Worldbinder

THE TEMPLE OF DEATH

Fallion came to, rising up out of dreams of ice and snow. Ice water seemed to be flowing through his veins instead of blood. His hands and feet were frozen solid. He tried to remember how he’d gotten here, when it had gotten so cold.

“Someone left the window open,” he said. That was it. Jaz liked to sleep with the bedroom window open, and often times in the fall, Fallion got too cool in the night. In his distorted dreams, he imagined that Jaz had left the window open all winter, and that was the cause of his current predicament.

He moaned in pain and peered about, but there was no light.

“Fallion,” Rhianna whispered urgently. “Draw heat from me.”

He wondered how she had gotten here. He tried to recall what the weather had been like when he went to sleep last night, but everything was a blank. All that he knew was bitter cold and pain.

“Draw heat from me, Fallion,” Rhianna whispered urgently.

Without thought, Fallion reached out and pulled a little warmth from her. She gasped in pain, and instantly Fallion regretted what he’d done. He lay there trembling from the cold, numb and filled with pain.

Rhianna pressed herself against him. She could feel him trembling all over. She’d never known anyone to shake so badly. Even as a child, when the strengi-saats had taken her into the forest, wet and nearly naked, she had not suffered so.

Now, Rhianna began to shiver too, and she felt as if she were sinking endlessly into deep, icy water.

She dared not tell Fallion that she was afraid he was killing her. My life is his, she told herself. It always has been, and it always will be.

But something in her ached. She didn’t want to die without really ever having lived. Her childhood had been spent with her mother, running and hiding endlessly from Asgaroth. Then for years, her mind and body were taken captive by Shadoath. For a couple of years she had finally been free, but every minute of her freedom had been a torment, for she had fallen in love with Fallion so deeply that her life was no longer her own.

I don’t want to die without ever having learned to live, she told herself, and lay there with teeth chattering, struggling to give Fallion her warmth.

Slowly, Fallion became aware of his predicament. His legs and arms were bound tightly, cutting off the circulation. It seemed to make the cold keener. He remembered the squeak of wagon wheels, the jostling. The muggy air in the stone box.

But now they were somewhere outside the box. He could feel an open space above, and suddenly heard a wyrmling’s barking growl in another room.

We’re in a building, he realized. Distantly, he heard the chatter of a squirrel, and if he listened hard, he could hear nesting birds up above, cheeping to their mother.

We’re in the woods, he realized. It’s daylight outside.

The night came flooding back to him-the battle at Cantular, his ruthless attackers, the news that Talon was dead. Despair washed through him.

I must get free, he thought. If I don’t do it, no one can. He tried to clear his mind of numbness, of fatigue, of pain.

He reached out with his mind, felt for sources of heat. He touched lightly on Rhianna, Jaz, and Talon. She was still warm, too warm.

Talon’s alive! he realized, tears filling his eyes. But the spell that the Knight Eternal had cast had drained her, leaving her torpid, near death.

“Talon’s alive,” Fallion whispered for the benefit of Jaz and Rhianna, “barely.” Rhianna began to sob in gratitude.

Fallion reached out, quested farther, and found the wyrmlings in another room, off to his right. There were several of them. Their huge bodies were warm.

He wouldn’t need to drain much from them. He touched them, let their warmth flood him.

There was a shout in the other room. “Eckra, Eckra!”

Heavy feet rushed through the door, and Fallion heard the rustle of robes. He knew what was coming. The Knight Eternal would drain him of all heat.

Unless I drain him first, Fallion thought.

In a desperate surge, Fallion reached up to drain the life’s warmth from the Knight Eternal. To do so would require more control than he had ever mastered.

But as he did, he discovered too late that the creature looming above him had no life’s heat. It was as cold as the stone floor beneath them.

“Eckra,” it cursed, and suddenly the cold washed over Fallion again, and he was lost in a vision of winter, where icy winds blew snow over a frozen lake, and somehow Fallion was trapped beneath the ice, peering up from the cold water, longing for air, longing for light, longing for warmth.

