Chaosbound

  Aaath Ulber glared at the wyrmling workers, so intent on slaughtering the Dedicates as they woke, and a red curtain lowered in front of his eyes.

  With an animal howl, he waded in among the dead and rushed the wyrmlings.

  Warlord Zil stared uncomprehendingly into the humans’ arena at Ox Port. It was a strange building, with thick walls all around but open to the sky.

  Inside, hot springs rose from the ground in an emerald pool, with roiling mist rolling off in waves.

  A few beech trees grew beside it, and wild birds flitted among the branches, chirping and singing.

  Zil wondered at it. It looked like some kind of sanctuary, a walled bath where a human lord might soak beneath the trees and meditate.

  Or perhaps the barbarians performed sacred rites here, made some sort of offerings to Water.

  There were trees, he saw, but there was no place to hide. The bath was empty.

  He heard a cry of alarm. Almost it sounded like a human voice, and he turned his head. At last he realized that it was only the warning bark of a tree squirrel.

  The wyrmling bull sniffed the air like a dog trying to catch a scent, and Draken waited for him to charge.

  Suddenly there were cries down the street. The wyrmlings had found some more victims. The wyrmling whirled and disappeared, blinding in his speed.

  Other wyrmlings flashed by, half a dozen runelords at least, and few spared more than a glance into the arena.

  Cries rent the air all through town as the wyrmlings took those who had remained in their houses.

  But the death brigades passed by the arena—and the vast majority of the townsfolk.

  Silence fell over the village, and a minute later the town’s facilitator called out, “More endowments for Aaath Ulber! Who will grant him speed for his journey this day?”

  The rest of the facilitators also began to cry out, hoping to heap endowments upon Aaath Ulber in his moment of need.

  In the Room of Whispers, Crull-maldor learned the bad news.

  “The humans are gone?” she cried.

  Captain Zil stood at the far east end of the village. His men had made their sweep. She could see through the captain’s eyes as the men finished searching some longhouses, then peered off to the woods.

  “The smell of humans along the roads is strong,” Zil explained. “We think that they might have fled into the countryside.

  “We have been through every house, every shop. The humans are gone.”

  Crull-maldor took the news and tried to remain stoic. The humans had already taken her Dedicates’ keep. She could not hold them off.

  Alarm bells were tolling. Her wyrmlings were fleeing the lower levels, seeking to escape through the main entrance. Her own people were opening the portcullises now, retreating mindlessly.

  But the front gates were guarded too, and human runelords there slaughtered anyone who tried to escape.

  Crull-maldor considered her options. “The humans cannot have gotten far,” she said. “Search the woods to the east. Perhaps they have escaped to the next town.”

  With that, Zil and his wyrmling runelords bolted off to the east in a vast line, sweeping the woods for any sign of the fleeing humans.

  Crull-maldor broke off communications. Her wyrmling champions had been slaughtered, and she suspected that in a few moments, the humans would execute her Dedicates, weakening her grasp upon the island.

  Dozens of her lich lords were already dead.

  More importantly, the humans would find her forcibles there in the Dedicates’ Keep, at least ten thousand of them.

  She was only glad that there were not more. Lord Despair had promised to send them, but none had reached her yet.

  I am undone, she thought. There is nothing left for me to save.

  She had offered Aaath Ulber a trade, and he had refused. He had betrayed her hopes.

  She took little comfort in the knowledge that Aaath Ulber would destroy the emperor.

  Still, she thought, when the emperor is gone, I may manage to win his place.

  The hope was faint, and even as the thought came to her it dwindled to nothing. No, she could not believe that she’d take the emperor’s place any longer. Only one thing was left to her. She promised herself: Aaath Ulber . . . I shall take my vengeance.

  29

  THE LICH’S TOUCH

  A winter’s night in Internook is as cold as a lich’s touch, and just as likely to take your life.

  —A saying of Rofehavan

  In the Fortress of the Northern Wastes streams of blood spilled down the hallways where corpses formed small dams and diversions.

