Chaosbound

by David Farland

  “Soon,” Myrrima promised. “If he does not return by nightfall, I’ll go find him.”

  “Not without me,” Draken said.

  Myrrima gave him a hard look, as if to say, “If I don’t come back, you’ll need to take your sister and flee.” But then her face softened as she realized his predicament. His betrothed was out there somewhere.

  “Your sister’s safety comes first,” she said.

  Draken didn’t dare voice his own thoughts to Sage. Why can’t the child see? he wondered. Her father is never coming back.

  At sunset Myrrima let her cloak of mist blow away in the evening breeze, and then waited until darkness had fallen before Draken lowered the away boat. The evening fog rose from the water, creating clouds at the limit of vision. A waxing moon was just cresting the horizon like a glowing white eye in the socket of the sea. Stars danced upon the glassy waves. A slight breeze had come up from the south, surprisingly cool, like the touch of the dead. Draken almost imagined that he felt spirits on the water.

  As soon as the boat was lowered, Draken dropped into it. His mother shot him an angry look, but he stared her in the eye. “You can’t ask me to stay,” he said.

  Myrrima hesitated, as if to voice some argument. “Will you follow my orders?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” Draken said.

  “Then I order you to get out of this boat and take care of your sister.”

  “Perhaps in going with you, I would take better care of my sister. We don’t know what kind of trouble you might be walking into.”

  His mother stared hard at him, and at last sighed. The truth was that neither of them knew what was right. “You’ll keep your head down.”

  Myrrima gave Sage some final instructions. “If Draken and I don’t come back by dawn, take the ship south to Toom or Haversind. Don’t come looking for us.”

  “I won’t leave you,” Sage said, as if by will alone she might hope to save them.

  “Promise me you won’t try to come for us,” Myrrima said. “If we get in trouble, then I doubt that you could help, Sage. You have a long life ahead of you. If we don’t return, know that we love you—and know that above all, I want you to make the best life for yourself that you can.”

  Sage jutted her chin and refused to promise.

  I suppose that I should not be surprised if my little sister is hardheaded, Draken told himself, considering who we have as parents.

  Draken took the oars. Myrrima drew some runes upon the water to ease their way, and Draken began to row.

  He could smell the smoke of cooking fires on the water, and as he drew near to shore, he spotted a large village rising upon a nearby hill; he was surprised by its size. It sprawled north and south along the shoreline for as far as he could see.

  Internook always did have an excess of people, he thought.

  A pair of beacons had been lit on the arms of the bay. The fires themselves burned in censers held by statues of men with the heads of bulls, carved from white stone. The firelight gleamed upon the surface of the stone, turning the monstrous statues orange-yellow, so that they could be seen from afar. Their horns looked to be covered in gold, and they spread wide and nearly circled the pyre like bloody crowns.

  Draken recalled hearing once that each port had its own symbol, its own effigy at the mouth of the bay, so that ships passing by night might better navigate.

  He knew that the word vagr was old Internookish for port. But he could not guess at the word for bull.

  “Do you know where we are?” Draken asked.

  Myrrima shook her head no.

  Draken made his way by starlight toward the docks, pulling his cloak up to hide his face. As he drew nearer the village, he studied the rocky beach. He could see no wreckage as there had been in Landesfallen.

  Internook, it appeared, had actually risen a bit, rather than sinking into into the sea.

  What a shame, Draken thought. The world would have been better off without the barbarians.

  He silently rowed up into the bay, and the reek of a town grew strong. He could smell fish guts and dead crabs, the leftover of the day’s catch. Sea lions barked somewhere among the rocks along the shore, and that surprised him, given the warlords’ penchant for wearing boiled sealskins as armor when they went to war.

  Lights shone all through town—wan lights that only yellowed the thin hides that the barbarians used for windows. There were no lanterns placed upon the darkened streets, as he would have seen in Mystarria. The houses looked strange and widely spread. There were huge long-houses upon the hill; each was a dark, monolithic fortress with forty or fifty acres of farmland surrounding it. Dozens of families might live in a long house.

