Worldbinder

DARKNESS FALLS

Dogs can talk, Alun knew. And right now, his hounds told a tale of wyrmlings in the warrens above him.

Alun stood beneath a thumb-lantern in the yellow light, holding the leash to Wanderlust in one hand and the leash to Brute in another. He was supposed to be on lookout, a mere rearguard.

The wyrmlings had not yet even attacked the front gate. Instead, for five minutes now they had been pounding the thunder drums, crumbling the facade that hid some of the tunnels of the warrens, making a dozen entries. Tremendous booms and snarls snaked through the tunnels, accompanied by the sounds of cracking rock. Motes of stone dust floated in the air, and Alun had worried that the whole mountain would collapse.

But now Wanderlust was barking in alarm and peering up the empty tunnel. Her ears were drawn back flush with her leather mask. Her rear legs quivered in anticipation, and her tail was still.

“We’ve got problems,” Alun called to the troops in the cavern. “There are wyrmlings above us!” He strained his senses.

Warlord Madoc was in charge. He glared at Alun. “You certain, lad?”

Distantly, Alun heard a woman’s scream echoing as if out of some nightmare. “Yeah.”

Madoc looked at his troops, shook his head in dismay. He obviously didn’t want to split his forces, for that is precisely what the wyrmlings were after.

“Hold the gate!” he shouted to his men. “Let me see what we’re up against.” He came rushing toward Alun. His sons, Connor and Drewish stared at him in terror, as if afraid that he’d ask them to follow, but he just shook his head no.

Madoc alone would brave the tunnels above, it seemed.

But at the last instant, Siyaddah peeled away and rushed to join him, followed by a pair from the warrior clan, a young man that Alun did not know, and the girl Talon, that he had helped rescue from the Knights Eternal.

“Let’s go,” Alun told the dogs. Wanderlust gave a strong jerk on her leash and went racing up the tunnel into the warrens, barking.

“Quiet!” Madoc shouted at the dogs. “Quiet now.”

Both dogs went silent, for they were well trained. Still, they strained at their leashes, leading the way.

These won’t be common troops up here, Alun realized as he tried to hold the dogs back. No common troops could have climbed the sheer walls of the mountain.

With a pounding heart, he realized that there would be Knights Eternal ahead.

In the darkness, Rhianna reached the corpse of the dead knight and grabbed at his wings. The creature’s skin had gone gray with age and his flesh felt dry and mummified. As she pulled at his wings, his whole body followed. It could not have weighed fifty pounds. Even his bones must have rotted and dried up.

Rhianna’s blow had taken the creature square in the skull, bursting it like an overripe melon. All that was left of its head was a single mandible hanging by a scrap of skin.

Rhianna was afraid to move, afraid to draw attention. She could not see much in the darkness, but wyrmlings were filling the courtyard in front of the warrens, and the snarl and bang of thunder drums filled the night. Stone slabs were sliding down from the mountainside, revealing its secret passageways, and for the moment, that seemed to hold the wyrmlings’ attention. But at any instant, the wyrmlings could come for her.

Grasping the wings with both hands, Rhianna gave the knight’s remains a swift kick, and the wings came free with surprising ease.

She studied the fearful prongs in the powdery starlight, wondering how to insert them, afraid that the obvious answer was the only one.

There was a rush of wings behind her, and Rhianna whirled, afraid that a Knight Eternal had found her.

High King Urstone landed with a grunt.

“Gesht,” the high king whispered, casting a worried look into the sky. The word might have meant hurry, or follow me. Rhianna could not be certain, so she tried to do both.

She grasped the wings, held them over her head.

The high king leapt forward, shoved the metal prongs into her back, hard.

The pain that lanced through her drove a gasp from Rhianna’s lungs.

But the king spared her no sympathy. He raced to Fallion, took one look at him, and picked him up.

“Gesht! Gesht!” he hissed, and King Urstone leapt into the air, his wings flapping madly, trying to lug Fallion up along with his own bulk.

Wait for me, Rhianna thought forlornly. Her wings felt like dead weight on her shoulders, and she had to wipe away tears of pain.

