Wurm War

by Christopher Golden

  The rook fluttered up from his perch on Timothy’s shoulder as the boy approached the door. Again there came the heavy knocking, and he slid back the bar and swung open the door, eyes going wide at the sight of the gigantic Lord Romulus standing framed in the doorway.

  “Ah, Cade,” he said in a rumbling voice, eyes twinkling menacingly from inside the darkness of his horned helmet. “I believe I am expected.”

  Cassandra strode along a high-ceilinged corridor in SkyHaven, barely noticing the elegant tapestries that hung from the walls. The sun shone through skylights of spell-glass high above, and she was grateful for the way the warm glow of the day took away some of her exhaustion and anxiety. Sunlight had always had that effect on her.

  “Are you sure this is wise?” Carlyle asked, trying to match Cassandra’s stride. She was flanked on one side by the fussy little man—she still was having trouble picturing him as a combat mage—and on the other by Ivar, who was having no difficulty keeping up with her.

  “Quite sure,” Cassandra told him, hearing an edge of authority in her voice that sounded foreign to her. “If we kept Grimshaw here, we could be sure that none of those in Parliament who sympathize with him would come to his rescue, but that is not the law. As Grandmaster, I have no choice but to turn the prisoner over to the proper authorities. What’s more, Grimshaw is a danger to the residents of SkyHaven, as well as an unneeded distraction. Moving him to a more secure holding cell at the Xerxis will allow me to concentrate more fully on my duties.”

  Cassandra picked up her pace, marching down the corridor that would take them outside through a high, arched door and into the courtyard, where the prison transport would be waiting. She wanted to be there to see Grimshaw taken away. As they hurried along, Carlyle became strangely silent, almost reticent. It was not like him at all, and Cassandra shot him a curious sidelong glance.

  “What is it?” she asked. “It’s not like you to hold your tongue.”

  “I’m just concerned, Grandmaster. Grimshaw was Alhazred’s disciple, and there are bound to be others. We have no way of knowing who they are, or what they might try next.”

  “Which is exactly why it behooves us to remove him from SkyHaven,” she said. “The sooner he is placed inside an inhibitor cell at the Xerxis, the better off we will all be.”

  With a tiny smile she glanced at Ivar. “How am I doing?”

  Even in a hurry, Ivar moved with unequaled grace. He gave her a small nod. “Leander would have been quite proud.”

  Pride and grief mixed in her heart. Ivar’s confidence in her gave her hope, but she mourned the loss of Leander both as her friend, and for the leadership he could have provided during this crisis. It made her all the more determined to be a strong grandmaster for the order.

  As they reached the door, Carlyle and Ivar fell behind, and Cassandra waved her hand across the magical eye embedded in the wooden frame. The door swung wide to allow them to exit.

  There was a sharp bite to the wind as they went out into the courtyard, a hint of the approaching fall blowing in off the ocean. It whipped Cassandra’s red hair around her face, momentarily blinding her. She pushed her hair away and saw that the prisoner transport had already arrived, two uniformed Arcanum law officers flanking the metal vehicle. There was nothing attractive about this means of conveyance. The transport was cold in appearance, made from sharply angled, unadorned metals.

  “Here he comes now,” Carlyle said, his robes flapping around him as the wind picked up.

  Ivar leaned his head back and closed his eyes, seeming to enjoy the wind on his face. Cassandra noticed that his nostrils flared, and suspected that the Asura was sampling the many scents found in the air. To be so in tune with one’s senses, she thought. It must be an amazing gift.

  Grimshaw made not a sound as he was brought through a heavy metal door that led down into the dungeons of SkyHaven. The constable was missing an arm—Verlis had bitten it off to keep the fiend from murdering Timothy—so he could not be placed in manacles. There were shackles around his legs, however. They had cleared the courtyard while the transport was there, unwilling to take the chance of innocents being hurt if something should go wrong.

