We are far from home, Fallion realized. Farther than I ever thought I would be.
He had not imagined how it would be. Nothing in his life could ever be the same as it had been. He could not unbind the worlds, re-make the old. He doubted that such a power even existed. He only hoped that the world that he made would be better than the one he had left behind.
The soldiers took turns pulling the cart and kept running through the heat of the day. Even Fallion’s grandfather, a giant of a man, took his own turn at the handcart.
Every so often, Alun was given a chance to sit on the cart and gain a much-needed rest.
So it was that in the middle of the afternoon, they stopped in a huge meadow where they could see for half a mile around. The sun-bleached grass shone like ice in the blazing light of day.
Fallion’s friends had all gone fast to sleep. But Fallion stretched his legs by walking for a bit.
He felt refreshed for the first time in days, as if he had finally gotten his energy back, and he wondered if it was because of some spell that Sisel had cast upon him.
The Wizard Sisel came and stood beside him silently for a moment, a huge and comforting presence, and together they just stared out over the silver fields, admiring a valley down below and the broad river twisting through it.
“It’s beautiful here,” Fallion said after a few moments of silence. “I did not know that it would be so beautiful.”
“Yes,” the wizard said. “This field is strong in life. The grass is good, the trees hardy. Let us hope that it stays that way.”
“Can you keep them alive?” Fallion asked.
Sisel frowned. “Not for long, I fear. Can’t you hear it-the voices of the stones, the cries in the brooks, the lament of the leaves? ‘We are fading,’ they say.
“All of the trees that you see now, these pleasant grasses, came from your world, not ours. They are like a dream to us, a welcome dream from our past, a dream that will soon fade to despair.
“The very stones beneath our feet ache. The earth is in pain.”
The Wizard Binnesman had spoken those words to Fallion’s father, and now they seemed an echo of the past. “What can you do?” Fallion asked.
“There are pockets of resistance, places where the earth’s blood pools just beneath the surface. In these places, life is still abundant. The wyrmlings have little sway there. A week ago, I had little hope at all. But now…there is a wizard at the heart of the world.”
“Averan.”
Sisel frowned, bent his head like fox that was listening for the rustling sounds of mice in the grass.
Averan should be alive, Fallion thought. With the worlds combined, it would have changed the great Seal of the Earth there. She had healed the earth once, mended the seal. She could do it again. Fallion imagined Averan, the wizardess with her staff of black poisonwood, frantically at work.
But Sisel’s worried expression spoke otherwise. “Yes,” Sisel whispered, “my old apprentice Averan. Is she well? I wonder. Is she even alive? Or has our hope been spent in vain?”
Fallion bit his lip. He wanted to go find her, do his part to mend the world. But he wondered if it was even possible now.
Moments later, after a quick meal, they set out on the road.
In the late afternoon Fallion’s wagon halted one last time, beneath the shadow of Mount Luciare. Its peaks were capped with snow even so late in the summer, and Fallion could see the city up on its slopes, enormous slabs of whitened stone along the castle wall providing overwhelming fortifications. There were tunnels carved into the mountain, their openings yawning with wide arches, so that they let in the light. Scrollwork had been cut around the arches and overlaid with gold so that they gleamed in the sunlight. Huge braziers lined the arches, too, and Fallion realized that these were not just for adornment. In case of a night attack, the braziers would cast a bright light, which would reflect from the white walls and gold foil, blinding any wyrmlings.
Even from a great distance, the castle was beautiful and inviting.
King Urstone left the handcart, and for several miles the small group made their way through a wooded fen. The king brought only Fallion, his friends, the young man Alun, and eight strong warriors to act as a guard. Dank trees huddled over brackish water where mosquitoes and midges swarmed.
For Fallion, negotiating the swamp was no great matter. The muddy trail was just dry enough to hold his weight. But those of the warrior clan found themselves slogging through mud that often reached their knees.
