Worldbinder (15 page)

For two years she had hidden her desires. She could hide them no more.

Fallion stroked her cheek, and she could see the want in his eyes. But tenderly, he pushed her back.

“What is this?” he asked. “I know how you feel. I’ve seen your love growing in the way that you look at me, at the way you linger in my presence. You are one of the most beautiful women that I know. But you and I are too much like brother and sister.”

She loved him. Fallion knew it. But he had always kept himself aloof. He had done so in part because he knew that someday he might have to marry another in order to seal a political alliance.

But Fallion had remained aloof for a more important reason: he knew in his heart that he did not love her in the way that she loved him.

She smiled secretively. “I know that you want me.” He did not deny it. “And every day, I want you more.”

Fallion knew that Rhianna’s mother was from Fleeds, a land where women ruled, and where they chose their mates much as they chose their stallions. In hindsight he should have known that she would try to claim him in this way. “So why do you choose to profess your love today?”

“It’s just,” she said hesitantly, “today, more than any other, I wanted you to know that you are loved.”

“I see,” Fallion said, a forlorn chuckle rising from his throat.

“You saved my life,” she said. “And you saved my soul. And you’ll save this world, too. The time will come when the people of this world will thank you.”

He felt grateful for the gesture, even if it had caught him by surprise.

He rolled his hips, dislodging her, and threw her down into the pine needles. Then he leaned over her, and returned her kiss gently.

He looked into her eyes for a long moment, until she asked in hope and wonder, “What is this?”

“It’s a token of my gratitude.”

    12    

Warlord Madoc lay in bed that night, unable to sleep. The great changes that had taken place worried him—the breaks in the castle wall, the rise of forests where only stones and thistles should have been.

There was a new power in the world for him to contend with—a power greater than his sword, a power even greater, perhaps, than the wyrmlings.

That power had devastated him. Like so many others in the city, he had been struck down when the worlds collided. That did not bother him much. He had been knocked unconscious before.

What bothered him was the waking dreams.

In his dream, he had been a farmer, a free man with but one cow to give milk and a brood of thirteen children to drink it all. In his dream, he worked from sunrise to sunset every day, just to feed his family. In his dream, he loved his wife more fiercely than he knew a man could
love, and even though there were no wyrmlings in the world, he still fretted about the future, for a hail storm in the spring could ruin a crop or grasshoppers in the summer might eat him out, and that might be as disastrous as any wyrmling, and if his cow dried up because the howling of some distant wolf frightened her, it would be as bad as a famine.

No one of import knew his name in this dream. No king feared him; no warriors vied for the honor of eating at his table. He had no rank or title. He had no future.

And yet, most disturbing of all, in the dream he was a happy, happy man.

Upon awaking, Madoc had thought it only a strange dream, vivid and disturbing. He recalled so many details—the way that the lilac bush outside his house perfumed the night air, the games of horse he played with his children, the profound joy that he took each night, sometimes three times a night, in making love to his wife, Deralynne.

Could that all have been real?

His wife lay beside him, and he could tell that she, too, was troubled. He had told her of the war council, of Daylan Hammer’s words.

More troubling still, the woman he slept beside was not the wife he’d loved on that shadow world. She was a warrior woman with bones as big as an ox and an unkind temperament. She had borne him sons, but took no pleasure in the making of them.

At last she reached out and squeezed his hand, as if to comfort him. It was an odd gesture, one that she had never performed before.

“I dreamed,” she said, “that I was a cobbler’s wife, and that I was childless. We … were wealthy, I suppose. We had everything that we could want, except for the one thing that I wanted most—a daughter. And then the raiders came, the damned warlords of Internook, and they plundered our house, took all that they wanted, and burned the rest.”

Madoc considered this. He wondered if she might go searching for the cobbler of her dreams. He wondered if he should go searching for Deralynne. His home with Deralynne had been in a peaceful land called Toom, where stories of raids and looting in faraway places were just that… stories.

Were the loves that they had forged in another life any less meaningful than the ones that they had forged here?

At last, he asked the question that burned in him.

