Worldbinder

by David Farland

  “Then we are left to our own resources,” King Urstone said. “We are left to the blood metal, and to our own counsel, and to the small folk of the world.”

  “And to my father,” Fallion said. “Do not forget him. There is hope there.”

  “Yes,” Sisel agreed. “There is your father indeed—if we can get him out of the prison in Rugassa!”

  “I don’t have the troops,” King Urstone said. “Besides, he would be slain if we try.”

  “Then let us not send an army to batter down the door,” Sisel suggested, his eyes seeking out Fallion. “One warrior, or a handful of them, could be enough—if they were endowed with both the attributes and the hopes of our people….”

  Fallion peered up at Siyaddah. Worry was plain on her face, worry for him. She held his gaze.

  He could not speak her language, but he vowed to himself to learn.

  “I will agree to such a plan,” King Urstone said. “Indeed, I would hope to be one among that handful—if we live out this night. But I fear that all hope for us is vain. Perhaps the best that we can seek is to die valiantly in the defense of our people.”

  Jaz peered up at King Urstone, and a sad smile crossed his face. “You died for your people once before, grandfather,” Jaz said. “I don’t wish to see you make a habit of it.”

  35

  HEROICS

  He who would be a hero must first conquer himself: his fear, his uncertainty, his own weakness and despair.

  And sometimes, we must conquer our own sense of decency.

  —Warlord Madoc

  At Cantular, Warlord Madoc fought for his life, swinging his battle-ax, cleaving a wyrmling’s head even though he had to strike through the creature’s helm. As the wyrmling fell, Madoc peered back across the bridge.

  The fortress on the north end of the bridge was lost, and for nearly a mile along the bridge’s length the wyrmling troops were backed up, pressing to reach the fortress on the southern banks.

  Madoc and his men were fighting their way into the south fortress, trying to fend off the wyrmlings on their tail. They hadn’t been able to get the drawbridge up in time, and only managed to close the portcullis gates. And so his men fought the wyrmlings as they tried to climb the gates and walls.

  The floodwaters roared through the river, which was white with foam. Apparently it had rained in the mountains, and trees and brush raced past, swirling in the moil.

  There had to be ten thousand wyrmlings on the bridge, while enormous graaks glided overhead, snaking down to strike at Madoc’s troops on the fortress wall.

  The battle was lost. Fewer than a hundred men held the south fort, and they could not hold out for long.

  But Madoc had one last trick for the wyrmlings: It was there, under the bridge—a trap, cunningly wrought. It had been there for a hundred years.

  A single rope woven from cords of steel held the bridge aloft. The rope connected to a series of supports, and if it was pulled hard enough, the supports would tumble, and the bridge would collapse. Even now, the Emir and a dozen men were under the bridge, turning the great screw that would pull the cable while Madoc and his men fought.

  Madoc screamed “Beware above!” as a giant graak swooped. His men hurled a dozen war darts, most of which went hurtling into the monster’s open maw, burying themselves in the roof of its mouth or in its gums. Their poison seemed to have no effect. But one dart went hurtling into the beast’s eye and disappeared in the soft tissue of its eyelid. The creature blinked furiously, snapped its head.

  Madoc leapt away as the giant graak’s lower jaw hit the tower wall, knocking over stones, sweeping them away.

  Then the monster was past, and wyrmling warriors leapt into the breach, howling in glee.

  “Despair take you!” a great wyrmling lord shouted, leaping toward Madoc with two axes in his hand.

  Madoc ducked beneath his swing, even as a battle dart whizzed past Madoc’s shoulder.

  “Not today,” Madoc spat as he split the lord’s skull and then instantly kicked the wyrmling, sent him tumbling thirty feet to land on his fellows. A pale hand grasped onto the wall, and with a quick stroke, Warlord Madoc severed it from its owner.

  There was a sudden grinding sound and a series of snaps beneath the bridge as the steel rope pulled its first support free. “Beware!” the Emir shouted. “Everyone out of the way!”

  Then the bridge collapsed.

