Wurm War

by Christopher Golden

  So much had changed in the little time since he had left Patience behind. At least on Terra.

  On the island nothing had changed, and it filled his heart with pleasure to see it. He wished that he could simply stay here, that he could return to the simple happiness of his childhood. But he was not a child anymore, and back on Terra he had friends who needed him and many others who were also depending on him, much as it might trouble them. He had made promises, and if there was one thing that his father had taught him during his visits to the island, it was that promises must be kept.

  Timothy stood on the jetty of rocks from which he had once fished and took a deep breath of ocean air. He stared out at the vast water before him, then hurled the pit of the Yaquis fruit out over the waves. Perhaps it would wash up on the shore of some other island, some other land, and a new Yaquis tree would grow.

  A seed from Patience, searching for roots in a strange new place.

  He smiled grimly and turned, hurrying up the beach to the workshop where he had spent years designing and building his inventions. He had not even bothered to climb up to the treetop home where he and Ivar had lived. If he survived, he would return here and spend some time there.

  Perhaps with Cassandra.

  The thought quickened his pulse, as sweet to him as the fruit he had just tasted. Visiting Patience with Cassandra seemed the most obvious and perfect idea he had ever had.

  But such thoughts would have to wait.

  That morning he had been surprised to find the workshop dusty. One panel of the southern wall had been torn away, he presumed by one of the terrible storms that struck the island several times a year, and neither he nor Sheridan had been there to replace it. Rain had gotten in. Many of his plans and journals had been destroyed. Plants had grown wild around the entrance and up under the walls in places. Such things had been happening a little at a time, and during his previous return trips he had told himself he would take care of them the next time.

  Now he wished he had done more to take care of the workshop, of the island, which had once been his whole life.

  The stolen moments out on the rocks had been an indulgence, but he knew that Raptus would not come to Arcanum until tomorrow morning, and this might be his last trip to Patience for some time. Or ever, though he didn’t want to think about that.

  Now, though, it was time for him to get back. In the workshop that day he had been busy. The Yaquis tree had its uses, but for his purposes he needed the branches and long hanging leaves of the Horax tree. Once he had used the stems of those leaves to make twine for fishing, but he had found other uses for it as well, weaving nets with which to capture some of the small animals on the island, and sometimes to dredge the shallows for black crabs. The twine, once woven, was nearly unbreakable. He had three perfect nets in the workshop and two others that needed repair.

  But his time that day had been consumed by another task. Timothy was constantly sketching designs for inventions he might one day build, determined to perfect them before actually bringing them to life. Only since he had left Patience for the dangers of Terra had he even considered building weapons. But of late he had been designing a weapon that would fire projectiles, using Horax twine pulled taut and a shaft carved from a branch of that same tree. Horax wood was heavy and strong. It could be carved, but it was difficult to break. He thought that if whittled to a point and fired with enough speed, it would easily pierce the tough hide of a Wurm.

  Timothy had built himself a crossbow.

  Now he gathered the weapon, and a belt he had made with a pouch for the Horax shafts, and he started away from the workshop, out across the sand toward the magical door that stood on the beach. Once upon a time, only his father had ever come and gone through that door. But then Argus Cade had died and one day it had been Leander Maddox emerging from the other world, bringing the dreadful news.

  At the door Timothy paused and took one last breath of the pure, sweet air of Patience. Then he went through.

  On the other side of the door was a corridor on one of the upper floors of his father’s house. From a window he could see all of Arcanum stretched out far below. Once there had been ghostfire lamps in the halls, but Timothy had replaced them with lanterns of hungry fire, nonmagical flame that would still burn if the glass was shattered. It was dangerous, but far better than ghostfire, which to him seemed so cruel.

  He hurried down the corridor now, past the pipes that he had installed to carry water through his father’s house without magic. His house. He still thought of it as his father’s—sometimes even as the Cade estate, which was the way others referred to it. And yet perhaps that was all right. This beautiful old mansion with its dark wood and elegant tapestries was all that he had left to remind him of his father. He had grown up on the island, but he was proud to call this house on August Hill his home.

