Worldbinder r-6

by David Farland

  Talon shook her head. “Not in the summer. There were some vast lakes in the mountains. With the change, it looks as if they are emptying.”

  “Can we swim it?” Rhianna asked.

  Everyone turned and looked at Rhianna as if she were daft. Fallion’s legs were already shaking from weariness.

  “I’m not up to it,” Jaz said. “But how about if you swim it, and we’ll all climb on top and ride you, like you was a boat?”

  Fallion could not escape the feeling that this flood was his fault. “There has to be another way across.”

  At that, Talon bit her lip uncertainly. “There is-a bridge, downstream, at the city of Cantular. But it will be guarded.”

  “How many guards?” Fallion asked, wondering at the odds. There were four of them, and though he had never seen a wyrmling, he was up to the challenge of fighting a few, if he had to. Fallion was good with a sword. And in the full light of day, he still had his flameweaving skills to draw upon.

  “Dozens, maybe hundreds,” Talon said. “There was a vast fortress there at one time, and the bridge has always been a strategic point. The wyrmlings will have it well garrisoned.” She eyed Fallion critically. “Wyrmling archers are good,” she said. “They use bows made of bone.”

  He understood what she was saying. Fallion had skill as a wizard, but a flameweaver could die from an arrow wound as easily as any other man.

  “Then we will have to take great care,” he said.

  THE CHASE

  It is said that the Knights Eternal never die. But some would argue that they never have lived, for the Knights Eternal are recruited from stillborn babes.

  — the Wizard Sisel

  In the cool morning air, Vulgnash and the Knights Eternal raced through a glen, their long legs carrying them swiftly. They had fed well during the night. Fourteen strong men they killed, draining the life from them. They were sweet, these small humans of the otherworld, filled to bursting with hopes and desires that humans on this world seemed to have forgotten.

  Vulgnash could not recall when he had last tasted souls so sweet, like fat woodworms. Other humans that he had taken lately were empty, like the husks of dead beetles.

  There had been other small humans at the fortress besides the men-women and children. Vulgnash and his cohorts had left them. Perhaps the Knights Eternal would go back to feed upon them at another time.

  Now, he was sated, full of hope himself. He hoped to catch the wizard soon.

  Already, the morning sun was coming, slanting in from the trees to the south. Kryssidia looked toward it mournfully, as if begging that they stop and find a cave in which to hole up for the day.

  “Patience,” Vulgnash growled. “We may catch them yet.”

  The humans had left a trail that was easy to follow. Even without Thul’s infallible sense of smell, Vulgnash could have followed the scuff marks among the pine needles, the broken twigs and bent grass.

  Vulgnash used his powers to draw shadows around them, so that they traveled through a lingering haze. Had anyone spotted them there, they would have only seen an indistinguishable mass of black, loping through the gloom.

  Finally, they reached a grotto, a place where the rocky crown of a hill thrust up, with a cliff face that rose some eighty feet on three sides. A few gnarled old pines cast a deep shadow in the cavern.

  “The scent of humans is strong here,” Thul growled. “The scent of death is strong on them. They bedded here for the night.”

  It was a good place to bed down, Vulgnash saw. It had hidden the humans from prying eyes during the night, from his prying eyes, and its shadows would hide him from the burning sunlight.

  “They can’t have gotten far,” Vulgnash said. The sun had not yet cracked the horizon. “They might only be a few hundred yards on their way.”

  Kryssidia hissed in protest, but Vulgnash went racing down the hill, heading west, using all of his skill to run silently over the forest floor, sometimes leaping into the air and taking wing when the brush grew thick or rocks covered the ground.

  Thul raced ahead, loping along, stooping every dozen feet to test the ground for a scent. They glided down a long slope, into a forest of oaks that opened up, inviting more light.

  Slanting rays of morning sunlight beat through the trees, cutting Vulgnash’s flesh like a lash. He drew his cowl tightly over his face and bent the light to his will, surrounding himself in shadows.

