The Wyrmling Horde (23 page)

Power is beautiful, and the Great Wyrm is the most beautiful of us all.

 

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

Rhianna saw that the horse-sisters' preparation for the raid on the wyrmlings took precedence over all else that night. They immediately went to work setting all in motion for battle. Because Caer Luciare was far away, the first order of business among the sisters was to feed their horses miln, a rich mixture of grain and molasses, to ready them for the long run.

Then the sisters began to pack, taking only light weapons and armor. That decision alone astonished Rhianna. To fight a wyrmling was an act of courage. To fight one in nothing but a horse-sister's leather jerkin was heroic.

Meanwhile, facilitators, smiths, and jewelers began making forcibles—recasting each metal rod with the proper rune at its tip, and then filing and hammering the soft blood metal into shape.

Once each forcible was deemed usable, the facilitators could transfer endowments from one horse to another—giving each horse two endowments of metabolism, one of brawn, and one of stamina.

The smiths worked fast, far faster than the men of Caer Luciare had been able to. In part they sped along because they knew
how
to make forcibles. It was an ancient art here. In part they worked quickly because the women's small hands and nimble fingers found it easier to do the work. In part they flew through the work because the master craftsmen each first took endowments of metabolism. Thus, they hoped to accomplish in one day what might otherwise have taken weeks.

The making of force horses would prove to be their greatest problem, Rhianna knew. It was a time-consuming process.

With horses, an endowment could only be transferred to the leader of a herd, whether it be a stallion or a mare.

Thus, creating a force horse sounded as if it should be easy. You could just cut the leader from the herd, and then draw endowments from the colts above one year of age.

But it wasn't so easy as all of that. You didn't want to take endowments from just any colt. For brawn, you might want a heavy war horse, perhaps one of the imperial breed. For speed, a racehorse from the desert. For stamina, a simple work horse might do, though mules were sometimes used. For wit, there was a breed called the Carther Mountain ponies.

And so before the facilitators could endow a horse, they had to take the strongest adults, horses two years or a bit
above of age, and corral them with five or six others, creating a small herd, and then give the animals a day to fight.

Once a herd leader emerged, the endowments could be stripped from the others.

By dusk, Rhianna hoped, the first forty force horses would be ready to go.

But humans were not so finicky when it came to granting endowments, and before dawn a facilitator came to Rhianna's tent. She was a small woman with dark hair, in costly attire.

“We are ready for the ceremony,” she said. “Which endowment would you like first?”

Rhianna hadn't given it much thought. Brawn, she wondered. Or speed.

In that moment's hesitation, the facilitator made up Rhianna's mind for her. “Glamour,” she said. “When creating a powerful Runelord, the first few should always be glamour—and then voice. It makes it easier for others to give their endowments to those that they love, and you will be stronger for it in the long run.”

Rhianna's heart skipped a beat at the thought. Glamour. Raj Ahten had been rich with it, so rich that women who should have hated him were filled with lust, and would spread their legs for him. Men who saw him imagined that there could be no maliciousness in him.

“When you see the face of pure evil,” an old saying went, “it will be beautiful.”

Rhianna wanted to be beautiful, as fair as a summer morn, as powerful as a tempest. She had heard of Raj Ahten's wife Saffira, with hundreds of endowments of glamour. No man could resist her. To look upon her made men weak with desire.

Fallion will love me, Rhianna thought. I can make him love me more than he could ever imagine.

And as quickly as the thought came, she repented of it, trying to force the selfish desire away.

“Glamour,” she confirmed.

 

* * *

The endowment ceremony took place in Sister Daughtry's pavilion, with Rhianna and her new Dedicate resting among plush cushions.

Her first Dedicate was a young girl, perhaps no more than sixteen. In the blush of youth, her eyes were bright and her skin as white as cream.

“In giving this gift,” she said, looking noble and tragic, “I honor you, and I give myself for my land. Use my gift well, milady.”

The girl's courtly mannerisms were overstated. She tried to look brave, but she was trembling in fear.

