Chaosbound

by David Farland

  The girl had frowned, looking as if she might cry.

  I must have looked like a wolf baring its fangs, Borenson thought.

  “Good day, child,” he’d said, trying to sound gentle. But his voice was too much like a growl. Rain had turned away, looking as if she wanted to flee.

  Borenson had felt too weary to cater to her feelings.

  I’ll have to apologize to that girl for calling her a tart, he thought. The prospect didn’t please him. He hadn’t decided completely whether she was worth an apology.

  Besides, he wasn’t sure if she would accept it.

  There are many kinds of walls, Borenson thought. Kings build walls around their cities, people build walls around their hearts.

  As a soldier, Borenson knew how to storm a castle, how to send sappers in to dig beneath it, or send runelords to scale it.

  But how do you scale walls built of anger and apathy, the walls that a son builds around his heart?

  When my family looks at me now, they only see a monster, he realized.

  Borenson’s size, the bony protuberances on his forehead, the strangeness of his features and his voice—all worked against him.

  My wife is already distancing herself from me. I would never have thought that Myrrima would be that way.

  Children will shriek when they see me.

  Even Erin recoiled from me as she died, he thought. That was the worst of it. In the end I could give her no comfort, for she saw only the outside of me.

  They don’t realize that on the inside I am still the same man I always was.

  At least Borenson hoped that he was the same.

  Borenson felt alone. He worried that he could no longer fit in among his people. He wondered what would happen when he sailed into Inter-nook or Toom. How would people receive him?

  With rocks and sticks, most likely, he thought.

  But then it occurred to him that he might not be unique. Perhaps others from Caer Luciare had merged with their shadow selves. Men like him might be scattered all across Mystarria. . . .

  He sighed, wondering what to do, and trudged over a ridge, seeking footholds among the rocks and bracken. Dead crabs and fish still littered the ground, but these had been left from the binding, not from the tidal wave.

  The flood had been violent, of course. The tidal wave had uprooted huge trees and sent them hurtling in its path, and floating debris had been carried along and piled high—kelp, brush, buildings, dead animals and trees—creating something of a dark reef for as far as the eye could see. In some places, the flotsam rose up in a huge tangled mass of logs and ruin.

  Gulls and terns could be seen out perching on the debris, as if silently guarding it.

  Most of the flood victims would be caught in that tangle, he imagined, and in many places the tangle was a hundred feet high, and it was hundreds of yards from shore.

  He had not gone five miles when he knew that he had found some wreckage that had washed inland from Garion’s Port. He climbed a tall rocky hill and scaled a pinnacle of weathered red stone, then stood looking down for a long moment.

  The blue gum forest was not particularly thick, and now it was all submerged. Trees stood in water as if they had all gone a-wading. Amid some trees he spotted a little wreckage—an old woman floating belly-up, her skin appearing as white as a wyrmling’s hide.

  Not far away was a bit of an oxcart, and just beyond that floated the ox that might have been pulling it.

  The woman looked naked, much as many of the folks last night had been when he searched upstream. At first Borenson had wondered if perhaps they’d all been caught bathing. But apparently the violence of the flood had a way of stripping the soggy clothes from a corpse.

  He waded out into water that was chest-deep, until he reached the old woman. Then he checked her for valuables. The woman’s pants still clung to one leg, and he pulled them free. They looked too small for Myrrima, but Sage might need them. He found a ring on the woman, too—gold with a big black opal in it.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered as he wrenched it from her finger. “My family has need.”

  He didn’t know how much it might be worth, but he hoped that it might buy passage if he managed to hail a ship.

  Then he pushed the woman back out into the waves, in the manner of his folk, giving her to the sea, and waded back to shore.

  He continued south for a mile, scavenging as he went, trying to get as close to the huge mounds of wreckage as possible.