High King Urstone sprinted through the early morning, a thousand warriors at his back, as they raced along.

With the great change, dirt and grasses had sprung up over the old road in a single night. It didn’t erase the road so much as leave a light layer of soil over it with clumps of stubble growing here and there. The wyrmling trail was easy to follow.

There was only one set of wagon tracks in the dust, along with the tracks of a dozen wyrmling warriors.

They stopped at a brook that burbled over the road, and several men bellied down to drink. It was the heat of the day, and sweat rolled off them. A few cottonwood trees shaded the brook, making it a welcome spot, and King Urstone shouted out, “Ten minutes. Take ten minutes here to rest.”

He saw a fish leap at a gnat in the shadows, and watched for a moment. There was a pair of fat trout lying in the water.

Warlord Madoc came up at his back, and asked, “Will we catch them today, do you think?” At first the king thought that the warlord was talking about the fish. King Urstone shook his head, trying to rid it of cobwebs and weariness.

“Aye, we’ll catch them,” the king assured him. “We got a late start, but it should be enough. The wyrmlings are forced by their nature to travel at night. But the days are far longer than the nights, this time of year. We should be on them well before dark.”

Madoc nodded and seemed to find no fault with the logic. That was odd. It seemed to the king that Madoc always sought to find fault with his logic nowadays.

“It will be a rough fight,” Madoc said, “with two Knights Eternal in the battle.”

“We have weapons to fight them with,” the king said.

Madoc bore one of those weapons, a dainty sword that was nearly useless in his immense hand. He pulled it from its sheath, showed it to the High King. A patina of rust had formed on the fine steel blade. “Sisel said that these had been blessed, but I say they’re cursed. This rust has been spreading like a fungus since dawn.”

The High King smiled, not in joy, but in admiration for the enemies’ resourcefulness. “I would say that they are both blessed and cursed. We will have to put that sword to good use before it rots away into nothingness.”

“You gave that fool Alun one of these swords to bear,” Madoc said. “Will you let him bear it into battle?”

“You call him a fool? You are the one who made him a warrior, and he acquitted himself well in battle this morning, by all accounts. Do you now regret your choice?”

“Oh course not,” Madoc blustered. “But…he has no training with the sword, and it is an enchanted weapon!”

“Your point is well taken,” King Urstone said. Alun had fallen behind the war party. He didn’t have a warrior’s legs, couldn’t hope to keep pace. The king had assigned some men to help him along, even if they had to lug him like a sack of turnips.

The king’s mind turned to worries about his own son, and so he suggested, “Perhaps we should find another to bear it. Your son Connor, he is trained with the sword, is he not? It is said that he’s quite good. Would he like the honor?”

“I, I, uh-” Madoc blustered. He knew his son was clumsy with the sword. He had a strong arm, more fitted to the ax. More importantly, he wasn’t about to send his son charging into battle against the Knights Eternal, enchanted sword or no.

King Urstone fought back the urge to laugh.

Madoc often complains to his friends that I’m a fool, King Urstone realized, but the man has never fared well in a match of wits with me. “Have no worries,” Urstone said at last. “ I will bear that sword into battle, and cleave off the head of a Knight Eternal.”

It was altogether fitting that the king do it. Urstone had been trained with the sword from childhood, and there were few men alive who could hope to match him with it. More importantly, it was said in Luciare that “the king bears upon his shoulders the hopes of the nation.” In ancient times, it was believed that the combined hopes of a people could give a warrior strength in battle.

These weapons were enchanted with old magic. Perhaps, Urstone thought, there is old magic in me, too.

Thus, the fight that he was racing to was not just a battle between two individuals. Urstone would be pitting the hopes of Luciare against the powers of Lady Despair.

Madoc grunted, “That would be best, I think. Yes, that would be well.”

Urstone peered hard at him. He doesn’t hope for my success in battle, he realized. He hopes to see me die.

