Worldbinder (33 page)

Fallion could think of nothing to say. This stranger, this legend, had called him brother.

Then King Urstone clapped Daylan on the back, and the two began talking in Urstone’s guttural tongue, and Fallion was excluded from the conversation.

Rhianna came and gave Fallion a sisterly hug while Daylan Hammer, the Wizard Sisel, the Emir’s daughter, and the king’s men huddled together making plans. The wyrmling princess retreated to the dark confines of the tower.

Sundown was less than an hour away, and the wyrmlings would be here soon for the exchange.

Rhianna nodded toward Daylan. “So, what do you think of Uncle Ael?”

“I don’t know,” Fallion said. He was still bewildered.

“He seems to like you,” Rhianna said. “That’s a good thing. He does not make friends easily.”

“He seems to
know
me,” Fallion corrected.

Sunset drew near all too soon for Fallion’s liking. The sun descended in a crimson haze that smeared the heavens, for there was still much dust high in the atmosphere, and in the long shadows thrown by the mountain it seemed that night wrapped around the small band like a cloak.

Daylan Hammer assured the king that the proceedings had all been secured under oaths so profound that even a wyrmling dared not break them. He did not expect the wyrmlings to attack.

But time had taught King Urstone this one lesson: never trust the wyrmlings.

So his guards secreted themselves in the woods around the tower in case the wyrmlings tried an ambush.

Fallion waited with his hand upon his sheathed sword, now caked in rust, while the king, the Wizard Sisel, Alun, Siyaddah, and Fallion’s friends all stood together in the tower’s shadow. Daylan Hammer and the wyrmling princess climbed the tower and stood atop its ruined walls.

The first star appeared in the sky, and bats began their nightly acrobatics around the tower.

Fallion had begun to believe that the wyrmlings would not show when he suddenly heard a flapping.

A wyrmling rose up out of the shadowed woods, came circling the tower. Fallion was fascinated by her artificial wings, and peered hard to see them. Her wings were translucent and golden, like a linnet’s wings, but there were darker bands through them, almost like bones, with webbing between the supports. They reminded him of the leathery wings of a graak.

There was no harness, no sign that the wings were any type of device. For all that Fallion could see the wings just sprouted from the woman’s back.

She circled the tower, looking down upon the men, as if she were just another bat.

Then she let out a cry, strange and filled with pain, the howling of some evil beast.

In the far distance, several answering cries rose from the trees among the swamp.

King Urstone clutched his battle-ax and shouted a warning. Talon translated, “It’s a trap!”

“No,” Daylan Hammer warned, “Wait!”

At that moment, wyrmlings rose up out of the swamp. They came winging toward the hill rapidly, vastly faster than the first, and the Wizard Sisel whispered, “Ah, damn.”

It wasn’t until they drew nearer that Fallion recognized the source of his dismay: these wyrmlings wore red—crimson cowls over blood-red robes, with wings that looked to be made of darkest ruby.

There were three of them.

Each held a black sword in clasped hands, the handle clutched against his breast while the blade pointed back toward his feet.

“Knights Eternal,” Talon intoned. “But I count three of them. We slew one yesterday, and another the night before. There should be only one left.”

“Yes,” Sisel said, “These Knights Eternal should not exist. Lady Despair has been hiding their numbers, and each of them is a hundred years in the making. It is only by luck that Lady Despair has revealed her secret. This is an evil omen. I wonder how many more there might be?”

Fallion let the energy in him build, drawing heat from the ground, preparing to unleash a fireball. The king’s men drew weapons, and Jaz bent his bow.

“Hold,” Daylan called down from the tower, lest one of the humans be first to break the truce.

The Knights Eternal flew toward them, crisscrossing and veering, as if to dodge archery fire.

And then a creature rose.

Something vast lifted out of the swamps, three miles
in the distance, lumbering above the trees upon leather wings.

It was like nothing that Fallion had ever seen. He had ridden upon sea graaks in Landesfallen. But the thing that came up out of the swamp could have swallowed one of those whole. It was black and sinister in color, and its wingspan had to stretch a hundred, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet. The length of its body was more than eighty feet long, and Fallion imagined that a small village full of people could have ridden on its back.