  The first break appeared forty yards out from the fortress. Huge blocks of stone went crashing into the wine-dark waters. Wyrmlings screamed in surprise—a fearful shout, deliriously cut all too short as they were swallowed by the river.

  Then the whole bridge suddenly snapped for a mile in the distance, seeming to shatter one section after another, and great portions of it sank beneath the waves.

  Dust and debris rose in the air, and the water churned, sending white plumes high, creating a silver streak across the river where the black bridge had spanned.

  Only on the bulwarks, every two hundred yards, did portions of the bridge remain standing, and even those began to tilt inexorably into the river as wyrmlings screamed and tried to hold on.

  Perhaps five thousand wyrmlings were suddenly gone, while here and there a few dozens or hundreds clung to portions of the bridge, now stuck out on small islands in the roaring flood.

  Madoc’s men screamed and cheered and went leaping over the gates onto what little of the bridge remained intact, driving the wyrmlings toward the water.

  The wyrmlings that were closest drew back a pace, tried to find the room to fight. But their fellows behind were pushed, and some of them went screaming into the waves.

  Madoc turned away, left his men to finish the job. He had more urgent concerns back at Caer Luciare.

  With mounting excitement he realized what a victory he had won here this night. He would be hailed as a hero at Caer Luciare. And when Urstone was dead, the people would beg him to be their new king.

  All he had to do now was race back to Luciare and save what he could of the city.

  36

  SMALL GIFTS

  I have always felt a peculiar longing, a sense that I am incomplete. I’d hoped that when Fallion joined the worlds that the sensation would have lessened. But Fallion has left me forever incomplete. —Rhianna

  After the council and dinner, King Urstone suggested that any warrior who could sleep should do so.

  Rhianna wasn’t tired. She’d slept most of the day in the cart during the ride south.

  Siyaddah came to Rhianna’s table and spoke softly in her strange tongue. Talon listened and said to Fallion, “All of that ogling that you have been doing must have paid off. Siyaddah has invited us to her father’s apartments to rest.”

  “I didn’t make eyes at her,” Fallion objected.

  Rhianna and Talon looked at each other, then both just shook their heads, as if to disabuse Fallion of the idea that they were fools.

  “But tell her that we would be grateful for a bed,” Fallion said.

  I’ll bet you’d be grateful, Rhianna thought—especially if she was in it.

  Rhianna could not help but be jealous. She had fought beside Fallion, stood beside him for years. She had openly declared her love for Fallion only two days ago, and he had said that he loved her too. But she could see how attracted he was to this stranger.

  Why doesn’t he look at me like that? she wondered.

  Fallion earned a smile from Siyaddah with the news, and moments later Fallion, Jaz, Talon, and Rhianna were following Siyaddah’s shapely form through the tunnels, until at last she stopped at a door beneath some thumb-lanterns. Words were painted in yellow beneath the lights, and Rhianna tried to remember their shapes as they entered a plush apartment.

  The room was decorated in a style that somehow felt familiar to Rhianna. The walls were draped in rich, colored silks in palest blue, as if to mimic a tent. The floor was carpeted in lamb hides, their thick hair as inviting as a bed. And all around the sitting room, pillows lay
for the guests to recline on. It was much like the great tents that the horse-sisters of Fleeds lived in.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” Siyaddah said. She nodded, and a servant went through the room, blowing out most of the lights so that they could sleep. Rhianna went and lay down upon a huge pillow, and just rested there, thinking.

  Talon apologized to Siyaddah and told Fallion, “I lived in this city until three days ago,” Talon said, “or at least my shadow self did. My father disappeared in the melding. You and I both know where he went. His two halves joined, and now he is across the Carroll Sea, on the far side of the world. But I have a mother here—not Myrrima, but the woman my father married on this world, Gatunyea. I need to go see her, to let her know that I am well, and to explain where I think father is. Will you excuse me?”

  Rhianna did not envy her that sticky task.

  “Go,” Fallion said, “and may luck follow on your heel.”

