Worldbinder

THE WASTELAND

Bird song filled the woods as Fallion woke-nuthatches and wrens proclaiming their territories. Rhianna lay beside him, her cheek pressed against his chest, and he took his waking slow. The morning sun slanted through the forest, and as he watched the nightjars and ricks winging through the dim light, it seemed as fine a dawn as Fallion could remember.

Sunrise was still half an hour away.

He felt rested, and though his normal vigor had not returned, he could tell that healing was coming. A day or two more, he thought, and I will be better.

As the foursome ate a hasty meal, Talon bore the news. “We have to make good time today, get as far away from here as possible. Are you up to running?”

None of them were, but each nodded yes.

And so, without further ceremony, they ran.

They raced over mountain trails in the half-light and plunged down a steep slope into an oak forest that was as pretty as any that Fallion had ever seen. The graceful limbs of oaks, thick with moss, twisted high in the air, with nothing but leaf-mold and a few fallen limbs beneath them. The group scared up herds of deer as they ran, and hares and foxes, and once Jaz pointed out a rare gray lynx as it leapt up into a tree.

There was no sign of wyrmlings, no sound of hunting horns behind them, no footprints in the dirt.

By the crack of sunrise they left the forest and ran into the open sun, through fields much like those that Fallion remembered from his youth, endless fields of grass and black-eyed Susans, with only a few trees in the distance, winding along the banks of some creek bed.

On his own world, this land had been devastated by reavers, left devoid of settlements, and even now Fallion worried as he ran.

Some primal sense warned him that nothing was quite as it seemed. There were wyrmlings here, yes, and reavers, and strengi-saats. It was as if enemies that he’d never imagined and never fully understood were all preparing to combine against him.

Heightening his fears now was the fact that it was late summer, and the grass had died off. Only a few golden strands of straw still stood. There was no cover, no place to hide, and Fallion remembered the sounds of heaving wings.

There could be wyrmlings in the trees ahead, or in the trees behind, just watching the fields, marking them as they ran. Talon had assured him that wyrmlings would not attack in the daylight. The full sun burned their eyes, burned their pale skin too easily.

But they could still see. They could be watching from a line of trees.

And so he ached for cover.

As they ran, he noted that certain tender flowers and vines had begun to die off in the night. They were wilted, as if they had been plucked up by the roots.

Once, when they rested beside a brook, Talon squatted to inspect some watercress that looked sickly; her face grew sad. “It’s the blight,” she said, her voice thick with regret. “I fear it will take all of these plants before long-the green meadows and fields of flowers, the willows and oaks. Such things will only be a memory, a dream. And once again, this world will become a wasteland.”

“A blight?” Jaz asked.

“The Death Lords’ blight,” Talon said. “The wyrmlings put a curse upon the land, years ago. Most of the plants died off. Only the cruelest of weeds and thorns eke out a living now.”

“What is a Death Lord?” Fallion asked.

“They are leaders among the wyrmlings. They are…like wights,” she said. “They’re more spirit than flesh and bone. Indeed, they have no bones at all, and one would be hard pressed to discern their flesh, for they are no more substantial than smoke or a morning fog. But unlike the spirits that haunted our world, the Death Lords are powerful sorcerers who choose their fate. They choose to remain suspended between life and death, between our world and the fields of nothingness. Thus, they become masters of both worlds.”

Fallion became chill at the thought, and throughout the day as they ran, he noticed more and more that the plants were indeed failing.

He worried for farmers in faraway places-the orchards and vineyards of Mystarria, the wheat fields of Heredon. How would his people survive if this blight took hold of the land in those places?

And as the day drew out, he saw more and more tokens that Talon was right. In two days, maybe three, the forests and meadows they had passed through would become a wasteland.

Once, in the distance, they saw smoke to the north, hanging lazily over a stand of trees.

Talon cursed, and they struck south at a full run, until they passed another line of trees.

They skirted in its shadows, following the winding course of a stream, careful to be quiet. In the shade of the woods, the tall grass held the morning dew, and they marched along soundlessly.