  Garion’s Port had been among the largest cities in all of Landesfallen. It was a popular place for ships to take on stores. The supplies were typically packed in waterproof barrels and then sealed. Borenson hoped that a few barrels might have survived intact, but he saw nothing like that.

  Upon a hill he thought he spied the hull of a ship, and so he stripped and swam out to it, nearly a mile, but it turned out to be nothing more than the curved trunk of a gum tree floating in the water. He returned to shore feeling downcast.

  A few times he called out, trying to hail any survivors, but his throat was too far gone for much shouting. He saw a few floaters—mostly children and animals—and he wondered why he did not see more.

  He lost hope, but kept on trudging doggedly, until the coast suddenly veered back to the east. He stopped atop a small knoll and stood for a moment, staring breathlessly out into the water, not believing his luck.

  There, not three hundred yards from shore, a white ship lay amid a tangle of trees, looking as if some vast giant had just lifted it out of the sea and set it there.

  It is too whole to be a wreck, Borenson thought. Someone has beached it.

  “Hallooo aboard!” he cried. “Halloo in there!” He waved his arms and stood on the hill for a long moment, waiting for someone to come topside and give answer.

  The wind was still, the water as calm and flat as a pond.

  Perhaps they’re scavenging, he thought.

  Borenson took off his armor and clothes, and then laid them on the bank. He swam through the water until he reached the pile of flotsam. He climbed up on the logs, fully expecting that at any moment someone from the ship would pop a head up and find him standing there naked.

  But as he neared the ship, he called again, and no answer came.

  His prize was just dancing on the water, light as a swan. The prow had beached upon some logs, but other than that, the ship looked whole. There were no sails, but that could be fixed. The Walkins had been sleeping beneath a bit of sail just up the beach.

  Borenson climbed over the railing, walked around. The vessel was small indeed, no more than thirty-five feet in length.

  It was a small trader by the looks of it, or perhaps a large fishing vessel, the kind used for plying the waters along the coast—not one of the big ships meant for crossing the ocean. It looked odd, for the ship was all gleaming white, reflecting the sunlight.

  Borenson appraised it.

  This ship is new-made! It hasn’t even been painted properly. There is only an undercoat!

  He could not believe that his fortune would hold.

  He climbed down belowdecks.

  The ship had two cabins—one for a captain, the other for a crew of four—but Borenson found that the captain’s quarters were not made for a man of his proportions. With only a six-foot ceiling, he could not enter without crouching. He would never have fit on the slat of board that made the bed.

  Much better was the hold. The entry was wide enough so that he could climb in easily. The ship had a deep belly, with a wide berth for cargo, and Borenson imagined that he and a dozen more people could make do inside.

  But the vessel hadn’t escaped the flood completely free of damage. He found water seeping into the hull, and the wood was warped. The ship had been cast into a rock perhaps, or hurled into a tree.

  He studied the breach. The seep was not bad, he decided. The ship had apparently been in dry dock when the flood hit, probably up on a cradle, waiting for a new coat of paint. Because it was so light, with
out crew or cargo, it must have floated high in the water, rising above the flood.

  The interior of the vessel had been pitched, and that stopped most of the leakage, but the truth was that when any ship took its maiden voyage, it always had a few cracks. Given a couple of days the wood would swell, and most likely the hull would seal itself. If it didn’t, Borenson decided, it wouldn’t take much work to pass a few buckets of water topside each day, to drain the bilge.

  When he was done inspecting, Borenson felt so moved that he dropped to his knees to thank the Powers.

  I have a ship! he told himself. I have a ship!

  5

  A NIGHT IN THE CITY OF THE DEAD

  The Great Wyrm provides for all your wants: meat to cure the pangs of hunger, ale to ease a troubled mind, the wine of violence in the arena to entertain. All of these are found in the city. There is no need to ever leave.

  —From the Wyrmling Catechism

  Crull-maldor peered down from a spy hole in the wyrmling’s citadel at the Fortress of the Northern Wastes. A band of human warriors two hundred strong had encircled her watchtower, and now they stood below, blowing battle horns, bellowing war cries, and shaking their fists at the tower as they encouraged themselves for battle.