She heard a shout off to her left, saw a trio of wyrmlings charging out of the darkness. Her own staff was at her feet, so she grabbed it and went sprinting along the wall, fleeing the wyrmlings. In a hundred yards, the wall ended.

Rhianna ran, swiped the tears of pain from her face, and tried furiously to flap the wings.

She had only gone fifty yards when she felt a tingling sensation as the wings came alive.

The heavy footfalls of wyrmling warriors closed in behind her, accompanied by the sounds of bone mail clanking.

Rhianna raced, fearing that at any moment a poison war dart would strike her square in the back, the way that one had with Jaz.

She peered upward, saw King Urstone flying high up the mountain toward a parapet.

A wyrmling roared at her back, came racing up with a burst of speed. Rhianna knew that she couldn’t outrun the monster, so she whirled to her right and leapt over the wall.

A wyrmling leapt after her and grabbed her right wing. She pulled free. The wyrmling plummeted with a scream.

Her wings were barely awake. She could feel blood surging through them, and she flapped frantically as she went into an uncontrolled spin.

She hit the ground with a thud some eighty feet below, her fall softened both by the flapping of her wings and a pile of dead bodies.

There were shouts off to the east. She heard a clang as an iron war dart bounced off the ground beside her.

Rhianna took off, running and flapping her wings feverishly, and then it seemed that some power outside herself took control of the wings, began forcing them to stretch forward and grasp the air in ways that she had not imagined, then pull downward and back, propelling her into the air. The wings had awakened.

Rhianna pumped furiously, aware that it was her own blood that sang through the veins of the wings, that it was her own energy that drove them.

It took great effort to get off of the ground. It was as hard as any race that she had ever run. Her heart hammered in her chest and blood throbbed through her veins as she took flight, but with a final leap she was in the air, her feet miraculously rising up from the ground.

She was boxed-in ahead. A two-story market rose up on one side, a sheer cliff face on the right. She flew to the market wall, batting her wings, and raised herself high enough so that she could grab onto the roof. With a burst of renewed fear, she clambered over the wall and rose into the air, flapping about clumsily like a new fledgling, grateful only to be alive and flying.

She wheeled about, heading upward, her heart pounding so hard that she grew light-headed. She had only one desire: to reach Fallion’s side.

Thunder drums roared and a deafening concussion blasted through the tunnels. Daylan Hammer, with his endowments of hearing, drew back from the door.

“King Urstone is flying up, bearing the wizard Fallion to safety,” the lookout called. “The wyrmlings have got battering rams.”

The thunder drums snarled, and from pedestals inside the iron door, archers shot arrows out through small kill holes.

There was a tremendous boom. Rocks cracked overhead; a split ran along the tunnel wall creating a seam, and pebbles and dust dribbled down. There were strange rumblings, the protests of stones stressed beyond the breaking point.

“Run!” Daylan warned. “The roof is going to collapse!” He whirled away from the great iron door, heard rocks sliding and tumbling outside, banging against the iron, sealing them in.

The warriors of the clan just stood, peering up at the widening rent. Time seemed to freeze.

Daylan could outpace them all, and right now he realized that he needed to do so. There would be no saving them if the roof came down.

“Flee,” he warned, hoping to save at least a few men, and then he darted between them, shoving men aside as lightly as possible, hoping not to throw them off balance.

A cave-in, he thought. This passage will be sealed, leaving only two entrances to defend.

By the time that most of the men had begun to react, he was thirty yards from the door and gaining speed. His ears warned when the rocks began to come down behind him.

He yearned to go back and dig out what men he could, but his duty was clear. Fallion Orden was of greater import than all the men in this cavern.

Vulgnash dropped from the wispy clouds, bits of ice stinging his face, and for a moment he just soared, floating almost in place as he studied the battle below. He was hidden up here, a shadow against the clouds.

Starlight shone upon Mount Luciare, turning the stone to dim shades of gray, almost luminous.

Distantly, he could hear the triumphant battle-cries of wyrmling troops, the rumble of thunder drums.

The city was in ruins. Mounds of dead men littered the streets between the lower gates and upper gates, and now the wyrmling troops had brought up battering rams and were attacking the great iron doors that sealed off the warrens.

