ground still shook, and the water thundered. But the sound was receding.

The starvelings seemed to be floundering in despair. Driven from their homes, and now this.

I’m as poor as them, Borenson thought. Poorer, for at least they have a few sacks full of belongings.

Borenson sat down on the rocks; Myrrima knelt at his side. Draken and Sage followed, and all of them focused on Erin, weeping, their eyes full of concern.

Borenson’s youngest daughter was fading. There was nothing that anyone could do. Perhaps Myrrima’s touch and her kisses could ease the child’s passing, but Myrrima could not save her.

For several long minutes Erin gasped, struggling only to breathe, too far gone to speak.

Then at last her eyelids fluttered, and Erin’s piercing blue eyes rolled back into her head. Her chest stopped rising, and now a gurgle escaped her throat as her chest fell one last time. It was a sound that Borenson associated with strangling.

Life fled from her.

Borenson sat cradling his sweet daughter Erin; Myrrima cried in despair.

There was nothing left to do but mourn.

A vast gaping void seemed to yawn wide and black in Borenson’s soul.

There is no beauty in death, he realized.

2

THE CROW RIDER

The eyes of the Great Wyrm are upon you, though you see her not, for she can ride the mind of the rat and the roach, the crow and the owl. She is aware of all of your doings, and will take vengeance for those who are weak, and offer blessings to those who serve her well.

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

In the cool light of predawn, a carrion crow searched a tidal pool, tilting her head to the right to listen for prey and to get a better look into the pool. The water was flat and as clear as crystal. In the shallows the crow spotted myriads of anemones, bright starbursts of green and purple, while orange starfish grazed along the rocks among gray-blue barnacles. In the deeper water an ugly sculpin fish, mottled in shades of muddy brown, lay finning in the sand. The crow held back from gulping it down, for the fish was full of bones that could lodge in her chicks’ throat.

She was seeking for soft young shrimp that might be trudging about in the shallows, but saw a cockle in the sand, its heart-shaped shell wide open. She grabbed it in her beak, but it snapped closed instantly.

So she hurled it against a rock until the shell shattered. Then she held the cockle under one talon while she pulled the sweet meat free with her beak.

Suddenly the carrion crow felt a cool touch, a wind that hinted at winter, and looked up in alarm, ruffling her feathers. She cawed in warning to others of her kind, though the beach was empty, and then peered about, her black eyes blinking as she searched for the source of her fear.

There was a shape above her, hiding beneath a twisted pine on a craggy ledge. It was not moving. It was large and white of skin, much like the wyrmlings that the crow sometimes saw marching along the ridge in the predawn. But it was ill-shaped, and though it had sockets for eyes, she saw nothing in its eye holes but empty shadows.

Suddenly the bloated figure dropped, its ugly white skin deflating, like a bubble in the water that has popped. In that instant, a shadow blurred toward her, and the crow recognized the source of her fear. . . .

Crull-maldor lunged from the shadows, abandoning her cloak of glory, her malevolent spirit but a darker shade among the morning shadows, and she seized the crow. She did not grab it with physical hands, did not rend it with teeth or fingers. Instead, she took it with her mind and her will, forcing her spirit into the tiny shell of its body, grasping hold of its consciousness.

Almost, Crull-maldor could imagine the voice of her ancient master Yultonkin warning, “Do not be too eager to seize the mind of a bird, for birds are prey to many, to the hawk and coyote, the bobcat and the mink, and if you should die while your two minds are joined, you may never be able to return to your flesh.”

So once she had seized control of the bird’s mind, Crull-maldor blinked, peering about for signs of danger, looking out from the eyes of the crow.

The world was distorted. The crow’s eyes were set upon the side of its head, and so it had a vast field of vision, and it could focus with only one eye at a time. The crow saw a wider spectrum of colors than Crull-maldor could with her own eyes. The crow saw the blacks and whites and reds that a wyrmling can see, but it also saw greens and blues and yellows, and everything had a crystalline clarity that Crull-maldor envied.

So Crull-maldor scanned for danger.

The beach was a wasteland, rocky and uninviting. A few huge walruses could be seen in the distance, surfing in upon some waves to spend the day swatting at sand flies on the beach. But there was little else. Few gulls. No hawks or foxes.

The lich had little to fear in the way of predators, she knew. The powerful spells that let her cling to life allowed her to exist only by siphoning off spiritual energy from creatures around her, and as she drew off that energy, the plants and animals around her weakened and succumbed. Most of the Northern Wastes were barren of life not because they were infertile, but because the presence of her kind drew so much from the land. There were no fine trees here anymore, and fewer herds of caribou and musk oxen than there had once been. Crull-maldor and her disciples had sucked the life from such creatures long ago. Now the lifeless land left her weak. Nearly all that survived within fifty miles of here was a few tenacious gorse bushes, insects, and the larger creatures that haunted the beaches.

Now comfortable, Crull-maldor gobbled the tender yellow innards of the cockle in one swallow. It tasted of sand and shell and salt. The savor was not altogether pleasing, but she would need sustenance this day.

The carrion crow leapt into the air, then flew up into the pines. Crull-maldor loved the sense of freedom that came with flying.

The bird was eager to return to its nest, regurgitate the cockle into the mouth of her babes. But Crull-maldor wrestled for control, forbidding it.

It was a struggle, a constant struggle, to take control of living things. Even after a hundred and eighty-two years of practicing the skill, Crull-maldor found her hold upon this beast to be tenuous.

Yet she held on to the crow with her mind. Seizing it with claw and talons would not have been half so cruel, for the crow ached to return to its nest.

As the sun rose, a luminous pearl climbing up from the sea, the carrion crow found itself leaping into the air, and flying out over the waters to the south.

Crull-maldor dominated the crow completely now, and peered out through its eyes, scanning the distant horizon for ships.

All that she saw were a few large wyrmling fishing vessels, their square sails the color of blood.

The crow would tire and falter long before it reached the distant shore, some two hundred miles south, Crull-maldor knew. When it did, Crull-maldor would let it fall and drown. Until then, she felt the exhilaration of flight. . . .

Such was her lot, day after endless day. There is a price to be paid for working in the service of evil, and the lich lord Crull-maldor was paying it. She was too powerful in the ways of magic for others to kill. Indeed, she had mastered dark magics known to no one else. Thus, she held the exalted position of Grand Wizard of the Wyrmling Hordes, and was far too dangerous for her political rivals to want around. So one hundred and eighty-seven years ago, the emperor Zul-torac had “promoted” her, sending her to lead the garrison at the wyrmling fortress in the Great Wastes of the North.

As such, it was her duty to protect this land from intrusion, to keep the humans from ever returning. Her armies occupied the wastes, and it was her job to feed and clothe them. Thus, her hunting parties scoured the lands in the far north hunting for caribou, seals, and great white bears. Her fishermen plied the coastal waters, taking the great serpentine leviathans that chased schools of fish to the north each summer.

She also commanded scores of miners and workers: smiths to forge weapons, armorers to carve mail from the bones of world wyrms, sorcerers to manufacture goods that could be used as tribute to the empire— cloaks of glory that would let a lich walk in the sun, artificial wings, and wight wombs to shelter and nourish the spirits of the newly dead.

But though Crull-maldor was Lord of the Northern Wastes, and thus had an exalted title and rank, hers was an appointment that would take her nowhere. She had no opportunity for advancement, no hopes of ever returning to the great fortress at Rugassa. Serving well at her post would earn her no reward. She had been disposed of utterly, and forgotten.

In more ways than one, she was the living dead.

Yet always there was the hope that the emperor Zul-torac would fall from grace, and that the great Creator—Despair—would need someone to replace him. Crull-maldor knew that it would happen eventually, and in that moment, if all went well, Despair would remember Crull-maldor’s name. It was only a matter of time, but Crull-maldor lived in hopes of that moment.

Thus, she did her master’s bidding.

By night the wyrmlings of her garrison would usher out into the wastes, keeping watch over the ocean shores lest a cohort of humans try to settle. Theirs was a futile watch, for it had been fifty-eight years since a human had been seen.

By day, while her wyrmlings toiled, Crull-maldor kept her own watch.

She climbed higher into the air. The seas were glassy calm for as far as the crow’s sharp eyes could perceive.

Killer whales were spouting as they herded a school of salmon along, and a few gulls rode the calm waters. Crull-maldor spotted a young leviathan undulating over the waves. Nothing else moved.

There were no humans riding on the waters.

But the lich had more than one reason for riding this crow. Crull-maldor was seeking to extend her skills, to learn to ride in the minds of creatures perfectly.

She wanted to learn not only to control others, but to avoid detection while doing it.

In particular, some who were strong in arcane powers would be able to detect her presence. Her ancient nemesis, the emperor, was always wary, always watching.

Someday, she thought, I will ride a crow into the southern lands, and there I will spy upon my enemies.

Each day she risked it. Each day she grew in skill. Yet each day she was rebuffed.

So now she blanked out her mind, seeking to hide her thoughts, her intent, and concentrated simply on the mechanics of flight: flapping the crow’s wings, breathing steadily, ignoring hunger and thirst.

More than an hour into the flight Crull-maldor was attacked.

For those who had the ears to hear, a high-pitched growl of warning, like the snarl of a jaguar, sounded in alarm in the spirit world. At the cry, thousands of other voices rose up, iterating the same warning, as an army of liches went on the defensive. The emperor’s minions struck out blindly, sending thousands of spirit darts that rose up from the southern horizon, each a fiery nimbus that streaked through the sky like ball lightning, hissing and crackling, each discernible only to the eyes of Crull-maldor’s spirit.

One dart struck, and the crow’s wings cramped. Dazed by the attack, the bird fainted. As the crow plummeted toward the sea, Crull-maldor fought for control, flapping furiously.

Distantly, Crull-maldor heard Zul-torac’s simpering laugh. The emperor never tired of his petty games.

The emperor was jealous of Crull-maldor’s powers, her ability to “ride” others, to project her thoughts into the minds of lesser creatures. He was also afraid of her.

Each day, Crull-maldor tested his strength—as she ranged farther and farther across the waters. Each day, she drew a little closer before one of his spies discovered her.