  Talon asked permission of Rhianna and Jaz, too, for she would be leaving them without a translator.

  “Would you like me to come with you,” Rhianna asked, “for moral support?”

  Talon thought for a moment. “No. I think … I think that I should tell her alone. I don’t know how she will take it.”

  “All right,” Rhianna said. She got up and hugged Talon, then sent her out the door.

  Without a translator, Siyaddah could not speak to them, but she did her best to be a good hostess. She showed them the water closet, an affair much nicer than any that Rhianna had ever seen. In it, a waterway was cut in stone and then covered, so that any waste would just wash away.

  After showing them this room, Siyaddah waved at them, urging them to find a cushion to sleep on.

  They each found a pillow, and Siyaddah showed them that they could pull a lambskin over them if they got cold.

  Rhianna lay down, and wondered how long Talon would be gone.

  All night, she thought. Her mother here in Luciare would be sick with grief, Rhianna imagined, and she would need Talon to comfort her.

  Rhianna wondered about her own mother. Common sense said that her mother was dead. On her own world, Rhianna’s father had killed her. Rhianna had been blindfolded at the time, and had not seen it. But she’d heard the blow land, a blow to the head that hit with a loud crack, and she’d heard her mother’s body fall.

  But what about on this world? Rhianna wondered. Fallion and Jaz had a father here, or at least his shadow-half. Could I have my mother’s shadow self here?

  She suddenly found herself growing misty-eyed at the prospect, and she fought back a sniffle. It was too much to hope for, but she dared imagine that she had a mother here.

  Would I even know her if I saw her? Rhianna wondered.

  Rhianna tried to recall her mother’s face. Sometimes she still saw it in dreams, but the memory had faded: red hair tied in a single braid, hanging down her back, an oval face generously dotted with freckles, fierce hazel eyes that were almost green, a small nose just a tad too thin.

  Her body had always been well toned and muscled, and she had walked with the deadly gait of a trained fighter.

  There was so much fight in that woman, Rhianna thought, I cannot believe that she was bested in battle.

  But she remembered the sound of her mother’s skull cracking open, and a knot in Rhianna’s belly tightened.

  At that moment, there was a call at the door, and Daylan Hammer entered.

  He spoke softly to their hostess for a moment, and then turned to Rhianna.

  His smile was broad, but sad.

  “My little one,” he said as he came to sit beside her. He took her hand, leaned his shoulder against her, but he sat facing Fallion.

  “It has been many years,” he said softly to Fallion, “many years since you last appeared. Do you remember anything of your past life, of why you have spent so many centuries hiding, healing?”

  Fallion shook his head.

  “You should,” Daylan told him. “Your spirit has mended sufficiently. It, like your body, needs time to rest and heal when it is injured. I think it is healed, but now it is time for it to awaken.”

  Daylan unclasped Rhianna’s hand, reached out to Fallion, and touched him with one finger, on the sternum. He said nothing that the human ear might hear, but Daylan was an expert at speaking as lords did on the netherworld, from spirit to spirit. Rhianna distinctly heard the words within her mind, “Waken, Light-bringer. The world has need of you and the hour is late.”

  Fallion’s eyes widened just a little in surprise, then Daylan spoke in words for all to hear.

  “Once there was One True World, where mankind thrived, beneath the shelter of a great tree. We lived in peace, and there was great prosperity, for men did not seek their own gain, but sought to enrich each other as much as themselves. The True Tree spread above us, hiding us from the eyes of our enemies, and whispering words of peace.

  “We had enemies, but we also had each other. There were Darkling Glories that hunted us, creatures of great power that carried darkness with them wherever they went. And there were heroes among us who hunted the Darkling Glories in return, men called the Ael.

  “You were one of the Ael,” Daylan told Fallion. “You were a champion who swore to serve his people, and for this the people gave you their support.

  “So you were gifted with runes of power, much like the runelords on the world where you were born. But in those days, the taking and giving of endowments was not such a horrid thing. Dedicates did not die in the exchange. People chose their champions wisely, offering up endowments only to the most deserving, and as one of the Ael you would draw upon those runes only in moments of great extremity.