The shape of the body was serpentine, and the creature kept its head bent, as a heron will when it flies. But it had no heron’s head. Instead, it was ugly and blunt, like the head of a blind snake, with a mouth filled with ungainly teeth. Its long body seemed to undulate through the air. A leathery tail fanned out in the back, almost like a rudder.

Upon its back, a small figure clutched at a chain, looking frightened and beleaguered.

Father! Fallion thought, his heart feeling as if it would break.

“What is that creature?” Jaz shouted.

Fallion looked to King Urstone, whose face was pale with fear, and then to the Wizard Sisel, who merely shook his head in bafflement.

“It is a graak,” Daylan Hammer shouted from atop the battlements. “But only of a kind that has been spoken of in legend.”

Fallion stood, heart hammering, in mounting fear.

Did I create that terror when I merged the worlds? he wondered. He had no answer.

There were too many of the Knights Eternal. The darkness was falling.

Suddenly, the wyrmling princess gave a great cry and leapt from the tower wall. She landed only feet from Fallion, and the ground trembled beneath her weight.

The huge beast, this graak of legend, landed in the field, two hundred yards away, and the lonely figure just clung to its neck. The graak reared up, its ugly neck
stretching thirty feet in the air, and for a moment Fallion feared that it would lunge, take them in its teeth and kill them all.

Then it lay down as the wyrmling princess sprinted through the dry grass toward it.

“Areth?” the king cried out. “Areth?”

The lone figure raised up, peered in their direction, and let out a mournful cry, almost a sob.

He was a wreck of a man. His black hair had not been cut in years, and it fanned out from his head in disarray. His long beard reached nearly to his belly.

But even from a distance, Fallion recognized his father’s blazing blue eyes.

Prince Urstone let go of the beast’s neck, went sliding down its leathery hide, dropping twenty feet to the ground.

He got up on unsteady legs, as if he were not used to walking. He began staggering over the grass, calling out, sobbing.

He’s a broken thing, Fallion thought, a wretch.

Fallion heard Talon sniff, looked over, saw tears of pity in her eyes.

Fallion, so focused on his father, almost did not see the wyrmling princess run and leap onto the monster’s neck, quickly scrambling for purchase. The behemoth let out a strangled cry, then thundered up into the air.

For an instant, Fallion’s father was there under blackest shadows, the wind beating down upon him, and then the stars reappeared.

At the edge of the glade, three Knights Eternal flew, wings flapping softly.

Fallion saw his father stumble, and King Urstone let out a shout, went rushing across the field, calling “Areth! Areth. Ya gish, ha!”

Fallion found himself running, too, legs pumping in an effort to keep up.

“Father!” he shouted. “Father, I’m here!” Fallion so wanted to see his father again, that for a moment he imagined that this “shadow father” might recognize him.

Then his father rose from the ground, and came stumbling toward them on unsteady legs.

King Urstone drew to a halt, took a step backward and shouted in his own tongue.

That’s when Fallion saw it. There was something wrong with his father’s eyes. Fallion had fancied that he’d seen blazing blue eyes a moment ago.

But now all that he saw were pits, empty pits.

They’ve blinded him, Fallion realized. They couldn’t just set my father free. They had to blind him first.

And as the derelict came staggering forward, Fallion’s dismay only grew. In the failing light, he realized that his father’s skin looked papery and ragged. His hair was falling out in bunches. His face was shrunken and skeletal.

“Father?” Fallion cried out in horror.

“Fallion, get back!” the Wizard Sisel shouted a heartfelt warning. “There is no life in that accursed thing!”

King Urstone had fallen back, and now he drew his ax in his right hand and grabbed Fallion with his left, holding Fallion back.

The wretch drew closer, and with each step, the rotting horror of his features became clearer. Soon he was forty feet away, then twenty.

The shape of his face is wrong, Fallion decided. That’s not my father at all.

Fallion felt bewildered, uncertain.

No, his features aren’t becoming clearer. He is rotting before our eyes.

The thing came toward Fallion, staggering and bumbling, and fell. Almost, Fallion reached out to grab him, but he heeded Sisel’s warning.

The derelict suddenly flicked his wrist, and a knife dropped from his sleeve, into his hand. Viciously, he took a swipe at Fallion.