So it was late in the afternoon by the time that they reached a small tower in the marsh, a simple thing of sandstone, long ago fallen into ruin. The tower crowned a small hill, and to the east of it was a large dry meadow.
The Wizard Sisel walked around the tower, using his staff to scratch a circle in the turf. Then he scratched runes upon it in six intervals. Fallion had never seen the like of it, and so he asked, “What is this that you are making?”
“A circle of life,” Sisel said, after a little thought. “Here in this world, life is the power that I have studied-life magic, the power that can be found within all living things, within animals, and plants, water and stones.”
“And what power do the Knights Eternal serve?” Fallion asked.
“They serve nothing,” Sisel said. “They seek only to subjugate other powers, to twist them to their own use, and ultimately to destroy the very thing that they twist.” Sisel fell silent for a moment. He pulled the stalk from a shaft of wheat, then began to chew the succulent end of it as he stared down over the valley. A pair of geese rose up from the river, honking, and flew along its shore.
“Life magic is different from the magic of your world. It is more…whole. On your world I served the Earth, and learned the arts of healing and protection. Healing is one of the arts I practice here, too. But there is so much more that one can do…”
Fallion already knew that in his own world, the wizard had gone by the name of Binnesman, and was greatly renowned. “And so now that the worlds have combined, you are a master of both?”
Sisel shook his head. “Not a master. A servant. Those who serve greater powers should never lay claim to the title of master.
“Still, the circle will afford great protection in case the wyrmlings try to break the accord.” Sisel glanced down the small hill. Though Fallion had heard nothing, Sisel said, “Ah, look, they’re here.”
Fallion glanced down the trail, saw the wyrmling princess first. Her pale skin looked like something dead in the bright sunlight, and she kept her arm raised to cover her eyes. She wore a sack draped over her head like a cowl, to give her a little more protection.
Behind her came a small man in a peasant’s brown robe. His beard was graying, and Fallion saw nothing extraordinary about him.
But last of all came a young woman, her dark skin and hair contrasting sharply with a dress of white silk, adorned with a border of gray at the hems. She wore bangles of gold and a single black pearl in her nose ring, and she moved with extraordinary delicacy and grace.
Fallion found his attention riveted on her. His heart pounded and his breathing came ragged, and when the wyrmling blocked his view of her for an instant, he found himself stepping to the side, just to catch a glimpse of her again.
What is it about her? he wondered. She was not the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but he found his body responding to her as if she was. Am I falling in love?
But such questions weren’t warranted, he knew. He hadn’t spoken to her, hadn’t even been introduced. Yet he found himself drawn to her like no other.
This is the way it will feel, he thought, when you first meet the woman you will love. Whether this meeting turns out well or ill, this is how it will feel.
There was a shriek from Rhianna, who had been sitting on a rock at the door to the tower, and suddenly she leapt up. “Uncle Ael!” she cried, and went bounding downhill, where she met the wyrmling’s escort, and threw her arms around him.
Fallion ha
d to search his memory. He had heard the name of course. Ael was the mysterious uncle who had taught Rhianna swordsmanship as a child-in the netherworld. Of him, Rhianna had steadfastly refused to speak.
The Wizard Sisel smiled in greeting and called out in a relieved tone, “Daylan Hammer, well met!”
Fallion just stood for a moment, rooted to the ground. Uncle Ael was Daylan Hammer, the hero of legend?
Fallion nudged Talon. “The woman who is with them, the one with the dark hair, who is she?”
“You met her father,” Talon said. “The Emir. He is a good friend and counselor to the king.”
“Why is she so small? She looks like one of us.”
“Her family is from Dalharristan. People are shorter there. And most of those that you’ve seen are of the warrior caste. They are larger and stronger than those of other castes. Her mother was not a warrior born, but was of a ruling clan, bred for intelligence, beauty, and strong character.”
“Is she…spoken for?”
Talon gave him a knowing smile. “You’re not interested in her. Trust me.”
