"We won t have time," Fallion said. "It might take days or weeks to teach him what he needs to know."
"Trust me," Lord Erringale said. "You two will have all of the time you need."
Fallion shook his head. "I can t walk that far. The pain is too great. Every muscle in my body is cramping."
"I ll help," Erringale said, and he went to the wagon and began to help Fallion down.
Rhianna wondered, What is Erringale plotting?
The Wizard Sisel strode forward a pace, his russet robes whispering in the dry grass, and peered north hungrily. So often, Rhianna had seen him with a serene smile on his face. She would have thought that nothing could remove it. But now he glared toward the skyline like one eager to do battle.
"I think that Erringale is right," the wizard said. "There are ways to resist evil without resorting to bloodshed. The time has come for me to deal with Vulgnash."
Vulgnash spotted his prey ahead, saw Fallion standing in a field near the tree line on a wooded hill, miles away.
Fallion was hunched over, arms folded over his stomach, in almost a fetal position. His face was gray and haggard from pain, and his hair was unkempt. The journey had taken its toll on him. He looked weaker than a kitten.
For the past half hour, Vulgnash had had endowments vectored to him-metabolism, sight. Vulgnash s endowments of sight were a marvelous thing. For ages, he d seen all of the world in shades of gray, with an occasional splash of red. He d never seen the world through a human s eyes.
But suddenly he could espy colors that he d never dreamed existed-skies of deepest blue and undiscovered stars of gold glimmering above, powdering the heavens.
He suspected that if he took a human body in the future, he might see colors even more vividly.
Never again, he thought, will I take a wyrmling s body. From now on, when I need to commandeer a new shell, I will always take a human form.
He could see other advantages. It wasn t just the sight. The human fliers, with their smaller weight, were faster than him.
Vulgnash hastened forward, wings flapping in a rush. He heard a throaty grooak, and peered back. The enormous graak had fallen far behind.
I need them not, he thought. The wyrmling warriors had their place. They could bind the prisoners once Vulgnash secured them.
Yet Vulgnash worried about a trap. He saw Fallion waiting in the grass ahead, but not the woman who had rescued him.
Even as he worried about her, she came swooping up over the hill, speeding toward him, faster than any falcon, her wings blurring.
She moved at a frightening pace. Before he realized it, she was overtaking him-two miles out, then one.
But Vulgnash had more than endowments to his credit. He stretched forth his hand and drew starlight from the sky. From horizon to horizon, darkness suddenly stretched, while a thin light whirled like a tornado out of the skies, and landed blazing hot in his palm.
When the darkness faded, he peered ahead, but saw no sign of Rhianna.
She has dived into the trees, Vulgnash reasoned. Smart girl.
He peered down and ahead, where a copse of elms rose beside a stream, their canopy of leaves shielding the ground from view.
He searched for signs of movement, hoping that she had veered into a tree, that its swaying branches would betray her.
But he saw nothing. Dimly, he became aware of shouting far behind. Wyrmlings were roaring frantically.
He craned his neck, looking back. The girl was behind him!
She redoubled her speed during that moment of darkness, he realized.
And now she was winging toward the giant graak, like a falcon to the nest of a dove.
Now we shall see how the wyrmling warriors fare! Vulgnash thought. He had hated bringing them. They and their mount only slowed him down. He longed to see them fail, these fierce champions rife with endowments, all under the protection of their master.
But Rhianna did not dare engage them. She flew straight toward their graak, hurtling in with an astonishing burst of speed, and then dropped as she neared. The warriors hurled battle darts.
She fell, dodging missiles, and the enormous black graak snapped at her as she passed.
Then Rhianna s wings unfolded and she was rising again.
Vulgnash saw a flash of silver as her blade struck the monster s right wing, slicing the leathery membrane between its bones.
The huge graak roared in pain; instantly it began to fall, unable to bear its weight. The graak dropped, flapping frantically, spinning out of control. Wyrmling warriors cried out and fought to hold on, though some tumbled from their mount, raining from the sky.