  Ivar opened his eyes and glared darkly at Grimshaw. Though he was escorted by six SkyHaven mages, the Asura watched the villain as if he expected Grimshaw to attack them. The thought gave Cassandra a chill, and she was glad to know that Grimshaw wouldn’t be kept at the Xerxis indefinitely. As soon as his trial was over, he would wind up in the undersea prison of Abaddon.

  She shuddered, remembering the stories that Timothy had told her about the place. But if anyone deserved such a horrible fate, it was Grimshaw.

  A pulsing ball of white magical energy hovered several feet above the prisoner’s head, sapping Grimshaw of his ability to cast spells and wield magic. But as the security team reached the transport with their prisoner, Cassandra heard Ivar utter a sudden gasp. She glanced at him and saw that the black patterns on his bare flesh had begun to darken, moving ominously across the surface of his body.

  “Ivar. What’s wrong?”

  “Something is not right,” the Asura said, nostrils twitching. “I can smell it in the air.”

  Carlyle laughed nervously. “What in the name of the Seven Guardians are you talking about? You cannot smell trouble.”

  Ivar did not respond. He only stared at the transport—more specifically at the two uniformed officers awaiting the transfer.

  “The guards,” he said, pointing one of his long fingers at the two. “They have the stink of dark magic upon them, and their sweat smells of fear.”

  The SkyHaven mages escorting Grimshaw had just reached the transport and were exchanging cordial greetings with the transport guards.

  “Hold!” Cassandra called, starting toward them. “Wait just a moment, Troy,” she said to the senior member of her security team.

  All of them glanced her way, and the transport guards must have seen suspicion in her eyes, for in that instant they revealed their betrayal. Before Cassandra could shout a warning, they were in motion, magic crackling around their clenched fists. Spells burst from their hands, slamming into the SkyHaven security mages and throwing them back, away from Grimshaw.

  They turned and thrust their hands out, blue-black magic churning around their fingers before it lanced outward, directly at Cassandra. Carlyle grabbed her around the waist and dropped to the ground, pulling her after him. The murderous magic burned the air above their heads as it passed by.

  “Curse them! This is precisely what I was afraid of!” Carlyle snarled.

  None of the security mages were moving, and Cassandra hoped they were only unconscious. The transport guards focused their magical attack on the inhibitor spell hovering over Grimshaw’s head, dispersing it with a conjoined blast of disruptive power. Cassandra watched in horror, realizing that Carlyle had been correct indeed, and that if Grimshaw escaped, it would be her responsibility, her first act as true Grandmaster of the order. She would not have it.

  “Stop them! He’s going to escape,” Cassandra cried, leaping to her feet and conjuring a spell that would shatter the betrayers’ bones and the transport alike.

  “Mistress, no!” Carlyle shouted.

  The traitors were too fast, unleashing crackling bolts of magic that threw up a defensive shield, deflecting her attack, the magic dispersing in the air. A triumphant shout drew her attention, and she looked over to see Grimshaw laughing, magic swelling around him as though he could barely contain it. It was purplish black, the color of a bruise. But far worse was the fact that Grimshaw’s missing arm had been replaced by a strange, multi-tentacled appendage seemingly composed of pure dark magic.

  As she and Carlyle watched in shock and revulsion, Grimshaw’s roiling black tentacles entwined his would-be rescuers.

  “You can assist me in one final way,” she heard the former constable bellow. “I have need of your life energies.”

  The transport guards screamed as their flesh withe
red and their life force was drained away. Their empty uniforms fluttered to the ground, and their ashes were whisked away on the wind.

  “Grimshaw!” Cassandra shouted as she stumbled toward the dark mage.

  Carlyle was beside her. His hands glowed with a bright golden light as he summoned an assault of combat magic. Cassandra did the same, spreading her legs in a battle stance as she mustered all her strength into a single attack spell. As one, they shouted and unleashed their magic.

  That disgusting, serpentine limb spread into a black, oily cloud of magic, and the spells they had cast disappeared inside. Grimshaw only laughed.

  “Nothing would make me happier than to stay and chat with you, my dear,” he snarled. “But I have places to go. People to meet.”

