Chaosbound

1 Sir Borenson at the End of the World

At the end of a long summer’s day, the last few beams of sunlight slanted through the ancient apple orchard outside the ruins of Barrensfort, creating golden streams among the twigs and branches of the trees.

Though the horizon was a fiery glowering, sullen and peaceful, from the deadwood linnets had already begun to rise upon their red and waxen wings, eager to greet the coming night.

Sir Borenson leaned upon the ruins of an old castle wall and watched his daughters Sage and Erin work amid the tallest branches of an apple tree. It was a hoary thing, seeming as old as the ruins themselves, with lichen-covered boughs that had grown to be as thick as many another tree.

The wind had knocked the grand old tree over two summers ago, so that it leaned at a slant. Most of its limbs had fallen into ruin, and now the termites feasted upon them. But the tree still had some roots in the soil, and one great branch thrived.

Borenson had found that the fruit of that bough was the sweetest to grow upon his farm. Not only were the golden apples sweeter than all of the others, they ripened a good four weeks early and grew huge and full. These apples would fetch a hefty price at tomorrow’s fair.

This was not the common hawk’s-day fair that came once a week. This was the High Summer Festival, and the whole district would likely turn out up at Mill Creek, for trading ships had come to Garion’s Port in the past few weeks, bringing spices and cloth from faraway Rofehavan.

The fallen tree left a hole in the canopy of the orchard, creating a small glade. The grass grew lush here. Bees hummed and circled, while linnets’ wings shimmered like garnets amid streams of sunlight. Sweet apples scented the air.

There can be beauty in death, Sir Borenson thought, as he watched the scene.

Erin climbed out on a thin limb, as graceful as a dancer, and held the handle of her pail in her mouth as she gently laid an apple in.

“Careful,” Sir Borenson warned, “that limb you’re on may be full of rot.”

Erin hung the bucket on a broken twig. “It’s all right, Daddy. This limb is still healthy.”

“How can you tell?”

She bounced a bit. “See? It has some spring in it still. The rotten ones don’t.”

Smart girl, for a nine-year-old. She was not the prettiest of his brood, but Borenson suspected that she had the quickest wit, and she was the most thoughtful of his children, the first to notice if someone was sad or ill, and she was the most protective.

You could see it in her eyes. Borenson’s older offspring all had a fierceness that showed in their flashing blue eyes and dark red hair. They took after him.

But though Erin had Borenson’s penetrating blue eyes, she had her mother’s luxurious hair, and her mother’s broad face and thoughtful expression. It seemed to Borenson that the girl was born to be a healer, or perhaps a midwife.

She’ll be the one to nurse me through my old age, he mused.

“Careful with those apples,” he warned. “No bruises!” Erin was always careful, but Sage was not. The girl seemed more interested in getting the job done quickly than in doing it well.

Borenson had wadded some dry grass and put it in the buckets, so that the girls could pack the apples carefully. The grass had tea-berry leaves in it, to sweeten the scent. Yet he could tell that Sage wasn’t packing the apples properly.

Probably dreaming of boys, he thought. Sage was nearly thirteen, and her body was gaining a woman’s curves. It wasn’t uncommon here in Landesfallen for a girl to marry at fifteen. Among the young men at the Festival, Sage could draw as much attention as a joust.

Marriage.

I’ll be losing her soon, too, Borenson thought. All of my children are growing up and leaving me.

Talon, his oldest, was gone. She’d sailed off to Rofehavan more than three months past, with her foster siblings Fallion, Jaz, and Rhianna.

Borenson couldn’t help but wonder how they had fared on the journey. By now they should have made landfall on the far continent. If all was going as planned, they were crossing Mystarria, seeking out the Mouth of the World, beginning their descent into darkness, daring the reavers’ lair.

Long ago, according to legend, there had been one true world, bright and perfect, shining in the heavens. All of mankind had lived in joy and peace, there in the shade of the One True Tree. But an ancient enemy had tried to seize control of the Seals of Creation, and in the battle that ensued, the world shattered, breaking into millions and millions of shadow worlds, each less perfect, each less whole, than that one world had been.

Fallion, a young flameweaver, said that he knew how to heal the worlds, bind them all into one. Borenson’s older children were accompanying him to the underworld, to the Seals of Creation, to help in his task.

Borenson wrenched his thoughts away. He didn’t want to consider the perils that his children faced. There were reavers in the underworld, monstrously large and powerful. Best not to think of that.

Yet he found it hard lately to think of much else. His children should have landed in Rofehavan. If their ship had made good time, they might soon reach the Seals of Creation.

A new day could be dawning.

“Father,” Erin called, “Look at this apple!” She held up a huge one, flashed her winning smile. “It’s perfect!”

“Beautiful!” he said.

You’re beautiful, he thought, as he stood back and watched. It was his job to take down those buckets that were full.

There was a time a few years ago when he would have been up in the tree with her. But he was getting too fat to climb rotting trees. Besides, the arthritis in his right shoulder hurt. He wasn’t sure if it was the long years of practice with the war hammer or some old wound, but his right arm was practically useless.

It was a silly rhyme that he’d learned as a child. An old gaffer with long silver hair used to sing it as he puttered down the lanes in the market, doing his shopping.

Borenson heard a sound behind him, a suspicious rustling of leaves.

Barrensfort was not much more than a pile of gray rocks. Two walls still rose sixty feet from some old lord’s tower, a broken finger pointing accusingly to the sky. Once it had been a great fortress, and Fallion the Bold had slept here sixteen hundred years ago. But most of the rocks for the outer wall had been carted off long ago. Borenson’s fine chimney was made from the rounded stones of the old wall.

So the courtyard in the old fortress was open to the sky. In a hundred years the rest of the walls might fall in, and a forest would likely grow over the spot.

But for now, there was only one large tree here, an odd tree called an encampment tree. It looked nothing like the white gums common to the area, but was perhaps a closer relative to the stonewood trees down by the sea. It was large, with rubbery gray bark and tiny spade-shaped leaves. Its limbs were thick with fronds that hung like curtains, creating an impenetrable canopy, and its branches spread out like an umbrella. A good-sized tree could shelter a dozen people.

When settlers had first come to Landesfallen, nearly a thousand years earlier, they had used such trees as shelter during the summers while building their homes.

Unfortunately, Sir Borenson had three such trees on his property, and for the past several years he’d had problems with squatters coming to his land and living in them—particularly during the harvest season. They’d steal his fruit, raid his vegetable garden, and snatch shirts from his clothesline.

Borenson didn’t hate the squatters. There were wars and rumors of wars all across Rofehavan. But he couldn’t allow them to stay on his land, either.

He whirled and crept toward the tree.

It’s probably nothing, he thought. Probably just some rangit or a sleepy old burrow bear.

Rangits were large rabbitlike creatures that fed on grass. They often sought shade during the heat of the day.

A burrow bear was a gentle beast that ate grass and vegetables. It had no fear of mankind whatsoever, and if Borenson found one, he’d be able to walk right up to it and scratch its head.

He went to the tree, swatted aside the long trailing fronds, and stepped beneath the canopy.

There was a burrow bear—its carcass sitting upon a spit, just waiting for someone to light a fire beneath it.

Inside the shadowed enclosure, entire families squatted: mothers, fathers, children—lots of young children between the ages of three and six. There couldn’t have been fewer than twenty people in all.

They crouched, the children with wide eyes and dirty faces peering up at him in terror. The stench of poverty was thick on them.

Borenson’s hand went to his dagger. He couldn’t be too careful around such people. Squatters had attacked farmers before. The road to Sand Hollow had been treacherous all summer.

He half-expected someone to try to creep up on him from behind. Borenson was vastly outnumbered, but he was an expert with the dagger. Though he was old, if it came to a fight, he would gut them to a man.

One little girl who could not have been eight pleaded, “Please, sir, don’t hurt us!”

Borenson glanced at one of the fathers. He was a young man in his mid-twenties with a wife and three little children clinging to him for protection.

By the powers, what can I do? Borenson wondered. He hated to throw them off his property, but he couldn’t afford to let them remain, thieving.

If he’d had the money, he’d have hired the men to work. But he couldn’t support these people.

He said, “I thought it was the borrowbirds that ate my cherries, fool that I am.”

“Please, sir,” the young man apologized. “We didn’t steal anything.”

Borenson shook his head. “So, you’ve just been hunkering down here in my fields, drinking my water and helping get rid of the excess burrow bears?”

Back in the shadows Borenson spotted a young man clinging to a pretty lass. His jaw dropped as he recognized his youngest son, Draken, holding some girl as skinny as a doe.

Draken was only fifteen. For weeks now he had been shucking his chores, going “hunting” each afternoon. Borenson had imagined that it was wanderlust. Now he saw that it was only common lust.

“Draken?” Sir Borenson demanded. Immediately he knew what had happened. Draken was hiding this girl, hiding her whole family.

“It’s true, Father,” Draken said. “They didn’t steal the cherries. They’ve been living off of wild mushrooms and garlic and trout from the river, what ever they could get—but they didn’t eat from our crops!”

Borenson doubted that. Even if these folks spared his crops, he lived on the borders of a small town called Sweetgrass. Surely the neighbors would be missing something.

Draken was clutching his girl with great familiarity, a slim little thing with a narrow waist and hair as yellow as sunlight. Borenson knew that romance was involved, but one glance at the poor clothing of the squatters, the desperation in their faces, and he knew that they were not the caliber of people that he would want in his family.

Draken had been trained in the Gwardeen to be a skyrider, patrolling Landesfallen on the backs of giant graaks. Borenson himself had taught Draken the use of the bow and ax. Draken was warrior-born, a young man of great discipline, not some oaf of a farm boy to sow his seed in the first pretty girl who was willing.

“I thought I taught you better,” Borenson growled in disgust. “The same discipline that a man uses on the battlefield, he should use in bed.”

“Father,” Draken said protectively, leaping to his feet, “she’s to be my wife!”

“Funny,” Borenson said. “No one told me or your mother of a wedding. . . . You’ll not sleep with this tart.”

“I was trying to think of how to tell you—”

Borenson didn’t want to hear Draken’s excuses. He glared at the squatters, and then dismissed them. “You’ll be off my property in five minutes.” He let them imagine the penalty for failure.

“Father,” Draken said fiercely. “They’re good people—from Mystarria. This is Baron Owen Walkin and his family—his wife Greta, his daughter Rain, his sons and their kin.”

Borenson knew the Walkin name. He’d even met a Baron Walkin twenty years ago, an elderly man of good report. The Walkins had been staunch supporters of the king and came from a long line of stout warriors. But these starvelings looked nothing like warriors. There was no muscle on them. The patriarch of the family looked to be at least ten years Borenson’s junior, a thin man with a widow’s peak and fiery red hair.

Could times really be so hard in Mystarria, Borenson wondered, to turn true men into starvelings? If all that he heard was true, the barbaric warlords of Internook had invaded the coasts after the death of the Earth King.

Ten years back, Borenson’s family had been among the very first wave of refugees from Mystarria. He was out of touch with his homeland.

But the latest rumors said that the new overlords were harsh on their vassals, demanding outlandish taxes, abusing women.

Those who back-talked or stood up to the abuse would find themselves burned out of their homes—or worse.

As a baron loyal to the Earth King, Walkin and his kin would have been singled out for retribution.

Borenson suddenly realized just how desperate these people really might be.

“I . . .” Draken fumbled. “Rain here will be a good wife!”

Rain. Borenson made a mental note. His own wife Myrrima was a wizardess who served Water. Borenson thought it no coincidence that his son would fall for a girl named Rain.

He sought for words to voice his disappointment, and one of the poor folk in the group—the matriarch Greta—warned, “Beware what you say about my daughter. She loves your son. You’ll be eating your words for the rest of your life!”

What a confounded mess, Borenson thought. He dared not let these people stay on his land, yet he couldn’t in good conscience send them off.

If he sent them off, they’d have to make their way into the interior of Landesfallen, into the desert. Even if they found a place to homestead, it was too late to plant crops. The Walkin family had come a long way—just to starve.

Outside in the orchard, Erin called, “Father, I need another bucket!”

“Where are you, Father?” Sage called.

That’s when he was struck.

Something hit Borenson—harder than he’d ever been hit in his life. The blow seemed to land on the back of his head and then continue on through his whole body, rattling every fiber of his being.

White lights flashed in his eyes and a roaring filled his ears. He tried to turn and glance behind him, but he saw no one as he fell. He hit the ground and struggled to cling to consciousness, but he felt as if he’d been bashed by a reaver’s glory hammer.

He heard the squatters all cry out in alarm, and then he was spinning, spinning . . .

Borenson had a dream unlike any other. He dreamt that he was a man, a giant on a world different from his own, and in the space of a heartbeat this man’s life flashed before his eyes.

Borenson dreamt of simple things—a heavy-boned wife whose face was not quite human, for she had horny nubs upon her temples and heavy jaws, and canine teeth that were far too large. Yet he loved her as if she were beautiful, for she bore him stout sons who were destined to be warriors.

In his dream, he was a warrior himself—Aaath Ulber, the leader of the High Guard, the king’s elite forces. His name was a title that meant Berserker Prime, or Greatest of All Berserkers, and like his wife, he was not quite human, for his people had been breeding warriors for two hundred generations, and he was the culmination of their efforts.

He dreamt of nights spent on guard duty on a lonely mountain with only a spear for company, and days hunting for fell enemies in the dank forests, thick with morning fog. He dreamt of raids on wyrmlings: pale manlike monsters that were larger even than he, monsters that fed on human flesh and hid from the sun by day in dank holes. He dreamt of more blood and horror than any man should see in a lifetime.

Last of all, he dreamt that he saw a world falling from the heavens, plummeting toward him like a great star that filled the sky. As it drew near, all around him his people cried out in wonder and horror.

He saw blue water on that world, vast seas and great lakes. He saw the titanium-white tops of giant clouds, swirling in a great vortex. He saw a vast crimson desert, and green lakes and hills. He saw a terminus, a line dividing night from day, and the gloriously colored clouds at its edge— great swaths of rose and gold.

Around him, people were shouting in alarm and pointing into the air. He was on the streets of Caer Luciare, a mountain fortress, and his own daughter was looking up and crying, “This is the end!”

Then the falling world slammed into his.

When he woke, Sir Borenson was still falling. He was lying on the ground, but it was dropping away. He cried out, and all around him the squatters shrieked in fear, too.

He slammed to a halt and his whole body smashed into the ground, knocking the air from his lungs.

Though the skies had been clear, thunder roared in the heavens.

The squatters under the tree were still shouting. The mother of one family begged, “Is everyone all right?”

“Earthquake!” someone said. “It was an earthquake!”

Sir Borenson had never felt anything like this. The ground wasn’t trembling or rolling. Instead, it seemed to have just dropped—perhaps hundreds of feet.

Borenson peered at the group. His heart raced. The ground was wet and smelled of seawater, and his clothes were sopped.

Other than that, he felt somehow disconnected from his body. All of the old aches and pains were gone.

“Father!” Sage shouted. “Father, help! Erin’s hurt!”

Borenson leapt to his feet and stood for a moment, dazed. The dream that he’d had, the dream of Aaath Ulber, cast such a huge shadow in his memory that he felt unsure just who he was.

He blinked, trying to recall where he was. Memory told him that he was on the mountain, on Caer Luciare. If he turned around he would see his girl.

But this was no mountain. He was under the tree.

He glanced at the squatter children in the shadows. Two women and a couple of children seemed to have fainted. A knot of children were trying to revive them, and suddenly one little girl peered up with terrified eyes. She shrieked, and others glanced up at him and followed suit. They fell over themselves in their hurry to back away.

Borenson looked down at the tots, wondering if he had blood on his face, wondering what frightened the children, and it seemed that he looked from too great a height.

“It’s all right,” he told them. “I won’t hurt you.”

He raised his hands. They were meaty things, huge and heavy. More importantly, there was a small spur of bone protruding from each wrist, something that no human should have.

His hands were the hands of Aaath Ulber.

He was wearing war gear—metal bands with targets on his wrists, heavy gray mail unlike any forged on his world.

He reached up and felt his forehead—the bony plates on his temples, the nubs of horns above that were more pronounced than those of any other warrior of the clans, and he knew why the children cried in terror.

He was Aaath Ulber and Sir Borenson, both men sharing one enormous body. He was still human, as humans had looked on that other world, but his children and wife here would not recognize him as such.

“Father!” Sage shrieked out in the orchard. She wept furiously.

Borenson turned and stumbled through the curtain of vines.

The world that appeared before him was a disaster.

Strange vortexes whirled in the sky, like tornadoes of light, and thunder crackled in the clear air.

Water covered much of the ground—seawater and beds of red kelp. Crabs scuttled about while starfish and urchins clung to the mud. Bright coral stuck up from a ridge of rocks that hadn’t been in the glade moments ago. Everything was sopping wet.

An enormous red octopus surged over the grass desperately, just up the path.

The walls of the old fortress leaned wildly, and everywhere that he looked trees had tilted.

Sage was under the huge apple tree, weeping bitterly and calling, “Father! Father, come quick!”

Part of that old rotten tree had fallen during the disaster.

Borenson bounded to her, leaping over an enormous black wolf eel that wriggled across the trail.

Sage stood solemnly, looking down at her little sister. Erin had fallen from the tree onto a rotten limb; now she lay with her neck twisted at a precarious angle.

Erin’s mouth was open; her eyes stared up. Her face was so pale that it seemed bloodless. She made little gaping motions, like a fish struggling to breathe.

Other than that, her body was all too still.

In the distance, a mile away, the village bell in Sweetgrass began ringing in alarm.

Sage took one look at Borenson and backed away from him in horror. She gave a little yelp and then turned, fumbling to escape.

Draken had come out from under the encampment tree, and he rushed up to Erin.

He tried to push Borenson away. “Get back, you!”

He was small, so small that his efforts had little effect. “It’s me, your father!” Borenson said. Draken peered at him in shock.

Borenson reached down and tried gently to lift Erin, to comfort her, but felt the child’s head wobble in a way that no person’s should. The vertebrae in her neck seemed to be crushed. Borenson eased her back into place.

If she lives, Borenson thought, she might never walk again.

Erin peered up at him, took in the horror of Borenson’s face, and there was no recognition in her eyes—only stark panic. She frowned and let out a thin wail.

“Stay calm, sweet one,” Borenson said, hoping to soothe her. But his voice came out deep and disturbing—more a bull’s bellow than the voice that Erin was used to. “It’s me, your father.”

In the distance a war horn blew an alarm. It was his wife Myrrima sounding a call from the old ox horn that he kept hung on a peg beside the fireplace. Two long blasts, two short, three long.

It was signal for retreat, but it wasn’t a simple retreat. He was supposed to go somewhere. He had not heard that call in so many years that it took a moment to dredge up its meaning.

Draken was at his side now, reaching down to lift Erin, trying to pull her into his arms. He was just as eager to help the child as Borenson was, just as frightened and dazed.

“Don’t touch her,” Borenson warned. “We’ll have to move her with great care.”

Draken peered at him in terror and disbelief. “What? What happened to you?”

Borenson shook his head in wonder.

In the distance Myrrima shouted, “Erin? Sage? Borenson?” She was running toward them; he could tell by her voice that she was racing through the orchard. “Everyone, run to high ground! Water’s coming!”

That’s when Borenson felt it: a tremor in the earth, a distant rumbling that carried through the soles of his steel boots.

The realization of his full predicament struck him.

On Aaath Ulber’s world there had been no continent where Landesfallen stood—only a few poorly charted islands on the far side of the world.

Borenson had taken meetings with King Urstone many times. The wyrmling hordes had all but destroyed mankind, and some of the king’s counselors advised him to flee to the coast and build ships to carry refugees to the Far Isles.

But it had seemed impossible, and the king had worried at what would happen if his people were ever found there, cornered on some desert island.

On Aaath Ulber’s world, this whole continent was underwater, Borenson realized. In the binding of the worlds, the two became one. That’s why there are sea animals here on dry land—it wasn’t dry on both worlds. Now the land has fallen. The sea is rushing in to cover it!

“Run!” he shouted to Draken and Sage. “Run to high ground! The sea is coming!”

He peered down at little Erin. He could not move her safely. Nor did he dare leave her here.

He wasn’t sure how much time he had. Minutes? Hours? No, he could feel the land trembling. He might not have even minutes. The sea was rushing toward him in a flood.

We may all be doomed!

The squatters came boiling from under the tree, then stood gaping, gasping and crying in astonishment. Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw—kelp and coral and creatures of the sea all suddenly appearing where once there had been dry ground.

“Run!” Borenson urged them.

The valley here along the Hacker River was long and narrow, a mile or two across.

On both sides of the valley, stark red-rock cliffs rose up. In only a few places could those cliffs be scaled.

“There!” Borenson shouted. “Up that hill!”

The squatters were shrieking, the children yelping in fear. At least one woman was still unconscious, and young men carried her. Others limped about groggily. The men were gathering bags while mothers tried to herd their children.

Draken looked back toward the house. “Shall I save the horses?”

“Save your sister!” Borenson shouted. “Get to high ground.”

The earth continued to rumble, growing louder by faint degrees. Draken grabbed his sister Sage by the elbow and took the girl Rain by the hand. The three rushed off.

It was nearly a mile to the ridge. They’d be minutes running toward it, long minutes climbing.

Borenson looked down at Erin. “Daddy?” she said. Her eyes scanned left and right, unseeing, unable to focus.

“I’m here,” he said. “Mother is coming. You’ll be all right.”

Myrrima had some skills as a healer, as did all water wizards. Her kiss could calm a troubled mind; her stroke could draw away a man’s pain. But Borenson didn’t think that she could mend a broken neck, not in the time that they had.

Perhaps the flood won’t reach us, Borenson dared hope. How far did the land sink? Certainly it won’t all be underwater. We are fifty-two miles from the sea.

He imagined that some sort of balance must have been reached in the binding of the worlds. Perhaps his homeland would only sink halfway into the sea.

He heard his wife crashing through the brush of the overgrown orchard. This part of his land was ill-kept.

“Myrrima,” Borenson bellowed. “Over here!”

She came running a moment later, leaping over a rock covered in coral, rushing between two trees, panting from exhaustion. She wore her deep blue traveling robe over a white tunic and leggings. The years had put a little weight on her, but not much. She did not run fast. No longer did she have any endowments of speed or brawn. The Dedicates who had given her their attributes had all been slain long ago, shortly after they’d fled Mystarria, as had his Dedicates.

Yet as a wizardess she would enjoy a longer life than Borenson, and in the past ten years she seemed not to have aged a year.

Myrrima stumbled to a halt, not even recognizing him. The woman had had the sense to bring his war hammer, throw together a bundle of clothes. Now she backed away with fear in her eyes.

Her body language said it all: Who is this giant, crouching above my child?

“Myrrima,” Borenson said. “It’s me—your husband.”

Wonder and confusion warred in her face. Myrrima peered down at Erin, there gasping for breath, and she seemed to cave in on herself.

“Erin?” she called, daring to scrabble closer. “My little Erin!” Myrrima dropped to her knees, still panting for breath, and kissed Erin’s forehead, then began to stroke her. “My baby! My sweet baby?”

“She fell,” Borenson explained, “in the binding of the worlds.”

“Mother?” Erin called. She peered up, unseeing.

“I’m here,” Myrrima whispered. “I’m here for you.”

There was a protracted silence. Borenson became more aware of the rumbling beneath his feet, the squawking of borrowbirds. The animals felt the danger, too.

“We have to get her to safety,” Myrrima said. She eyed Borenson with distrust. “Can you move her gently?”

Borenson let out a little wail of frustration. His giant hands were so powerful, yet so uncouth. They were ill-suited for such delicate work.

“Can you hold back the water?” he begged.

Myrrima shook her head in defeat.

Borenson worried that nothing that he could do would save the child. Perhaps he could not even his save his family. How tall would the waves be? Forty feet tall, or four hundred?

Myrrima shifted the child slightly, lifting her just enough so that Borenson could slip his fingers beneath Erin. As gently as he could, he slid one palm beneath the child’s body and another beneath her head.

With great care he lifted. The girl seemed so small in his arms.

I am of the warrior clan, a voice whispered in his mind. This child weighs nothing.

It was Aaath Ulber’s voice.

Borenson put one arm beneath Erin, like a board, and began to carry her as swiftly and as delicately as he could.

The grass was wet, the ground uneven. Strange sea creatures dotted the land—enormous crabs creeping about with claws ready, rays gasping for air. Colorful coral rose up in shades of tan and bone and red, all surrounded by clumps of summer grasses.

Borenson hurried, trying not to jar his daughter, careful not to slip. He kept glancing to the ground then back to Erin’s small face, contorted as it was as she struggled to stay alive.

Is she even breathing? Borenson wondered. He watched her chest rise a little and then fall again.

Yes, she breathes.

Up ahead, Owen Walkin’s people lumbered along. All of them moved slowly, painfully, as if some great illness had befallen them.

Suddenly, Borenson felt as if he were watching them from outside his own body. The people looked small and puny. “Run, you feral dogs!” he roared.

People of such low breeding don’t deserve to live, he thought.

It was not a thought that would ever have presented itself to Sir Borenson.

Aaath Ulber was talking.

Though the others were weak Borenson felt strong, stronger than either he or Aaath Ulber had ever been. In some ways, he felt as if something vital had always been missing and now he had found it.

He reached the river, which had gone strangely muddy. A pair of giant rays were flapping about. The water was not deep this time of year, nor was it swift. But the rounded stones beneath the surface were slick.

Borenson sloshed through, Myrrima at his side, and made it more than halfway before he slipped.

He caught himself, but Erin’s little head swiveled to the right.

