Thus as Vulgnash reached the end of the platform, he found himself at the mouth of the vent, a chill wind whirling all about him, making his blood-red cape flutter like a caged bird. Without the refreshing wind, no mere mortal could have withstood the heat of this place. Even Vulgnash would have succumbed in time. He peered down, hundreds of feet below, into the pool of magma.
“Lady Despair,” Vulgnash cried. “I hear your summons, and obey.”
The lake of magma below him was red hot. Suddenly it boiled madly and the lake began to rise. Molten stone churned, and the level kept rising, until it seemed that the platform itself would be swallowed by magma.
Then the mouth of the great wyrm appeared, rising from the molten flow.
She was a hundred yards in diameter, and her mouth, which had five hinges, each jaw shaped like a spade, could have swallowed a small fortress.
She rose up, and magma streamed off of her.
Vulgnash dropped to one knee and bowed until the bony plate on his forehead touched the hot floor.
A great rushing voice filled the room. “Speak, Vulgnash. I feel that your mind is clouded by questions.”
Vulgnash dared hardly admit it to himself. He was not used to questioning his master. But he could not hide his thoughts from the Great Mother.
“How long?” he asked.
“Four years, since last I summoned you.”
“But… there is a forest growing outside the gates,” Vulgnash objected. He knew that he had to have slept for centuries.
“A great and strange thing has happened,” the wyrm said. “The world is changed, made anew by a powerful wizard, named Fallion Orden. He has combined two worlds into one, his and ours. He is our enemy. He must be dealt with.”
That any one wizard could have such power seemed unimaginable. “You have but to command me, my master, and I will throw myself into battle no matter how fearsome the foe. But… how do we fight such a creature?”
“Have no fear,” the Great Mother said. “I brought Fallion here by design. In his world, his power was great. But in this new world … he cannot withstand you. He is a flameweaver, talented in some ways, but he is only a child in his understanding….”
Vulgnash smiled, his lips pulling back to reveal his overlarge canines. If there was one thing that he understood, it was the weaving of flames. He had been mastering his skills for millennia.
The Great Mother continued. “Take the three into the woods south of the ruins at Caer Golgeata. You will find a golden tree there. Destroy it, root and limb.
“You will also find humans, small in stature, led by the wizard Fallion. Bring him, and prepare his spirit to receive a wyrm.”
Vulgnash knew that powerful enemies sometimes required wyrms of great power to subdue them. Knowing which wyrm was to take him might make a subtle difference as to the type of tortures Vulgnash would use to prepare the victim. “Is there a particular wyrm that I should prepare him for?”
The answer struck Vulgnash with awe.
Lady Despair answered, “I may choose to possess him myself.”
8
TALON
Life is an endless awakening.
As a child, we awaken to the wonders and horrors of the universe.
As young adults we awaken to our own growing powers, even as young love enslaves us.
As adults, we awaken to the worry and responsibility of caring for others.
Last of all, we awaken to death, And the light beyond.
—High King Urstone
In the tallest tower of Castle Coorm, Fallion kicked open the door to a small room and stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust as motes of dust floated in his view.
The room had served as his bedroom as a child, a room for both him and Jaz. But as Jaz said, it had grown smaller over the years.
The room was filled with trash—broken chairs from the king’s hall, a broken wheel from a wagon, various tools with broken shafts—all things that had some worth but needed the tender care of a good wood-wright.
Beneath the litter, Jaz’s bed still remained, but Fallion’s was gone. Gone also were their treasures—the princely daggers that had hung on the wall, the fine curtains that had once hung over the window, the carved and painted animals that Jaz had played with as a child.
Fallion had hoped to find something to remind him of his childhood, but there was nothing. Nor had he found much of worth in Warlord Hale’s chamber. It seemed that everything of worth had long ago been destroyed, sold off, or stolen.
He closed the door, then climbed the stairs to the uppermost tower, where his mother’s far-seers had once kept vigil.