  These were small men by wyrmling standards. They were not the well-bred warriors of Caer Luciare that she’d known in her world. These small folk wore armor made of seal skins, gray with white speckles, and had bright hair that was braided and slung over their backs. They bore axes and spears for battle, and carried crude wooden shields. They had dyed their faces with pig’s blood, hoping to look frightening.

  Crull-maldor fought back the urge to laugh. No doubt they thought they looked fierce. Perhaps they even were fierce. But they were small, like the feral humans that had gone to war with the wyrmlings three thousand years ago.

  She admired their fortitude. No doubt they had seen the giant footprints of the wrymlings and had some inkling as to what they were up against.

  But none of the wyrmlings had shown themselves. Sundown was long hours away. It was late afternoon, and the dust particles in the air dyed the world in shades of blood. The sun cut like a rapier, leaving stark shadows upon the world.

  The enormous stone pinnacle of the fortress’s watchtower, standing three hundred feet tall and crafted from slabs of rock forty feet thick, drew the small humans like flies to a carcass.

  They had been coming all morning—first children eager to explore this strange new landmark, then worried parents and siblings who were wondering what had befallen the children. Now an angry mob of warriors prepared for battle.

  Human settlements surrounded the towers. No doubt by nightfall the small folk would begin to muster a huge army.

  Still, the warriors below did not want to wait for reinforcements. So they sang their war songs, gave their cheers, lit their torches, and rushed into the entrance.

  At Crull-maldor’s back, the wyrmling Lord Aggrez asked, “What is your will, milady?”

  Wyrmling tactics in this instance had been established thousands of years ago. The tunnels at the mouth of the cave wound down and down. No doubt the humans imagined that it led straight up to the citadel, but they would have to travel miles into the wyrmling labyrinth to find the passage that led up.

  Along the way, they would have to pass numerous spy holes and kill holes, ranging through darkness that was nearly complete, down long rocky tunnels lit only by glow worms.

  “Let them get a mile into the labyrinth,” Crull-maldor said, “until they find the bones and offal from their children. While they are stricken with fear and rage, drop the portcullises behind them, so that none may ever return. I myself will lead the attack.”

  Crull-maldor peered at the lord. Aggrez was a huge wyrmling—nine feet in height and more than four feet across the shoulder. His skin was as white as chalk, and his pupils were like pits gouged into ice. He frowned, his lips hiding his overlarge canines, and Crull-maldor felt surprised to see disappointment on his face. “What troubles you?”

  “It has been long since my troops have engaged the humans. They were hoping for better sport.”

  Twenty thousand warriors Crull-maldor had under her command, and it had been too long since they had fought real battles, and too long since they had eaten anything but walrus and seal meat.

  “You want them for the arena?” Crull-maldor asked.

  “A few.”

  “Very well,” Crull-maldor said. “Let us test their best and bravest.”

  Though Crull-maldor did not lead the way, she followed. This would be her people’s first real battle against a new enemy, and though the humans were small, she knew that even something as small as a wolverine could be astonishingly vicious.

  So she went down into the tunnels, to the ambush site. The metal tang of blood was strong in the air, and filled the hallway. Dozens of the small folk had already been carried down to this point, deep under the fortress. Their offal lay on the floor—piles of gut and stomachs, kidneys and lungs, hair and skulls.

  The humans had been harvested, their glands taken for elixirs, the meat for food, the skins as trophies. Not much was left.

  Now Crull-maldor chose a small contingent of warriors to lead the attack, and they waited just down the corridor from the ambush site, silent as stone.

  It took the human warriors nearly half an hour to arrive. They bore bright torches. Their leader—a fierce-looking man with golden rings in his hair and a helm that sported the horn of a wild ox poking forward—found the bones of his children.