“Aaaagh!” Myrrima gave a cry, then reached out and tried to hold Erin’s head securely in place. They attained the far bank, raced up wet stones. A patch of slick red kelp hindered him, but he finally made it to the base of the ridge.

The squatter families ahead toiled up the long slope. The ground trembled mightily now. The flood was coming.

Borenson marched boldly, passing the squatters, holding Erin as securely as he could. He studied Erin’s face; she gasped for breath. Her complexion was as white as a pearl, her skin seemingly translucent. He could make out the tiny veins and arteries that colored her skin, blue and red. Her pupils had constricted to pinpoints.

She’s in shock, he realized. She’s strangling for lack of air.

There was no way to save her. Perhaps all of his efforts had been in vain. Yet he clung to hope.

With giant strides he passed through the clot of squatters, surged uphill. The air filled with a distant roar and birds squawked.

He’d climbed three hundred feet. He peered to the east and saw a gray cloud in the distance—a haze of dust and spray.

He had to get higher. With a burst of speed, he charged uphill, cuddling Erin, trying to hold the life inside her.

At last he reached the ridgetop and peered toward the sea. Just to the west lay Sweetgrass, its village bell ringing wildly. The whole earth was roaring, and beyond the town a massive wave surged through Hacker River Valley.

The squatters, Myrrima, and Borenson’s children trudged up, their faces stark with shock and amazement; they stopped next to Borenson and peered at the rushing waters.

The sea came far more swiftly than Borenson would have imagined. This was not some puny wave making its way along a sandy beach.

It roared—a sound that shook the world in a continuous boom as if all the thunder that had ever been suddenly voiced itself at once.

The ground was trembling now, and loose stones began to bounce down from some red-rock cliffs above. Borenson glanced up fearfully, but none of the stones came near.

The valley spread below, and Borenson had an eagle’s view of the river snaking along, the green fields to either side. He could see his own pleasant home with its newly thatched roof and barns, with his sheep and cattle in his pens, and his yellow dog Mongrel standing out in front of the house, woofing at the confusion.

His neighbors’ homes lay east and west. He saw the Dobbit family rushing about near their cottage, Farmer Dobbit racing to free his livestock, seeming only now to recognize the danger.

Old widow Taramont, half blind and crippled by age, was puttering at the door to her home, calling for help.

Farther west, townsfolk were stirring. A young girl raced down the road beside the river; dozens of folks were charging behind her, hoping to outrun the great wave.

Then the sea came.

The flood surged into the valley and followed the course of the Hacker River as it snaked through the hills. A wall of water two hundred feet high blasted through the canyon, thundering over the village, crushing houses, Borenson’s barn, sweeping neighbors away.

It crashed into the ruins of the old fortress, knocking down stone walls that had stood for sixteen hundred years.

The sea ripped up trees and sent them rumbling in a wall before it. Borenson saw flashes of pale bodies, victims of the flood, mingled among the ruins.

The water thrashed below, raising a fine mist that wetted Borenson in a muddy rain. Then the wall hurried on, filling up the valley as the sea sought its new bounds, creating a long irregular inlet.

A rainbow formed in the mist above the ruin, a cruel joke of nature.

For a long moment Borenson searched for signs of life. The water was filthy, as dark as loam. Bits of bark and even whole trees came bobbing to the surface, along with patches of thatch roof.

He waited breathlessly to hear someone shout for help, to see a pale body thrashing in the dark waves.

But nothing moved down there—not so much as a wet cat. The weight of the water had crushed the townsfolk, snuffing out their lives as completely as if they were but the tender flames of candles.

It seemed forever that he stood rooted to the ground.

Borenson recognized what had happened. Fallion had done it! Fallion had bound two worlds together—the world of Borenson and the world of Aaath Ulber.

For some reason when the worlds had combined, Borenson and Aaath Ulber combined, too. Yet he wondered why none of the others around him had been similarly transformed.

It was said that other people lived on shadow worlds; it was as if when the One True World splintered, the folk of the One True World had splintered too.

It was believed by some that every man was therefore incomplete and had shadow selves upon far worlds.

Borenson had always thought it idle speculation.

But somehow in the binding Borenson had bound together with Aaath Ulber, his “shadow self.” Two men, each living his own life upon a different world, had fused into one body.

The notion was staggering. He didn’t have time to comprehend it. He couldn’t even begin to fathom the implications.

He wondered why Fallion had bound only two worlds. Why not all of them? Why not bind a million, million worlds all at once, and re-create the perfect world of legend?

Perhaps it’s an experiment, Borenson imagined. Fallion is testing his powers.

He worried. If Fallion had bound two worlds together, then that meant that he had already made it to the Lair of Bones deep in the Underworld.

Considering the devastation that Fallion had wrought here, what must Fallion be going through now? Borenson wondered. There might have been cave-ins in the tunnels. They might have filled with water.

For all that Borenson knew, Fallion and his friends were all dead.

If this binding had been a trial, it had gone horribly awry. Chances were that the experiment might never be repeated.

Only then did the magnitude of the destruction begin to sink in. Here in Landesfallen, the vast majority of the people lived in cities along the coast, while a few others lived in river valleys like this one.

If we had been on the coast, Borenson realized, we’d all be dead.

Without my crops, he considered, we may be dead anyway.

Young Draken peered at the crashing waters and spoke some words that Borenson had not heard in many long years. “The Ends of the Earth is not far enough. . . .” He turned and glanced at his father. “Do you think he knew?”

The boy was referring to the warning that the Earth King had uttered when he died, the words that had sent Borenson fleeing to Landesfallen. At Garion’s Port, fifty miles to the west of here, two huge stones flanked the bay, stones called the Ends of the Earth. And upon his death, the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden had warned Borenson that the Ends of the Earth were not far enough. Borenson had known that he had to flee inland.

Had Gaborn sensed this flood? Borenson wondered. Could he have known what would befall us, ten years in the future?

Borenson sighed. “He knew. His prescience was a thing of legend.”

The refugees all fell in exhaustion and lay panting, peering down at the flood. The ground still shook, and the water thundered. But the sound was receding.

The starvelings seemed to be floundering in despair. Driven from their homes, and now this.

I’m as poor as them, Borenson thought. Poorer, for at least they have a few sacks full of belongings.

Borenson sat down on the rocks; Myrrima knelt at his side. Draken and Sage followed, and all of them focused on Erin, weeping, their eyes full of concern.

Borenson’s youngest daughter was fading. There was nothing that anyone could do. Perhaps Myrrima’s touch and her kisses could ease the child’s passing, but Myrrima could not save her.

For several long minutes Erin gasped, struggling only to breathe, too far gone to speak.

Then at last her eyelids fluttered, and Erin’s piercing blue eyes rolled back into her head. Her chest stopped rising, and now a gurgle escaped her throat as her chest fell one last time. It was a sound that Borenson associated with strangling.

Life fled from her.

Borenson sat cradling his sweet daughter Erin; Myrrima cried in despair.

There was nothing left to do but mourn.

A vast gaping void seemed to yawn wide and black in Borenson’s soul.

There is no beauty in death, he realized.

2 The Crow Rider

In the cool light of predawn, a carrion crow searched a tidal pool, tilting her head to the right to listen for prey and to get a better look into the pool. The water was flat and as clear as crystal. In the shallows the crow spotted myriads of anemones, bright starbursts of green and purple, while orange starfish grazed along the rocks among gray-blue barnacles. In the deeper water an ugly sculpin fish, mottled in shades of muddy brown, lay finning in the sand. The crow held back from gulping it down, for the fish was full of bones that could lodge in her chicks’ throat.

She was seeking for soft young shrimp that might be trudging about in the shallows, but saw a cockle in the sand, its heart-shaped shell wide open. She grabbed it in her beak, but it snapped closed instantly.

So she hurled it against a rock until the shell shattered. Then she held the cockle under one talon while she pulled the sweet meat free with her beak.

Suddenly the carrion crow felt a cool touch, a wind that hinted at winter, and looked up in alarm, ruffling her feathers. She cawed in warning to others of her kind, though the beach was empty, and then peered about, her black eyes blinking as she searched for the source of her fear.

There was a shape above her, hiding beneath a twisted pine on a craggy ledge. It was not moving. It was large and white of skin, much like the wyrmlings that the crow sometimes saw marching along the ridge in the predawn. But it was ill-shaped, and though it had sockets for eyes, she saw nothing in its eye holes but empty shadows.

Suddenly the bloated figure dropped, its ugly white skin deflating, like a bubble in the water that has popped. In that instant, a shadow blurred toward her, and the crow recognized the source of her fear. . . .

Crull-maldor lunged from the shadows, abandoning her cloak of glory, her malevolent spirit but a darker shade among the morning shadows, and she seized the crow. She did not grab it with physical hands, did not rend it with teeth or fingers. Instead, she took it with her mind and her will, forcing her spirit into the tiny shell of its body, grasping hold of its consciousness.

Almost, Crull-maldor could imagine the voice of her ancient master Yultonkin warning, “Do not be too eager to seize the mind of a bird, for birds are prey to many, to the hawk and coyote, the bobcat and the mink, and if you should die while your two minds are joined, you may never be able to return to your flesh.”

So once she had seized control of the bird’s mind, Crull-maldor blinked, peering about for signs of danger, looking out from the eyes of the crow.

The world was distorted. The crow’s eyes were set upon the side of its head, and so it had a vast field of vision, and it could focus with only one eye at a time. The crow saw a wider spectrum of colors than Crull-maldor could with her own eyes. The crow saw the blacks and whites and reds that a wyrmling can see, but it also saw greens and blues and yellows, and everything had a crystalline clarity that Crull-maldor envied.

So Crull-maldor scanned for danger.

The beach was a wasteland, rocky and uninviting. A few huge walruses could be seen in the distance, surfing in upon some waves to spend the day swatting at sand flies on the beach. But there was little else. Few gulls. No hawks or foxes.

The lich had little to fear in the way of predators, she knew. The powerful spells that let her cling to life allowed her to exist only by siphoning off spiritual energy from creatures around her, and as she drew off that energy, the plants and animals around her weakened and succumbed. Most of the Northern Wastes were barren of life not because they were infertile, but because the presence of her kind drew so much from the land. There were no fine trees here anymore, and fewer herds of caribou and musk oxen than there had once been. Crull-maldor and her disciples had sucked the life from such creatures long ago. Now the lifeless land left her weak. Nearly all that survived within fifty miles of here was a few tenacious gorse bushes, insects, and the larger creatures that haunted the beaches.

Now comfortable, Crull-maldor gobbled the tender yellow innards of the cockle in one swallow. It tasted of sand and shell and salt. The savor was not altogether pleasing, but she would need sustenance this day.

The carrion crow leapt into the air, then flew up into the pines. Crull-maldor loved the sense of freedom that came with flying.

The bird was eager to return to its nest, regurgitate the cockle into the mouth of her babes. But Crull-maldor wrestled for control, forbidding it.

It was a struggle, a constant struggle, to take control of living things. Even after a hundred and eighty-two years of practicing the skill, Crull-maldor found her hold upon this beast to be tenuous.

Yet she held on to the crow with her mind. Seizing it with claw and talons would not have been half so cruel, for the crow ached to return to its nest.

As the sun rose, a luminous pearl climbing up from the sea, the carrion crow found itself leaping into the air, and flying out over the waters to the south.

Crull-maldor dominated the crow completely now, and peered out through its eyes, scanning the distant horizon for ships.

All that she saw were a few large wyrmling fishing vessels, their square sails the color of blood.

The crow would tire and falter long before it reached the distant shore, some two hundred miles south, Crull-maldor knew. When it did, Crull-maldor would let it fall and drown. Until then, she felt the exhilaration of flight. . . .

Such was her lot, day after endless day. There is a price to be paid for working in the service of evil, and the lich lord Crull-maldor was paying it. She was too powerful in the ways of magic for others to kill. Indeed, she had mastered dark magics known to no one else. Thus, she held the exalted position of Grand Wizard of the Wyrmling Hordes, and was far too dangerous for her political rivals to want around. So one hundred and eighty-seven years ago, the emperor Zul-torac had “promoted” her, sending her to lead the garrison at the wyrmling fortress in the Great Wastes of the North.

As such, it was her duty to protect this land from intrusion, to keep the humans from ever returning. Her armies occupied the wastes, and it was her job to feed and clothe them. Thus, her hunting parties scoured the lands in the far north hunting for caribou, seals, and great white bears. Her fishermen plied the coastal waters, taking the great serpentine leviathans that chased schools of fish to the north each summer.

She also commanded scores of miners and workers: smiths to forge weapons, armorers to carve mail from the bones of world wyrms, sorcerers to manufacture goods that could be used as tribute to the empire— cloaks of glory that would let a lich walk in the sun, artificial wings, and wight wombs to shelter and nourish the spirits of the newly dead.

But though Crull-maldor was Lord of the Northern Wastes, and thus had an exalted title and rank, hers was an appointment that would take her nowhere. She had no opportunity for advancement, no hopes of ever returning to the great fortress at Rugassa. Serving well at her post would earn her no reward. She had been disposed of utterly, and forgotten.

In more ways than one, she was the living dead.

Yet always there was the hope that the emperor Zul-torac would fall from grace, and that the great Creator—Despair—would need someone to replace him. Crull-maldor knew that it would happen eventually, and in that moment, if all went well, Despair would remember Crull-maldor’s name. It was only a matter of time, but Crull-maldor lived in hopes of that moment.

Thus, she did her master’s bidding.

By night the wyrmlings of her garrison would usher out into the wastes, keeping watch over the ocean shores lest a cohort of humans try to settle. Theirs was a futile watch, for it had been fifty-eight years since a human had been seen.

By day, while her wyrmlings toiled, Crull-maldor kept her own watch.

She climbed higher into the air. The seas were glassy calm for as far as the crow’s sharp eyes could perceive.

Killer whales were spouting as they herded a school of salmon along, and a few gulls rode the calm waters. Crull-maldor spotted a young leviathan undulating over the waves. Nothing else moved.

There were no humans riding on the waters.

But the lich had more than one reason for riding this crow. Crull-maldor was seeking to extend her skills, to learn to ride in the minds of creatures perfectly.

She wanted to learn not only to control others, but to avoid detection while doing it.

In par tic u lar, some who were strong in arcane powers would be able to detect her presence. Her ancient nemesis, the emperor, was always wary, always watching.

Someday, she thought, I will ride a crow into the southern lands, and there I will spy upon my enemies.

Each day she risked it. Each day she grew in skill. Yet each day she was rebuffed.

So now she blanked out her mind, seeking to hide her thoughts, her intent, and concentrated simply on the mechanics of flight: flapping the crow’s wings, breathing steadily, ignoring hunger and thirst.

More than an hour into the flight Crull-maldor was attacked.

For those who had the ears to hear, a high-pitched growl of warning, like the snarl of a jaguar, sounded in alarm in the spirit world. At the cry, thousands of other voices rose up, iterating the same warning, as an army of liches went on the defensive. The emperor’s minions struck out blindly, sending thousands of spirit darts that rose up from the southern horizon, each a fiery nimbus that streaked through the sky like ball lightning, hissing and crackling, each discernible only to the eyes of Crull-maldor’s spirit.

One dart struck, and the crow’s wings cramped. Dazed by the attack, the bird fainted. As the crow plummeted toward the sea, Crull-maldor fought for control, flapping furiously.

Distantly, Crull-maldor heard Zul-torac’s simpering laugh. The emperor never tired of his petty games.

The emperor was jealous of Crull-maldor’s powers, her ability to “ride” others, to project her thoughts into the minds of lesser creatures. He was also afraid of her.

Each day, Crull-maldor tested his strength—as she ranged farther and farther across the waters. Each day, she drew a little closer before one of his spies discovered her.

Crull-maldor fought to still the crow’s wings, let them catch the air. She soared for a moment as she strengthened her tenuous hold upon the bird.

“Be gone, little Crow Rider,” the emperor whispered to Crull-maldor’s spirit. “Go find yourself a statue to defecate on. You may never return. You may never again lay your eyes upon the mainland.”

“Every man’s days are numbered, my emperor,” Crull-maldor shot back, “even yours. Especially yours!”

The wind was wet and heavy under the crow’s wings, making flight a labor. The bird regained consciousness, and began to flap with difficulty as Crull-maldor gave it its head.

The lich waited to hear more of her old enemy’s banter. Perhaps he would send another hail of spirit missiles, hoping to strike down her mount, hoping that the crow would drown while Crull-maldor’s spirit was still harnessed to the beast. But there was an unaccustomed silence.

Suddenly the crow spotted something in the heavens: a bright light, like a new moon glowing above.

Crull-maldor wondered if it was some new form of attack, and the crow slowed on the wing, cocked its head to the left to peer upward, and soared for a moment.

The orb grew in brilliance and expanded as it rushed toward the earth. The crow’s heart beat wildly, and Crull-maldor loosed her hold enough to let the crow wheel and head inland.

In seconds the orb filled the heavens, and Crull-maldor gazed up in wonder.

She saw a world falling toward her, vast and beautiful. Brilliant white clouds swirled over a cerulean sea. There was a vast red continent—a desert, she suspected, and white-capped mountains. Still the world plummeted toward her, growing in her field of view.

It’s like a falling star, Crull-maldor thought, one that will crush the whole world! What a beautiful way to die.

She spotted rivers running like veins of silver through greenest jade, and saw vast forests of emerald and jasper.

Then the world struck, and tumult filled the skies.

The crow cawed and flapped wildly, its heart pounding, but there was no physical blow, no massive assault of rock hurtling down from the heavens.

Instead, Crull-maldor felt energy sizzling through her as bolts of static lightning suddenly roared through the heavens. Atoms fell in a cold drizzle, pounding through her head and back, as if to force the crow down into a watery grave. Eerie lights blazed in the heavens, pinwheels of white fire, and a mist exploded up from the sea.

Then the new world stopped falling, and every atom locked into place.

Something slammed into the crow, a shock more mental than physical, and it began dropping toward the water. The pain of the blow fogged Crull-maldor’s eyes, and for a moment she fought to see. Crull-maldor seized control of the small animal, steadied its wings, and went into a blind glide.

Then it seemed as if a film fell away from her vision, and a new world was revealed: ships plied the waters below her, fishing vessels bobbing on the sea as fishermen threw their nets, schooners racing south with sails full of wind. Even from a distance, Crull-maldor recognized the forms of humans.

Dozens of vessels spread out along the coast in every direction, and off to her left a city sprawled along the arms of a bay. Where once there had been nothing but rocks and scree scattered over the barrens, now there were vast fields and forests in the distance.

Crull-maldor fought down mounting excitement.

Somehow two worlds had collided. She’d seen a world falling from the heavens. In an instant everything had changed in ways she’d never imagined.

The barrens were now filled with people, with life—life that would sustain her, make her strong. To her right, she spotted more cities all along the coast. The humans were vast in number. She guessed that hundreds of thousands now lived in the Northern Wastes. Maybe millions, she realized.

Yet as wondrous as this all seemed, as she flew along Crull-maldor had a second insight: all morning long she had been struggling to retain control of her crow. Now, she flew steadily, strongly, and hardly even noticed the crow’s struggle to escape her grasp.

I have greater power in this new world, Crull-maldor realized.

Crull-maldor could not yet guess what had wrought such a mighty change, but she planned to find out.

She turned the crow, went riding on the morning thermals toward her fortress to the north. She would need to consult the elders in the City of the Dead.

3 Rain in the Darkness

Rain turned into iron that day. While some in her family seemed content to just sit and wallow in despair, Rain vowed to survive this disaster. So she went to work.

She helped carry her aunt Della up the ridge before the flood took the Hacker River Valley; then she spent the rest of the morning doing what she could to make the children comfortable.

First she found some shelter beneath an exposed cliff near a streamlet where the grass was thick enough for a bed. She helped lay the family’s blankets on the wet ground, and then tried to start a fire.

This turned out to be no easy task, for kelp and coral mingled among plants on the ground and seawater had soaked everything. So Rain took some of the children to find dead branches in a ravine up among the red rock, but found more sea urchins and brightly colored anemones than good dry wood.

Still, she pulled off the bark from some sticks, exposing the dry pith. Soon a wan blaze sputtered in the open air.

In no time at all the children ran about and began to gather food. They found lobsters and eels lying on the ground, with octopuses and halibut—rare treasures from the sea.

These they cooked above the fire, making the biggest feast that Rain could recall having eaten in many years.

With his belly filled, her father Owen went out to explore. Like everyone else, he felt strangely exhausted, and walked with less energy than a man twice his age.

Something has happened to us, Rain thought. Some sort of wizardry has sapped our vitality.

Rain felt so weary that she feared that if she stopped moving, she might just lie down and die. They all felt so.

Rain’s aunt Della said it best when she woke from her faint. Rain asked, “How do you feel?”

Rain’s mother Greta had offered, “It’s okay to say it. You feel like cow shit. We all feel that way.”

But Della, never one to be outdone, countered, “No, I feel like cow shit that’s been trampled on by the rest of the herd.”

Then she just lay in the shadows, the sweet grass for her bed, and asked, “What happened?”

Rain delighted in saying, “Nothing much. Half of Landesfallen has sunk into the sea, flooding everything, and we managed to drag your lazy carcass up the cliff. I was sure that you were faking, just trying to get out of work. Oh, and for some reason, there are starfish and crabs and kelp growing everywhere, and Sir Borenson turned into a giant eight feet tall— with horns.”

Della propped herself up on an elbow and peered around, looking at the growths of coral clinging to the rocks above her. The Borenson family sat in a little knot, about a hundred yards away, hovering around Erin.

“Is that girl dead?” Della asked.

Rain nodded, and a look of dread crossed Della’s face. She hadn’t asked about her own children. “Did any of ours . . . ?”

“No,” Greta answered, “thank the Powers.”

Della began asking questions, the same questions that everyone else had. What happened? How could this happen? What shall we do?

Rain had no answers. The flood could be explained easily enough by an earthquake. But the change to Sir Borenson? The strange tornadoes of light?

Her mind revolted from wondering or worrying about it.

Instead she watched the Borensons, her heart aching for them. She longed to go to Draken, put her arms around him and comfort him. But she dared not do it in front of his father and mother, particularly that father, now that he had changed into something . . . monstrous.

Her face reddened, and she looked away.

She couldn’t look at Borenson without feeling guilty. He’d said that they’d stolen cherries, and it was true. The children in her family had gone out in the early mornings, rampaging through the trees, filling their bellies.

The Walkins had done their best to hide it even from Draken. Rain had begged her parents to make her brothers and sisters stop, but Rain’s father had downplayed the deed, saying that the children’s need for food outweighed Borenson’s rights as a landowner.

At least Rain had been able to keep the children out of the Borenson’s garden, though the neighbors’ gardens hadn’t fared as well.

We are thieves, she thought. Borenson was right. But me and my family will be thieves no more.

Today, making such a vow was easy, she knew. There was no one to steal from, nothing to take.

But winter was coming, and her family would be forced to find shelter somewhere upriver, in a town. Hard times would surely follow. What would they do then?

When Owen Walkin came back from his little scouting trip, the only report that he could muster was “There’s a whole lot of fish and whatnot on the other side of the hill.”

He knelt on the ground. His face looked gray and weathered in the morning sun, and his eyes were dazed. “What do you figure happened?” he asked no one in par tic u lar, as if perhaps the Walkin clan had somehow managed to answer the riddle in his absence. “I mean, I mean nothing adds right. The great wave could be explained, but . . . the fish on dry ground . . . and what happened to Draken’s dad?”

He was still in shock.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll figure everything out.”

Owen put his head in his hands, shook it. He peered up at his brothers and his sons. “I’ve been thinking. Everyone down in Sweetgrass got washed away. Everyone in the whole valley got washed away. . . .”

“Yes?” his brother said.

“They should be floating to the surface soon,” Owen said meaningfully. Then he added, “We should be the first to the harvest. . . .”

The idea sickened Rain. She wasn’t a grave robber. She’d been raised as a proper lady of the court. Ever since Warlord Grunswallen had Rain as his bed servant, her family’s estate had been falling endlessly.

Her father and his brothers had waylaid Grunswallen in the streets, leaving him in a bloody heap.

The whole family had fled their homes that day, taking what riches they could. Three months of travel got them out of the country. The family hadn’t had enough gold to buy passage to Landesfallen, but her father had come up with it somehow.

Rain dared not ask where he’d stolen the money. Hopefully, no one had died for it.

Petty theft had become a way of life; all of the younger children in the clan were doing it. But robbing from the dead?

What I was, she thought, I am no more. And I do not like what I am becoming.

Rain felt unclean, and remaining in her father’s presence made her feel even filthier. She got up and walked over to the Borenson family.

She felt like a traitor by doing so, as if she was switching camps.

When she reached the Borensons, she stopped for an instant and hugged Draken, wrapping one arm around his back and giving him a squeeze. She dared not show more affection openly.

The giant, Sir Borenson, stood talking softly, his voice a deep rumble, like distant thunder. She peered up at him, at the nubs of horns above his temples. He hardly looked human.

If anyone can understand how people can change, Rain thought, he should be able to.

Draken’s mother Myrrima smiled at her. “So,” she said, as if some mystery had been solved at long last, “you’re the reason that Draken has taken up ‘hunting’ so suddenly. I thought that there might be more to it than a taste for burrow bear.”

“Yes, milady,” Rain said, giving a small curtsy. She was a proper lady of the court after all.

“No need to curtsy here,” Myrrima said. “My husband is a baron over nothing in Landesfallen.”

The family was standing in a cluster, though they had moved a few paces away from Erin’s body. No one spoke for a long moment. Instead, they stood with heads hanging, deep in thought, and Rain realized that she had broken in on a family council.

She waited for someone to ask her the inevitable question “What do you think happened?,” but no one did.