Talon took the lead for the morning, but at one point she stopped them all, her body going taut, her hands outstretched, and peered into the deep shadows just at the edge of the woods.

In the tall grass about fifty yards away, a young man stood. His chest was naked and matted with fur. His tawny hair fell down over his shoulders like a lion’s mane. His eyes were strange and wild.

He stood perfectly still for a long moment, and Fallion could not help but notice that there was something wrong with him. His eyes looked terrified, like those of an animal, and he had no arms.

Talon did not speak, but the young man suddenly turned his head as if looking for an escape.

That’s when Fallion noticed the antlers. At first he had just thought them to be limbs from an alder, but now he saw them clearly, three tines to the side, as the young man turned and bounded away like a hart, on four strong legs, each of them slamming into the ground simultaneously, and then thrusting him upward in mighty bounds. He looked like a hart, sailing through the air and then falling to the earth with each bound, as he raced away across an open field.

“What is that?” Jaz asked in amazement.

“A legend,” Talon said, “and not one from your world.”

“A legend?” Fallion asked.

“A galladem,” Talon said. “Legends say that in ages past, the galladems were friends of the true men. Those that hunted wolves and bears would often have them come to their campfires, where the galladems would tell tales of the forests. They would tell what the trees dreamed of as they slumbered through the long winter, and would translate the songs of birds into the human tongue. They helped guide the men on their hunts, for the wolves and bears and rock lions were enemies to the galladems.”

“Can you talk to him?” Jaz asked.

Talon shouted across the fields in a strange tongue, and the galladem halted for a moment, stared back at her quizzically, and then began walking away slowly.

In defeat, Talon said, “It has been hundreds of years since last a galladem was seen. I fear that we no longer speak the same tongue.”

“What did you say?” Gaborn asked.

“I spoke the words of a blessing in the old tongue,” Talon said. “May the fruits of the forest and the field be yours. May you bask in sunshine in the meadow, and find shelter in the hills. May you refresh yourself with cool water, and never know want.”

Suddenly the creature stopped; it turned its head at a seemingly unnatural angle and shouted back.

When it fell silent, it bounded away.

“What did it say?” Rhianna begged. Talon had to think a bit.

“It spoke in the old tongue,” Talon said. “I think…it said that ‘the earth is in pain. The stones cry out in torment, and jays bicker and the wrens wonder why.’ It warned us to watch for wolves upon our trail, wolves that cannot die, and it wished us well.”

Fallion wondered for a long time. When I melded these two worlds, did I heal them just a little bit? Did I help restore a creature to life that was only a legend-or had the galladem been there upon the shadow world all along? Perhaps it was just a rare specimen, the last of his kind.

Fallion had no way of knowing. Nor could he be sure what its warnings meant.

But soon they were back to running. With each step their feet brushed the full heads of wheat and oats, sent the seeds scattering. Fallion imagined that it was music, a rattle formed by nature, and the sweat streaming from him watered the earth like a rare rain in the dry season.

He lost consciousness as he basked in the full sunlight, and all that was in him was motion, the sound of his lungs working like a bellows, the jarring of footfalls, and sigh of the wind, the droning of bees and flies in the meadows.

At noon they found an abandoned “inn,” and Jaz begged for a halt. Talon’s pace was brutal, and none of them had their full strength yet. Fallion had been loath to mention it in front of the others, but his legs felt weak and rubbery, and his head had begun to spin. During the run, he concentrated on keeping one foot in front of the other, and hoped that soon he would get his second wind.

But he suspected that he would never get a second wind. So he was glad when Talon called a halt, determined to have a brief rest and a quick meal.

“It looks as if there is a brook down beyond those trees,” Jaz said. “I’ll go fill some flasks for us.”

Fallion was glad for that. He wanted some water, but it looked too far to go.

“Eat,” Fallion told the others. “But keep your portions small. Better to take little and often than to eat much.”

