Worldbinder Part 6

Jaz looked up, moved back for Fallion to get a better view, and Fallion gasped.

Their Talon had changed. At first, he thought that it was only a matter of growth. Talon had always been a diminutive girl, combining her mother's lithe body and her father's strength. But she was diminutive no more.

"What do you think?" Jaz asked. "Seven feet tall? Maybe more?"

That looks about right, Fallion thought. And three across the shoulder. She looked as if she weighed a good three hundred pounds, all of it muscle.

Her face remained much the same, or, at least Fallion could still see Talon's resemblance in it. But it stretched in an odd way. There were two strange humps above her brow, like those on a calf that is about to sprout horns, and her forehead seemed thickened, as if a bony plate had grown there. Her cheekbones were similarly armored. She groaned, opening her mouth as if to curse at some bad dream, revealing incisors that had become over-large.

"What happened?" Jaz asked.

Fallion suspected that he knew. Some other creature must have been standing where Talon was, on that shadow world, and the two of them had become one.

7.

THE HUNTER AWAKES.

There was a time when the Knights Eternal were Lady Despair's most fearsome weapon. But as her powers grew, so did the powers of her minions, and the walking shadows, the Death Lords, began to haunt our dreams. With the merging of the two worlds, though, we should have guessed that it was only a matter of time before the Knights Eternal reestablished their dominion.

-the Wizard Sisel Gongs were tolling in Ruga.s.sa, their deep tones reverberating among the rocks in the fortress, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, thundering up from the center of the earth.

Upon the toll, Vulgnash awoke in the tower crypt, and with a powerful kick threw off the lid of his coffin.

Gripping its sides, he inspected his rotting flesh. His skin had dried, becoming gray and leathery, and his flesh had cracked and wrinkled. Maggots had burrowed trails through his arms.

How long, he wondered, since last I walked the earth? He had hoped to remain dead for eternity this time.

But Lady Despair summoned him, and he rose at her bidding. He had promised his service to the Great Wyrm, whether it be in life, or in death, and now he had to answer the call.

Besides, he would rather be summoned into the presence of Lady Despair than into that of the Emperor.

From the condition of his hands, he imagined that it had not been long. Three years since last he woke, perhaps five, no more.

Yet Vulgnash felt as if he had been pummeled. Every muscle in his body ached; he had seldom felt so weak.

He climbed from the coffin, and stood for a moment, staring down through a tower window. People rushed everywhere a thousand feet below him, like beetles in a dung hill.

The fortress was in ruins. Walls of black basalt looked as if they had split during an earthquake.

He peered out beyond the city gate, to see if the fortress was under attack, and stared in awe. There was a strange and wondrous change in the land: a forest stood out on the plains before the castle. The plains should have been barren. Last he knew, they were burned twice yearly so that no army could draw near without being seen.

But here was a forest of h.o.a.ry pine trees that looked to be a thousand years old. And strange birds flew up out of it, like none that he had ever seen before.

How long? he wondered. A thousand years? It can't be. My flesh would have turned to dust, and I would be beyond the power even of Lady Despair to call.

And now the gongs were sounding, announcing that the Great Wyrm demanded his presence.

Vulgnash swore, strode to his closet, and drew on a crimson robe to hide the ruin of his face, then went striding down the stairs, into the great hall.

He felt so weak, he needed sustenance; and so as he entered the great hall, where servants went scurrying about in terror, their eyes wide in fright to see him, he grabbed a small girl of eight or nine.

"Your life is mine," he whispered, then placed five fingers upon her skull-one between her eyes, two upon each of her eyes, and his thumb and pinky finger upon her mandibles.

At this touch, the girl's blood turned to ice water in her veins, and she wet herself.

The girl tried to withdraw in terror, but his fingers held to her flesh as if it were his own. Some of the servants that saw groaned or looked away in horror; one cried out the girl's name in mourning, "Ah, little Wenya!"

With a whispered incantation, the girl's pa.s.sions-her longing for life, her hopes and ambitions-and the fire in her soul that drove them were drawn away.

The spell went to work, and the girl's flesh, rife with water, began to sag and putrefy, even as Vulgnash's own flesh gained heft and a less unwholesome color.

When he was done, he let the girl fall away, a dry and rotting husk. He felt refreshed, but not refreshed enough. He would need to feed on others before he regained his full strength.

But the gongs were tolling, and he had no time for it.

He grabbed a torch from a sconce, then went striding down to the lower levels. Powerful guards cringed in terror as he pa.s.sed, for they knew what Vulgnash was.

