Chaosbound (52 page)

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.

But in the uprising that followed, the humans vastly outnumbered the usurpers. Most of the wrymling warriors had but three endowments of metabolism. They were fast, but not faster than a marksman's arrow.

From the smoke and ashes of the great fortress Aaath Ulber came, and he raced across the land, scouring the coasts to the east. Three other human champions survived, and they raced to the west.

Songs would be sung of them that night, about the giant Aaath Ulber who wore robes woven from blood and traveled the earth in boots formed of gore.

By midafternoon Aaath Ulber caught the wyrmling champion Zil some twenty miles east of Ox Port, where the wyrmlings were setting fire to a village.

It is said that Zil begged for his life, and offered to serve mankind. But Aaath Ulber would not trust the creature, and so he slew Zil with the sword, slicing his throat close against the jaw, so that the wyrmling's lying tongue plopped out and jerked about on the ground.

Then Aaath Ulber hurled the wyrmling champion onto a bonfire that raged, the remains of some lord's fine manor.

By dusk, Aaath Ulber was a blur racing through all the cities along the coast and headed north into the wilderness, to clear out the wyrmling mines.

With the evening, the barbarians of Internook were singing and feasting. The human captives were coming home from the fortress, and folks from Ox Port sent wagons drawn by fast horses to speed them on their way.

The evening came warm and clear that night, with stars raging in the heavens, and the folks of Internook thought to celebrate.

But Draken wondered aloud to Myrrima, “Why are they celebrating? Internook doesn't have enough forcibles to protect itself. The wyrmlings will surely come from their fortresses to the south, and they will punish these people.”

Myrrima was at the feast, picking out bread for their journey. She anticipated that Aaath Ulber would be back by dawn. “Celebrate life while you can,” Myrrima said, “for death comes all too swiftly. The folk of Internook know this.”

She picked up a loaf of barley bread from a table, the sweet color of dark honey, and squeezed it experimentally. Then she turned to Draken, and the words that came from her now seemed to be wrung from her heart: “You should marry Rain tonight. Prudence might tell you to wait, but my heart says that you should marry her and enjoy your time together while you can.”

Draken stared at her in disbelief. He looked so young. He was fifteen, going on sixteen. He was hardly more than a child.

“But, I'll need to buy land, build a house, get everything ready to support a wife.”

“That can come later,” Myrrima said. “The two of you can work together. It will be hard, but it can be done.”

“I'm not old enough,” Draken objected.

“Age cannot be measured in years alone,” she told him. “You fled the
locus Asgaroth with us when you were but a child. You've flown with the Gwardeen, and faced the wyrmlings. Such things age a boy and make him wise before his time. You're more of a man than someone twice your age.”

“Father would never agree,” Draken said.

“Aaath Ulber? He's not here to stop you,” Myrrima said.

She hated to admit it, but Draken's father was gone now. Borenson had been transformed into a monster, a hero, a creature of legend. Like a dragonfly emerging from the bones of its nymph form, he had taken a fearsome visage.

“Your real father, Sir Borenson, would have agreed with me,” Myrrima said. “He was a man who loved to see people happy.”

Draken nodded slightly, “Yes, I think he would have agreed.”

So Draken married that night at the feast, while Aaath Ulber was still scouring the wilds. He married in the style of the barbarians of Inter-nook.

In front of the entire village, he and Rain stood next to the fire, and Warlord Hrath bound their wrists together with strong cords. He gave Draken a fine ax, for his right hand, and Rain a bottle of wine for her left, and then had them repeat their oaths.

Draken found himself shaken at the power of the ceremony. The nearness of Rain, the warmth of her touch, the anticipation that he felt—all combined to send him shivering. He hardly recalled the words of the oath. He peered at his mother on the far side of the fire, saw her eyes tearing with joy, while little Sage stood holding her hand.

Draken promised to love Rain for the rest of his life, and to bed no other woman. He promised to nourish her and her children, both belly and soul. He swore to protect her and sustain her, through daylight and darkness, through the warm spring rains and the bounty of summer, until winter's icy touch released him.

When Rain took her vows, they barely registered in his mind. They were much the same as his, but he recalled an odd phrase, one that he'd
never heard in a wedding ceremony, for Rain swore to “scold him only when he needs it, and to nag him not at all.”

When the vow was finished, he took her in his arms and kissed her. The townsfolk raised their mugs of ale and shouted a great salute. There were cheers of “Blessed be your bed!” and “Health to you; wealth to you; and great be your joy!”

Then he found himself striding away from the group, still bound to Rain. Warlord Hrath warned him, “Don't untie the knot until dawn. It will bring you bad fortune!”

So together they went down to the docks and got into their away boat, and with each of them holding an oar, they rowed at a leisurely pace out to the
Borrowbird
. The ocean was calm that night, as calm as a summer pool, and the starlight reflected from its muzzy surface.

They climbed into the ship, which was still at anchor, and peered up at the sky. A crescent moon hung above the water, and in the distance a seabird cried.

Draken kissed his wife then, and peered into her eyes.

Her face was not the most beautiful that he had seen, he thought. She was fair enough, but not like some of the great women of legend.

He did not love her any less for it. Instead, he yearned to hold her, to cling to her.

He kissed her, and in moments he found himself playfully tugging at her clothes. He could not get his own shirt off, for the ties that bound him to Rain kept them on.

