She prepared to hide the balm under her seat, in the wyrmling manner, to save for later.
Yet something about the salve intrigued her. It was a symbol. She had not asked for it. The horse-sister who had given it to her had done so for no other reason than that she saw that Kirissa was in pain, and the girl desired to help. She asked for no coin in return.
These people bear one another’s burdens, Kirissa realized. They do not use others as tools, or seek solely to profit from them.
Kirissa was having a hard time divorcing herself from the wyrmling catechisms. Before the binding, part of herself had lived among the Inkarrans, but that shadow self had never been philosophically inclined.
In Kirissa’s mind the whole notion of a society built not upon greed and fear, but upon love and compassion, seemed revolutionary.
Her thoughts began to explode. She could see how simple acts of kindness, multiplied over and over as tens of thousands of people per day made small gifts, might be the foundation for a new world.
She had heard of the horse-sisters, but Kirissa had lived so far away that the horse-sisters were no more than fables. Legends said that these women had the bodies of horses and the heads and breasts of women.
So when the winged woman, Rhianna, came early that afternoon with Sister Gadron to the wagon to speak, Kirissa was eager to get to know her better. Earlier, Kirissa had been able to ask only a few questions.
Rhianna began speaking through the translator and querying Kirissa in detail. “When we reach Rugassa, how can we enter without being seen?” she asked.
“You can’t,” Kirissa said. “The wyrmlings watch by day and night. Many eyes will be following you as you approach.”
“How many guards are at each entrance?”
“I don’t know,” Kirissa said. “I saw a dozen when I left the fortress, but that was the only time I’ve ever been through an outer gate.”
“What defenses do the guards employ?”
“There are kill holes above each entrance,” Kirissa said, “and hidden tunnels behind the walls. Once you enter the labyrinth, you must fear getting lost. There are other defenses. Some of the main tunnels can be flooded with magma if the need is pressing.”
Rhianna went on like this for an hour, grilling Kirissa about troop strengths, about the quarters where the Knights Eternal slept, about the habits of Death Lords—asking questions that Kirissa really could not answer. Rhianna asked about other threats—the emperor himself, the Great Wyrm, and the kezziard pens. She asked about other creatures within the pens—giant graaks and things that were stranger still—but while Kirissa had heard tales of creatures from the shadow worlds, she had never seen such things herself.
At the end of that hour, Rhianna began speaking to Kirissa in Inkarran. Rhianna’s vocabulary was limited, childishly so, and in some instances she confused the order of words, but the words were precisely formed and Kirissa could understand her intent.
More interestingly, though Rhianna was human, she spoke to Kirissa in her own voice, in the deep voice of a wyrmling.
She learns faster than any wyrmling, Kirissa realized. She has memorized every word that I have spoken in the past hour.
Kirissa stared at her in awe. Rhianna was of the small folk, and her size was unimpressive. But it had been hundreds of years since a human had slain a Knight Eternal.
This is a mighty lord, Kirissa realized, as dangerous as Emperor Zul-torac himself.
But she had little time to ponder the implications of this observation, for Rhianna immediately began to delve into new topics, having the translator ask, “How do you tell a wyrmling to surrender? How do you say, ‘Throw down your weapons.’ ”
“I think that it is unwise to ask them to surrender,” Kirissa said. “They will only arm themselves again later, and come after you in greater numbers.”
Then Rhianna asked her one final question. “If you were to return to Rugassa, what would be done to you?”
Kirissa thought long about that. “They would kill me,” she said. “But they would torture me first, in order to punish me.”
“Will they take you to the dungeons where Fallion is kept?”
“Yes,” Kirissa said, growing worried at her line of questioning.
“If I asked you to do this for me, would you do it? Would you let yourself be captured?”
Kirissa recognized what Rhianna needed. Kirissa would not be able to find her way down to the dungeons. Even if she had known the way, she would slow down a pack of force soldiers intent upon a quick strike.