Crull-maldor fought to still the crow’s wings, let them catch the air. She soared for a moment as she strengthened her tenuous hold upon the bird.

“Be gone, little Crow Rider,” the emperor whispered to Crull-maldor’s spirit. “Go find yourself a statue to defecate on. You may never return. You may never again lay your eyes upon the mainland.”

“Every man’s days are numbered, my emperor,” Crull-maldor shot back, “even yours. Especially yours!”

The wind was wet and heavy under the crow’s wings, making flight a labor. The bird regained consciousness, and began to flap with difficulty as Crull-maldor gave it its head.

The lich waited to hear more of her old enemy’s banter. Perhaps he would send another hail of spirit missiles, hoping to strike down her mount, hoping that the crow would drown while Crull-maldor’s spirit was still harnessed to the beast. But there was an unaccustomed silence.

Suddenly the crow spotted something in the heavens: a bright light, like a new moon glowing above.

Crull-maldor wondered if it was some new form of attack, and the crow slowed on the wing, cocked its head to the left to peer upward, and soared for a moment.

The orb grew in brilliance and expanded as it rushed toward the earth. The crow’s heart beat wildly, and Crull-maldor loosed her hold enough to let the crow wheel and head inland.

In seconds the orb filled the heavens, and Crull-maldor gazed up in wonder.

She saw a world falling toward her, vast and beautiful. Brilliant white clouds swirled over a cerulean sea. There was a vast red continent—a desert, she suspected, and white-capped mountains. Still the world plummeted toward her, growing in her field of view.

It’s like a falling star, Crull-maldor thought, one that will crush the whole world! What a beautiful way to die.

She spotted rivers running like veins of silver through greenest jade, and saw vast forests of emerald and jasper.

Then the world struck, and tumult filled the skies.

The crow cawed and flapped wildly, its heart pounding, but there was no physical blow, no massive assault of rock hurtling down from the heavens.

Instead, Crull-maldor felt energy sizzling through her as bolts of static lightning suddenly roared through the heavens. Atoms fell in a cold drizzle, pounding through her head and back, as if to force the crow down into a watery grave. Eerie lights blazed in the heavens, pinwheels of white fire, and a mist exploded up from the sea.

Then the new world stopped falling, and every atom locked into place.

Something slammed into the crow, a shock more mental than physical, and it began dropping toward the water. The pain of the blow fogged Crull-maldor’s eyes, and for a moment she fought to see. Crull-maldor seized control of the small animal, steadied its wings, and went into a blind glide.

Then it seemed as if a film fell away from her vision, and a new world was revealed: ships plied the waters below her, fishing vessels bobbing on the sea as fishermen threw their nets, schooners racing south with sails full of wind. Even from a distance, Crull-maldor recognized the forms of humans.

Dozens of vessels spread out along the coast in every direction, and off to her left a city sprawled along the arms of a bay. Where once there had been nothing but rocks and scree scattered over the barrens, now there were vast fields and forests in the distance.

Crull-maldor fought down mounting excitement.

Somehow two worlds had collided. She’d seen a world falling from the heavens. In an instant everything had changed in ways she’d never imagined.

The barrens were now filled with people, with life—life that would sustain her, make her strong. To her right, she spotted more cities all along the coast. The humans were vast in number. She guessed that hundreds of thousands now lived in the Northern Wastes. Maybe millions, she realized.

Yet as wondrous as this all seemed, as she flew along Crull-maldor had a second insight: all morning long she had been struggling to retain control of her crow. Now, she flew steadily, strongly, and hardly even noticed the crow’s struggle to escape her grasp.

I have greater power in this new world, Crull-maldor realized.

Crull-maldor could not yet guess what had wrought such a mighty change, but she planned to find out.

She turned the crow, went riding on the morning thermals toward her fortress to the north. She would need to consult the elders in the City of the Dead.

3

RAIN IN THE DARKNESS

It takes a strong man to do what must be done, regardless of how unpleasant the deed might be. As a Walkin, I expect you to be forever strong.

—Baron Owen Walkin

Rain turned into iron that day. While some in her family seemed content to just sit and wallow in despair, Rain vowed to survive this disaster. So she went to work.

She helped carry her aunt Della up the ridge before the flood took the Hacker River Valley; then she spent the rest of the morning doing what she could to make the children comfortable.

First she found some shelter beneath an exposed cliff near a streamlet where the grass was thick enough for a bed. She helped lay the family’s blankets on the wet ground, and then tried to start a fire.

This turned out to be no easy task, for kelp and coral mingled among plants on the ground and seawater had soaked everything. So Rain took some of the children to find dead branches in a ravine up among the red-rock, but found more sea urchins and brightly colored anemones than good dry wood.

Still, she pulled off the bark from some sticks, exposing the dry pith. Soon a wan blaze sputtered in the open air.

In no time at all the children ran about and began to gather food. They found lobsters and eels lying on the ground, with octopuses and halibut—rare treasures from the sea.

These they cooked above the fire, making the biggest feast that Rain could recall having eaten in many years.

With his belly filled, her father Owen went out to explore. Like everyone else, he felt strangely exhausted, and walked with less energy than a man twice his age.

Something has happened to us, Rain thought. Some sort of wizardry has sapped our vitality.

Rain felt so weary that she feared that if she stopped moving, she might just lie down and die. They all felt so.

Rain’s aunt Della said it best when she woke from her faint. Rain asked, “How do you feel?”

Rain’s mother Greta had offered, “It’s okay to say it. You feel like cow shit. We all feel that way.”

But Della, never one to be outdone, countered, “No, I feel like cow shit that’s been trampled on by the rest of the herd.”

Then she just lay in the shadows, the sweet grass for her bed, and asked, “What happened?”

Rain delighted in saying, “Nothing much. Half of Landesfallen has sunk into the sea, flooding everything, and we managed to drag your lazy carcass up the cliff. I was sure that you were faking, just trying to get out of work. Oh, and for some reason, there are starfish and crabs and kelp growing everywhere, and Sir Borenson turned into a giant eight feet tall— with horns.”

Della propped herself up on an elbow and peered around, looking at the growths of coral clinging to the rocks above her. The Borenson family sat in a little knot, about a hundred yards away, hovering around Erin.

“Is that girl dead?” Della asked.

Rain nodded, and a look of dread crossed Della’s face. She hadn’t asked about her own children. “Did any of ours. . . ?”

“No,” Greta answered, “thank the Powers.”

Della began asking questions, the same questions that everyone else had. What happened? How could this happen? What shall we do?

Rain had no answers. The flood could be explained easily enough by an earthquake. But the change to Sir Borenson? The strange tornadoes of light?

Her mind revolted from wondering or worrying about it.

Instead she watched the Borensons, her heart aching for them. She longed to go to Draken, put her arms around him and comfort him. But she dared not do it in front of his father and mother, particularly that father, now that he had changed into something . . . monstrous.

Her face reddened, and she looked away.

She couldn’t look at Borenson without feeling guilty. He’d said that they’d stolen cherries, and it was true. The children in her family had gone out in the early mornings, rampaging through the trees, filling their bellies.

The Walkins had done their best to hide it even from Draken. Rain had begged her parents to make her brothers and sisters stop, but Rain’s father had downplayed the deed, saying that the children’s need for food outweighed Borenson’s rights as a landowner.

At least Rain had been able to keep the children out of the Borenson’s garden, though the neighbors’ gardens hadn’t fared as well.

We are thieves, she thought. Borenson was right. But me and my family will be thieves no more.

Today, making such a vow was easy, she knew. There was no one to steal from, nothing to take.

But winter was coming, and her family would be forced to find shelter somewhere upriver, in a town. Hard times would surely follow. What would they do then?

When Owen Walkin came back from his little scouting trip, the only report that he could muster was “There’s a whole lot of fish and whatnot on the other side of the hill.”

He knelt on the ground. His face looked gray and weathered in the morning sun, and his eyes were dazed. “What do you figure happened?” he asked no one in particular, as if perhaps the Walkin clan had somehow managed to answer the riddle in his absence. “I mean, I mean nothing adds right. The great wave could be explained, but . . . the fish on dry ground . . . and what happened to Draken’s dad?”

He was still in shock.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll figure everything out.”

Owen put his head in his hands, shook it. He peered up at his brothers and his sons. “I’ve been thinking. Everyone down in Sweetgrass got washed away. Everyone in the whole valley got washed away. . . .”

“Yes?” his brother said.

“They should be floating to the surface soon,” Owen said meaningfully. Then he added, “We should be the first to the harvest. . . .”

The idea sickened Rain. She wasn’t a grave robber. She’d been raised as a proper lady of the court. Ever since Warlord Grunswallen had Rain as his bed servant, her family’s estate had been falling endlessly.

Her father and his brothers had waylaid Grunswallen in the streets, leaving him in a bloody heap.

The whole family had fled their homes that day, taking what riches they could. Three months of travel got them out of the country. The family hadn’t had enough gold to buy passage to Landesfallen, but her father had come up with it somehow.

Rain dared not ask where he’d stolen the money. Hopefully, no one had died for it.

Petty theft had become a way of life; all of the younger children in the clan were doing it. But robbing from the dead?

What I was, she thought, I am no more. And I do not like what I am becoming.

Rain felt unclean, and remaining in her father’s presence made her feel even filthier. She got up and walked over to the Borenson family.

She felt like a traitor by doing so, as if she was switching camps.

When she reached the Borensons, she stopped for an instant and hugged Draken, wrapping one arm around his back and giving him a squeeze. She dared not show more affection openly.

The giant, Sir Borenson, stood talking softly, his voice a deep rumble, like distant thunder. She peered up at him, at the nubs of horns above his temples. He hardly looked human.

If anyone can understand how people can change, Rain thought, he should be able to.

Draken’s mother Myrrima smiled at her. “So,” she said, as if some mystery had been solved at long last, “you’re the reason that Draken has taken up ‘hunting’ so suddenly. I thought that there might be more to it than a taste for burrow bear.”

“Yes, milady,” Rain said, giving a small curtsy. She was a proper lady of the court after all.

“No need to curtsy here,” Myrrima said. “My husband is a baron over nothing in Landesfallen.”