  Some of the men behind him cursed or cried out in anguish, but their leader just squatted over the pile of human refuse, his face looking grim and determined. His face was dyed in blood, and his hair was red, and torchlight danced in his eyes.

  Quietly, each wrymling raised a small iron spike and plunged it into his neck. The spikes, coated with glandular extracts harvested from the dead, filled the wyrmlings with bloodlust, so that their hearts pounded and their strength increased threefold.

  The wyrmlings roared like beasts, and the rattling of chains in the distance gave answer. The portcullises slammed into the floor behind the humans, metal against stone, with a boom like a drum that shook the world.

  Half a dozen wyrmling warriors led the attack, charging into the human hosts, bearing long meat hooks to pull the men close and short blades to eviscerate them. They hurtled heedlessly into battle.

  The human leader did not look dismayed. He merely hurled his torch forward a dozen paces to get better light; in a single fluid move he reached back and pulled off his shield.

  The wyrmlings roared like wild beasts; one shouted “Fresh meat!” as he attacked.

  Instantly the human warlord snarled, and suddenly he blurred into motion. Crull-maldor had never seen anything like it. One instant the human was standing, and the next his whole body blurred, faster than a fly’s wings, and he danced into the wyrmling troops, his fierce war ax flashing faster than the eye could see.

  Lord Aggrez went down, lopped off at the knee, as the warrior blurred past, slashing throats and taking off arms. In the space of a heartbeat he passed the wyrmling troops and raced toward Crull-maldor.

  The human warriors at Caer Luciare had always been smaller than wyrmlings, yet what they lacked in size they made up for in speed. But this small warrior was stunning; this went far beyond anything in Crull-maldor’s experience.

  The women and children had not shown such speed. There was only one explanation—magic, spells of a kind that Crull-maldor had never imagined.

  The warrior raced toward her, but seemed not to see her. Her body was no more substantial than a fog, and she wore clothing only for the convenience of her fleshly cohorts—a hooded red cloak made of wispy material with the weight and consistency of a cobweb.

  Thus her foe did not see her at first, but was peering up at the great wyrmlings behind her. In the shadows of the tunnel, she was all but invisible.

  The humans’ champion be
llowed—fear widening his eyes while his mouth opened in a primal scream. He charged toward the wyrmlings behind her, and suddenly his breath fogged, and terror filled his eyes.

  He felt the cold that surrounded Crull-maldor. It stole his breath and made the blood freeze in his veins.

  He shouted one single word of warning to the warriors behind, and then Crull-maldor touched him on the forehead with a single finger.

  Her touch froze the warrior in his tracks, robbed him of thought. He dropped like a piece of meat, though she had brushed him only lightly.

  The rest of the human warriors backed away in fear, nearly in a rout. Crull-maldor knelt over her fallen foe for a moment, sniffed at his weapons. There was no enchantment upon them, no fell curses.

  She rose up and went into battle, floating toward the rest of the warriors. None raced with their leader’s speed. None bellowed war cries or tried to challenge her.

  They were defenseless against her kind.

  Crull-maldor was the most powerful lich lord in her world; she feared nothing.

  She did not wade into battle on legs, but instead moved by will alone.

  Thus she drove into ranks of the small humans. They screamed and sought to escape. One man tried to drive her back with a torch, and the webbing of her garment caught fire. Thus, for a few brief moments she was wreathed in smoke and flame, and all of the humans saw the hunger in her dead face and the horror of her eyes, and they wailed in despair.

  Then, invisible without her cloak, Crull-maldor waded into the human troops and began to feed, drawing away the life force of those who tried to flee, or merely stunning those whose ferocity in battle proved that they would make good sport in the arena.

  There were no more warriors like the mage that had confronted her. She found herself hoping for stronger resistance. She found herself longing for a war that promised great battles and glorious deeds, for only by distinguishing herself could she hope to gain the attention of Lady Despair, and thus perhaps win the throne.

  But she was bitterly disappointed.