Rents had opened up in the mountainside where great stone slabs had slid off, exposing some of the tunnels that had been dug into the mountain.

And there above the battle, a tiny set of wings fluttered clumsily.

It was no Knight Eternal flying there, he knew instantly. The wing-beats were ineffectual, and the body was too small to be one of his own kind. It was one of the small folk, a fledgling, new to wings!

Vulgnash knew that it was the custom among humans to claim wings won in battle.

If that small fledgling is not the wizard I seek, Vulgnash thought, it is one of his kin.

He studied its trajectory, saw where it flew-there, a parapet where another winged human lay wounded.

With a slight folding of the wings, Vulgnash went into a dive.

On the fifth level of the warrens, Alun raced up the gently sloping tunnel. Tiny thumb-lights, hanging from their pegs, lit the way like fallen stars.

But suddenly, the path ahead went black, and the smell of fresh air impinged on his consciousness. He’d found a rent. Part of the rock face had collapsed to his left, leaving the tunnel exposed.

And up ahead, the lights were all out.

He heard a distant wail, the death cry of an old man.

Alun raced past the rent, which was no more than twenty feet wide, and peered down. A hundred and fifty feet below, the wyrmling army crowded in the courtyard. A Death Lord stood at their head, a chilling specter whose form was so dark, it seemed that he sucked in all of the light nearby. There was a boom and the ground shivered beneath his feet, but there was no snarling as was found in the report of a thunder drum.

The wyrmlings had taken battering rams to the iron gates, the city’s last defenses.

“Hurry,” Warlord Madoc urged, racing past Alun.

Alun chased after Madoc, feeling naked, exposed to the sight of the troops below. The wyrmlings could not help but see them sprinting along the open cliff. But soon they were back in the darkened tunnels.

Madoc halted to light a thumb-lantern, and then they hurried ahead.

The knight’s trail would not be hard to follow. He left darkness in his wake.

He can’t be far ahead, Alun realized. It takes time to kill people, even women and babes.

They passed an apartment that had its door bashed in. Warlord Madoc stopped to survey the damage. The apartment looked like a slaughterhouse, with blood-splashed walls. Alun did not dally to gaze upon the faces of the murdered mother and her boys, the youngest just a toddler. Yet he could not help but notice with a glance that upon each of the dead, there was a red thumb-print between the eyes, as if the Knight Eternal had anointed them with blood. Alun knew the family, of course. The dead woman was Madoc’s wife.

Warlord Madoc roared like a bear when he saw her body, and went charging back out into the corridors, brandishing his war ax.

King Urstone is a dead man, Alun thought. If there was ever a chance that Warlord Madoc would forgive him for this debacle, the chance has passed.

No, Urstone had tried to save his son, and the imprudent attempt would bring ruin upon them all.

For that, it was only right that King Urstone should die.

Yet a part of Alun rebelled at the thought. It was not fair that Urstone had lost his son. It was not fair that he should die for loving too well. This was all a tragic mistake, and Alun worried that he was supporting a monster, that Warlord Madoc, despite his bravery and his prowess in battle, was the kind of man who would bring them all to ruin.

Let him die first, Alun silently prayed to whatever powers might be. Let Madoc die at the hands of a Knight Eternal.

They passed apartment after apartment, each much the same, each smelling of blood attar, each dark and bereft of life.

There were cries up ahead, a woman’s scream, and Warlord Madoc went bounding up the hallway.

Talon gave a cry and raced up at his back.

Alun felt strangely disconnected from his body. His heart pounded in fear. He couldn’t bear the thought of fighting a Knight Eternal in the darkness like this. It was madness. They’d all be killed.

Yet he sprinted to keep up, realizing that at the very least he would not die alone.

“Here!” Warlord Madoc shouted as he rounded a corner. Up ahead, thumb-lanterns still burned merrily. The Warlord raced to an open door and peered in.

“Welcome,” a voice hissed from within, “to your demise.”

“If I die,” Madoc growled, “then you will lead the way.” He raised his ax and charged.