Yes, how convenient would that be, King Urstone slain in a glorious battle, a hero’s death, leaving Madoc to rule the kingdom.

But I have a son still, a son who can spoil his plans.

Tonight at dusk the trade is supposed to be made, only a dozen hours from now.

“Wish me luck?” the king asked.

“Most assuredly,” Madoc said. “My hopes rest upon you.”

Nightfall was many hours away when a wyrmling guard came crashing down the stairs three at a time.

“Humans are coming, warrior clan!” he roared. “The road is black with them!”

Vulgnash leapt to his feet. For two hours he had been sitting with nothing to do, listening only to the occasional talk of the small folk in their room, whispering in their strange tongue, as quiet as mice. He had strained his ears. He knew that he would not be able to understand the meanings of their words. He had no context to put them in, but often, he had found, when learning a new language, it was best to begin by familiarizing himself with the sounds. He had been silently cataloguing the vowels and consonants, occasionally trying them out on his tongue.

Now, with a battle coming, there were other matters to attend to.

He raced up to the tower. The sunlight was as bright as a blade there, slanting down from the east. There was no cloud cover.

To the south he could see the human war band, sunlight glancing off their bone armor, as yellow as teeth. The men ran in single file, bloody axes in their hands. In the distance, racing down the winding road, they looked like a huge serpent, snaking toward the horizon for almost a mile.

They would reach the fortress in less than half an hour.

His captain raced up behind Vulgnash. “Master, shall we evacuate, head into the woods?”

There were trees all around. Leaves hung thick upon the oaks and alders. But they would not offer the protection that Vulgnash needed. His wyrmling troops could cope with the light much better than Vulgnash could.

“No, we’ll fight them here.”

The captain tried not to show fear, but he drew back. Vulgnash was condemning him to death.

“I’ll deepen the shadows around the fortress,” Vulgnash said, “and I will place the touch of death upon each of you, give you my blessing. And I have these-” he reached to a pouch at his throat, pulled it hard enough to snap the rawhide band that held it. The bag was heavy with harvester spikes.

“Take three to a man,” Vulgnash told him, placing the bag in the captain’s palm, “no more.”

The wyrmling commander smiled. He and his men would die, but it would be a glorious death, fighting gleefully in a haze of bloodlust, lost to all mortal care.

“Shall I have the men kill the captives,” the commander asked, “as a precaution?”

Normally, that is what Vulgnash would have done. He would have made sure that no matter what effort the humans spent, they would lose in the end.

But his master’s command was upon him, and Vulgnash always executed her commands to perfection.

“No, leave them,” he said in resignation. “If the warriors win through, I may have to come back and take them again.”

They’re going to kill me, Alun thought, as he raced along the road. Connor and Drewish are going to kill me now. Don’t let the dogs get behind me.

He worried about Connor and Drewish. The fact that wyrmling warriors might be on the road ahead, led by the immortal Eternal Knights, somehow did not seem as sinister.

Of course, he was falling-down weary.

His legs had turned to mush, and he could run no more. He was wheezing like a dying man, unable to get enough air no matter what, and chills ran through him while beads of sweat stood out cold upon his brow.

They charged up a hill through the woods, and Alun stumbled and sprawled on his face. For a moment he lay on the ground, laid out like a dead toad, and he was happy, for so long as he was on the blessed ground, he could rest.

“Up with you,” a soldier chided, grabbing him by the arm and yanking. Another soldier took him by the other arm, and soon they were carrying him, each of them cruelly holding an arm. “Move those legs, damn it. There are wyrmlings ahead, and we need you to fight them all for us.”

Alun knew that he would be no good in this fight. There had been three harvester spikes in the little packet that he’d found, but he had dropped that somewhere back at the fort. He’d searched the floor for it, but never found the spikes. He felt dirty and shameful for having used them at all. They were, after all, made from glands taken from folks captured at Caer Luciare. Folks like Sir Croft, or that little boy, Dake, that had disappeared last month. The harvester spikes were an affront to all decency. Yet now as he went into battle, he yearned for the thrill he’d felt before. Without them, he would be lost.