The family was standing in a cluster, though they had moved a few paces away from Erin’s body. No one spoke for a long moment. Instead, they stood with heads hanging, deep in thought, and Rain realized that she had broken in on a family council.

She waited for someone to ask her the inevitable question “What do you think happened?,” but no one did.

“Okay then,” Sir Borenson said. “Now that we’re settled, I’ll head inland to search for survivors, and Draken can go seaward.” He did not say it, but Myrrima would obviously stay here with their daughters.

“How long will you be gone?” Myrrima asked.

“As long as it takes,” Borenson said. “If we find anyone who is hurt or in need, we’ll take care of them as best that we can. But it might be a while before we can make it back to camp.”

Myrrima listened to his words, worry evident in the creases on her face. “I’ll keep a fire going.”

Rain felt glad to hear of their quest. She cringed at the thought that some poor child, cold and broken, might be washed up along the shore. With the fury of the flood, it seemed a vain hope that anyone might have escaped, but it was a hope that she had to cling to.

The group broke as Sir Borenson and his wife went off to speak in private. Rain took that moment to stop and hold Draken’s hand. She stood gazing into his dark eyes.

“My father will be heading toward the coast, too,” she said, realizing that she would have to warn her father, let him know that he should couch his pilfering from the dead as a rescue mission.

“I’ll be glad for the company,” Draken said.

For nearly two hours now her clan had left Draken’s family alone, giving them time and space to grieve for little Erin. Rain had been reticent to get close.

She almost asked Draken, “What do you think happened?” But the words died on her tongue. Her head was hurting from wondering so much, and she knew that he couldn’t possibly have an answer. Indeed, at any moment, she expected him to ask the question.

But he never did. He merely stood, gazing into her eyes.

Suddenly she understood. “You know what happened! You know why there are fish on dry ground!”

He squeezed her hands, looked toward her family. “I have a guess. . . .”

“What is it?” she demanded.

“I can’t say. I am honor-bound not to speak of it. Someday, when we’re married, perhaps. . . .”

Rain understood secrets. Draken had his secrets, she had hers.

“When we’re man and wife,” she said, “I want no secrets between us.”

She clung to his hand as if she were drowning. She knew that she’d have to reveal her own secrets to him someday. How could she tell him what Warlord Grunswallen had forced her to do?

Draken nodded. Rain glanced back toward her father’s camp; her father, Owen, rose from a crouch, along with his brother Colm.

She excused herself from Draken’s presence and warned her father of the Borensons’ intentions.

Moments later, Sir Borenson and most of the other men set out from camp, splitting off in two directions. For long minutes Rain stood watching Draken as he trundled away.

I’ll wait for him, she thought. I’ll make my bed near the Borensons, so that I’ll awaken when he returns.

Late that night Sir Borenson came stumbling in to camp, closer to dawn than to midnight. Myrrima had been awake all night, thinking about the implications of the great change that had occurred.

Her husband had told her little before he hurried off on his rescue mission. He’d told her how he had merged with another man in the binding of the worlds, but he had cut the conversation short when Rain entered their camp.

So when he returned that night she asked, “Why don’t you tell me what you are afraid to say in front of the others?” Myrrima studied his face by starlight, waiting for an answer, but the giant only hesitated, searching for the right words.

The night was comfortless. Stars glimmered cold and dim through a strange misty haze. All afternoon, Myrrima had preened Erin’s body for burial—washing her face, primping her clothes, braiding her hair in corn rows. It was the custom back in her homeland in Heredon to stay up at night with the newly dead, for their spirits often hovered nearby on that first few nights, and one could hope for one last glimpse during the long vigils, one last chance to say good-bye.

Borenson had been gone for hours, scrabbling along the shore, calling for survivors. When he’d walked into camp, he reported, “Mill Creek is gone, washed away.” His voice was hoarse from overuse, from calling out.

He sat beside her little fire, his head hanging, gazing into the ash-covered embers, their dull red light too dim to reach his face.

Myrrima had anticipated that the town would be gone, but she suspected that her husband was weighed down by some greater worry. He had secrets, and she knew from the way that he got up and began to pace that he was fighting to find the right words to tell her.

Myrrima had knelt all evening with Sage, and together they wept. They’d mourned Erin and all of the friends and neighbors that they had known. They’d considered their lot and mourned for themselves.

She worried for her oldest daughter, Talon, who was off in Mystarria, and for Fallion, Jaz, and Rhianna—whom she loved as much as if they were her own offspring. The suspicion that she had lost Talon and the others was growing minute by minute.

I lost more than a child today, Myrrima knew. She dared not say it yet, but she feared that she had lost a husband.

Oh, when she looked at the giant, she imagined that she could see the old Borenson. His features were there, somehow hidden in all of that mass of flesh, the way that one can sometimes look at a knot of wood on a tree and imagine seeing a half-hidden face in it.

But she estimated him to be over seven and a half feet tall now, and he could not weigh less than four hundred and fifty pounds.

She could never be intimate with such a monster, not like a husband and wife should be. They could never be tender or close.

She suspected that Borenson had something to tell her, something that would cause her more grief, so Myrrima asked the question that was most upon her mind. “Why don’t you tell me what you were afraid to say in front of the others?”

“Where do you want me to start?” Borenson begged, shrugging. It was a peculiar gesture, one that he used to signify that he would hold nothing back.

“Start with your life on that shadow world,” Myrrima said. “You had a family, a wife, I suppose?”

“Her name is Gatunyea,” Borenson said in that deep voice. It was as if a bull were trying to approximate human speech. “We lived in what you would call Rofehavan, in the north of Mystarria, in a city called Luciare. She bore me two fine sons, Arad and Destonarry, and I have a daughter close to Talon’s age named Tholna.”

Myrrima sighed. There was so much that she didn’t understand. If two men had merged into one, why did he appear here and not in Mystarria, or somewhere between the two lands? “I see. . . . Do you think that they are still alive?”

“I’m alive,” he said. It was all the argument he could give. “You’re alive. Our children survived. Things have changed in the binding, but I suspect that my . . . other family is still out there.”

Now Myrrima spoke the hardest words that had ever come from her mouth. “You need to go to them. You’ll need to find out if this wife of yours survived. If she is alive, she and the children will be beside themselves. You must reassure them.”

They both knew what Myrrima was really saying. He was a giant now, and he was no longer suited to be her husband. There was a chance that he still had a wife out there. It only made sense that he go to her.

“Myrrima,” Borenson said with infinite sadness.

“We both know the truth,” Myrrima said, struggling to be strong, to hide even a hint of the loss she felt. “You have changed in the binding. Though I’ll love you forever, some things are impossible.”

She could not make love to such a man.

“You know me,” Borenson said. “I may look like a monster on the outside, but I am the same man who has slept at your side these past twenty years. My love for you—”

“You have another woman, one who must be sick with grief. Your children must be wondering where you are. . . .”

Borenson hung his head, reached out and stroked her cheek with one finger.

He would have to sail back to Rofehavan, she knew. But that was easier said than done. They had no boat. Perhaps they could buy passage on a ship, but they had nothing to buy passage with. Their only shelter for the night was a bed of ferns at the base of a cliff.

A great feast they’d made in the midafternoon, but by morning all of the sea life would be going to rot.

Myrrima had to wonder how they’d survive the coming week, much less make it back to Rofehavan.

She didn’t even want to think about going back.

Myrrima had always felt so strong, but something was wrong. Her muscles ached as if from fatigue, a weariness that made her fear sleeping, lest she never wake again. To stand or move took immense effort. The numbing weariness wasn’t just upon her, but upon her children and the Walkins, too—seemingly everyone but Borenson.

“It could be months or years before I make it back to Rofehavan,” Borenson confirmed. “All of Garion’s Port is drowned. A ship might come in time, but even if it does, I may not be able to buy passage. . . .” He took a deep breath, as if to broach a topic that he dared not discuss, and then released it again, his head shaking from side to side.

All of his old mannerisms are there, Myrrima realized. It is as if my husband is wearing different flesh.

“Say what is on your mind,” Myrrima begged.

“I want you and the children to come back to Rofehavan with me,” Borenson said. “I dare not leave you here without food or a home—” Myrrima began to object, for even if she wanted to go back to Rofehavan, finding a ship might be impossible.

“Hear me out!” Borenson begged. Myrrima fell silent as he struggled for words.

“I have been thinking,” he said, “for long hours. Not everything is clear to me yet, but much is clear.

“I believe that Fallion bound two worlds together as an experiment, to see what would happen in such an event, and I believe that his experiment failed.

“We could be in grave danger, more danger than you—or Fallion—yet know.

“You wonder why I have joined with my shadow self and you have not? I have an answer: On our former world there were millions and millions of people, strewn all across Rofehavan and Indhopal, Inkarra and Landesfallen. But on the shadow world where I came from, humankind was all but wiped out. There were only forty thousand of us, living in one vast enclave upon a mountain deep within the borders of what you call Mystarria. Our enemies had all but destroyed us.

“I think that you did not join with your shadow self,” Borenson said softly, “because you had no shadow upon that world to join with.”

Dead, Myrrima realized. On that world my shadow self was dead.

It made sense. She felt more dead than alive right now. The strange exhaustion that had come upon her . . .

“On the shadow world,” Borenson continued, “there are creatures called wyrmlings. They are giants, larger than I am. They’re fierce, and they eat human flesh. They’ve hunted mankind nearly to extinction.”

“Are there other creatures from that world that we do not have on ours?” Myrrima asked.

“A few,” Borenson said. “The birds and squirrels are different, as you will see.”

“Are there other monsters besides wyrmlings—things that we should be warned about?”

The giant shook his head no. “The wyrmlings,” Borenson continued, “number in the millions. They hide in great tunnels and warrens beneath the ground by day, and only come out to hunt by night. A large wyrmling stands up to nine feet tall and can weigh seven hundred pounds.”

“So they are like the arr, or like sea apes?” Myrrima asked. The arr was a race of giants that had once lived in the mountains throughout Rofehavan. They were like apes in form, but much larger.

“They look more like men,” Borenson said. “Legend says that they once were men, but they began to breed themselves for size and strength, just as my people do. In time they changed.”