He got into his pack, pulled out his food. The good people of Castle Coorm had provided well. He suspected that Farion herself had packed the food. There was fresh bread and well-aged cheese, roast beef, and a small savory pie that smelled of chicken and onions. There were even a few fat strawberries.

Fallion ate those first, for their juice was staining his pack. By then, Jaz had returned with the water. Fallion decided to save the beef and the savory for later, so he took some bread in his mouth and strode about, studying the inn.

It was like no building that Fallion had ever seen. It was laid out in a circle, and huge stone slabs formed the walls. There were three levels, one atop another, with a watchtower built at the very pinnacle. Each stone slab in the wall was thirty feet tall, rectangular in shape, and six feet wide. The slabs were fitted together so perfectly that a mouse could not have squeezed between them, and once there had been fair carvings embedded in the stone-images of a hunting party riding with hounds, chasing an enormous elk. But the images had been chiseled down by vandals, and now there were foul markings laid over the fair, glyphs painted in black, white, and red.

Talon went inside, and Fallion ducked his head in. The building had been gutted by fire, but the vestiges of campfires showed that it was still used as a shelter sometimes.

Fallion stepped back out into the sun, for it smelled unhealthy inside, and he studied the glyphs with mounting curiosity. He had never seen writing that in itself seemed evil. But here it was-glyphs portraying a giant spider with a child beneath it, images of warriors decapitating women, a man eating an enemy’s liver.

“What do these glyphs say?” he asked Talon when she came back outside.

Talon glanced away, as if she feared to look upon them. “Wyrmlings have camped here,” she said. “It is their writing. They paint in only three colors-black, white, and red, for those are the only colors that the wyrmling eye can see.”

“Can you read the glyphs?”

“Some.”

Talon pointed up at a black circle with a red squiggly line coming out of it. “This is the symbol of Lady Despair, the great wyrm that infests the world. Like the worm in an apple, her influence continues to spread, until the whole will be diseased. She is the one that the wyrmlings venerate, and obey. The rest of the writing is a prayer to her.”

She pointed to the white spider above a black child. “This is a prayer that the Stealer of Souls will leave our human children stillborn. The rest of the glyphs…you can imagine.”

“The Stealer of Souls?” Fallion asked.

“He is a wrym, what we would call a locus on our world, a wyrm of great power.”

Fallion’s heart skipped. He’d known that wyrmlings were giants of some kind, like the frowth giants on his own world. But they were more than just giants, they were giants infected by loci, by creatures of pure evil that fed upon their spirits and led them into deeper perversion.

Fallion had faced loci before and sent them into retreat. But somehow, he wasn’t eager to face them now.

Too much had changed. Too much was still unknown.

“Tell me more about the wyrmlings,” Fallion said.

“They are tall,” Talon said, “half-a-head taller than even our largest warriors, and strong. It is said that they were human once, but you could not tell by looking at them. For eons they have served the wyrms, thinking it an honor to be possessed by one of the mighty. There is no kindness in them, no decency or truth. They respect only power. They are motivated only by fear and greed. The best of them have no wyrms in them, but even they are dangerous beyond all measure. They would gladly tear you from limb to limb, hoping only that by doing so they might be found worthy to be taken by a wyrm. The worst of them…” Talon shuddered, turned away.

“What?” Fallion asked.

“The worst of them are possessed by powerful loci, sorcerers who remember lore that should have best been forgotten when the world was young. These are the Death Lords. You do not want to meet them…” her voice trailed into a whisper, “but I fear we have no choice. We heard the sound of wings last night. They are coming.”

Fallion shuddered. He peered at the image of Lady Despair, at the world beneath her, and suddenly he saw a wheel of fire again, the Seal of the Inferno, burning like a forge. He blinked the image away, rubbed his eyes.

Was it only in my dreams that I could heal the Earth? he wondered.

“You said that the wyrmlings were once human-” Fallion said, and a thought struck him so sharply that he leapt to his feet.

“What?” Talon asked.