  After the Dedicates’ keep was cleared of its wyrmling assassins, there was no one left to stop Aaath Ulber.

  A cask of forcibles he found there, ten thousand, all stored in a box hewn from granite. It was a great treasure, enough to endow powerful champions, and Aaath Ulber dared hope that it might be the key to saving mankind.

  Yet the wyrmlings were still strong. More than a hundred thousand Dedicates lay in a slumber.

  Aaath Ulber stopped at the door while young Wulfgaard searched among the Dedicates for his betrothed. He found her at last, lying facedown upon the floor in a puddle of her own blood.

  Wulfgaard flipped her onto her back. Her face had gone white, drained, but blood stained her lips.

  A rune of metabolism had been branded upon her forehead. It sat in a circle, a shapeless mass that somehow still pulled at the mind, begging to be recognized.

  She must have wakened, Aaath Ulber thought, when we slew the wyrmling that took her endowments.

  Wulfgaard lifted her in both arms, then peered up to the roof of the cavern and let out a long wail. He held her body high, as if begging the world to bear witness.

  There will be no winning this war for that lad, Aaath Ulber thought. He might take vengeance, he might kill the wyrmlings, but that will be the end of it.

  Aaath Ulber gave him a few minutes to sob and to mourn, as measured by his body. But in that time the sun had moved less than a minute in its journey across the sky.

  The moment was used in preparation. Aaath Ulber threw away some of his blades, and sharpened some wyrmling weapons.

  As he did, he planned how to finish it.

  The wyrmling fortress was designed much like an ant’s nest. The lower opening, well hidden, let air vent into the warrens.

  But the wyrmling bodies heated the atmosphere, so that warm air rose up through the tunnels—to finally escape at the upper entrance.

  Killing the wyrmlings now would be an easy matter. All that Aaath Ulber needed to do was clear out the upper tunnels. He knew that the wyrmlings here defended their fortress with firetraps, and suspected that he would find such traps hidden on the floors above him. All he’d have to do was light them, and let the smoke carry death through the tunnels above.

  Aaath Ulber ate his lunch, rested. Half an hour he gave himself. He needed no more than that. He had enough endowments of stamina so that he would no longer require sleep. Instead, he only stood as runelords do, staring away at some private dream.

  With so many endowments of wit, he found that remembering was easy. Even incidents that had occurred before he’d taken his endowments seemed to be easily recalled.

  So he stood in that room of death, eating a bit of cheese and bread from his pack, lost in a fond memory.

  He recalled the first time that he’d met his wife Myrrima, in a small city in Heredon. She’d taken endowments of glamour from her sisters and her mother back then, endowments that had been all but impossible to purchase.

  Thus, she’d combined the beauty and poise of four gorgeous women into one. Her hair had been dark and silky, and the pupils of her eyes were so dark they almost looked blue.

  The sight of her had left him speechless with desire. He’d wanted to know her name. He’d wanted to hold her hand and walk with her.

  But it was his lord, Gaborn Val Orden, who had introduced them, and had suggested that they marry. I
t was a strange moment, one that always left him with wonder.

  Why did Gaborn do that? Aaath Ulber asked himself. It wasn’t part of Gaborn’s nature to go about acting as a matchmaker.

  Gaborn himself claimed to have done it by inspiration. He’d felt that it was the Earth’s will.

  But why? How has our union benefited the Powers?

  He could not be certain. He often felt that some grand destiny awaited him and Myrrima, but he knew not what.

  Perhaps that destiny will not be borne out by me but by my children, he suspected.

  Or perhaps the great deed is already accomplished. Myrrima and I protected both Gaborn and Fallion in their youth. We nurtured them, kept them safe from assassins. That deed was well done.

  Yet he wanted something more. He wanted to know the very moment when he fulfilled his destiny.

  Perhaps it would not be some great thing that he accomplished. Perhaps it would be a deed so insignificant that mortal men would not even note it.

  He turned his mind from the thought. Nothing could be gained by pondering such things, and he feared that in doing so, he might be giving sway to false pride.