  It made the village seem surprisingly . . . desolate, Draken decided. It was spread over a broad area, and each long house squatted like a small keep, an island in its own private wilderness.

  No one walked the streets that he could see. There were no rich travelers with torchbearers, as you might notice in more civilized countries. There were clean bright houses down near the docks, but he could not hear any travelers at the inns, raising their voices in song.

  The entire village was preternaturally quiet.

  This is not the Internook of legend, Draken thought, where warlords drink and gamble through the long nights, while their dogs are made to fight bears for sport.

  He pulled up to the docks in the starlight, climbed from the boat, and pulled his hood low over his face. His mother took the lead.

  They climbed onto the wooden decks, which creaked and trembled under the onslaught of small waves, and made their way up toward a steep ridge, where he could see stairs climbing into town.

  Hundreds of small fishing boats were moored at the docks, and as Myrrima passed one, she grabbed an empty sack, stuffed in some rope, and slung it over her back, as if hoping that in the darkness she might pass for some fisherwoman, bringing her catch home from the sea.

  The ruse worked with the cats at least. A dozen hungry dock cats came rushing up to greet her, tails raised high and twitching in excitement. Some of them mewed sweetly, eager for fish. But when Draken peered down at one orange tom in the moonlight, he saw that its face had been clawed by other cats until it was swollen and disfigured. One eye was closed with pussy wounds, and as it mewed, it sounded vicious and threatening, as if it was accustomed to demanding fish rather than begging.

  Myrrima stomped her foot, shooing the monstrosities away, and climbed the stairs into town, with Draken at her back. They came out of the darkness onto a deserted street, and peered both ways. The cold wind gusted suddenly at Draken’s back, and once again he felt that odd chill creeping up his spine, like the touch of the dead.

  It seemed early for the streets to be so barren. No one walked them, not a solitary man.

  Sailor folk live here, Draken told himself. That’s why the streets are barren. They’ll need to be up at dawn, to sail with the tide.

  Yet that answer didn’t entirely satisfy him. He’d seen the docks at the Courts of Tide in Mystarria, where sailors caroused to all hours.

  Perhaps it is unsafe to walk the streets at night here, he wondered.

  Myrrima halted, and spoke, her voice shaking. “This is odd. It’s almost as if the town is deserted.”

  Then Draken heard something, a bit of music carried on the wind, the distant sound of singing, like men carousing in an alehouse.

  “That way!” he said. “I hear something.”

  Myrrima looked baffled, but followed his lead.

  There was a sort of wooden porch that ran the length of the streets—made from rough planks laid over the mud. Draken crept to the side of a building and stood in its shadow, then padded along quickly toward the inn. The walkway let him travel in complete silence.

  As he drew closer, the noise of the place became louder. There was roaring and cheering from men, as if a great celebration was going on. Drums and pipes pounded a steady rhythm while drunken men sang some folk song in the ancient tongue of I
nternook that had long ago fallen into disuse. A bear roared, mastiffs woofed, and the cheers became frenzied.

  Perhaps it is a holiday, Draken reasoned. That’s why the town is abandoned. Everyone has gone to the celebration.

  He considered how best to keep a low profile.

  I’ll find a dark corner or nook, and then crawl deep into it, he told himself. I’ll keep my ears open and my mouth shut. Surely someone will mention Aaath Ulber. It is not every day that a giant wanders into town.

  Soon he reached an alehouse, but it was unlike any that he had ever seen. In his home country of Landesfallen an alehouse or an inn was seldom much larger than a cottage. Indeed, most alehouses simply were cottages owned by some widow who made her living by brewing ale. At night, when a batch was ready, she’d open her doors, throw a keg on the table, and let folks come and enjoy a mug at her hearth. If she had talent and could sing, all the better. If she was fair to look upon, finer still.

  But this place was no cottage. He’d never seen a building so large, not outside of a castle. It was all made of wood, with enormous beams black from age. It was built much like a long house, but it seemed that all of the houses on the hill could fit inside. It had no windows, but high up, where the ceiling reached its apex at about forty feet, there was a broad opening in the wall. There, Draken could see light and the smoke of torches leaking through the breach.

