The Wyrmling Horde

 

Praise for the Runelords Saga

“[Farland] explores the very nature of virtue and finds disturbing contradictions at the heart of every moral question. . . . When I reached the end of
The Runelords
and saw grace arise from a devastating battlefield where too many great hearts lay dead, Farland had earned the tears that came to my eyes. It was not sentiment but epiphany.”

—
Orson Scott Card, author of
Empire,
on
The Runelords

 

“The suspense is real, the action is nonstop, and the characterizations continue to convince. . . . [This is] a series that has put Farland on high-fantasy readers' maps.”

—Booklist
on
The Lair of Bones

 

“Sometimes truly terrifying, sometimes impossibly sweet,
The Lair of Bones
is a tale sure to entrance any reader. This is a superb story with deeply empathetic characters.”

—Sara Douglass, author of
The Serpent Bride

 

“The author's imaginative approach to magic, coupled with a richly detailed fantasy world and a cast of memorable heroes and villains, adds depth and variety to this epic tale of war and valor.”

—Library Journal
on
Wizardborn

T
HE
W
YRMLING
H
ORDE

 

 

 

T
OR
B
OOKS BY
D
AVID
F
ARLAND

 

The Runelords

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Wizardborn

The Lair of Bones

Sons of the Oak

Worldbinder

The Wyrmling Horde

Chaosbound

D
AVID
F
ARLAND

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE WYRMLING HORDE

Copyright © by 2008 by David Farland

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-5585-0

First Edition: September 2008

First Mass Market Edition: October 2009

Printed in the United States of America

0    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

 

 

 

To Nichole, Danielle, Forrest, Spencer, and Ben—who have
all helped their dad so much over the years.

To contact the author, e-mail [email protected].
To see news of the series, visit his site at
www.runelords.com
.

T
HE
W
YRMLING
H
ORDE

  Prologue  

This is Understanding's House,

I've seen these doors before,

Though when or where, I don't know.

 

In dusty rooms, like ancient tombs,

I studied endless lore.

For what or why, I don't know.

 

Yet soon I learned too much,

Like a child lost in war.

Lost in horrors

I hope you'll never know.

 

            
—A song of Mystarria

 

In all of his dreams, Fallion had never dreamed with such intense clarity. He dreamed that he was soaring above the Courts of Tide. He was not riding a graak, nor did he wear a magical wing. In his dream Fallion's arms stretched wide, holding him aloft, like some seagull that hangs motionless in the sky, its wingtips trembling as the wind sweeps beneath them.

Nothing below obstructed his view.

He glided over houses where the sweet gray smoke of cooking fires floated lazily above thatched roofs, and Fallion darted above a palace wall, veering between two tall white towers where a guard with his pike and black scale mail gaped up at Fallion in astonishment. Fallion could see each graying hair of the guard's arched eyebrow, and how the man's brass pin hung loose on his forest-green cape, and he could even smell the man's ripening sweat.

Fallion swooped low over the cobbled city streets, where fishermen in their white tunics and brown woolen caps trudged to their dank homes after a hard day working the nets; the young scholars who attended the House of Understanding stood on street corners arguing jovially while sipping tankards of ale, and a boy playing with a pet rat in the street gaped up at Fallion and pointed, his mouth an O of surprise.

“The king has come!” the child cried in surprise, and suddenly the people looked up in awe and rejoiced to see Fallion. “The king! Look!” they cried, tears leaping to their eyes.

I must be dreaming, Fallion thought, for never have I seen the world so clearly.

There is a legendary stream in the land of Mystarria. Its icy waters tumble down from the snowfields of Mount Rimmon, beneath pines that guard the slopes, along moss-covered floors where huge marble statues of dead kings lie fallen. The stream's clean flow spills into forest pools so transparent that even at a depth of forty feet every water weed and sparkling red crayfish can be seen. The enormous trout that live there “seemingly slide through the air just by slapping their tails,” and all of them grow fat and to a ripe old age, for no fisherman or otter can hope to venture near in waters so clear.

So the stream is called the Daystar, for it is as clear and sparkling as the morning star.

And that is how preternaturally clear the dream came to Fallion, as clear as the waters of the Daystar.

He longed to continue dreaming forever, but for one thing: the air was so cold. He could feel frost beginning to rime his fingernails, and he shivered violently.

This frost will kill me, he thought. It will pierce my heart like an arrow.

And so he struggled to wake, and found himself . . . flying.

The wind rushed under him, cold and moist, and Fallion huddled in pain sharp and bitter.

He could feel a shard of steel lodged below his ribcage, like a dagger of ice. Drying blood matted his shirt.

He struggled to wake, and when his eye opened to a slit, it was bright below. The wan silvery light of early morning filled the sky. He could see the tops of pines below, limbs so close that if he had reached out he could almost have touched them.

Where am I? I'm flying above a forest.

In the distance he could descry a mountain—no, he decided, a strange castle as vast as a mountain. It was built into the sides of a black volcano whose inner fires limned the cone at its top and spewed smoke and ash.

All beneath, along the skirts of the volcano, a formidable fortress sprawled, with murderously high walls and thousands of dark holes that might have been windows or tunnels into the mountain.

There was no fresh lime upon the walls to make the castle gleam like silver in the dawn. Instead, the castle was black and foreboding. A few pale creatures bustled along the walls and upon the dark roads below, racing to flee the dawn, looking like an army of angry ants. Even a mile away, Fallion could tell that they were not entirely human.

Wyrmlings, he realized.

Fallion shivered violently, so cold and numb that he feared he would die. His thoughts clouded by pain, he struggled to figure out what was happening.