  So he focused instead on the memory of Myrrima, as fair as a rising moon, as brilliant as a diamond. An old man’s voice whispered in his mind.

  “I’m growing, I’m growing old.

  My hair is falling and my feet are cold.”

  Aaath Ulber woke, feeling invigorated. He judged that half an hour had passed by his body’s time, and that was enough.

  “Let’s finish it,” he called to Wulfgaard.

  The young man knelt on the floor beside his betrothed. Tears streamed down his face, and a terrible rage filled his eyes.

  I don’t even know the girl’s name, Aaath Ulber thought. I guess that it doesn’t matter anymore.

  Wulfgaard jerked his head toward the sleeping Dedicates. “Maybe we should kill the rest. Who knows what the wyrmlings are doing, or what they’re capable of? How many heroes might they have up on the surface? They could be laying entire villages to waste. And you and I are the only two men left down here to stop them.”

  That was the crux of the problem. Aaath Ulber’s gut warned him that this battle hadn’t been won yet. A lich can communicate across the leagues. The lich lord Crull-maldor knew that he was here. She’d warn her captains, and the wyrmlings would attack the cities and village on the surface.

  The only way to stop them was to kill their Dedicates.

  Aaath Ulber had rejected that plan once before. But he’d hoped to have more champions with him still. Now he recognized that he was walking on the edge of a knife, and he did not know which way he would fall.

  “I didn’t come down here to murder Dedicates,” Aaath Ulber argued.

  “I’ve sworn to clean out these warrens, and let the folks aboveground worry about themselves.”

  Wulfgaard glared. Aaath Ulber could see that he wanted vengeance, and he believed that the only sure way to get it was to slaughter their Dedicates.

  “Are you weary of battle?” Aaath Ulber goaded him. “Are you so tired of fighting?”

  “No!” Wulfgaard denied.

  “The best way for you to get your vengeance,” Aaath Ulber said, “is to kill the wyrmlings—not your own kind. I’m sure that many of the young ladies down here are betrothed to others. Would you do to their men what the wyrmlings have done to you?”

  Wulfgaard looked fierce. Rage and pain had left him on the edge of madness. He refused to answer.

  “Let’s do this the hard way,” Aaath Ulber said. He wanted Wulfgaard to go out and slay wyrmlings, but he knew that they couldn’t leave these Dedicates unguarded.

  Aaath Ulber was the better warrior. That meant that he’d have to clear the warrens, leaving Wulfgaard here to watch over the Dedicates . . . and fester.

  “You stay here with your betrothed,” Aaath Ulber said. “Make sure that your actions honor her.”

  With that, he turned and plunged into the wrymling tunnels.

  The next hours seemed to be a nightmare, with Aaath Ulber slaughtering all that came his way. He spared no one, and only one time did a wyrmling give him pause.

  He was in the crèches, where wyrmling women tended their babes. He was forced to slaughter them all, the children as well as adults, for to leave the young ones alone, without adults to tend them would be to protract their deaths.

  As he raced into a small side cavern, a woman who was tending a dozen toddlers whirled and spoke to him in Rofehavanish, with a strange Inkarran accent. “Please?” she begged.

  He halted, expecting her to say more, but she seemed not to know any more Rofehavanish.

  He wondered where she had learned that word. While tending the Dedicates? Or was she like him, two people united in one body?

  He thought to ask her, but the answer would not alter what had to be done, so he slit her throat and moved on.

  The cries of the dying followed Aaath Ulber into the Room of Whispers, where he halted, and stood warily.

  All around him, he could hear voices—wyrmlings crying in pain, wyrmlings shouting orders, the distant tolling of bells.

  The room was empty now, a simple dome. Three glow worms on the ceiling provided a dim green light, and all around the room were little silver rings pounded into the stone. Glyphs surrounded each ring, and a hole in the center let sounds escape.

  Through the holes, Aaath Ulber heard the whispers.

  A cold chill shot up his spine. He whirled, expecting to find a lich at his back. A whisper came from one of the holes, some wyrmling commanders shouting to a panicked crowd, “Get back! Get back to your holes. There is no escape!”

