The RuneLords

by David Farland

  Raj Ahten had rejected the tale, never considered the possibility it might be true--for if it was true, it portended such dire consequences for this invasion that Raj Ahten could hardly dare ponder them.

  If it was true, if Orden had planned this raid weeks ago, then he could have sent for aid, he could have summoned the kings of the North to battle.

  Four weeks ago Orden had set march. Four weeks. It was possible. The fierce Warlord of Internook could have marshaled his hordes, sent them in longboats to land on the rocky beaches of Lysle, then marched them here, joining with Knights Equitable of various kingdoms.

  These would not be common soldiers. These would not be men who trembled at the sight of Raj Ahten's Invincibles.

  Raj Ahten opened his eyes again, just as Binnesman's horse wheeled to join the procession, taking its lead.

  "The new King of the Earth is coming," the old wizard had said. Now Raj Ahten saw the truth. This Earth Warden would join his enemies. This Earth Warden would indeed serve a king. "The Earth rejects you..."

  Raj Ahten felt a strange terror beginning to well up inside him. A great king marched at the head of that army, he felt sure. The wizard's king. The king his pyromancer had warned him of.

  And he brought an army Raj Ahten could not match.

  Even as he watched, a marvelous thing happened: at that very moment, the great cloud of dust over the army began to form--tall spires of dust rose hundreds of yards into the air like the points of a crown, and a face took form in the roiling dust, a stern visage of a cruel man with death in his eyes.

  The Earth King.

  I came here to hunt him, and now he hunts me, Raj Ahten realized.

  Raj Ahten had little time remaining. He needed to return to the castle, take it quickly, win back his forcibles before he retreated.

  He raced down the stairs of Tor Loman, heart pounding in terror.

  * * *

  Chapter 48

  FIRE

  Raj Ahten raced back down the forest trail, leaping rocks, speeding through glens. He suspected now that Longmont held no treasure, that the forcibles had moved.

  Everything pointed to it--Orden practically begging for execution. The man was obviously joined in a serpent. To kill him would behead the serpent, freeing another soldier to fight with almost as much metabolism as Orden now carried.

  But leaving Orden alive and incapacitated kept the serpent intact. Raj Ahten had only to find warriors dedicated to the serpent, slaughter them quickly, and cut the serpent into pieces.

  The existence of a serpent seemed evidence that the forcibles had left Longmont, for if Orden had really taken hundreds of endowments, he'd not have relied on a serpent for power. He'd have garnered greater stamina. But the man was too easily wounded, too slow to heal.

  No, he couldn't have taken hundreds of endowments, or even dozens. He didn't have the people here to serve as Dedicates. So he'd moved the forcibles. Probably not far. People who hide valuables seldom want to hide them far. They want to be able check on them frequently.

  Yet it was possible Orden had given them to another.

  All morning, Raj Ahten had hesitated to attack the castle for some reason he could not name. Something about the soldiers on the walls had disturbed him. Now he realized what it was: Prince Orden wasn't on those walls. He'd expected father and son to fight together, as in the old songs,

  But the son was not here.

  The new King of the Earth is coming, the old wizard had told him. But the wizard had not emphasized the word new. "I see hope for House Orden," the wizard had said.

  Prince Orden. It made sense. The boy had earth spells protecting him, a wizard in his employ. Gaborn was a fighter. Raj Ahten knew. He'd sent Salim to kill Gaborn on two occasions, in an effort to keep Mystarria from uniting with a more defensible realm. Yet the assassin had failed.

  He has bested me at every turn, slain my pyromancer, evaded me.

  So Gaborn now has the forcibles, Raj Ahten realized, and has taken endowments, and rides at the head of the advancing army. True, Gaborn hadn't had much time to garner endowments, but the matter could be easily handled. Orden had recaptured Longmont three days ago. In that time, a dozen faithful soldiers could have taken endowments on Gaborn's behalf, preparing themselves to act as vectors, waiting for Gaborn to return to Castle Groverman to collect his due. The new Dedicates might be secreted in Longmont or Groverman or any of half a dozen castles nearby.