  The magical arm suddenly whipped out as if with a mind of its own, and struck the young Grandmaster in the center of the chest with a crackling snap. Cassandra was hurled violently backward by the force of the assault. She rolled across the ground, certain that she would have been dead if she hadn’t managed to erect a shield of defense mere moments before the dark magic touched her. When she crawled to her knees, she saw that Carlyle was down as well. Down and not moving.

  Grimshaw was already climbing into the transport. “Alliances must be made,” she heard him say as the door swung shut behind him. Then there came the roar of the prison transport’s magically fueled engines, and the vehicle rose up, escaping SkyHaven with no further resistance.

  Cassandra rushed to her assistant. “Carlyle! Are you all right?”

  He groaned as he opened his eyes, and then a scowl twisted his face. “Grimshaw!” Carlyle shouted as he pushed himself up. “We can’t let him—”

  “Too late, I’m afraid.” Cassandra shook her head. She looked around the courtyard at the security mages, who were at last rising from the ground, holding their heads and wincing with pain. “I’ve really made a mess of things.”

  Carlyle sighed. “No. No, you haven’t, mistress. Only the traitors who aided Grimshaw were killed. Otherwise, no one was badly hurt. You took all the necessary precautions. What else could we have done?”

  She stared at him. “We could have stopped him. You don’t have to be so gentle with me, Carlyle. I am the Grandmaster now. You shared your fears and I dismissed them. I was a fool.”

  Carlyle rose to his feet and looked around. At last he met her gaze. “We’ll get him, Grandmaster. Eventually we will find him again. Mark my words.”

  “Indeed,” she replied, still feeling like a complete fool. “Notify the authorities at once to give chase. It cannot be too difficult to track a stolen prison transport.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Carlyle said.

  “And why not?”

  “Grimshaw is traveling south,” Carlyle explained. “Heading toward—”

  “Tora’nah and the invaders from Draconae,” Cassandra finished, cold fingers of dread brushing against the nape of her neck. Now she understood the last words Grimshaw had spoken.

  Alliances must be made.

  “He’s going to Raptus,” Cassandra said quietly. “Grimshaw is going to ally himself with Raptus. We have to warn Timothy.”

  She looked around for Ivar, to ask him to hurry to August Hill with the terrible news, but he was nowhere to be found.

  Cassandra called his name, scanning the courtyard, new fear growing in her heart.

  “I saw him moving toward the transport just after you were struck down,” Carlyle said. “You don’t think he might have…”

  The question hung unanswered in the air, as Cassandra gazed off in the direction the craft had flown.

  “He might have,” she answered in a fearful whisper, the whereabouts of the Asura now weighing heavily upon her.

  Chapter Four

  General Raptus watched with uneasy fascination as the device that the mages called the Burrower dug through the first layers of dirt and rock, and he was glad that he had ordered his raiders to keep some of the mages alive. Mercy had not caused him to do this. It was practicality. It had been ages since the Wurm roamed free in this world, and to learn what he could of its current events—its most vulnerable targets and most important leaders—he would have to interrogate prisoners.

  Now, though, he had found another use for those he had allowed to live: operating the Burrower. The mages had seemed horrified when he instructed them to dig up the tombs of the Dragons of Old, the ancient burial ground of his own kind. The weakling Verlis had instructed them never to defile that land. But Raptus had set them to digging immediately.

  He was searching for something.

  His soldiers could have used their talons to dig down into the rock and soil, but the mages had found a way to accomplish his chore all the faster. Raptus also enjoyed the irony that if he did find the object of his search, the mages’ inventiveness would have helped to hasten their own extermination.

  The Burrower bucked, rocked, and whined as its spinning nose tore into the sacred ground. Raptus looked from the deepening hole to the mage who operated the digging mechanism. The man’s face was flushed and pink, his eyes bulging in their sockets. It was obvious that he was terrified of failing at the task Raptus had assigned him. Yasgul, one of general’s more sadistic soldiers, sat crouched behind the man with sword in hand, adding to the pathetic mage’s terror. It was how all humans should behave in the presence of their superiors, Raptus thought. And soon he would make that belief a reality.

