He asked about reavers in the underworld, and Talon assured him that they existed. “But the wyrmlings went to war with them a century ago. They don’t pose a threat. Not like they did on our world.”
Perhaps, Fallion thought, but he could not be sure.
“And yet…” Fallion mused. “In both worlds, the plight of mankind is great. My father used his Earth Powers to save millions. If not for him, our world would have been destroyed, as this one has been destroyed.”
Fallion fell silent for a long time.
“So the worlds really are reflections of each other,” Talon mused.
“No,” Fallion said. “I think that they are not reflections so much as distortions, distortions of the One True World. I think a great war is going on there, and few are left among mankind.”
The thought had never occurred to him before, but it felt right. It was said that the Queen of the Loci had tried to seize control of the Great Seals in ages past, and during a battle she had rent them, breaking them.
Fallion had always imagined that the story ended there. But the battle for control still goes on, he thought, upon countless shadow worlds.
Rhianna called out softly in her sleep, “Fallion?”
He glanced back at her, lying beneath the shadows of the pine. She rolled over in her sleep, using her arms as a pillow.
“Fallion,” Talon whispered, “what happened to all of the people on our world? Are they all still alive? Did you bring them all with us?”
Fallion had been worrying about this very thought through much of the evening.
“I believe so,” Fallion said. “Jaz, Rhianna, and I are all half-alive. The folk in Coorm too, though some of the older ones, it seems, could not endure the shock.”
“You don’t sound certain.”
“The problem is,” Fallion said, “in both worlds, this area was a wilderness. There might be millions of people living in Indhopal, but that is a thousand miles away, and until I see them, I can’t be sure.”
“I’ll bet they’re a little confused!” Talon smiled, showing her oversized canines. “Millions of humans on this world again-that will be good news to the folk of Luciare. Father will dance when he learns of it.”
“But will they be worth much, fighting your giants?” Fallion wondered. He knew that they wouldn’t, not if they had only their own strength. “Are forcibles used among the clans?”
Talon shook her head. “Such magic has not been heard of. The three hundred forcibles we brought with us will be a great prize for the clans.”
Fallion started to speak, but Talon reached over and threw a hand over his mouth.
“Shhhh…” she whispered, “Wyrmlings.”
Jaz seemed to be snoring loudly in the sudden silence. A few crickets filled the night with song. Fallion listened for the tell-tale pad of running feet through the forest, the crack of twigs.
But what he heard was a flapping, like the leathery wings of a graak.
Talon looked up. Fallion could see patches of night sky through the tree branches, the burning fires of distant stars. He could hear flapping nearby, and another pair of wings just downhill.
He dared not speak. Jaz kept snoring, and Fallion leaned down and covered his mouth lightly.
The flapping was not close-perhaps two hundred feet in the air and another three hundred feet to the south. The creature would never be able to hear over the sound of its wing noise.
Fallion craned his head, trying to get a look at it, but rocks and the tree barred it from his sight.
“You didn’t tell me they had wings,” Fallion whispered when the creature had flown on.
“They don’t,” Talon said. “Not all of them-only the highest in rank, the Seccath. The wings are very rare and magical. Those wyrmlings are hunting for us, I suspect.”
Fallion wished that he had seen them. He wanted to know how the wings worked, but Talon could not tell him.
Talon went to bed a while later, and Fallion stayed up long enough to make sure that she fell asleep, and then woke Rhianna for her turn at guard duty.
He briefly told her of the wyrmlings, and asked her to listen for the sound of wings.
He lay down. He was so tired, he was half afraid that if he fell asleep, he might never wake.
But all of the worries of this day kept him awake. He worried for Waggit, for Farion, for some nameless boy with a swollen face. He wondered how many had died this day and how many more might suffer because of his mistake.
In a more perfect world, I would be a better man, he told himself.
As he lay there filled with such gloomy thoughts, Rhianna lay down beside him, stroked his face once, and then kissed him passionately.
She leaned back afterward and peered into his eyes.
There, she thought. Now I’ve shown him.
The last time she had kissed him thus was when his mother died. To Rhianna’s knowledge, he hadn’t been kissed by another girl since, save once, when a young lady of the Gwardeen had shown her affection.
He stared up at her in wonder. The light-berries lay upon the moss around him, and it seemed to Rhianna that he was lying in a field of stars.
He had never hinted that he might love her. But I am born of the royal houses in both Crowthen and Fleeds, she told herself, and I am as worthy of his love as any.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Rhianna whispered.
She straddled him, as if to hold him, then leaned down and kissed him again.
For two years she had hidden her desires. She could hide them no more.
Fallion stroked her cheek, and she could see the want in his eyes. But tenderly, he pushed her back.
“What is this?” he asked. “I know how you feel. I’ve seen your love growing in the way that you look at me, at the way you linger in my presence. You are one of the most beautiful women that I know. But you and I are too much like brother and sister.”
She loved him. Fallion knew it. But he had always kept himself aloof. He had done so in part because he knew that someday he might have to marry another in order to seal a political alliance.