There, upon a mossy roof that was growing weak from rot, he peered out across the altered landscape. Rocks rose up in a tumult, twisted and eerie. It was not as if they had just thrust up from the ground, broken and new. Instead, they looked to have been sculpted by wind and rain over millennia. Their forms were graceful, strange, and utterly out of place.
In the past hours, the dust had begun to settle, and though a yellow haze obscured the heavens, in the distance the ruins of ancient cities could be seen in half-a-dozen directions, their stonework marvelous and otherworldly, and their broken towers soaring high.
Yellow moths of a type that Fallion had never seen fluttered everywhere, clouds of them rising above the forest, apparently unnerved at the vast change.
Fallion felt unnerved, too. The sun was too bright, and rested in the wrong place in the sky. The plants seemed to have a strange metallic tang. A great weariness was on him, sapping his strength. He felt on the verge of collapse, and feared that if he slowed down, if he stopped for even a minute, he would just lie down and never regain the strength to rise again.
Rhianna climbed the stairs behind him, came up to him wordlessly, then just stood stroking his back.
“Has Talon stirred?” Fallion asked.
“Not yet,” Rhianna answered. Talon was still unconscious, resting in the hovel where Hearthmaster Waggit lived. Fallion had come here to search for richer quarters, but Warlord Hale’s room had been a pigsty, full of rotting food and foul odors.
“This is a trap,” Fallion said as he peered out above the woods. “This whole place is a trap. We should leave.”
“Not without Talon,” Rhianna said. “I couldn’t leave her, and neither could you. We’ll have to wait until she’s ready to travel.”
She had been unconscious for hours. Fallion worried that she would die. Certainly, there had been others in the village that had died. One had been crushed under rocks when a wall buckled; others had perished from wounds received in taking the keep. Two elderly men apparently died for no reason at all, except, perhaps, from the shock of the change.
And there were other oddities. Another young man had grown large and distorted, like Talon. He too was unconscious.
Four people had apparently vanished altogether; Fallion suspected that they lay crushed somewhere beneath the rubble. Fallion could hear their sons and daughters even now, down among the castle grounds, calling out their parents’ names in vain.
Another young girl had a large gorse bush grow through a lung during the change and would not make it through the night.
Talon might not make it, either, Fallion knew. Whatever she had become, it might not survive.
“You should go down among the people,” Rhianna said. “There is talk of throwing a celebration tonight.”
“I’m not in the mood to dance or sing,” Fallion said. “They shouldn’t be, either.”
“You saved them,” Rhianna said. “They want to honor you.”
“I didn’t save all of them.”
“Perhaps not,” Rhianna said, “but I heard a woman talking down there. She said that ‘Under Warlord Hale’s rule, we were all dead. But good Fallion has brought us back to life.’ That seemed reason enough to honor you.”
Rhianna took his hand, squeezed it. She wanted to infuse him with the love that she felt, but she knew that it was incomprehensible to h
im, for the love that she felt was not something that she had learned in her mother’s arms. Her love was deeper, and more profound. She had once given an endowment of wit to a sea ape, and had learned to see the world through its eyes. It had been as devoted to its master as a dog would be. It had adored its master. There were no words to describe the depth of its affection. And now, Rhianna felt that way about Fallion. Only long years of practice allowed her to keep from constantly following him with her eyes, or from stroking his cheek, or kissing his lips. She dared not let him know, for she knew that it was a burden for one to have to bear unrequited love.
“If the villagers want to honor me,” Fallion said after a moment, “tell them to post a heavy guard. And tell them not to wait until tonight. There may be worse things in those woods than strengi-saats now.” He sighed, stood resting with his palms upon the head of a gargoyle for a moment, as if bestowing a blessing, and then when he had regained his strength, said, “I’ll go check on Talon.”
He stalked down the stairway in a foul mood. As he descended, he found himself in darkness, until he came out upon the green. Three women were tending the tree, tenderly wrapping the scars on its bark in tan linen.
A few hours ago, Fallion remembered hearing them cheer as he freed them from Warlord Hale.