“Be of comfort,” Rhianna said. “Your gift does you honor. I promise to engage it in the service of our people, and I will remember always this covenant between us.”

But even as Rhianna said the words, she wondered how she could keep such a promise. She wanted the girl's beauty so badly, she ached for it.

The facilitator took a forcible and inspected it, then began her harking song as she sought to ease the mind of the Dedicate. All too quickly, the forcible began to glow white-hot. The facilitator touched it to the back of the girl's neck, and then pulled away a snake of light. It seemed to extend from the girl, growing longer and longer, as the facilitator examined it.

Rhianna was lost in her imaginings all through the ceremony, wondering how well Fallion might love her. And in a moment, the facilitator touched the forcible to Rhianna's breast, and her mind seemed to explode. The feeling of health that entered her, of well-being and ecstasy, was something she could never have imagined. It struck through her like lightning, and for an instant the pleasure was so intense that she blacked out.

When she came to, a facilitator's aide put a robe over the new Dedicate, and pulled down a deep brown hood, so that Rhianna could not see the girl's face.

Rhianna knew what the girl would look like, though.
Those fine bright eyes would be dull and lusterless, their whites having gone to sickly yellow. Her smooth skin would be dry and papery. Her gleaming hair would have turned limp and dull. Her face would be a wreck.

The facilitator studied Rhianna for an instant, the way that a sculptor might look at his own work, searching it for defects. “Beautiful,” she said. “You look so beautiful.”

It was near dawn, and the campfires sputtered and raged in a contrary wind outside the tent. War horns blew in the distance, and there was some commotion as riders came into camp, announcing that they had caught a wyrmling woman. Rhianna went outside to see the cause of the commotion, and saw only a young girl, giant though she was. Her hands were tied together, and she had been forced to run for miles while horse-sisters drove her from behind at lance-point.

“What is this?” Sister Daughtry called to the sisters as they brought their charge toward camp.

“One of the white giants,” the horse-sisters said. “We found her to the north, with three men on her tail. She speaks Inkarran.”

Sister Daughtry studied the girl, impressed at her size. “So this is one of your wyrmlings,” she whispered under her breath to Rhianna. “This is what we must fight?”

Sister Daughtry called out to the girl, “Kwi et choulon zah?”

“Kirissa Mentarn,” the girl answered. Then she began to speak rapidly. Sister Daughtry inclined her head and frowned.

“Was there a man with her, a huge wyrmling?”

“There was,” one rider answered.

“She asks what happened to him.”

“He's dead. He fought two other wyrmlings, and wounded both before they killed him. We avenged him,” the rider said.

Sister Daughtry broke the news to the girl in halting words. The wyrmling girl did not seem surprised, and though there was sadness in her face, she was not overwrought with grief.

Instead, she kept peering at Rhianna, at her wings, as if
Rhianna were some icon of great power. Indeed, though she faced the others, her eyes stayed riveted upon Rhianna, as if she believed that Rhianna led the clans.

Kirissa kept talking, spewing out words in flawless Inkarran so quickly that Sister Daughtry seemed incapable of following. “She says that when the worlds were tied together, two halves of herself became one,” Daughtry explained. “At least that is what I think she is saying. She found herself among the wyrmling horde, and tried to escape. She wants to go home, to Inkarra.”

Rhianna said, “Ask her if she has seen a wizard, a young man with wings like mine.”

Daughtry asked the question, and the girl nodded violently and began pointing to the ground, as if to explain where she had seen him. She demonstrated how the man had wings like Rhianna's.

Fallion, Rhianna realized. This woman had seen Fallion. Everything in Rhianna made her want to grab the wyrmling girl and force the information out of her, but Rhianna knew only a few words of Inkarran.

Sister Daughtry grew thoughtful. “We must find a translator. The girl knows of your man. She has not seen him personally, but knows where to find him. I do not speak enough Inkarran to trust myself to the task of translating.”

One horse-sister offered, “Sister Gadron speaks the tongue well. She is riding in the Winters' Camp, last I heard.”