“Really?” Fallion asked. It was a challenge. Suddenly Fallion found his feet, and in Rhianna’s wake he went trundling to meet Daylan Hammer.
After hugging Rhianna for a long minute, Daylan threw his hood back, and stood grinning in the sun. Fallion saw that his beard was not gray, merely begrimed with ash. “Little Rhianna!” he said. “Why, you grew up faster than a mushroom, but turned out as beautiful as a robin’s egg!”
Daylan seemed genuinely pleased, and Fallion found that he envied their relationship.
“And your mother,” Daylan asked. “Is she well? Is she here?”
“Dead,” Rhianna said. “She’s dead, these eight years back.”
Daylan seemed crestfallen. “I am so sorry. She was a good woman, a great woman.”
Fallion found himself wondering how many lives Daylan must have mourned. After so many, could he feel any real loss or pain anymore?
Yet Fallion could see it in the immortal’s eyes. Yes, there was real loss there.
Fallion stood behind Rhianna, and she turned to introduce him, but Daylan stopped her with a wave of the hand.
“Hail, Torch-bearer,” Daylan said with profound respect. He grabbed Fallion by the forearm, as was common among soldiers, shaking hands as if they were old friends or allies who had braved battles together. “I know you,” Daylan said. “We have met many times.”
Fallion knew that they had never met, not in this life-time at least. And so Daylan could only be talking of past lives.
“This is your handiwork?” Daylan asked, cocking his head to one side, inclining it toward the valley that spread out below them, the trees and the grass, and the snow-covered mountain in the background.
“It is,” Fallion said feeling a bit embarrassed. He had hoped to bind the worlds into a perfect whole, but this flawed thing was all he had been able to manage.
Tears flooded Daylan’s eyes, and he grabbed Fallion and hugged him close, weeping freely. “You’ve done it, brother. You’ve finally done it.”
Fallion could think of nothing to say. This stranger, this legend, had called him brother.
Then King Urstone clapped Daylan on the back, and the two began talking in Urstone’s guttural tongue, and Fallion was excluded from the conversation.
Rhianna came and gave Fallion a sisterly hug while Daylan Hammer, the Wizard Sisel, the Emir’s daughter, and the king’s men huddled together making plans. The wyrmling princess retreated to the dark confines of the tower.
Sundown was less than an hour away, and the wyrmlings would be here soon for the exchange.
Rhianna nodded toward Daylan. “So, what do you think of Uncle Ael?”
“I don’t know,” Fallion said. He was still bewildered.
“He seems to like you,” Rhianna said. “That’s a good thing. He does not make friends easily.”
“He seems to know me,” Fallion corrected.
Sunset drew near all too soon for Fallion’s liking. The sun descended in a crimson haze that smeared the heavens, for there was still much dust high in the atmosphere, and in the long shadows thrown by the mountain it seemed that night wrapped around the small band like a cloak.
Daylan Hammer assured the king that the proceedings had all been secured under oaths so profound that even a wyrmling dared not break them. He did not expect the wyrmlings to attack.
But time had taught King Urstone this one lesson: never trust the wyrmlings.
So his guards secreted themselves in the woods around the tower in case the wyrmlings tried an ambush.
Fallion waited with his hand upon his sheathed sword, now caked in rust, while the king, the Wizard Sisel, Alun, Siyaddah, and Fallion’s friends all stood together in the tower’s shadow. Daylan Hammer and the wyrmling princess climbed the tower and stood atop its ruined walls.
The first star appeared in the sky, and bats began their nightly acrobatics around the tower.
Fallion had begun to believe that the wyrmlings would not show when he suddenly heard a flapping.
A wyrmling rose up out of the shadowed woods, came circling the tower. Fallion was fascinated by her artificial wings, and peered hard to see them. Her wings were translucent and golden, like a linnet’s wings, but there were darker bands through them, almost like bones, with webbing between the supports. They reminded him of the leathery wings of a graak.
There was no harness, no sign that the wings were any type of device. For all that Fallion could see the wings just sprouted from the woman’s back.