  The building looked like a castle, he decided, a fortress all made of wood. He went to the great front doors, which were wide enough so that a wagon might be pulled through, and yanked on one to see if it would open.

  It swung outward a bit, and immediately he regretted his deed, for there was no way to open that door discreetly. Still, he saw no other way to enter.

  So he pulled it open just a crack, and tried to see inside.

  He nearly made it. A young man was standing with his back to the door, and as it swung outward, the young man was thrown off balance. He was a dirty creature, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with grime on his face. He had the blond locks so common to men here, cascading down his back, and a deep yellow beard covered his stony visage. He wore a jerkin of gray spotted sealskin, but bore no weapons.

  He glanced at Draken suspiciously, seemed disinterested, and then craned his neck to see over the crowd. A bear bellowed, and the men roared and cheered.

  They’re watching the dogs fight, Draken thought, and strode into the great hall and tried to see over the crowd. The men in front of him were so large that it was like trying to peer over a wall.

  The building, it turned out, housed more than an inn. It had an arena. A shallow pit, perhaps twelve feet deep and eighty feet in diameter, filled the center of the room. Tables circled the pit in rows, each row elevated a little higher than the last so that Draken found himself peering down into a little amphitheater.

  The place stank of Internook ale, dark and sour and as rank as stale piss.

  Warriors sat at the tables, drinking and feasting and carousing, laying down bets. There must have been five hundred men in the place, all with light hair. Some were blond going to gray, or pure silver. Some were more of a burnished gold or even a light red.

  The men were all so much alike—burly barbarians with strong chins and deep brows, and great bushy beards that hid their mouths—that they seemed like brothers and cousins. Men with faces creased by wind and sun. Some wore their hair braided in corn rows, while others tied it back with rags.

  It was not a bear in the pit. Instead, two great white bears were chained with iron collars to some support beams, and thus loomed above the pit. Several of the barbarians in the crowd had dogs with them, and the dogs growled and barked at the bears.

  Down in the pit stood Aaath Ulber. His eyes were so black and swollen that Draken wondered if he could even see. His right ear had been bitten off, so that dried blood colored his hair and seeped down his shirt.

  The giant had no weapons, and he was ringed by three wolves.

  One of the wolves lunged, jumping for the giant’s throat. Aaath Ulber dodged, caught the wolf in his fists, and hurled it against the wall, snapping bones and sending droplets of blood flying onto the dinner guests. The barbarians cheered and roared their approval, banging tin mugs on the wooden tables, even as another wolf lunged in and bit into Aaath Ulber’s hamstring.

  The giant kicked and flailed, until the wolf yelped and leapt back, then stood blinking.

  Draken spotted more dead wolves on the ground, and realized that Aaath Ulber had already beaten them. There wasn’t any fight left in these two.

  A tiny portcullis opened behind the wolves, and Aaath Ulber rushed them. The wolves went fleeing into a dark tunnel.

  A warlord shouted, “Round one goes to the giant! Praise be to the Powers!”

  He blew a war horn, and the crowd roared in approval.

  But the wolf fight was not the only entertainment. The room thrummed to the sound of drums and pipes and lutes. A band was stationed on a platform so high that they seemed to be playing in the rafters. Men sang drunkenly and laughed at the tops of their voices.

  Draken spotted a man in a fool’s cap, wearing a cloak made of parti-colored patches of rags—scarlet and daisy yellow, sky blue and sea-foam green, plum and bone—weaving in and out among the tables. He had an enormous swan upon a platter, cooked with its feathers still on, its neck hanging over the edge of the plate. He made a great show of trying to work his way among the tables, smiling at guests and greeting them, all the while knocking over mugs and stepping on people’s feet. He stopped at one table and held up the swan’s head, then worked its mouth open and closed as it told jokes to the guests.