“How would you know where they take me?” Kirissa asked.
“I’m a Runelord,” she said. “I have a small tincture of perfume, sandalwood oil. I would place it on you and then follow the scent. No matter where they took you, I would be able to find you.”
Kirissa was afraid to volunteer for such a ruse. The Earth King had warned her long ago that the time would come when the small folk of the world would need to stand against the large, but she had always thought that she would meet her enemy with a good blade in hand—an ax or scimitar.
It was only the Earth King’s words that gave her the courage to say, “Yes, I will go down with you. But we may need Cullossax’s key if we are to breach the dungeons.”
Rhianna gave a meaningful look to Sister Gadron.
“I’ll get right on it,” Sister Gadron said.
As it turned out she did not have to go far to get the key. A wyrmling’s necklace with an ornate key carved from bone had seemed a fine trophy to one of the horse-sisters.
The summer sun shone down with the intensity of a blast furnace as Rhianna came winging to Caer Luciare, its white granite walls gleaming.
She flew over the market streets, with their cobbled stones and quaint shops. The folk of Caer Luciare had favored vivid colors—bold peach, avocado, and plum—but now the gay shops clashed with the macabre decor of the new inhabitants. The wyrmlings had already begun marking everything with their crude glyphs—images of Lord Despair as a world wyrm, rising up. Other glyphs showed the image of the Stealer of Souls, a spidery creature, or of various clan markings that she was just beginning to recognize—the dog’s head of the Fang Guards, or the three black skulls of the Piled Skulls clan.
Every cottage and market was somehow defiled. Either windows were shattered or doors caved in, or vile drawings covered the walls.
Like dogs, Rhianna realized. The wyrmlings are like dogs peeing on trees and bushes. There is some inner dictum that forces them to mar or destroy the lands that they take.
But it was more than just the paintings that adorned the places. The carnage looked worse than she remembered. It wasn’t just the new damage to structures or the sickening graffiti. The wyrmlings had not yet begun to reclaim their dead after the battle, so now their white corpses lay strewn about, stomachs bloating and festering, oozing foul smells that rose up on the thermals. With her endowments of scent, the odors seemed overwhelming.
The dead were not just part of the decor, she realized, they were the centerpiece.
Rhianna dropped to the ledge of a lower wall, near where Jaz had died. She saw bloodstains on the cobblestones that might have been his. His body lay hacked and ruined.
My brother, she thought, look what they’ve done to him.
She did not care if the wyrmlings saw her there. She suspected that some were watching from Caer Luciare, from the dark corridors. Certainly there were enough spy holes in the place. But none would dare issue forth in this blazing sun to test her prowess in battle. And if they did, she would be happy to show them a thing or two.
So she stood for a long moment, weeping above Jaz’s corpse. “The wyrmlings have a lot to answer for,” she said to him. “And I shall make them pay.”
But first I need a weapon that will kill a Death Lord.
That was what she had come for. She had lost her staff while fighting against Vulgnash, the staff that the Wizard Binnesman had inscribed with runes and magic stones for the Earth
King Gaborn Val Orden.
Vulgnash’s endowments of metabolism had been too much for Rhianna to overcome. She hadn’t been able to even come close to hitting him. And after the folk of Caer Luciare had fled, she’d been afraid to return for the staff.
But now she was ready to meet Vulgnash once again.
She turned and flew to the upper wall, where Fallion had taken his wound, and where she had slain a Knight Eternal. She found the mummified corpse still lying on the ground, its crimson robes draped about it. Rhianna kicked the corpse over. Carrion beetles crawled about underneath it, went blindly scattering this way and that, seeking to escape the sunlight.
Rhianna separated the robe from the corpse.
Odd, she thought, that the wyrmlings haven’t scavenged from their own dead.
But then she began to wonder. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps it wasn’t out of laziness that the wyrmlings had left their dead on the battlefield untouched—but more out of respect.