But Fallion had remained aloof for a more important reason: he knew in his heart that he did not love her in the way that she loved him.
She smiled secretively. “I know that you want me.” He did not deny it. “And every day, I want you more.”
Fallion knew that Rhianna’s mother was from Fleeds, a land where women ruled, and where they chose their mates much as they chose their stallions. In hindsight he should have known that she would try to claim him in this way. “So why do you choose to profess your love today?”
“It’s just,” she said hesitantly, “today, more than any other, I wanted you to know that you are loved.”
“I see,” Fallion said, a forlorn chuckle rising from his throat.
“You saved my life,” she said. “And you saved my soul. And you’ll save this world, too. The time will come when the people of this world will thank you.”
He felt grateful for the gesture, even if it had caught him by surprise.
He rolled his hips, dislodging her, and threw her down into the pine needles. Then he leaned over her, and returned her kiss gently.
He looked into her eyes for a long moment, until she asked in hope and wonder, “What is this?”
“It’s a token of my gratitude.”
STRANGERS IN ONE ANOTHER’S ARMS
Even the greatest of heroes and men
Are less than what they might have been.
— a saying of Mystarria
Warlord Madoc lay in bed that night, unable to sleep. The great changes that had taken place worried him-the breaks in the castle wall, the rise of forests where only stones and thistles should have been.
There was a new power in the world for him to contend with-a power greater than his sword, a power even greater, perhaps, than the wyrmlings.
That power had devastated him. Like so many others in the city, he had been struck down when the worlds collide
d. That did not bother him much. He had been knocked unconscious before.
What bothered him was the waking dreams.
In his dream, he had been a farmer, a free man with but one cow to give milk and a brood of thirteen children to drink it all. In his dream, he worked from sunrise to sunset every day, just to feed his family. In his dream, he loved his wife more fiercely than he knew a man could love, and even though there were no wyrmlings in the world, he still fretted about the future, for a hail storm in the spring could ruin a crop or grasshoppers in the summer might eat him out, and that might be as disastrous as any wyrmling, and if his cow dried up because the howling of some distant wolf frightened her, it would be as bad as a famine.
No one of import knew his name in this dream. No king feared him; no warriors vied for the honor of eating at his table. He had no rank or title. He had no future.
And yet, most disturbing of all, in the dream he was a happy, happy man.
Upon awaking, Madoc had thought it only a strange dream, vivid and disturbing. He recalled so many details-the way that the lilac bush outside his house perfumed the night air, the games of horse he played with his children, the profound joy that he took each night, sometimes three times a night, in making love to his wife, Deralynne.
Could that all have been real?
His wife lay beside him, and he could tell that she, too, was troubled. He had told her of the war council, of Daylan Hammer’s words.
More troubling still, the woman he slept beside was not the wife he’d loved on that shadow world. She was a warrior woman with bones as big as an ox and an unkind temperament. She had borne him sons, but took no pleasure in the making of them.
At last she reached out and squeezed his hand, as if to comfort him. It was an odd gesture, one that she had never performed before.
“I dreamed,” she said, “that I was a cobbler’s wife, and that I was childless. We…were wealthy, I suppose. We had everything that we could want, except for the one thing that I wanted most-a daughter. And then the raiders came, the damned warlords of Internook, and they plundered our house, took all that they wanted, and burned the rest.”
Madoc considered this. He wondered if she might go searching for the cobbler of her dreams. He wondered if he should go searching for Deralynne. His home with Deralynne had been in a peaceful land called Toom, where stories of raids and looting in faraway places were just that…stories.
Were the loves that they had forged in another life any less meaningful than the ones that they had forged here?
At last, he asked the question that burned in him.
“If you could have that life, would you?” Madoc asked.
“I would kill anyone, risk anything, not to,” she said. She turned to him then, the moonlight shining through the window just barely revealing the curve of her face, the glint of an eye.
“We are a wealthy family,” she said, “held in esteem. You could be High King someday. You should be High King. What has Urstone done for this people? For years his son has languished in prison while the wyrmlings consolidate their hold. To do nothing in a time of war, that is treason. Urstone should be…replaced.”
Madoc had never considered murdering the king before. It was a repugnant idea.
Yet he knew that she was right. The kingdom needed a strong leader now more than ever, and Urstone had become too enfeebled over the years.
To kill him would be to serve the people.
THE WAYFINDER
Death is the perfect huntress, and she will find us all. Lady Despair, make me worthy prey this night, swift and elusive.
— a prayer for wyrmling children
Less than an hour before dawn, just as the first birds began to peep querulously at the coming light, the Knights Eternal found the human fortress south of Caer Golgeata, as Lady Despair had promised.
They circled the small castle twice from above, studying its curious workmanship, then dived into the courtyard. As Vulgnash landed, his wings folded neatly around him like a bloody robe.
Vulgnash studied the tree in the courtyard while his companions began the hunt. The undersides of its leaves gleamed softly in the starlight, creating a numinous glow. The sound of its leaves whispering in the night breeze soothed his jangled nerves, aroused feelings of hope and longings for decency that had long since abandoned him.