  The place stank. Old ale had spilled onto the tables and floors for generations. But worse was the odor of the men in their jerkins made of sealskin and pig leather. They smelled of putrefaction and grime. Only the fairer scents of roasting meat and new-baked bread made the place bearable.

  The young man who had seemed disinterested in Draken a moment before now stepped up behind and whispered in his ear. His voice was soft, his tone low and threatening. “Here now, little brother, you shouldn’t be here. This is for elders of the clan.”

  He took Draken by the biceps, and began to steer him out. Draken reached for his knife, in case the fellow tried to get rough.

  “Wait,” Draken said. “I want to watch!”

  Down in the pit, the announcer shouted. “Now, for the main challenge: Aaath Ulber the giant, scourge of the North, shall fight the wyrmling hero Lord Gryzzanthal!”

  The shouting and cheers rose to a fever pitch, and the young fellow that had taken hold of Draken seemed unable to help himself. He stopped, then glanced toward the action.

  A door flew open down in the pit, and out strode a creature neither quite man nor monster. The creature was massive; it stood a good nine feet tall and could not have weighed less than eight hundred pounds. It was broad at the shoulder, almost impossibly so, and its skin gleamed sickly white; Gryzzanthal’s face was hideous, with bony ridges upon his brow and armored plates upon his cheeks and jaw. The scowl upon his face could only have belonged to something that was pure evil.

  The wyrmling was dressed in full battle regalia—with helm, armor, and sheath all ornately carved from bone. The helm was decorated with the tusks of a great boar that curled up near the bottom, forming chin guards. Gryzzanthal bore a round shield of yellowed bone with a black circle painted on it that showed the Great Wyrm in red.

  His only weapon was a wyrmling blade, a strange heavy sword that ended in two long prongs.

  The wyrmling banged sword on shield and growled a challenge. Aaath Ulber stepped back, roaring like an enraged animal, and the two began to circle, looking for an opening.

  It wasn’t a fair fight.

  Aaath Ulber had no armor, no weapon.

  Draken wondered what the giant had done to deserve such a fate. And he wondered why the warlords of Internook would keep a wyrmling to fight in the ring.

  Myrrima had crowded close
to the door, and now she let out a soft yelp of recognition. Myrrima whispered, “That’s him!”

  The elder gasped. “Shhh . . .” he urged, opening the door, trying to push them out of the building. “Quiet. It’s not safe for you here.”

  Down in the arena, Aaath Ulber lunged toward the wyrmling’s weak side. The monster responded by swatting with his shield.

  The crowd roared as Aaath Ulber grabbed the shield and pulled, trying to rip it from the wyrmling. But the monster tried to yank it back.

  In seconds somehow Aaath Ulber got behind the creature and worked an arm under its chin guard. Aaath Ulber leapt in the air, throwing his weight into a lock, and tried to strangle the wyrmling.

  The wyrmling flailed about, but its sword was useless. He swatted back with his shield, equally useless. The great monster whirled and threw himself backward, crushing Aaath Ulber into the wooden posts that ringed the arena; for a moment Aaath Ulber’s eyes rolled back in pain as the wind was knocked from him. But Aaath Ulber clung to the wyrmling like death, and the audience went wild, shouting, “Ride him! Ride him to the ground!”

  The young elder shoved Draken again. “Run!” he warned. “Head for the woods. The streets are not safe!”

  Draken turned to leave. The rising moon glanced off the cobbled streets, and not a hundred yards away he saw something.

  It was a great boar, like those his father had hunted far to the south in the Dunnwood of Heredon. It was a huge shaggy beast, with hair on its chest that swept the ground, and massive curling tusks that glinted like skeletal teeth.

  Atop the boar was barding that gleamed like silver in the moonlight—chains across its back, and a fearsome helm that covered its head and snout.

  But it was not the great boar that took his breath away, it was the creature riding its back.

  “Wyrmling!” Myrrima breathed in warning, and Draken thought to run. But the wyrmling leapt from its mount in a single fluid movement and seemed to flow toward them with superhuman speed.

  Eight endowments of metabolism it has, Draken thought, perhaps more.