Worldbinder

by David Farland

  The two winged human warriors hadn’t had time to adapt to a life of flight, and so they squatted along with the rest of their kind. Their attention was riveted on the enemy in front of them, when they should have been scanning the sky above.

  With a kick, the Knights Eternal soundlessly broke away from the mountain wall, unfolded their wings, and swooped into a dive.

  Like hawks they stooped, using all of their strength to focus on the wingtips, keeping them rigid against the driving wind, gently tilting, making corrections, as they guided themselves toward their targets.

  They gained speed as they fell, and soon were rushing toward ground. With just a tilt of the wingtips, they began to break, and went shooting just feet above the crowd.

  Thunder drums continued to boom, cracking walls and shattering stone. The wyrmlings wailed and snarled in death as the humans hurled their iron darts, and everywhere men were shouting battle cries. Fallion’s nerves jangled, and for a moment it seemed that all went silent as he tried to block out the sound.

  From the castle wall above Fallion, he heard a roar of warning and imagined that from their higher vantage point the lookouts must have spotted some new threat.

  Jaz leapt forward, taking aim with his great bow and loosing a black arrow into the throat of a wyrmling kezziard rider. He grabbed a second arrow in a blur, and took aim at a kezziard’s eye.

  A war dart came hurtling up from a wyrmling below, and Jaz dodged aside even as he let his arrow fly.

  A tall warrior stepped in front of Fallion, blocking his view; quickly Fallion ducked to his left to get a glimpse of the battlefield.

  He heard a heavy chunk, crack, chunk.

  The warrior that had blocked Fallion’s view suddenly grunted. Fallion glanced at him, and saw that a black dart now sprouted from his back.

  The warrior staggered forward a pace and moaned as he toppled over the wall.

  That dart barely missed me! Fallion realized. He wondered where it had come from. Obviously, there was an enemy behind him.

  At that instant Jaz cried out, falling to his knees.

  Fallion heard the muffled flapping of wings, a sound an owl might make as it takes a mouse. A Knight Eternal, he realized.

  He ducked. At the same instant something enormous swooped above his head.

  Then Fallion spotted a huge black iron war dart protruding from Jaz’s back.

  For an instant, time froze. Fallion saw the panic in Rhianna’s eyes, saw her swing her staff wildly as a pair of Knights Eternal blurred above her. But as quickly as they had come, the enemy was gone, winging off into the shadows.

  Fallion thought to follow, but knew that it would be too dangerous. He could no longer see them, and their flying skills far outmatched his own.

  Jaz knelt on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. He coughed, and gobs of blood spattered to the ground.

  He began to laugh just a bit as Fallion drew near.

  “What?” Rhianna asked, grabbing for his shoulder, trying to pull him up. Jaz shook his head no, refusing her help.

  Jaz looked up at Fallion, smiling broadly, while blood poured freely from his mouth. Tears glistened in his eyes.

  “Do you hurt?” Rhianna asked, trying to comfort him.

  “The poison… is cold.”

  Jaz collapsed, his face banging onto the stone.

  “Jaz!” Fallion cried, and reached down to grab him. He listened for Jaz to breathe, but only heard the air escape his brother’s throat.

  Rhianna’s face was blank with shock.

  All of the roaring, all of the snarl and bass of the thunder drums, all seemed but a small and distant noise. In that instant, Fallion knelt with his brother, utterly alone.

  Then Rhianna was on him, trying to pull him back from the wall. “We’ve got to get away! They’re coming!”

  Even as she spoke, a great sky serpent flapped overhead, and they were washed in the wind from its wings. Something wet splattered from the sky, and there was a crackling sound as it splashed to the stone walls.

  Oil? Fallion wondered. Some vile poison?

  But drops of red hit his face, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Blood, he realized. Putrid blood, that smelled as if it had been days rotting in a barrel.

  The very stench of it made him want to retch, and, oddly, the touch of it began to burn his skin. He heard a hissing sound around him as foul liquid landed on vines and trees and set them steaming.