As Thul hunched with his cowl around his face and crept from door to door sensing for living things, Kryssidia merely crouched upon a wall, watching for guards.
“They’re hiding,” Thul hissed at last, his voice as dry as a crypt. “But they are here.”
“Of course they are here,” Vulgnash said. There was tall grass and vines outside the castle gate, and only a few pairs of feet had trampled them. If the inhabitants of the castle had fled, they’d have left a larger trail.
With any luck, the wizard Fallion Orden would still be here.
Vulgnash leapt up a stone wall, strode to the tree. He caressed its golden bark, found it soothing and pleasant to the touch. It had an exotic scent to it, like cumin, only sweeter.
With his finger he drew a rune upon the tree, then stepped back a few paces and uttered a single curse word.
The bark squealed and shattered, as if lightning took the tree, and suddenly it was blasted with rot. Fungi the color of butter and snow covered it like a scab, and burst up from beneath the rents in the bark. Leaves shriveled and turned the gray of dirty rags.
Vulgnash stood back as the heavy scent of decay filled the courtyard.
In death most of all, Vulgnash thought, the tree was beautiful.
There was a hiss from across the courtyard, at the mouth of the keep. “Here,” Thul whispered.
Kryssidia swooped down from the wall on crimson wings, like a giant bloodied crow, while Vulgnash strode to the door in question.
Thul pushed upon it, and the heavy door swung inward.
Interesting, Vulgnash thought. I had imagined that they would bar it. But of course, by doing so, they would have signaled where they were hid.
Thul stood by the open door, and his long dark tongue flickered like a snake’s. Vulgnash tasted the air, too. His senses were acutely attuned to the smell of death, and every creature, no matter how much alive, also had a taste of death to it-an odor of decaying skin, putrefying fat. Yes, there was more than a hint of death in the air. There was the smell of those who were wounded and dying.
Moving almost as one, the three drew their blades and crept into the keep, walking as softly as shades. Some small starlight came in shafts through the windows. Vulgnash bent his will upon it, scattered it backward, so that the three became one with the shadows.
They followed the familiar scent of death through the halls, found a stairwell going down. The scent was stronger there.
They crept down the stone steps, halted just in front of the door.
The smell of decay was strong. Someone stood just on the other side, guarding the door, a human, an older man. There was no fear in his scent. He did not know that he was being stalked.
Kryssidia pushed on the door, this time using only the power of his shade.
This door was barred.
The Knights Eternal looked at one another, and then as one bent their wills upon the door.
It shattered inward as if a rampaging bull had charged into it. Shards of wood and splinters flew everywhere.
A frightened old man cried out, “What? What? Who goes there? I, I, I have a sword.”
Vulgnash had learned many languages in his long life, but he did not recognize this one. The old man’s words were meaningless.
The man shouted, “Help! Someone! Everyone!” He drew a sword and began swinging wildly in the darkness. Obviously, he was not a wyrmling. He did not even have the poor night vision of one of the warrior clan. He was blind and helpless in the dark.
“Shawve zek Fallion Orden?” Vulgnash hissed. Where is Fallion Orden?
The old man cried out, lunged forward, aiming only at the sound of Vu
lgnash’s voice. Thul grabbed the man by the wrist as he passed, and squeezed so tightly upon the ganglia of his wrist that the fellow’s swords clattered to floor, even as the bones of his wrist shattered with a crackling sound.
The old man let out a groan of pain, falling to his knees, and Thul grabbed his face, preparing to drain the life from him.
There were shouts down the hallway, the sound of more guards coming, and Vulgnash’s heart leapt in joy. There would be enough lives to feed all three here tonight! Indeed, Kryssidia was already leaping ahead, eager to sate his appetite.
“Wait!” Vulgnash commanded before Thul could take the old man’s life. “I will have an answer to my question first.”
He reached down as Thul held the old man’s weapon hand, and grabbed the old man’s finger. The old man shrieked and fought as Vulgnash knelt down and cleanly bit it off.
Men began racing into the hallway now, five men with torches that threw dancing shadows. They were shouting as they sought to engage Kryssidia.
The fools did not know that you cannot kill the dead.
He batted them aside as if they were pups, smashing skulls and breaking bones with every blow.
Meanwhile, in the weak torchlight, Vulgnash spat the bloody finger onto the floor, where it lay twitching.
“Azgan ka u-zek Fallion Orden.” Show me the way to Fallion Orden.
Suddenly the finger spun, as if moved by an invisible hand, and then drew to a stop, pointing due west.
So, Fallion was gone, and the old man knew which way he had gone. Vulgnash saw the terror in the old man’s eyes, revulsion at the bloody finger, a palpable sense of betrayal at what it had done. Vulgnash smiled, gladdened by this small act of torture.
The sun was coming. It was probably too late to go hunt for the wizard now. But there was time to eat, time to grow fat from the life force of others, and all three of the Knights Eternal were famished.
“Thul,” Vulgnash said, “you may eat him now.”
THE WASTELAND
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