Myrrima shook her head. “How can that be?”

“Are not the beagle and the mastiff both brothers to the wolf?” Borenson asked. “Do not the pony and the warhorse both come from the same stock? It is the same with people. Some say that humans and wyrmlings share common ancestors, but I do not believe it. When you see one, you will know. They have no love or compassion. All that is in them is fierceness and hunger.

“They live for one reason, hoping for only one reward,” Borenson said, and he paused for a moment, as if unsure is he should speak more, “they hope that their evil deeds will be great enough so that a locus may feed upon their souls.”

Myrrima gasped. A locus was a parasite, a being that fed upon men’s spirits. Once it attached to a human host, it controlled him. It rode him the way that a man rides a horse, turning him this way and that. A man who had lost his soul to a locus became a crazed thing, ruthless and vile.

“They want this?” Myrrima asked. It was a horror beyond imagination.

Borenson frowned, as if searching for the right words. “They have been trained to want it, for generation after generation. They are taught to believe that the soul of a man dies shortly after the death of the body, and that his spirit is like a mist that fades and dissipates. They have been taught to believe that only a locus is immortal, and if it feeds upon them, consumes their spirit, it will live on.”

Borenson paused. A star shot overhead, and in the distance out among the rocks a herd of rangits suddenly began to bound away, startled by some noise, thumping as their huge bodies landed upon the compact ground. Cicadas were buzzing up among the trees. Myrrima wondered where Draken was, when he would return. The night was half gone, and dawn was mere hours away. She hunched up a little, hugging herself for warmth. It was a summer night, but dampness made it feel cool.

She sniffed. The Walkins’ fire just up the trail had gone out, leaving only the scent of ash. The night flowers of a nearby bush had opened so that the shadows under a ledge were filled with a wonder: white petals like wild peas that glowed with their own inner light; the shadows were filled with numinous stars.

A great uneasiness began to assail Myrrima. If what Borenson said was true, then a new horror had arisen in Rofehavan, something so monstrous that it boggled the mind.

She could not quite fathom it. She could not imagine people engaging in a breeding program that spanned generations. The mind revolted at the thought. One could not help whom one fell in love with. Her son was proof of that. Draken was hardly more than a boy, but he had found this girl Rain, and he wanted to marry her. He seemed totally devoted to her.

She tried to adjust her thinking, and the dangers presented by the wyrmlings seemed clear.

Yet Borenson spoke of returning to Rofehavan, and of taking her family back there.

“You want to go and fight!” she said.

The giant set his jaw, the way her husband used to do when he was determined upon some course. “I have to go back and fight—and you must come with me!”

Myrrima wanted to argue against his plan. She’d fought in wars before. She’d fought Raj Ahten’s armies, and had slain reavers in battle. She was the one who had slain a Darkling Glory at Castle Sylvarresta.

Sir Borenson had been a mighty warrior, as had she. But they’d both lost their endowments long ago.

“No,” she said. “We’re too old for another war. You once told me yourself that you would never fight again.”

“We don’t always join the battle,” Borenson said. “Sometimes the battle joins us.”

“We don’t even know that the wyrmlings are alive,” Myrrima objected.

“You have sea anemones on the rocks above your head and crabs walking on dry ground,” Borenson said. “How can you doubt that other creatures from my world— the wyrmlings— survived?”

A new realization struck Myrrima. “You think that the wyrmlings will come here?”

“Eventually,” Borenson said. “They will come. Right now, it’s nighttime. The wyrmlings’ home is spread across the hills near Mystarria’s old border with Longmot, while fortresses dot the land. The wyrmlings have come out of their lairs for the night—and discovered a new wonder: humans, small folk the size of you and Sage. What do you think those monsters will do with them?”

The very notion struck Myrrima with horror. Yes, she sympathized with the plight of her people. But she also recognized that there was no saving those folks tonight. Whatever happened to them would happen. It would take months for them to travel Rofehavan, even if she decided to go.

Every instinct warned against it. She was a mother now, with children to protect.

“I can only hope that the folk of Mystarria will band together, form some sort of resistance.”

“They might,” Borenson said. “But I don’t know if they stand a chance against the wyrmlings. You see: The magics of the shadow world worked differently from ours. The wyrmling lords are not . . . entirely alive. The wyrmling lords are wights. Their lord, the Dread Emperor Zul-torac, is no more substantial than a mist.”

Myrrima wondered at this. If wyrmlings were ruled by wraiths . . .

“We had no magic to fight them,” Borenson said. “The wraiths flee from the sun and the wyrmlings make their home in lightless holes; our men feared to seek out their lairs, for even if by the power of our arms we could hope to win against the wyrmling hordes, we could not fight their dark masters.”

“Couldn’t you cast enchantments upon your weapons?”

“There are no water wizards in their world,” Borenson said. “With cold steel we might be able to wound a wight, but that was the best that we could hope for, and even in wounding one, we would most likely lose our own lives.”

“I see,” Myrrima said. She was a wizardess, Water’s Warrior.

“We can hike from here down to Garion’s Port,” Borenson said. “There are lots of traders plying the waters this time of summer. One will find us.”

“Perhaps,” Myrrima said, “but where will they land? Garion’s Port is submerged. All of the landmarks that showed where it was are underwater.”

“Still, the ships will come,” Borenson said. “With any luck we can hail one, buy passage.”

“We have no money.”

“Look at me,” Borenson said. He lifted her chin, forcing her to behold his might. “I can do the work of four men. You can work, and Draken can too. I suspect that we can buy passage with our sweat. Maybe not on the first ship that passes, but eventually. . . .”

Myrrima wondered. If a ship came from Rofehavan, it would be looking for a port so that it could sell its goods. Its captain would be hoping to take on food and stores, not hire a family of destitute beggars to go limping home after a profitless voyage.

Still, Borenson voiced his hopes. “This flood may have wrecked the coasts, but ships that were on the high seas will still be intact. With any luck, we can reach Mystarria before the winter storms.”

“Two months, or three, with any luck,” Myrrima agreed. “It might take that long to hail a passing ship. We’ll have to hope that some captain will have mercy on us.”

“I did not say that the trip would be easy,” Borenson agreed, “but staying here would be no easier. We have no crops, no land, no seeds or implements to till the ground. Summer is half over. We’ll be eating wild rangit for the winter, you’ll be sewing clothes from burrow-bear skins, using nothing more than a sharp bone for a needle.

“At least if we reach Rofehavan, we can hope to find a port somewhere. We can live like civilized folk.”

Myrrima didn’t like feeling cornered. She wanted to make a rational choice, not get bullied into some fool-headed course. “Even if we make it,” Myrrima said, “what do you hope to find? If what you say is true, then all of Rofehavan will be overrun. Here we may struggle to eat, but at least we won’t have to fight hordes of wyrmlings. Our folk haven’t the strength to fight such monsters, not without blood metal.”

Blood metal was forged to make forcibles, the magical branding irons that Myrrima’s people used to transfer attributes—brawn, grace, speed. Each branding iron had a rune forged upon it that controlled the attribute it could harness. As a vassal was branded, the forcible drew out the desired attribute, so that when the iron next touched a lord, the lord would gain the vassal’s power. The spell lasted so long as both of them remained alive, and the forcible was destroyed in the process.

Thus a lord who had taken endowments from his vassals became more than a man, for he might have the strength of ten men, the speed of five, the intelligence of three, the sight of five, and so on. Using such implements, Sir Borenson had become one of the greatest warriors of his generation.

But the blood-metal mines in Kartish had played out ten years back. There were no runelords of great stature anymore.

“Oh, there will be plenty of blood metal,” Borenson assured Myrrima. “Upon the shadow world, folk had no use for it. Rune magic as we use it was unknown. But there is a large hill near Caer Luciare, a hill riddled with blood metal. And if there is one hill, there may be others.

“Let us hope that the folk of Rofehavan will put the metal to good use—that by the time we reach those green shores, the wyrmlings are subdued.”

Myrrima’s mouth dropped. It seemed to her that the world could not get more twisted, more turned upside down.

She saw clearly now why he wanted her to return to Mystarria: to fight a great war.

Home, she thought. There is land aplenty back in Mystarria. All we have to do is take it back from the monsters.

“I’ll come,” Myrrima said, though she could not help but worry.

Borenson said softly, “Good, I would appreciate it if you would tell the children and the Walkins of our plan. They might take the news better from you.”

“All right,” Myrrima said. But she couldn’t just leave it at that. “You need to understand: I will enchant weapons for you, but I will not let you take my children into war.”

Borenson said, “Draken is old enough to make up his own mind. Unless I miss my guess, I can’t talk him out of marrying that slip of a girl, and if he so chooses, you won’t be able to stop him from going to war.”

He was right, of course. She couldn’t stop Draken, and she wouldn’t stop her husband.

Borenson peered to the west, filled with nervous energy, as if eager to be on his way across the ocean. He looked off into the distance, where the shadows of trees and brush melded with the shadows of red-rock. “I wonder what is keeping Draken?”

“Fatigue,” Myrrima guessed. “We’re all so tired. I suspect that they wandered as far as they could, and decided to settle for the night.”

“I’d better go and find him,” Borenson said, “make sure that he’s okay.”

“In the dark?”

“I’ve hunted by starlight all of my life,” Borenson said. “Or at least Aaath Ulber has. I can no longer sleep by night: that’s when the wyrmlings come out.”

In a moment he was off, trundling along a winding trail that dipped and rose. The trail was made by game, mostly—wild rangits and hunting cats. But men used it from time to time, too. Several times a week she had seen horsemen up here. During the rainy season, the ridge trail wasn’t as muddy as the old river road.

So she watched him trudge away, a lumpy malformed monstrosity fading into the darkness.

I’ll follow him to Mystarria, she thought, but if I have my way, I won’t be going to fight any wyrmling horde. I’ll go to win my husband back. I’ll go to find Fallion and plead with him to unbind the worlds.

Rain lay in the deep grass beneath the shadows of the cliff, as silent as the boulders around her. She’d heard Borenson trudging home in the dark, tramping through the dry leaves that she’d swept onto the trail.

