Worldbinder

PROLOGUE

The tree riveted Shadoath as she stalked into Castle Coorm. It was no more than a sapling, perhaps eight feet tall, with a dozen branches spreading wide in a perfect umbrella. But the sight of it smote her at even a hundred yards, urging her heart to melt. Every winding branch was perfect. Every crook of every twig seemed to have been preconceived by an artistic genius before being executed. The leaves were darkest green above, a mellow honey beneath, and looked something like an oak. The bark was the rich golden color of ripe wheat, warm and soothing, inviting to the eye.

Shadoath had seen such a tree once before, countless ages ago, on another world.

No, she thought. It can’t be.

But she knew that it was. It wasn’t just how the tree looked. It was how it made her feel. Her eyes wanted to drink it in from the distance. Her arms wanted to embrace it. Her head and shoulders yearned to shelter beneath it. Her lungs ached to breathe the perfumed air that exuded from its leaves. Her eyes longed to lie beneath it and stare up, and dimly she recalled the ancient days, when those leaves emitted a soft golden light during the nights, and those who took pleasure beneath it would peer up through layers of foliage and try to make out the light of distant stars. The sight of its limbs made her yearn for perfection, to be better than she had ever been, to do more than she had ever done, to change for the better.

The tree was dangerous, she knew. Left alive, it would grow and develop, rising up like a mountain, insinuating its branches for miles in every direction. It would silently tug at the minds of men, urge them to become its servants. Left alone, it would do even more. It would silently nurture the souls of men, urging them to become virtuous and perfect.

Every instinct in her shouted, Kill it now! Burn it down!

Only the shock of seeing it stayed her hand.

There were mighty changes going on in Rofehavan. The children born in the past generation were more like Bright Ones from the netherworld than children of the past.

And now the One True Tree had risen again.

She wanted to be sure. She studied the knotty roots coming up from the grass. The tree had been planted in the green at Castle Coorm, in the center of a roundabout. A small rock wall, perhaps four feet tall, surrounded the tree. A fountain rose at the back, water splashing down gray stones from the mouth of a gargoyle. At one time there had been a pleasant rock garden here, rife with flowering vines. A few of them still remained, trumpet flowers of red.

But Shadoath could not look for long. The tree drew her eye, the golden bark rising from the grass, where the small roots were already beginning to splay wide, questing for purchase; the bole of the tree twisting as if in torment; the branches rising up to embrace heaven.

Shadoath stood peering at it, and all weariness seemed to leave her, all of her aches and worries. It was as if she laid aside every care, and an upwelling of hope rose inside her, strange longings.

The tree is my master, and I am its servant, her body told her.

But a voice whispered inside her, the voice of the tree. “You are my master; how may I serve you?”

An image of their true relationship formed in her mind. Neither was whole without the other, the tree told her. Neither of us should live alone.

Damn, she realized, the young tree has already gained consciousness. Left alone, it would become wise and venerable and forbidding.

There was a rustling sound behind her, one of the guards on the castle wall. Across the courtyard, Warlord Hale was stumping down from the tower, lugging his great weight along as fast as he could. She had almost forgotten that he existed, even though he was the one who had sent the urgent message asking what to do about the damned tree.

“So,” a girl asked, “do you like my tree?”

Shadoath shook her head, let her vision clear, and suddenly spotted the young woman there beneath the tree, squatting cross-legged upon a rock. Shadoath had been so captivated that she hadn’t seen the girl, even though she sat in plain sight, as quiet and motionless as a mushroom.

She was some indeterminate age between twelve and sixteen, Shadoath imagined, with hair so pale yellow it was almost white, and eyes as pale as sea foam. Her skin had the greenish cast of one who was wizardborn, and she wore a robe that looked not to have been woven, but to simply have grown around her as roots that interlocked. It was the pale green of new leaves. She bore a staff of golden wood, hewn from the tree itself.

“I love your tree,” Shadoath said.

The girl smiled broadly, stood, and raised a hand, beckoning Shadoath to come forward, to rest beneath its limbs.

Shadoath could hear Warlord Hale pounding down the wooden stairs, his huge bulk an assault upon them. He was nearly to the door of his keep.

Now that her mind had cleared, Shadoath realized why the young wizardess had chosen to plant the tree here in the courtyard of Castle Coorm. It was to honor the last Earth King, Gaborn Val Orden, of course. This had been his residence before he wandered off into the wilderness to die.

So the wizardess had brought the tree here in his honor. She wanted to restore him to the people’s memory even as she and her damned tree created a new world order.

