Worldbinder

UPON A BED OF STARS

It was with a heavy heart that Fallion left Castle Coorm. There were over a hundred and eighty people left in the castle, mostly impoverished families with grubby children, too little food, and no way to protect themselves.

If Talon was right, they would be in grave danger so long as they stayed in Coorm.

“Leave here,” Fallion warned them. “Stay in the caves beneath the castle tonight. There are boats that can take you out through the underground river in the morning, so that the little ones will not have to walk so far. They’ll carry your food, too. Whatever you do, don’t show your faces above ground tonight. Stay hidden till morning, then make your way north to Ravenspell, or east to the Courts of Tide. There should be people there, greater safety. Travel only by day, and hide yourselves at night.”

He looked at a young boy, no more than three, terrified and vulnerable. His right cheek was bruised, and his eye swollen shut.

Fallion patted his head, whispered some words of encouragement.

In a more perfect world, he thought, children would never know such fear.

He wished that he could do more for them. He was tempted to stay behind, lead them to safety himself, but Talon had objected. “If we’re right, you’re the one that the enemy is searching for. Staying with the refugees would only slow you down-and place them in greater danger.”

So Fallion left amid sad farewells, hugging Hearthmaster Waggit and Farion, departing the castle an hour before sunset, taking only his three friends and some food. At the castle gate, Fallion and the others raised their swords in salute, crying out, “Sworn to defend.”

The people cheered, not realizing that the salute carried sad memories for the four. For it was on just such a journey from this castle that they had first sworn their oaths to one another.

Fallion took one last longing look at the golden tree, tried to let its form become etched in his memory. For a long moment, he listened, hoping to hear its voice in his mind once again. But there was nothing.

Regretfully, he struck out through the meadows, heading toward the mountains to the west. The air was full of the smell of pines, clean and refreshing, and the warm sun beat down on the fields.

With every step, Fallion found himself threshing wheat and oats, knocking the full kernels from the stalks. Grasshoppers and honeybees rose up in small clouds as they passed.

Soon his party reached the coolness beneath the woods. Sunshine slanted through the trees, casting shadows, while light played upon motes of dust and pollen in the air.

The woods filled with the chatter of jays, the thumping of woodpeckers, the peeps of nuthatches and occasional coo of a mourning dove.

It would have been a perfect walk, if Fallion hadn’t felt so drained. The weariness lingered with him, left him so sapped that he could hardly walk, much less keep up with Talon’s grueling pace. Still, she urged him on.

Jaz often complained, for he was as weary as any, but Rhianna merely kept silent, following at Fallion’s back like a shadow, sometimes whispering encouragement.

The old road to Hay was a road no longer. In this new world, it was filled with rocks and scree, gouged by canyons and blocked by hills. Sometimes along the path, Fallion saw further evidence of the damage done by his spell-trees growing up insanely through boulders, a nuthatch impaled by a tuft of grass, speared through by a dozen small blades, struggling vainly to break free.

And he wondered at the damage done to himself. Why am I so weary? He found sweat rolling off of him, a steady sheen, even though the day was cool.

But not all of the “accidents” were bad. As they walked along near sundown, they came upon a vine growing in the shadows of some rocks. It looked like some kind of pea, with a few brilliant white blossoms and it had berries on it-perfectly white berries, like wild pearls, that glowed brightly among the shadows.

Rhianna stopped and peered at them in wonder. “What are these called?” she asked Talon.

Talon merely shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen them before, never heard of them-not in either world.”

Fallion could only imagine that two plants had combined, creating something that was better than on either world. Whether the light-berries, as he decided to call them, had ever existed on the One True World, he did not know, but he liked to think that they had.

Rhianna picked a dozen berries, carried them in her palm for a ways.

It wasn’t until they stopped that night in a rocky grotto, shielded on three sides by rocks and from above by a huge pine tree, that Fallion came up with a theory for his fatigue.

They plunged into the blackness of the grotto, a place that would be decidedly easy to defend from strengi-saats. Jaz threw down his pack, dropped onto a bed of pine needles, and said dramatically, “I’m dead.”

Fallion brushed some twigs off of a mossy bed. A firefly flew up out of a nearby bush, then others began to shine, turning into lights that danced and weaved among the trees.

Rhianna laid her light-berries down, but Fallion saw that they were fading.

That’s when the realization struck. “Of course you’re dead,” Fallion told Jaz. “And so am I, and Rhianna.”