“Okay then,” Sir Borenson said. “Now that we’re settled, I’ll head inland to search for survivors, and Draken can go seaward.” He did not say it, but Myrrima would obviously stay here with their daughters.

“How long will you be gone?” Myrrima asked.

“As long as it takes,” Borenson said. “If we find anyone who is hurt or in need, we’ll take care of them as best that we can. But it might be a while before we can make it back to camp.”

Myrrima listened to his words, worry evident in the creases on her face. “I’ll keep a fire going.”

Rain felt glad to hear of their quest. She cringed at the thought that some poor child, cold and broken, might be washed up along the shore. With the fury of the flood, it seemed a vain hope that anyone might have escaped, but it was a hope that she had to cling to.

The group broke as Sir Borenson and his wife went off to speak in private. Rain took that moment to stop and hold Draken’s hand. She stood gazing into his dark eyes.

“My father will be heading toward the coast, too,” she said, realizing that she would have to warn her father, let him know that he should couch his pilfering from the dead as a rescue mission.

“I’ll be glad for the company,” Draken said.

For nearly two hours now her clan had left Draken’s family alone, giving them time and space to grieve for little Erin. Rain had been reticent to get close.

She almost asked Draken, “What do you think happened?” But the words died on her tongue. Her head was hurting from wondering so much, and she knew that he couldn’t possibly have an answer. Indeed, at any moment, she expected him to ask the question.

But he never did. He merely stood, gazing into her eyes.

Suddenly she understood. “You know what happened! You know why there are fish on dry ground!”

He squeezed her hands, looked toward her family. “I have a guess. . . .”

“What is it?” she demanded.

“I can’t say. I am honor-bound not to speak of it. Someday, when we’re married, perhaps. . . .”

Rain understood secrets. Draken had his secrets, she had hers.

“When we’re man and wife,” she said, “I want no secrets between us.”

She clung to his hand as if she were drowning. She knew that she’d have to reveal her own secrets to him someday. How could she tell him what Warlord Grunswallen had forced her to do?

Draken nodded. Rain glanced back toward her father’s camp; her father, Owen, rose from a crouch, along with his brother Colm.

She excused herself from Draken’s presence and warned her father of the Borensons’ intentions.

Moments later, Sir Borenson and most of the other men set out from camp, splitting off in two directions. For long minutes Rain stood watching Draken as he trundled away.

I’ll wait for him, she thought. I’ll make my bed near the Borensons, so that I’ll awaken when he returns.

Late that night Sir Borenson came stumbling in to camp, closer to dawn than to midnight. Myrrima had been awake all night, thinking about the implications of the great change that had occurred.

Her husband had told her little before he hurried off on his rescue mission. He’d told her how he had merged with another man in the binding of the worlds, but he had cut the conversation short when Rain entered their camp.

So when he returned that night she asked, “Why don’t you tell me what you are afraid to say in front of the others?” Myrrima studied his face by starlight, waiting for an answer, but the giant only hesitated, searching for the right words.

The night was comfortless. Stars glimmered cold and dim through a strange misty haze. All afternoon, Myrrima had preened Erin’s body for burial—washing her face, primping her clothes, braiding her hair in corn rows. It was the custom back in her homeland in Heredon to stay up at night with the newly dead, for their spirits often hovered nearby on that first few nights, and one could hope for one last glimpse during the long vigils, one last chance to say good-bye.

Borenson had been gone for hours, scrabbling along the shore, calling for survivors. When he’d walked into camp, he reported, “Mill Creek is gone, washed away.” His voice was hoarse from overuse, from calling out.

He sat beside her little fire, his head hanging, gazing into the ash-covered embers, their dull red light too dim to reach his face.

Myrrima had anticipated that the town would be gone, but she suspected that her husband was weighed down by some greater worry. He had secrets, and she knew from the way that he got up and began to pace that he was fighting to find the right words to tell her.

Myrrima had knelt all evening with Sage, and together they wept. They’d mourned Erin and all of the friends and neighbors that they had known. They’d considered their lot and mourned for themselves.

She worried for her oldest daughter, Talon, who was off in Mystarria, and for Fallion, Jaz, and Rhianna—whom she loved as much as if they were her own offspring. The suspicion that she had lost Talon and the others was growing minute by minute.

I lost more than a child today, Myrrima knew. She dared not say it yet, but she feared that she had lost a husband.

Oh, when she looked at the giant, she imagined that she could see the old Borenson. His features were there, somehow hidden in all of that mass of flesh, the way that one can sometimes look at a knot of wood on a tree and imagine seeing a half-hidden face in it.

But she estimated him to be over seven and a half feet tall now, and he could not weigh less than four hundred and fifty pounds.

She could never be intimate with such a monster, not like a husband and wife should be. They could never be tender or close.

She suspected that Borenson had something to tell her, something that would cause her more grief, so Myrrima asked the question that was most upon her mind. “Why don’t you tell me what you were afraid to say in front of the others?”

“Where do you want me to start?” Borenson begged, shrugging. It was a peculiar gesture, one that he used to signify that he would hold nothing back.

“Start with your life on that shadow world,” Myrrima said. “You had a family, a wife, I suppose?”

“Her name is Gatunyea,” Borenson said in that deep voice. It was as if a bull were trying to approximate human speech. “We lived in what you would call Rofehavan, in the north of Mystarria, in a city called Luciare. She bore me two fine sons, Arad and Destonarry, and I have a daughter close to Talon’s age named Tholna.”

Myrrima sighed. There was so much that she didn’t understand. If two men had merged into one, why did he appear here and not in Mystarria, or somewhere between the two lands? “I see. . . . Do you think that they are still alive?”

“I’m alive,” he said. It was all the argument he could give. “You’re alive. Our children survived. Things have changed in the binding, but I suspect that my . . . other family is still out there.”

Now Myrrima spoke the hardest words that had ever come from her mouth. “You need to go to them. You’ll need to find out if this wife of yours survived. If she is alive, she and the children will be beside themselves. You must reassure them.”

They both knew what Myrrima was really saying. He was a giant now, and he was no longer suited to be her husband. There was a chance that he still had a wife out there. It only made sense that he go to her.

“Myrrima,” Borenson said with infinite sadness.

“We both know the truth,” Myrrima said, struggling to be strong, to hide even a hint of the loss she felt. “You have changed in the binding. Though I’ll love you forever, some things are impossible.”

She could not make love to such a man.

“You know me,” Borenson said. “I may look like a monster on the outside, but I am the same man who has slept at your side these past twenty years. My love for you—”

“You have another woman, one who must be sick with grief. Your children must be wondering where you are. . . .”

Borenson hung his head, reached out and stroked her cheek with one finger.

He would have to sail back to Rofehavan, she knew. But that was easier said than done. They had no boat. Perhaps they could buy passage on a ship, but they had nothing to buy passage with. Their only shelter for the night was a bed of ferns at the base of a cliff.

A great feast they’d made in the mid afternoon, but by morning all of the sea life would be going to rot.

Myrrima had to wonder how they’d survive the coming week, much less make it back to Rofehavan.

She didn’t even want to think about going back.

Myrrima had always felt so strong, but something was wrong. Her muscles ached as if from fatigue, a weariness that made her fear sleeping, lest she never wake again. To stand or move took immense effort. The numbing weariness wasn’t just upon her, but upon her children and the Walkins, too—seemingly everyone but Borenson.

“It could be months or years before I make it back to Rofehavan,” Borenson confirmed. “All of Garion’s Port is drowned. A ship might come in time, but even if it does, I may not be able to buy passage. . . .” He took a deep breath, as if to broach a topic that he dared not discuss, and then released it again, his head shaking from side to side.

All of his old mannerisms are there, Myrrima realized. It is as if my husband is wearing different flesh.

“Say what is on your mind,” Myrrima begged.

“I want you and the children to come back to Rofehavan with me,” Borenson said. “I dare not leave you here without food or a home—” Myrrima began to object, for even if she wanted to go back to Rofehavan, finding a ship might be impossible.

“Hear me out!” Borenson begged. Myrrima fell silent as he struggled for words.

“I have been thinking,” he said, “for long hours. Not everything is clear to me yet, but much is clear.

“I believe that Fallion bound two worlds together as an experiment, to see what would happen in such an event, and I believe that his experiment failed.

“We could be in grave danger, more danger than you—or Fallion—yet know.

“You wonder why I have joined with my shadow self and you have not? I have an answer: On our former world there were millions and millions of people, strewn all across Rofehavan and Indhopal, Inkarra and Landesfallen. But on the shadow world where I came from, humankind was all but wiped out. There were only forty thousand of us, living in one vast enclave upon a mountain deep within the borders of what you call Mystarria. Our enemies had all but destroyed us.

“I think that you did not join with your shadow self,” Borenson said softly, “because you had no shadow upon that world to join with.”

Dead, Myrrima realized. On that world my shadow self was dead.

It made sense. She felt more dead than alive right now. The strange exhaustion that had come upon her . . .

“On the shadow world,” Borenson continued, “there are creatures called wyrmlings. They are giants, larger than I am. They’re fierce, and they eat human flesh. They’ve hunted mankind nearly to extinction.”

“Are there other creatures from that world that we do not have on ours?” Myrrima asked.

“A few,” Borenson said. “The birds and squirrels are different, as you will see.”

“Are there other monsters besides wyrmlings—things that we should be warned about?”

The giant shook his head no. “The wyrmlings,” Borenson continued, “number in the millions. They hide in great tunnels and warrens beneath the ground by day, and only come out to hunt by night. A large wyrmling stands up to nine feet tall and can weigh seven hundred pounds.”

“So they are like the arr, or like sea apes?” Myrrima asked. The arr was a race of giants that had once lived in the mountains throughout Rofehavan. They were like apes in form, but much larger.

“They look more like men,” Borenson said. “Legend says that they once were men, but they began to breed themselves for size and strength, just as my people do. In time they changed.”

Myrrima shook her head. “How can that be?”

“Are not the beagle and the mastiff both brothers to the wolf?” Borenson asked. “Do not the pony and the war horse both come from the same stock? It is the same with people. Some say that humans and wyrmlings share common ancestors, but I do not believe it. When you see one, you will know. They have no love or compassion. All that is in them is fierceness and hunger.

“They live for one reason, hoping for only one reward,” Borenson said, and he paused for a moment, as if unsure is he should speak more, “they hope that their evil deeds will be great enough so that a locus may feed upon their souls.”

Myrrima gasped. A locus was a parasite, a being that fed upon men’s spirits. Once it attached to a human host, it controlled him. It rode him the way that a man rides a horse, turning him this way and that. A man who had lost his soul to a locus became a crazed thing, ruthless and vile.

“They want this?” Myrrima asked. It was a horror beyond imagination.

Borenson frowned, as if searching for the right words. “They have been trained to want it, for generation after generation. They are taught to believe that the soul of a man dies shortly after the death of the body, and that his spirit is like a mist that fades and dissipates. They have been taught to believe that only a locus is immortal, and if it feeds upon them, consumes their spirit, it will live on.”

Borenson paused. A star shot overhead, and in the distance out among the rocks a herd of rangits suddenly began to bound away, startled by some noise, thumping as their huge bodies landed upon the compact ground. Cicadas were buzzing up among the trees. Myrrima wondered where Draken was, when he would return. The night was half gone, and dawn was mere hours away. She hunched up a little, hugging herself for warmth. It was a summer night, but dampness made it feel cool.

She sniffed. The Walkins’ fire just up the trail had gone out, leaving only the scent of ash. The night flowers of a nearby bush had opened so that the shadows under a ledge were filled with a wonder: white petals like wild peas that glowed with their own inner light; the shadows were filled with numinous stars.

A great uneasiness began to assail Myrrima. If what Borenson said was true, then a new horror had arisen in Rofehavan, something so monstrous that it boggled the mind.

She could not quite fathom it. She could not imagine people engaging in a breeding program that spanned generations. The mind revolted at the thought. One could not help whom one fell in love with. Her son was proof of that. Draken was hardly more than a boy, but he had found this girl Rain, and he wanted to marry her. He seemed totally devoted to her.

She tried to adjust her thinking, and the dangers presented by the wyrmlings seemed clear.

Yet Borenson spoke of returning to Rofehavan, and of taking her family back there.

“You want to go and fight!” she said.

The giant set his jaw, the way her husband used to do when he was determined upon some course. “I have to go back and fight—and you must come with me!”

Myrrima wanted to argue against his plan. She’d fought in wars before. She’d fought Raj Ahten’s armies, and had slain reavers in battle. She was the one who had slain a Darkling Glory at Castle Sylvarresta.

Sir Borenson had been a mighty warrior, as had she. But they’d both lost their endowments long ago.

“No,” she said. “We’re too old for another war. You once told me yourself that you would never fight again.”

“We don’t always join the battle,” Borenson said. “Sometimes the battle joins us.”

“We don’t even know that the wyrmlings are alive,” Myrrima objected.

“You have sea anemones on the rocks above your head and crabs walking on dry ground,” Borenson said. “How can you doubt that other creatures from my world—the wyrmlings—survived?”

A new realization struck Myrrima. “You think that the wyrmlings will come here?”

“Eventually,” Borenson said. “They will come. Right now, it’s nighttime. The wyrmlings’ home is spread across the hills near Mystarria’s old border with Longmot, while fortresses dot the land. The wyrmlings have come out of their lairs for the night—and discovered a new wonder: humans, small folk the size of you and Sage. What do you think those monsters will do with them?”

The very notion struck Myrrima with horror. Yes, she sympathized with the plight of her people. But she also recognized that there was no saving those folks to night. What ever happened to them would happen. It would take months for them to travel Rofehavan, even if she decided to go.

Every instinct warned against it. She was a mother now, with children to protect.

“I can only hope that the folk of Mystarria will band together, form some sort of resistance.”

“They might,” Borenson said. “But I don’t know if they stand a chance against the wyrmlings. You see: The magics of the shadow world worked differently from ours. The wyrmling lords are not . . . entirely alive. The wyrmling lords are wights. Their lord, the Dread Emperor Zul-torac, is no more substantial than a mist.”

Myrrima wondered at this. If wyrmlings were ruled by wraiths . . .

“We had no magic to fight them,” Borenson said. “The wraiths flee from the sun and the wyrmlings make their home in lightless holes; our men feared to seek out their lairs, for even if by the power of our arms we could hope to win against the wyrmling hordes, we could not fight their dark masters.”

“Couldn’t you cast enchantments upon your weapons?”

“There are no water wizards in their world,” Borenson said. “With cold steel we might be able to wound a wight, but that was the best that we could hope for, and even in wounding one, we would most likely lose our own lives.”

“I see,” Myrrima said. She was a wizardess, Water’s Warrior.

“We can hike from here down to Garion’s Port,” Borenson said. “There are lots of traders plying the waters this time of summer. One will find us.”

“Perhaps,” Myrrima said, “but where will they land? Garion’s Port is submerged. All of the landmarks that showed where it was are underwater.”

“Still, the ships will come,” Borenson said. “With any luck we can hail one, buy passage.”

“We have no money.”

“Look at me,” Borenson said. He lifted her chin, forcing her to behold his might. “I can do the work of four men. You can work, and Draken can too. I suspect that we can buy passage with our sweat. Maybe not on the first ship that passes, but eventually. . . .”

Myrrima wondered. If a ship came from Rofehavan, it would be looking for a port so that it could sell its goods. Its captain would be hoping to take on food and stores, not hire a family of destitute beggars to go limping home after a profitless voyage.

Still, Borenson voiced his hopes. “This flood may have wrecked the coasts, but ships that were on the high seas will still be intact. With any luck, we can reach Mystarria before the winter storms.”

“Two months, or three, with any luck,” Myrrima agreed. “It might take that long to hail a passing ship. We’ll have to hope that some captain will have mercy on us.”

“I did not say that the trip would be easy,” Borenson agreed, “but staying here would be no easier. We have no crops, no land, no seeds or implements to till the ground. Summer is half over. We’ll be eating wild rangit for the winter, you’ll be sewing clothes from burrow-bear skins, using nothing more than a sharp bone for a needle.

“At least if we reach Rofehavan, we can hope to find a port somewhere. We can live like civilized folk.”

Myrrima didn’t like feeling cornered. She wanted to make a rational choice, not get bullied into some fool-headed course. “Even if we make it,” Myrrima said, “what do you hope to find? If what you say is true, then all of Rofehavan will be overrun. Here we may struggle to eat, but at least we won’t have to fight hordes of wyrmlings. Our folk haven’t the strength to fight such monsters, not without blood metal.”

Blood metal was forged to make forcibles, the magical branding irons that Myrrima’s people used to transfer attributes—brawn, grace, speed. Each branding iron had a rune forged upon it that controlled the attribute it could harness. As a vassal was branded, the forcible drew out the desired attribute, so that when the iron next touched a lord, the lord would gain the vassal’s power. The spell lasted so long as both of them remained alive, and the forcible was destroyed in the process.

Thus a lord who had taken endowments from his vassals became more than a man, for he might have the strength of ten men, the speed of five, the intelligence of three, the sight of five, and so on. Using such implements, Sir Borenson had become one of the greatest warriors of his generation.

But the blood-metal mines in Kartish had played out ten years back. There were no runelords of great stature anymore.

“Oh, there will be plenty of blood metal,” Borenson assured Myrrima. “Upon the shadow world, folk had no use for it. Rune magic as we use it was unknown. But there is a large hill near Caer Luciare, a hill riddled with blood metal. And if there is one hill, there may be others.

“Let us hope that the folk of Rofehavan will put the metal to good use— that by the time we reach those green shores, the wyrmlings are subdued.”

Myrrima’s mouth dropped. It seemed to her that the world could not get more twisted, more turned upside down.

She saw clearly now why he wanted her to return to Mystarria: to fight a great war.

Home, she thought. There is land aplenty back in Mystarria. All we have to do is take it back from the monsters.

“I’ll come,” Myrrima said, though she could not help but worry.

Borenson said softly, “Good, I would appreciate it if you would tell the children and the Walkins of our plan. They might take the news better from you.”

“All right,” Myrrima said. But she couldn’t just leave it at that. “You need to understand: I will enchant weapons for you, but I will not let you take my children into war.”

Borenson said, “Draken is old enough to make up his own mind. Unless I miss my guess, I can’t talk him out of marrying that slip of a girl, and if he so chooses, you won’t be able to stop him from going to war.”

He was right, of course. She couldn’t stop Draken, and she wouldn’t stop her husband.

Borenson peered to the west, filled with nervous energy, as if eager to be on his way across the ocean. He looked off into the distance, where the shadows of trees and brush melded with the shadows of red-rock. “I wonder what is keeping Draken?”

“Fatigue,” Myrrima guessed. “We’re all so tired. I suspect that they wandered as far as they could, and decided to settle for the night.”

“I’d better go and find him,” Borenson said, “make sure that he’s okay.”

“In the dark?”

“I’ve hunted by starlight all of my life,” Borenson said. “Or at least Aaath Ulber has. I can no longer sleep by night: that’s when the wyrmlings come out.”

In a moment he was off, trundling along a winding trail that dipped and rose. The trail was made by game, mostly—wild rangits and hunting cats. But men used it from time to time, too. Several times a week she had seen horse men up here. During the rainy season, the ridge trail wasn’t as muddy as the old river road.

So she watched him trudge away, a lumpy malformed monstrosity fading into the darkness.

I’ll follow him to Mystarria, she thought, but if I have my way, I won’t be going to fight any wyrmling horde. I’ll go to win my husband back. I’ll go to find Fallion and plead with him to unbind the worlds.

Rain lay in the deep grass beneath the shadows of the cliff, as silent as the boulders around her. She’d heard Borenson trudging home in the dark, tramping through the dry leaves that she’d swept onto the trail.

She didn’t understand everything that the giant had said, but she understood enough. The Borensons would be going away.

Rain chewed her lip, thought about her own family. Her father had killed men for her benefit. He’d stolen and lied to bring her family here, where they might have some hope of living in peace and safety.

She tried to imagine what it would be like to sail back to Mystarria with the Borensons, and she couldn’t envision it. It would be a betrayal to her father, to people who had sacrificed everything for her honor.

There is only one thing to do, she decided. I’ll have to convince Draken to stay here, with me.

After Borenson left, Myrrima tried to sleep. There was a patch of sandy ground among the rocks, where a little sweet clover grew. Myrrima had gathered a few ferns and laid the leaves out as a cushion. That was all that the family had for a bed, and she huddled with Sage for warmth, their bodies spooned together. The child felt so cold.

Today was supposed to be the High Summer Festival, and because it was high summer, Myrrima didn’t feel much need for a blanket. Yet sleep failed her.

The Walkins were all spread out in a separate camp, perhaps a hundred yards up the trail. While their fire died, Myrrima lay like a dazed bird, her mind racing from all that Borenson had told her.

While she rested there, eyes hardly blinking, she saw a girl tiptoeing down the trail, making not a sound. A mouse would have been hard-pressed to walk as quietly.

Rain is coming to see Draken, Myrrima thought. She can’t bear to leave him alone.

Somehow, the realization gladdened her. Draken had lost so much already, Myrrima hoped that he would find a lasting love.

A cool wind blew over her, and Myrrima felt a sudden chill. It was cold, so cold.

Just as quickly, she realized that it wasn’t the wind. The cold seemed to be inside her—reaching down to the bone. And the young woman coming toward her made too little sound. She was leaping over rocks, marching through deep grass and dry leaves.

Myrrima recognized the young woman now. It was Erin. It was the shade of her daughter, glowing softly, as if with some inner light. Yet her form was translucent.

Myrrima pushed herself up in a sitting position, heart racing. To be touched by a shade might mean her death. Myrrima’s every instinct was to run.

Yet she longed to see her child one last time.

“Ware the shade!” someone in the Walkin clan hissed in the distance. It was an ancient warning.

Erin came, passing near Myrrima’s bed. Her feet moved as if she was walking, but her body only glided, as if carried on the wind. She was dressed just as she had been in death.

She went past the edge of camp, over to her own still body, and stood for a moment, looking down, regarding it calmly.

Myrrima dared hope that the shade might notice her. Very often, the dead seemed only vaguely aware of the living, so Myrrima didn’t expect much. But a loving glance would have warmed Myrrima’s heart. A smile of recognition would have been a lifelong treasure.

The spirit knelt above her body, reached down a finger, and stroked her own lifeless chin.

Myrrima found tears streaming down her cheeks; she let out a sob, and hurriedly shook Sage, waking her, so that she too might see her sister one last time.

Then Erin turned and peered straight into Myrrima’s eyes. Instantly the child drew close, covering eighty feet in the flutter of a heartbeat, and she did something that no shade on Myrrima’s world had ever done before: Erin spoke, her child’s voice slicing through the air like a rapier. “What are you doing here, Mother? You should go to the tree.”

Myrrima’s throat caught. She was too astonished to speak. But Sage had risen up on one elbow, and she spoke: “What tree?”

Erin looked to Sage. “The Earth King’s tree: one of you should go there before night falls again. Before night falls forever.”

A sob escaped Myrrima’s throat. She longed to touch her daughter. “I love you.”

Erin smiled. “I know. You mustn’t worry. All of the neighbors are here. They’re having a wonderful festival!” She pointed east, up toward Mill Creek.

As if carried on the wind, Myrrima suddenly heard the sounds of the fair: a joyful pandemonium. Minstrels strummed lutes and played the pipes and banged on drums. She heard the young men cheer uproariously as a lance cracked in a joust. There were children screaming with wild glee. In all her life, Myrrima had never heard such sounds of joy.

Then Erin peered at her again, and said, “Go to the Earth King’s tree!”

With that, the shade dissipated like a morning mist burning beneath the sun. Yet though Erin’s form was gone, Myrrima still felt the chill of the netherworld.

Sage climbed to her feet and stood peering off into the east. “Why does she want us to go to the Earth King’s tree?”

Myrrima had no idea. She knew where the tree lay, of course. It was an oak tree—the only one in all of Landesfallen, up on Bald Hill, past the town of Fossil. Legend said that before the Earth King died, he’d traveled the world, seeking out people, putting them under his protective spell.

When he’d reached Bald Hill, he was an old man, failing in health. So he’d used the last of his powers to transform himself into a tree. Thus he stood there still, in the form of an oak, watching over the world.

“He’s coming back!” Sage suddenly exulted as an odd notion took her. “The Earth King is returning!”

Myrrima stood, studied her daughter’s clear face in the starlight, saw wonder in Sage’s eyes.

“He can’t be,” Myrrima said calmly. “Gaborn is dead.”

But Sage was too enamored of the idea. “Not dead,” she said, “transformed. He’s a wizard of wondrous power. Don’t you see? He knew that his life was failing, so he turned himself into a tree, preserving himself, until now—when we need him most! Oh, Mother, don’t you see?”

Myrrima wondered. She was a water wizardess, and often during the changing of the tides, she felt the water’s pull. If she were to give in to it, go down into the river and let herself float out to sea, in time she would grow gills and fins, become an undine. And as the centuries slowly turned, she would lose her human form altogether.

But could she gain her old form back? She had never heard of such thing, never heard of an undine or fish that resumed its human shape.

Gaborn had been the Earth King, the most powerful servant of the earth in all of known history. If he’d had the power to transform himself into a tree, then perhaps he could indeed turn himself back.

“It’s more than twenty miles from here to Bald Hill,” Myrrima said. “I don’t think I have the energy to walk that far in a single day.”

Sage said matter-of-factly, “Father can do it.”

4 The White Ship

Borenson loped for seventeen miles in the darkness before he found Draken. The lad was with Baron Walkin and one of his brothers.

The giant reached them just at the crack of dawn, as the sun rose up in the east as pretty as a rose. Wrens flitted about in the brush beside the water, while borrowbirds whistled their strange ululating calls from the white gum trees.