Suddenly there was shouting up ahead, “We’ve cornered them! We’ve got them!”

And the soldiers went charging up the hill, trees whisking by on either side, bearing Alun like a marionette.

Alun hoped that the battle would be over by the time that he reached the spot, but they came upon an old hill fort formed from great gray slabs of basalt. Trees grew up around it, and brush and blackberry vines, leaving it a ruin, hidden in gloom.

Indeed, the gloom grew thick around it, so dark that one could almost not see the door. The harder that Alun peered, the deeper the shadows seemed to thicken, until the door was just a yawning pit in the blackness.

Even as he watched, the darkness seemed to readjust. Shadows that should have fallen from the east now twisted, coming from the north or west.

Whatever hid in that fort, it did not want to be seen.

A handcart sat out front, one of the heavy kind that wyrmlings used to haul equipment to war, with huge wheels all bound in iron. A stone box lay spilled beside it, tossed on its side, the heavy stone lid lying upon the ground.

There was no sign of the hostages, no sign of battle. The old fort was deathly quiet. The soldiers surrounded it, and the High King and his counselors stood peering at it, considering.

“Shall we put the torch to it,” Madoc asked, “smoke them out?”

“No,” King Urstone said. “It might harm the hostages. Nor can we batter down the wall or risk them in any manner.” He nodded toward a captain. “Take down a good stout tree. We’ll need a ram to get through that door.”

He turned and searched the crowd, until his eyes came upon Alun, who was bent over, panting from exertion. The king strode over to him, and there was hardly a sheen of sweat upon his forehead. He peered at Alun with deep blue eyes, and asked, “Alun, may I have the use of the sword?”

Alun drew it from the scabbard and was dismayed to see that the sword, which had reflected light like a clear lake this morning, was dulled by a layer of rust.

“Milord,” he apologized. “I’m sorry. I should have oiled it.”

“It’s not your fault, Alun,” the king said gently.

He turned to the troops.

“Gentlemen, there are wyrmlings in this fortress, and I mean to have their heads. Most of you know that the Knights Eternal are most likely holed up with them, like a pair of badgers. We’ll have a hard time of it, digging them out. But if all goes well this day, we shall rid ourselves of the Knights Eternal once and for all.”

There was a tremendous roar as men raised their axes and cheered.

Vulgnash stood over the bound bodies of the small ones. He stood in what had once been a kitchen. There was a chopping block in one corner, for the hacking of meat, and a pair of stone hearths to one side. At his back was a window that had been boarded up long ago. He had checked it, in order to make sure that there was no clear passage. Blackberry vines grew beyond the window to a height of twenty feet, blocking out the light.

Outside, the sound of chopping stopped. The warrior clan had their battering ram now, and soon would be at the door.

His wyrmling guard stood ready to receive them.

Outside, there was a shout. “You in there: release your prisoners and we will let you go free.”

Vulgnash knew a lie when he heard it. The humans were only seeking assurance that the small ones yet lived.

He considered taking the small wizard outside, holding him up with a knife to his throat, letting them know the danger of pressing this attack. But too many things could go wrong. The wizard could grasp the sunlight, use it as a weapon. Or the enemy might fire an arrow, killing the hostage, and leaving Vulgnash to suffer his master’s wrath.

So he crouched and drew his blade. All the while, his mind was occupied, reaching out to the shadows, drawing them close, wrapping them around the old hill fort.

There was a crashing at the door, and painful light cut through the room.

“Now,” Vulgnash shouted, and his warriors shoved the harvester spikes into their necks. Instantly the bloodlust was upon them, and they began to howl and shriek like creatures damned as they lunged from the shadows.

The warrior clansmen charged the breach, fear in their pale eyes. Their breath fogged in the cold air of the room, for Vulgnash had blessed this place with the touch of the tomb.