She circled the tower, looking down upon the men, as if she were just another bat.
Then she let out a cry, strange and filled with pain, the howling of some evil beast.
In the far distance, several answering cries rose from the trees among the swamp.
King Urstone clutched his battle-ax and shouted a warning. Talon translated, “It’s a trap!”
“No,” Daylan Hammer warned, “Wait!”
At that moment, wyrmlings rose up out of the swamp. They came winging toward the hill rapidly, vastly faster than the first, and the Wizard Sisel whispered, “Ah, damn.”
It wasn’t until they drew nearer that Fallion recognized the source of his dismay: these wyrmlings wore red-crimson cowls over blood-red robes, with wings that looked to be made of darkest ruby.
There were three of them.
Each held a black sword in clasped hands, the handle clutched against his breast while the blade pointed back toward his feet.
“Knights Eternal,” Talon intoned. “But I count three of them. We slew one yesterday, and another the night before. There should be only one left.”
“Yes,” Sisel said, “These Knights Eternal should not exist. Lady Despair has been hiding their numbers, and each of them is a hundred years in the making. It is only by luck that Lady Despair has revealed her secret. This is an evil omen. I wonder how many more there might be?”
Fallion let the energy in him build, drawing heat from the ground, preparing to unleash a fireball. The king’s men drew weapons, and Jaz bent his bow.
“Hold,” Daylan called down from the tower, lest one of the humans be first to break the truce.
The Knights Eternal flew toward them, crisscrossing and veering, as if to dodge archery fire.
And then a creature rose.
Something vast lifted out of the swamps, three miles in the distance, lumbering above the trees upon leather wings.
It was like nothing that Fallion had ever seen. He had ridden upon sea graaks in Landesfallen. But the thing that came up out of the swamp could have swallowed one of those whole. It was black and sinister in color, and its wingspan had to stretch a hundred, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet. The length of its body was more than eighty feet long, and Fallion imagined that a small village full of people could have ridden on its back.
The shape of the body was serpentine, and the creature kept its head bent, as a heron will when it flies
. But it had no heron’s head. Instead, it was ugly and blunt, like the head of a blind snake, with a mouth filled with ungainly teeth. Its long body seemed to undulate through the air. A leathery tail fanned out in the back, almost like a rudder.
Upon its back, a small figure clutched at a chain, looking frightened and beleaguered.
Father! Fallion thought, his heart feeling as if it would break.
“What is that creature?” Jaz shouted.
Fallion looked to King Urstone, whose face was pale with fear, and then to the Wizard Sisel, who merely shook his head in bafflement.
“It is a graak,” Daylan Hammer shouted from atop the battlements. “But only of a kind that has been spoken of in legend.”
Fallion stood, heart hammering, in mounting fear.
Did I create that terror when I merged the worlds? he wondered. He had no answer.
There were too many of the Knights Eternal. The darkness was falling.
Suddenly, the wyrmling princess gave a great cry and leapt from the tower wall. She landed only feet from Fallion, and the ground trembled beneath her weight.
The huge beast, this graak of legend, landed in the field, two hundred yards away, and the lonely figure just clung to its neck. The graak reared up, its ugly neck stretching thirty feet in the air, and for a moment Fallion feared that it would lunge, take them in its teeth and kill them all.
Then it lay down as the wyrmling princess sprinted through the dry grass toward it.
“Areth?” the king cried out. “Areth?”
The lone figure raised up, peered in their direction, and let out a mournful cry, almost a sob.
He was a wreck of a man. His black hair had not been cut in years, and it fanned out from his head in disarray. His long beard reached nearly to his belly.
But even from a distance, Fallion recognized his father’s blazing blue eyes.
Prince Urstone let go of the beast’s neck, went sliding down its leathery hide, dropping twenty feet to the ground.
He got up on unsteady legs, as if he were not used to walking. He began staggering over the grass, calling out, sobbing.
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