Unbidden, words came to mind, a cruel voice speaking in a hiss. “Though the world may applaud your slaughter, you will come to know that each of your victories is mine.” In his mind’s eye, he saw his old enemy Asgaroth upon his fine blood mare, a tall man in black, wrapped in shadows. And once again Fallion felt his shirt tear open, felt the words scrawled upon his chest formed from runes of air, like insects marching over his skin.
Fallion bit his lip. A cold certainty was upon him. The crowds had applauded his slaughter not hours ago, when he’d killed Warlord Hale, but the taste of victory was sour.
Fallion gazed at the tree for a long moment. He felt strange in its presence. It made him want to be a better man, and he recalled hearing its voice earlier, its cry for help. But now there was only a deep silence in his thoughts. It was as if the tree were fast asleep.
He hurried down a back street where cobbles had come out of the road, leaving it pitted and muddy. He ducked into Waggit’s hovel, saw Waggit puttering about the hearth, looking here and there, as if trying to decide whether it was time to build a dinner fire. Waggit’s endowments had aged him. His hair had gone silver, and it was long and unkempt. He still had the height of a warrior, but the muscles in his chest and shoulders had grown thin and wasted.
He looked up from the hearth, “Fallion!” he said in glee. “You’ve come home!”
So much had changed over the years, Fallion felt surprised that Waggit even recognized him.
Waggit shouted in glee and danced a step. “It’s good to see you, boy!” He leapt across the room, gave Fallion a hug, and burst into tears.
“Good to see you, too, old friend,” Fallion said, taking the proffered hug. And it was.
Waggit’s summer jacket was worn and old. To Fallion he felt too thin in the ribs.
“Where have you been—” Waggit asked, “off fighting reavers?”
It was ground they had covered only hours ago, but Waggit had already forgotten. “Nothing so grand, I’m afraid,” Fallion said. “I went sailing to the Ends of the Earth, to Landesfallen.”
“Ah!” Waggit said. “I hope they fed you good.” It was the best reply he could come up with. He stood with head cocked to one side, as if hoping to be of some help.
“I ate well enough,” Fallion said. “Any word of advice today, old friend?”
Waggit peered hard at Fallion with rheumy eyes, his face growing desperate as he tried to recall some tidbit of forgotten lore. His lower lip began to tremble, and he cast his eyes about the room as if searching for something. At last, he merely shrugged, then burst into tears.
Fallion put his arms around the old man. “There now,” he said. “You’ve given me enough wise counsel to last me a lifetime.”
“I… can’t remember,” Waggit said.
“I’ll remember for the both of us,” Fallion said. He hugged Waggit once more, wondering at the cruelty of forcibles.
Waggit had not been born a fool, he once told Fallion. But he had slipped into an icy creek as a child, while fetching water for his mother, and had nearly drowned. After that, his ability to remember was stolen, and he ended up working the silver mines.
But when the reavers attacked Carris, he had fought them with his pick, actually killing a few. For his courage and strength, he had been granted a few forcibles, and with a few endowments of wit and stamina, had made himself a scholar, one of the wisest in the land.
Now the folk who had granted the endowments, his Dedicates, were all dead, and with their deaths, Waggit’s ability to remember had died too, along with the lore that he’d once mastered.
Did my father do well or ill, granting him endowments? Fallion wondered. Would Waggit not have been happier to remain a fool than to gain great wisdom and lose it all?
Fallion fought back his sadness and ducked through a curtain into the cozy room where Talon lay upon a low cot. She had grown too large to fit on it.
Jaz had covered her with a coarse blanket, and now he knelt beside her, his shoulders slumped from weariness, so still that he looked as if drawing a breath was almost too great a chore.
“How is she doing?” Fallion asked. “Any change?”
Jaz shook his head slightly.
“There is a chair here in the corner, if you would like it,” Fallion offered.
Jaz shrugged. “I know. I was too tired to get up and sit.”
Fallion slumped in the chair.
Jaz did not turn. As he gazed at Talon, his face was lined with grief.