The wyrmlings grabbed the first warriors to breach the door, long pale arms snaking out of the darkness, and each used a meat hook in one hand to drag a warrior back while hacking with the other-thus clearing the path for more victims. A volley of arrows sped through the doorway, taking one of his over-eager wyrmlings in the eye. The big fellow fought bravely for several seconds before he staggered to his knees. A human lunged through the door and split his skull like kindling with a single blow from the ax.

With the first blood spilled and the first death, the ground was now blessed, and Vulgnash felt his own powers begin to gape wide, like the mouth of a pit.

The first wave of warriors burst into the room in earnest and found themselves lost in the suffocating darkness, unable to spot a target before they were slaughtered.

The dark fortress filled with screams.

Rhianna kicked Fallion’s leg, waking him, and Fallion came awake slowly. They were lost in blackness as the screams of warriors and the clash of arms rang out.

For long minutes, Fallion lay, desperately trying to clear his mind.

The sorcerer had his hands full for the moment, and Fallion reached out with his mind, questing for a source of heat. He could feel the bodies of creatures living and dying nearby, but dared not draw from them. To do so might alert the sorcerer. Fallion realized now that his questing touch had alerted the sorcerer in times past.

But there was a roof to this building, a stone roof, and the sun had been shining full upon it all through the morning. The warm stone held the heat.

Ever so carefully, Fallion reached out with his mind, searching, and began to draw the heat into him.

There is a saying among wyrmlings. “In a well-built fort, a single warrior should be able to hold off a thousand.”

Vulgnash knew of such fortresses-the sea fort at Golgozar, the old castle upon Mount Aznunc. This was not such a fort.

Still, as the first wave of human warriors faded, he was proud of his warriors. Only one wyrmling had fallen in battle, while dozens of the war clan lay slaughtered upon the floor.

“Drag back the bodies,” he shouted during the lull in battle. “Leave a clear killing field.”

His wyrmlings complied as best they could, throwing the bodies back, heaping them to the roof. But they weren’t able to finish the job before the second wave burst upon them.

A dozen men rushed the door, each bearing torches, war cries ringing from their throats. The light cut through the shadows, and in that instant, his wyrmlings were vulnerable. The gloom lessened, and the humans launched themselves into battle.

One of his warriors took a killing blow. An ax slashed through his armor, and guts came tumbling out. But the bloodlust was upon the wyrmling warrior, and he fought on. Another took a spear to the neck, and too much blood was flowing. A third got cut down through the knee.

Still his men fought-not with bravery, but with madness in their eyes. Vulgnash threw his energy into deepening the gloom, and men screamed and died in the smoky air. The smell of blood and gore perfumed the old fortress. Corpses littered the floor; blood pooled beneath the wyrmling’s feet.

Vulgnash used his powers to feed the frenzy. Death was in the air. Death surrounded them. As one human warrior took a blow, the ax slashed through the armor and grazed his chest.

Vulgnash stretched out a hand, and the skin flayed wide. Ribs cracked and a lung was exposed. The human cried out and fell gasping to the floor before a man could touch him.

His wyrmling warriors began to roar in celebration, dancing upon the bodies of the dead.

Only three of his men had expired, and two hundred humans lay in their gore.

Death ruled here.

There was no time to rest before the third wave hit.

A hail of arrows announced the attack, came blurring through the doorway. Even in the shadows they found some marks. His men could no longer retreat far from the door, for their path was blocked by the dead.

Five good wyrmling warriors took arrows. Three of them sank slowly to their knees.

And the humans did not rush in. They gave the arrows time to do their work.

The wyrmling soldiers roared in frustration, screaming curses and insults at the humans, trying to lure them in. But the human forces were well trained, and did not respond to the taunts.

It was fifteen long minutes before the third wave came. The warriors rushed in so silently, Vulgnash did not hear them coming. They came with torches this time; every man among them had a torch.

Vulgnash used his powers quickly, snuffed the torches out, sent the smoke circling into the lungs of the human warriors.

The humans gasped and choked, struggling for breath as they fought.