After downing the graak, Rhianna went soaring upward, wings flapping so quickly that she made a vertical climb.
The girl has learned to fly well in two days, Vulgnash realized, better than I would have imagined.
Some of that had to do with her endowments of wit, he suspected. She would learn much more quickly, when she recalled every twinge of every muscle.
Part of it was her small size. The large wings gave her greater lift than a wyrmling, and allowed for acrobatics that Vulgnash would never master.
But he suspected that there had to be more to it. The girl had tremendous reflexes. In part she might have been born with them, but they had also been trained through years of battle practice.
Yet she did not press the attack. She hurtled around him in a wide circle, and went winging off into the distance.
She fears me, Vulgnash suddenly realized. She is nothing.
She didn t dare get near him. She was hoping that he d give chase. She was only seeking to distract him, delay him.
He whirled and peered forward. Sure enough, Fallion and the others had fled the clearing and gone into the trees.
Vulgnash growled in frustration, and redoubled his speed, racing toward the meadow at the base of the hill.
As he neared, he spotted movement in the trees.
The Wizard Sisel hid there, between the boles of two mighty elms, with Fallion at his back.
The ground was clear beneath him, except for a carpet of desiccated leaves. The wizard raised his staff in hand and held it at one end, swinging it in great arcs like a club, muttering an incantation.
He hopes to cast a spell of some kind, Vulgnash realized, but Vulgnash had no fear. Vulgnash was under the Earth King s protection. If Sisel were going to attack, Vulgnash would have heard his master s warning.
The old wizard knew many tricks, but his spells were all about healing and protection. At the best, he might hope to avert Vulgnash s fireball.
Vulgnash glided toward the pair warily, like an eagle on the wing.
He could hear the wizard shouting his incantation:
Bright flows your blood.
And hale are your bones.
Your heart is no longer a heart of stone.
Light fills your eyes, and brightens your mind with longings common to all mankind.
Suddenly the wizard whirled and pointed his staff, and though Vulgnash was still a quarter of a mile away, too far to hurl a fireball, the effects of Sisel s spell were devastating.
A force smashed into him, like a powerful wave that smote him and washed through him. The blow was minor, not much greater than he d feel if a gust of wind hit him.
But in an instant, the world changed.
Vulgnash suddenly felt a powerful need for air.
In five thousand years, he had never drawn a single breath, and it was as if his body recognized this fact, and filled him with a singular craving.
At the same time, he was assailed by a consuming hunger. He had never eaten as humans do. He had always drawn his life force from others when the need arose. But instantly he realized that his belly seemed to be clinging to his backbone.
More than that, there was a tremendous pounding in his chest as his heart burst into motion, and every sense came alive. He felt warm wind streaming through his hair, and every follicle of it was alive. For the first time he tasted t
he smell of the earth-the rich humus of the forest nearby and the drying grasses of the fields below.
His own robes held the cloying scent of death, of decaying flesh, and he d never recognized his own reek.
A tremendous thirst overtook him, for he had never tasted water, and suddenly the mucus in his throat seemed drier than sand.
In shock, Vulgnash peered ahead and saw that the spell had cost the Wizard Sisel dearly. Where once his robes had been russet and burnt umber, the colors of dying leaves, suddenly they had gone as white as snow, while his beard and hair had turned to silver.
He now leaned on his staff, gasping, as if he had just run a tremendous race.
The pain that Vulgnash felt was more than he could bear. Vulgnash wailed in torment and lobbed the fireball from his hand, sent it careering toward the wizard. But he had thrown too soon. The fireball raced forward a hundred yards, then began to expand, growing larger and larger, and slowing with every second. By the time it reached the trees, it had become nothing more than a cloud of burning gas, and the wizard turned and fled, disappearing from sight.
Vulgnash went wheeling down to the earth, slamming into a tree, then falling in a tangle.