  Death, come to conquer life. It was more than mere blood. There was a spell upon it.

  It was an omen.

  Suddenly, Fallion felt disoriented. All of the rules of combat he had learned as a child meant nothing here. The wyrmlings fought a different kind of war.

  Rhianna grabbed Jaz’s scabbard and bow, then pulled on Fallion’s shoulder, trying to lift him up.

  Fallion staggered to his feet, went tottering behind her. He stared back, his eyes on Jaz, hoping that his brother might show some sign of life.

  A huge human warrior reached down, grabbed Jaz by the wings, and began trying to lift him.

  “He’s dead,” Fallion called back uselessly.

  At that instant there was a tearing sound, and Jaz’s wings ripped free. His corpse sloughed away, slapping to the cold stone battlements.

  Ah, Fallion realized. He wasn’t helping Jaz, just taking a prize of war.

  Rhianna led Fallion away in a daze, racing up the cold stone streets. He couldn’t feel his feet. His body had gone numb. There were shouts everywhere. Giant graaks flapped high over the city while wyrmlings spattered their bloody elixir onto trees and gardens, set the trees and grass sizzling, then found a place to land.

  Behind Fallion, there was a shout as kezziards hit the outer wall. Fallion did not understand the war clan’s language, but he knew what they were crying. “Pull back, pull back! The wyrmlings are over the wall.”

  Fallion peered back toward Jaz one last time, but could not see him. The human warriors behind Fallion were in full retreat, blocking Fallion’s view, and a kezziard was climbing over the spot where Jaz’s body lay, the wyrmling riders looking fearsome in their thick armor.

  In a more perfect world, Fallion thought, my brother is still alive.

  He ached to take wing, to fly to the Mouth of the World and dare the tunnels down, seeking out the Seal of the Inferno.

  Soon, he promised himself.

  But there was a battle to fight first.

  42

  A VISION

  Every man is a prisoner of his own making. The size of our jail is defined by the limits of our vision.

  —Daylan Hammer

  Time had no meaning in Areth’s cell. Seconds seemed to draw out into hours, hours into centuries. As his unseen Dedicates endured unimaginable tortures, only Areth felt their pain.

  Several times he lost consciousness, then rose again to the surface, like a drowning man. From time to time, voices came to him, hallucinations caused by the extremity of his torture.

  Other times, he heard groaning deep in the earth, as if rocks were colliding and rubbing together, struggling to form new hills. It was almost as if the earth had a voice, and if he listened hard enough, he could hear it.

  “Pain. I am in pain,” the earth said. That is all that he could discern in the noise, that and a sound like groaning.

  Areth whispered, “I would help if I could.”

  Areth heard his wife’s voice.

  “Areth, awake,” she said softly.

  He looked up and saw that he was in a meadow.

  I am dreaming, he realized, but only stared at his wife. She had been dead for sixteen years. Areth knew that she could not be here, and he peered into her face not because he loved it, but because he had not been able to recall what she had looked like now for nearly a decade.

  A dream such as this, it was rare and precious, and he hoped to recall it when he woke.

  Her skin was dark, beautiful, as it had been in life. Her eyes sparkled like stars reflected in a pool a
t midnight.

  But there was something wrong. Her face was mottled and of different colors. He peered hard. White sand, pebbles, twigs, leaves and mud all seemed to be pressed together, forming her face.

  A vague worry took him. Areth feared that he was mad. He knew that this was a dream, but the meadow somehow seemed too real, too lush. He could smell the sweet scent of rye and the bitter tang of the dandelions in the grass. Bluebells rose up at the roots of the aspen trees at the edge of the glade. There was too much detail in the grass. He could see old blades lying on the ground, the new grass rising up from them. He could smell worms upon the ground.

  He listened to the bickering of wrens and calls of cicadas deeper in the woods, and he felt sure that it was not a dream.

  “Who are you?” Areth asked the woman, for he suddenly realized that she could not be his wife. She was a stranger.

  “I am the Spirit of the Earth,” the woman whispered, smiling down at him. “I have come to beg your help. The world is a wasteland, and soon will succumb. The very rocks and stones cry out in agony. Soon, mankind will pass away, like a dream.”