  All too soon, they stopped at the edge of a wood. Before them lay a broad expanse of golden field, the morning sun shining full upon it in the distance, so that a line of light cut hard across his vision.

  Kryssidia hissed and turned away, but Vulgnash squinted, even though the light pierced his eyes like nails.

  There in the distance, perhaps only a quarter of a mile away, he could see four figures racing through the endless open fields of summer straw. Bright yellow flowers grew tall in the field, with dark centers. They bobbed in the soft morning breeze.

  So close, he thought. So close.

  The humans could not have known that he was on their trail. Vulgnash and his men had moved as softly as shadows. And though the humans were running, they were not running in their speed. Instead they jogged, conserving their strength as if for a longer race.

  Vulgnash peered at the bent grass they left in their wake. In the starlight, the trail would look as dark as a road.

  “Tonight,” he said, “we will take our hunt on the wing. Though they run all day, we will be upon them within an hour.”

  CANTULAR

  See to it that no enemy ever crosses the River Dyll-Tandor without paying a toll in blood.

  — the Emperor Zul-torac

  The sun was riding low in the sky, drifting down into a yellow haze by the time that Fallion’s group reached the ruins of Cantular.

  They had followed the river for miles, keeping to the edge of the woods, where deer trails and rabbit trails would hide their track, and suddenly they rounded a bend, and saw the city sprawling there in its ruin. A vast stone fortress made up the bulk of it, hundreds of feet long and a full forty feet tall.

  Whether it had been deserted for five years or five thousand, Fallion thought that it would look much the same. The massive sandstone slabs that made up the walls of the city were monolithic, and looked as if they might stand for eternity. Here, holes had been dug, and the slabs had been made to sand up like pillars. Then enormous stone slabs were laid atop them, forming massive roofs.

  A thousand wyrmling troops could be hidden inside, and they’d have taken up only a corner of the fortress.

  There were no fields for crops or pens for animals. Those had been razed long ago. But even from a distance he could see the remains of orchards, the larger trees standing in even rows, their fruit having gone wild, while saplings grew in their shadows.

  “It looks deserted,” Jaz said hopefully.

  “Looks are often deceiving,” Talon said.

  A great bridge still spanned the river. Colossal stones served as bastions against the raging flow, and though trees and wreckage battered them, the foundations of the bridge still held. The waterline was high, though. If it rose even another two feet, it would swamp the bridge. Beyond the bridge, out in the lowlands, the waters had flooded an area that was miles wide. Fallion suspected that he might be witnessing the birth of a new sea.

  At each end of the mile-long bridge squatted another massive stone fortress with a drawbridge, guard houses, and crenellated towers. Even from here, Fallion could see that the drawbridge at each end had been raised.

  “The majority of the garrison will be on the far side of the river,” Talon hazarded. “In fact, I’m not sure how well-guarded it will be here on the north. There might be only a few. There might be no guards at all.”

  “So we might be able to fight our way through the north tower,” Fallion said, “but even if we do, we have to deal with the fact that there is another drawbridge at the far end.”

  “True,” Talon said, “but say t
hat we fight our way through the tower on this side. We can run a mile before we hit the far side. From there, we can jump into the water and swim. It might be a distance of only thirty yards, rather than a swim of a mile.”

  Fallion didn’t care for the plan. Even if they did swim to shore on the far side, they could find themselves trying to swim though a hail of arrows.

  And then what? If they made it to shore, the wyrmlings would be on their trail at nightfall.

  “Right, then,” Rhianna said. “Let’s get to it.”

  “In the morning,” Fallion said. He wasn’t the kind to hesitate, but the more he studied the situation, the less he liked it.

  “In the morning?” Jaz asked. “Why not now?”

  “It’s too close to nightfall,” Fallion said. “The wyrmling troops are waking. If we attack now, we’ll attack them in their strength. And even if we break through to the far side of the river, we’ll have to worry about them dogging our trail for the rest of the night. We should wait until morning, hit them in the light of day.”