The black basalt tunnels were cracked and broken, and often the pa.s.sageway was littered with rubble and boulders. Vulgnash waded through or climbed over as the need took him.

Is this why she summoned me? he wondered. A mere earthquake? But no, he knew that there must be some greater threat to the realm.

In his weakened state, the race left him drained.

The great fortress of Ruga.s.sa was built upon the crown of a volcano, and his spiraling journey downward felt like a plummet. All the while, the gongs grew louder, more insistent, until at last he had gone far enough, and the corridor opened into the audience chamber.

Two others had arrived before him and stood at each side of the chamber like an honor guard, robed all in crimson. Thul and Kryssidia were their names.

She has summoned three of the Knights Eternal, Vulgnash realized, a full quorum. Great need must be upon her.

A platform jutted out above a lake of boiling magma, which heated the room like a blast furnace. Tunnels high up allowed the hot air to escape, while lower vents, one of which sat directly behind the platform, allowed cold air to rush in.

Thus as Vulgnash reached the end of the platform, he found himself at the mouth of the vent, a chill wind whirling all about him, making his blood-red cape flutter like a caged bird. Without the refres.h.i.+ng wind, no mere mortal could have withstood the heat of this place. Even Vulgnash would have succ.u.mbed in time. He peered down, hundreds of feet below, into the pool of magma.

"Lady Despair," Vulgnash cried. "I hear your summons, and obey."

The lake of magma below him was red hot. Suddenly it boiled madly and the lake began to rise. Molten stone churned, and the level kept rising, until it seemed that the platform itself would be swallowed by magma.

Then the mouth of the great wyrm appeared, rising from the molten flow.

She was a hundred yards in diameter, and her mouth, which had five hinges, each jaw shaped like a spade, could have swallowed a small fortress.

She rose up, and magma streamed off of her.

Vulgnash dropped to one knee and bowed until the bony plate on his forehead touched the hot floor.

A great rus.h.i.+ng voice filled the room. "Speak, Vulgnash. I feel that your mind is clouded by questions."

Vulgnash dared hardly admit it to himself. He was not used to questioning his master. But he could not hide his thoughts from the Great Mother. The wyrm that was within him spoke to her, revealing his deepest secrets.

"How long?" he asked.

"Four years, since last I summoned you."

"But...there is a forest growing outside the gates," Vulgnash objected. He knew that he had to have slept for centuries.

"A great and strange thing has happened," the wyrm said. "The world is changed, made anew by a powerful wizard, named Fallion Orden. He has combined two worlds into one, his and ours. He is our enemy. He must be dealt with."

That any one wizard could have such power seemed unimaginable. "You have but to command me, my master, and I will throw myself into battle no matter how fearsome the foe. But...how do we fight such a creature?"

"Have no fear," the Great Mother said. "I brought Fallion here by design. In his world, his power was great. But in this new world...he cannot withstand you. He is a flameweaver, talented in some ways, but he is only a child in his understanding...."

Vulgnash smiled, his lips pulling back to reveal his overlarge incisors. If there was one thing that he understood, it was the weaving of flames. He had been mastering his skills for millennia.

The Great Mother continued. "Take the three into the woods south of the ruins at Caer Golgeata. You will find a golden tree there. Destroy it, root and limb.

"You will also find humans, small in stature, led by the wizard Fallion. Bring him, and prepare his spirit to receive a wyrm."

Vulgnash knew that powerful enemies sometimes required wyrms of great power to subdue them. Knowing which wyrm was to take him might make a subtle difference as to the type of tortures Vulgnash would use to prepare the victim. "Is there a particular wyrm that I should prepare him for?"

The answer struck Vulgnash with awe.

Lady Despair answered, "I may well possess him myself."

8.

TALON.

Life is an endless awakening.As a child, we awaken to the wonders and horrors of the universe.As young adults we awaken to our own growing powers, even as young love enslaves us.As adults, we awaken to the worry and responsibility of caring for others.Last of all, we awaken to death, And the light beyond.

-High King Urstone In the tallest tower of Castle Coorm, Fallion kicked open the door to a small room and stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust as motes of dust floated in his view.

The room had served as his bedroom as a child, a room for both him and Jaz. But as Jaz said, it had grown smaller over the years.

The room was filled with trash-broken chairs from the king's hall, a broken wheel from a wagon, various tools with broken shafts-all things that had some worth but needed the tender care of a good wood-wright.