  As he rounded a corner, he heard the laughter of Wurm children, and the kind voice of Sheridan attempting to calm them. At the top of the long, circular stairs he looked down and saw several of the adult Wurm—the warriors of Verlis’s clan—standing close, no doubt preparing to go out and join the squadrons to which they had been assigned.

  He continued on until he reached the new workshop he had set up in the house when he had finally come to live here. Ivar was already inside. When Timothy entered, the Asura looked up calmly from Timothy’s gyrocraft, the flying machine that the boy had built when he had first come to Arcanum and lived at SkyHaven.

  “Good. You have returned,” Ivar said. “I was worried.”

  “No need. I’m all right,” Timothy replied. He laid the crossbow and the pouch of shafts on a table. “What do you think?”

  The Asura picked up the weapon and examined it, testing the twine and the trigger. Ivar nodded thoughtfully. “It will work.”

  Timothy noticed that Ivar wore his knife, a long dagger with the markings of the Asura tribe. Ivar had not worn it for quite some time, and had been without it during his strange adventure to the south in pursuit of Grimshaw. The boy was both chilled and comforted to see it strapped to the Asura’s hip again.

  “What of the nets?” Ivar asked.

  “Are you through with the repairs on the gyro?”

  “Almost. I thought you would want to finish yourself, so you are certain it has all been done properly.”

  Timothy smiled. “I’m sure it has. But I’ll look it over. Do you want to go back to Patience and pick up the nets?”

  Ivar nodded. “I will be swift.”

  The boy thanked him, and then the Asura was gone. Timothy went over to the gyro and began to examine Ivar’s work. His old friend was not an inventor the way that Timothy was, but he had no trouble understanding the mechanism of something once it was built. He had done an expert repair job.

  There was a rap at the door.

  Timothy turned to see Cassandra standing just inside the workroom. Her red hair seemed somehow darker to him, and wild, and the concern in her eyes gave her features a certain cast that made her seem more adult. She was not a child, of course, but she was still a girl, even though she was a grandmaster.

  Yet there was little of the girl in her face just then.

  “You didn’t come to the Xerxis,” she said, her voice oddly small.

  Timothy found that his throat was dry, and he had to fight to force himself to speak. Just the sight of her did that to him. Darkly serious as she seemed, there was still a light in her eyes that no crisis could extinguish.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I … I did want to come to see you. But there was so much to do.”

  Cassandra stepped farther into the room. She wore robes of deep green that matched her eyes, with cuffs of gold that reminded him of the sky above Patience.

  “We both have our responsibilities,” she said. “But I have fulfilled mine for the moment. Until nightfall at least. Do you have a moment for me now?”

  She was only inches away. Timothy reached out to take her hand.

  “Of course.”<
br />
  Words failed him then.

  But they were no longer necessary.

  Edgar was perched on a small table in Timothy’s bedroom, pecking at the remains of a fruit tart that the boy had never gotten around to finishing. Everyone was rushing about in preparation for Raptus’s assault on the city, but he had nothing to do. When the time came—when sunrise brought the war to the outskirts of Arcanum—Edgar would be in the center of it all, at Timothy’s side. But no one had asked his opinion on the deployment of combat mages or the best way to assault Wurm from the air, so in the midst of all the franticness and fear, he was left to his own devices.

  He hated it.

  Not the fruit tart. Though it had gone a bit stale. No, Edgar hated being surrounded by such anxiety and determination and feeling so useless. It felt as though tiny insects were creeping underneath his feathers. He was constantly ruffling them and hopping about, unable to settle down.

  From out in the hallway there came a noise, the clank of wood on metal. Edgar tilted his head and paused to listen more closely. When he heard the familiar toot of steam escaping from the valve on the side of Sheridan’s head, a kind of relief went through him. Ever since Timothy had left the island and come to live in Arcanum, the rook and the mechanical man had been friends. They often bickered, and Edgar found that sometimes he could not stop himself from making wry comments, but Sheridan never seemed to mind.