  Talon nodded her assent.

  “Where will we stay then?” Jaz asked. He didn’t like the idea of camping in the open. The trees along the river had been fairly thick, but in the flood, many had washed away. The scrub that was left could hardly hide a pair of rabbits.

  “We’ll sleep in there,” Fallion said, nodding toward the ruins.

  “Among the wyrmlings?” Jaz asked.

  Fallion liked the idea. He was certain that the wyrmlings were hunting him, as Talon feared, and tonight they would be scouring the fields and forests. But the last place they would look would be here, in the heart of a wyrmling fortress.

  “Like I said,” Rhianna said, “let’s get to it.”

  And so in the failing sun, they crept along the riverbank, keeping low.

  There in the shadows, they found a vine thick with light-berries and picked a few. The vine had begun to wilt, and Fallion guessed that in a day it would be dead.

  So they made their way to the edge of the ruined city. A great wall had once surrounded it, but the wyrmlings had knocked it down in a dozen places. Enormous battering rams, huge logs with iron heads shaped like foul beasts, still lay abandoned outside the gates. Evil symbols had been scrawled on the broken walls. Fallion could see the glyph of Lady Despair.

  It was in the final approach, when they ran across an open field and leapt through a gap in the broken wall that they were most exposed.

  But at the most, they were only visible for a few seconds.

  They ran up to the side of a building and hunched, waiting to see if an alarm sounded. If they were attacked, Fallion wanted it to be there in the open, in the failing light, rather than in the corner of some dark building.

  When no alarm sounded, they crept down an empty street, keeping close to the walls.

  Fresh tracks in the dirt showed that wyrmlings walked down the street often.

  They were in an old merchant quarter. Stalls lined both sides of the streets, and in some places the merchandise still moldered. Bolts of cotton and flax sat rotting in one stall, broken chairs and a baby crib in another, clay pots in a third.

  Down the street, a gruff laugh sounded, almost a snarl. The wyrmlings were awake.

  Fallion did not dare venture farther into the city. Fallion spotted a likely place and dove into an abandoned smithy with a circular forge, a bellows, and an overturned anvil.

  In the back, a leather curtain formed a door, separating the smithy from the living quarters.

  They raced inside.

  “Up or down?” Talon asked while Fallion’s eyes were still adjusting to the gloom. He realized that in the change, she must have improved her night vision. When he could finally see, he made out a wooden ladder leading up to a loft. Another went down to a pantry.

  A partial skeleton lay sprawled upon the floor, a few scattered bones wrapped in a rotten dress. The skull had been taken.

  The ladder was rotting, too. Fallion imagined that a giant would have to worry about breaking a rung as he climbed. So Fallion decided to go up it. Besides, if the group was attacked, Fallion would rather defend from above than beneath.

  “Up,” he said, racing quietly up the ladder.

  He reached the top, found a bedroom. A child’s bed, with a mattress made of straw over some wooden slats, rested near the chimney, and a wooden horse lay on the floor. Otherwise the room was bare. A window stood closed, the last of the sunlight gleaming yellow through a pane made of scraped hide.

  The dust on the floor had not been disturbed in years.

  “This will do,” Fallion said.

  He peered about the room. The walls were formed from sandstone and looked to be a good two feet thick. The roof itself was a great slab of stone.

  He felt safe here, protected, like a mouse in its burrow.

  Everyone climbed into the room, and Fallion considered pulling up the ladder. But he suspected that if anyone was familiar with this place, they would notice what he’d done. Better to leave everything undisturbed.

  A TURN ON THE DANCE FLOOR

  An undeserved reward cankers the soul.

  — Daylan Hammer

  At the feast in the great hall in Caer Luciare that night, Alun threw the remains of a greasy swan’s leg over his back, food for the dogs. The king’s mastiffs were quick to lunge from their beds by the fire to scuffle for it, and as the growls died down, Alun could not help but turn just a bit, to see which dog had won.

