Worldbinder

A PAIR OF KINGS

“Your Highness, this is outrageous!” Warlord Madoc burst out. “Surely you don’t believe this.”

Madoc was red with rage. He had waited all morning for a chance to take the king from behind, but there had been no opportunity. The king hadn’t waded into battle until the very last, and then he had gone in alone. Madoc couldn’t put an end to him, for there would have been too many witnesses.

Now this mad wizard was trying to foist these otherworlders off as new-found heirs.

“Outrageous?” Sisel said. “I think not. Fallion Orden here is the firstborn son of Gaborn Val Orden, a king of great import upon his own world. Fallion’s grandfather lost his life in battle before Fallion was born. That man was you, King Urstone, upon that shadow world. He was your shadow self. And so when the worlds combined, you had no other half to combine with.

“In the same way,” the wizard continued, “on our world, their mother was lost while she still carried her firstborn in her arms.”

King Urstone bowed his head in thought. Areth’s wife had died while he was away, killed in a wyrmling assault. The wyrmlings had tried to take her prisoner, but she had slipped from their grasp and thrown herself from the tower wall, with her babe in arms. She gave her life rather than let her child be raised among the wyrmlings-for had she been taken, her royal child would have been raised as one of their slaves.

King Urstone had always felt guilty for this. I should have been there to protect her, he thought, instead of staying out for the night on patrol.

“It doesn’t matter who they are,” Drewish shouted. “They cannot be heirs to the throne. Look at them: they’re not even warriors.”

King Urstone looked down at the little humans. They squatted on rocks in the last of the sunlight, shivering, away from the infernal slaughterhouse, and rubbed their wrists and knees, trying to get back some circulation.

One of the girls was large, though, like one of the warrior clan. Her face was familiar, but he could not put a name to her.

“It’s not size that is the measure of a warrior,” she said in their own tongue. “There are few among you who could best King Orden here in a fight.”

Urstone laughed at her feisty tone. “And how, sweet lady, would you know?”

“Can’t you tell?” she asked. “I am Tholna, daughter of Aaath Ulber. But I also lived upon a shadow world, where Aaath Ulber’s shadow self spent half a lifetime training young King Orden here in battle.”

The king knew Tholna. Her father was one of his two most trusted guards. But he had disappeared after the change, like so many others. King Urstone had wondered if he were even alive.

Now Tholna turned up here in the wilds, with these otherworldly humans.

He could detect no change in her. She claimed to be two people at once, but if that was so, it seemed to King Urstone that the smaller creature had been subsumed, swallowed whole.

“This is all very befuddling,” King Urstone said. “I don’t know what to say. You tell me that these are my grandsons, but common sense says that they are no get of my son’s, and therefore cannot be heirs. And yet…”

“Yet what, milord?” Madoc asked, his tone a tad too demanding.

“I must think this matter through.” To suddenly have two new heirs, that would certainly spoil Madoc’s plans for his own sons, King Urstone knew. He liked the idea of thwarting Madoc’s plans. But claiming these…otherworlders as heirs might put them in danger from Madoc and his men, and that would be unfair to the small humans.

So King Urstone was hesitant to even consider them as heirs. Besides, these children did not really come from his own blood. But he felt a connection between them that could not be denied.

There are small people in the land now, King Urstone thought. They will need a great leader. Perhaps this young wizard-king will be that leader.

Sisel took King Urstone by the bicep and said, “Your Highness, walk with me for a moment.”

In all of his life, the wizard had never touched King Urstone that way, had never dared command him. By that alone, King Urstone recognized that the wizard felt an overpowering need.

They walked up the road a few hundred feet, well out of earshot of the troops.

“Milord, you must get Prince Fallion to safety. Zul-torac has already sent the Knights Eternal to apprehend him. By sunset, Vulgnash will be making his report to the emperor, and a sea of troops will be dispatched. He will spare no resource. He will attack us in force. We have two or three days to prepare at most.”

“Are you sure?” the king asked.

“Yes. Fallion Orden is the wizard who bound our two worlds together; he represents a far greater danger than the emperor has ever faced before.”

King Urstone peered at Fallion. He was small by warrior clan standards. He could not have stood more than six feet, a full two feet shorter than King Urstone himself. He had a slender build, though he was well proportioned. But there was something unsettling about him, a threatening gleam to his eye, a confidence that the king associated only with the most dangerous of warlords.

“I’m beginning to like this little fellow more and more,” King Urstone said.

“Don’t make the mistake of naming him as an heir yet,” the wizard said. “It will only infuriate warlord Madoc.”

“Oh, I won’t do that,” the king said. “Not until I know him better. But I do value the lad. He cost me many good men today.”

King Urstone looked to the south. “I want to see my son, my own flesh and blood. I want to be there tonight when Daylan Hammer makes the exchange. Will you come with me and the little ones?”

It was a long hard run, even for one of the warrior clan-a hundred and fifty miles in less than ten hours. King Urstone would need the handcart to carry the small folk on, and he would need guards. But he believed that he could make it. He was warrior-born, after all. He just wasn’t sure if the wizard could make it. Still, Sisel seemed to have physical resources far beyond most men of his stature.

“I wouldn’t want to miss it,” the Wizard Sisel said.