And the slaughter began in earnest.

Vulgnash hardly needed warriors to fight for him now. The deaths of so many men, the fleeting life energies, only fed his powers. He felt invincible.

Warriors rushed in, and Vulgnash did not wait for his men to attack. He stretched out his hand, and rents appeared in men’s flesh, long slashes that looked as if beasts had torn them.

The room was filled with warriors with torches, a mob of them, and Vulgnash pointed to one of his fallen wyrmlings and uttered a curse. The wyrmling’s body exploded, and giant maggots erupted from its gut, raining down through the room.

The human warriors shouted as the maggots began to eat their flesh.

Vulgnash felt something odd. The room was colder than a tomb, colder even than it should be.

He sent his mind questing, found the little human wizard stealing heat.

Vulgnash rushed back, stepped on the wizard’s neck, and reached down, sucking the heat from him. It came snaking out in a fiery cord.

But the wizard’s distraction had served its purpose.

At that instant, more torch-men rushed into the room.

His wyrmlings shrieked, blinded by the light, and fought on. They had fought grandly, as harvesters will, leaping into battle, axes hacking off heads and chopping through armor. They had roared and fought when they’d taken a dozen wounds, but it was a losing battle.

Vulgnash whirled and sent the fire that he had drawn from Fallion hurling into the darkened room. The humans screamed and died in a rush of flames, as did the last of his own wyrmling warriors.

“See what your insolence has cost?” Vulgnash raged at Fallion.

The humans retreated from the fire, fleeing the fortress.

The last of his wyrmlings were left gasping, propping themselves up on their knees, struggling to stay alive. First there were three, then two, and at last one sank to the ground with a groan.

Vulgnash was left alone in this place of death.

He peered at the lengthening shadows. The warrior clan had been at the attack for an hour. He’d held them off for that long. But sundown was still many hours away.

“I saw only one of the Knights Eternal,” the captain reported. “He hides at the back, in the doorway to the kitchen. I think that he has the hostages there.”

High King Urstone sat on a rock, sharpening the other-worlder’s long sword. Oiling and sharpening seemed to do little good. It was rusting even as he worked.

“Even one Knight Eternal is more than anyone can safely deal with,” the Wizard Sisel said. “And I fear that this is Vulgnash himself.”

“It’s as cold as the tomb in there,” the captain said. “My veins feel like they are frozen.”

The captain grimaced in pain, reached down his shirt, and brought out a large maggot. It was perhaps three inches long and as thick as a woodworm. Even as he held it, the maggot swiveled its head this way and that, struggling to bite him. The captain hurled it to the ground and gave it the heel of his boot.

“Even to get close to Vulgnash brings a small death,” Sisel told the king. “You must be wary.”

“He’s not the worst of Zul-torac’s terrors,” the king said.

The captain cleared his throat. “One more thing. Watch your footing in there. The floors are slick. He has turned that place into a slaughterhouse.”

“Not a slaughterhouse,” Sisel said, “a temple-where the high priest of death administers the ordinances of death.”

King Urstone smiled weakly. This wasn’t a task that he relished doing. Hundreds of his forces were gone, and he still hadn’t gotten the badger out of its den.

“Do me a favor, captain. Have some of your men go out back. There should be a door to the kitchen, or a window at least. Get them open.”

“The brush is thick back there,” the captain said. “It will take a while to get through it.”

“Make lots of noise,” the king said. “I could use a distraction.”

King Urstone peered up. The Emir stood over him, holding the other-worlder’s staff, inspecting it. Of all the weapons, this one alone had remained untouched by the Knight Eternals’ curse.

“Do you think that will do you any good?” Urstone asked.

“I hope so,” the Emir said. He would bear it into battle. He was as faithful and capable a warrior as King Urstone had ever known, a true friend.

Madoc himself bore the dainty little sword, while two dozen archers had each commandeered a single arrow from the other-worlder’s quiver.

“Right then,” the king said. “Let’s go.”