Shadoath reached the rock wall, and the young woman stretched down to give her a hand.

That’s when Shadoath struck, as quick as the thought touched her.

Shadoath had taken the body of a warrior this time, a pale assassin from Inkarra, with skin whiter than bone, hair the color of spun silver, and pale blue tattoos that covered her arms and legs. Shadoath’s speed was blinding, and her curved dagger bit into the wizardess’s armpit with great force.

Shadoath grabbed the proffered hand, for Earth Wardens, as this young wizardess surely was, had great skill at both hiding and healing. Shadoath held on while the young wizardess tried to leap back and buck, like a young deer. She saw the girl’s pleading eyes as warm blood pumped over Shadoath’s hand.

Shadoath twisted the blade, and she saw strange visions. Suddenly she seemed to be standing in deep rushes at the edge of a pond while a huge grouse thundered up from the ground. Obviously the vision was meant to startle her, get her to loosen her grip, but Shadoath held on.

Suddenly she seemed to be holding a great bear whose vicious fangs were mere inches from her throat. Shadoath drew out her blade, plunged it beneath the young wizardess’s sternum, and let it quest for her heart.

The bear disappeared, and for a moment she saw the wizardess’s true face, her pupils constricted to pinpricks, and she saw an image of the One True Tree as it might be someday, with tens of thousands of people living beneath it, giving it water and food, giving it life, even as it sheltered them from the elements and from the eyes of all enemies.

And then the young wizardess was dead, nothing but a piece of bloody meat gurgling and jerking at Shadoath’s feet.

Shadoath pulled her away from the tree, for she knew that the tree itself had healing powers, and might even be able to raise the newly dead if her body remained beneath its boughs for long.

“Why?” the tree begged.

Shadoath merely smiled secretively as she dragged the bloody girl far across the green.

The bloated form of Warlord Hale appeared at the door of the keep, his head towering above those of his guards: he trundled across the cobbled pavement to meet Shadoath.

“Killed ’er, I see?” he said. “Glad you were up to it. I tried it myself a dozen times, but couldn’t seem to get near her, even though she never went more than a dozen yards from that tree. What do ya want me to do with the damned tree now, chop ’er down, burn it?”

Shadoath considered as Warlord Hale babbled on inanely.

“It’s one of those trees, ain’t it? I told the boys it was, a World Tree, just like the old tales. Didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t want to just let it stand-bad for morale. That’s why I sent for you.”

Hale obviously yearned for approval, so Shadoath said, “You did well, sending for me.”

“So, do I chop it down?”

The human spirit would revolt at such a task. It might even break. She doubted that many of Hale’s men could do it. But Hale was far enough gone in the ways of evil that he could hardly be called human anymore.

Shadoath considered. She wanted the tree dead. But there was one thing that she wanted more-Fallion Orden. For nearly a year now, since she had lost the battle at the Ends of the Earth, she had been considering ways to subvert him-or barring that, to destroy him. She had been taking deep counsel with others of her kind, and they had begun to devise a trap. All that they lacked was the right bait.

Could this be it? Fallion Orden craved to restore the Earth, make it whole, as it had been before the cataclysm. And the very fact that the One True Tree had been reborn was a sign that the restoration-somehow, beyond Shadoath’s understanding-was moving forward rapidly.

Fallion did not know it yet, but he would need the wisdom of a world tree in order to advance his plans.

Given that, would not the spirit of this tree call to his? And would not his spirit call to the tree?

And when the two met, would it not be a good time to thwart both of their plans?

“There is good news in the Netherworld,” Shadoath told Warlord Hale as she considered what to do. “The Queen of the Loci has escaped. The Glories sought to bind her in a Cage of Brilliance, but their powers failed them. They are not as strong as they were in ages past, and we have managed to free her. She is gathering armies more powerful than ever before. Remain true, and your reward shall be great and endless.”

“Glad to hear it,” Warlord Hale said. “I–I am true to you, you know.”

There was malice in his eyes, she saw, and desire. He wanted to give his soul to her, let his spirit become the home of a locus. Because her kind had trained him from youth, he believed that in doing so he would gain a type of immortality, that his soul would be bound into the black soul of the locus, and carried down through time.

He was fit for it, she knew. His soul was a black pit. There was true and monstrous evil in him, and he would be a comfortable abode for a locus. But he yearned to be possessed so badly that she could not resist the urge to deny him this reward.

“Soon,” she promised. “Your time is coming.”

She turned to the tree, regarded it coolly. “Leave it alive for now. I want Fallion Orden to see it.”