  Raj Ahten had used the same tactic on occasions. As Raj Ahten raced back to Longmont, he considered all these things. He calculated how much time it would take to seize Longmont, destroy the forces within, and search for his treasure, to verify his guess.

  He had tricks up his sleeves, weapons he'd not planned to employ this day. He'd not wanted to reveal his full strength in battle, but perhaps it would be necessary.

  He considered how much time it would take afterward to flee. Groverman's army stood twenty-five miles off. Many of those men were afoot. If every soldier had an endowment of metabolism and one of strength, they might make it here in three hours.

  Raj Ahten planned to be gone in one.

  In Castle Longmont, Captain Cedrick Tempest worried for his people, worried for Orden, worried for himself. After Orden and Raj Ahten had raced north, both armies waited expectantly while Raj Ahten's men prepared for battle.

  The giants had carried whole trees of oak and ash to the slope of the hillside, as if to make a bonfire, and there the flameweavers had stepped inside, turning the dead trees into a conflagration.

  For long minutes, the three danced within the fire, letting it caress their naked flesh, each of them walking around the edge of the bonfire, drawing magical signs in the air, emblems of blue-glowing fire that clung in the smoke as if they hung on a castle wall.

  It was an eerie, mesmerizing sight.

  Then they began to whirl and chant in an odd dance, as if each man himself were synchronizing with the flames, dancing with the flickering lights of the fire, becoming one with it.

  Thus each flameweaver weaved and bobbed and cavorted, and began to sing a song of desire, calling, calling.

  It was one of the flameweaver's greatest powers--that of summoning fell creatures from the netherworld. Tempest had heard of such things, but few men ever witnessed a Summoning.

  Here and there, men on the walls began drawing symbols of protection, vainly muttering half-remembered spells. Some hedge wizard from out of the wild began to draw runes in the air, and the men around him clustered near for protection.

  Tempest chewed his lip nervously as the wizards gathered their powers. Now, in the bonfire, the walls of flame thickened, becoming green things like no earthly fire. A luminous portal was forming.

  In another moment, Tempest saw shapes materialize within that light-white flaming salamanders from the netherworld, bobbing and leaping, not wholly formed.

  At the sight of those creatures summoned into the flames, Cedrick Tempest was chilled to the bone. His men could not fight such monsters. It was folly to stay here, folly to fight.

  A cry of consternation caught in Tempest's throat. Help. We need help, he thought.

  He'd hardly thought this, when he spotted a blur to the east of the castle, someone rushing over the downs, returning from Tor Loman. He hoped it was King Orden, pleaded to the Powers that Orden had returned victorious.

  But the man racing over the downs did not wear Orden's shimmering cape of green samite. Raj Ahten raced toward them, his helm gone.

  Tempest wondered if Orden had even caught the Wolf Lord, then glanced down into the keep. Shostag the Axeman was Orden's second. If Orden had died, then Shostag should be up, should be the new head of the serpent. Tempest saw no sign of the burly outlaw down in the keep.

  Perhaps Orden still lived, would come to fight in their behalf.

  Raj Ahten shouted a command, ordering his troops to prepare for battle.

  An old adage said, "When Runelords battle, it is the commoners who die." It was true. Th
e Dedicates in their well-protected keeps, the common archers, the farm boys skirmishing for their lives--all would fall without notice before a Runelord's wrath.

  All his life, Cedrick Tempest had sought to be more than a commoner, to avoid such a fate. He'd become a force soldier at the age of twelve, made sergeant at sixteen, captain of the guard at twenty-two. In all those years, he'd grown accustomed to feeling the strength of others in his arms, to having the health of Dedicates flowing in his blood.

  Until now. He stood in nominal command of Longmont, struggling to marshal his forces against Raj Ahten's troops. Yet he was little more than a commoner. In the battle for Longmont, most of his Dedicates had been slaughtered. He had an endowment of wit, one of stamina, one of grace. Nothing more.

  His chain mail weighed on him heavily, and his warhammer felt clumsy in his hand.

  The winds sweeping from the south chilled him, and he wondered what this day would bring. He cowered behind the battlements. Certainly, he felt death in the air.