  “Is this wise?” asked a raspy voice.

  Raptus whipped around, twin gouts of flame leaping out from his flared nostrils. He looked upon the grim and scarred face of Hannuk, one of his most trusted advisors.

  “You question me, Hannuk?”

  “I mean you no disrespect, General.” Hannuk averted his eyes. “But why do you tempt the spirits of our ancient ancestors by defiling their final resting place with that”—he gestured with his hand toward the digging machine—“that damnable thing.”

  Raptus looked back to the Burrower, its cylindrical body penetrating the ground farther, toppling the long-standing stones that marked the graves of the species that had evolved into the Wurm. It was a sad sight indeed, but necessary if the future that he imagined for his people was ever to come to pass.

  “It is a sacrifice that must be made,” Raptus snarled, watching as the device continued its progress, digging deeper and deeper into the cold, hard ground of Tora’nah. “The mages have provided us with a way to hasten our plans. I have no compunction about using their invention to acquire what is needed to achieve this victory.”

  “What is needed?” Hannuk asked, moving nearer. “We have breached the divide and our forces are resolute and strong.” He blew a stream of orange fire into the air. “Now we lay siege to the Xerxis, and the accursed Parliament of Mages, and make those responsible for their treachery pay dearly.”

  It’s all so simple for him, Raptus thought. Hannuk believed so strongly in their superiority, but his faith was unfounded. The mages of Terra drastically outnumbered the Wurm—thousands to one—and their combat mages wielded sorcery vastly more powerful than what the Wurm had at their disposal.

  A horrible shriek like the birth cries of a thousand hatchlings filled the cold air of Tora’nah, and Raptus spun to see that the Burrower had struck something. Green, foul-smelling gas erupted like a geyser from the massive hole in the ground.

  Both the mage operating the machine and Yasgul, his guard, began to choke, coughing uncontrollably as the noxious fumes assailed them. Raptus strode toward the excavation, Hannuk at his side. Cautiously they approached the ragged edge. The air was befouled by the escaping gas, and they both unfurled their wings to fan it away.

  “You talk of destroying the mages,” Raptus said as he peered into the thick, roiling green cloud. “But their numbers are far superior to ours, and their magic is great. Without some other advantage, we have no hope against them.”

  The general gestured for the Burrower to be retracted from the hole, and the
digging machine slowly began to withdraw, moving backward up the ramp with the whirring and grinding of its mechanical innards.

  “No mage can stand before us,” Hannuk argued as Raptus leaped down into the gaping hole. “We have the furnace of hatred in our hearts, our fire consumes them, and we come as death from above—”

  “The mages would strike us all down in a matter of days,” Raptus said with a growl as he landed atop the flat piece of gray stone that had been cracked by the spinning head of the Burrower. “First they would be afraid, but then they would gather their numbers, pooling their magical might to see us dead.”

  Raptus knelt, his wings continuing to fan away the thick, greenish fog that leaked from the jagged crack in the stone beneath his taloned feet.

  “Then what are we going to do?” Hannuk asked, peering over the edge of the hole. “Do we stay here, waiting for the arrival of the mages—for our inevitable deaths? You promised vengeance upon our betrayers, Raptus. How will this ever come to pass if we do not attack?”

  The general worked his claws into a crack in the stone and then tore it up and away. “I did not say we would not attack.”

  “But how will we—”

  “As a hatchling the ancient beliefs were taught to me by a wizened Wurm called Barrakus,” the general explained. “In me he saw something special, and because of that he shared a secret that had been kept by members of his clan for countless ages—a secret meant only to be revealed to the one who could potentially change the destiny of the Wurm.”

  Raptus reached down into the darkness of the breach he had just torn in the slab of rock, his hands falling upon the warm, smooth surface of an object that his people had believed only legend.

  “Barrakus believed me to be that Wurm, Hannuk,” Raptus said, and slowly he withdrew his hands from the darkness, holding an enormous egg-shaped thing of the same sickly green as the gas that had come from that hole.

  “And with this, I intend to prove him right.”