  The floor beneath him vibrated to the sound of a gong.

  The room was chill.

  He peered up, found the hole where the sound had come from. The ring around it was marked with the three glyphs—the Eater of Souls, the number two, and the naked skull.

  Aaath Ulber’s breath fogged from the cold, and he whirled again.

  A wight was nearby. Nothing stood in the entrance.

  He spotted a bit of glittering spider cloth on the floor and slashed it with his sword, lest the wight be hiding in its shadow.

  Then he whirled again. “Show yourself!” he commanded.

  A whisper came to him from one of the holes above. “You have seen me before,” a wyrmling said in the tongue of the men of Caer Luciare.

  “I know you,” Aaath Ulber shouted, “Crull-maldor.” It was said that there is power in knowing a lich’s true name, but Aaath Ulber did not feel powerful.

  “Alas,” the lich wailed in mock sorrow, “you know my name!” She chuckled softly, and the sound of her voice faded. Aaath Ulber knew which tube it was coming from, and he pulled a war dart, jammed the barb up the hole.

  A moment later, he heard the whisper again issuing from another hole on the far wall. “You have touched me,” Crull-maldor said. “You have pricked me deeply, and now I shall prick you.”

  Aaath Ulber whirled, for he felt a cold wind brush his back. But there was nothing there.

  She’s trying to get behind me, he reasoned. She’ll come out from one of her damned holes. But which?

  In the protracted silence that followed, he knew that she was moving, racing through dim hallways, struggling to take him unawares.

  He began to circle nervously, his head swiveling this way and that, as he searched for a shadow that would rise behind him.

  He caught a dark blur in the corner of his eye, whirled, and saw a mist rising into one of the holes.

  “Come out here!” he roared. “Let us finish it now!”

  “What is the hurry?” the lich asked reasonably, her voice a dim whisper from the far corner of the room. “They say that vengeance tastes sweetest when it is served stale.”

  Aaath Ulber circled slowly, whipped his blade behind him in a dance.

  A whisper came from a tube. It was distant, so dim that a man without endowments could never have heard it. “Watch yo
ur back, little man. I shall touch you yet. In an hour when you are less watchful, in a way that you do not suspect, I shall freeze your heart. . . .”

  Aaath Ulber hesitated, waiting for the lich to return, but the room began to regain warmth, and he felt certain that it was gone.

  It would be hiding from him somewhere, coiled like an asp beneath some stone.

  He turned and raced from the room, up a corridor. The level above was empty of wyrmlings. They were clearing out, fleeing for the surface.

  Near one guardhouse he found a huge stone vat that smelled of tar. He pulled off the heavy lid and peered in. The tar was mixed with bits of some noxious weed. The odor was more than foul; it seemed to corrode his very throat.

  There was a torch in the guard shack, and a piece of flint.

  Aaath Ulber held his war hammer above the torch and struck the handle with the flint until a spark caught in the dry moss that was wrapped around the head of the torch. He blew it until the torch blazed to life, then threw the torch into the vat.

  Flames leapt from it, licking the ceiling, and heavy black smoke boiled from the infernal pot.

  Aaath Ulber turned and stalked down into the depths of the wyrmling fortress as the smoke boiled out, filling the tunnels above.

  As he passed the Room of Whispers, he stopped for a moment, heard the hacking coughs of wyrmlings and the panicked cries from the rooms above.

  He would let the smoke do his killing for him.

  With a heavy heart, he turned back. There were wyrmling children still down below, babes whose only crime was that they had been born wyrmlings, that they had been given endowments.

  It was time to punish them for those crimes.

  30

  A SEASON OF PROMISE

  Spring is a season of promise, and in the fall nature fulfills those promises.

  —A saying in Rofehavan

  The collapse of the Wyrmling Empire in Internook came swiftly.

  As Myrrima had feared, the wrymlings took vengeance in some places. Wyrmling death squads marched through the streets in a dozen cities, led by powerful runelords, and wyrmling war horns announced the attack on the fortress all across the land.