The three had stopped at a huge bend in the channel where the ruins of a ship had been cast up among the dead trees and bracken. The ship must have been taking on stores at Garion’s Port. The hull was more than breached—the whole ship had cracked in half. The men had begun salvage efforts, pulling a few casks and crates from the water around the wreckage. But when they had grown tired, they had then set camp by the shore.

Borenson found Draken groggily nursing a small fire while Baron Walkin peered out into the water and his brother slept beneath a bit of tarp. Borenson jutted his chin toward the wreck and asked Draken, “What’s the report?”

“The only people that we found were floaters. Other than that, all we really found was this wreck.”

Borenson was saddened to hear that there were no survivors, but he hadn’t expected better news. So his mind turned to more immediate concerns. “Anything of value on it?”

“Not much. There were some casks of ale floating about, and bales of linen. We found a few empty barrels floating high. We got those. As for the ship, we thought that the brass fittings on the masts and whatnot might be of worth. But after our long walk, we grew too tired to try to haul it all home. We thought that we might use the empty barrels and some other flotsam to make a raft, and then pole it upstream with the tide.”

Borenson walked over to Baron Walkin to get a better view of the wreck. Dead fish floated in the still water beside the ship’s hull, their white bellies distended and bloating. After a moment, Borenson recognized that something large and hairy floating against the wreck was a goat.

“Do you think we could use the wood from the ship to make a smaller vessel?” Borenson asked.

Baron Walkin peered up at him curiously. “There’s not enough left of it, even if we had the right tools. Besides, if we did manage to get something floating, where would you sail to?”

“Haven’t decided,” Borenson averred.

“I’m afraid there’s not much here to salvage,” Baron Walkin said. “There are a few more casks floating inside the wreck. If you dive up into it, you can see them, but it’s hard work, and risky, trying to get them out. Broken beams, shifting tides. A man takes his life into his hands every time he dives into that mess.”

“Have you seen any other wrecks?” Borenson asked, “More lumber?”

“About two miles farther on the sea meets the land,” Baron Walkin said. “That’s as far as we got. The whole coast is submerged.”

In his mind’s eye Borenson consulted a map. The Hacker River wound through the hills here, but gently turned. That meant that most of the wreckage from the tidal wave should wash up south of the new beachfront—perhaps only five or six miles to his south.

“You didn’t try searching for Garion’s Port?”

“We were too tired,” Draken said, stepping up beside the two. “The land is pretty rugged. The water just sort of comes in and surrounds the trees, and the rocks are something terrible.”

Borenson bit his lip. Draken looked done-in, too tired to go for a rigorous hike. But Borenson felt optimistic. He’d searched in vain through the night for survivors. The tidal wave had just been too brutal, but he hoped to find a couple more wrecks like this one—perhaps with enough material to patch together a real ship.

“You gents see if you can get those barrels pulled out by noon,” he said. “I’m going to go down the coast a bit to see what I can see. . . .”

Baron Walkin peered up at Borenson, gave him a warning look. “Don’t order me about,” he said. “I’m not your manservant. I’m not even your friend. My title—such as it is—is every bit as vaunted as your own.”

Walkin wasn’t a big man. Years of hard work and little food had robbed the muscle from his frame, and Borenson had a hard time trying to see him as anything more than a starveling. But the baron held himself proudly in the manner of the noble-born.

But nobility was a questionable thing. Sir Borenson had made himself a noble. He had won his title through his own deeds, while Owen Walkin had gained his title by birthright. Such men weren’t always as valiant or upright as their progenitors.

This man believes that I owe him an apology, Borenson realized, and perhaps he should have one. After all, our children do want to marry.

“Forgive me,” Borenson said. “If anything, your title is of more worth than mine, for yours was a prosperous barony, whereas I was made lord of a swamp—one where the midges were as large as sparrows and the mosquitoes often carried off lambs whole.”

Baron Walkin laughed at that, then eyed Borenson for one long moment, as if trying to decide whether Borenson was sincere, and at last stuck out his hand.

They clasped wrists and shook, as befitted lords of Mystarria. “I’ll forgive your insults, if you’ll forgive my children for eating your cherries.”

“I’d say we’re even,” Borenson laughed, and the baron guffawed.

With that, Borenson went striding off.

Draken watched the giant lumber away, and fought down a knot of anger. In the past few weeks, he had gotten to know Baron Walkin well, and he liked him. Walkin was a wise man, hospitable. It was true that the family had fallen on hard times, and Draken pitied the family. But Walkin had a way of looking into a man’s eye and recognizing his mood that seemed almost mystical, and though he had little in the way of worldly goods, he was as generous as he could be.

“What do you think he’s after?” Draken asked as the giant loped away, following an old rangit trail.

“He’s heading for Rofehavan, unless I miss my guess,” Walkin said, then peered at Draken meaningfully. “You’ll be welcome to stay and make your home with us, if you prefer.”

Draken thought for a long moment. He was in love with Rain, that much he knew. In the past six weeks, he hadn’t had a day when he’d gone without seeing her. Already he missed the touch of her skin, and he longed to kiss her.

But he was torn. He had already guessed what had happened. Fallion had bound two worlds. Draken didn’t know what that meant precisely. He didn’t know why his father had changed, but he knew that something was terribly wrong. The binding should not have brought such a mess.

Draken had been trained from childhood to be a soldier. He knew how to keep secrets. And Fallion’s whereabouts and mission were a family secret that he hadn’t even shared with Rain. So he had to go on pretending that he didn’t know what was wrong with their world.

But he was worried for Fallion, and he felt torn between the desire to go to Rofehavan and learn what had happened and to stay here with Rain.

“I don’t know what to do,” Draken admitted.

“Let your heart guide you,” Baron Walkin suggested.

Draken thought for a long minute. “I want to stay with you, then.”

The baron waited and asked, “Why?”

Draken tried to find the right words. “I can’t abide the way my father spoke to Rain. He owes her an apology, but he’ll never offer it. He won’t apologize to a girl. He’s a hard man. All that he ever taught me was how to kill. That’s all that he knows how to do. He knows nothing of kindness, or love.”

“He taught you how to raise crops, didn’t he? How to milk a cow? It seems to me that he taught you more than war.”

Draken just glared.

“You’re being unfair,” the baron said. “You’re angry with him because you think he will try to keep you from the girl you love. That’s natural for a boy your age. You’re getting ready to leave home, start off on your own. When that happens, your mind sometimes plays tricks on you.

“The truth is that your father is raising you the best way that he knows how,” Baron Walkin said. “Your father was a soldier. From all that I’ve heard, he was the best in the realm.”

“He killed over two thousand innocent men, women, and children,” Draken said. “Did you know that?”

“At his king’s command,” Walkin said. “He did it, and he is not proud of it. If you think that he is, you misjudge him.”

“I’m not trying to accuse him,” Draken said, “I’m just saying: A foul deed like that takes its toll on a man. It leaves a stain on his soul. My father knows nothing about gentleness anymore, nothing about mercy or love.

“In the past few months, I’ve begun to realize that about him. I don’t want to be around him, for I fear that I might be forced to become like him.”

Baron Walkin shook his head. “Your father taught you to be a soldier. Every father teaches his son the craft he knows. He is an expert at warfare, and that craft can serve you well.

“But don’t think that your father doesn’t know a thing or two about love. He may be hard on the outside, but there’s kindness in him. You accuse him of killing innocents, and that he did. But killing can be an act of love, too.

“He killed the Dedicates of Raj Ahten, but he did it to serve his king and his people, and to protect the land that he loved.”

Draken glared. “From the time that I was a child—”

“You had to flee Mystarria with assassins on your tail,” the Baron objected. “What loving father wouldn’t teach a child all that he needed to know in order to stay alive?

“And once you were six, you went into the Gwardeen and served your country as a graak rider. You’ve hardly seen your father over the past ten years.

“Take some time to get to know him again,” the baron suggested. “That’s all that I’m saying.”

Draken peered into the baron’s brown eyes. The man’s long hair was getting thin on top, and a wisp of it blew across his leathery face.

“You surprise me,” Draken said. “How can you look past his appearance so easily?”

“Every man has a bit of monster inside him,” Walkin said, flashing a weak grin.

In the distance, Draken could still see the giant loping along, leaping over a fallen tree.

Perhaps the baron is right, Draken thought.

He’d only been home from his service among the Gwardeen for a few months, and the truth was that he’d felt glad of the change. From the time that he was a child, he’d lived his life as a soldier. Now he wanted to rest from it, settle down.

Draken felt so unsure of himself, so uprooted. He wasn’t certain that he had really ever understood his father, and right now, he felt certain that he did not know him at all—not since the binding of the worlds. That hulking brute rushing down the trail, that monster, was not really Sir Borenson.

Of that Draken felt strangely certain.

Borenson’s long legs took him swiftly to the beach two miles inland, where he stood for a moment on a tall promontory and gazed out over the ocean. The waters were dark today, full of red mud and silt. The sun shone on them dully, so that the waves glinted like beaten copper.

But he did not see the ocean, did not focus on the white gulls and cormorants out in the water. Instead he saw a wall. The ocean was a wall.

It’s a low wall, he thought, but it’s thousands of miles across, and I have to find a way over it.

He turned and followed a line of small hills.

As he loped along, he found wildlife aplenty. The rangits were out in force, grazing beneath the shadows of the trees, and as he approached they would leap up and go bounding through the tall grass.

The borrowbirds flashed like snow amid tree branches, their white bellies and wings drawing the eye, while their pink and blue crests gave them just a hint of color. They landed among the wild plum trees at the shaded creeks and squawked and ratcheted as they squabbled over fruit.

Giant dragonflies in shades of crimson, blue, and forest green buzzed about by the tens of thousands, and tiny red day bats that had lived among the stonewoods until yesterday now flitted about in the shadows of the blue gums.

The sun beat down mercilessly, spoiling the dead fish and kelp that lay all about.

So for a long hour Borenson hiked, sometimes struggling to climb rocky outcroppings where perhaps no man had ever set foot, and other times wading between hills in water as quiet as a lagoon.

He’d seen how Draken had turned his back on him there in camp. The boy had been leaning toward Baron Walkin.

They’re getting close, Borenson realized. Draken feels more for him than he does for me.

Borenson felt that he was losing his son.

In his mind, he replayed an incident from yesterday. Rain Walkin had been up, stirring the cooking fire. The other Walkin children had been scurrying about, hunting for any fish or crabs that might be worth scavenging.

Borenson had nodded cordially to the waif Rain, doing his damnedest to smile. But all he had accomplished was a slight opening of the mouth— enough to flash his overlarge canines.

The girl had frowned, looking as if she might cry.

I must have looked like a wolf baring its fangs, Borenson thought.

“Good day, child,” he’d said, trying to sound gentle. But his voice was too much like a growl. Rain had turned away, looking as if she wanted to flee.

Borenson had felt too weary to cater to her feelings.

I’ll have to apologize to that girl for calling her a tart, he thought. The prospect didn’t please him. He hadn’t decided completely whether she was worth an apology.

Besides, he wasn’t sure if she would accept it.

There are many kinds of walls, Borenson thought. Kings build walls around their cities, people build walls around their hearts.

As a soldier, Borenson knew how to storm a castle, how to send sappers in to dig beneath it, or send runelords to scale it.

But how do you scale walls built of anger and apathy, the walls that a son builds around his heart?

When my family looks at me now, they only see a monster, he realized.

Borenson’s size, the bony protuberances on his forehead, the strangeness of his features and his voice—all worked against him.

My wife is already distancing herself from me. I would never have thought that Myrrima would be that way.

Children will shriek when they see me.

Even Erin recoiled from me as she died, he thought. That was the worst of it. In the end I could give her no comfort, for she saw only the outside of me.

They don’t realize that on the inside I am still the same man I always was.

At least Borenson hoped that he was the same.

Borenson felt alone. He worried that he could no longer fit in among his people. He wondered what would happen when he sailed into Internook or Toom. How would people receive him?

With rocks and sticks, most likely, he thought.

But then it occurred to him that he might not be unique. Perhaps others from Caer Luciare had merged with their shadow selves. Men like him might be scattered all across Mystarria. . . .

He sighed, wondering what to do, and trudged over a ridge, seeking footholds among the rocks and bracken. Dead crabs and fish still littered the ground, but these had been left from the binding, not from the tidal wave.

The flood had been violent, of course. The tidal wave had uprooted huge trees and sent them hurtling in its path, and floating debris had been carried along and piled high—kelp, brush, buildings, dead animals and trees—creating something of a dark reef for as far as the eye could see. In some places, the flotsam rose up in a huge tangled mass of logs and ruin.

Gulls and terns could be seen out perching on the debris, as if silently guarding it.

Most of the flood victims would be caught in that tangle, he imagined, and in many places the tangle was a hundred feet high, and it was hundreds of yards from shore.

He had not gone five miles when he knew that he had found some wreckage that had washed inland from Garion’s Port. He climbed a tall rocky hill and scaled a pinnacle of weathered red stone, then stood looking down for a long moment.

The blue gum forest was not particularly thick, and now it was all submerged. Trees stood in water as if they had all gone a-wading. Amid some trees he spotted a little wreckage—an old woman floating belly-up, her skin appearing as white as a wyrmling’s hide.

Not far away was a bit of an oxcart, and just beyond that floated the ox that might have been pulling it.

The woman looked naked, much as many of the folks last night had been when he searched upstream. At first Borenson had wondered if perhaps they’d all been caught bathing. But apparently the violence of the flood had a way of stripping the soggy clothes from a corpse.

He waded out into water that was chest-deep, until he reached the old woman. Then he checked her for valuables. The woman’s pants still clung to one leg, and he pulled them free. They looked too small for Myrrima, but Sage might need them. He found a ring on the woman, too—gold with a big black opal in it.

“Forgive me,” he whispered as he wrenched it from her finger. “My family has need.”

He didn’t know how much it might be worth, but he hoped that it might buy passage if he managed to hail a ship.

Then he pushed the woman back out into the waves, in the manner of his folk, giving her to the sea, and waded back to shore.

He continued south for a mile, scavenging as he went, trying to get as close to the huge mounds of wreckage as possible.

Garion’s Port had been among the largest cities in all of Landesfallen. It was a popular place for ships to take on stores. The supplies were typically packed in waterproof barrels and then sealed. Borenson hoped that a few barrels might have survived intact, but he saw nothing like that.

Upon a hill he thought he spied the hull of a ship, and so he stripped and swam out to it, nearly a mile, but it turned out to be nothing more than the curved trunk of a gum tree floating in the water. He returned to shore feeling downcast.

A few times he called out, trying to hail any survivors, but his throat was too far gone for much shouting. He saw a few floaters—mostly children and animals—and he wondered why he did not see more.

He lost hope, but kept on trudging doggedly, until the coast suddenly veered back to the east. He stopped atop a small knoll and stood for a moment, staring breathlessly out into the water, not believing his luck.

There, not three hundred yards from shore, a white ship lay amid a tangle of trees, looking as if some vast giant had just lifted it out of the sea and set it there.

It is too whole to be a wreck, Borenson thought. Someone has beached it.

“Hallooo aboard!” he cried. “Halloo in there!” He waved his arms and stood on the hill for a long moment, waiting for someone to come topside and give answer.

The wind was still, the water as calm and flat as a pond.

Perhaps they’re scavenging, he thought.

Borenson took off his armor and clothes, and then laid them on the bank. He swam through the water until he reached the pile of flotsam. He climbed up on the logs, fully expecting that at any moment someone from the ship would pop a head up and find him standing there naked.

But as he neared the ship, he called again, and no answer came.

His prize was just dancing on the water, light as a swan. The prow had beached upon some logs, but other than that, the ship looked whole. There were no sails, but that could be fixed. The Walkins had been sleeping beneath a bit of sail just up the beach.

Borenson climbed over the railing, walked around. The vessel was small indeed, no more than thirty-five feet in length.

It was a small trader by the looks of it, or perhaps a large fishing vessel, the kind used for plying the waters along the coast—not one of the big ships meant for crossing the ocean. It looked odd, for the ship was all gleaming white, reflecting the sunlight.

Borenson appraised it.

This ship is new-made! It hasn’t even been painted properly. There is only an undercoat!

He could not believe that his fortune would hold.

He climbed down belowdecks.

The ship had two cabins—one for a captain, the other for a crew of four—but Borenson found that the captain’s quarters were not made for a man of his proportions. With only a six-foot ceiling, he could not enter without crouching. He would never have fit on the slat of board that made the bed.

Much better was the hold. The entry was wide enough so that he could climb in easily. The ship had a deep belly, with a wide berth for cargo, and Borenson imagined that he and a dozen more people could make do inside.

But the vessel hadn’t escaped the flood completely free of damage. He found water seeping into the hull, and the wood was warped. The ship had been cast into a rock perhaps, or hurled into a tree.

He studied the breach. The seep was not bad, he decided. The ship had apparently been in dry dock when the flood hit, probably up on a cradle, waiting for a new coat of paint. Because it was so light, without crew or cargo, it must have floated high in the water, rising above the flood.

The interior of the vessel had been pitched, and that stopped most of the leakage, but the truth was that when any ship took its maiden voyage, it always had a few cracks. Given a couple of days the wood would swell, and most likely the hull would seal itself. If it didn’t, Borenson decided, it wouldn’t take much work to pass a few buckets of water topside each day, to drain the bilge.

When he was done inspecting, Borenson felt so moved that he dropped to his knees to thank the Powers.

I have a ship! he told himself. I have a ship!

5 A Night in the City of the Dead

Crull-maldor peered down from a spy hole in the wyrmling’s citadel at the Fortress of the Northern Wastes. A band of human warriors two hundred strong had encircled her watchtower, and now they stood below, blowing battle horns, bellowing war cries, and shaking their fists at the tower as they encouraged themselves for battle.

These were small men by wyrmling standards. They were not the well bred warriors of Caer Luciare that she’d known in her world. These small folk wore armor made of seal skins, gray with white speckles, and had bright hair that was braided and slung over their backs. They bore axes and spears for battle, and carried crude wooden shields. They had dyed their faces with pig’s blood, hoping to look frightening.

Crull-maldor fought back the urge to laugh. No doubt they thought they looked fierce. Perhaps they even were fierce. But they were small, like the feral humans that had gone to war with the wyrmlings three thousand years ago.

She admired their fortitude. No doubt they had seen the giant footprints of the wyrmlings and had some inkling as to what they were up against.

But none of the wyrmlings had shown themselves. Sundown was long hours away. It was late afternoon, and the dust particles in the air dyed the world in shades of blood. The sun cut like a rapier, leaving stark shadows upon the world.

The enormous stone pinnacle of the fortress’s watchtower, standing three hundred feet tall and crafted from slabs of rock forty feet thick, drew the small humans like flies to a carcass.

They had been coming all morning—first children eager to explore this strange new landmark, then worried parents and siblings who were wondering what had befallen the children. Now an angry mob of warriors prepared for battle.

Human settlements surrounded the towers. No doubt by nightfall the small folk would begin to muster a huge army.

Still, the warriors below did not want to wait for reinforcements. So they sang their war songs, gave their cheers, lit their torches, and rushed into the entrance.

At Crull-maldor’s back, the wyrmling Lord Aggrez asked, “What is your will, milady?”

Wyrmling tactics in this instance had been established thousands of years ago. The tunnels at the mouth of the cave wound down and down. No doubt the humans imagined that it led straight up to the citadel, but they would have to travel miles into the wyrmling labyrinth to find the passage that led up.

Along the way, they would have to pass numerous spy holes and kill holes, ranging through darkness that was nearly complete, down long rocky tunnels lit only by glow worms.

“Let them get a mile into the labyrinth,” Crull-maldor said, “until they find the bones and offal from their children. While they are stricken with fear and rage, drop the portcullises behind them, so that none may ever return. I myself will lead the attack.”

Crull-maldor peered at the lord. Aggrez was a huge wyrmling—nine feet in height and more than four feet across the shoulder. His skin was as white as chalk, and his pupils were like pits gouged into ice. He frowned, his lips hiding his overlarge canines, and Crull-maldor felt surprised to see disappointment on his face. “What troubles you?”

“It has been long since my troops have engaged the humans. They were hoping for better sport.”

Twenty thousand warriors Crull-maldor had under her command, and it had been too long since they had fought real battles, and too long since they had eaten anything but walrus and seal meat.

“You want them for the arena?” Crull-maldor asked.

“A few.”

“Very well,” Crull-maldor said. “Let us test their best and bravest.”

Though Crull-maldor did not lead the way, she followed. This would be her people’s first real battle against a new enemy, and though the humans were small, she knew that even something as small as a wolverine could be astonishingly vicious.

So she went down into the tunnels, to the ambush site. The metal tang of blood was strong in the air, and filled the hallway. Dozens of the small folk had already been carried down to this point, deep under the fortress. Their offal lay on the floor—piles of gut and stomachs, kidneys and lungs, hair and skulls.

The humans had been harvested, their glands taken for elixirs, the meat for food, the skins as trophies. Not much was left.

Now Crull-maldor chose a small contingent of warriors to lead the attack, and they waited just down the corridor from the ambush site, silent as stone.

It took the human warriors nearly half an hour to arrive. They bore bright torches. Their leader—a fierce-looking man with golden rings in his hair and a helm that sported the horn of a wild ox poking forward— found the bones of his children.

Some of the men behind him cursed or cried out in anguish, but their leader just squatted over the pile of human refuse, his face looking grim and determined. His face was dyed in blood, and his hair was red, and torchlight danced in his eyes.

Quietly, each wyrmling raised a small iron spike and plunged it into his neck. The spikes, coated with glandular extracts harvested from the dead, filled the wyrmlings with bloodlust, so that their hearts pounded and their strength increased threefold.

The wyrmlings roared like beasts, and the rattling of chains in the distance gave answer. The portcullises slammed into the floor behind the humans, metal against stone, with a boom like a drum that shook the world.

Half a dozen wyrmling warriors led the attack, charging into the human hosts, bearing long meat hooks to pull the men close and short blades to eviscerate them. They hurtled heedlessly into battle.

The human leader did not look dismayed. He merely hurled his torch forward a dozen paces to get better light; in a single fluid move he reached back and pulled off his shield.

The wyrmlings roared like wild beasts; one shouted “Fresh meat!” as he attacked.

Instantly the human warlord snarled, and suddenly he blurred into motion. Crull-maldor had never seen anything like it. One instant the human was standing, and the next his whole body blurred, faster than a fly’s wings, and he danced into the wyrmling troops, his fierce war ax flashing faster than the eye could see.

Lord Aggrez went down, lopped off at the knee, as the warrior blurred past, slashing throats and taking off arms. In the space of a heartbeat he passed the wyrmling troops and raced toward Crull-maldor.

The human warriors at Caer Luciare had always been smaller than wyrmlings, yet what they lacked in size they made up for in speed. But this small warrior was stunning; this went far beyond anything in Crull-maldor’s experience.

The women and children had not shown such speed. There was only one explanation—magic, spells of a kind that Crull-maldor had never imagined.

The warrior raced toward her, but seemed not to see her. Her body was no more substantial than a fog, and she wore clothing only for the convenience of her fleshly cohorts—a hooded red cloak made of wispy material with the weight and consistency of a cobweb.

Thus her foe did not see her at first, but was peering up at the great wyrmlings behind her. In the shadows of the tunnel, she was all but invisible.

The humans’ champion bellowed—fear widening his eyes while his mouth opened in a primal scream. He charged toward the wyrmlings behind her, and suddenly his breath fogged, and terror filled his eyes.

He felt the cold that surrounded Crull-maldor. It stole his breath and made the blood freeze in his veins.

He shouted one single word of warning to the warriors behind, and then Crull-maldor touched him on the forehead with a single finger.

Her touch froze the warrior in his tracks, robbed him of thought. He dropped like a piece of meat, though she had brushed him only lightly.

The rest of the human warriors backed away in fear, nearly in a rout. Crull-maldor knelt over her fallen foe for a moment, sniffed at his weapons. There was no enchantment upon them, no fell curses.

She rose up and went into battle, floating toward the rest of the warriors. None raced with their leader’s speed. None bellowed war cries or tried to challenge her.

They were defenseless against her kind.

Crull-maldor was the most powerful lich lord in her world; she feared nothing.

She did not wade into battle on legs, but instead moved by will alone.

Thus she drove into ranks of the small humans. They screamed and sought to escape. One man tried to drive her back with a torch, and the webbing of her garment caught fire. Thus, for a few brief moments she was wreathed in smoke and flame, and all of the humans saw the hunger in her dead face and the horror of her eyes, and they wailed in despair.

Then, invisible without her cloak, Crull-maldor waded into the human troops and began to feed, drawing away the life force of those who tried to flee, or merely stunning those whose ferocity in battle proved that they would make good sport in the arena.

There were no more warriors like the mage that had confronted her. She found herself hoping for stronger resistance. She found herself longing for a war that promised great battles and glorious deeds, for only by distinguishing herself could she hope to gain the attention of Lady Despair, and thus perhaps win the throne.

But she was bitterly disappointed.

As the last human warrior crumpled to his knees and let out a mewling cry, like a child troubled by nightmares, Crull-maldor told herself: There are millions of humans in the barrens now. Perhaps among them I will find a worthy foe.

Her wyrmling troops feasted upon fresh man-flesh that evening, and then prepared a few captured humans for the arena, stripping them naked lest they have any concealed weapons.

That was when Crull-maldor found the markings upon the humans’ champion. His skin bore scars from a branding iron, and upon the warrior’s flesh she saw ancient glyphs, primal shapes that had formed the world from the beginning.

Crull-maldor studied a glyph—actually four glyphs all bound into a circle. The largest was the rune for might, but attached to it were other smaller glyphs—seize, confer, and bind.