Timing is everything in battle, Alun knew. Even a Knight Eternal might be struck down with a lucky blow. But it required perfect timing, and perhaps the element of surprise.

“Kill!” Alun growled, as he released his dogs.

Wanderlust and Brute bent double as they dug their paws into the floor and bounded down the corridor.

The dogs swarmed past Warlord Madoc as he raced into the room. Rhianna and Siyaddah charged in at his back, while Alun drew up the rear.

He heard a smack and a yelp, Brute’s cry. The dog went flying, thumped against a wall.

Madoc roared like a wounded animal, and as Alun rounded the corner, everything was in chaos.

The room was as cold as a tomb. Dead children littered the floor.

Wanderlust had hold of the Knight Eternal’s left wing and was dragging it backward and thrashing her head.

Madoc himself had taken a mighty swing with his ax, lopping off the knight’s right wing.

The knight growled like a beast and lunged past Madoc. It grabbed Talon by the throat and hurled her to the floor, just as Siyaddah leapt in with crescent shield, slashing at the knight’s wrist.

Talon’s own small sword clanged to the floor and came spinning near Alun, just as the Knight Eternal caught his balance and leapt in the air, kicking with both feet, sending Warlord Madoc flying over a chair.

Alun looked at the small sword, its blade covered with rust, and knew that it might be the only weapon in this room that had the power to unbind the knight, to drain the stolen life from is organs.

The Knight Eternal threw off Wanderlust and then leapt upon Warlord Madoc, grabbing him by the throat. He slammed Madoc’s head back against the wall, smashing the warlord’s helm and leaving a smear of blood, then howled in victory and gaped his teeth, ready to tear out Madoc’s throat.

Alun grabbed Talon’s sword and lunged at the Knight Eternal, aiming for its face.

The creature whirled and caught the blade in its hand, almost absently.

Too late it realized its mistake.

The blade struck, and the Knight Eternal gripped it like a vise. Alun struggled to pull it free, like a sword from an ancient scabbard, and the blade sliced into the creature’s palm.

It had been focused on Warlord Madoc, but now the Knight Eternal whirled and peered at its hand as if a serpent had just bit it.

“How?” it cried, raising its palm.

Black blood came boiling from the wound. The Knight Eternal studied this phenomenon, then looked up to Alun in consternation.

Already the creature had begun to change. Its dry flesh was turning papery, and it suddenly weaved, unable to keep to its feet.

“Death take thee,” Alun said thrusting the sword into its throat. The Knight Eternal fell back and collapsed.

Wanderlust leapt on it, wrestled free a leg, and then stood growling and shaking it.

Siyaddah stood in a fighting stance in the corner, as if afraid that the creature would get up and attack. Talon was crawling on her knees, shaking her head clear.

Warlord Madoc lay against the wall, blinking and breathing heavily for a moment. Alun had expected him to be dead, but suddenly he regained his feet.

The only fatality in the fight was Brute, who lay against the wall, lips drawn back in a permanent snarl.

Siyaddah raced to the Knight Eternal, grabbed it from behind, and pulled off the valuable wings. She could not leave such a prize for the enemy.

Alun stood above his dead dog, mourning.

“These are yours,” Siyaddah said, shoving the wings toward him. But Alun only stood. He peered up at her for a moment, and shook his head.

“I don’t want them.”

“Then bring them,” Warlord Madoc said. “I’ll wear them proudly. Come on. We’ve got a war to finish.” He whirled and raced through the tunnels, outdistancing his companions as he searched for a target for his wrath.

In Emperor Zul-torac’s observatory, Areth Sul Urstone lay in a fetal position, groaning in pain, watching the destruction of his city.

Suddenly the snarl and boom of thunder drums went silent. All of creation seemed to pause on the brink of ruin as the Death Lord raised a spidery hand, then turned his cowled head toward Rugassa, as if seeking permission to put an end to mankind.

“Will you concede?” the Emperor hissed. “Your soul, the life of your spirit, in exchange for the city?”

Areth knew that the Death Lord only awaited the Emperor’s command. Such wights, being less than half alive, could communicate across the leagues, whisper thoughts to the spirits of one another. It was for this reason that Lady Despair had elevated them in position, giving them charge of her armies.