  Sooner than you know, Areth thought. He could not say why, but he believed the wyrmling torturers this time. They were attacking Luciare and would slaughter the last vestiges of mankind. Perhaps a few might escape, but only a few, and they would be hunted.

  “I can grant you the power to save them,” the Earth Spirit whispered. “If you will accept the gift, you can save the seeds of mankind. But it comes with a great price—all that you are, all that you ever will be. All of your hopes and dreams must be relinquished, and you must serve me above all.”

  Areth felt as if his knuckles had grown thick with arthritis. Pain blossomed in them, as if they had been crushed. He laughed in pain.

  If this is a dream, then I must not be sleeping very soundly, he thought. The torturers are still at me.

  “Do you accept?” the woman asked.

  “Why not? Sure, I accept.”

  The woman faded without another word.

  Areth opened his eyes, found himself lying upon the greasy floor of his cell. There were no lights nearby to let him see. The stone floor was covered with his sweat and stank of rotting skin. A corner in the back was reserved for his waste, and bore an appropriate odor.

  He was wracked in pain. It felt as if one of his lungs had collapsed, and his right arm had been pulled from his shoulder joint.

  But as he peered into the darkness, groaning in pain, he could not help but remember for the first time in years the scent of sweet rye grass bursting from ground swollen by spring rain.

  43

  BATTLE FOR THE UPPER GATE

  In a fight between flameweavers, everyone gets burned.

  —a saying of Fleeds

  Thunder drums kept snarling as the Warrior Clans beat a hasty retreat from the lower wall. There were cries of pain, shouted battle orders. Amidst the bedlam, Rhianna raced over the paved streets of the market, hanging on to Fallion with her left hand while she struggled to hold her own staff and Jaz’s weapons in her right.

  The enormous graaks flew over her head and landed on the upper wall. Wyrmling troops slid down their scaly backs, then raced to take the upper gate, leaving a host of slaughtered defenders in their wake. The wyrmling troops moved too fast to be commoners.

  They’ve taken endowments of metabolism, Rhianna realized.

  There were cries of despair from the defenders on the upper wall, and all around Rhianna in the market streets below, human warriors began sprinting to meet the threat, jostling her, nearly knocking her down.

  Fallion staggered beside Rhianna in a daze, trying to peer back at his lost brother.

  With a sudden rattle of chains, a huge iron door slammed down on the upper wall, and there were groans of shock and despair from the defenders nearby.

  The defenders had just been locked out of the upper levels of the city. Rhianna whirled and glanced behind. Wyrmling troops were swarming over the lower walls by the tens of thousands.

  We’re trapped! she realized. With wyrmling runelords manning the wall above them and a host charging up from behind, the human warriors were caught between a hammer and an anvil.

  It was going to be a slaughter.

  And she could see no way to beat the wyrmling runelords. There couldn’t be more than four hundred men at the mouth of the warrens. If they charged out, they might be able to take the gate—but in doing so they’d leave the warrens undefended.

  The Warrior Clans weren’t prepared for the wyrmling tactics. They had planned to make an orderly retreat, exacting a heavy toll from the wyrmlings for every step that they took.

  But now, once the defenders in the city had been handled, the wyrmlings would be able to stroll through the warrens, wiping out the women, the children, the elderly and the babes.

  “Fell-ion!” a deep voice cried above the tumult. “Fell-ion!”

  Rhianna whirled, saw King Urstone not a hundred feet away. He pointed toward the upper gate, gave a silent nod, then leapt into the air, flying rapidly.

  Fallion just stood, his face a blank. He was still in shock.

  “Fallion,” Rhianna cried, “we have to win back the gate! Carry me up there!”

  Rhianna pointed up. It was a short flight, but a steep climb. The guards from the outposts along the upper wall were all racing to the gate, but these weren’t the city’s grandest fighters. Most of them were mere boys, and they would be fighting runelords.