“Go and beg her to join us,” Sister Daughtry said. Then she told the riders, “Feed and water this girl. Untie her. Treat her as a guest. Though she is a giant, she is not much more than a child. When Sister Gadron arrives, we'll learn what we can learn.”

Rhianna studied the girl, who squatted on the ground timidly while children from the camp circled her, gaping. For her part, the girl peered up at Rhianna in frank wonder and jutted her chin toward Rhianna's wings once again, as if to remark upon them. Then the girl lowered her head in token of respect.

She knows what I had to kill to win these wings, Rhianna realized. What she doesn't know is how many more of the Knights Eternal I plan to kill.

Rhianna went back into the tent, and left the wyrmling girl out on the plains, the wind blustering through her hair while smoke from the campfires roiled across the ground.

By noon Rhianna had taken eighty endowments, including enough brawn, grace, stamina, and metabolism from the clan's strongest men that she could fight any wyrmling warrior.

But more than that, she had three endowments of voice from the horse-sisters' finest singers. Hearing and scent were taken from camp dogs. Endowments of wit came from three of the horse-sisters' brightest young students.

Rhianna had never imagined what it would be like to be a powerful Runelord.

With three endowments of wit, she was able to recall nearly everything that she saw and heard flawlessly.

Her endowments of hearing and scent seemed to open whole new worlds of perception, for with endowments of scent from dogs, the world seemed to expand, and her mind came alive to nuances of smell and taste that had always been beyond mere mortals. She could taste the scent of blood on the wind from miles away, and suddenly she realized how this keen new sense might warn her of future dangers.

With three endowments of hearing, she became aware of women whispering in their tents a hundred yards off. With endowments of sight, finches and sparrows in the far fields seemed to stand out with crystalline clarity.

She had gone nearly two days without sleep, but with her endowments of stamina, she did not feel weary.

I need never sleep again, Rhianna realized.

Late that morning, the translator arrived to question Kirissa. Sister Gadron was a small mousy woman who rode a blood mount. She smelled of sheep and children, and had marvelously white skin—almost as pale as a wyrmling's. Her long silver hair hung neatly down her back, and dark
tattoos snaked along her leg and circled her wrist like bangles. She was obviously a full-blooded Inkarran.

Rhianna followed her into a tent, where Kirissa hid from the daylight beneath a sheepskin.

The sun beating through the red silken walls of the tent burned Kirissa's eyes so that she kept her head turned aside and down, and closed them as much as possible as she spoke with the Inkarran.

The presence of one of the winged ones in the room made Kirissa nervous. Among wyrmlings only the Death Lords wore wings, as did the royals. Kirissa could not be sure whom the woman had killed for the wings.

At first, the questions were easy: What is your name? Where are you from? Why are you here in the desert?

For two long hours the translator asked questions, and Kirissa answered them all. Only a few times did the questions stump her. The first was of her lineage. It was important in Inkarra, and Kirissa was able to tell Sister Gadron about her family there, but among the wyrmlings family was nothing—unless one was of royal blood.

Then it was queries about ancient history. Where did the wyrmlings hail from?

It was a question that Kirissa had never heard an answer to. The study of history was not important to wyrmlings. Time wiped away all clues to the past.

The horse-sisters grilled her about leadership. Sister Gadron asked what the emperor planned to do with the small folk? What would he do if he was attacked?

Kirissa told her, “I can only guess at the emperor's plans, but what does that matter? The Great Wyrm now walks the labyrinth. Despair himself is in charge. The emperor is now just another Death Lord, a shade.”

“Who is this Great Wyrm?” Sister Gadron asked.

“Despair, the creator of heaven and earth, the great lord of all wyrms. It takes human form from time to time, and two nights ago, the Great Wyrm seized the body of a new host.”

At last Sister Gadron was satisfied with Kirissa's story, unsettling though it might be. Now the questions turned to Cullossax.

“What did Cullossax do in Rugassa?” Sister Gadron asked.

Kirissa answered, “He was a tormentor. It was his job to torture and punish those who broke wyrmling laws, whether their offense consisted of actively doing wrong, or failing to do well. By killing the weak and unruly, he culled the horde.”