The lich lord had never seen such scars before, but instinctively she knew what they meant. It was a spell of some nature, a type of parasitical magic, which caused attributes from one being to be imbued upon another.

This is a new form of magic, she realized, one with untold potential. She suspected that she could duplicate the spells, even improve upon them, if she knew more. With mounting excitement she pored over the champion’s other scars: speed, dance, resilience. Four types of runes were represented, and Crull-maldor immediately knew that she could devise others that the humans had not anticipated.

Suddenly, the humans and their new magic took on great import in her mind.

She did not know if she should reveal what she had found to the emperor. Perhaps he already knew about this strange magic. Perhaps he would never know—until after Crull-maldor had mastered it.

So far today, she had not heard from the emperor. Certainly he had witnessed the great change wrought upon the world. Other wyrmling fortresses would be reporting the sightings of humans.

But if things were amiss in the capitol at Rugassa, Crull-maldor had not been forewarned.

Probably, she thought, the emperor will not tell me anything. He hopes that I will fail, that I will embarrass myself, so that he will look better in return.

It had always been this way. Their rivalry had lasted for more than four hundred years.

But at the moment, Crull-maldor suspected that she had the upper hand.

I could just tell him that humans have come, she thought, and not warn him of the dangers of confronting them.

She liked that. A half-truth oft served better than a lie.

But she decided to wait. She didn’t need to report the incursion instantly.

Little of import happened that day. One of he wyrmling captains reported a strangeness: some of her subjects claimed to recall life on another world, the world that had fallen from above. They wished to leave the fortress, head south to their own homes.

Crull-maldor ordered that all such people be put to death. There was no escaping the wyrmling horde.

So she waited until after sundown, when the long shadows stretched into full darkness and bats began to weave about the citadel in their acrobatic hunt.

Stars glowered overhead, the fiery eyes of heaven, and a cool and salty breeze breathed over the land.

With the coming of night, the spirits of the land rose from their hiding places.

A second human army was gathering for the night, soldiers from far places riding horses to the towers. Crull-maldor did not want to leave her wyrmlings defenseless, yet she needed to gain information.

So while the armies began to surround her fortress, Crull-maldor dropped from the citadel and went floating beneath the starlight, weaving her way between boulders, drifting above the gorse and bracken.

Field mice felt the cold touch of her presence, and went hopping for their burrows.

Hares thumped their feet to warn their kind. Then they would either hold still, hoping that she passed, or race for the shelter of the gorse.

Nothing substantial had lived here—until today. Nothing substantial could have lived here. Crull-maldor had been cheating death for centuries, living as a shade, a creature that was nearly pure spirit. But to hold on to the spark of life, to stay in communion with the world of fleshy creatures, required tremendous power, power that could only be gained by drawing off the life force of others.

Thus, on a normal night, as she wound her way through the bracken, Crull-maldor would have touched a rabbit here, drained a bush there, or cut short the song a cricket as she passed.

She would have left a trail of death and silence in her wake. But to night she felt sated, for she had fed upon the spirits of men.

Her mind was not upon the hunt for food that evening, but upon the hunt for information. Her eyes could see beyond the physical realm. Indeed, she was so far gone toward death that she could not easily perceive the physical world anymore, unless she happened to be riding in the mind of a crow or a wolf.

Now she passed through the wilds in a daze, as if moving through a dream.

More immediate, more real to her, were the perceptions of her spirit. She could see into the dead world easily, a world that had always been a mystery to mortals.

They lived here in the Northern Wastes, the dead did—in these so called “barrens.” Most of the time, the dead prefer to isolate themselves from the living, for living men often hold powerful auras that confuse and trouble the dead.

So the dead had built cities that seemed to be sculpted from light and shadow. Great towers rose up all around her in shades that the mortal eye cannot see—the rose colors of dawn, the deepest purples of twilight, and shades of fire that no mortal can imagine.

Soaring arches spanned the streets, with flowering vines cascading from them, while great fountains spurted up in broad plazas that seemed to be paved with a pale mist.

What a living wyrmling imagined was only a barren waste was in fact the home to millions.

But to night in the spirit world, much had changed. There had been one city here yestereve. Now Crull-maldor saw towers everywhere, rising above the plains. Hosts of human dead had come.

Their women shrieked for joy and children laughed, while minstrels played in far pavilions.

The spirits of the dead celebrated here, the shades of humans and wyrmlings mingling together, oblivious of the living world—just as the living world was oblivious of them.

So the lich lord wafted above streets of mellow haze, into the House of Light, and there came upon a great convocation of elders, mixed with scholars from the human world.

Crull-maldor did not see them with her physical eyes; instead she perceived their spirits, like spiny sea urchins created from light. Each spirit was a small round ball with thousands of white needle-like appendages that issued out in every direction.

Each spirit had the memory of its fleshly form draped over it like a cloak, showing dimly remembered exteriors. Thus, the balls of light hovered about inside the shells of wyrmling lords and men.

Crull-maldor went to the most glorious among them—a human woman who shone with tremendous brilliance, a symbol of her wisdom and power.

Then the lich lord seized the woman. Crull-maldor sent a tendril of light coiling out from her own spirit, and penetrated the woman’s field. The lich took the woman by the umbilicus and twisted, causing the woman untold pain.

Once again, Crull-maldor found the act to be surprisingly easy. A spiritual attack upon such a powerful being should normally have required great concentration. But now it felt like child’s play.

“Tell me what you know!” Crull-maldor demanded.

The woman shrieked, and the color of her spindles of light suddenly changed from bright white to a delicious deep red. She recoiled, and all of the tendrils around her nucleus shrank in on themselves, the way that the arms of sea anemone will do when something brushes against it.

“What would you have of me, great lord of the dead!” the woman cried. Her name was Endemeer, and she had once been a vaunted scholar.

“What has happened to my world?”

“A great sorcerer has come,” Endemeer said. “He has bound two worlds into one, two worlds that were but shadows of the one true world that existed at the beginning of time.

“He has bound flesh to flesh in those who live; and he has bound spirit to spirit among the dead. . . .”

Immediately Crull-maldor knew that the scholar spoke correctly. This world that she had said once existed, Crull-maldor had heard of it from some of the greater spirits she had tortured.

But until now, Crull-maldor had not believed in it. She had suspected that it was a place found only in one’s imagination.

It explained everything so simply, yet it had tremendous ramifications.

Crull-maldor had not yet revealed to the emperor her news about the humans in her land. She knew now that she could not hide the news. This great change impacted entire continents.

Humans are abroad in the land once again, Crull-maldor thought, and where there is conflict, there is also opportunity.

Crull-maldor immediately sent an alarm, a flash of thought to the emperor Zul-torac. Our wyrmling scouts have found humans in the Northern Wastes. They came with a great change that has twisted the earth.

The emperor sent back a terse reply, and she felt his thoughts crawling through her mind, seeking to infiltrate it. She set a barrier against them, so that he could not read her mind, and he replied. I know, fool! Deal with them.

His thoughts fled, dismissing her.

Crull-maldor grinned. As she had hoped, he had not had the foresight to tell her how to deal with them.

The scholar Endemeer whimpered and tried to escape Crull-maldor’s grasp. The lich lord merely held her, eager to wring more information from her.

“Tell me about the humans’ new magic, the glyph magic.”

Crull-maldor sent her own tendrils of light plunging deep into those of her captive. Each tendril of light was like a strand of human brain. It stored wisdom and memories. As Crull-maldor brushed against Endemeer, she glimpsed the memories stored upon Endemeer’s tendrils.

Grasping the ones that she wanted, Crull-maldor ripped the tendrils free. It was like tearing apart a human brain. The tendrils’ light immediately began to dim, so Crull-maldor shoved them into her own central bundle, transplanting the memories. By doing so she stole the spirit’s knowledge. It was a violation as reprehensible as rape, a type of murder.

So Crull-maldor hunched over her prey, ripping light from Endemeer and in the City of the Dead the lich lord discovered the deepest secrets of the runelords.

6 A Call to Arms

War horns rent the air; Myrrima startled awake, heart pounding.

She cocked an ear, alert for sounds of danger, and heard the screams of horses dying in battle, along with some warlord shouting, “Man the breach! Man the breach, damn you!”

A drum pounded and sent a snarl rolling over the hills like the crack of thunder. Deep voices roared in challenge in some strange tongue, voices unlike any that Myrrima had ever heard.

Blinking the sleep from her eyes, Myrrima climbed from her bed there in the lee of the rocks, the warm ferns crushed from her weight, and peered out in alarm in the cool morning mist, trying to find the source of danger.

But there were no armies clashing in the distance, and as she woke it seemed to her that the sounds faded, as if they could be heard only in dream.

She stood panting, trying to catch her breath, clear her head. She blinked, looking around. Erin’s body still lay there on the grass not a hundred yards off, her face pale, her lips going blue. Sage was sleeping soundly in the ferns.

Nearby, the Walkin clan was still sleeping, too. Myrrima was the only one who had wakened.

Her heart ceased to hammer so hard; she stood for a moment, thinking.

It was only a dream. It was only a dream. All of Borenson’s talk last night stirred up evil memories of battles long past. Or perhaps her vision of Erin that she’d had not more than a couple of hours ago had conjured an evil dream.

What ever the cause, the sounds of battle had faded. Myrrima sat in a daze, wondering.

“What is it, Mother?” Sage asked, stirring from her sleep.

“Nothing,” Myrrima whispered. She searched about camp. Borenson and Draken were still gone.

Yet as she sat in the early dawn, she heard the sound of water tinkling in the streamlet nearby, the discreet cheeping of small birds in a thicket.

Other than that, the morning was utterly still. The sun was just rising in the far hills, painting the dawn in shades of peach and rose. It was that time of morning when everything is still, even the wind.

Yet there she heard it again—the deep call of a war horn in the distance, and the sound of men clashing in battle.

She strode toward it with a start and cocked her ear. The sound seemed to be coming from the far side of the old river channel.

Straining to hear, she crept over to the cliff, her feet rustling dry grasses, and stood for a moment. The sound had faded again, but she could hear it now—a deep rumbling in the ground, as if horses were charging into battle, the blare of horns. She could almost smell blood in the air.

She peered across the channel. Its waters were dark and muddy, filled with filth and jetsam. Mists rising off of it made the far shore nearly impossible to make out. Could there be a battle over there? But who would be fighting?

Yet as she stood at the edge of the cliff, peering about, there was no sign of troops in the distance, and the sound seemed now to be coming from below her, from the still waters in the channel.

Myrrima clambered carefully down the steep slope a hundred feet, until she stopped at the water’s edge.

The sounds of war came distant now, so distant. She wondered if she was listening to the remnant of a dream.

Suddenly, out in the water a body floated to the surface not forty feet from shore, a woman with wide hips, someone who would have made her home in the village of Sweetgrass. Thankfully, Myrrima could not see her face, only her stringy gray hair.

The corpse bobbed for a moment, and then the sounds of battle suddenly blasted in Myrrima’s ears.

“Internook! Internook!” a barbarian cried. “Hail to the Bearers of the Orb!” Men cheered fiercely all around her, and she heard them running, mail ringing and jangling.

She peered off in the mist, and let her eyes go out of focus, and then she saw it: a castle a hundred miles north of the Courts of Tide, its battlements all lit by fire. It was dark there, and she could not see the enemy— except for a mass of great beasts out beyond the walls, giants with white skin and startling white eyes, wearing armor carved from bone.

“To battle!” some warlord cheered. “To battle!”

And then just as suddenly as it had come, the vision ended, as if a portcullis gate had slammed down, holding the vision at bay.

Is this a vision of the future? Myrrima wondered. But a certainty filled her.

No, it is a battle happening now, far across the ocean. Dawn had come to her home here in Landesfallen, but night still reigned on the far side of the world. As Borenson had warned, the wyrmlings were greeting their new neighbors.

The vision, the sounds, both seemed to be coming from the water, and that is when Myrrima knew.

She had wondered whether to follow Borenson across the ocean into his mad battle.

But water was calling to her, summoning Myrrima to war.

Borenson will find a ship, Myrrima realized. Water will make a way for us to reach that far shore. My powers there will be needed.

A giant green dragonfly common to the river valley came buzzing over the water nearby, a winged emerald with eyes of onyx. It hovered for a moment, as if gauging her.

Myrrima knelt then at the edge of the old river channel and laved dirty brown water over her arms, then tilted her face upward and let it stream, cold and dead, over her forehead and eyes. Thus she anointed herself for war.

There had been a time in Myrrima’s life when she’d made a ritual of washing herself first thing each morning. As a child she’d loved water, whether it was the sweet drops of a summer rain clinging to her eyelashes, or the tinkling of a freshet as it darted among the rocks. It was her love of water that gave her power over it. At the same time, water had power over her, too—enough power so that she often felt pulled by it, and she found herself wanting to go lie in a deep river, so that the water could caress her and surround her and someday carry her out to sea.

Six years back, she had purposely given up the ritual, afraid that if she did not, she would lose herself to water.

But this morning was different. Worries wormed their way through her mind, and she had seldom felt so tired.

So when she reached camp, she found Sage and led her to the nearby stream. It was only a trickle at this time of year. A little water roamed down from the red-rock above. In the winters the rain and snow would seep into the porous sandstone, and for centuries it would percolate down through the rock until it hit a layer of harder shale. Then it would slowly flow out, and thus seeped from a cliff face above. Myrrima was so attuned to water that she could taste it and feel in her heart how long ago it had fallen as rain.

Not much water escaped the rocks, barely enough to wet the ground. But there was a boggy spot where the streamlet stole through the moss and grass.

Wild ferrin and rangits often came to drink here, and so had trampled the grass a bit.

So Myrrima took Sage and with stones and moss they dammed the small stream, so that it began to rise over the course of the morning.

Rain came to help them, bringing some clay that she had found nearby. As they padded clay between the stones of the dam, Myrrima told the young women of Borenson’s plan to return to Mystarria.

“It may be a dangerous journey,” Myrrima said. “I can understand why you would not want to go. I hesitate to ask you, Sage. Landesfallen has been your home for so long, I will not force you to come.”

“I don’t remember Mystarria,” Sage said. “Draken sometimes talks about the vast castle we lived in, all white, with its soaring spires and grand hallways.”

“It wasn’t grand,” Myrrima said. “I suppose it must have seemed so to a tot like him. Castle Coorm was small, a queen’s castle, set in the high hills where the air was cool and crisp during the muggy days of summer. It was a place to retreat, not a seat of power.”

“I should like to see it,” Sage said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

“Much has changed in Mystarria, you understand?” Myrrima said. “It’s not likely that we’ll ever live in a castle again.”

Rain had just brought some mud, and she halted at the mention of Mystarria, her muscles tightening in fear. The girl knew how much the place had changed far more than Myrrima did.

“I understand,” Sage said.

“I don’t think that you do,” Rain told them. “When we left last year, the place was in turmoil. There is no peace in that land, and I think that there never shall be again. The warlords of Internook have been harsh masters, harsher than you know. When my father fled the land, he left a prosperous barony. But months later we heard that all of the people in the barony—women, children, babes—were gone. One morning the warlord’s soldiers came and marched them all into the forests, and none came back. But that evening, wagons began to arrive filled with settlers who had shipped in from Internook, and the houses in the cities were filled, and farmers came to reap crops that they had not sown.

“The warlord Grunswallen had sold our lands months before his soldiers began the extermination. My father had sensed that it was near. He said that he’d felt it coming for days and weeks. He’d seen it in the superior smirks that the Internookers gave us, in the way that they heaped abuse on our people. My family fled just two days before the cleansing occurred. . . . I thank the Powers that we were able to exact a small token of vengeance against that pig Grunswallen. The Internookers wear hides made of pigskin because they are pigs in human form.”

Myrrima peered up at Rain; she worried that the young woman would turn Sage away from the course.

Perhaps that would be best, Myrrima thought. I don’t want to take Sage into such unstable lands. I don’t want to make life-and-death decisions for my child.

“There are other dangers, too,” Rain said. “The mountains and woods are full of strengi-saats, monsters that hunt for young women so that they can lay their eggs in the women’s wombs. You cannot go out by night. The soldiers do a fair job of keeping them away from the towns and the open fields, but each year the strengi-saats’ numbers grow, the monsters range closer into the heartland, and the nights grow more dangerous.”

Sage looked to Rain. “You don’t think I should go?”

Rain stammered, “No—Perhaps there is no right choice. But I think that if you go to Mystarria, you should know what you’re up against.

“And since the change in the world—who knows what things will be like in Mystarria now?” Rain hesitated and then explained to Myrrima: “I heard your husband talking last night about creatures called wyrmlings. . . .”

Myrrima’s heart skipped. If the girl had heard about the wyrmlings, then she’d heard much that Myrrima would wish to keep secret. “What else did you hear?”

“I know that your son Fallion is responsible for this . . . change.” Rain hesitated, her keen green eyes studying Myrrima for a sign of reaction. “But I don’t understand it all. Draken told me that his brothers and sisters had all gone back to Mystarria; I’d already known that Fallion was a flameweaver, but I’ve never heard of a flameweaver who had powers like this.” She shrugged and swept her arms wide, pointing to a ledge nearby where an outcrop of rock was still covered in coral.

“Who else have you told?” Myrrima asked.

Rain had been keeping her voice soft, and she glanced over the deep grass to where the folks in her own camp were beginning to stir. “No one. Nor shall I tell. I think it is best if no one here ever learns who is responsible for this . . . debacle.”

Myrrima found a knot of fear coiling in her stomach. She was worried for Fallion and Talon, for all of her children. What would people think if they knew? Half of Landesfallen had sunk into the sea, millions of people were dead. Certainly, one of their kin would seek vengeance against Fallion, if they knew what he had done.

Yet Myrrima’s worries for her children went far beyond that. Fallion had planned to go deep into the Underworld, to the Seals of Creation, to cast his spell.

With all that had happened, Myrrima could not help but fear for Fallion’s safety. She worried that the tunnels he’d entered had collapsed. Even if the structures had survived, they had been dug by reavers, and it was well known that every time a volcano blew or a large earthquake struck, the reavers grew angry and were likely to attack during the aftermath, much like hornets whose nests have been stirred up.

Fallion had gone to heal the world; Myrrima felt almost certain that he had paid for his trouble with his life. No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Sage had listened to Myrrima’s words, to Rain’s warnings. Now she peered up at her mother with blue eyes blazing. She had deep red hair and a face full of freckles. “I want to go with you. There’s nothing holding me here. Everyone that I knew is gone. I want to find Talon and Fallion, make sure that they are all right. . . .”

Myrrima looked to Rain. “And you? Will you come with us?”

Rain hesitated. “I don’t think so. I don’t see why you have to go looking for trouble. If the wyrmlings come, we can fight them on our own ground.”

Myrrima knew that Rain would try to convince Draken to stay here with her. Myrrima didn’t know how to feel about that—whether to be angry or to hope that she succeeded.

So Myrrima hummed to herself until the shallow pool filled to a depth of a few inches. The Walkin children came by and all stood peering into the water eagerly, until Myrrima began to draw runes of healing and refreshment upon the water.

She bathed then, laving the clean water up over her own head, letting it wash over and through her. She peered up, and wished that she knew what the best course to follow might be. Dare she really take the children back to Mystarria, expose them to such dangers? Or could she possibly stay here? It would be easy to enchant some weapons, cast spells upon them that would vanquish unclean spirits. She could send them with Borenson.

When she finished her mind felt cleared of all doubt. She had to go with Borenson. She would need to enchant weapons not for one man, or even a hundred, but perhaps for thousands.

More importantly, she felt renewed, filled with energy. The bath seemed to wash away the curse that had sapped her strength.

So she bathed Sage now. As she laved the water over the girl, she asked her master for a small blessing upon Sage: “May the stream strengthen you. May the moisture renew you. May Water make you its own.”

As the last handful of water streamed down Sage’s face, she gasped as if in relief, and then broke into tears of gratitude for what her mother had done.

She reached up and began to wipe the tears away, but Myrrima pulled her hand back. “Such tears should be given back to the stream,” she said.

So Sage stood there in the stream, and let her tears fall into its still waters.

Afterward, Myrrima invited Rain into the pool, and offered to repeat the cleansing ceremony with each of the Walkin women and children.

For two long hours Myrrima stood in her blue traveling robes, her long dark hair dangling over one shoulder. Between each ceremony she would have to stoop and trace runes of cleansing and healing on the surface of the pool while water-skippers danced around her fingers.

One by one she washed everyone in the group.

Those children who had been cleansed instantly began darting around camp, their lethargy much diminished, while the womenfolk seemed at last to come alive.

Noon had just passed and Myrrima was thinking about lunch when a call went up from the Walkin children.

“There’s a ship! There’s a ship in the channel!”

The sighting aroused a bit of excitement, and the Walkin children raced to the lip of the cliff and peered down into the polluted water below.

Myrrima had been trying to keep the children away from the old river channel all day, afraid of what they might see floating past. But now the whole Walkin clan stood on the shore and waved.

“We’re rescued, Mother!” Sage was calling.

Myrrima walked to the bank and stood peering down.

It wasn’t one boat—it was nine, or one boat and eight rafts. They were paddling over the water, following the course seaward.

Three dozen men manned the vessels. “Halloo!” they called, waving bandanas and hats.

Myrrima drew closer, but one of the Walkin women strode forward and acted as voice.

“Need help?” one of the men called from a boat. “We’re from Fossil!” another shouted from a raft. “Is anyone injured?” a third cried.

The men paddled, doing their best to row the clumsy vessels in unison, and a fine tall man with a blunt face and long brown hair hanging free stood up in the boat.

“We’ve got a child dead,” the Walkin woman, Greta, shouted. “She’s beyond anyone’s help.”

“Do you need food or supplies?” the tall man asked.

“We got away with nothing more than what’s on our backs,” Greta said. “We had fish and crabs for dinner last night, but we daren’t eat it today.”

The boat floated near and finally bumped against the shore not far below them. “Where are your menfolk?” the leader called.

“They went west, searching for survivors,” Myrrima answered.

The leader gave them a suspicious look. Then he put on a pleasant face and called up, “I’m Mayor Threngell, from Fossil. We don’t have much in the way of supplies, but you’re welcome in our village. There’s food and shelter for any that need it.”

He searched the faces of the Walkins as if looking for someone familiar. “Are you locals?”

The Walkins hardly dared admit that they were squatters. “New to the area,” one of them answered. “We’re looking to homestead.”

Myrrima had met Mayor Threngell two years back at the autumn Harvest Festival; she recognized him now. “I’m local,” she said. “Borenson’s the name. Our farm was destroyed in the flood.”

The mayor grunted, gave her a cordial nod. “Go east, not twenty miles. It’s not an easy walk, but you should make it. You’ll find food and shelter there,” he affirmed. But the welcome in his voice had all gone cold, as if he wasn’t sure that he wanted to feed squatters. “Tell your men when they get back. Tell them that there is to be no looting of the dead, no salvage operations. This land is under martial law.”

Myrrima wondered at that. Law here in the wilderness was rather malleable. Vandervoot, the king, had lived on the coast. Most likely, Myrrima imagined that he was food for crabs about now. This mayor from a backwater town could hardly declare martial law.

More than that, she could see no justice in what Threngell proposed. Here he was: a man with land and horses, crops and fields, demanding that folks who had nothing take no salvage from the dead. But she knew that often lords would find reasons why they should grow a little fatter while the rest of the world grew a little leaner.

“Under whose authority was martial law declared?” Myrrima asked.

“My authority,” Mayor Threngell said, a warning in his voice.

7 Acts of Love

Sweating and grunting, Borenson used a log as a lever to pry the bow of the ship up so that it groaned and scraped.

For two long hours he’d been trying, with Draken, Baron Walkin, and the baron’s younger brother Bane to get the ship free. It was grueling labor—pulling wreckage from under the vessel, setting up logs to use as rollers under the ship, setting up other logs to use as pry bars, shoving and straining until Borenson felt that his heart would break.

Now, as the ship began to nudge, he realized that all of their labor might have been for nothing. The rising tide had lifted the back of the ship. Had the tides been extra high, he imagined that they just might have borne the ship out into open water. But the tide wouldn’t rise high enough today, so he shouted, “Heave! Heave!”

As one, all four men threw their weight into their pry bars, and the bow lifted into the air. Suddenly there was a groaning as the roller logs took the weight of the ship, and it began to slide backward into the ocean.

Bane Walkin let out a cry of pain, shouting, “Stop it! Stop it!”

But there was no stopping the vessel now. It rolled backward and splashed into the ocean, spewing foam.

As the bow slid away, Borenson spotted Bane—fallen, clutching his ankle. His foot had obviously gotten caught between the ship and a log.

Borenson rushed to Bane’s aid, and had the man pull off his boot. Draken and Baron Walkin knelt at his side. Gingerly, Borenson twisted the young man’s ankle. It had already begun to swell, and a bruise was setting in. But the man was lucky. At least he still had his foot.

“Good news,” Borenson teased. “We won’t have to amputate!”

Bane gritted his teeth and tried to laugh, though tears had formed in the corners of his eyes.

“Well, at least we won’t have to be hiking home,” Baron Walkin said, and he turned and looked at their ship, bobbing proudly on the waves.

Borenson grinned. I have my ship!

So it was that the four men claimed their prize. With a sail and rope salvaged from another wreck, they set sail nearly at noon. A breeze had kicked up, making small whitecaps on the waves, and with a little trial and error they managed to set out, plying the waters north. The ship had no proper wheel, but instead relied upon a rudder, so Borenson manned it from the captain’s deck while Baron Walkin and Draken trimmed the sails. Bane merely sat on the prow, nursing his foot. He’d wrapped it in wet kelp to keep down the swelling, and now he held on his rubbery green bandage.