  Fallion seemed to snap out of his daze. He grasped Rhianna around the lower belly and leapt into the air, flapping his wings for all that he was worth.

  Rhianna peered down. Beneath them, the wyrmlings had breached the lower wall in twenty places; kezziards were climbing over it. The gate to the lower levels had come down, and the wyrmling hordes were rushing through. There seemed to be no end of them. A few human hosts, realizing the danger, had turned to meet them, but there wouldn’t be enough of them.

  Up ahead of her, the monstrous graaks leapt into the air and dove back toward the markets.

  They’re going to pick up reinforcements for the gate, Rhianna realized.

  One monster winged straight toward them, as if it would attack. Rhianna let out a little cry of despair, and adjusted her sweaty grip on her staff and bow.

  Fallion strained, flapping hard, and then went into a dive, veering beneath the oncoming monster. He struggled to pull out of the dive, then suddenly went swooping up like an owl.

  Fallion didn’t have a wyrmling’s bulk, and his wings were made to fit the giants. Rhianna figured that together they weighed about as much as a single wyrmling. The wings could carry them, but sweat was streaming from Fallion’s brow by the time they reached the upper wall.

  As soon as he landed, he stopped and knelt, gasping for breath. Below them the thunder drums were deafening, and the cries of the warriors were like the roar of the sea.

  “Fallion,” Rhianna cried. “We have to clear the gates!”

  There were at least a hundred wyrmling troops at the gate to their east, fierce creatures in black capes, with huge strange swords and battle-axes that glinted like molten metal in the torchlight.

  King Urstone had landed on the far side of the gate, and now he gathered some young warriors around him, shouting battle orders. But there were not a hundred humans manning the entire upper wall.

  Down in the lower markets, the human warriors were charging the gate to the upper portion of the city. The Wizard Sisel led the charge, striding boldly forward, his staff held high. Thousands of warriors marched at his back. A great cloud of fireflies swarmed among the human hosts, lighting the way.

  Rhianna did not doubt that the wizard was preparing some spell to bring down the gate.

  Fallion glanced up into the sky, as if afraid that one of the Knights Eternal would swoop down on him, but for the moment the skies were clear.

  He reached out with his left hand, as if endlessly straining to grasp something in the valley below, s
omething almost beyond his reach. Fires burned in the valley, hundreds of torches in their sconces, dozens of small brushfires.

  Suddenly, nearly every torch and burning bush winked out.

  Their energy came whirling toward Fallion in a fiery tornado, ropes of burning red flames that twisted in the air and then landed in his hand, forming a white ball that blazed like the sun.

  He hurled the energy down among the wyrmling troops that bristled just inside the gates. A fiery ball whooshed into their midst and burst, incinerating a dozen wyrmlings, searing and setting fire to perhaps fifty more.

  King Urstone shouted, and his young warriors leapt into battle. Some of them simply hurled themselves over the wall, down to the gate, leaping sixty feet to land atop wyrmling warriors.

  It was suicide, but Rhianna saw big wyrmling runelords devastated by the assault, bones crushed by the weight of their attackers.

  Fallion reached out again toward the few fires that had flickered back to life. The fires blacked out, and coils of burning energy shot toward his outstretched palm.

  Just as suddenly, the coils arced up into the sky, like a fiery tornado that was upside down.

  A Knight Eternal grabbed the energy, and came swooping toward them at astonishing speed, holding a glowing ball of molten fire.

  “Watch out!” Fallion shouted, stepping in front of Rhianna, using his body as a shield.

  Rhianna cowered, afraid that the fireball would take her.

  But the Knight Eternal hurled the ball away at the last instant, sent it roiling into the castle’s defenders. Young soldiers let out a wail of pain as they died.

  The knight stooped from the sky and dove straight at Fallion, who only now drew his sword.

  The knight’s own black blade was in his hand. He winged toward Fallion at a falcon’s blinding speed, his blade held forward.

  Rhianna had wondered why Talon had called these creatures “knights.” Now she saw: it was racing toward them like a lancer, but instead of a warhorse, it rode upon the wind.