She didn’t understand everything that the giant had said, but she understood enough. The Borensons would be going away.

Rain chewed her lip, thought about her own family. Her father had killed men for her benefit. He’d stolen and lied to bring her family here, where they might have some hope of living in peace and safety.

She tried to imagine what it would be like to sail back to Mystarria with the Borensons, and she couldn’t envision it. It would be a betrayal to her father, to people who had sacrificed everything for her honor.

There is only one thing to do, she decided. I’ll have to convince Draken to stay here, with me.

After Borenson left, Myrrima tried to sleep. There was a patch of sandy ground among the rocks, where a little sweet clover grew. Myrrima had gathered a few ferns and laid the leaves out as a cushion. That was all that the family had for a bed, and she huddled with Sage for warmth, their bodies spooned together. The child felt so cold.

Today was supposed to be the High Summer Festival, and because it was high summer, Myrrima didn’t feel much need for a blanket. Yet sleep failed her.

The Walkins were all spread out in a separate camp, perhaps a hundred yards up the trail. While their fire died, Myrrima lay like a dazed bird, her mind racing from all that Borenson had told her.

While she rested there, eyes hardly blinking, she saw a girl tiptoeing down the trail, making not a sound. A mouse would have been hard-pressed to walk as quietly.

Rain is coming to see Draken, Myrrima thought. She can’t bear to leave him alone.

Somehow, the realization gladdened her. Draken had lost so much already, Myrrima hoped that he would find a lasting love.

A cool wind blew over her, and Myrrima felt a sudden chill. It was cold, so cold.

Just as quickly, she realized that it wasn’t the wind. The cold seemed to be inside her—reaching down to the bone. And the young woman coming toward her made too little sound. She was leaping over rocks, marching through deep grass and dry leaves.

Myrrima recognized the young woman now. It was Erin. It was the shade of her daughter, glowing softly, as if with some inner light. Yet her form was translucent.

Myrrima pushed herself up in a sitting position, heart racing. To be touched by a shade might mean her death. Myrrima’s every instinct was to run.

Yet she longed to see her child one last time.

“Ware the shade!” someone in the Walkin clan hissed in the distance. It was an ancient warning.

Erin came, passing near Myrrima’s bed. Her feet moved as if she was walking, but her body only glided, as if carried on the wind. She was dressed just as she had been in death.

She went past the edge of camp, over to her own still body, and stood for a moment, looking down, regarding it calmly.

Myrrima dared hope that the shade might notice her. Very often, the dead seemed only vaguely aware of the living, so Myrrima didn’t expect much. But a loving glance would have warmed Myrrima’s heart. A smile of recognition would have been a lifelong treasure.

The spirit knelt above her body, reached down a finger, and stroked her own lifeless chin.

Myrrima found tears streaming down her cheeks; she let out a sob, and hurriedly shook Sage, waking her, so that she too might see her sister one last time.

Then Erin turned and peered straight into Myrrima’s eyes. Instantly the child drew close, covering eighty feet in the flutter of a heartbeat, and she did something that no shade on Myrrima’s world had ever done before: Erin spoke, her child’s voice slicing through the air like a rapier. “What are you doing here, Mother? You should go to the tree.”

Myrrima’s throat caught. She was too astonished to speak. But Sage had risen up on one elbow, and she spoke: “What tree?”

Erin looked to Sage. “The Earth King’s tree: one of you should go there before night falls again. Before night falls forever.”

A sob escaped Myrrima’s throat. She longed to touch her daughter. “I love you.”

Erin smiled. “I know. You mustn’t worry. All of the neighbors are here. They’re having a wonderful festival!” She pointed east, up toward Mill Creek.

As if carried on the wind, Myrrima suddenly heard the sounds of the fair: a joyful pandemonium. Minstrels strummed lutes and played the pipes and banged on drums. She heard the young men cheer uproariously as a lance cracked in a joust. There were children screaming with wild glee. In all her life, Myrrima had never heard such sounds of joy.

Then Erin peered at her again, and said, “Go to the Earth King’s tree!”

With that, the shade dissipated like a morning mist burning beneath the sun. Yet though Erin’s form was gone, Myrrima still felt the chill of the netherworld.

Sage climbed to her feet and stood peering off into the east. “Why does she want us to go to the Earth King’s tree?”

Myrrima had no idea. She knew where the tree lay, of course. It was an oak tree—the only one in all of Landesfallen, up on Bald Hill, past the town of Fossil. Legend said that before the Earth King died, he’d traveled the world, seeking out people, putting them under his protective spell.

When he’d reached Bald Hill, he was an old man, failing in health. So he’d used the last of his powers to transform himself into a tree. Thus he stood there still, in the form of an oak, watching over the world.

“He’s coming back!” Sage suddenly exulted as an odd notion took her. “The Earth King is returning!”

Myrrima stood, studied her daughter’s clear face in the starlight, saw wonder in Sage’s eyes.

“He can’t be,” Myrrima said calmly. “Gaborn is dead.”

But Sage was too enamored of the idea. “Not dead,” she said, “transformed. He’s a wizard of wondrous power. Don’t you see? He knew that his life was failing, so he turned himself into a tree, preserving himself, until now—when we need him most! Oh, Mother, don’t you see?”

Myrrima wondered. She was a water wizardess, and often during the changing of the tides, she felt the water’s pull. If she were to give in to it, go down into the river and let herself float out to sea, in time she would grow gills and fins, become an undine. And as the centuries slowly turned, she would lose her human form altogether.

But could she gain her old form back? She had never heard of such thing, never heard of an undine or fish that resumed its human shape.

Gaborn had been the Earth King, the most powerful servant of the earth in all of known history. If he’d had the power to transform himself into a tree, then perhaps he could indeed turn himself back.

“It’s more than twenty miles from here to Bald Hill,” Myrrima said. “I don’t think I have the energy to walk that far in a single day.”

Sage said matter-of-factly, “Father can do it.”

4

THE WHITE SHIP

The generous man is beloved of his family and of all those who know him.

—Emir Owatt of Tuulistan

Borenson loped for seventeen miles in the darkness before he found Draken. The lad was with Baron Walkin and one of his brothers.

The giant reached them just at the crack of dawn, as the sun rose up in the east as pretty as a rose. Wrens flitted about in the brush beside the water, while borrowbirds whistled their strange ululating calls from the white gum trees.

The three had stopped at a huge bend in the channel where the ruins of a ship had been cast up among the dead trees and bracken. The ship must have been taking on stores at Garion’s Port. The hull was more than breached—the whole ship had cracked in half. The men had begun salvage efforts, pulling a few casks and crates from the water around the wreckage. But when they had grown tired, they had then set camp by the shore.

Borenson found Draken groggily nursing a small fire while Baron Walkin peered out into the water and his brother slept beneath a bit of tarp. Borenson jutted his chin toward the wreck and asked Draken, “What’s the report?”

“The only people that we found were floaters. Other than that, all we really found was this wreck.”

Borenson was saddened to hear that there were no survivors, but he hadn’t expected better news. So his mind turned to more immediate concerns. “Anything of value on it?”

“Not much. There were some casks of ale floating about, and bales of linen. We found a few empty barrels floating high. We got those. As for the ship, we thought that the brass fittings on the masts and whatnot might be of worth. But after our long walk, we grew too tired to try to haul it all home. We thought that we might use the empty barrels and some other flotsam to make a raft, and then pole it upstream with the tide.”

Borenson walked over to Baron Walkin to get a better view of the wreck. Dead fish floated in the still water beside the ship’s hull, their white bellies distended and bloating. After a moment, Borenson recognized that something large and hairy floating against the wreck was a goat.

“Do you think we could use the wood from the ship to make a smaller vessel?” Borenson asked.

Baron Walkin peered up at him curiously. “There’s not enough left of it, even if we had the right tools. Besides, if we did manage to get something floating, where would you sail to?”

“Haven’t decided,” Borenson averred.

“I’m afraid there’s not much here to salvage,” Baron Walkin said. “There are a few more casks floating inside the wreck. If you dive up into it, you can see them, but it’s hard work, and risky, trying to get them out. Broken beams, shifting tides. A man takes his life into his hands every time he dives into that mess.”

“Have you seen any other wrecks?” Borenson asked, “More lumber?”

“About two miles farther on the sea meets the land,” Baron Walkin said. “That’s as far as we got. The whole coast is submerged.”

In his mind’s eye Borenson consulted a map. The Hacker River wound through the hills here, but gently turned. That meant that most of the wreckage from the tidal wave should wash up south of the new beachfront—perhaps only five or six miles to his south.

“You didn’t try searching for Garion’s Port?”

“We were too tired,” Draken said, stepping up beside the two. “The land is pretty rugged. The water just sort of comes in and surrounds the trees, and the rocks are something terrible.”

Borenson bit his lip. Draken looked done-in, too tired to go for a rigorous hike. But Borenson felt optimistic. He’d searched in vain through the night for survivors. The tidal wave had just been too brutal, but he hoped to find a couple more wrecks like this one—perhaps with enough material to patch together a real ship.

“You gents see if you can get those barrels pulled out by noon,” he said. “I’m going to go down the coast a bit to see what I can see. . . .”

Baron Walkin peered up at Borenson, gave him a warning look. “Don’t order me about,” he said. “I’m not your manservant. I’m not even your friend. My title—such as it is—is every bit as vaunted as your own.”

Walkin wasn’t a big man. Years of hard work and little food had robbed the muscle from his frame, and Borenson had a hard time trying to see him as anything more than a starveling. But the baron held himself proudly in the manner of the noble-born.

But nobility was a questionable thing. Sir Borenson had made himself a noble. He had won his title through his own deeds, while Owen Walkin had gained his title by birthright. Such men weren’t always as valiant or upright as their progenitors.

This man believes that I owe him an apology, Borenson realized, and perhaps he should have one. After all, our children do want to marry.

“Forgive me,” Borenson said. “If anything, your title is of more worth than mine, for yours was a prosperous barony, whereas I was made lord of a swamp—one where the midges were as large as sparrows and the mosquitoes often carried off lambs whole.”

Baron Walkin laughed at that, then eyed Borenson for one long moment, as if trying to decide whether Borenson was sincere, and at last stuck out his hand.

