The Wyrmling Horde (48 page)

Erringale frowned and looked to the ground. In the distance, there was a rumbling and flash of light to the east.

“You propose to hide Fallion upon my world?” Erringale asked.

“Yes,” Daylan answered.

“Won't this false Earth King be able to find him?” Erringale
asked. “How do we know that Fallion won't bring danger to all that love him?”

“It is a chance that we must take,” Daylan said.

“No!” Fallion said vehemently. “I can't go with you, Daylan. Too many of my people would be made to suffer for my sake.”

“Then what do
you
want to do?” Rhianna asked. Fallion was the one in pain. She wanted to save him. She would do anything that he asked.

“Send me back,” he said. “I won't put my friends in jeopardy.”

“You can't go back,” the emir said. “Despair will continue to torture you. Just when you think that it could get no worse, it will. No one can bear such torment forever. In time, Despair will either drive you mad, or win you and make you his tool.”

Fallion shook his head. “Having seen Despair, how could I ever consent to become like him?” He looked to Lord Erringale. “You were there: you know how Despair was formed. The more that Yaleen felt others' pain, the more she hated them. But I'm different. The more I feel their pain, the more I care for them.”

For once, Talon's thoughts outraced Rhianna's. “Fallion, if you return to Despair,” Talon said, “all that you have hoped for will be lost. You will never be able to bind the worlds into one.”

Fallion considered his response thoughtfully. His face was filled with pain and anguish. Despair almost had him. “How can I hope to bind the worlds now,” he begged, “after seeing what horrors I have wrought?”

Perhaps I should kill him, Rhianna thought. Despair has already won. I could put him out of his misery.

And if I do, she realized, what will happen to Fallion's Dedicates?

The pains that he now bears will return to them in full—the horror of their mutilations, their grief and terror.

Fallion knows that. He stands between them and their pain. He can't give it back to them.

No true man would, she thought. For then Despair, in his fury and petulance, would subject them to unspeakable horrors.

Rhianna considered the arguments, and she knew that she could not kill Fallion anyway, even to save him from his torment. She was a strong woman, but she didn't have that kind of strength.

“There may be a way,” Erringale suggested to the group, hope rising in his voice, “to turn the tables on Lord Despair—if we dare try it!”

Erringale looked to Fallion. “To resist evil, we almost never need to resort to bloodshed. Let me ask, could you teach
another
how to bind the worlds?”

“Perhaps,” Fallion said uncertainly. “It would be hard, but I could try. It would have to be a flameweaver of great power, but in time, yes, I think I could teach someone.”

Erringale's eyes shifted, focused upon the emir. “There is a flameweaver among us, one who has come to help you. Upon your world, his shadow was the greatest flameweaver your kind has ever known, but upon his world he has shunned such power. Fallion, I would like you to meet the shadow of Raj Ahten.”

Fallion peered up at the emir, and his eyes went wide.

Rhianna knew what he was thinking. There was distrust written plainly upon Fallion's face.

“He's a good man,” Talon said. “He's nothing like the Raj Ahten that our fathers slew. He's risked his life for his people time and time again, proven himself over and over. If there is anyone you can trust with your secret, it is Tuul Ra.”

Fallion shook his head, unconvinced. But he had little in the way of choices.

“The enemy will be here soon,” Lord Erringale said. “We must be prepared to meet them. Come with me, Fallion, Tuul Ra. Let us prepare.” Lord Erringale nodded toward the hill nearby, covered with oaks and elms.

“We won't have time,” Fallion said. “It might take days or weeks to teach him what he needs to know.”

“Trust me,” Lord Erringale said. “You two will have all of the time you need.”

Fallion shook his head. “I can't walk that far. The pain is too great. Every muscle in my body is cramping.”

“I'll help,” Erringale said, and he went to the wagon and began to help Fallion down.

Rhianna wondered, What is Erringale plotting?

The Wizard Sisel strode forward a pace, his russet robes whispering in the dry grass, and peered north hungrily. So often, Rhianna had seen him with a serene smile on his face. She would have thought that nothing could remove it. But now he glared toward the skyline like one eager to do battle.

