Worldbinder

SMALL FOLK

Alun came staggering into camp on rubbery legs that night, well after dark. He was supposed to have run a hundred miles, but of course his energy gave out.

The other warriors drove him anyway, hurling curses and encouragement at him in equal measure. “You’re a warrior now!” “Move those damned spindly legs!” “Does a wolf tire when it runs to battle?”

They laughed, and the tone seemed kindly enough.

But they were going to kill him, Alun knew.

He realized it as soon as his legs gave out, and he went sprawling in the dirt.

Drewish had urged him on with a swift kick to the ribs and a derisive laugh, and had rushed on. But Connor had only halted long enough to yell, “Get off your lazy ass. We’ll have no laggards.”

Alun had fumbled about, gasping for air, and Connor just rolled his eyes. At last, he picked Alun up by the scruff of the neck, half carrying him, and ran, holding him upright, forcing him to move his tired legs.

After a few miles of this, Alun fainted, and woke to find that some burly soldier was carrying him on his back as if he were a corpse. When Alun groaned, the fellow laughed and dropped him to the ground. “Come now, no bellyaching. We’re off to battle. Let’s hear a war song out of you.”

And that was when Alun knew they were going to kill him. Madoc had given him the honor of joining the clan, and now he’d send him to the front of the line to be slaughtered by wyrmlings.

They weren’t about to let a mongrel like Alun breed with their precious daughters.

That was it, he imagined. Or else they want to kill me because they know what I did. Had someone told Madoc about his meeting with the high king?

The king had assured Alun, “This meeting must be kept private. Tell no one. I want to see my son take the throne someday. Not just for me, but as Daylan Hammer has said, for you, too, and for your posterity.”

No, Madoc and his men don’t know what I did, Alun decided. They only know what I am.

And so he ran as well as he could, and he was dragged and carried and kicked the rest of the way.

He didn’t make it a hundred miles. But he had run forty, he felt certain.

It was a good account for one of the serf-born caste. There were rumors that one of his great grandmothers had been bedded by a warrior, and thus he claimed some decent blood. But the same could be said of every serf in the kingdom.

Every bone in his body ached, and when he tried to pee that afternoon, there was blood in his urine from the pummeling his kidneys had taken during the run. He felt too tired to care.

The last few miles were the hardest. They had reached a strange canyon called the Vale of Anguish. Here, odd rock formations stood, piles of rubble that often looked more like men than rocks should, almost as if monstrous deformed beings had been turned to stone.

There were caves in the hills here where the warriors could hide for the night, and get some sleep-or fight, if they were backed into a corner.

But when he got to camp, lit only by starlight and a scythe of a moon, it was abuzz with excitement.

“They found little people-” someone was saying, “tiny folk that don’t know how to talk. They live in huts made out of stones, with roofs made from sticks and straw. There’s a whole village of them, just beyond the hill.”

Alun would never have believed such nonsense under normal circumstances, but in the last day, the world had turned upside down. Forests had sprung up where there should be none. Mountains had collapsed and rivers changed their courses. Anything seemed possible.

“Little people,” a soldier laughed, “what good are they? Can’t eat ’em, can you?”

For effect, he tore off a huge piece of bread with his teeth, as if he were rending a little person.

“Maybe we’ll find some use for their women,” another jested, and he was joined by gruff laughter.

Alun wondered. He wanted to see these little folk, but his legs were so sore that he didn’t think that he could walk up the hill. Still, he grabbed a loaf of dry bread from a basket, along with a flagon of ale, and slowly crept up the steep hill, past soldiers who were feeding and laughing.

He caught bits of conversation as he went. “River’s flooded up ahead, they say. We’ll have a rough swim of it.”

“I can’t swim,” a heavy warrior said.

“Don’t worry,” the first said. “You just float, and I’ll drag you along.”

“That’s the problem,” the heavy one said. “I can’t float. Bones are too heavy. I sink like an anvil. Always have. I just hope the king lets us take the bridge.”

Atop the hill, High King Urstone, Warlord Madoc, the Emir of Dalharristan, the Wizard Sisel, and other notables all stood beneath a stand of sprawling oaks, peering down at a strange little village.

As the soldiers had said, there were houses made of small stones, and other houses made of mud-and-wattle, all with roofs formed from thick layers of grass, tied in bundles and woven together. There were small gardens around the houses, all separated from one another with rock walls.