Rhianna halted, peered at him in the shadows, as did Talon. “All three of us are dead-at least we were on this world.”

“What do you mean?” Talon asked, standing above him like a hulk.

“Talon, you said that humans were almost gone from this shadow world. How many are left?” Fallion asked.

“Thirty-eight thousand.”

“Yet on our world, there were millions,” Fallion said. “Talon I’ve been wondering why you joined with your shadow self, but we didn’t. Now I understand. We have no shadow selves here.”

The others peered at him, and Fallion talked in a rush, thinking aloud. “We were hunted as children, Jaz and I, from before our birth. Rhianna was, too. On this world, our other selves failed to survive. That’s why we feel so…dead.”

There was a long silence. “You’re scaring me,” Rhianna said. She sat down on unsteady legs, nearly collapsing from exhaustion.

“If we died on this world, wouldn’t we remember at least some of our lives?” Jaz asked. “Shouldn’t we remember being children?”

“Does dust remember?” Talon asked.

There was a drawn-out silence as Fallion considered the implications. He wondered if he even had a history on this world. Had he died, or had it been one of his ancestors? Perhaps he’d never been born here.

“Fallion,” Rhianna asked with rising concern. “You came on this quest because you want to heal the world, bind the shadow worlds into one perfect world. But have you considered the possibility that in that world, perhaps none of us would exist?”

“We feel half-dead now,” Jaz said. “Would we die if all the worlds were bound?”

Fallion had no idea.

If I bind the worlds, heal them, Fallion wondered, is it possible that I would be doing it for others, and not for myself?

And what about those unfortunate souls like me? Would I doom them to oblivion? Or would we all live, filling a single world to the breaking point?

He had no answers. But suddenly he realized that he had to stop his quest to mend the worlds. For years now he had felt driven. But now he needed some answers before he could proceed.

“Talon,” he asked. “In the city of Luciare, is there an Earth Warden, a wizard that we can talk to?”

Talon thought for a moment, then nodded. “Sisel is his name. Our warriors are strong, but I think that it is by his powers more than any other that the city has been preserved.”

“Then I must talk to him when we reach the city,” Fallion said.

The party laid down then, Rhianna cuddling up at Fallion’s side. Talon took the first watch. Everyone seemed to be lost in their own private thoughts for a long time, and soon Fallion heard Jaz begin to snore while Rhianna fell into a fitful sleep.

Fallion laid abed that night, under the gloom of the trees, the brief flashing of fireflies nearly the only source of light.

A few stars shone between the branches of the trees. His mother had taught him that stars were only distant suns, and that worlds like his drifted around them. He wondered what the worlds that circled these suns were like, and he wondered if somewhere up there one of his shadow selves might be looking down upon his own world.

Fallion kept an eye on Talon, who merely rested with her back to the rock. There was little chance of them being discovered by wyrmlings, but Fallion had to worry about strengi-saats, and perhaps beasts that he’d never even imagined.

“Tell me stories,” Fallion asked Talon when the others were all asleep, “about your life in the castle, about your father.” He wanted to keep her awake as much as he wanted to hear stories.

“I…don’t remember much,” Talon said softly. “It’s all like a dream, one that you’ve forgotten and then struggle to recall in the morning. I remember things, but they’re so…disjointed.”

“Then tell me what you remember the best.”

And she did.

On this world, Borenson had married a woman, but not Myrrima. She was a woman of the warrior clans, a fit mate, and Borenson had dutifully sired seven children upon her.

Talon had been raised in a creche with the other warrior children, trained to fight. She had been taught her duties as a warrior, and saw breeding as one of those duties. Her father’s rank was so high that she was greatly desired by other men, but few were considered suitable mates. Her father had been consulting the genealogies, trying to decide which man would win her as the prize.

Hers had been a grim life, and narrow, Fallion thought. There were no happy childhood memories, unless one counted a score of victories in mock combat-or the slaughter of her first wyrmling at the age of fourteen-as happy memories.

The news saddened Fallion. He had hoped that life on other shadow worlds might be happier than life on his own. At the worst, he thought it would be a distorted reflection, but a reflection nonetheless.

He had to look hard to see any similarities between the worlds. The land wasn’t the same. The low hills of Coorm were mountains here, and much else had changed. The warrior clans of Shadow, as he decided to call the other world, hardly looked human.

But the more he considered, the more that he saw that the worlds were alike. There were pine trees and bears on both of the worlds, harts and hares.