“I think that Erringale is right,” the wizard said. “There are ways to resist evil without resorting to bloodshed. The time has come for me to deal with Vulgnash.”

Vulgnash spotted his prey ahead, saw Fallion standing in a field near the tree line on a wooded hill, miles away.

Fallion was hunched over, arms folded over his stomach, in almost a fetal position. His face was gray and haggard from pain, and his hair was unkempt. The journey had taken its toll on him. He looked weaker than a kitten.

For the past half hour, Vulgnash had had endowments vectored to him—metabolism, sight. Vulgnash's endowments of sight were a marvelous thing. For ages, he'd seen all of the world in shades of gray, with an occasional splash of red. He'd never seen the world through a human's eyes.

But suddenly he could espy colors that he'd never dreamed existed—skies of deepest blue and undiscovered stars of gold glimmering above, powdering the heavens.

He suspected that if he took a human body in the future, he might see colors even more vividly.

Never again, he thought, will I take a wyrmling's body. From now on, when I need to commandeer a new shell, I will always take a human form.

He could see other advantages. It wasn't just the sight. The human fliers, with their smaller weight, were faster than him.

Vulgnash hastened forward, wings flapping in a rush. He heard a throaty
grooak,
and peered back. The enormous graak had fallen far behind.

I need them not, he thought. The wyrmling warriors had their place. They could bind the prisoners once Vulgnash secured them.

Yet Vulgnash worried about a trap. He saw Fallion waiting in the grass ahead, but not the woman who had rescued him.

Even as he worried about her, she came swooping up over the hill, speeding toward him, faster than any falcon, her wings blurring.

She moved at a frightening pace. Before he realized it, she was overtaking him—two miles out, then one.

But Vulgnash had more than endowments to his credit. He stretched forth his hand and drew starlight from the sky. From horizon to horizon, darkness suddenly stretched, while a thin light whirled like a tornado out of the skies, and landed blazing hot in his palm.

When the darkness faded, he peered ahead, but saw no sign of Rhianna.

She has dived into the trees, Vulgnash reasoned. Smart girl.

He peered down and ahead, where a copse of elms rose beside a stream, their canopy of leaves shielding the ground from view.

He searched for signs of movement, hoping that she had veered into a tree, that its swaying branches would betray her.

But he saw nothing. Dimly, he became aware of shouting far behind. Wyrmlings were roaring frantically.

He craned his neck, looking back. The girl was behind him!

She redoubled her speed during that moment of darkness, he realized.

And now she was winging toward the giant graak, like a falcon to the nest of a dove.

Now we shall see how the wyrmling warriors fare! Vulgnash
thought. He had hated bringing them. They and their mount only slowed him down. He longed to see them fail, these fierce champions rife with endowments, all under the protection of their master.

But Rhianna did not dare engage them. She flew straight toward their graak, hurtling in with an astonishing burst of speed, and then dropped as she neared. The warriors hurled battle darts.

She fell, dodging missiles, and the enormous black graak snapped at her as she passed.

Then Rhianna's wings unfolded and she was rising again.

Vulgnash saw a flash of silver as her blade struck the monster's right wing, slicing the leathery membrane between its bones.

The huge graak roared in pain; instantly it began to fall, unable to bear its weight. The graak dropped, flapping frantically, spinning out of control. Wyrmling warriors cried out and fought to hold on, though some tumbled from their mount, raining from the sky.

After downing the graak, Rhianna went soaring upward, wings flapping so quickly that she made a vertical climb.

The girl has learned to fly well in two days, Vulgnash realized, better than I would have imagined.

Some of that had to do with her endowments of wit, he suspected. She would learn much more quickly, when she recalled every twinge of every muscle.

Part of it was her small size. The large wings gave her greater lift than a wyrmling, and allowed for acrobatics that Vulgnash would never master.

But he suspected that there had to be more to it. The girl had tremendous reflexes. In part she might have been born with them, but they had also been trained through years of battle practice.