He gave one final look to the Wizard Sisel and asked, “Is there a last blessing you might bestow upon me?”

The wizard got a bemused expression, stood for a long moment as if trying to recall something he’d heard in the distant past. King Urstone had expected no boon, but he could see the wizard’s mind at work.

There is something, King Urstone thought, some lore that he recalls from the otherworld.

“Don’t go into battle like this,” Sisel said at last. “Don’t go in haste, or fear, or rage.” He glanced up to the trees. “Take a look around. Look at the trees, the sunlight, the grass.” He fell silent, and King Urstone could hear the sound of woodpeckers in the distance, a squirrel chattering, and after a moment, the squawk of a jay. “This is a lush land, full of life. Look at this fortress. In better times, it could be put to use as an inn. It would be a pleasant place to stop and have a meal.

“But Vulgnash has turned it into a tomb.

“Light and life oppose him. In there, he hides from them. You must draw upon these, if you will defeat him.”

The wizard reached into his pocket, drew out some pea pods that he might have harvested from his garden. “Take these with you. There is life in them. And after this meeting, you would do well to plant the seeds somewhere.”

King Urstone noted that the wizard called this a meeting, not a battle.

King Urstone smiled. It sounded like madness. Taking seeds into battle?

The wizard saw his look, and gently chided him. “Don’t put such faith in your arms. They will do you no good in there. How many strong men have died this day, putting their faith in such weapons? And don’t go prepared to die. Nearly every warrior who confronts death prepares himself to die. Look inside yourself and find hope. Can you think of no great reason to live?”

Only last night, King Urstone had succumbed to despair and had been prepared to go into battle and lose his life. But then he had learned of the forcibles, and of a plan to save his son, and of the small folk who now inhabited the land. All of these things were renewing a hope that he had thought long dead. “Your words to me last night gave me hope,” King Urstone said, “great hope indeed, and a reason to live.”

Tonight my son will be free, he thought.

“Good,” Sisel said, reaching up and clutching the king’s arm in token of friendship. “Then go now, not as a servant of death, but as a minister of life.” He looked pointedly at Madoc, “Leave these others behind. You have no need of them.”

King Urstone did not charge in as the soldiers had. He was not going to run blindly into a trap. Nor would he shirk his duty, or stumble on quavering knee.

He strode resolutely to the mouth of the fortress, of the tomb, and planted himself just outside the broken door.

His breath streamed cold from his mouth, and his blood turned to ice water in his veins. He could see heaped bodies lying in a pool of black blood. The air smelled thick with death.

A shadow filled the room before him, a black mass. He could not make out a human form, but he could hear labored breathing, and he could sense a monstrous evil hidden within.

The king advanced toward the doorway, and Vulgnash caught sight of his weapon, the other-worldly steel gleaming red in a shaft of sunlight.

Even that brief image undid him. Vulgnash held back a shriek, half blinded by pain, and threw a hand in the air to shield his eyes.

He looked at the king, and heard voices. For half an instant, he had a vision of King Urstone as a young man, kneeling upon one knee, surrounded by his warlords. Each of them laid his left hand upon the young king’s head, and a wizard spoke for them all. “Upon you we place the hope of all our people. Though you be king, you are a servant to us all.”

There was great power in such words, whether the humans knew it or not. Vulgnash could feel the hopes of many surrounding the king, shielding him like a battle guard.

Vulgnash stretched out his hand, hoping to rend the king from a distance, but his curse could not touch the man.

And there was life all around him, white-hot life. He carried seeds upon him.

The king halted, just outside the door, and planted his long sword in the ground, then stood with his hands folded over the pommel. The blade was angled so that red sunlight cut through the blackness, causing Vulgnash great pain.

What is this? Vulgnash wondered. Where did the humans learn such lore?

“Vulgnash,” King Urstone called out. “Show yourself.”

Vulgnash held to his shadows.

The king hesitated for a long moment, and then shouted, “Vulgnash, I offer you your life.”

Vulgnash laughed, “That is not in your power.”