Could it be? Fallion wondered. Every thing on this world, he suspected, had its shadow on his own. What were the wyrmlings a shadow of? Certainly not the reavers. Talon had said that the wyrmlings fought reavers.

Could they have had human counterparts on his world?

Skin of white. Eyes that cannot abide the day. They worshipped Lady Despair. Wasn’t it the Inkarrans who so often worshipped the Dark Lady death? There had been wars between the royalty and the death cults for ages.

“Where did the wyrmlings originate?” Fallion asked.

“That knowledge is lost,” Talon said. “They destroyed the southern lands millennia ago, and then moved to the west, to what we call Indhopal. Only in the past few decades have they come to the north and east. They move like a plague of locusts, destroying everything in their path.”

“Inkarra,” Fallion said with some certainty. “They are Inkarrans.”

Surprise washed over Talon’s face. “Of course, I should have seen it.”

“But knowing that doesn’t help us,” Fallion admitted. “We weren’t facing an Inkarran invasion in our own world, at least not like this. It’s as if our histories diverged so far in the past, that the two worlds are hardly the same.”

Talon grunted her agreement.

This world is a snare, Fallion reminded himself. The loci brought me here for a reason. They brought me here because they have an advantage here.

And then he had a new fear. The dreams had begun shortly after he had slain the locus Asgaroth. It was said that beings in the netherworld could send dreams across space. Had an enemy sent him these dreams?

If so, healing the Earth might be far beyond his grasp. The enemy might have sent him a false hope. He had not really healed this world so much as simply bound two corrupt worlds together.

Is that all that the enemy wants? Fallion wondered.

He had no way of knowing, but the very question left him deeply troubled. And as they took off again that afternoon, he could not shake the apprehension that he had become the unwitting tool of the enemy.

They ran for nearly an hour, across a broad expanse of plains. Fallion glanced back, could see the trail they’d left, the bent stubble pointing the way like an arrow, and it filled him with worry.

At the end of an hour, they saw a line of trees and imagined that it foretold another brook, but when they reached it the ground dropped suddenly, and there was a broad canyon more than two miles across.

Within it ran a raging torrent, brown water churning and foaming, while huge trees torn and uprooted swirled in the flood. It was as if a dam had broken, and the whole world seemed to be washing away. In Fallion’s own world, no river like this had existed. But here, the mountains were taller, and the range that had been called the Alcairs bulged into a different formation. Now it seemed that with the changes in the land, the river was washing away trees that had stood for centuries. Most disconcerting of all to Fallion was that the water was flowing west, when it should have been going east. He could only imagine that the river snaked back in the proper direction at some point.

“Damn,” Talon swore. “This is the River Dyll-Tandor. I had hoped that it was farther north.”

“Is it always this treacherous?” Rhianna asked.

Talon shook her head. “Not in the summer. There were some vast lakes in the mountains. With the change, it looks as if they are emptying.”

“Can we swim it?” Rhianna asked.

Everyone turned and looked at Rhianna as if she were daft. Fallion’s legs were already shaking from weariness.

“I’m not up to it,” Jaz said. “But how about if you swim it, and we’ll all climb on top and ride you, like you was a boat?”

Fallion could not escape the feeling that this flood was his fault. “There has to be another way across.”

At that, Talon bit her lip uncertainly. “There is-a bridge, downstream, at the city of Cantular. But it will be guarded.”

“How many guards?” Fallion asked, wondering at the odds. There were four of them, and though he had never seen a wyrmling, he was up to the challenge of fighting a few, if he had to. Fallion was good with a sword. And in the full light of day, he still had his flameweaving skills to draw upon.

“Dozens, maybe hundreds,” Talon said. “There was a vast fortress there at one time, and the bridge has always been a strategic point. The wyrmlings will have it well garrisoned.” She eyed Fallion critically. “Wyrmling archers are good,” she said. “They use bows made of bone.”

He understood what she was saying. Fallion had skill as a wizard, but a flameweaver could die from an arrow wound as easily as any other man.

“Then we will have to take great care,” he said.