  Yet for the moment the preparation for battle stood at a standstill. The soldiers and giants and dogs of Raj Ahten all kept beyond bowshot. For several more long minutes, only the flameweavers worked, dancing, twisting, gyrating in the heart of their bonfire, one with the flames; and the glowing salamanders took clearer form, becoming worms of white light, adding their own magical powers to those of the flameweavers.

  Now, in the center of the great fire, the flameweavers stopped their wild dance and raised their hands to the sky as one.

  The skies went black as onyx as the flameweavers began drawing ropes of energy from the heavens. Time and again, the flameweavers reached into the sky and caught the light. Time and again, they gathered it into their hands and merely held it, so that their hands became green blazing lights of their own that glowed brighter and brighter.

  The hedge wizard muttered and cursed.

  The flameweavers' magics took more than the mere light from heaven. For minutes now, the air had been growing colder. Tempest saw that a rime of frost began to cover the castle walls, and the haft of the warhammer in his hand had gradually become stinging cold.

  Frost formed along the ground--heaviest near the bonfire, and fanning out over the fields and all around the army, as if this otherworldly fire drew heat, rather than gave it off. The flameweavers were drawing the energy from the fire so efficiently now that Tempest imagined that even he could have stood in those emerald flames, walked through them unburned.

  Tempest's teeth chattered. It seemed that the very heat of his body was beginning to be sucked from him. Indeed, he could see the salamanders more clearly in the flames now--ethereal beings with tails of flame, leaping and dancing about, staring at the men on the castle walls.

  "Beware the salamander's eyes. Don't look into the flames!" the hedge wizard began to shout. Tempest recognized the danger. For when his eyes met those pinpricks of flame that formed the orbs of a salamander, though for only a flickering instant, the salamander grew more solid in form while Tempest's blood ran all the colder. Men averted their gaze, studied the Frowth giants or the mastiffs or the Invincibles in Raj Ahten's army--anything but the salamanders.

  In the foreboding gloom, the bonfire grew surreal--became a green flaming world of its own, its walls decorated in fierce runes, the creatures at its heart growing in power with each passing moment.

  The clouds above had become so cold that a thunderous hail now began to fall lightly, bouncing like gravel from the battlements, pinging against the helms and armor of the castle's defenders.

  Tempest felt frightened to the core of his soul. He did not know what the flameweavers might try. Would they simply suck the life heat from the men on the walls? Or would they send gouts of fire lancing into the ranks? Or did they have some scheme that was even more nefarious?

  As if to answer his question, one flameweaver suddenly stopped his gyrations among the heart of the emerald flames. For a long moment, ropes of green energy coiled from the skies, falling into each of his hands. Now, the skies all around grew blacker than the darkest night. Distantly, thunder grumbled, yet if lightning flashed, Tempest never saw it.

  In that moment, it seemed as if all time, all sound, suddenly stilled in expectation.

  Then the flameweaver compacted the energy in his hand, as if he were forming a snowball, and hurled a green bolt of fire toward the castle walls. Immediately the flameweaver dropped back, as if spent.

  The green bolt exploded into the drawbridge with a sound of thunder, as if answering the heavens. The castle rattled under the impact, and Tempest grasped a merlon for support. The ancient earth spells that bound the oak planks and stone of the bridge were supposed to resist fire. Even the touch of the elemental some fifteen minutes earlier had only barely charred the wood of the bridge.

  But never was anything made to resist an accursed fire like this. The green flames smote the iron crossbars on the bridge, then raced up the metal, burning the iron with a fierce light, racing up the chains that held the drawbridge closed. Wondrously, the flames did not scorch the wooden planks of the bridge, did not burn the stone casements around it. Instead, they ate only the iron, burned only iron.

  In horror, Cedrick Tempest imagined how the touch of that flame would have affected an armored warrior.

  With a creaking sound, the bridge fell open.