They are waiting only for me, for my word, Areth knew. It is in my power to save my people, or to let them die. He let out a whimper of pain and despair.

Rhianna landed upon a parapet above the city, where High King Urstone knelt above the body of the wounded Fallion, examining the splotch of blood smeared over Fallion’s ribs. The thumb-lanterns here had blown out, apparently when the great stone doors that concealed this place had fallen. Now the parapet was open to the cool night air. Stars rained down light, sprinkling it liberally over the gray stone. Flowers, overflowing from gray pots, gleamed like starfish in the darkness, perfuming the night air. Pennyroyal petals and seeds had been strewn upon the floor, giving a heavenly scent.

This would be a pleasant place to die, she thought.

Rhianna gasped, sweat streaming from her face after the short flight, and peered down at Fallion, her heart burdened with worry.

Down below, the thunder drums had fallen silent. Rhianna had seen the huge battering rams that the wyrmlings carried through the city, entire trees felled just for this purpose, bound with iron rings, fitted with brass heads shaped like snarling lions. With a single thrust of each battering ram, sparks and fire had flown out, and the great iron doors had shattered, torn from their hinges.

There was nothing to stop the wyrmlings from taking the city now. It had no defenses left. The warriors that held the tunnels were too few in number. They might slow the wyrmlings for an hour, but that was it.

Dawn was still an hour away. The eastern skies were brightening on the edge of the horizon, washing out the stars.

King Urstone spoke. Rhianna did not understand his words, but she understood the tone. He pointed to the east.

“Take him and go,” King Urstone said, “if you can carry him. Save yourselves. There is nothing more that we can do. The city is lost, and I wish to die with my people. The wyrmlings will be inside within an hour, and nothing can save us.”

Rhianna nodded. “Give me a little while more.” She knelt and gently touched Fallion’s wound. He had already fainted from loss of blood, and it was just beginning to clot. To try to move him would only cause the wound to break open. She didn’t dare risk it.

With a heavy heart, High King Urstone nodded, then took a fighting stance above Fallion’s body and just stood above him, battle-ax gripped in both hands, on guard. “I will watch with you as long as I can.”

Vulgnash studied the three as he plunged from the clouds, and his heart filled with glee. They were unaware of him until the instant that he landed in a rush of wings, standing upon a stone railing above them.

High King Urstone roared and whirled, his battle-ax swinging at Vulgnash’s legs. The movement seemed painfully slow. With five endowments of metabolism, Vulgnash easily leapt above the blow and still had time to cast a spell that drained Fallion of precious heat, chilling his body to near death.

The air on the parapet suddenly turned to ice, and fogged from the mouths of Vulgnash’s enemies. The flowers in their pots began to rime with frost.

Rhianna shouted and batted at Vulgnash with her staff.

He knew that weapon. It was a deadly thing. He had tried to curse it into oblivion, and he had imagined that it would be rotted by now, full of wood worms, but the staff still glittered in the starlight, hale and deadly.

The relic was a curiosity. He was amazed that it held such power, and at some future time, he hoped to study it further.

Vulgnash stepped aside, and Rhianna’s blow connected only with stone.

“Be gone, foul beast!” King Urstone roared, twisting his battle-ax to come in for another blow.

Vulgnash smiled. With his endowments of brawn and metabolism, he felt stronger and swifter than ever before. He had just made a flight that should have taken all night in less than two hours.

Soon, he thought, I will be Lady Despair’s most trusted servant.

Already he had begun to figure out new ways to twist forcibles. In Rugassa, torture was considered both a science and an art. And tonight, Vulgnash had advanced the science to new heights. He had created special forcibles for Areth Sul Urstone. By binding a rune of touch to a rune of empathy, he’d created forcibles that not only let a lord feel more strongly, but feel the tortures that the runelord’s Dedicates endured.

In the days to come, Vulgnash felt certain that he could raise the art of the runelords to heights that had never been dreamt of on Fallion’s world.

Now Vulgnash was eager to test his new-found strength in battle.