They clasped wrists and shook, as befitted lords of Mystarria. “I’ll forgive your insults, if you’ll forgive my children for eating your cherries.”

“I’d say we’re even,” Borenson laughed, and the baron guffawed.

With that, Borenson went striding off.

Draken watched the giant lumber away, and fought down a knot of anger. In the past few weeks, he had gotten to know Baron Walkin well, and he liked him. Walkin was a wise man, hospitable. It was true that the family had fallen on hard times, and Draken pitied the family. But Walkin had a way of looking into a man’s eye and recognizing his mood that seemed almost mystical, and though he had little in the way of worldly goods, he was as generous as he could be.

“What do you think he’s after?” Draken asked as the giant loped away, following an old rangit trail.

“He’s heading for Rofehavan, unless I miss my guess,” Walkin said, then peered at Draken meaningfully. “You’ll be welcome to stay and make your home with us, if you prefer.”

Draken thought for a long moment. He was in love with Rain, that much he knew. In the past six weeks, he hadn’t had a day when he’d gone without seeing her. Already he missed the touch of her skin, and he longed to kiss her.

But he was torn. He had already guessed what had happened. Fallion had bound two worlds. Draken didn’t know what that meant precisely. He didn’t know why his father had changed, but he knew that something was terribly wrong. The binding should not have brought such a mess.

Draken had been trained from childhood to be a soldier. He knew how to keep secrets. And Fallion’s whereabouts and mission were a family secret that he hadn’t even shared with Rain. So he had to go on pretending that he didn’t know what was wrong with their world.

But he was worried for Fallion, and he felt torn between the desire to go to Rofehavan and learn what had happened and to stay here with Rain.

“I don’t know what to do,” Draken admitted.

“Let your heart guide you,” Baron Walkin suggested.

Draken thought for a long minute. “I want to stay with you, then.”

The baron waited and asked, “Why?”

Draken tried to find the right words. “I can’t abide the way my father spoke to Rain. He owes her an apology, but he’ll never offer it. He won’t apologize to a girl. He’s a hard man. All that he ever taught me was how to kill. That’s all that he knows how to do. He knows nothing of kindness, or love.”

“He taught you how to raise crops, didn’t he? How to milk a cow? It seems to me that he taught you more than war.”

Draken just glared.

“You’re being unfair,” the baron said. “You’re angry with him because you think he will try to keep you from the girl you love. That’s natural for a boy your age. You’re getting ready to leave home, start off on your own. When that happens, your mind sometimes plays tricks on you.

“The truth is that your father is raising you the best way that he knows how,” Baron Walkin said. “Your father was a soldier. From all that I’ve heard, he was the best in the realm.”

“He killed over two thousand innocent men, women, and children,” Draken said. “Did you know that?”

“At his king’s command,” Walkin said. “He did it, and he is not proud of it. If you think that he is, you misjudge him.”

“I’m not trying to accuse him,” Draken said, “I’m just saying: A foul deed like that takes its toll on a man. It leaves a stain on his soul. My father knows nothing about gentleness anymore, nothing about mercy or love.

“In the past few months, I’ve begun to realize that about him. I don’t want to be around him, for I fear that I might be forced to become like him.”

Baron Walkin shook his head. “Your father taught you to be a soldier. Every father teaches his son the craft he knows. He is an expert at warfare, and that craft can serve you well.

“But don’t think that your father doesn’t know a thing or two about love. He may be hard on the outside, but there’s kindness in him. You accuse him of killing innocents, and that he did. But killing can be an act of love, too.

“He killed the Dedicates of Raj Ahten, but he did it to serve his king and his people, and to protect the land that he loved.”

Draken glared. “From the time that I was a child—”

“You had to flee Mystarria with assassins on your tail,” the Baron objected. “What loving father wouldn’t teach a child all that he needed to know in order to stay alive?

“And once you were six, you went into the Gwardeen and served your country as a graak rider. You’ve hardly seen your father over the past ten years.

“Take some time to get to know him again,” the baron suggested. “That’s all that I’m saying.”

Draken peered into the baron’s brown eyes. The man’s long hair was getting thin on top, and a wisp of it blew across his leathery face.

“You surprise me,” Draken said. “How can you look past his appearance so easily?”

“Every man has a bit of monster inside him,” Walkin said, flashing a weak grin.

In the distance, Draken could still see the giant loping along, leaping over a fallen tree.

Perhaps the baron is right, Draken thought.

He’d only been home from his service among the Gwardeen for a few months, and the truth was that he’d felt glad of the change. From the time that he was a child, he’d lived his life as a soldier. Now he wanted to rest from it, settle down.

Draken felt so unsure of himself, so uprooted. He wasn’t certain that he had really ever understood his father, and right now, he felt certain that he did not know him at all—not since the binding of the worlds. That hulking brute rushing down the trail, that monster, was not really Sir Borenson.

Of that Draken felt strangely certain.

Borenson’s long legs took him swiftly to the beach two miles inland, where he stood for a moment on a tall promontory and gazed out over the ocean. The waters were dark today, full of red mud and silt. The sun shone on them dully, so that the waves glinted like beaten copper.

But he did not see the ocean, did not focus on the white gulls and cormorants out in the water. Instead he saw a wall. The ocean was a wall.

It’s a low wall, he thought, but it’s thousands of miles across, and I have to find a way over it.

He turned and followed a line of small hills.

As he loped along, he found wildlife aplenty. The rangits were out in force, grazing beneath the shadows of the trees, and as he approached they would leap up and go bounding through the tall grass.

The borrowbirds flashed like snow amid tree branches, their white bellies and wings drawing the eye, while their pink and blue crests gave them just a hint of color. They landed among the wild plum trees at the shaded creeks and squawked and ratcheted as they squabbled over fruit.

Giant dragonflies in shades of crimson, blue, and forest green buzzed about by the tens of thousands, and tiny red day bats that had lived among the stonewoods until yesterday now flitted about in the shadows of the blue gums.

The sun beat down mercilessly, spoiling the dead fish and kelp that lay all about.

So for a long hour Borenson hiked, sometimes struggling to climb rocky outcroppings where perhaps no man had ever set foot, and other times wading between hills in water as quiet as a lagoon.

He’d seen how Draken had turned his back on him there in camp. The boy had been leaning toward Baron Walkin.

They’re getting close, Borenson realized. Draken feels more for him than he does for me.

Borenson felt that he was losing his son.

In his mind, he replayed an incident from yesterday. Rain Walkin had been up, stirring the cooking fire. The other Walkin children had been scurrying about, hunting for any fish or crabs that might be worth scavenging.

Borenson had nodded cordially to the waif Rain, doing his damnedest to smile. But all he had accomplished was a slight opening of the mouth— enough to flash his overlarge canines.

The girl had frowned, looking as if she might cry.

I must have looked like a wolf baring its fangs, Borenson thought.

“Good day, child,” he’d said, trying to sound gentle. But his voice was too much like a growl. Rain had turned away, looking as if she wanted to flee.

Borenson had felt too weary to cater to her feelings.

I’ll have to apologize to that girl for calling her a tart, he thought. The prospect didn’t please him. He hadn’t decided completely whether she was worth an apology.

Besides, he wasn’t sure if she would accept it.

There are many kinds of walls, Borenson thought. Kings build walls around their cities, people build walls around their hearts.

As a soldier, Borenson knew how to storm a castle, how to send sappers in to dig beneath it, or send runelords to scale it.

But how do you scale walls built of anger and apathy, the walls that a son builds around his heart?

When my family looks at me now, they only see a monster, he realized.

Borenson’s size, the bony protuberances on his forehead, the strangeness of his features and his voice—all worked against him.

My wife is already distancing herself from me. I would never have thought that Myrrima would be that way.

Children will shriek when they see me.

Even Erin recoiled from me as she died, he thought. That was the worst of it. In the end I could give her no comfort, for she saw only the outside of me.

They don’t realize that on the inside I am still the same man I always was.

At least Borenson hoped that he was the same.

Borenson felt alone. He worried that he could no longer fit in among his people. He wondered what would happen when he sailed into Internook or Toom. How would people receive him?

With rocks and sticks, most likely, he thought.

But then it occurred to him that he might not be unique. Perhaps others from Caer Luciare had merged with their shadow selves. Men like him might be scattered all across Mystarria. . . .

He sighed, wondering what to do, and trudged over a ridge, seeking footholds among the rocks and bracken. Dead crabs and fish still littered the ground, but these had been left from the binding, not from the tidal wave.

The flood had been violent, of course. The tidal wave had uprooted huge trees and sent them hurtling in its path, and floating debris had been carried along and piled high—kelp, brush, buildings, dead animals and trees—creating something of a dark reef for as far as the eye could see. In some places, the flotsam rose up in a huge tangled mass of logs and ruin.

Gulls and terns could be seen out perching on the debris, as if silently guarding it.

Most of the flood victims would be caught in that tangle, he imagined, and in many places the tangle was a hundred feet high, and it was hundreds of yards from shore.

He had not gone five miles when he knew that he had found some wreckage that had washed inland from Garion’s Port. He climbed a tall rocky hill and scaled a pinnacle of weathered red stone, then stood looking down for a long moment.

The blue gum forest was not particularly thick, and now it was all submerged. Trees stood in water as if they had all gone a-wading. Amid some trees he spotted a little wreckage—an old woman floating belly-up, her skin appearing as white as a wyrmling’s hide.

Not far away was a bit of an oxcart, and just beyond that floated the ox that might have been pulling it.

The woman looked naked, much as many of the folks last night had been when he searched upstream. At first Borenson had wondered if perhaps they’d all been caught bathing. But apparently the violence of the flood had a way of stripping the soggy clothes from a corpse.

He waded out into water that was chest-deep, until he reached the old woman. Then he checked her for valuables. The woman’s pants still clung to one leg, and he pulled them free. They looked too small for Myrrima, but Sage might need them. He found a ring on the woman, too—gold with a big black opal in it.

“Forgive me,” he whispered as he wrenched it from her finger. “My family has need.”

He didn’t know how much it might be worth, but he hoped that it might buy passage if he managed to hail a ship.

