Chaosbound (50 page)

“As must I,” Draken said.

He gazed into Rain's eyes, and there was so much pain in his gaze, so much concern. “Please,” he said. “If you must go, go!”

Sage wept and she threw her arms around Myrrima, gave her a hug. She came to a decision. “I want to stay, too, Mother.”

Rain glanced toward the door in a near panic. Time was wasting. She admired the family's dedication to one another, but she didn't want to die for Borenson's memory.

Myrrima looked at her daughter Sage; the love in her face had grown fierce. “Stay with us then. We can all watch your father's back together.”

They'll die trying to save what is left of Sir Borenson, Rain realized. She wondered if Borenson had indeed been such a great man. Was he, or anyone, worth such a sacrifice?

A distant cry rose from far down the street, a woman's wail of fear and pain. The wyrmlings were coming.

Rain didn't trust Myrrima's magic. It was said that water wizards had uncanny powers of protection, but they were not foolproof. A powerful mage could see right through the wizardess's ruse, as could a person with a strong and focused mind.

Some folks in the arena cried out in alarm, they glanced about in a panic, as if seeking the closest exit.

Myrrima stood at the door and blocked their escape. “Hold!” she
called. “No one may leave. The enemy is here already. They are searching the town. We are hiding, hiding in a mist of our own making. No enemy can find us here. Avert your eyes from your enemy, and they shall avert their eyes from you! They will not see you!”

Before she finished her last words, there was a boom at the door to the arena. A wyrmling ax cleaved through it, shattering the wood and creating a wedge of light.

Myrrima whirled to face the threat.

Faster than a heartbeat, a second blow rang upon the door, and then a third; the wreckage of the door flung open.

A huge bull wyrmling stood for an instant, glaring into the arena.

Children gulped in terror.

Myrrima faced him. She looked down to the floor, and the wyrmling's eyes followed.

The wyrmling was breathing rapidly. A dozen endowments of metabolism he had to have had.

The wyrmling bull peered about the room, and his eyes seemed glazed, unfocused, as if he wandered through a waking dream.

Suddenly a cry rang out in the arena. One of the Dedicates had awakened, and she called out in a wail, “Alas, our lady Anya has fallen in battle!”

Rain stifled an urge to curse and brought her short sword ringing from its sheath as she waited for the wyrmling to charge.

Aaath Ulber roared in pain as a wyrmling runelord's ax sliced into his scalp, chipping bone from his skull.

The blow knocked him back a pace, and he staggered, head reeling. He tried to find his feet.

He'd reached the Dedicates' keep. Unfortunately he'd found the wyrmling guards, too—enormous bulls who were scarred by hundreds of forcibles.

One of them rushed into the breach and lunged with a meat hook,
snatching Anya from her feet. She writhed and her bright blade flickered forward like the tongue of a serpent, but the huge meat hook had caught her in the back of the neck. The wyrmling shook his fist, and neck bones snapped. Anya's head lolled crazily.

The wyrmling hurled Anya against the wall as Wulfgaard gave a battle cry. The boy lunged with his own sword and plunged it beneath the wyrmling's arm, so that it ran up the bone and bit deep into the creature's armpit. Hot blood erupted from the wound, and Wulfgaard danced backward.

Aaath Ulber charged, knocking the dying guard away, and saw Dedicates ahead. In the dim light thrown by ten thousand glow worms on the roof high above, he saw men and women stacked like cordwood, three or four deep.

Alarm bells had begun to sound, huge gongs that tolled solemnly. The wyrmlings had tried to slow Aaath Ulber down by closing the portcullis gates, but he'd spotted gear boxes below, and soon discovered that he had to open each box in order to clear the level above.

But he'd found the wyrmlings' treasure.

The room was filled with Dedicates. Many were still sleeping, but others were now awake—men and women freed from their endowments.

Unfortunately, the keep was also filled with wyrmlings. The wyrmling workers were trundling about with great swords, taking the heads off of anyone unfortunate enough to rise.

Bodies lay thick on the floor.

With a rush of bloodlust, Aaath Ulber buried his war hammer into the chest of a wyrmling runelord, then leapt in the air and kicked the head off another.

The path opened.

Wulfgaard rushed into the room, eager to find his betrothed.

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

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.