“Come with me,” Vulgnash said softly to those who stood between him and his prey, “and I will lead you to the land of shadows.”

The High King swung his ax, and Vulgnash leapt out and swiftly kicked the elbow of the king’s left arm. The ax went flying from his hand, over the parapet and into the darkness.

Rhianna shouted a war cry and swung her staff at Vulgnash’s waist. To Vulgnash the blow seemed laughably slow.

He reached down with a foot and kicked the High King, whose brows were still arced in surprise, shoving him into the path of Rhianna’s blow.

The great staff slammed against Urstone’s head with a snapping sound, as if it had hit stone. The king’s helmet shattered and a fine mist of blood sprayed out from the back of his head. Urstone fell. His body slumped over the railing.

Rhianna only stopped, heart pounding in horror at what she’d done.

Vulgnash leapt from the railing, his movements so fast that his speed was blinding.

He’s a runelord, Rhianna realized.

She swung her staff. The Knight Eternal dodged, and the staff struck the ledge with a jolt. He kicked her arm, and the staff tumbled over the parapet.

He smiled down at her, and Rhianna stood gasping. She had no weapon that could touch him. He knew it. Her only hope was to go after the staff.

But in doing so, she would leave Fallion alone, unprotected.

Fallion. All that the Knight Eternal wanted was Fallion.

Rhianna swiftly pulled a dagger, then put it to Fallion’s carotid artery.

“Leave,” she demanded. “Or so help me, I’ll kill him.”

This is what Fallion would want me to do, she thought. Fallion feared that his powers would be turned to evil. He knew what Lady Despair wanted. She wanted Fallion to bind the worlds into one, all under her control.

Vulgnash hesitated, studied her, and Rhianna dug the blade into Fallion’s flesh.

The Knight Eternal spoke, his thoughts whispering into her mind. “You love him more than your own life, yet you would kill him?”

“It’s what he would want.”

“It would please me to see you take his life,” Vulgnash said.

She studied his eyes, and knew that he meant it. Yes, he wanted Fallion, but he also wanted to see Rhianna commit this one foul deed.

He’s testing me, Rhianna realized. My pain amuses him.

Vulgnash did not move forward, and for a long moment he stood waiting. There were shouts from the tunnel behind Rhianna, accompanied by the frenzied yap of a dog.

She dared not turn away from the Knight Eternal.

“Rhianna,” Warlord Madoc cried. “Hold it. Stop.”

Warlord Madoc raced up at her back, keeping his distance from Vulgnash. For a moment he studied the scene, the Knight Eternal held at bay by a woman willing to sacrifice the man that she loved, King Urstone slumped over a railing, the back of his head smeared with blood.

“Get back from him, girl,” Warlord Madoc said. “Let me handle this.” He spoke to Rhianna in her own language.

Then he spoke to Vulgnash in the wyrmling tongue. “You need us,” he told the Knight Eternal. “Your harvesters need humans to prey upon. Leave us in peace, and we will be your vassals.”

“The land is filled with humans now,” Vulgnash said. “Great will be our joy as we hunt them and harvest them. We need you no more.”

“Still,” Madoc said. “I propose a truce: a thousand years. Give me a thousand years, and I will prepare these people to be your servants. We will join you, and Lady Despair whom you serve. If not, we’ll take the life of the Wizard Fallion, and you can go back to her empty-handed.”

Vulgnash knew the will of his master. For decades she had been plotting this, and right now the future balanced upon a precipice. Sometimes he could hear his master’s thoughts, like whispers in his mind.

He glanced off to the north, straining to hear the will of Lady Despair in this matter. At last, he felt her touch.

Tell him what he most wants to hear, she said. Vulgnash smiled.

“Lady Despair agrees to the trade.”

Warlord Madoc took the news hard, felt the breath knocked out of him. It was almost more than he could have hoped. Yet, now that the wyrmlings had agreed, he wasn’t sure that he liked the truce. He wasn’t sure that he could trust the wyrmlings. They might take Fallion and simply raze the city.

And even if the wyrmlings kept to the bargain, what then? Mankind would survive, but they would fall under the shadow of Rugassa, and his children’s children would serve his enemies.