These wyrmlings had died on the field of honor, and now it appeared that they would remain—in some sort of macabre memorial.
Rhianna had heard of people in Indhopal who would not touch their dead for three days, as a token of respect.
It might only be something like that, she thought.
She threw off her own robe and draped herself in the cowled bloody red robes of a Knight Eternal.
Flying fast, she wouldn’t be distinguishable from one of them.
She flew to the base of the mountain, beneath the parapet where Warlord Madoc had fallen.
The Earth King’s staff should be near here, she thought. But she could not find it. Warlord Madoc lay dead and broken upon a rock, his back arched painfully, arms spread wide, his dead eyes gazing up into the sun.
But Rhianna couldn’t see the staff.
She hoped that wyrmlings had not defiled the weapon, as they had the buildings. She knew that the Death Lords had tried to curse the weapon, destroy it that way.
But after several seconds, she could not see it.
There were a number of large rocks here, scree from the tunneling in the mountain up above.
Perhaps, she thought, it has fallen under the rubble. She began to peer around, peeking down under the shadows.
Just then, she heard a noise above. She glanced up to see a large boulder dropping down from a parapet. She leapt aside as it slammed into the ground, then went bouncing away.
Perhaps the sun is not as great a deterrent as I’d imagined, Rhianna thought.
She heard the gruff laugh of a wyrmling coming from somewhere far up the mountain, drifting down. He called out a taunt.
She did not need a translator. The tone said it all: I know what you’re looking for. Come and get it if you dare.
Suddenly, she realized how dangerous that might be.
The wyrmlings have had a night to dig up ore from the mountain, and two full days to refine it and take endowments. Surely they have done so by now.
Their taunts are not idle threats.
Rhianna leapt up and flew away.
I will have to go to Rugassa without my staff, she realized.
16
* * *
ILL MET BY DAYLIGHT
Trust not in your own arms, but in the Great Wyrm. No chick falls from its nest without the Wyrm’s knowledge. How much more then does the Great Wyrm know your needs. It alone knows all, and has all power.
—From the Wyrmling Catechism
Lord Despair was impatiently touring his armory when his Knights Eternal returned that morning, three hours after sunrise.
He was studying the wyrmling weapons mounted on the walls—axes for chopping, hooks for grabbing one’s prey, battle darts in various weights and sizes, war bows and spears. All of them were overlarge for a human.
But Despair wasn’t interested in weapons for humans. The Emperor Zul-torac had opened a door to the netherworld, and now the Thissians were negotiating with a murder of Darkling Glories. The Darkling Glories normally hunted with only teeth and talons, but Despair felt that they might benefit from wyrmling technology.
All day, his unease had been building, like the static that builds before a storm, waiting to be unleashed. He wanted to know what was happening at Caer Luciare. He wanted his shipment of forcibles. Three days ago, it would have been no small thing to look into the mind of his Death Lord and learn what was going on in Luciare. But now his Death Lord there was gone, and Lord Despair had no idea which of his warlords now ruled in Caer Luciare.
The Knights Eternal stopped outside the armory, and both of them hesitated at the door.
They looked haggard, bleary-eyed.
“Yes,” Despair demanded. “What word do you have of my forcibles?”
The Knights Eternal cringed, a rare thing. Their kind were usually fearless. Lord Despair knew instantly that the news would not be just bad, it would be horrific.
“We have returned from Caer Luciare, and the news is not favorable,” Kryssidia said. “But we have brought a gift of blood metal, in hopes of turning aside your wrath.”
The Knights Eternal each dropped a heavy black sack at their feet, and pushed it forward. By the size, it had to represent a hundred pounds of blood metal, perhaps enough to make a thousand forcibles.
I shall have to send it to my facilitators immediately, Lord Despair thought. A thousand endowments will give me the strength I need to resist the coming attack.
Inside, something eased. The Earth’s warning was not as persistent. But it was still there.
“Your gift is appreciated,” he said, turning away from the wall of weapons and drawing closer. “Now, tell me of the ill news.”