  The fruit tart entirely forgotten, he hopped off the table and spread his wings, flying to the door. He did not fly out into the corridor right away, however. Now that the Wurm children had at last given up tormenting him, he did not want to draw their attention again, so he landed on the floor and peeked out into the hall. Sheridan was alone, carrying a tea tray.

  Edgar hopped into the hall and took flight.

  “Good afternoon, Sheridan,” the rook said.

  With a whir of gears the mechanical man’s head spun all the way around. “Oh, hello, Edgar.”

  The rook alighted on Sheridan’s shoulder. “Actually, I take it back. Nothing good about today, is there?”

  Sheridan turned his head around to look where he was going. Another hiss of steam escaped his head. “Every day we’re alive is a good day. That’s what I think.”

  Edgar ruffled his feathers, then folded his wings tightly against his back. He scratched at his chest with his beak. “Forever the optimist. All right, I’m with you. If we’re still alive at this time tomorrow, I’ll think it’s a heck of a day.”

  “You must have faith, Edgar,” the mechanical man chided, carrying the tray down the corridor toward Timothy’s home workshop.

  “I’d better. I’m going to be out there fighting the Wurm tomorrow.”

  Sheridan sighed. “I wish I were going to be with you. I have no taste for war, but I hate the idea of staying behind and waiting for news.”

  Edgar tilted his head. “You’re doing your part, pal. Those Wurm kids get on my nerves, but their parents need someone to look out for them.”

  “I still believe they ought to have left with the mage children,” Sheridan said. “If the attackers should get as far as August Hill—”

  “We’ll have to hope the magical defenses Argus built into this place will protect them. But Verlis and Cythra didn’t want to send them off with just mages to look out for them. If the kids got too rambunctious, there could be trouble.”

  Sheridan shook his head. “Still, there is no trust. They have to fight side by side for the lives of us all, but they dare not turn their backs on one another.”

  “Maybe someday,” Edgar said. “But someday’s a ways off still.”

  They reached the workshop and found the door open several inches. Sheridan balanced the tray in one hand and pushed it open the rest of the way.

  “Good afternoon, Timothy. You’ve been working so hard, I thought you might like—”

  Edgar blinked several times, his beak open in surprise. Timothy and Cassandra stood in the middle of the workshop in a tight embrace, lost in a passionate kiss. As Sheridan spoke up, they broke apart.

  “Sheridan!” the boy said, face flushed scarlet. He stammered something and then looked over at the girl.

  For her part Cassandra only smiled shyly and gave a soft laugh. That seemed to set Timothy at ease.

  “You’ve caught us by surprise, I’m afraid,” Timothy said.

  “And you, us,” Sheridan replied.

  “Way to go, Tim,” Edgar said, prompting another blush of embarrassment from the boy and another laugh from Cassandra. “We’re proud of you.”

  Edgar truly was pleased. He had seen the affection developing between the two young ones for quite some time, and with the shadow of the war looming, they had brought a spark of light and life into a dark time. He hoped they knew how fortunate they were to have found that spark.

  “Sheridan,” the rook said, “leave the tray. Let the kids get back to what they were doing before we interrupted.”

  The mechanical man gave a loud toot of steam and then set the tea tray on a worktable. “Yes, of course. Terribly sorry. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Edgar laughed and shifted position on Sheridan’s shoulder, talons scratching metal. “They’re not going to need anything. That tea’s gonna sit there and get cold too, I’d wager.”

  As Sheridan left the room, pulling the door behind them, Edgar glanced back and saw Tim and Cassandra holding hands and smiling at each other, still a bit shy.

  Right there, Edgar thought. That’s what we’re fighting for.