Still, he hoped, in a thousand years, our children might multiply and become strong. The wyrmlings were notoriously hard on their spawn, and the mortality rate for wyrmling children was high. Madoc could only hope that his own descendants might win back their freedom.

Rhianna had her back to him, and she was peering up at the Knight Eternal resolutely, ready to slit Fallion’s throat at a moment’s notice. Warlord Madoc gave her a light kick to the back of the skull, and she went tumbling forward.

Madoc could hear the sounds of running feet and that damned dog barking in the tunnel behind him. His companions were drawing near, but came forward only slowly, unsure what to do.

“Take him,” Madoc told Vulgnash.

“No!” Talon cried at his back, and came lunging out of the tunnel.

The Knight Eternal moved with blinding speed, dropped, and seized Fallion’s sleeping form, like a cat pouncing upon a bird. In an instant he rose up, reeled and dove over the parapet.

Wings flapping madly, Vulgnash carried his prey into the sky.

Warlord Madoc whirled to meet Talon. The girl charged him with her small sword. She did not strike fear into him. She was, after all, only a child, one of the small folk at that, and Madoc had decades of practice to his credit.

She lunged with a well-aimed blow, but he slapped it aside with the flat of his ax, then punched her in the face. He outweighed the girl by nearly a hundred pounds, and Talon flew back and crumpled from the blow.

Siyaddah and Alun were right behind her. Siyaddah dropped the wings that she’d been dragging, and pulled a weapon as she stalked toward him. “Wait!” Madoc cried. “I can explain. I’m buying our lives here, saving the city.”

And it was true. The wyrmling armies had halted outside the city gates. The thunder drums had hushed, and the wyrmlings waited as if in anticipation.

“We heard,” Siyaddah said. “We heard the bargain that you made. But I’d rather die than honor it.”

They leave me no choice, Madoc realized. He could not leave witnesses to his unholy trade.

Madoc glared at her. “Stupid girl. If you’d rather die, then you shall.”

Behind him, he heard a groan and some small movement.

Siyaddah stepped forward to duel, her gleaming shield held clumsily at her side. She wasn’t a tenth the warrior that Talon had been.

Alun only held still at her back, the gawking lad who had been willing to sell his people out for nothing more than a title. Madoc wasn’t worried about him.

But suddenly the boy hissed a command, “Kill,” and unleashed his war dog. The beast leapt at Madoc in a snarling ball of fury, going for Madoc’s throat.

Madoc brought his ax up, hoping to fend the dog off, and stepped backward, just as something sharp rammed into his back.

He peered down and saw a dagger there just below his kidney. Rhianna’s small, pale hand gripped it. With a grunt she twisted the blade and brought it up in an expert maneuver, slicing his kidney in half. White-hot pain blinded Madoc.

He did not have time to cry out before Siyaddah slammed into his chest and sent him tumbling over the parapet.

Rhianna dropped and knelt in shock.

She crawled to the end of the balcony, her arms shaking, her legs and knees feeling frail. She climbed the balcony wall and peered over the parapet, into the starlight, and far in the distance, she saw leathery wings flapping madly. The morning air was beginning to brighten, dulling the stars. The Knight Eternal was carrying Fallion away in a frenzied blur, like some great bat.

He has endowments of strength and speed, Rhianna realized. He’s flying faster than I ever can. Her arms trembled as they tried to bear her weight. Her stomach was turning, and she felt ill, on the verge of collapse.

How fast is he going? she wondered. A hundred miles per hour, two? How far will he get before dawn? Will he reach Rugassa?

She’d barely been able to manage the flight to the parapet a few minutes ago. And in her current condition, she couldn’t manage even that. Even if she had been able catch up with Fallion’s captor, she was no match for him.

He’s gone, she realized. Fallion’s gone. Maybe forever.

Rhianna looked down, her heart breaking. She saw Madoc’s form sprawled on the pavement hundreds of feet below, broken, ringed by wyrmlings who hacked and stabbed at the corpse, making sure of it.