Yet she did not press the attack. She hurtled around him in a wide circle, and went winging off into the distance.

She fears me, Vulgnash suddenly realized. She is nothing.

She didn't dare get near him. She was hoping that he'd give chase. She was only seeking to distract him, delay him.

He whirled and peered forward. Sure enough, Fallion and the others had fled the clearing and gone into the trees.

Vulgnash growled in frustration, and redoubled his speed, racing toward the meadow at the base of the hill.

As he neared, he spotted movement in the trees.

The Wizard Sisel hid there, between the boles of two mighty elms, with Fallion at his back.

The ground was clear beneath him, except for a carpet of desiccated leaves. The wizard raised his staff in hand and held it at one end, swinging it in great arcs like a club, muttering an incantation.

He hopes to cast a spell of some kind, Vulgnash realized, but Vulgnash had no fear. Vulgnash was under the Earth King's protection. If Sisel were going to attack, Vulgnash would have heard his master's warning.

The old wizard knew many tricks, but his spells were all about healing and protection. At the best, he might hope to avert Vulgnash's fireball.

Vulgnash glided toward the pair warily, like an eagle on the wing.

He could hear the wizard shouting his incantation:

Bright flows your blood.

And hale are your bones.

Your heart is no longer a heart of stone.

Light fills your eyes, and brightens your mind

with longings common to all mankind.

Suddenly the wizard whirled and pointed his staff, and though Vulgnash was still a quarter of a mile away, too far to hurl a fireball, the effects of Sisel's spell were devastating.

A
force
smashed into him, like a powerful wave that smote him and washed through him. The blow was minor, not much greater than he'd feel if a gust of wind hit him.

But in an instant, the world changed.

Vulgnash suddenly felt a powerful need for air.

In five thousand years, he had never drawn a single breath, and it was as if his body recognized this fact, and filled him with a singular craving.

At the same time, he was assailed by a consuming hunger. He had never eaten as humans do. He had always drawn his life force from others when the need arose. But instantly he realized that his belly seemed to be clinging to his backbone.

More than that, there was a tremendous pounding in his chest as his heart burst into motion, and every sense came alive. He felt warm wind streaming through his hair, and every follicle of it was alive. For the first time he tasted the smell of the earth—the rich humus of the forest nearby and the drying grasses of the fields below.

His own robes held the cloying scent of death, of decaying flesh, and he'd never recognized his own reek.

A tremendous thirst overtook him, for he had never tasted water, and suddenly the mucus in his throat seemed drier than sand.

In shock, Vulgnash peered ahead and saw that the spell had cost the Wizard Sisel dearly. Where once his robes had been russet and burnt umber, the colors of dying leaves, suddenly they had gone as white as snow, while his beard and hair had turned to silver.

He now leaned on his staff, gasping, as if he had just run a tremendous race.

The pain that Vulgnash felt was more than he could bear. Vulgnash wailed in torment and lobbed the fireball from his hand, sent it careering toward the wizard. But he had thrown too soon. The fireball raced forward a hundred yards, then began to expand, growing larger and larger, and slowing with every second. By the time it reached the trees, it had become nothing more than a cloud of burning gas, and the wizard turned and fled, disappearing from sight.

Vulgnash went wheeling down to the earth, slamming into a tree, then falling in a tangle.

He hit the ground, and such an overwhelming feeling of illness coursed through him that he was reeling with pain.

I'm alive! he realized. I'm mortal.

He climbed to his knees and peered at his hands, as if he'd never seen them before. There were holes in his arm where maggots had burrowed into his flesh, and everywhere that he had a hole, the pain was white-hot and magnificent.

Lying on his belly, Vulgnash collapsed among the dead leaves on the forest floor, smelling the rot of decomposing humus, the scent of mold and soil.

Blood had begun to flow from the wormholes in his arms, welling up unexpectedly.

Vulgnash folded his arms in close, and sat for a moment, rocking back and forth, mind racing.

I'm mortal, he realized. I'm undone.