He asked about reavers in the underworld, and Talon assured him that they existed. “But the wyrmlings went to war with them a century ago. They don’t pose a threat. Not like they did on our world.”

Perhaps, Fallion thought, but he could not be sure.

“And yet…” Fallion mused. “In both worlds, the plight of mankind is great. My father used his Earth Powers to save millions. If not for him, our world would have been destroyed, as this one has been destroyed.”

Fallion fell silent for a long time.

“So the worlds really are reflections of each other,” Talon mused.

“No,” Fallion said. “I think that they are not reflections so much as distortions, distortions of the One True World. I think a great war is going on there, and few are left among mankind.”

The thought had never occurred to him before, but it felt right. It was said that the Queen of the Loci had tried to seize control of the Great Seals in ages past, and during a battle she had rent them, breaking them.

Fallion had always imagined that the story ended there. But the battle for control still goes on, he thought, upon countless shadow worlds.

Rhianna called out softly in her sleep, “Fallion?”

He glanced back at her, lying beneath the shadows of the pine. She rolled over in her sleep, using her arms as a pillow.

“Fallion,” Talon whispered, “what happened to all of the people on our world? Are they all still alive? Did you bring them all with us?”

Fallion had been worrying about this very thought through much of the evening.

“I believe so,” Fallion said. “Jaz, Rhianna, and I are all half-alive. The folk in Coorm too, though some of the older ones, it seems, could not endure the shock.”

“You don’t sound certain.”

“The problem is,” Fallion said, “in both worlds, this area was a wilderness. There might be millions of people living in Indhopal, but that is a thousand miles away, and until I see them, I can’t be sure.”

“I’ll bet they’re a little confused!” Talon smiled, showing her oversized canines. “Millions of humans on this world again-that will be good news to the folk of Luciare. Father will dance when he learns of it.”

“But will they be worth much, fighting your giants?” Fallion wondered. He knew that they wouldn’t, not if they had only their own strength. “Are forcibles used among the clans?”

Talon shook her head. “Such magic has not been heard of. The three hundred forcibles we brought with us will be a great prize for the clans.”

Fallion started to speak, but Talon reached over and threw a hand over his mouth.

“Shhhh…” she whispered, “Wyrmlings.”

Jaz seemed to be snoring loudly in the sudden silence. A few crickets filled the night with song. Fallion listened for the tell-tale pad of running feet through the forest, the crack of twigs.

But what he heard was a flapping, like the leathery wings of a graak.

Talon looked up. Fallion could see patches of night sky through the tree branches, the burning fires of distant stars. He could hear flapping nearby, and another pair of wings just downhill.

He dared not speak. Jaz kept snoring, and Fallion leaned down and covered his mouth lightly.

The flapping was not close-perhaps two hundred feet in the air and another three hundred feet to the south. The creature would never be able to hear over the sound of its wing noise.

Fallion craned his head, trying to get a look at it, but rocks and the tree barred it from his sight.

“You didn’t tell me they had wings,” Fallion whispered when the creature had flown on.

“They don’t,” Talon said. “Not all of them-only the highest in rank, the Seccath. The wings are very rare and magical. Those wyrmlings are hunting for us, I suspect.”

Fallion wished that he had seen them. He wanted to know how the wings worked, but Talon could not tell him.

Talon went to bed a while later, and Fallion stayed up long enough to make sure that she fell asleep, and then woke Rhianna for her turn at guard duty.

He briefly told her of the wyrmlings, and asked her to listen for the sound of wings.

He lay down. He was so tired, he was half afraid that if he fell asleep, he might never wake.

But all of the worries of this day kept him awake. He worried for Waggit, for Farion, for some nameless boy with a swollen face. He wondered how many had died this day and how many more might suffer because of his mistake.

In a more perfect world, I would be a better man, he told himself.

As he lay there filled with such gloomy thoughts, Rhianna lay down beside him, stroked his face once, and then kissed him passionately.

She leaned back afterward and peered into his eyes.

There, she thought. Now I’ve shown him.

The last time she had kissed him thus was when his mother died. To Rhianna’s knowledge, he hadn’t been kissed by another girl since, save once, when a young lady of the Gwardeen had shown her affection.

He stared up at her in wonder. The light-berries lay upon the moss around him, and it seemed to Rhianna that he was lying in a field of stars.

He had never hinted that he might love her. But I am born of the royal houses in both Crowthen and Fleeds, she told herself, and I am as worthy of his love as any.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Rhianna whispered.

She straddled him, as if to hold him, then leaned down and kissed him again.

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.”