  It was a pup of nine months, young enough to be fast and hungry, big enough to hold his own.

  Much like me, Alun thought with a satisfied grin. He was half drunk on the king’s wine, though the meal had hardly begun.

  It would be a big feast tonight. The warriors would need their strength tomorrow as they ran north for the attack. The big men would keep a grueling pace. A warrior was expected to run ten miles in an hour, a hundred miles in a day, and the run would last from first light to full night.

  Only by covering the ground in a single day could the warriors hope to gain the element of surprise in their attack.

  Alun could only hang his head in despair. He could never make such a run. It would soon be apparent to all that though he might be named a warrior, he was in fact only a fraud.

  Indeed, now that the lords were finishing the main course, the festivities would begin. There would be jugglers and dancing, a fool who aped the lords.

  But first-

  Madoc stood, and his men began banging the table with the butts of their knives, with mugs or bones-whatever they had at hand.

  “Good sirrahs,” he roared for quiet, for the room was huge and hundreds of people sat at the tables. There had not been a feast so well attended since last summer’s eve. “Good sirrahs and ladies,” Madoc roared. “I have an announcement. Today let it be known to all-to lord, to lady, to warrior and commoner alike, that Caer Luciare has a new Master of the Hounds, our very own Alun.”

  There were shouts and cheers from the many nobles gathered about, as Madoc brought out a large gold cape pin that bore the image of three racing hounds upon it. It was a lovely thing. More importantly, it was the badge of his office, and with great ceremony, Madoc pinned Alun’s cape with it, inserting the prong and then twisting until the spiral pin was locked in place. Then he took Alun’s simple old brass cape pin and set it upon the table.

  The applause died down quickly as the guests prepared to return to conversations, but Madoc roared, “And, let it be known that Alun has proven himself this day to be a man of great courage, a man of decisive wit, of firm resolve, and a man of uncommon character. Indeed, he is no longer a common man at all in the view of House Madoc. Not a vassal. It is with heartfelt appreciation, that I name him a warrior of Clan Madoc, and a defender of the free.”

  At that there was far less clapping. Many of the nobles just stared in confused silence for a moment. Alun was not a warrior born, after all. He was an ill-bred gangrel. Everyone could see it.

  Yet, somet
imes, the honor was won, every generation or so.

  There were excited whispers as women went asking their men what Alun had done.

  What will they think? Alun wondered.

  He did not care, or at least he told himself that he didn’t. He peered across the room, to the royal table off to his left, where the High King ate. There, to his right, in a place of honor, sat the king’s long-time ally and best friend, the Emir of Dalharristan, resplendent in a coat of gold silks, his white turban adorned with a fiery golden opal.

  And four seats down sat his daughter Siyaddah, her dark eyes glistening in the candlelight. She looked at Alun and smiled gently, as if welcoming him to the nobility.

  She remembers me, Alun realized. And she thinks fondly of me.

  His heart hammered and his mouth grew dry.

  She is not so far above my station. I am a warrior now.

  He took a drink from the goblet of wine, but a single swallow did not satisfy his thirst, so he downed it all, a rich red wine in a silver goblet.

  He had never taken a drink from a goblet before. He picked it up, looked at it. It was a beautiful thing, with two feet like a swan on tall legs, and feathers on the outside, and a swan’s long neck bent and forming a handle.

  Such a mug, he realized, was worth more than his life had been worth as a slave. With it, he could have bought his freedom twice over.

  Now?

  He nodded to one of the serving children that waited against the wall. A boy of six ambled forward, struggled to fill the mug from a heavy cask of wine.

  Alun sat and waited. He waited while the fool went strutting around the room, aping the lords and ladies. He waited as minstrels sang while the dessert pastries were passed around.

  He waited until the king called for a dance.

  Then he downed another mug of wine and went to ask Siyaddah to join him upon the dance floor.