There were folks outside of the houses, worried little folk, men with spears and torches, women with clubs. They weren’t as small as Alun had hoped they would be. He wouldn’t be able to pick one up in his hand. But they were short, more like children than adults, that was certain.

King Urstone was admiring their village. “They’re tidy things, aren’t they,” he said. “Clever little houses, lush little gardens. Perhaps we could learn from them.”

“I suppose,” one of the warlords said. “Though I don’t see much good that will come of it.”

“What will we do?” King Urstone asked the lords around him. “They’re obviously frightened of us, but we can’t just leave them here, unprotected, with the wyrmlings about. The harvesters would have them in a week. For their own sake, we have to get them back to Caer Luciare, even if we must drag them.”

“We could try leading them,” the Emir said in his thick accent. “Perhaps if we offer them bread and ale, they will think well of us?”

“I think…I can talk to them,” Warlord Madoc said, his voice sounding dreamy, lost in thought. Then he took off, striding downhill.

The small folk began shouting, waving their weapons, and Madoc unstrapped the great ax from his back, gently set it on the ground, and called out something in a strange tongue.

Alun had never heard such words before, and he wondered where Madoc could have learned them.

Suddenly, on the northern horizon, a white light blazed so brightly that it looked as if a shard of the sun had fallen to earth.

Everyone turned to see what was going on. Several people gasped in wonder.

“It’s coming from Cantular,” the Emir said.

Indeed, even with the naked eye, Alun could see that the bright light issued from Cantular. The sandstone buildings glowed gold in its brilliance, and long shadows were cast everywhere. The city itself was still a good four miles distant, though, and Alun could see little else.

The Emir pulled out an ocular-a pair of lenses made from ground crystal, held together by a long tube. He aimed the ocular toward the city, touched a glyph on the side of the tube, and spoke the name of the glyph.

Suddenly, an image appeared shimmering in the air, a dozen feet behind the rod.

It was an enlarged replica of the city, far away.

Alun could see clearly that a man stood atop a building, a man so white-hot that he glowed like the sun. He waved a sword, while above him three wyrmling Seccaths in crimson robes hovered in the air like hawks.

“Sweet mercy,” the Wizard Sisel cried, “the Knights Eternal have been loosed!”

But Alun’s fear quickly turned to wonder. There were people fighting the Knights Eternal, four small humans like those in the village below. A bowman loosed an arrow, and one of the Fell Three plummeted from the sky.

The bright one blazed even brighter, and light flooded the sky across the horizon.

Then the horizon abruptly went dim.

The ocular showed the scene, ropes of fire twirling between the bright one and a Knight Eternal, and then the lights went out, the humans dropped in a faint, and a pair of wyrmlings plummeted from the sky, like falcons stooping for the kill.

What happened next all took place in shadows. The ocular could not reveal much in so little light.

The warlords stood staring in dumb amazement.

“You saw that?” one of them cried. “Their archer slew a Knight Eternal! He killed one of the Three!”

Another warlord asked, “Are all of these small folk such warriors? If so, they would be grand allies! We had better make them allies, before they slaughter us all.”

High King Urstone glanced down the hill at the poor farmers with their torches and clubs. The whole village together didn’t look as if it could fend off a single wyrmling beggar. The king said thoughtfully, “I think that those four were folks of some import. They would have to be for the wyrmlings to send the Three after them.” There were grunts of agreement.

The Emir said thoughtfully, “Daylan Hammer said that it was a wizard who bound our worlds together. One of those small folk is obviously a wizard. Could it be that he is the one who bound our worlds?”

“Look,” one of the lords said, “the Knights Eternal are dragging them away. I think they’ve taken your wizard captive.”

Madoc, who had been down in the valley, came huffing up the hill, his breathing ragged with excitement. He was looking to the north, where the lights had been.

“Then we will have to free the hostages,” King Urstone said. “Perhaps that is why we are here. The Powers conspired to draw us here, lest some greater doom fall upon us.”

“You would fight the Knights Eternal,” Madoc grumbled, “in the dark, in a fortified position? That’s madness. You’ll foil our mission!”

The High King bit his lower lip. “Those small folk slew one of the Three. If we learn how they did it, we may be able to win this war once and for all.” He gave Warlord Madoc a stern look. “The world has changed. We have more than just our own people, our own vain ambitions to think about. We will attack an hour after dawn, in the full light of day, and hunt the wyrmlings down. If any of the Knights Eternal are still abroad, we’ll take off their heads. If done by the light of day, it might take weeks before they can rise again. No word of what happens here must reach Rugassa.”