Kryssidia knelt. “Master, your warriors at Caer Luciare have discovered the pleasures afforded by the forcibles. The Fang Guards have taken over the fortress, and they are taking endowments from many warriors. The place is filled with carnage, with fallen warriors strewn about by the thousands. They have not been felled by axes—but with forcibles.
“The Fang Guards imagine that they are a great nation, and that Caer Luciare now rivals Rugassa in power. We demanded forcibles, but their leader, Chulspeth, brandished a weapon from the small folk at us—a powerful staff filled with runes—and said, ‘Tell your emperor that I have sent him all of the forcibles he will get. We have taken many endowments, and we have a weapon now that will kill the Death Lords. Tell him to surrender. If he wants to live, he will do so under my rule. Tell him to come himself—and grovel before me. Perhaps I will let him lick my boots.’ ” Kryssidia added. “Since they would not give us forcibles, we dug some blood metal ourselves.”
Despair’s blood rushed from his face, and he stood for a moment fighting back a cold fury. He had not received a single forcible from Chulspeth.
The fool.
He considered how to fight, what warriors to send. It had to be someone he trusted, and it had to be someone who could battle a Runelord with hundreds of endowments.
Lord Despair had no warriors with endowments to match, but he had servants with other powers.
Vulgnash. He felt inside himself, and felt peace. He had used his Earth Powers to choose Vulgnash, put him under protection. And so he could send the Knight Eternal into battle. The Earth did not warn against it. Vulgnash’s skills as a flameweaver would do nicely. And with his endowments of metabolism, he could fly to Caer Luciare and back in only a few hours.
Yes, he would do nicely. It would give him a chance to atone. This mess, after all, was his fault. He had gifted the Fang Guards with endowments of bloodlust, and had left them untamed.
But Despair could not spare his pet at the moment. The human attack was imminent, and Vulgnash would be needed here.
“I will send Vulgnash tonight. Tell him what you’ve seen. You will go with him to punish the Fang Guards. Tell him to burn Chulspeth. There is to be a new lord at Caer Luciare, one who will do my bidding. . . .” Despair considered. He needed someone he could trust, but someone whose presence he could spare. Kryssidia
had been gifted with a dozen endowments in the past two days. Over the last few millennia, Lord Despair had elevated his Death Lords to the highest positions because he could commune with them from afar. But having a physical body, it seemed, now offered more substantial benefits. “You, Kryssidia, shall keep the order at Luciare. You shall take endowments there, no less than two hundred, and you shall hold the title of emperor of Luciare.”
“I am honored,” Kryssidia said, bowing low.
Despair had taken some endowments already—brawn, stamina, metabolism, and grace. He would need more for the coming battle. “Take the blood metal to my facilitators quickly, and have them begin making forcibles and extorting endowments. I want a thousand endowments in the next five hours.”
The demand was outrageous, impossible. There weren’t enough facilitators to do the work. But the need was upon him.
Despair felt inside himself, listening to the Earth’s warnings.
Yes, the danger was still there, but it had grown less. The humans were coming soon, but not with sufficient force.
Deep inside, he heard the voice whispering. “Now is the time. Choose to save the seeds of mankind.”
But Despair had no desire to choose further. He’d tried to use the newfound protective powers to choose his Death Lords, but they were so far gone toward death that he was powerless to save them.
All right then, he thought, I will choose.
The Knights Eternal had picked up the blood metal and were racing to take it to the facilitators.
He turned to the fleeing Knights Eternal. “I choose you,” Despair whispered.
He felt a connection made, weak and tenuous. With one foot in the grave, and one foot out, the Knights Eternal were almost beyond his powers to reach. He wondered if, when he sent them word of danger, they would even be able to hear his call.
That is the Earth Spirit’s problem, he thought, and laughed.
Human flesh. That was what the Earth wanted him to choose.
The Wyrmling Horde Page 24