“I thought for sure,” he said softly, “that when you healed the worlds, we’d get cloudbursts of beer, and the meadows would sprout dancing girls as pretty as any flower….”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Fallion said.
“What’s wrong with us? I feel like a burrow bear that’s been pulled out of its hole in mid-winter. I just want to sleep for a few more months.”
“Jaz, we have to go away,” Fallion said. “We have to get out of here, now.”
“What do you mean?” Jaz did not move. He looked as if he was too tired to care.
“That rune, it was a trap. The tree was the bait. Once my mind touched the rune, I knew that I had to mend it or die. But it couldn’t be mended, not really. It was meant to do only one thing, to bind two shadow worlds into one. I didn’t bind all of the worlds into one. I didn’t heal anything. I fear I’ve made things worse.”
Jaz nodded almost imperceptibly, as if he couldn’t muster the energy to care.
“Jaz, no human sorcerer made that rune. It was beyond the power of any mortal to form. I know who made it: our father’s ancient enemy, the Queen of the Loci.”
Now Jaz looked at him, cocking his head just a bit, peering at him from the corner of his eye.
“She’s here, Jaz, somewhere. She knows what I’ve done. She tricked me into doing it.”
“Maybe, maybe she was just testing you,” Jaz suggested. “Maybe she wanted to see if you really could bind the worlds. If the wizards are right, she was never able to do that. If she’d been able to, she’d have bound all of the worlds together into one, under her control.”
“It was a test,” Fallion agreed. “But in passing it, I failed us all.”
Jaz finally drew a deep breath, as if trying to muster the energy to rise. “Go then, if you must,” he said. “I can’t leave Talon behind. And we can’t let the Queen of the Loci catch you. If she does, we both know what she will try to force you to do—bind the worlds into one, all under her control.”
Fallion hesitated. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Talon, not like this. He wasn’t certain what was wrong with her. Perhaps in the melding, her organs had become jumbled up. Perhaps the creature that lay before him had two hearts a
nd only half a lung. He couldn’t be certain.
He only knew that in binding the two worlds together, he had not done it perfectly. There had been mistakes, dangerous errors. The vine that had grown through his hand was just one of them, and the stinging pain and the bloody bandage that he now wore were constant reminders.
What if I’d tried binding all of the worlds into one? Fallion wondered. What if those little errors had been multiplied a million million times over?
It would have been a catastrophe. I would have destroyed the world.
Maybe that is why the Locus Queen set this trap—to see what would happen if I succeeded.
There was a pitcher of water on the bed stand. Fallion felt thirsty but too tired to take a drink. Still, he knew that his body would need it.
Talon suddenly groaned in her sleep. “Ishna! Ishna! Bolanda ka!” She thrashed from side to side. Her voice was deep and husky.
“What did she say?” Jaz asked.
Fallion shook his head. It was no language that he had ever heard, and he was familiar with several.
He wondered if it were just aimless babbling, the ranting that came with a fevered dream.
Fallion got up, found a towel on the bed stand, and poured some of the cool water from the pitcher onto the towel.
He knelt beside Talon and dabbed her forehead, held the rag there with one hand and touched her cheek with the other, checking for a fever.
She was definitely warm.
He had been holding the rag on her head for all of thirty seconds when her eyes sprang open wide, filled with terror, and she backhanded him.
Fallion went flying as if he’d been kicked by a war horse.
In an instant, Talon sprang to her feet, as if to do battle, knocking Jaz aside. “Wyrmlings!” she shouted, her eyes darting about the room, trying to take everything in.
“Talon, it’s okay!” Jaz said. “You’re all right! You’re with friends.”
Talon stood, gasping for breath. At seven feet tall, she dwarfed all of those around her, dwarfed the tiny room. Every muscle in her arms and neck seemed strained, and she took a battle stance. In that moment, she seemed a fearsome warrior, more terrifying than any man that Fallion had ever seen. Her eyes darted about, as if she was trapped in some nightmare. Slowly her vision cleared. She recognized Fallion and Jaz, but merely stood in shock, trying to make sense of the situation.
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