She turned back to her friends. The parapet was a grisly mess. Talon was out cold. Rhianna could see that she was breathing steadily, but though Rhianna crawled to her side and called her name, Talon would not wake.

Siyaddah went to High King Urstone and stood over him for a long moment, seeking signs of life. She studied his face, then leaned over his back, trying to hear his heartbeat through his armor. At last she put her silver buckler to his face to see if he was breathing.

After a moment, she let out a sad cry and tears rolled down her cheek.

“He’s dead,” she moaned in dismay. “He’s dead.”

Rhianna could not speak to Siyaddah or Alun, for she did not know their language.

Down below, the wyrmling hordes still filled the courtyard. The army did not surge forward into the tunnels, nor did they fall back. Instead, they merely waited, as if for some further command.

Rhianna reached up and felt the knot at the base of her skull, smeared with blood. She could hardly think.

Footsteps came echoing up from the tunnel, and Daylan Hammer appeared around a bend, bearing a thumb-lantern.

He rushed up, spoke softly to Alun and Siyaddah for a moment.

“So is it true that they have Fallion?” Daylan asked Rhianna.

“Yes,” she said, looking back. Vulgnash was gone, far from her sight.

Daylan peered into the sky for a long moment, as if he could see what Rhianna could not. He was a Bright One of the netherworld, and as such, his powers of sight were legendary.

“Yes,” Daylan said at last. “He is gone…far beyond our reach-for now.”

He peered down at the armies massed before the gate, and said, “I wonder what they’re waiting for. The sun is coming. Surely they must be eager to take the city before dawn?”

He studied the army for a moment longer, then shouted, “Quickly, we must get down into the tunnels. There is one great battle left to fight!”

“When next you sleep…” Daylan Hammer had said. The words rolled over and over in Fallion’s mind, “When next you sleep…”

What had Daylan commanded?

That I dream, Fallion recalled dimly.

He was lying in the arms of a giant, flying through air both thin and cold. He could hear wings flapping, but he was so far under, he could not even open his eyes to look.

In a stupor, he reached up and grasped his cape pin, and immediately was thrust into another world. Here the skies were bluer than the darkest sapphire, and oak trees rose up like mountains among the hills, as if to bear heaven upon their limbs. Fallion was standing in a field of wheat that rose up to his chest, and an enormous owl came to him with broad wings and spoke an ancient name, Ael.

For the first time, Fallion realized that it was a question.

Yes, Fallion answered, I am Ael.

Fallion climbed its back, and as the great owl flew through a world that was now only a remembered dream, soaring over crystal lakes, swooping up to climb tall mountains whose skirts were covered with evergreens and whose mantles were draped in snow, finally to make his way at the end of the day toward a vast tree whose branches were filled with lights, Fallion began to recall.

I know that tree, Fallion thought. Its limbs and trunk were golden. Its broad leaves were dark green on the top, almost black in the failing light, but brighter underneath. He could hear the voices of women and children singing beneath the One True Tree, singing in a strange tongue that even his spirit had almost forgotten.

And the memories came. He had lived beneath the boughs of that tree once, had lived there for ages, in a city dug beneath its roots. And in its shade he had helped to maintain the great runes.

He remembered standing there, tending the runes hour after hour. His was the Seal of Light, a great circle of golden fire that bound the Seal of Heaven to the Seals of Earth and Water.

He knew its every texture and nuance, for over countless ages he had not only nurtured it, but with the help of the tree had formed it.

Now in his memory he stood above it, tending the multitude of tiny flames within it.

“Careful,” a still voice whispered in his mind. “The passions in that one are too strong. She must be mellowed.” It was the voice of the One True Tree, his companion and mentor, his helper in this great endeavor.

Fallion had turned his attention to the flame in question. It represented a young woman, one whose passions often rose high.

“Light-bringer,” a woman’s voice called. “What are you doing?”

Fallion turned and saw a beautiful young woman with raven hair and sparkling eyes. It was Yaleen, the woman whose passions he needed to soothe.

She strode toward him like a panther, like a huntress, her movements liquid and powerful…

And as Fallion’s body slumbered, and Vulgnash bore him to Rugassa, Fallion’s spirit began to wake.