“If you could have that life, would you?” Madoc asked.

“I would kill anyone, risk anything, not to,” she said. She turned to him then, the moonlight shining through the window just barely revealing the curve of her face, the glint of an eye.

“We are a wealthy family,” she said, “held in esteem. You could be High King someday. You
should
be High King. What has Urstone done for this people? For years his son has languished in prison while the wyrmlings consolidate their hold. To do nothing in a time of war, that is treason. Urstone should be … replaced.”

Madoc had never considered murdering the king before. It was a repugnant idea.

Yet he knew that she was right. The kingdom needed a strong leader now more than ever, and Urstone had become too enfeebled over the years.

To kill him would be to serve the people.

    13    

Less than an hour before dawn, just as the first birds began to peep querulously at the coming light, the Knights Eternal found the human fortress south of Caer Golgeata, as Lady Despair had promised.

They circled the small castle twice from above, studying its curious workmanship, then dived into the courtyard. As Vulgnash landed, his wings folded neatly around him like a bloody robe.

Vulgnash studied the tree in the courtyard while his companions began the hunt. The undersides of its leaves gleamed softly in the starlight, creating a numinous glow. The sound of its leaves whispering in the night breeze soothed his jangled nerves, aroused feelings of hope and longings for decency that had long since abandoned him.

As Thul hunched with his cowl around his face and crept from door to door sensing for living things, Kryssidia merely crouched upon a wall, watching for guards.

“They’re hiding,” Thul hissed at last, his voice as dry as a crypt. “But they are here.”

“Of course they are here,” Vulgnash said. There was tall grass and vines outside the castle gate, and only a few pairs of feet had trampled them. If the inhabitants of the castle had fled, they’d have left a larger trail.

With any luck, the wizard Fallion Orden would still be here.

Vulgnash leapt up a stone wall, strode to the tree. He
caressed its golden bark, found it soothing and pleasant to the touch. It had an exotic scent to it, like cumin, only sweeter.

With his finger he drew a rune upon the tree, then stepped back a few paces and uttered a single curse word.

The bark squealed and shattered, as if lightning took the tree, and suddenly it was blasted with rot. Fungi the color of butter and snow covered it like a scab, and burst up from beneath the rents in the bark. Leaves shriveled and turned the gray of dirty rags.

Vulgnash stood back as the heavy scent of decay filled the courtyard.

In death most of all, Vulgnash thought, the tree was beautiful.

There was a hiss from across the courtyard, at the mouth of the keep. “Here,” Thul whispered.

Kryssidia swooped down from the wall on crimson wings, like a giant bloodied crow, while Vulgnash strode to the door in question.

Thul pushed upon it, and the heavy door swung inward.

Interesting, Vulgnash thought. I had imagined that they would bar it. But of course, by doing so, they would have signaled where they were hid.

Thul stood by the open door, and his long dark tongue flickered like a snake’s. Vulgnash tasted the air, too. His senses were acutely attuned to the smell of death, and every creature, no matter how much alive, also had a taste of death to it—an odor of decaying skin, putrefying fat. Yes, there was more than a hint of death in the air. There was the smell of those who were wounded and dying.

Moving almost as one, the three drew their blades and crept into the keep, walking as softly as shades. Some small starlight came in shafts through the windows. Vulgnash bent his will upon it, scattered it backward, so that the three became one with the shadows.

They followed the familiar scent of death through the
halls, found a stairwell going down. The scent was stronger there.

They crept down the stone steps, halted just in front of the door.

The smell of decay was strong. Someone stood just on the other side, guarding the door, a human, an older man. There was no fear in his scent. He did not know that he was being stalked.

Kryssidia pushed on the door, this time using only the power of his shade.

This door was barred.

The Knights Eternal looked at one another, and then as one bent their wills upon the door.

It shattered inward as if a rampaging bull had charged into it. Shards of wood and splinters flew everywhere.

A frightened old man cried out, “What? What? Who goes there? I, I, I have a sword.”

Vulgnash had learned many languages in his long life, but he did not recognize this one. The old man’s words were meaningless.