He hit the ground, and such an overwhelming feeling of illness coursed through him that he was reeling with pain.
I m alive! he realized. I m mortal.
He climbed to his knees and peered at his hands, as if he d never seen them before. There were holes in his arm where maggots had burrowed into his flesh, and everywhere that he had a hole, the pain was white-hot and magnificent.
Lying on his belly, Vulgnash collapsed among the dead leaves on the forest floor, smelling the rot of decomposing humus, the scent of mold and soil.
Blood had begun to flow from the wormholes in his arms, welling up unexpectedly.
Vulgnash folded his arms in close, and sat for a moment, rocking back and forth, mind racing.
I m mortal, he realized. I m undone.
His heart hammered with excitement; emotions that he d never felt before assailed him-dread, hopelessness, fatigue. He d never realized how powerful and incapacitating human emotions could be.
I m mortal.
It was like a slow poison.
I might live for a few years, he realized, but I will surely die.
In fact, he wasn t sure that he could live even a few hours more.
How old am I? he wondered. He had existed for five thousand years, given a semblance of life from the time that he was a stillborn child, strangled first, then stripped from his mother s womb.
No human lived so long, and indeed he had sent his consciousness through hundreds of corpses.
So if he had suffered a mortal s fate, he would have died of old age by now.
How old is the body I ve taken?
He did not know. He had taken the corpse from a tomb, where it had lain rotting. The hands looked old-with thick veins and dark patches of liver spots.
How had it died? Vulgnash wondered. There were no wounds upon the corpse, no gashes from an ax, no broken bones. Vulgnash had checked for such things before taking it.
Had it died of disease-a hacking cough, a weakness of the heart?
He had no way of knowing.
Whatever killed the previous owner could kill me, Vulgnash realized. I could die any second.
Few weapons had ever been formed that could slay a Knight Eternal. Now Vulgnash felt vulnerable.
A voice rang out from the trees. Vulgnash peered up, but could not find the source of it. It was as if the woods spoke to him, not some man. Yet it was a human voice, the crowing voice of the Wizard Sisel. "Vulgnash," he shouted. "How does it feel to be mortal?"
"Why?" Vulgnash screamed, peering this way and that, trying to find the source of the call. But all that he saw were the gray boles of trees, spotted with lichens and moss.
"You have taken countless lives," Sisel called. "And the thought occurred to me-how can he value that which he has never owned?"
Vulgnash tried to clear the phlegm from his throat, for it was thick and crusty. He wanted to shout some curse, but a great weariness was on him. He had not slept in days.
"So," Sisel said, "consider now your allegiance. You were a servant of death. Your masters fed you till you grew strong by consuming innocent souls.
"But think: there in that empire of death, what can they offer you now?
"I invite you to join us, to switch your allegiance. I can heal your wounds, help you."
There were no words to express Vulgnash s outrage. He knew curses that he could hurl, but they would do no good. He peered about frantically, searching for some sign of the wizard, but the woods were still and empty.
He peered up, realizing that the voice might have been coming from above.
At last, panting from weakness and despair, Vulgnash roared his defiance. "Never!" he cried. "I come for you, by all that is unholy I shall have you!"
Cramped with pain, Fallion Orden hugged Rhianna good-bye. They stood in the deep woods not two hundred yards from where Vulgnash roared, hidden by little more than the Wizard Sisel s spell. Behind Rhianna, a door to the netherworld yawned wide.
It was a solemn moment. Fallion did not know if he would ever see his friends again.
For her part, Rhianna stood before him, shaking, looking so weak that he thought she might swoon. All of her endowments had failed her. None gave her the strength for this moment.
"I love you," she said. "More than you can ever know."
Fallion hugged her hard. His body told him that he was being torn apart-that teeth were shattering in his head, that ears were being stripped into ragged bits, that skin was being pulled from his face by some brute who wielded powerful tongs.
