The Wyrmling Horde (45 page)

It was a full three minutes before the emir suddenly coughed and reached up in the air, scrabbling as if to grab something.

Fallion stood over him, growing brighter. “He took a sore wound,” Fallion said, intent on his healing.

The emir coughed again and climbed to his elbows. He was half in a daze as he gazed around the room, trying to regain his bearings. “What happened?” he croaked.

“We got caught,” Talon said. “Rhianna came for us.”

“We have to get out of here soon,” Rhianna said, peering toward the doors. “I got in here without killing anyone, but I hear bells tolling. The wyrmlings will be on my trail.”

Talon listened. She couldn't quite hear the bells. She translated Rhianna's warning for the emir.

“Tell her to take Fallion and go,” the emir said. He tried to climb to his feet, but he staggered and lost his balance. He looked up, saw them all sitting there. “Go!” he demanded. “I'll be along. He's the only one who matters.”

“He's not the only one,” Talon said. She knew what the emir was doing. He wanted to give his endowments back to his daughter. He hoped to die nobly.

The emir glanced up at her. “Of course not,” he said, peering around. “We must also get Daylan out, and the wyrmling girl.”

Fallion went to Daylan's cell, and began ministering to him. The emir climbed unsteadily to his feet, jutted his chin toward Rhianna. “Your winged friend here is the fastest. She has the best chance of escape, and her charge matters more than we do. Please, tell her to go. I cannot save the father, but perhaps we can help save the son.”

Talon translated the emir's thoughts. By the time that she was through, Daylan Hammer was sputtering and moaning in the other room.

But suddenly the golden glow of the sunstone faded, its light dying. Fallion came from the room. Twisting the stone around, Fallion studied it. It shone like a dull ember. “The fire is all but gone from it. Do you have another?”

Rhianna looked to Talon. Rhianna's had been destroyed, and Daylan's and the emir's sunstones had been taken.

“That was the last one,” Talon said. “Go,” Talon told Rhianna. “Take Fallion with you. He can do no more good here, and we'll just slow you down. We'll follow you out as soon as we can.”

“It won't be easy to carry the wyrmling girl,” Rhianna warned. “Perhaps we should leave her.”

“I can't,” Talon argued. “Besides, we'd have to carry her regardless. Without endowments, she's nothing but dead weight.”

Rhianna hesitated, as if trying to think of a sound reason
to stay with them, but reluctantly she nodded her agreement. She'd take Fallion. “Remember, kill no one. So long as we pose no threat, their false Earth King will not know where we are.”

“That may be easier said than done,” Talon argued.

Then Talon rushed into the wyrmling girl's cell and lifted her gently. With Talon's eight endowments of brawn, the girl seemed bulky, but not too heavy to bear. Talon's real concern wasn't that she would tire, but that under so much weight one of her bones might snap and she would be left hobbling about, unable to bear her charge.

She left Daylan Hammer and the emir to help one another.

So they began their journey, racing as fast as they could through the labyrinth, toiling up the winding stairs. The emir led the way, followed by Rhianna, who had Fallion clinging to her back. Without endowments of metabolism, he couldn't even begin to keep pace with the others.

The distant tolling of bells must have called the wyrmlings out. The company began to meet them in the corridor at nearly every turn. Each time that they did, Rhianna would simply roar at them like a Knight Eternal sounding a battle cry. With her flawless memory, she knew the call well. With her endowments of voice, she could mimic it perfectly.

The emir shoved aside those who did not get out of the way. With his speed and brawn, the smallest push sent the wyrmlings toppling.

And as they moved through the hot corridors, Fallion began to recover his strength completely. He drew heat from air, channeling it into himself so that he glowed brightly. The wyrmlings roared in pain at the sight of him and backed away.

Rhianna reached the top landing, and charged down a wide corridor. Talon could hear the toll of the warning bell clearly now.

Ahead, a contingent of wyrmling soldiers marched toward them, four abreast. There were perhaps thirty in all.
They cringed from the light, and Rhianna roared, but she did not give them time to withdraw.

She flapped her wings once and leapt, went soaring above their heads; some troops turned to engage her. In that instant, the emir and Daylan Hammer rushed in among the wyrmlings.

None of the wyrmling soldiers had endowments, it seemed. The emir and Daylan shoved the wyrmlings aside, half to the right, half to the left, so that they fell in tangled heaps. They'd cleared a path for Talon.

She rushed through, trampling over the few fallen wyrmlings who tried to rise.

We're lucky that there were no Death Lords among them, Talon thought. But her hope was that the Death Lords would be slow to come.

The emir grabbed weapons from the fallen soldiers—a few daggers and a pair of heavy axes.

They reached a great archway, and suddenly Talon knew where she was. They'd reached the Arena of the Great Wyrm. Talon could smell the fetid air inside.

Rhianna bypassed it and led the way down the tunnel toward the southern gates.

Talon recalled the great iron doors that had fallen behind them earlier; she worried that she and her friends might still be locked in.

The warning bells were tolling heavily, making the walls vibrate with every resounding gong.

The company sped through in haste now, and as they sprinted ahead, Talon saw the great iron doors beginning to fall. Rhianna reached the spot and ducked beneath, but Talon was lugging the big wyrmling girl and could not match her speed.

I'm not going to make it, she thought.