In less than an hour they reached the mouth of the channel and turned inland, then retrieved their salvage from the earlier wreck.

Borenson had just loaded the last of the crates and barrels aboard when Draken raised a cry of warning. Borenson looked upstream. Several rafts and a small boat paddled in the distance, perhaps a mile out upon the water.

“Rescuers!” Bane Walkin said.

Borenson doubted it. The men were rowing toward them, hard.

Borenson didn’t like the look of it. “Let’s get under way, quickly.”

“Agreed,” Baron Walkin said, face grim. He nodded toward the wreckage floating nearby. “Looks like we’re done with the salvage. It’s going to turn into a free-for-all out here.”

Draken untied the knots that bound the ship to a tree and shoved off, pulling himself topside at the last moment, while Borenson raised the sails, then took the tiller from Baron Walkin.

As the wind swiftly began driving the ship up the channel, the rafts began to spread out, as if to intercept.

“Give them a wide berth,” Borenson suggested, “until we know what they’re about.”

He pushed hard on the tiller, taking the ship directly north, toward the far shore, some four miles in the distance, while Walkin tacked the sails.

The men in the flotilla waved frantically, trying to hail the ship. There were more than thirty of them.

“Halt!” one man shouted from the boat, his voice carry ing over the water. “How long have you had that ship?”

Borenson recognized Mayor Threngell from Fossil. He was a nodding acquaintance. Borenson knew of only one reason that he would ask that question.

“Four years!” he cried out in return, knowing full well that the mayor wouldn’t recognize him, not with the change to his form.

“Bring her about!” the mayor cried. He and his men waved frantically.

“What?” Borenson called. He cupped a hand to his ear, as if he couldn’t hear. Then Draken and the Walkins all waved back, as if to say “good day.”

“That’s the mayor from Fossil. You think he’ll give us trouble?” Draken asked under his breath.

Borenson felt embarrassed to have such a lackwit for a son.

“Of course they’ll give us trouble,” Baron Walkin said. “A ship like this is worth twenty thousand steel eagles, easily. Everything else out there in the water is just leftovers. He’ll be out to steal it before sundown.”

“He’ll have to catch us first,” Borenson said.

Borenson didn’t think that the ship was worth twenty thousand eagles— it was worth far more. Fossil had always been a nothing town, out in the middle of nowhere. But now with the flood, with the water moving inland, it was in prime position to become a port city, perhaps the largest in Landesfallen.

Mayor Threngell would have figured that out by now. But a port was nothing without ships.

This ship might be Fossil’s only tie to the old world, to trade between the continents. Threngell would see that, in time, too. He’d bring his mob to take the ship.

Borenson realized that he’d need to make his escape quickly, before the mayor had time to act.

The Walkin and Borenson families didn’t have much in the way of stores, but a plan began to form in Borenson’s mind. He could sail up the old river channel to Fossil and buy a few supplies. Those men in their rafts would have a hard time rowing forty or fifty miles upstream, especially now that the tides and turned, and with the lowering of the tide, it would be pulling the rafts back toward the open sea.

But no matter how he figured it, there was no way to avoid the mayor and his lackeys completely.

Fortunately, the mayor and his men weren’t well armed. If it came to a fight, Borenson wasn’t above showing them a trick or two.

It was early afternoon when the ship sailed to camp at the base of the cliff. Draken leapt out of the vessel as it neared shore and swam to a half submerged tree, tying the boat up to dock.

The entire camp swarmed down to see the ship, the children leaping about excitedly. It was a great treasure, a valuable find. The only person who didn’t come down, it seemed, was Rain, and she was the one person that Draken most wanted to see.

So while the Walkins showed off the white ship with its makeshift sails and a few barrels and crates of odd salvage, Draken scrambled up the cliff.

He found Rain preparing dinner for the clan, roasting some hapless burrow bear.

“These are for you,” he said, setting a pocketful of plums on a large rock that served as a table. He’d picked them this morning, and had been saving them all day. “They grow along the creeks.”

Rain fell into his arms, and Draken hugged her. He realized that she had been waiting for him, staying back up here while the others buzzed around the ship.

Holding her, touching her, felt like coming home.

She was a slender girl, so narrow of hip that it often surprised him when he put his arms around her to feel how little of her there really was. She had pale blond hair tied back in a sensible style, and copious freckles. Her jaw was strong, her lips thin, and her green eyes looked as if she was a woman who would brook no argument. She did not wear a dress, but a cream-colored summer tunic that was wearing thin, over a pair of tight woolen pants.

After a long kiss, Rain whispered, “Has your father told you the news?”

“What?” Draken asked.

“He plans to go back to Mystarria, to fight some war. Your mother told me all about it. She asked if I would come with you.”

Draken was surprised to learn the news this way, rather than hear it from his father. Now Rain whispered hurriedly, giving what few details she could. Mostly, it seemed that she had only guesses and suppositions, but the news was grave indeed.

“Do you want to go?” Draken asked, fighting back his worry. He didn’t want her to. He didn’t want to take her into danger.

She thought long and hard. She’d told him much of how they had fled Rofehavan in the first place, but he knew that she still had secrets.

The brutish warlords of Internook had taken over the coastal cities of Mystarria, and they were harsh taskmasters. They’d driven the peasants mercilessly, and every few months they would march through the villages and demand a levy, taking the finest of the family’s sheep and cattle, seizing anything of worth, and dragging off the fairest virgins in the city.

For the past three years, Rain had spent her days and nights in hiding, as much as she could.

Townsfolk died, driven to starvation, and each time some land opened up, a family of barbarians from Internook would show up and lay claim to it.

Soon, neighbors were spying upon neighbors, telling which family might be hiding a cow in the woods or a daughter in the cellar, so that the levies would be paid.

As a baron, Owen Walkin had commanded respect among his people, but the time had finally come when hope failed him, and he’d taken his family and run off, crossing through cities and countryside by night, until they reached the land of Toom.

He’d fled just in time, as Rain told it, for two days later the entire barony was destroyed, its citizens forced to march into the forest and never return.

Rain finally answered, “We had it hard enough escaping from Mystarria the first time. I’m not eager to go back. I don’t think I could ever go back. Stay here with me—please.”

Her voice had become soft and urgent at the last, and she begged him to stay with her eyes more than with her words. She clutched his hands, as if begging him to stay forever.

Dare I stay? he wondered. His mother and father were going away, going to fight. He couldn’t imagine leaving them to their own devices.

A moment later, Borenson came lumbering up the cliff and stood for a moment. He seemed to weave on his feet, and Draken realized that he had to be exhausted. As far as he could tell, his father had gotten no sleep since yesterday morning.

But the giant stood blinking his bloodshot eyes and peering at Rain and Draken as if judging them. At last he sauntered over and said to Rain, “I want to apologize for my harsh words yesterday. I . . . was distraught.”

Rain put her hands on her hips and gave him an appraising look. “Yesterday when you were a man, you insulted me. Today when you’re a monster, you ask forgiveness. I think I like the monster better.”

Borenson guffawed and broke into a genuine smile. “Then you would be the first.”

A clumsy moment followed. Rain looked down at the ground, gathered her courage, and said, “You need to know something. I’m in love with your son, and he loves me. We didn’t set out for it to happen. It just did. He was kind to my family, and I saw his goodness. . . . Anyway, I begged him to tell you, but he was afraid of what you would think. He was hoping that we might find some land nearby, get settled, and then introduce us. We have not done anything unseemly, except . . .”

Borenson’s brow furrowed, as if he expected her to admit to some infidelity. “Except what?”

“Except that we hid on your land. My father and brother found some odd jobs with your neighbors. We didn’t dare speak to you. We were ashamed that we had fallen too far. . . .”

Draken knew that his father was not a man to stand on station. He had been born a butcher’s son, and had made himself the first knight of the realm.

Borenson finally reached down and hugged her briefly. “Welcome to the family.”

“Thank you,” she said. She pulled away, blinked a tear from her eye, and studied his face.

“Myrrima says that you’re going back to Mystarria. She’s invited all of us to come along.”

“Will you be joining us?” Borenson asked.

Rain frowned, looked to Draken, and let out a deep sigh. “I don’t know. The family is against it. There is not much for us here, but if what you say is right, by going back to Mystarria we would be marching out of the rain to get into the storm. . . .”

Draken squeezed her hand, begging her to be discreet. He wanted to talk to his father at length before making a determination.

“You wouldn’t have to go all the way to Mystarria,” Borenson suggested. “We’ll make stops along the way. There is good land in Toom to be had.”

“There was ten years ago,” Rain objected, “but refugees took it. ‘There’s plenty of good ground left,’ they say, ‘if you’d like to grow rocks.’ But since everyone in Toom has more than they want, rocks are awfully hard to sell.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that you stay here in Landesfallen,” Borenson said. “There is food to be had, if you work hard enough. But the coastal cities are all gone, and with them went the smithies, the chandlers, the glassblowers, and so on. You’ll find yourselves lacking for comfort.”

“My mother has considered that, and she says that while ‘We may find ourselves wanting for some necessities, there is one thing that we will have in abundance here—peace.’ ”

“Perhaps,” Borenson agreed, “for a time. But who knows how long it will last? The wyrmlings will come eventually, perhaps in an hour or a manner that you are not prepared for. I prefer to take matters into my own hands.”

Rain peered up at him, gauging his size. “Do you really think that there’s blood metal to be had in Mystarria?”

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

She nodded. “You’d make a fearsome lord.”

It was true, Draken thought. Borenson looked strong now, terrifying.

What’s more, Draken realized, his father knew the secret fighting styles of the assassins from Indhopal, and had mastered the weapons of Inkarra. He’d been a strategist for kings.

Sir Borenson had gained fighting skills that the wyrmlings had never seen before. With his size, Draken imagined that his father would be a fearsome opponent.

Rain turned to Draken. “So, what all did you find on your trip?”

“Two casks of ale, four barrels of molasses, a barrel of rice, a barrel of lamp oil, and some crates. The crates were packed . . . with women’s linen undergarments.”

Rain laughed. “Well, then we shan’t want for underwear.”

Draken knelt on the ground and pulled out a small pouch, dropping some jewelry into his hand. “I also got this,” he whispered. There were two rings, one all of gold and one with a ruby. There was also a silver necklace and a couple of coins—steel eagles out of Rofehavan. “I got us wedding rings!”

Borenson bit his lower lip, peered down at the rings disparagingly. “Put them up, lad. No sense in letting the children see.”

The blood rose on the back of Draken’s neck. He’d taken salvage from the dead, and now his father was embarrassed by it.

But at that moment, Baron Walkin came into the camp and dumped the contents of his own coin purse onto the ground, spilling out dozens of rings and coins.

“Have a look at this!” he called to his wife and children. “Look what the men brought home. There’s enough gold and coin here to buy a small farm!”

Walkin’s brother Bane stood precariously above the loot on his injured ankle, beaming, like a boy who has just brought his first stag home from the hunt.

Borenson peered at the baron in surprise, then glanced back at Draken. He suddenly saw the way of it. He’d sent Draken out to search for food and supplies, but the Walkins had spent the night looting dead bodies. Draken didn’t tell what had happened; Borenson simply saw the shame burning in his face.

What’s more, the Walkins had made a race of it—looting the bodies before Draken could reach them.

An unholy rage suddenly welled up in Borenson, his face flushing. He strode forward and stepped on the Walkins’ loot. “This isn’t yours,” he said. “The people of Mystarria—that you once swore to serve—need it. In the name of the king, I lay hold of it.”

Walkin’s fist clenched in anger, and he squatted with back bent, but tried to restrain himself.

“You have no right to speak for the king,” Owen Walkin growled. “Nor for Mystarria. There is no king in Mystarria anymore. There is no Mystarria—just a rotting carcass being carved up by scavengers.”

“Fallion Orden still lives,” Sir Borenson countered. “He’s the rightful king. He has returned to Mystarria. I’m sailing back to serve him.”

Baron Walkin peered up at Borenson, eyes gleaming with anger. Draken suddenly realized that his father had challenged a desperate man. The baron had lost everything in the world, and so he had nothing to lose.

Instinctively, Draken pulled Rain back away from the two men.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Baron Walkin said dangerously. “My brother and I risked our lives for that salvage, and my brother almost lost a foot. It’s half ours—at the very least. And I have a right, too. My family is starving. What ever loot me and the boys find, we intend to keep.”

Borenson growled deep in his throat, a warning sound that Draken had only heard from dogs.

Sir Walkin needed no translator. He reached down and drew a dagger from his boot, backed up a step, and took a fighting stance.

Draken studied him. Walkin might have been a fighting man once, but he wasn’t practiced at it.

Borenson gave a fey laugh. “I had almost forgotten how much trouble the in-laws can be. . . .”

Baron Walkin grinned, began to circle to his right, his eyes glittering with bloodlust.

“I give you fair warning, little man,” Borenson said. “You can’t win this fight.”

Walkin grinned, a surprisingly fey smile. “That’s what they all say.”

“I could cut you down faster than you know.”

“You make that sound easy,” Walkin warned.

Walkin feinted, trying to draw Borenson in, searching for an opening.

Borenson laughed grimly. “You can have the crates of linen. Those alone are worth a small fortune.”

The baron shook his head no, eyes glimmering dangerously.

At first Draken had thought that the baron was only posing, that he wouldn’t dare attack.

But now Draken could see Walkin thinking. There was a ship to win, and treasure—enough booty to secure his future in this wilderness. This might be his last chance to make such a boon for himself. If he didn’t take the loot now, he might have to watch his children starve this coming winter.

There were riches worth dying for—or killing for. Walkin imagined that he had no choice but to fight.

What was it that Baron Walkin had said earlier? Draken wondered. “Sometimes killing can be an act of love”? Suddenly Draken realized that the baron was talking from experience. He’d killed to provide for his family before.

“I’m sailing that ship to Mystarria,” Borenson warned. “Any trade goods we find will go to pay for supplies and safe passage through Internook’s waters. If you want, you can have your share after the voyage is done.”

“That’s a fool’s plan,” Walkin said. “I’m not going back to Mystarria. Warlord Bairn has a price on my head.”

So Walkin had decided. He wanted to take it all.

The women in Walkin’s camp stood with open mouths, stunned at this sudden turn.

Myrrima shouted at the baron and Borenson, “Stop it! Both of you stop it right now.” She stepped between them.

But she hadn’t properly gauged the situation. She still hoped that this was some petty squabble. She didn’t realize yet that Walkin had just decided to kill them all. That would be his only choice—to get rid of any witnesses who might tell what he’d done. It wouldn’t be hard to dispose of the bodies. Nearly everyone in Landesfallen was floating up on one beach or another.

Walkin grabbed Myrrima, pulled her in front of him as a shield, expertly shoved a blade against her throat, and warned Borenson, “Drop your weapon!”

Rain screamed, “Father, what are you doing? Let her go!”

Draken released his grip on Rain’s bicep, drawing his own blade. The time for talking was coming to an end, and he knew how to fight. He wasn’t going to try to use the woman that he loved as a shield, so Draken stepped back, lest one of the Walkin men tried to circle behind him.

Borenson smiled grimly. “You see, son, how he repays your hospitality? This man is every bit the brigand I thought that he was.”

“Honor is a luxury that only the rich can easily afford,” Baron Walkin said.

“Father—” Rain tried to argue.

“Stay out of our way!” Walkin growled, but Rain stepped between the two men. It was a courageous thing to do. Or maybe it was foolish.

Borenson still hadn’t drawn his own knife.

Myrrima grabbed the baron’s knife wrist and tried to break away. There was a time when Myrrima had enough endowments to snap the man’s arm, but she’d lost them all years ago, when the warlords of Internook overthrew Mystarria.

Rain lunged, grabbed her father’s wrist, and tried to free Myrrima. In the scuffle the baron’s knife caught Rain on the forearm. Blood gushed.

Some children cried out in alarm while Rain staggered back, put her hand over the gash, and tried to staunch the blood.

Sudden resolution shone in Baron Walkin’s eyes. He decided to kill Myrrima. He grabbed her chin and pulled her head back, exposing her throat.

At the sight, Sir Borenson’s eyes lost focus. His face darkened and contorted in feral rage.

With a snarl the giant lunged so quickly that Draken’s eyes could hardly register the attack. Big men weren’t supposed to be able to move that fast.

No, Draken realized, human beings can’t move that fast!

Borenson grabbed Walkin’s knife wrist. He twisted, as if to disarm the man, but perhaps misjudged his own strength. Walkin’s wrist snapped like a tree limb, a horrifying sound.

Borenson gripped Sir Walkin by the left shoulder and lifted him into the air. He shook the man like a rag doll, whipping him about so hard that it looked as if Walkin’s head might come off. For a full ten seconds Borenson roared, a deep terrifying sound more befitting a lion than a man.

The scene was totally riveting, and time seemed to slow. Borenson roared and roared, staring beyond the baron, while women shouted for him to stop.

The baron shrieked in pain and terror. His eyes grew impossibly wide. Borenson seemed beyond hearing, beyond all restraint. He dug his enormous thumbs into the Baron’s shoulders, plunging them through soft flesh like daggers, gripping the poor man so hard that blood blossomed red on the baron’s tunic.

Then Borenson bellowed and pulled his hands apart, ripping the baron in two.

Blood spattered everywhere, glittering like rubies in the sunlight, and Draken saw the blue-white bones of the baron’s ribs. Half a lung and some intestine spilled from the baron’s ribcage.

Borenson continued to roar as he shook the man, raising him overhead, and at last he hurled Baron Walkin sixty feet—over the cliff.

Walkin hit some rocks with a cracking sound; a second later he splashed into the water.

Borenson whirled on the rest of the Walkin clan, muscles straining, as he roared another challenge.

No one dared move. Borenson stood huffing and panting.

The giant had taken leave of his senses. He glared at the crowd, as if searching for another enemy to rend in two. Gore dripped from his hands.

Instinctively, Bane backed away, as did the other Walkins.

The children shrieked in terror and cringed, gibbering in fear. Rain just stood in shock—both at what her father had done and at Borenson’s response.

Even Draken feared what Borenson would do next.

Then, slowly, Borenson began to come to. He stood peering about at the crowd, his eyes jerking and refusing to focus. He raised his hands, peered at the gore dripping down his arms, and moaned.

Draken could not quite believe it. He could look back now and recognize the instant that his father had lost control. And Draken knew that his father had regained it. But in between, his father had been . . . gone, acting on pure instinct. He wasn’t even a spectator in the battle.

Owen’s wife Greta stood motionless, her face drained of blood. She gaped at Borenson as if she’d just wakened from one nightmare to a greater nightmare, and then in a small voice said, “Grab your things, children. We have to leave. We have to leave now!”

She was shaking, terrified. She dared not turn her back on the giant, for fear of an attack. So she glared at him as the children gathered around.

Borenson did not move to stop her.

Weeping and fearful glances came from the children. Bane’s wife berated him, commanding him to “Do something!” while another young woman muttered insults under her breath, calling the giant an “ugly arr,” and an “elephant’s ass.”

Rain stood for a moment, looking between her family and Draken, unsure which way to choose.

“Stay if you want,” Myrrima pleaded with Rain softly. Rain hesitated, turned to look at Myrrima with tears streaming down her cheeks. The horror of what had happened was too great for her to overcome. She turned and began to follow her clan.

Draken called, “Rain!”

Myrrima told him, “And you can go if you want.”

Draken stood, in the throes of a decision. He knew that he couldn’t follow. Rain and her family, they’d never accept him now. Besides, he wasn’t sure about them anymore. The baron had been willing to kill them all.

The entire Walkin clan scuttled away, grabbing their few bags of goods, fading off into the shadows thrown by the rocks.

Borenson grumbled, “There will be other women, son. Few are the men who fall in love only once in their lives.”

“She’s special,” Draken said.

Borenson shook his head, gave the boy a suffering look, and said, “Not that special.”

Draken whirled and growled at his father, “And you have the nerve to lecture me about discipline!” Draken stood, trembling, struggling to find the words that would unleash all of his anger, all of his frustration.

Borenson turned away, unable to face him.

Borenson said, “I am a berserker, bred for two hundred generations to fight the wyrmlings. They come at us with axes and harvester spikes stuck into their necks. I meet them with my rage.

“Even among those bred to be berserkers, only one in ten can do it— set aside all the pain of battle, all of the fear and hesitation, and go into that dark place where no soul ever returns unscathed. . . .”

Borenson watched the Walkins, shook his head, and said under his breath. “They’ll be back. We should leave here—soon.”

“They won’t be back,” Myrrima said. “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

“Fear only makes a coward more dangerous,” Borenson intoned.

Borenson stood, trembling at the release from his rage. His whole body seemed poised for battle, every muscle rigid. Draken had seen well-bred hunting dogs act that way.

“I had no choice but to kill,” Borenson told Myrrima. “The man put you in danger.”

Myrrima shouted, “You roared at children! No one does that. I not only don’t know who you are anymore, I don’t know what you are.” She hesitated. “Aaath Ulber, that’s what they called you on that other world?”

“It means Berserker Prime, or Greatest of the Berserkers,” Borenson said.

“Aaath Ulber then,” Myrrima said in disgust. “I shall call you Aaath Ulber from now on.”

Draken could see in the giant’s expression that he knew what Myrrima was doing. By calling him a different name, she was distancing herself from him.

For a moment, all fell silent. Draken fixed the new name in his mind.

Pure grief washed across Aaath Ulber’s face, but he took Myrrima’s rebuke. “Right then, Aaath Ulber it is.”

Draken stood between the two, bewildered. Draken was afraid of Aaath Ulber, terrified by what he’d done. The violence had been so fast, so explosive.

“Walkin deserved his punishment,” Aaath Ulber said evenly. “If that man was still alive, I’d kill him again. He planned to kill me, and then he would have done you.”

“How can you be so sure?” Myrrima demanded.

“I saw it in his eyes,” Aaath Ulber said.

“So, you can read minds on your other world?” Myrrima asked.

“Only shallow ones.” Aaath Ulber smiled a feral smile. He tried to turn away Myrrima’s wrath with a joke. “Look at the good side of all of this,” he said. “We won’t be squabbling with the in-laws over who gets to eat the goose’s liver at every Hostenfest feast.”

8 Filth

There was work to be done before the Borensons broke camp. There were empty casks that needed to be filled with water. The family would need to take a trip to Fossil to fetch supplies.

And there was a child to be buried.

Myrrima had been waiting for Aaath Ulber to return so that the whole family could join in the solemn occasion. She’d wanted to have time to mourn as a family. She had never lost a child before. She’d always thought herself lucky. Now she felt as if even her chance to properly mourn was being stripped from her.

Fallion bound the worlds, Myrrima thought, and now my family is being ripped apart.

She told Aaath Ulber how Erin’s spirit had visited near dawn, and told him of the shade’s warning that they must go to the Earth King’s tree.

Aaath Ulber grew solemn, reflective. He wished that he had been here to see it, but the chance had been lost and there was no bringing her back.

“She spoke to you?” he asked in wonder.

“Yes,” Myrrima said. “Her voice was distant, like a faraway song, but I could hear her.”

“A strange portent,” Aaath Ulber said. “It makes me wonder. I am two men in one body. Is Erin now two spirits bound together? Is that how she found this new power?”

Myrrima shook her head, for it was something she had no way of knowing.

“And if spirits also bind,” Aaath Ulber said, “does that mean that within my body, the spirits of two men are also bound?”

Somehow, this idea disturbed him deeply. But there was no knowing the truth of it now. It was a mystery that no one could answer, so he asked, “Shall we bury Erin in water, or in the ground?”

Myrrima considered. She was a servant of Water, and always imagined that she would want to be buried in water herself. And on Sir Borenson’s home island, it had been the custom to send the dead floating out to sea.

But the water in the old river channel was filthy, and Myrrima didn’t want her daughter floating in that. Besides, if Myrrima ever returned to Landesfallen, she would want to know where her daughter’s body might be found.

Myrrima said, “Let’s plant her here, on dry ground, where she can be near the farm.”

Aaath Ulber did not begrudge the task of digging a grave, even though he had no tools. The giant went to a place where the ground looked soft, then began to dig, using a large rock to gouge dirt from the earth.

Myrrima and Draken rolled the empty barrels out of the ship’s hold; she opened each one and smelled inside. Most of them had held wine or ale, so these were the ones that she moved to the spot where the small stream seeped down the cliff. She began to fill each barrel with water for their journey, and as she did, she fretted, making long lists of things she hoped to buy in the small village of Fossil: rope, lamps, wicks, flint, tinder, clothes, needles and thread, fish hooks, boots, twine, rain gear, medicines—the list was endless, but the money was not.

So she wrestled the empty barrels to a rock where the clean water cascaded down the cliff and began to let them fill. It was a slow process, letting the water trickle into the barrels. As she did, she found that her hands were shaking.

She paced around the barrels, nerves jangling. She felt that she should go after the Walkins and try to offer some apologies, make amends.

But nothing that she could do would ever undo the damage. Baron Walkin was dead. Perhaps he deserved it, perhaps not. Myrrima strongly suspected that if Aaath Ulber had just stopped to negotiate, approached things more rationally, the tragedy could have been averted.

But Aaath Ulber had killed the baron, taken all of the Walkins’ money, and left them with nothing.

They came to our land with nothing, she thought, and with nothing they walk away.

It sounded fair, but Myrrima knew that it wasn’t.

Draken went up the cliff, heading toward the brush. “We’re going to need plenty of firewood,” he said. It was one more thing that they’d need, and Myrrima dreaded the chore. Bringing in enough for the long journey would take hours, and she knew that they couldn’t wait that long—the mayor of Fossil and his men were probably already rowing frantically toward them.