  “To give an endowment, the best part of yourself, was not a sacrifice; it was an act of pure love.”

  Rhianna had heard these stories before. She had learned them on Daylan’s knee as a child, in her brief stay in the netherworld. Now, she realized, Daylan was telling them to Fallion in an effort to waken the memories.

  “Let me tell you how it will be,” Daylan said. “Tonight, Fallion, when next you sleep, you will recall your time beneath the great tree. You will remember the great hurt you suffered, and your valiant struggle to fight the Queen of the Loci. And when you wake, you will know what you must do….”

  Daylan was not a large man. He did not tower over the group, and Rhianna imagined that if you spotted him in a market, you would not have thought him special. He did not look wiser than other men, or stronger.

  But at this moment, she looked into his eyes and it seemed that he grew old. There was great sadness there, and infinite wisdom. He looked scarred and aged, like the majestic sandstone mountains in Landesfallen that have been battered and sculpted by the wind over the ages until their sides have worn away, creating faces as smooth as bone, revealing the inner majesty of the mountain.

  For a moment, Daylan did not look like a man, but a force of nature.

  Fallion smiled weakly and looked down at his hands, as if unsure whether to believe Daylan.

  “Fallion,” Daylan said. “Have you ever tried clutching your cape pin when you go to sleep?”

  Rhianna smiled. As Fallion had discovered when he first touched it, if you held the pin long enough, it would show you visions of the One True World. A huge owl would fly to you and carry you away on a dizzying journey. It was more of a thrill than a comfort. No one could hold onto that pin for more than a few moments. As teens, Rhianna and Fallion had once made a game of it, trying to see who could hold it the longest.

  “No,” Fallion said.

  “Try it when next you sleep,” Daylan said. “It will show you the One True World as it once was, and help you to remember.”

  Fallion nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  Daylan climbed to his feet, and said, “I should let you get whatever rest you can. There will likely be fighting before morning.”

  Fallion smiled at him, then glanced at Siyaddah. There were questions in her eyes, and she spoke softly
to Daylan for a moment.

  Daylan smiled at a question and began to translate. “She asks, why are you so brown? She says ‘You have the hair of the raven.’”

  “Tell her that in my world,” Fallion said, “my grandmother was from Indhopal, a land far to the east. Her skin was dark and beautiful, like Siyaddah’s. My lineage connects with men and women of Indhopal many times over the past thousand years.”

  Daylan translated, then relayed another question. “Oh,” Siyaddah said. “So you are of mixed breed, east and west?”

  “Yes,” Fallion answered. “And I even have ancestors among the white skins, the Inkarrans to the south.”

  Siyaddah asked a question. Daylan said, “She says that your eyes follow her, and that she has caught you looking at her many times. She wants to know, ‘Do you think she is beautiful?’”

  Rhianna found her heart beating hard at the question, and she held her breath.

  “Yes,” Fallion admitted, as Rhianna feared he would.

  Daylan spoke a single word, and Siyaddah repeated Fallion’s answer in his own tongue, “Yes.”

  Siyaddah smiled at him, began to speak. Her gaze was penetrating, frank. “She says that you are beautiful, too. She is not attracted to most of the men in Luciare. The warriors are too huge, too pale. If she were to mate with one of them, the chances are good that the child would be over-large, and she would die in childbirth. She wants to know if it is true that on your world, you were the son of Prince Urstone.”

  Daylan smiled at this. Rhianna knew that Daylan knew the answers, but he seemed to enjoy watching Fallion squirm.

  “On our world, Urstone was not a mere prince. He was the king, the High King of many realms, and his name will be forever revered. I am proud to be his son, and heir.”

  Siyaddah smiled nervously at that news. She bit her lip, and spoke softly and rapidly. Daylan offered in a humble tone, “She thinks it would be good if all people were to be united, the small folk of your world with the true men of her world. She wants to know, ‘Do you agree?’”