“I think this is some sort of barbarian joke on the newlyweds,” he said. “Let's cut the knot.”

“No,” Rain begged. “Leave it be. I like being bound to you.” She hesitated for a moment and said, “Let's cut the clothes off instead.”

And he did.

Aaath Ulber raced through the night from village to village, slaughtering wyrmlings as he went.

They could not have escaped him even if they had tried. With his
endowments of scent from hounds, he could smell the peculiarly rancid odor of their fat, even from miles away.

So with each city or village that he searched, finding the wyrmlings was not hard, and with so many endowments of metabolism to his credit, dispatching them was no harder.

He had grown weary of killing. He longed to stop, but he had to tell himself that with each wyrmling that he slew, he was freeing another four or five Dedicates.

I have not found myself, as the Earth King asked, he realized. I am more lost than ever.

He only hoped that Myrrima might help him. The touch of a water wizard could heal a man—even his blackened mind. So many times in the night when he'd wakened in the past, suffering from intolerable dreams of slaughter, Myrrima had healed him.

He only hoped that she could heal him now, in his darkest hour.

For the rest of the world, it was only a single night. But Aaath Ulber suspected that he had some thirty or forty endowments of metabolism now. He could run two hundred miles in an hour, and time for him stretched on limitlessly.

The work of that day seemed to him to be endless.

Yet as he ran, each time that he stopped in a tiny hamlet to dispatch a single wyrmling, he wondered, What have I won?

I've wiped out a minor fortress in the frozen wastes, he thought—one that was poorly equipped and run by a leader who was too evil and petty to be efficient.

It is not the same as what I will face in Rugassa.

In Rugassa they had mountains of blood metal. In Rugassa the emperor ruled, and beneath him there had risen some false Earth King. In Rugassa the skies were filled with Knights Eternal and Darkling Glories.

What we've won here, he thought, is nothing.

So he raced across the country through the long night, and his mind was not easy. His imagination conjured the nightmares he would have to face in Rugassa.

Sometimes he worried about Crull-maldor. The lich had managed to evade him, and even now he feared that she might rise up from the ground on the trail in front of him or materialize at his back.

She had sworn her vengeance.

Yet as the long night drew on, he finished his circle of eastern Inter-nook, and raced back to the fortress one last time to meet with the other champions.

As he crested a hill a few miles from the fortress, he glanced out to sea and spotted a fleet of wyrmling warships—three in number, making their way toward shore.

The vessels were huge, with enormous square sails stained like blood.

Supplies for Crull-maldor, he wondered, or fresh troops?

It didn't matter. He would have to finish the wyrmlings, lest news of the uprising reach distant shores.

So he stopped for a bit and fed himself on wild blackberries, then he raced downhill, hit the rocky beach, leapt out from shore, and poured on the speed as he reached the water.

Running at two hundred miles per hour, he raced over the sea, slipping and thrashing. The sea felt springy under his feet, but it was more solid than the stream had been. He wasn't sure if the salt in the water made the difference, or if it was because he had more endowments.

So he raced over the uneven surface of the ocean, bounding over waves and flotsam.

The ships drew nearer, and the size of them impressed him. The planks on the hull were perhaps sixteen inches wide and looked to be four inches thick. The mainmast towered a full hundred feet above the water.

He could see the wyrmling steersman at the helm, and Aaath Ulber appeared so quickly that the creature was barely able to register surprise before Aaath Ulber leapt twenty feet into the air, up to the prow, grabbed on to the heavy railing, and sprang lightly to the deck.

In less than a minute he dispatched all of the wyrmlings aboard, turning it into a ghost ship.

While checking the hold, he discovered the ship's purpose: It carried
treasure, stone boxes filled with forcibles, more than three hundred and fifty thousand of them. They were made of good blood metal, and the heads had already been filed down into runes of metabolism.

Of course, Aaath Ulber realized. The wyrmlings to the south are better supplied with forcibles. It took them weeks to send shipments to this worthless little outpost.

In exultation, Aaath Ulber raced to each of the ships, slaughtered the crew, and secured the treasure.

As he rode toward the rocky shore, he dreamt of what this might mean.

There were Dedicates to be had here in Internook, and there were warriors fierce and strong.

He stood at the helm of the lead ship, and shouted toward the shore, “The Wyrmling Empire shall be ours!”

Myrrima was treated to a room in the village inn that night, a fine room with a straw bed covered in quilts, and a pillow made from goose down.

The innkeeper, a matron in her fifties, built a small fire in the hearth, even though it was not cold, and she'd left wine and cheese on a night-stand.

It was long past midnight when Myrrima prepared for bed. She used a basin filled with warm water to take a sponge bath, and she promised herself a real bath on the morrow—in fresh clean water, out in the river.

She put on her night-robe and then sat before a bureau mirror combing out her long hair. She smiled to herself.

One of my children is married tonight, she thought. With luck, a grandchild will soon be on the way.

A cool wind blew through the room, and she suspected that the door must have blown open. She glanced toward it as a mist floated up through the crack.

A wyrmling hag materialized, her skin cracked with age, her body somehow formless and distorted.

In a panic, Myrrima pushed back in her chair. Her only weapon was her
bow and arrows, arrows blessed to kill even a lich. But she'd leaned her bow upon the bed, on the far side of the room.

The wyrmling hag towered above her. Myrrima heard words in her mind:
Come with me, to the land of the dead
.