“Just get enough for a day or so,” she shouted. “We can stop up the coast and take on firewood.”

Sage came to the barrel and crouched next to it. The girl was trembling, and tears filled her eyes. She was only thirteen, and had never seen anything like what Aaath Ulber had done to Owen Walkin.

She needs comfort, Myrrima thought. I could cast a spell to wash away the memory. . . . But that would be wrong. She’s going to need to learn how to deal with such things if we go back to Mystarria. “Are you all right?”

Sage shook her head no. She peered into the water barrel, her eyes unfocused. “Daddy tore that man apart.”

Myrrima had a rule in life. She never blamed a man for what he could not control. Thus, she would never ridicule a foolish man, even if he was only a little foolish. She’d never belittle the halt or lame.

But what of Aaath Ulber? Was he guilty of murder, or was what he’d done outside his control?

She didn’t want to exonerate him to Sage. But she’d seen how Aaath Ulber’s mind had fled when he attacked. He wasn’t in control. What’s more, Myrrima suspected that he couldn’t control himself.

“I think . . . he was protecting us,” Myrrima said. “He was afraid of what Owen Walkin might do. I suspect . . . that he was right to kill him. I just wish that he hadn’t been so brutal. . . . To kill that man so, in front of us, his wife and children—”

“I feel sick,” Sage said. Her face had a greenish cast, and she peered about desperately.

“If you need to throw up,” Myrrima said, “don’t do it here.”

But Sage just sat for a moment, holding all of the horror in. “So . . . Aaath Ulber was born to kill that way.”

Myrrima had seen the rage in Aaath Ulber’s eyes, how his own mind revolted after the deed. “There were men like him even in our old world, men whose anger sometimes took them. It’s . . . Aaath Ulber’s rage is an illness, like any other. I don’t like it. I don’t approve of what he did. But I cannot fault him for it. If you fell ill with a cough, I would not condemn you. I wouldn’t find fault. Instead I would offer you herbs for your throat, and with a compress I would wash your fever away. I would seek to heal you. But I fear that curing your father might be beyond my ability. I know only a few peaceful runes to draw upon him. I can try, but I suspect that the only cure lies in Mystarria—in the hands of Fallion. We must find him, and get him to unbind the worlds.”

“Did father start the fight?” Sage asked. “Draken said that it was ‘all his’ fault. Father started it.”

Sage had lost so much in the past day. She still needed a father. So Myrrima decided to let the girl hold on to the illusion that she still had her father for as long she could.

Myrrima asked, “What do you think?”

“Draken said that when Daddy first found the Walkins, he insulted them. He called Rain a ‘tart.’ So father started it, and Owen Walkin tried to finish it.”

Myrrima traced the logic. “It wasn’t Aaath Ulber who started this,” Myrrima said, “it was the Walkins. They’re the ones who were squatting on our farm. We thought it was the birds eating our cherries, but now you and I both know better.”

“Draken was letting them live there.”

“Because he loved their daughter,” Myrrima said. “But Draken didn’t have the right to let them squat. It wasn’t his farm. You wouldn’t go give away our milk cow, would you? That is what Draken was doing. He should have come forward and asked your father’s permission. Nor should the Walkins have allowed it.”

Myrrima did not want to say it, but she half-wondered if the Walkins had thrown Rain at Draken. Perhaps they’d hoped that the two would fall in love. Perhaps they’d encouraged Draken’s affection, knowing that his father was a wealthy landowner who might provide a parcel for an inheritance. It was, after all, a time-honored tradition among lords to increase their lands that way. But in Myrrima’s mind, it was also damned near to prostitution.

“Your father was in the right to throw them off,” Myrrima said. “We’ve had this talk about squatters before. It isn’t a kind thing to do, but it is needful.”

“But the Walkins had children in the camp,” Sage said. “Some of them were just babies. They shouldn’t have to starve just because . . . their parents make mistakes.”

“That’s the way of it,” Myrrima said. “When parents make mistakes, children often suffer.” She thought of Erin, and even of Sage. What would her children be called upon to bear because of her actions?

She dared not say it, but now she was reminded of how much she feared Aaath Ulber’s plan. He was going to take the whole family back into a war.

“The ship doesn’t really belong to Father,” Sage said. “It doesn’t belong to anyone. Father shouldn’t be able to just take it.”

“Aaath Ulber is a soldier at war,” Myrrima pointed out. “When a lord is in battle, he often finds that he may have to commandeer goods—food for his troops, shelter for his wounded, horses to draw wagons. He takes a little in order to help the many. That is what your father was doing with the ship. Owen Walkin knew that. He was a soldier, too. Baron Walkin broke his oath.”

Sage peered into the barrel. It was nearly full, and light reflecting from the water’s surface danced in her blue eyes.

Sage was aptly named, for even as a babe she had seemed to have a thoughtful look to her. “Father has changed,” Sage said. “I don’t know who he is anymore. He doesn’t think like we do, or else how could he do what he did to Sir Owen?”

“I suspect that you’re right,” Myrrima said. “Aaath Ulber’s people have been at war with the wyrmlings for thousands of years. In that war, his people lost everything—their lands, their friends, their freedom to roam. On Aaath Ulber’s world, he had a choice of only a few women that he could wed. He was expected to marry a woman from the warrior clans, a good breeder. In his world, he was expected to give up everything in the service of his people—even love.”

“I think that people who give up love,” Sage said, “must be a different kind of people. A person who would give up love for the war effort would give up anything else. I think he just expected Walkin to give up the ship. He didn’t think to ask for it, because in his world there would have been no need to ask.”

Myrrima studied her daughter, surprised at the depth of the girl’s insight. “I think you’re right. You should remember this. You and I both know your father, but we have yet to learn what kind of man Aaath Ulber really is.”

Rain still loved Draken; that much she felt sure of as she walked away from the Borenson camp, using a wad of grass as a poultice to stanch the wound to her arm. The cut wasn’t wide, but it was deep.

Yet the image of her father’s death hung over her, blinding in its intensity, so that as she plodded down the uneven trail, she often stumbled over rocks or tree roots.

Her thoughts were jangled, her nerves on edge.

There was a road of sorts here along the rim of the mesa—uneven and narrow. Teamsters sometimes used it in winter, Draken had told her. But there were no houses here, no other sign of life. Instead ragged bluffs of rock—sometimes iron red and sometimes ashen gray—rose all around in a jumble; in places the rock lay exposed for mile after weary mile. The soil was so shallow that little but rangit grass could grow in the open, and most of the shade could be found only beside the occasional stream.

I love Draken, she kept thinking, and she wanted to return to him. But she couldn’t bear standing in the presence of Aaath Ulber. His actions had driven a wedge between her and Draken, and Rain feared that she had lost him forever.

Just as importantly, she couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning her mother now. The Walkin clan was so poor. Rain was the oldest of seven children. Life would be hard enough here in the wilderness, but without her father, it would be much tougher now. Rain felt that she owed it to her mother to stay.

Which left her only one choice: She had to convince Draken to stay.

She found herself walking slowly. The Walkins soon became strung out, Rain’s mother leading the way, her back stiff and angry, her strides long and sure.

The mothers carried their infants, the fathers the toddlers, and every child above the age of five had to walk. But the little ones could not travel in haste, and could not go far. After a mile, they began to lag.

So Rain kept up the rear guard, making sure that they were safe. There were wild hunting cats up here on the bluff, she knew, cats large enough to take down a large rangit or run off with a child. She’d heard them not two nights ago snarling in the dark as she tried to sleep.

So she lagged behind. Her aunt Della soon came to walk at her side. Della was ten years Rain’s senior, and already had five children. Her tongue was as sharp as a dagger, and she felt compelled to honestly speak any cruel thought that came to mind.

“You’re not thinking of going back to Draken, are you?”

“No,” Rain said. The word was slow to come from her mouth.

“You can’t go back to him. It’s because of you that we’re in this mess.”

The notion seemed odd. “What do you mean?”

“If you hadn’t gotten caught by Warlord Grunswallen, Owen never would have had to kill to defend your honor.”

Rain felt determined to defend herself. “As I recall, I was churning butter in the basement when I got ‘caught.’ It wasn’t my fault. Someone—one of our neighbors—reported me.”

“But why?” Della demanded. “Obviously, you offended someone. They wanted to see you gone.”

Rain knew that wasn’t true. “I had no enemies, only faithless townsfolk who hoped to gain some advantage for themselves.”

“Or maybe someone just disliked the way that you always go around with your nose in the air, acting like you’re better than they are! Here I am, the pretty little lady—to the manor born.”

Della wasn’t the most pleasant woman to look upon. Nor was she ugly. But it was plain that she felt ugly inside. Her father had not had a title, though he was a respected cattleman.

“I’ve never done that,” Rain said. “I’ve never been a snob. Mother taught me to hold my head up high, to look others in the eye. That isn’t the same as being proud.”

Della opened her mouth, and then stopped, a sure sign that she had something truly devastating to say. “Going back to that boy would be a poor tribute to your father. He died to save your honor.”

That was the problem, Rain decided. He hadn’t died to save her honor. She’d seen the look in his eyes before the fight began. He was willing to kill Aaath Ulber—and Draken, and anyone else who got between him and his money.

“Father saved my honor,” Rain said candidly, “but took little thought for his own.”

“He was trying to feed his family,” Della said. “You’ll understand what he was going through someday, when you’ve spent enough nights awake worrying about how to feed your little ones.”

He could have tried to work it out, Rain thought. Della’s trying too hard to defend him. Suddenly she understood something. “You think it’s my fault that my father is dead?”

“He died to save your honor,” Della insisted. She stumbled over a root and caught herself, switched her babe to the other shoulder and patted its back, trying to soothe it to sleep. The babe was only nine weeks old. It was a colicky thing that spent most of the night crying. Now it raised its head, as if to let out a wail, but instead just lay back down to sleep.

I’d be colicky too if I had to drink Della’s sour milk, Rain thought.

She tried to track Della’s logic. When Rain had been caught and taken to Warlord Grunswallen’s manor, Owen had waited for the man to leave his home, and had then ambushed him in the market, overpowering his guards.

He’d tried to avenge Rain’s honor, but he’d struck too late. The fat old warlord had already bedded her.

Still, Owen had known that his deed would bring retribution on him and his family, so the whole family had fled that day, taking boats downriver for thirty miles, reaching a town in the full night, and then creeping overland for days.

They hadn’t stopped to purchase food for a week, hadn’t met with a stranger. They’d traveled only at night.

When they did resurface, two hundred miles from home, they heard rumors of how Owen Walkin’s entire realm had been “cleansed.”

At first, Rain imagined that it was their fault, that Grunswallen’s men had taken revenge upon the entire realm. But all of the bards agreed— the lands were cleared in the morning, and new tenants began to arrive by noon.

That could only have meant that Grunswallen had sold their lands months earlier—perhaps as much as a year in advance.

He’d simply become more rapacious as the time for the cleansing neared. Taking her as his slave was simply one last mad act among a long list of crimes.

So Rain’s father had saved her. In fact, he’d saved his entire family, and Rain felt grateful to him. But she did not feel guilty about the manner of his death.

She hadn’t wished it upon him. She hadn’t sensed it coming. She would have averted it, if she could.

“You say that my father died for my honor, but it seems to me that he died for all of us—just trying to get by.”

“You shouldn’t have stepped in!” Della said. “Your father couldn’t fight that giant—and you!”

Now Della’s true feelings came to the fore. Rain felt angry. She’d tried to talk her father down, stop him from committing a senseless murder. She’d hoped to remind of him of his honor.

But now she saw the true reason for Della’s rage. She suspected that Owen had been slow to react precisely because he feared hurting his own daughter.

Maybe she’s right, Rain thought.

She halted a moment, feeling ill, overwhelmed by the questions that raced through her mind.

Della’s youngest boy was trudging along ahead. He turned back and whined, “I want some water.”

“There’s water ahead,” Della urged.

The road before them wound over a long stretch of gray rocks that could not support even a gorse bush or a blade of rangit grass. The sun beat down mercilessly. Rain’s mother had forged far ahead of the rest of the group, and was now approaching a line of gum trees and wild plums, a sure sign that there was a creek. They had come perhaps two miles from the Borenson camp.

Suddenly Rain’s mother burst into a sprint, stretching her legs long as she pounded down the road. She looked as if she was breaking free, running from all the troubles of her past.

“There she goes,” Della said, as if she’d been expecting her to run. “Off to town. That mighty Lord Borenson is going to hang when she gets through with him.”

Rain’s mother was heading toward Fossil. It would be a long run— twenty miles—but she could make it in a few hours.

The blood burned in Rain’s face, shame and rage warring in her.

She worried how her mother would twist the tale. She couldn’t hope to gain much sympathy if she told the truth, so she’d have to lie: tell the townsfolk how a giant had killed her husband, a cruel beast who was intent on robbing a bit of salvage from her poor family. She’d neglect to mention what her husband had done.

But there was one thing that Rain felt sure of. No matter what happened, Aaath Ulber would not get a fair hearing. People would see his size, his strange features, and cast their judgment based on that.

Most likely the law would demand that he hang. Whether for the killing or for the robbery, it did not matter. The penalty was the same for both. Justice here in the wilderness was stark and sure.

Rain hurried her pace until she reached the line of trees.

They came upon a relatively broad creek, perhaps eight feet across. White gum trees grew along its banks, as did wild apples and plums. Rain crossed it and looked beyond—across a broad expanse of more gray rock, interspersed with fields of rangit grass. She studied her surroundings.

The fruit trees were the same breed as found in the Borensons’ old orchard. Most likely, burrow bears or borrowbirds had eaten the fruits in ages past, and then shat out the seeds here on the ridge. In this manner the fruit trees had gone wild along the creeks.

“This looks like a good place to camp,” Bane said. He was now the oldest of the Walkin brothers. So he urged the families to set camp beneath some trees, while the children went about searching for food.

An hour later, half of the children were asleep and Rain was wading in the creek, lifting rocks so that the children could catch crayfish, when Draken showed up.

One of the children saw him and raised a warning shout, as if he might have come to attack the camp.

As he came in out of the sun, beneath the shelter of some woody old peach trees, he called out, “Is Greta here?”

No one answered at first. Rain didn’t want to tell him. But finally she answered, “She’s gone . . . to Fossil.”

She watched his face fall, saw the fear building in his eyes.

Della laughed, “Your father is going to swing, if the town can find a tree big enough!”

Several of the children chimed in, “Yeah, he’s going to hang.”

Draken withstood the insults. “When she returns,” Draken asked, “will you give her this? It’s the salvage that Owen found last night.”

He held out a piece of white linen all bundled together.

Rain knew that he was trying to make things right. She suspected that he had come here on his own, defying his father.

“We don’t want your blood money,” Della called out. “Besides, there isn’t half enough to buy us off.”

Rain’s thoughts raced. Della didn’t want his money but she wanted him to double his offer?

Reverently, Draken set the money on the ground. “I’m not trying to buy you off,” he said. “This is for Greta . . . and her children. I was hoping she could use it to get some land and some food, so that the children don’t starve.”

No one stepped forward to take the gold. He stood for a long moment, gazing at Rain, and she merely remained by the creek, her heart breaking.

“Just so you know,” he said, “it wasn’t my father who did this. Anyone could tell you, my father was a fair man. But since the change . . . well, you can see . . . Aaath Ulber . . . my father isn’t himself.”

Draken stood shaking, peering into Rain’s eyes. He was forty feet away, but seemed afraid to draw any closer.

“You’d best get out of here, little man,” Della called.

Draken peered into Rain’s eyes, and with all that was in him begged, “Come with me!”

Rain just shook her head. He was asking too much of her. She turned and raced off into the trees, tramping loudly, blinded by tears. When she was in the deep shadows, she swiped her face and turned to see Draken out in the sunlight, trudging over the barren rock on stiff legs.

“Your da is going to hang!” Della shouted, and the children offered up similar catcalls, even as one of them grabbed up the little bundle of gold.

Rain felt confused, broken. Draken had tried to do something noble, had tried to make things right. But her family was just being mean and vindictive.

We were nobles once, she thought. Now we are reduced to being beggars and thieves, liars and robbers.

She loved Draken; that much Rain knew.

He was decent and strong. As a child he’d served as a Gwardeen, a skyrider flying on the backs of giant graaks. She admired his courage, his devotion to the people he’d served.

She knew that in all of Landesfallen, she’d never find another man that she shared so much in common with. Both of their fathers had been barons in Mystarria. Both of them had fled to the ends of the earth to start a new life.

Suddenly she realized that their fathers had even shared a common flaw. Draken felt humiliated by his father’s actions, just as Rain was embarrassed by what her father had become.

If Draken were more like my father, would I love him better? Rain wondered.

The answer was obvious.

I would not love him at all, she realized. I would think him mean and lowly, unworthy of affection.

She felt deeply troubled by the realization. The problem was that her entire family was changing, becoming the kind of people that Rain could not respect or tolerate.

For long minutes she sat in the deepest shade there in the grove. She saw a flash of red above as a day bat went winging about, hunting insects.

At last she got up, and began walking west, toward Draken, and hopefully toward a brighter future.

She passed by the edge of camp, and worried what her family would say. It seemed that all eyes followed her—the children’s, her aunts’.

She’d reached the blinding sunlight and the path over the rocks before Della spat, “I hope you die with them!”

Rain considered many replies before she turned and said, “Della, I hope that you have a happy and prosperous life, and that all of you can find peace.”

Half an hour after Draken left, Myrrima realized that he’d stopped bringing in firewood. She knew instantly where he had gone.

She wasn’t sure if he’d return to her.

Aaath Ulber had finished digging the grave for Erin, and now he put her body in. He gave a worried glance to the east, looking up the trail for Draken, and finally acknowledged that his son was gone by saying, “I reckon we lost another one.”

Then he went down to the ship and made ready for the voyage by wrestling the big water barrels onto the deck and stowing them in the hold. It was a job befitting a man of his size. Myrrima estimated that each barrel weighed nearly three hundred pounds. She and Sage together could hardly budge one.

The family gathered at Erin’s grave, and each of them spoke for a moment, talking about the best and brightest memories of her that they would treasure.

When it was Myrrima’s turn, she spoke of the blue dress that Erin had made for her last Hostenfest with material that she had bought herself. Erin had sewn it in secret, out in the barn, and when she had brought it out as a gift, Myrrima had feared that it would be ill-fitting or badly sewn. So she was astonished to find that it fit perfectly, and that Erin had sewn it as well as any seamstress in town might have done.

Aaath Ulber talked about how Erin had always been one to do her chores. He told her once when she was six that it would be her job to feed the pigs, and every day after that she would be up at dawn mixing the mash for them. He’d never had to tell her again.

Sage told of a time when Erin was only a toddler, and wanted a horse. The family didn’t have one, so Sage took Erin out into the fields until they found a burrow bear. Sage had used a bit of dried plum to tame the creature, simply offering it fruit from her pocket until it followed her around, and then she put Erin on its back so that she could ride.

Myrrima laughed at the tale. She’d never heard it before, and she wondered how many other secret acts of kindness Sage had done for her children.

With a heavy heart, she looked off to the east, hoping that Draken would return, but she didn’t see him. It was past time to go.

So she reached down and grabbed the first handful of dirt.

“Wait,” Aaath Ulber said. “He’s coming!”

From his higher vantage point, Aaath Ulber could see better. He gave a shout. “Hurry up!”

Draken raced into camp a minute later, looking shaken and guilty.

Myrrima called, “You couldn’t get Rain to come?”

Draken shook his head.

Aaath Ulber asked in his deep voice, “Did you give them the gold?”

Draken nodded, face pale. He was ready to take what ever punishment Aaath Ulber proffered.

Aaath Ulber grunted. “I saw you take it,” he admitted. “It won’t make things right between us, but Greta will thank you for it, come winter.”

“Greta wasn’t there,” Draken said. “She’s running ahead, to tell the townsfolk in Fossil what happened.”

Myrrima worried. The townsfolk would be quick to sympathize with the poor widow once they heard her tale. The best that Myrrima could hope for was that they could get into town, grab a few supplies, and then escape before Greta made it there.

Then, of course, she had to worry about the mayor and his men, coming to seize the ship.

“So much to do, so little time,” Aaath Ulber mourned. He began shoving dirt over Erin’s grave.

Moments later the family was on the ship. Draken unmoored it, and together they hoisted the sail.

They weren’t sixty feet from shore when they heard a shout from the cliff up above.

Rain raced downhill, reached the shore, and leapt out into the water. The men struggled for a moment to drop the sail as Rain swam out to meet them. The ship drifted farther and farther from shore faster than Rain could swim. The ship was nearly a quarter of a mile out when at last Draken was able to pull Rain into the boat, sopping wet.

She hugged Draken and wept, and Aaath Ulber said dryly, “You didn’t happen to bring a change of clothes, did you?”

She just laughed and cried and shook her head no.

Myrrima felt happy, for a moment. Happy for Draken, happy for Rain, happy that she hadn’t lost another child.

But instantly Aaath Ulber pointed out, “We’d better get under way, lest Greta reach town before we do and get us all hanged.”

The race was on.

Myrrima shook her head sadly at a sudden realization. It wasn’t her husband that she was worried about: it was any townsfolk who tried to stop him.

9 Return to the Oak

The trip to Fossil took too long for Aaath Ulber’s comfort. He wanted to speak to no one, and no one wanted to speak to him. He was glad to have Rain aboard ship, though there was a wall between them. He wanted to offer his sympathy, but he knew that she would have none of it.

I have become a monster, he thought. I have lost myself.

At home in Caer Luciare, it was considered a boon to be born a berserker. His gift was a prize. But here in Landesfallen, the gift had become a curse. He’d always told his children that they should retain control of themselves.

But how could he ask it of them, when he himself was out of control?

Aaath Ulber had no answer except one: I shall try to do better in the future.

But he felt weak, bereft of comfort. His children had seen him at his worst, and he knew that his life could never be the same. They wouldn’t trust him.

So he set his mind to other matters.

Right now, he felt an urgent need to get out on the open ocean, set sail for Mystarria. He yearned to know what had befallen Fallion, and he wanted to get home to Caer Luciare—to the wife and children that must be wondering about him.

But it wasn’t his mood that made the trip feel slow. An afternoon breeze was blowing up the channel toward the village, and ship could have made good time but for the debris floating in the water.

Only a day before the Hacker River Valley had been filled with orchards and woods, cities and homes. Now the debris was rising to the surface. Whole trees lay hidden in waters the deep brown color of dark ale. Bits of bark and wood floated everywhere, along with the occasional cow or burrow bear or dead fish or person. Beams from barns and homes littered the surface of the channel, along with bits of thatch, here a stool, there a chest that held some young girl’s dowry.

Often their little ship plowed over a sunken tree, and Aaath Ulber would hear it scraping the hull—or he’d hit a submerged body and feel it bumping along.

Aaath Ulber held his tongue, not wanting his children to know what made that noise.

So the ship sailed at quarter-mast, moving sluggishly, so that Myrrima and Sage could direct Aaath Ulber around the larger logs.

It would take months for the old river channel to get clear of debris, Aaath Ulber suspected. The Hacker River was just a trickle at this time of year. The water would move the logs and sticks around, send them surging inland when the tide rose, suck the debris back out to sea as the tides fell. The winds would have their way with it, too, blowing it toward one shore or another, depending upon the day.

In time it would wash high up on the beach, or it would sink into the depths, or it would simply wash back out to sea.

But for now the refuse was everywhere. In some places where the channel turned, the winds had already sent it into still eddies, and there the flotsam was so thick that it looked as if one could hike across it.

Already it had begun to smell foul as dead animals oozed into the flow. Aaath Ulber could hardly bear to look at it, for fear of whom he might see.

“Can I come to the Earth King’s tree?” Sage asked her mother.

“If your father will take you,” Myrrima answered.

Aaath Ulber raised a questioning brow. He’d thought that Myrrima would go to the tree.

“I think it best if you aren’t seen in town,” Myrrima reasoned.

Aaath Ulber couldn’t argue against that, nor did he want to. He’d need Draken, Rain, and Myrrima to go through town and purchase what ever supplies they could lay their hands upon, and they would need to reach good bargains, for his money would not spread far.

With this in mind, he promised to take Sage with him. She smiled at the thought, and began to chatter incessantly about her theory: the Earth King was going to rise again!

Aaath Ulber didn’t believe such foolishness. He wasn’t even sure that the young oak tree there at Fossil was the remains of the Earth King. It made sense, in a strange way. When a flameweaver was killed, the elemental in it took the form of towering flames and did its best to consume all that it could. When a wind wizard died, it released a tornado. When a water wizard passed, she typically gave herself to the sea. So it made sense that Gaborn would find some way to quickly return to the earth.

But Aaath Ulber refused to put too much stock in such speculation.

So they sailed in the late evening toward Fossil, and finally came to a place where the flotsam was so thick, Aaath Ulber did not dare go farther.

He moored the boat to a tree, and the family walked. A mile upstream, the vast tidal wave had deposited a huge wall of tangled trees and wreckage. Some of the local children from Fossil were out exploring in the mess.

Town was a mile beyond. By the time they reached it, the sun had nearly fallen.

Aaath Ulber gave Myrrima his coin pouch, such as it was. He wasn’t sure what a merchant might make of the steel discs from Caer Luciare. Myrrima had her own coin pouch as well, but it had been a lean year, and the family had been counting on the harvest to pay for supplies for next.

“First things first,” Aaath Ulber warned as he pressed his coin bag into her hand, “Hooks, needles, twine, matches, a good ax—”

“I know,” Myrrima said. Aaath Ulber bent down and gave her a kiss on the head, a clumsy gesture. It felt like kissing a child.