  Tempest shouted, ordering defenders down from the walls, to bolster the troops behind the ruined bridge. Three hundred knights were down in the bailey, mounted on warhorses, ready to issue out to attack if needed. But carts and barrels were also crowding the bailey, forming a barricade that would not be enough. In the hail and darkness, men struggled for better positions. Some knights were shouting, wanting to charge out now, attack while they might be of use. Other defenders on the ground sought to further barricade the gates. Warhorses were whinnying and kicking, and more than one knight fell from his charger and was trampled.

  Overhead, the whole sky went black again while ropes of twisted energy began to feed a second flameweaver. A long minute later, the flameweaver hurled a great ball of green flames at the east tower, which overlooked the drawbridge.

  Instantly the flames raced in a circle all about the base of the tower, so that for a moment it looked like a green ring upon a stone finger. But these flames were alive, seeking entry. They seemed to squirm through archery slots and up the kill holes. They flickered and licked the dull stone, limning the mortar that sealed the tower closed, then raced into windows. If anything, Tempest realized with mounting horror, this flameweaver's spell was more powerful than the first's.

  What happened next, Cedrick Tempest did not want to know, yet he could not help but watch.

  The stones of the tower seemed to wail in pain, and a rush of wind and light escaped all the holes in the tower from ground to rooftop as every piece of wooden planking or shield, as every wool tapestry, as every scrap of hide and hair and cloth on every man in that tower all simultaneously burst into flames.

  Fierce lights raged from the windows, and Captain Tempest could see his warriors trapped inside, lurid dancers shrieking in horror among the inferno.

  There could be no fighting such magic. In despair, Tempest wondered what to do. No charge had begun, yet already the castle gates were down, and half-undefended.

  Before the castle gates, with a shout that seemed to echo from the sky, cutting through the blackness and the curtain of hail, came Raj Ahten's voice: "Prepare the charge!"

  Somehow, in the past minutes, Tempest had lost sight of the enemy commander. Now he saw Raj Ahten on the hillside, standing among his men, staring toward the castle with an expression of apathy.

  The Wolf Lord's well-trained troops knew what to do. His artillerymen began to feed iron shot into the baskets of their engines, send it hurling high against the walls.

  All along the walls, Tempest's men hunched behind the battlements, and now the hail that fell from the skies grew deadly to the castle's defenders. An archer next to Tempest took a
ball to the head, was swept from the castle walls. Men raised their shields high for protection.

  Tempest looked to the hedge wizard, but now the wizard was crouched behind the battlements, eyes filled with terror.

  Wind buffeted from the south, and for a few seconds there was light as the flameweavers took their rest. Tempest saw Raj Ahten's spy balloon, which had been moored a moment earlier, suddenly lift like a graak, despite the battering hail. Four balloonists began emptying sacks of arcane powders into the air, powders that floated down toward the castle in dirty clouds of yellow, red, and gray.

  Tempest gaped, wondering where King Orden might be, whispering under his breath for the King to come, to save them all. Longmont is a great castle, protected by earth runes, he told himself. Yet already the gate was down, and Raj Ahten had not even begun his attack in earnest.

  Now, seeking power once again, Raj Ahten's flameweavers began grasping ropes of fire from the skies. Green walls of flame shone like emerald around the great bonfire, bedazzling, their intricate runes gleaming. The blackening trees within the wall were a bizarre sight, like twisted fingers and arms in an enormous heap of burning body parts. Or like scraps of iron in the forge. Everything became luminous in the heart of the inferno--flameweavers, fiery salamanders, dancing among the logs at the fire's center.

  As the flameweavers stole fire from heaven, darkness deepened, making the battlefield a garish, flickering, half-glimpsed sight. The hail fell heavier for a few seconds then, and the air froze in a cloudy fog before his face as Cedrick Tempest breathed.

  In that flickering darkness, Tempest glimpsed giants gathering their ladders, men on the battlefield drawing weapons.

  "Bowmen at the ready!" Tempest shouted. He watched the track to the north, hoping Orden would appear.

  Yet he now feared it would not happen, feared that Orden still lived, and that the serpent ring had not broken. Perhaps Orden had never met up with Raj Ahten, and was even now racing off on some fruitless hunt. Or perhaps Orden was incapacitated.