Fallion raised his sword and slashed the creature’s wrist, disarming it as the derelict fell to the ground and collapsed, its flesh turning to dust, leaving only a half-clothed
skeleton with ragged patches of hair to lie at Fallion’s feet.

Fallion stood there, his sword in hand, and peered down in dismay. He looked up at the Knights Eternal, but they were already winging away, over the dark swamps.

One of them threw back his head, and dimly Fallion realized, He’s laughing. They’re laughing at us!

There was no one to strike, no one to take vengeance upon.

The meadow was left empty and unbloodied. The wyrmlings had not violated the truce. Nor had they kept their word. They had their princess, and Fallion had … a corpse.

Sisel came up at their back, stood peering down in dismay. The others followed, the entire small group converging as one. King Urstone swore and raged at the sky.

“Was that my father?” Fallion asked, still uncertain.

“No,” the Wizard Sisel said, “just some unfortunate soul who died long ago in prison. The Knights Eternal must have put some kind of glamour upon the corpse.”

“But,” Rhianna asked, “the dead walked?”

“Oh yes,” Sisel intoned, “in the courts of Rugassa, the dead do more than walk.”

“I … was a fool to hope,” Fallion said, blinking back tears of rage and embarrassment.

“A fool, to hope?” Sisel said, “Never! They want you to believe that, because the moment you do, they have won. But remember—it is never foolish to hope, even when your hope has been misplaced.”

High King Urstone knelt, his hands resting on the pommel of his ax, and just wept softly for a long moment. There was no one to comfort the king, no one who dared, until at last Alun came and put his hand upon the king’s shoulder.

The king looked up at him, gratitude in his eyes.

“The wyrmlings lied,” Jaz said bitterly.

“It is in their nature to lie,” Sisel said. “The wyrms in
their souls find it hard to abide the truth. Daylan knew that they might try to deceive us. It was always a risk.”

“A risk?” Daylan Hammer called out. “Yes, there was a chance that the wyrmlings would seek to cheat us. But if we had let things go as they were, the destruction of our souls was not a risk—it was a certainty. You know of what I am speaking, Sisel. You smelled the moral rot as well as I did.”

Daylan Hammer came down from the tower now, and went striding up behind the group, peering down at the corpse.

“I smelled the moral rot,” Sisel said. “It was like an infected tooth, that threatens the life of the whole body. Still, I suspect that we could have waited a little longer before pulling it.”

“And I think that we have waited far too long,” Daylan said. “The moral rot runs all through Luciare now.” He sighed, studied the body. “I’m sorry Fallion, Jaz. I had hoped for a happier end than this.”

“What will you do now?” Jaz asked. “Will you go to Rugassa and free my father?”

“We don’t have the troops,” the Wizard Sisel said. “We could throw ten thousand men against the castle walls there and still not be sure to breach their defenses.”

“There must be something you can do—” Jaz said, “perhaps a better trade?”

But we’ve already offered a fair trade, Fallion thought. I know, he considered sarcastically, we could offer them me. It seems only right. Father saved my life once. Now I can save his.

Talon got a thoughtful look. “The wyrmlings have shown that they cannot be trusted. It was foolish to think otherwise. They will not barter for what they can easily steal.”

Daylan Hammer argued. “Not all wyrmlings are so hopelessly evil. Some can hold to a bargain—even some that harbor loci.”

“Ah,” the Wizard Sisel objected, “but to do so, they
must fight the very wyrm that consumes their souls, and no wyrmling can resist for long—”

Daylan began to object, but Sisel cut him off, raising a hand, begging for silence.

He peered up into the air. In the deepening night, a great-horned owl flew up out of the field, swooping low over the ground, as if hunting for mice. Then it suddenly glided once around the old tower.

“Fallion, we can’t go after your father,” Sisel said. “We have more important concerns right now.”

“What?” Fallion asked.

Sisel nodded toward the owl, and then cocked his head as if listening for some far-off cry. A pair of fireflies rose up from the grass and lit on the end of his staff, then sat there glowing, so that the wizard’s worried frown could be seen in a pale green light. Fallion could hear nothing from the woods, could see nothing to justify the dismay in Sisel’s voice. “Wyrmlings are coming. This is an ambush!”