Suddenly, a wizard stood at the king’s back, a plump man with a sunburned face and a brown beard going gray. He too bore seeds upon him, and the life within him was like a white-hot fire. “But it is in mine,” the wizard said. “Come out, and I will heal you. I can give you life, fresh and clean, unlike any that you have ever known. You will be a slave to no one. I can give you your own life. I cannot remove the wyrm that gnaws upon your soul. Only you can do that. A life devoted to clean thoughts and good deeds will drive it out.”

Could it be? Vulgnash wondered. Could I be granted life, after more than five thousand years?

“I rejected life long ago,” Vulgnash hissed. “I reject it now.”

The king lowered his eyelids in sign of acceptance. “If not life, then I can give you oblivion with this sword,” he intoned softly. “Eternal sleep and forgetfulness.”

Vulgnash drew himself up, and for the first time in centuries, he felt disconcerted. Something was wrong. Normally, his victims were filled with fear, an emotion that worked to Vulgnash’s benefit.

But this king knew better than to hope to slay a Knight Eternal in arger. Such hopes were false hopes, and would only have worked to his demise.

Yet he advanced anyway, without fear, and offered Vulgnash something more terrible than death-life. He carried seeds upon him, and the hopes of his people, and he bore an accursed sword.

It was as if Vulgnash stood before some mage king who had walked straight out of some long forgotten legend. King Urstone’s calm demeanor hinted at a tremendous reserve of power.

Against such a man, I dare not stand, Vulgnash decided.

With a roar he bent his will upon the door to the kitchen, used his mind to slam it shut. The door trembled in its frame and dust rained down. He bolted it, then raced to the small ones, glared down at Fallion Orden.

Everything in him warned that he should kill the young wizard. But Lady Despair had commanded otherwise.

In that moment, Vulgnash had no choice but to flee.

In the space of a heartbeat the roof exploded off the old fortress, fifteen tons of stone hurtling four hundred feet in the air.

The watchtower was thrown aside as if it were a toy, dashed aside by an angry child.

Urstone’s men screamed and raced for cover.

Fearing the worst, King Urstone charged the bolted door, hit it with his shoulder. The rotting wood gave way, and the door split cleanly down the middle.

He caught sight of his target, a hunched figure cowled in red, clutching a sword.

The Knight Eternal hunched above the prisoners, motionless.

The roof of the building crashed somewhere in the distance, shattering trees and leaving a wake of ruin.

Sunlight slanted into the building, playing upon motes of dust that danced in the air.

And the Knight Eternal merely stood there, unmoving.

King Urstone peered at him. It was no living man that he saw, only a rotting corpse with sunken eyes, wrinkled skin like aging paper.

The king plunged his sword through, just to be sure. The sword pierced easily, as if he had struck a wasp’s nest. The organs were desiccated, the bones weak with rot.

“He is not there,” the Wizard Sisel said softly. “I fear that his spirit has fled, and that we shall meet again.”

Sisel reached up and touched Vulgnash’s cheek.

“We should burn this dry husk,” one of the king’s men said. “It will make it harder for him to re-corporate.”

“That is just an old wife’s tale,” Sisel replied. “Vulgnash will just find another suitable corpse to inhabit; by sundown he will be on our trail. Still, take the heads off of the dead here in this room. We don’t want to leave bodies lying handy for him to use.”

“Take the wings off of him,” King Urstone said. “I claim them as my own.”

The wizard looked down at the four hostages, laid out on the floor. The vines that bound them suddenly loosened and fell away, as if drained of some infernal will.

The doorway behind them filled with men-warlord Madoc and the Emir and dozens of warriors.

The wizard spoke softly to the otherworlders for just a moment, then smiled and said to Fallion in his own tongue, “Fallion Orden, I’d like you to meet the grandfather that died before you were born.” He nodded toward King Urstone, then spoke in the king’s tongue, “And King Urstone, I would like you to meet the grandsons that-upon your world at least-were never born.”