Then he pushed the woman back out into the waves, in the manner of his folk, giving her to the sea, and waded back to shore.

He continued south for a mile, scavenging as he went, trying to get as close to the huge mounds of wreckage as possible.

Garion’s Port had been among the largest cities in all of Landesfallen. It was a popular place for ships to take on stores. The supplies were typically packed in waterproof barrels and then sealed. Borenson hoped that a few barrels might have survived intact, but he saw nothing like that.

Upon a hill he thought he spied the hull of a ship, and so he stripped and swam out to it, nearly a mile, but it turned out to be nothing more than the curved trunk of a gum tree floating in the water. He returned to shore feeling downcast.

A few times he called out, trying to hail any survivors, but his throat was too far gone for much shouting. He saw a few floaters—mostly children and animals—and he wondered why he did not see more.

He lost hope, but kept on trudging doggedly, until the coast suddenly veered back to the east. He stopped atop a small knoll and stood for a moment, staring breathlessly out into the water, not believing his luck.

There, not three hundred yards from shore, a white ship lay amid a tangle of trees, looking as if some vast giant had just lifted it out of the sea and set it there.

It is too whole to be a wreck, Borenson thought. Someone has beached it.

“Hallooo aboard!” he cried. “Halloo in there!” He waved his arms and stood on the hill for a long moment, waiting for someone to come topside and give answer.

The wind was still, the water as calm and flat as a pond.

Perhaps they’re scavenging, he thought.

Borenson took off his armor and clothes, and then laid them on the bank. He swam through the water until he reached the pile of flotsam. He climbed up on the logs, fully expecting that at any moment someone from the ship would pop a head up and find him standing there naked.

But as he neared the ship, he called again, and no answer came.

His prize was just dancing on the water, light as a swan. The prow had beached upon some logs, but other than that, the ship looked whole. There were no sails, but that could be fixed. The Walkins had been sleeping beneath a bit of sail just up the beach.

Borenson climbed over the railing, walked around. The vessel was small indeed, no more than thirty-five feet in length.

It was a small trader by the looks of it, or perhaps a large fishing vessel, the kind used for plying the waters along the coast—not one of the big ships meant for crossing the ocean. It looked odd, for the ship was all gleaming white, reflecting the sunlight.

Borenson appraised it.

This ship is new-made! It hasn’t even been painted properly. There is only an undercoat!

He could not believe that his fortune would hold.

He climbed down belowdecks.

The ship had two cabins—one for a captain, the other for a crew of four—but Borenson found that the captain’s quarters were not made for a man of his proportions. With only a six-foot ceiling, he could not enter without crouching. He would never have fit on the slat of board that made the bed.

Much better was the hold. The entry was wide enough so that he could climb in easily. The ship had a deep belly, with a wide berth for cargo, and Borenson imagined that he and a dozen more people could make do inside.

But the vessel hadn’t escaped the flood completely free of damage. He found water seeping into the hull, and the wood was warped. The ship had been cast into a rock perhaps, or hurled into a tree.

He studied the breach. The seep was not bad, he decided. The ship had apparently been in dry dock when the flood hit, probably up on a cradle, waiting for a new coat of paint. Because it was so light, without crew or cargo, it must have floated high in the water, rising above the flood.

The interior of the vessel had been pitched, and that stopped most of the leakage, but the truth was that when any ship took its maiden voyage, it always had a few cracks. Given a couple of days the wood would swell, and most likely the hull would seal itself. If it didn’t, Borenson decided, it wouldn’t take much work to pass a few buckets of water topside each day, to drain the bilge.

When he was done inspecting, Borenson felt so moved that he dropped to his knees to thank the Powers.

I have a ship! he told himself. I have a ship!

5

A NIGHT IN THE CITY OF THE DEAD

The Great Wyrm provides for all your wants: meat to cure the pangs of hunger, ale to ease a troubled mind, the wine of violence in the arena to entertain. All of these are found in the city. There is no need to ever leave.

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

Crull-maldor peered down from a spy hole in the wyrmling’s citadel at the Fortress of the Northern Wastes. A band of human warriors two hundred strong had encircled her watchtower, and now they stood below, blowing battle horns, bellowing war cries, and shaking their fists at the tower as they encouraged themselves for battle.

These were small men by wyrmling standards. They were not the well-bred warriors of Caer Luciare that she’d known in her world. These small folk wore armor made of seal skins, gray with white speckles, and had bright hair that was braided and slung over their backs. They bore axes and spears for battle, and carried crude wooden shields. They had dyed their faces with pig’s blood, hoping to look frightening.

Crull-maldor fought back the urge to laugh. No doubt they thought they looked fierce. Perhaps they even were fierce. But they were small, like the feral humans that had gone to war with the wyrmlings three thousand years ago.

She admired their fortitude. No doubt they had seen the giant footprints of the wyrmlings and had some inkling as to what they were up against.

But none of the wyrmlings had shown themselves. Sundown was long hours away. It was late afternoon, and the dust particles in the air dyed the world in shades of blood. The sun cut like a rapier, leaving stark shadows upon the world.

The enormous stone pinnacle of the fortress’s watchtower, standing three hundred feet tall and crafted from slabs of rock forty feet thick, drew the small humans like flies to a carcass.

They had been coming all morning—first children eager to explore this strange new landmark, then worried parents and siblings who were wondering what had befallen the children. Now an angry mob of warriors prepared for battle.

Human settlements surrounded the towers. No doubt by nightfall the small folk would begin to muster a huge army.

Still, the warriors below did not want to wait for reinforcements. So they sang their war songs, gave their cheers, lit their torches, and rushed into the entrance.

At Crull-maldor’s back, the wyrmling Lord Aggrez asked, “What is your will, milady?”

Wyrmling tactics in this instance had been established thousands of years ago. The tunnels at the mouth of the cave wound down and down. No doubt the humans imagined that it led straight up to the citadel, but they would have to travel miles into the wyrmling labyrinth to find the passage that led up.

Along the way, they would have to pass numerous spy holes and kill holes, ranging through darkness that was nearly complete, down long rocky tunnels lit only by glow worms.

“Let them get a mile into the labyrinth,” Crull-maldor said, “until they find the bones and offal from their children. While they are stricken with fear and rage, drop the portcullises behind them, so that none may ever return. I myself will lead the attack.”

Crull-maldor peered at the lord. Aggrez was a huge wyrmling—nine feet in height and more than four feet across the shoulder. His skin was as white as chalk, and his pupils were like pits gouged into ice. He frowned, his lips hiding his overlarge canines, and Crull-maldor felt surprised to see disappointment on his face. “What troubles you?”

“It has been long since my troops have engaged the humans. They were hoping for better sport.”

Twenty thousand warriors Crull-maldor had under her command, and it had been too long since they had fought real battles, and too long since they had eaten anything but walrus and seal meat.

“You want them for the arena?” Crull-maldor asked.

“A few.”

“Very well,” Crull-maldor said. “Let us test their best and bravest.”

Though Crull-maldor did not lead the way, she followed. This would be her people’s first real battle against a new enemy, and though the humans were small, she knew that even something as small as a wolverine could be astonishingly vicious.

So she went down into the tunnels, to the ambush site. The metal tang of blood was strong in the air, and filled the hallway. Dozens of the small folk had already been carried down to this point, deep under the fortress. Their offal lay on the floor—piles of gut and stomachs, kidneys and lungs, hair and skulls.

The humans had been harvested, their glands taken for elixirs, the meat for food, the skins as trophies. Not much was left.

Now Crull-maldor chose a small contingent of warriors to lead the attack, and they waited just down the corridor from the ambush site, silent as stone.

It took the human warriors nearly half an hour to arrive. They bore bright torches. Their leader—a fierce-looking man with golden rings in his hair and a helm that sported the horn of a wild ox poking forward— found the bones of his children.

Some of the men behind him cursed or cried out in anguish, but their leader just squatted over the pile of human refuse, his face looking grim and determined. His face was dyed in blood, and his hair was red, and torchlight danced in his eyes.

Quietly, each wyrmling raised a small iron spike and plunged it into his neck. The spikes, coated with glandular extracts harvested from the dead, filled the wyrmlings with bloodlust, so that their hearts pounded and their strength increased threefold.

The wyrmlings roared like beasts, and the rattling of chains in the distance gave answer. The portcullises slammed into the floor behind the humans, metal against stone, with a boom like a drum that shook the world.

Half a dozen wyrmling warriors led the attack, charging into the human hosts, bearing long meat hooks to pull the men close and short blades to eviscerate them. They hurtled heedlessly into battle.

The human leader did not look dismayed. He merely hurled his torch forward a dozen paces to get better light; in a single fluid move he reached back and pulled off his shield.

The wyrmlings roared like wild beasts; one shouted “Fresh meat!” as he attacked.

Instantly the human warlord snarled, and suddenly he blurred into motion. Crull-maldor had never seen anything like it. One instant the human was standing, and the next his whole body blurred, faster than a fly’s wings, and he danced into the wyrmling troops, his fierce war ax flashing faster than the eye could see.

Lord Aggrez went down, lopped off at the knee, as the warrior blurred past, slashing throats and taking off arms. In the space of a heartbeat he passed the wyrmling troops and raced toward Crull-maldor.

The human warriors at Caer Luciare had always been smaller than wyrmlings, yet what they lacked in size they made up for in speed. But this small warrior was stunning; this went far beyond anything in Crull-maldor’s experience.

The women and children had not shown such speed. There was only one explanation—magic, spells of a kind that Crull-maldor had never imagined.

The warrior raced toward her, but seemed not to see her. Her body was no more substantial than a fog, and she wore clothing only for the convenience of her fleshly cohorts—a hooded red cloak made of wispy material with the weight and consistency of a cobweb.

Thus her foe did not see her at first, but was peering up at the great wyrmlings behind her. In the shadows of the tunnel, she was all but invisible.

The humans’ champion bellowed—fear widening his eyes while his mouth opened in a primal scream. He charged toward the wyrmlings behind her, and suddenly his breath fogged, and terror filled his eyes.

He felt the cold that surrounded Crull-maldor. It stole his breath and made the blood freeze in his veins.