But he also felt Rhianna s yielding flesh, and knew that her fierce love was true. That memory would have to suffice. It would have to be something he held on to in the weeks and years to come.
"I should have married you by now," Fallion told her. "I should never have waited, or entertained other thoughts. I should have seen that you were my destiny."
Rhianna wept bitter tears on his shoulder, and kissed him good-bye. It did not seem like a long kiss. Had she had a week to hold him, it could not have been long enough.
She has twenty endowments of metabolism, he realized. To her it seems long enough.
Grimacing in pain, Rhianna reached up and covered her belly with one hand.
"What s wrong?" he asked.
Rhianna shook her head in anguish, then apologized. "I think that some Darkling Glories just found my Dedicates."
There was such sorrow in her face that Fallion wished that he could take one more endowment of compassion, take upon himself all of her pain.
Talon stepped forward and hugged him briefly with one arm. She d taken the little girl from the wagon, and now held the sleeping child.
"At least we have saved something from this world," Fallion told her.
Daylan clapped him on the shoulder, and offered a bit of advice. "You cannot break free, but here is something that might help. The emperor s daughter, Princess Kan-hazur, will weaken over the coming days. While in our prison at Caer Luciare, she was poisoned with red-wort. Its effects can kill her as she withdraws from it. I know that you cannot break free, but perhaps this information will be of use to you. You may be able to barter for favors-for leniency toward your Dedicates."
Last of all came the emir. He did not speak. He did not need to. They were more than brothers now, for they were joined with a special bond. Each of them bore the scars of a fresh endowment of wit. Fallion s own scar was upon the heel of his right foot, where he hoped it might never be seen.
I will be with you, my friend, the emir whispered into Fallion s mind. Through all of your trials, I will be there to advise you, to console you.
And I will guide you as best I can, Fallion offered in return, when you seek out the Seals of Creation, and bind the worlds into one.
The emir clasped Fallion on the shoulder, and nodd
ed.
Moments later, Fallion s friends were gone, stepping one by one into a brighter world, where the wind blew sweeter scents.
Fallion turned and walked through the brush, partly hunched and racked by pain, until he found Vulgnash there in the leaves, driven to his knees.
Fallion dared not fight him. Fallion had his skills as a flameweaver, skills that Vulgnash could never match. But they did not lend themselves to battle. Besides, Vulgnash was a powerful Runelord.
"I m ready to return to your master," Fallion said.
Vulgnash glared at him with murderous eyes. The great wyrmling in his red robes looked different now. His gray skin had fleshy hues to it, and there were emotions in his eyes that Fallion had never seen before-rage, self-pity, hurt.
"Where are the others?" Vulgnash roared.
"They ve gone where you cannot find them," Fallion said.
Quicker than a snake, Vulgnash reached out a hand and stripped the heat from Fallion s body. He felt himself falling, falling, as if into a sea of ice.
Back in Rugassa, Lord Despair stood upon the gargoyle outside his rooms. He peered down upon his minions, toiling in the dark fields, and smiled.
Lightning flashed above Mount Rugassa, and thunder pealed.
All was right with the world. The city of Rugassa lay beneath a dark cloud, one that would never lift. The Darkling Glories had put a pall over the city, so that for miles around, the night would never end.
Thousands of the creatures were streaming through the world gate, eager to hear his command, while the Thissians instructed them.
To the south, armies of reavers were marching toward him. Yet Lord Despair felt no fear. He had sent a Thissian ambassador to communicate with them, to invite them to join him, and the reavers would bow down to him and obey.
The Earth Spirit whispered peace to his soul, and Despair had no fear.
Only the small folk of the world presented any threat now, and that threat was dissipating too.
Darkling Glories were already flying in every direction, hunting down the small folk, looking for those who might have given themselves to his enemies as Dedicates.
Within a matter of days, the entire world would be under his sway.
The little mouse in the back of his skull fretted and squeaked its imprecations. "Your dying amuses me, Areth," Despair whispered. "Draw it out for as long as you like."
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