The emir raced to the door and rolled under, while Daylan dropped to his belly and skidded.

For an instant Talon feared that they had all left her behind.

But then the door slammed to a halt, and she saw what had happened. Two wyrmling axes had been placed beneath the door, their pommels in a groove in the floor, their heads up forming a T.

The emir had paved the way for her escape.

Talon reached the door, dropped her charge, and rolled under. By the time that she got to her feet, Daylan and the emir had pulled the wyrmling through, and the emir urged Talon, “You go ahead. I'll give you a rest.”

Talon realized what he was doing. She had far more endowments than he. She might well be needed if it came to a fight. She didn't dare waste her energy being a pack mule.

So she went charging down the corridor, now racing ahead of Rhianna. Wyrmling troops were suddenly thick in the tunnels, and Talon had to shove each of them aside, gently, as if she were only practicing moves for a sparring match.

Suddenly she reached the exit, smelled open fields and pine trees, and went charging out into the night. The sky seemed to yawn wide overhead, and stars powdered the heavens. Off to the east, the slender crescent of a new moon was just clearing the mountains.

Down below her, tens of thousands of wyrmlings filled the courtyard.

Lord Despair was in his private quarters, dining with Scathain and making plans for the future, when he heard the warning gongs. Scathain raised a brow, giving Despair an inquisitive look, and Despair wondered what had happened. He felt inside himself, seeking the counsel of the Earth Spirit. There was no attack. Neither he nor any of his chosen lords were in danger, of that he felt certain.

“Probably one of the tunnels has collapsed,” Despair told his visitor. “That is a constant danger when living underground. In the recent binding of the worlds, the ground here has been destabilized. A couple of small sections of tunnel
have collapsed in the past few days. It is probably nothing.”

It took several long minutes for the captain of the guard to bring word, interrupting dinner.

“Lord Despair,” the captain cried as soon as he entered the door, “the prisoners have escaped!”

Despair stared blankly at the man for half a second, unsure if he believed his ears. This was a terrible embarrassment.

“Impossible,” Despair said.

I chose my prisoners' guards, he thought. The earth should have warned me if they had been killed.

He looked into his heart, felt for the guards in the dungeon. His earth senses let him pinpoint their location.

They were alive. They were well. They were at their posts still.

Suddenly Despair laughed at his own folly.

“That clever girl,” he told his guest. “She came in right under our noses and stole my prisoners—without taking a single life!

“But it will do her no good. Fallion is one of my chosen ones. I can sense his whereabouts.”

He felt the young man, fleeing swiftly from the fortress.

Despair rushed out to the parapet of his tower, and in one mighty leap he was atop one of his stone gargoyles, peering down from it, using its head as his vantage point.

The Darkling Glory raced up behind, flew atop a gargoyle beside him.

Down below were his prisoners, streaking out across the plain. Fallion was glowing brightly, a brilliant and unearthly white.

The prisoners were racing away so fast that Fallion looked almost like a comet streaking across the dark plain. Wyrmlings fell back from the light by the score, and Rhianna roared in warning, so that his people cleared a trail for the prisoners. In seconds they were beyond the wall and off into
the brooding pines that surrounded the fortress now, and then Fallion let his brightness fade.

The Light-bringer lives up to his name, Despair thought.

Despair considered going down among the fools, doing battle. He felt no fear of his enemy's champions. The Earth did not warn against it, and he knew that they could not slay his body.

But Fallion had a power that no other flameweaver had ever displayed. He could shine so fiercely that he could slay a locus, incinerate it.

Would the Earth Spirit warn me of such danger? Despair wondered. No, it wouldn't. A locus is not a human. The Earth Spirit would not value its life.

I dare not try to take them alone, he thought. I need Vulgnash.

But Vulgnash was hours away, and his quest was of tremendous import. He had to win control over the blood-metal mines, and until he was finished, he could not be spared nor distracted.

And what harm does it do to let them run? Despair wondered. None of my servants was killed. My enemies only deceive themselves. They believe that they have freed Fallion, not knowing that he can never escape.

The guard had rushed in at Despair's back, and now he begged, “Shall I have men give chase?”

“You can't catch them,” Despair said. “And if you did, it is not in your power to take them.”

But Despair had a servant who could. He sent a thought to Vulgnash:
When you finish punishing my enemies, return with all haste. Bring back some blood-metal ore for forcibles.

“Would you like some help?” Scathain said. “I can have a murder of Darkling Glories here within minutes.”

Lord Despair smiled.

“Get them. It's time that these fools get a demonstration of what will come.”

The Darkling Glory did not walk back into the tunnel.
Instead he leapt from the gargoyle's head and went winging up the mountain, toward the cone of the volcano, where the door to the netherworld stood open.

Despair turned to the captain of the guard. “Tell the tormentors to get to work upon Fallion's Dedicates. I want him reeling in agony.”

  24  

At the End of Time, darkness shall cover the world, and gross darkness shall fill the hearts of men.

 

—From the Wyrmling Catechism

Just outside the walls of Rugassa, the Emir Tuul Ra halted long enough to steal a vehicle. It was a simple wyrmling handcart—two wheels and a tiny bed, with a couple of long poles to use as handles. The handcart was empty, and the wyrmling woman who was pulling it never knew what hit her. A simple tap from behind sent her sprawling into the dusty road, and the emir had her cart.