Beneath the litter, Jaz's bed still remained, but Fallion's was gone. Gone also were their treasures-the princely daggers that had hung on the wall, the fine curtains that had once hung over the window, the carved and painted animals that Jaz had played with as a child.

Fallion had hoped to find something to remind him of his childhood, but there was nothing. Nor had he found much of worth in Warlord Hale's chamber. It seemed that everything of worth had long ago been destroyed, sold off, or stolen.

He closed the door, then climbed the stairs to the uppermost tower, where his mother's far-seers had once kept vigil.

There, upon a mossy roof that was growing weak from rot, he peered out across the altered landscape. Rocks rose up in a tumult, twisted and eerie. It was not as if they had just thrust up from the ground, broken and new. Instead, they looked to have been sculpted by wind and rain over millennia. Their forms were graceful, strange, and utterly out of place.

In the past hours, the dust had begun to settle, and though a yellow haze obscured the heavens, in the distance the ruins of ancient cities could be seen in half-a-dozen directions, their stonework marvelous and otherworldly, and their broken towers soaring high.

Yellow moths of a type that Fallion had never seen fluttered everywhere, clouds of them rising above the forest, apparently unnerved at the vast change.

Fallion felt unnerved, too. The sun was too bright, and rested in the wrong place in the sky. The plants seemed to have a strange metallic tang. A great weariness was on him, sapping his strength. He felt on the verge of collapse, and feared that if he slowed down, if he stopped for even a minute, he would just lie down and never regain the strength to rise again.

Rhianna climbed the stairs behind him, came up to him wordlessly, then just stood stroking his back.

"Has Talon stirred?" Fallion asked.

"Not yet," Rhianna answered. Talon was still unconscious, resting in the hovel where Hearthmaster Waggit lived. Fallion had come here to search for richer quarters, but Warlord Hale's room had been a pigsty, full of rotting food and foul odors.

"This is a trap," Fallion said as he peered out above the woods. "This whole place is a trap. We should leave."

"Not without Talon," Rhianna said. "I couldn't leave her, and neither could you. We'll have to wait until she's ready to travel."

She had been unconscious for hours. Fallion worried that she would die. Certainly, there had been others in the village that had died. One had been crushed under rocks when a wall buckled; others had perished from wounds received in taking the keep. Two elderly men apparently died for no reason at all, except, perhaps, from the shock of the change.

And there were other oddities. Another young man had grown large and distorted, like Talon. He too was unconscious.

Four people had apparently vanished altogether; Fallion suspected that they lay crushed somewhere beneath the rubble. Fallion could hear their sons and daughters even now, down among the castle grounds, calling out their parents' names in vain.

Another young girl had a large gorse bush grow through a lung during the change and would not make it through the night.

Talon might not make it, either, Fallion knew. Whatever she had become, it might not survive.

"You should go down among the people," Rhianna said. "There is talk of throwing a celebration tonight."

"I'm not in the mood to dance or sing," Fallion said. "They shouldn't be, either."

"You saved them," Rhianna said. "They want to honor you."

"I didn't save all of them."

"Perhaps not," Rhianna said, "but I heard a woman talking down there. She said that 'Under Warlord Hale's rule, we were all dead. But good Fallion has brought us back to life.' That seemed reason enough to honor you."

Rhianna took his hand, squeezed it. She wanted to infuse him with the love that she felt, but she knew that it was incomprehensible to him, for the love that she felt was not something that she had learned in her mother's arms. Her love was deeper, and more profound. She had once given an endowment of wit to a sea ape, and had learned to see the world through its eyes. It had been as devoted to its master as a dog would be. It had adored its master. There were no words to describe the depth of its affection. And now, Rhianna felt that way about Fallion. Only long years of practice allowed her to keep from constantly following him with her eyes, or from stroking his cheek, or kissing his lips. She dared not let him know, for she knew that it was a burden for one to have to bear unrequited love.

"If the villagers want to honor me," Fallion said after a moment, "tell them to post a heavy guard. And tell them not to wait until tonight. There may be worse things in those woods than strengi-saats now." He sighed, stood resting with his palms upon the head of a gargoyle for a moment, as if bestowing a blessing, and then when he had regained his strength, said, "I'll go check on Talon."

He stalked down the stairway in a foul mood. As he descended, he found himself in darkness, until he came out upon the green. Three women were tending the tree, tenderly wrapping the scars on its bark in tan linen.

A few hours ago, Fallion remembered hearing them cheer as he freed them from Warlord Hale.