He shouted one single word of warning to the warriors behind, and then Crull-maldor touched him on the forehead with a single finger.

Her touch froze the warrior in his tracks, robbed him of thought. He dropped like a piece of meat, though she had brushed him only lightly.

The rest of the human warriors backed away in fear, nearly in a rout. Crull-maldor knelt over her fallen foe for a moment, sniffed at his weapons. There was no enchantment upon them, no fell curses.

She rose up and went into battle, floating toward the rest of the warriors. None raced with their leader’s speed. None bellowed war cries or tried to challenge her.

They were defenseless against her kind.

Crull-maldor was the most powerful lich lord in her world; she feared nothing.

She did not wade into battle on legs, but instead moved by will alone.

Thus she drove into ranks of the small humans. They screamed and sought to escape. One man tried to drive her back with a torch, and the webbing of her garment caught fire. Thus, for a few brief moments she was wreathed in smoke and flame, and all of the humans saw the hunger in her dead face and the horror of her eyes, and they wailed in despair.

Then, invisible without her cloak, Crull-maldor waded into the human troops and began to feed, drawing away the life force of those who tried to flee, or merely stunning those whose ferocity in battle proved that they would make good sport in the arena.

There were no more warriors like the mage that had confronted her. She found herself hoping for stronger resistance. She found herself longing for a war that promised great battles and glorious deeds, for only by distinguishing herself could she hope to gain the attention of Lady Despair, and thus perhaps win the throne.

But she was bitterly disappointed.

As the last human warrior crumpled to his knees and let out a mewling cry, like a child troubled by nightmares, Crull-maldor told herself: There are millions of humans in the barrens now. Perhaps among them I will find a worthy foe.

Her wyrmling troops feasted upon fresh man-flesh that evening, and then prepared a few captured humans for the arena, stripping them naked lest they have any concealed weapons.

That was when Crull-maldor found the markings upon the humans’ champion. His skin bore scars from a branding iron, and upon the warrior’s flesh she saw ancient glyphs, primal shapes that had formed the world from the beginning.

Crull-maldor studied a glyph—actually four glyphs all bound into a circle. The largest was the rune for might, but attached to it were other smaller glyphs—seize, confer, and bind.

The lich lord had never seen such scars before, but instinctively she knew what they meant. It was a spell of some nature, a type of parasitical magic, which caused attributes from one being to be imbued upon another.

This is a new form of magic, she realized, one with untold potential. She suspected that she could duplicate the spells, even improve upon them, if she knew more. With mounting excitement she pored over the champion’s other scars: speed, dance, resilience. Four types of runes were represented, and Crull-maldor immediately knew that she could devise others that the humans had not anticipated.

Suddenly, the humans and their new magic took on great import in her mind.

She did not know if she should reveal what she had found to the emperor. Perhaps he already knew about this strange magic. Perhaps he would never know—until after Crull-maldor had mastered it.

So far today, she had not heard from the emperor. Certainly he had witnessed the great change wrought upon the world. Other wyrmling fortresses would be reporting the sightings of humans.

But if things were amiss in the capitol at Rugassa, Crull-maldor had not been forewarned.

Probably, she thought, the emperor will not tell me anything. He hopes that I will fail, that I will embarrass myself, so that he will look better in return.

It had always been this way. Their rivalry had lasted for more than four hundred years.

But at the moment, Crull-maldor suspected that she had the upper hand.

I could just tell him that humans have come, she thought, and not warn him of the dangers of confronting them.

She liked that. A half-truth oft served better than a lie.

But she decided to wait. She didn’t need to report the incursion instantly.

Little of import happened that day. One of he wyrmling captains reported a strangeness: some of her subjects claimed to recall life on another world, the world that had fallen from above. They wished to leave the fortress, head south to their own homes.

Crull-maldor ordered that all such people be put to death. There was no escaping the wyrmling horde.

So she waited until after sundown, when the long shadows stretched into full darkness and bats began to weave about the citadel in their acrobatic hunt.

Stars glowered overhead, the fiery eyes of heaven, and a cool and salty breeze breathed over the land.

With the coming of night, the spirits of the land rose from their hiding places.

A second human army was gathering for the night, soldiers from far places riding horses to the towers. Crull-maldor did not want to leave her wyrmlings defenseless, yet she needed to gain information.

So while the armies began to surround her fortress, Crull-maldor dropped from the citadel and went floating beneath the starlight, weaving her way between boulders, drifting above the gorse and bracken.

Field mice felt the cold touch of her presence, and went hopping for their burrows.

Hares thumped their feet to warn their kind. Then they would either hold still, hoping that she passed, or race for the shelter of the gorse.

Nothing substantial had lived here—until today. Nothing substantial could have lived here. Crull-maldor had been cheating death for centuries, living as a shade, a creature that was nearly pure spirit. But to hold on to the spark of life, to stay in communion with the world of fleshy creatures, required tremendous power, power that could only be gained by drawing off the life force of others.

Thus, on a normal night, as she wound her way through the bracken, Crull-maldor would have touched a rabbit here, drained a bush there, or cut short the song a cricket as she passed.

She would have left a trail of death and silence in her wake. But tonight she felt sated, for she had fed upon the spirits of men.

Her mind was not upon the hunt for food that evening, but upon the hunt for information. Her eyes could see beyond the physical realm. Indeed, she was so far gone toward death that she could not easily perceive the physical world anymore, unless she happened to be riding in the mind of a crow or a wolf.

Now she passed through the wilds in a daze, as if moving through a dream.

More immediate, more real to her, were the perceptions of her spirit. She could see into the dead world easily, a world that had always been a mystery to mortals.

They lived here in the Northern Wastes, the dead did—in these so-called “barrens.” Most of the time, the dead prefer to isolate themselves from the living, for living men often hold powerful auras that confuse and trouble the dead.

So the dead had built cities that seemed to be sculpted from light and shadow. Great towers rose up all around her in shades that the mortal eye cannot see—the rose colors of dawn, the deepest purples of twilight, and shades of fire that no mortal can imagine.

Soaring arches spanned the streets, with flowering vines cascading from them, while great fountains spurted up in broad plazas that seemed to be paved with a pale mist.

What a living wyrmling imagined was only a barren waste was in fact the home to millions.

But tonight in the spirit world, much had changed. There had been one city here yestereve. Now Crull-maldor saw towers everywhere, rising above the plains. Hosts of human dead had come.

Their women shrieked for joy and children laughed, while minstrels played in far pavilions.

The spirits of the dead celebrated here, the shades of humans and wyrmlings mingling together, oblivious of the living world—just as the living world was oblivious of them.

So the lich lord wafted above streets of mellow haze, into the House of Light, and there came upon a great convocation of elders, mixed with scholars from the human world.

Crull-maldor did not see them with her physical eyes; instead she perceived their spirits, like spiny sea urchins created from light. Each spirit was a small round ball with thousands of white needle-like appendages that issued out in every direction.

Each spirit had the memory of its fleshly form draped over it like a cloak, showing dimly remembered exteriors. Thus, the balls of light hovered about inside the shells of wyrmling lords and men.

Crull-maldor went to the most glorious among them—a human woman who shone with tremendous brilliance, a symbol of her wisdom and power.

Then the lich lord seized the woman. Crull-maldor sent a tendril of light coiling out from her own spirit, and penetrated the woman’s field. The lich took the woman by the umbilicus and twisted, causing the woman untold pain.

Once again, Crull-maldor found the act to be surprisingly easy. A spiritual attack upon such a powerful being should normally have required great concentration. But now it felt like child’s play.

“Tell me what you know!” Crull-maldor demanded.

The woman shrieked, and the color of her spindles of light suddenly changed from bright white to a delicious deep red. She recoiled, and all of the tendrils around her nucleus shrank in on themselves, the way that the arms of sea anemone will do when something brushes against it.

“What would you have of me, great lord of the dead!” the woman cried. Her name was Endemeer, and she had once been a vaunted scholar.

“What has happened to my world?”

“A great sorcerer has come,” Endemeer said. “He has bound two worlds into one, two worlds that were but shadows of the one true world that existed at the beginning of time.

“He has bound flesh to flesh in those who live; and he has bound spirit to spirit among the dead. . . .”

Immediately Crull-maldor knew that the scholar spoke correctly. This world that she had said once existed, Crull-maldor had heard of it from some of the greater spirits she had tortured.

But until now, Crull-maldor had not believed in it. She had suspected that it was a place found only in one’s imagination.

It explained everything so simply, yet it had tremendous ramifications.

Crull-maldor had not yet revealed to the emperor her news about the humans in her land. She knew now that she could not hide the news. This great change impacted entire continents.

Humans are abroad in the land once again, Crull-maldor thought, and where there is conflict, there is also opportunity.

Crull-maldor immediately sent an alarm, a flash of thought to the emperor Zul-torac. Our wyrmling scouts have found humans in the Northern Wastes. They came with a great change that has twisted the earth.

The emperor sent back a terse reply, and she felt his thoughts crawling through her mind, seeking to infiltrate it. She set a barrier against them, so that he could not read her mind, and he replied. I know, fool! Deal with them.

His thoughts fled, dismissing her.

Crull-maldor grinned. As she had hoped, he had not had the foresight to tell her how to deal with them.

The scholar Endemeer whimpered and tried to escape Crull-maldor’s grasp. The lich lord merely held her, eager to wring more information from her.

“Tell me about the humans’ new magic, the glyph magic.”

Crull-maldor sent her own tendrils of light plunging deep into those of her captive. Each tendril of light was like a strand of human brain. It stored wisdom and memories. As Crull-maldor brushed against Endemeer, she glimpsed the memories stored upon Endemeer’s tendrils.

Grasping the ones that she wanted, Crull-maldor ripped the tendrils free. It was like tearing apart a human brain. The tendrils’ light immediately began to dim, so Crull-maldor shoved them into her own central bundle, transplanting the memories. By doing so she stole the spirit’s knowledge. It was a violation as reprehensible as rape, a type of murder.

So Crull-maldor hunched over her prey, ripping light from Endemeer and in the City of the Dead the lich lord discovered the deepest secrets of the runelords.