  Chapter Ten

  When the first light of dawn touched the tips of the spires of Arcanum the following morning—the day of the war—Carlyle was stationed at the southern perimeter of the city. He had been placed in command of the squadron that consisted of the combat mages of the Order of Alhazred and the Strychnos guild. He was at first reluctant to agree to this pairing. The mages of the Strychnos were female and nearly all statuesque and elegant. He had worried that for some of the Alhazred mages, the Strychnos would be too great a distraction. But he needn’t have been concerned. They were beautiful, but they were cold, specializing in plants and poison. They were gravely serious.

  He had also underestimated his own combat mages. Today they were all equally serious. Nothing would distract them from the task at hand.

  Other squadrons had been put into place around the city. From his vantage point, Carlyle could only see those nearest to him to the east and west. Though they had been broken up by guild—best to keep together those mages used to working as a team—no one carried a banner trumpeting their allegiance. They all shared one allegiance today.

  The southern perimeter of the city was mostly small shops and offices, as well as apartment buildings where many of the less skilled mages worked. Magical laborers and support staff could not afford more luxurious homes. It was troubling, because they could also least afford to lose the homes they had, and Carlyle could not see how it was possible that most of the buildings around him would not be reduced to rubble by the coming battle.

  With the sunrise the mages in his squadron set themselves into a battle stance, ready for an attack at any moment. Many of them crackled with pent up magic, the light of various spells flickering from their eyes and sparking from their fingertips.

  Carlyle watched the southern horizon with growing unease. Cythra was the Wurm assigned to their squadron, and Carlyle had sent her south as a scout so that she could return and give them advance warning of Raptus’s arrival. The sight of anything larger than a bird in the lightening sky would signal the beginning of war, and he knew that many of those around him would not survive it. There would be bloodshed. And some of that blood might be his own.

  Yet he was prepared for that. He had served as a combat mage, and faithfully as an aide to the Grandmaster of the Order of Alhazred. If he died defending this city and all of mage civilization, that was an honorable death.

  Still, he said a prayer to the gods—for his own sake and that of s
o many others—that it would not come to that.

  “Commander Carlyle!” shouted a voice.

  He spun to see Nimue, one of the best combat mages in the ranks of the Order of Alhazred, hurrying through the squadron toward him. Like many others, she had not worked daily at SkyHaven but instead had been working in Arcanum, both as a scholar at the University of Saint Germain and as a spy. When the late Grandmaster Maddox had reviewed all the mages who were members of the order, he had dismissed those with ties too close to Nicodemus, knowing they were likely to be treacherous. But Leander and Carlyle had both agreed Nimue was beyond reproach and utterly loyal to the order, not to any one individual who might become grandmaster. He was relieved to have her as part of his squadron.

  “Nimue,” he said as she approached.

  Some of the Strychnos mages and several of the Alhazred gathered nearer to hear what she had to report. Carlyle rounded on them.

  “Vigilance, all of you! Be taken off guard, and it will cost us all!”

  Nimue nodded in grim approval. Had she been commanding the squadron, she would have reacted the same way. Her long white-blond hair was tied back tightly to keep it out of her face, and her ice blue eyes were severe. Magical power radiated from within her, but not with the kind of obvious display some of the other mages put on.

  “What news?” Carlyle asked.

  “Caiaphas, whom you have charged with organizing our acolytes, has asked me to inform you that they are all in place at the top of the Wandsworth Bank Building.”

  Carlyle nodded and turned to gaze northward toward the center of Arcanum. Wandsworth Bank was perhaps half a mile away and a dozen stories high. It was a hut in comparison to the spires in the city center, but one of the taller buildings out here on the outskirts. Each of the guilds had gathered all of the magical weaponry they could find. Some had spell-bombs that would explode on contact and burn their targets or transform them into mud toads or something equally offensive. Others had enchanted blades that would cut whatever they touched. Most common, however, were curse-cannons, because they had been simple enough for the guilds to create hundreds of them just in the past day. They were little more than hollow shafts of wood loaded with powerful curse attacks that could be shot at a target by a simple snap of the wrist. They could only be used once each, but a blast from a curse-cannon ought to at least wound the Wurm that it struck. If an acolyte’s aim was good enough and they struck something vital, they might even be able to kill with one shot.