Fossil was not a large village, just a couple of hundred cottages all huddled on the banks of the river. It had a single inn and a great house that was used for the village moots.

Myrrima, Draken, and Rain took the old River Road to town; Aaath Ulber and Sage crept through some orchards, thus skirting the village altogether.

A couple of dogs barked at Aaath Ulber, and a horse nickered, as if it was time for feed, but otherwise the village paid him no regard.

Aaath Ulber and Sage reached a crossroad, heading north and south.

Night was beginning to fall. The air had gone still in the hills, which were thick with boulders. Among the short dry rangit grass, crickets had begun to sing. It was but two more miles.

With the coming of night he made a run for the tree, while Sage raced at his side. Running felt good. Once he got a steady pace, he reveled in the race, and became lost in thought. Sweat streamed down his face and back, while his heart hammered a steady rhythm. He cleared his mind and focused only on breathing.

Birds peeped querulously from the gorse along the road as he ran, while ferrin and rangits darted from his path.

Half an hour later, the evening sun was falling behind the hills, a rose colored pearl that limned the horizon. The old dirt highway ran right up to the side of Bald Hill, and Aaath Ulber could see the tree on its crown a mile away.

“There’s your tree, Sage,” he huffed. “It hasn’t turned into a man.”

“There’s someone beneath the tree, though,” Sage pointed out.

Her eyes were sharper than his. He saw nothing, until after a few minutes he spotted movement, a lone figure in the dusk. But then it seemed that the figure vanished again, perhaps by walking to the far side of the tree.

He put on a burst of speed, went climbing to the top. The hill was covered with dry grasses. Cicadas buzzed in the dusk.

He crested the top of the hill, came to the tree, and halted. The setting sun smote his eyes, backlighting the tree in shades of rose and blood.

No one was standing beneath it. Aaath Ulber peered around its base, just to be certain.

Sage gazed up at the oak silently, as if communing, and Aaath Ulber stood for a long moment, letting the sounds of nature wash through him. The tree’s leaves shivered in a small wind, and elsewhere in the vales below he could hear the breeze rustling through dry grasses.

He noted motes of dust caught in the wan light, small green motes that seemed to be dripping from the leaves. The ground beneath the tree seemed unnaturally bright, and as if golden sunlight caught it, sunlight that wasn’t there.

Aaath Ulber felt a thrill as a voice suddenly filled the silence within him, a voice that he recognized from long ago.

“A great evil is rising in the west,” the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden whispered. “I’ve sensed the change coming all summer. The crickets heralded it in their songs, and the mice worried over it. The enemy will commit a sacrilege against the earth.”

“Master,” Borenson said, dropping to one knee and lowering his head in token of respect. He had visited this tree before, a few years back. He’d sat beneath it on an afternoon and longed to hear Gaborn’s voice. But he’d left feeling empty and unsatisfied.

Now there was no denying what he heard. Gaborn’s voice came soft but clear. Aaath Ulber peered into the tree itself, and saw a ghostly form. Gaborn’s arms were raised up, contorted into limbs, and his elongated hands were lost in the branches. His face had the greenish hue of an Earth Warden, but his eyes had changed most of all. They seemed to be filled with starlight and kindness.

“A war is beginning, a war not for this world alone, but a war that shall span all of the heavens. Your enemy will embark upon a terrifying course, one that you cannot yet see. Their armies will race through the heavens like autumn lightning.

“Only you can stop them, my old friend. There is little that I can do to help.”

“Command me,” Aaath Ulber said, “and I will do all that is in my power.”

“I once told you how some had murdered my chosen. Do you recall?”

Aaath Ulber bowed his head, wondering why that knowledge would be important. He remembered the day clearly when Gaborn had visited him, revealing how some monstrously evil people had carried out plans to murder those under his protection. It was a secret that Aaath Ulber had never revealed. “I remember.”

“Good,” Gaborn whispered. “The time is coming when others must learn this secret. But your goal is not to kill unless you must. Your challenge is to help Fallion bind the worlds,” the Earth King whispered. “Only then can they be healed. Deliver him to the Seals of Creation.”

“It shall be done,” Borenson said, and for a moment his worries for Fallion were alleviated. The Earth King would know if his own son was dead or alive.

The tree’s leaves suddenly rustled in a stray breeze, and for the moment the tree fell silent.

“Beware the subtle powers of Despair,” the Earth King whispered. “It will seek to break you.”

Aaath Ulber trembled. He recalled the sound that Owen Walkin’s carcass had made as it bounced over the cliff.

“I am already broken,” Aaath Ulber admitted. “I fear that I am already lost.”

The image of the Earth King was fading, retreating back into the tree, like an old man turning toward his bed for the night.

“The journey will be long,” the Earth King whispered. “You must find yourself along the way. A broken man is hard-pressed to heal others.”

The image of the Earth King dissipated altogether, and very last of the day’s sunlight seemed to dim all at once, as if the candle of heaven had been snuffed. The golden glow at their feet, the motes of green dust in the waning light, all were gone.

Sage reached down to the ground and grabbed a single acorn. “We should keep this,” she said reverently, “as a remembrance.”

Aaath Ulber placed a large hand on her shoulder and nodded his agreement, and together they turned and marched downhill in the dusk.

They had not gone a hundred feet when they heard a loud crack, followed by a crash. They turned to see the great oak split in half.

Aaath Ulber thought, Now Gaborn is gone forever.

When Sage and Aaath Ulber reached the outskirts of Fossil, it was past dusk. Smoke wafted above the chimneys, and Aaath Ulber could smell meat roasting on the fire.

I should go into town, he told himself. The time will come when I must win people over. I must figure out how to inspire them to follow me to war—or at the very least, give up their endowments.

I’m big and strange to look upon, but I’m not that strange.

So he sauntered to the town square in front of the inn, with Sage on his heels, and found a surprise: A rider had reached the village, a girl of seven or eight who rode upon the back of a huge white sea graak.

The townsfolk had gathered around it, and now they stood with torches. The graak shone an unearthly orange in the firelight, and stood regally, fanning its wings, the skin at its throat jiggling—a sign that it was hot after a long flight. It was a male, with a long white plume upon its forehead— a bony ridge that ended with a fold of skin like a fan. The blue staring eye of the Gwardeen was painted upon the plume.

The rider, a petite thing, had her hair tied back and wore the ocher tunic of those who manned the citadel in the Infernal Wastes.

Several men had gathered round the beast, hoping for news. Myrrima, Draken, and Rain were among the crowd, bearing cloth sacks filled with produce. Rain had a pair of goats tethered together. Little Sage raced up to her mother, excited to see what might be in the sacks.

Aaath Ulber stopped in the shadows of the inn and stood listening.

“The southern coasts are worse,” the girl was saying. “The ocean swallowed all of the land for six hundred miles, from what we can tell. The South is flooded.”

The sheriff of the town was a big man whose name Aaath Ulber could not recall. He had obviously been hoping that the disaster was some local affair.

“Do they know what caused this?” There would be no answer, of course. The appearance of fish and coral reefs on dry land was unprecedented.

The girl shook her head.

“Right,” the sheriff said. “We’re on our own then.” He turned to some of the townsfolk. “We’ll—” The sheriff caught sight of Aaath Ulber in the shadows.

“Here now,” he demanded, “who’s there? What’s your business?”

Aaath Ulber had been dreading this moment. He turned and glanced behind him, as if unsure that the sheriff was talking to him.

The sheriff didn’t recognize Aaath Ulber, of course, but Aaath Ulber had known him as a nodding acquaintance.

Aaath Ulber stepped out into the torchlight, and there were a few exclamations of shock from the men. Some of them reached for their knives almost by instinct, and even the graak reared up and flapped its wings, letting out a croak of warning. A black dog that had been wagging its tail and watching the crowd suddenly began to bark at Aaath Ulber, ranging back and forth, its tail between its legs.

“I came for a drink at the inn,” Aaath Ulber said, “and to buy goods— if it pleases you.” None of the men spoke for a moment, so he added “What’s the matter—you’ve never seen a giant before?”

The sheriff eyed Aaath Ulber suspiciously. Always in the past he had been a jolly fellow, eager to please. He said coldly, “I decide whom we will trade with in this town—or not. Do you have a name?”

Aaath Ulber might have said that he was Sir Borenson, but he did not want to confuse the man. “Aaath Ulber,” he answered, “a poor giant, traveling from afar. Do not mistrust my appearance, for though I am the size of a great boar I am as gentle as a burrow bear.”

Aaath Ulber smiled at his own description, no doubt baring his oversized canines.

On any other evening, that answer might have served as an invitation to tell a tale or two, but the sheriff was in no mood for tales. He studied Aaath Ulber, taking in the curious hornlike growth on his temples; the bone spurs on his wrists; and the unearthly gray metal of his armor. He demanded, “Where do you hail from?”

Aaath Ulber dared not lie; yet the truth was stranger than any tale he could have devised. A half-truth served better. “Near Mystwraith Mountain on the far borders of Indhopal is the home of my ancestors.”

“I have never heard of it,” the sheriff said. Of course, Aaath Ulber knew that the folk here in Landesfallen had little contact with strangers. Indhopal was on the far side of the world; he doubted that anyone in this town had ever set foot there. The world was full of wonders, and so he thought to add one more.

“Our people are few in number now, fewer than the frowth, fewer than the arr. Like the hill giants of Toom, our numbers are dwindling. My people are called the Bawlin. In ancient times we bowed to the kings of Mystarria, and the most famous of our number served as a guard in the court of King Orden. I myself fought reavers under the banner of the Earth King, and saw the fall of Raj Ahten.”

Aaath Ulber of course could tell stories of the Great War all day; they’d even be true.

There were approving nods from some men, and one chimed in, “I’ve heard of them giants.”

The sheriff gave Aaath Ulber a stone-cold look for a long moment, as if weighing some argument in his mind, then said softly, dangerously, “Seize him!”

“What?” Aaath Ulber roared. “On what charge?”

“Suspicion,” the sheriff said. “There are no songs of a giant like you fighting beside the Earth King, and if you had done so, there would have been a song. Hence, I know you to be a liar.”

Aaath Ulber studied the man. The sheriff was looking for any foolish excuse to jail him—that much was evident.

Men fear power, and Aaath Ulber’s size and bearing marked him as being more powerful than others.

A couple of men strode forward, armed with nothing more than torches and a pitchfork. One of the townsfolk reached for his knife.

Myrrima stepped in front of him, blocking their path. She demanded, “Are there any songs of Myrrima and her bow, who slew the Darkling Glory at Castle Sylvarresta?”

The men drew to a halt. They all knew her name even if they did not know her in person. Some whispered, “It’s Myrrima!”

“I can vouch for this man,” she said. “Indeed, I fought beside him in the service of the Earth King. Any who seek to hinder him will have to deal with me and my husband!”

The townsfolk withdrew a pace. Sir Borenson’s reputation was more than enough to cow them.

At that, she turned toward the boat, and Aaath Ulber decided to forgo his chance at a beer and head for safety.

Aaath Ulber strode along in Myrrima’s wake. None of townsfolk tried to stop him.

Hah, Aaath Ulber thought, not one of them has the heart to fight.

Suddenly there was a mewling cry from the darkness up the road. A woman shouted, “Murder! Murder most foul!”

Greta Walkin staggered from exhaustion as she rounded a thatch-roofed cottage. She stood for a moment in the road, panting. Sweat streamed down her face, staining the armpits and neck of her blouse. She had obviously run for miles. A dog barked and ran out to meet her.

When she saw Aaath Ulber, she froze in her tracks. Her eyes widened and she pointed. “Murderer!”

Suddenly the villagers were thrown in a panic. The hue and cry had been raised. Ancient law required all the men in town stop what ever they were doing and apprehend the suspect.

The sheriff himself drew his long knife.

Aaath Ulber stepped back; bloodlust threatened to take him.

Villagers ringed about him, a couple waving their torches as if he were a wolf that they sought to keep at bay.

Aaath Ulber felt his heart racing, heard blood thundering in his ears. The shouts of the men seemed to come from far away, as if they were in a tunnel.

At any moment the berserker rage would fall over him, unless he did something to avert it.

The Earth King’s warning rang in his ears: “You must find yourself. . . .”

Aaath Ulber lunged and swung his fist lightly, smashing the sheriff in the forehead. The whack echoed from the stone walls of nearby cottages, and the sheriff staggered back, blood flowing from his broken nose. He stood for a moment, dazed, staring at the blood in his hands.

As his nose began to swell, he wheezed for air. The sheriff didn’t know it yet, but he was out of the fight.

Several men had drawn daggers now, and ringed Aaath Ulber. One man rushed in blindly jabbing his pitchfork. Aaath Ulber simply leaned away, then as his opponent drew close Aaath Ulber grabbed him by the collar and sent him flying. Another took advantage of the opening at Aaath Ulber’s back and lunged in with a knife swinging low, trying to hit an artery in his leg. Aaath Ulber simply kicked the man backward.

Aaath Ulber was going to grab the nearest man, but Myrrima shouted, “No more!”

She rounded on the townsmen. “I am Water’s Warrior!” she shouted. “A curse on all who dare hinder us! Your crops shall dry up, and your livestock will starve. Your manly parts shall wither, and every child that shelters under your roof will waste away with a pox!”

A wizard’s curse was not to be taken lightly. Perhaps only a horde of reavers could have given the men greater pause.

They looked at one another, and someone muttered, “I’m done here.” Then they began to back away, fading into the darkness.

Greta fell to the ground just outside the circle of men and lay sobbing beneath the upraised wings of the enormous white graak. “Murder!” she cried, begging for justice.

To Aaath Ulber’s surprise, Rain strode forward and addressed the townsfolk. “I saw what happened,” she said. “The man who died was my father—but he did not die honorably. He had slaughter on his mind, and robbery as his goal. It was not murder, as my mother here well knows. I loved my father dearly, and once he was a good man, but killing Aaath Ulber here would not serve justice. If my father had had his way, there would be four people dead now, not just one.”

The men of the town looked back and forth, as if to decide what course to pursue. At last the sheriff threw his own blade down. “It’s not worth it,” he said, spitting upon the ground, giving water to the earth, thus to ward off Myrrima’s curse.

The rest of the men backed off a pace, each spitting in turn, even as Greta lay crying “Murder! Murder!”

A couple of the men were still on the ground, panting and bloodied.

All of the townsfolk cast hateful looks Aaath Ulber’s way.

Had I been alone, Aaath Ulber realized, I would have had a fight on my hands.

Myrrima headed for the ship. Aaath Ulber followed at a measured pace, while the children rushed to join them. Aaath Ulber worried that at any moment a dagger might come flying at his back. He dared not run, dared not appear guilty.

For two hundred yards he avoided the temptation to glance behind. At last he cast a fleeting glance over his shoulder. The townsfolk were all gathered in the shadow of the enormous white graak, the torchlight glimmering red upon it. The men had a bitter air of defeat about them.

Aaath Ulber wanted more supplies, yet his instincts warned against ever returning to the village.

He thought sarcastically, A fine job I did of winning these men’s hearts.

10 The Narrows

The sun had died, sinking into an evening mist that drifted in from the sea. Rain ran along the road blindly, feeling as if the Powers that be had decided to shut off the world from all light.

“Get to the ship, quickly!” Myrrima warned the others. Rain, Draken, and Myrrima had purchased what supplies they could—a pair of lamps, some twine and rope, fishhooks, fresh rutabagas and apples from farmers, eggs, cheese, honey, and ham.

Rain carried a pair of sacks, not even sure now what they held, while Sage led their pair of goats out of town, toward the ship that was moored in the distance.

The townsfolk stood in a knot in front of their great house, some of them jeering and shaking their fists at Aaath Ulber while he strode away, glaring and baring his teeth.

The young graak rider flapped off on her great white monster, heading toward the ocean, and as Rain watched, she could see its wings blotting out the first new stars, flapping gently as it rode through the heavens.

They followed the road south through town, and every minute Rain expected to encounter some resistance, but for two miles they hurried, breathless from carry ing their load of food.

When they reached the ship, Draken was first aboard. He disappeared into the cabins for a moment, then stopped and looked down into the hold, trying to make sure that no one had boarded in their absence.

“All clear,” he called, and then climbed down into the hold, carry ing a huge bag of turnips. He came up and Rain handed him her load, while Aaath Ulber set his own bundle aboard.

Then Rain and Myrrima helped Sage wrestle the goats over the threshold and the group tried to set sail.

The wind had died in their absence, and the ship moved sluggishly, serving as a perch for a pair of gulls that thought the prow was a fine place to roost.

The tide was still going out. This far up the channel, there were no waves, just a gentle retreat of the water, and here so close to the end of the bay, the water was filled with flotsam. Much of it had the consistency of sawdust, for there were ground-up bits of bark and twigs everywhere, but some of it was made of logs, and amid this mess she could see things more vile floating in the water—the pale bellies of dead fish, the hair of dark animals, a woman’s bloodless hand.

So the group sat upon the deck as the ship drifted, gently floating toward the sea.

Rain doubted that the boat would drift far any time soon. The channel was nearly half a mile wide here, and the Hacker River had been but a trickle so late in the summer. The current was almost non existent.

“A night breeze will come soon,” Myrrima offered. She did not say it with hope but with certainty, as if already she felt it breathing upon her.

Rain peered to the south as the gloom deepened. She knelt on the deck, her arms thrown over the railing. Her mind was a muddle. She wanted to be with Draken, but she worried about her brothers and sisters.

Just as importantly, she worried what her family would think of her. Myrrima came and stroked her back.

“Are you having regrets?”

“I’ll miss my family,” Rain admitted. “But I fear that they won’t miss me—not after what I said in town.”

“You spoke the truth,” Myrrima said.

“Some people hate the truth,” Rain said, “and they hate those who tell it even more.”

“Not all truths are equally pretty,” Myrrima said. “Sometimes a truth is too hard for people to bear. Your mother will mourn Owen, but she will miss you, too.”

That brought tears to Rain’s eyes. She hoped that it was true.

“It’s my little brothers and sisters that I worry about the most,” Rain said. “They need someone to look after them. And they’ll always think of me as the sister who ran away.”

“Perhaps the future will bring you back together again, in brighter days,” Myrrima said.

Rain shook her head. She was going back to Mystarria, where there was most likely a price on her head. She was going to war, and she could not see that the future held any light for her at all. It was darker than the skies above.

Rain could hardly imagine how they would handle the ship with just four adults and a child. This looked to be a grueling journey.

“There is still time to go back home,” Myrrima said, “if that is what you truly want.”

Rain didn’t have any good choice here. Whether she stayed or went, she’d lose something she valued more than life itself.

She sat for a moment, twisting the ring on her finger. It was an old thing, passed down from her grandmother. The band was broad, of cheap silver, and the large stone in it was blood-red jasper. It was the only heirloom that she had from the family.

She shook her head. “You should have seen the looks they gave me when I left. I’ve never felt such hatred. And if I stay, it would just grow, until my aunt Della drove me out once and for all. It’s better that I leave.”

The whole crew fell silent. Aaath Ulber sat on the captain’s deck, manning the rudder. He had not slept in well over a day, and finally he began to snore wonderfully loud.

And in half an hour the wind came, rushing down the hills from the deserts of Landesfallen, fanning out above the cool water. It was not much of a breeze, but it filled the sails fitfully, so that they luffed for a moment; then the new wood of the timbers creaked as the ship began to ease forward.

Rain worried. They hadn’t had time to take on much in the way of supplies, and she didn’t know where the company might be able to take on more. If she understood correctly, islands that had once supported passing ships might well be underwater.

But Rain had more immediate concerns. The river channel was still filled with debris, and in the starlight whole trees could lie hidden beneath the ale-dark waters. So Draken and Rain each lit a little lantern, and she sat on the prow, her feet dangling near the waves, and helped guide the vessel.

Her efforts did little good, for often now they would scrape or bump against hidden obstacles.

Aaath Ulber came awake, and sat on the captain’s deck. He expertly steered the ship, pulling down on the shaft so that the rudder lifted and did not catch on hidden trees. He seemed to relish the touch of the rudder, the water gliding beneath him.

With a thoughtful expression Aaath Ulber made slowly for the sea.

Myrrima voiced the concern that Mayor Threngell would try to stop them, but Aaath Ulber said, “There’s little that they can do. Their little rafts can’t form much of a blockade. Even if a couple of them do get close enough so that they try to board, I’ll just throw them back in the water.”

They rode the waves for nearly thirty-six miles, until they rounded a wide bend. Here, two monolithic hills of stone created a narrow passage less than a quarter of a mile wide—the perfect spot for an ambush.

Ahead, guttering torches lit the water, a string of them billowing smoke. Men upon rafts held the strait.

At the sight of the ship, they gave a warning shout and stood upon their rafts, waving cudgels—knotty limbs pulled from the water.

“They don’t know who they’re dealing with!” Aaath Ulber growled, and he set course straight ahead—aiming to plow through the midst of them. But the channel ahead was filled with debris—dead trees and bits of houses, all thrust up from the water so thick that it looked like rugged ground, broken by rocks and ruin.

“Father,” Draken cried, “they’ve blockaded the river!”

Rain recognized what had happened. The townsmen had tied logs together and strung them across the narrow strait, forming a dam. And as the tide had retreated, the dam had collected tons of debris.

“Turn the ship!” Myrrima shouted, but it was too late. The ship rammed the debris, scraping against tree trunks and the roof of a house, then ground to a halt as completely as if it had struck a beach.

They sat there.

“Those clever little schemers,” Aaath Ulber muttered. “I thought they’d wear themselves out trying to catch us, but they came up with a better plan.”

“Prepare to be boarded!” Mayor Threngell called. “Lower your sails!”

Rain saw him, two hundred yards off, on the far side of the debris; he had a torch in one hand. He stood at the edge of his boat and peered about nervously, trying to figure out how to make his way across the flotsam.

Aaath Ulber chuckled at the man’s predicament. The mayor and his men didn’t have proper weapons, and crossing the logjam looked all but impossible.

Aaath Ulber got up from his seat, strode to the prow, and pulled his old war hammer from its sheath on his back. “Leave them to me,” he said, urging Rain and the others to retreat a pace so that he would have room to swing his weapon.

Rain heard Myrrima begin to pray under her breath, calling upon Water. Need drove her, and compassion.

She spoke to the Power that she served, whispering, “If indeed you want me to go to war, then I beg of you, open a path before us.”

Peace filled Rain like an ocean, and suddenly Myrrima stood, as if she had made up her mind what to do.

She went to the prow of the boat and raised her hands, summoning water into her service. Draken stood at her back, holding his lantern aloft, and Aaath Ulber stood at her right.

“Come the tempest, come the tide!” she shouted.

Nearby, the water began to swirl beside the boat, as if a huge hole had opened up in the ground and was draining the ocean away. Debris swirled in the vortex. It began to whirl faster and faster, and the sound of roaring water filled Rain’s ears, as if a mountain river thundered through rocks.

“Whoa!” Draken shouted; Sage cried, “Mother?”

It was obvious that neither child had ever seen Myrrima make such a display of power before.

The ship creaked and wobbled, and waves began to build, lifting the flotsam so that it swelled and bucked.

Then suddenly water spouted up from the vortex, twisting and rising into the air.

Myrrima reached out and grasped the column of water, taking it into her hand, so that a plume of water twisted a dozen feet in the air, whirling from her palm, as if it were a staff.

She pointed her watery staff toward the logjam in front of the ship and shouted, “Come the tide!”

Suddenly a rushing filled the air, and all around her the water began streaming seaward. Water from the sound leapt up and flowed over logs and bracken as if a river had suddenly flooded.

Mayor Threngell saw what Myrrima was doing; his eyes went wide. “Run!” he shouted to his men. “They’ve got a water wizard!”

In the logjam, debris strained toward the open sea, and strange groaning sounds and rumblings erupted. The enormous pressure of the rushing tide suddenly snapped ropes that held the dam in place.

The ship lurched forward, logs and debris rumbling against its hull as it began to break clear.

The great raft of debris went rushing seaward, and now the townsmen on their various watercrafts began to scream and do their best to push themselves away from logs that rumbled toward them.

Myrrima stood with her watery staff still swirling in her hand. She threw the whirling staff back into the surging tide. It danced upon the surface a moment, like a waterspout, and the water at its base began to swirl faster and faster.

“Bring up the dead!” Myrrima called to the waves. The whirl pool churned and foamed, became a waterspout rising into the air; from the foam a body surged, a dead man large and pale, his eyes already plucked out by fish. The water made a moaning noise as it rose, as if the dead declared their pain.

Then a young girl surged into the waterspout, and in an instant dozens of other corpses bobbed into the air as if eager to be free of their watery grave, and all of them spun about in the plume, rising fifty feet in the air, as the moaning in the waters continued to build.

There had recently been a village here, a thriving hamlet. It had had tidy streets and quaint shops. A man in town had made stained-glass windows for a living, and every shop and house along the street was provided with a window to advertise his wares. Rain had envied the folks who’d lived here.

Their corpses rose, faces blue from the depths, hideous and terrifying, whirling as they swirled up the waterspout and then went flying through the air like fat dolphins.

The mayor and his men groaned in wordless terror and sought to escape, paddling away in a hurry, as horrid corpses began to splash around their boat in a gruesome hail.

Suddenly the ship burst through the last of the flotsam, groaning and scraping as it ran over a submerged log.

The Borenson family broke free of the narrows and headed out into the open sea.

11 Whispers

An hour before dawn, heavy fog from the sea besieged the watchtower at the wyrmling fortress so that its single black stone pinnacle floated above an ocean of clouds. Crows circled the tower, cawing, troubled by the movement below.

All around the tower, the clouds were lit a sullen red from beneath. Hundreds of bonfires ringed the tower so that the fog glowed like dying embers.

From the fires below voices rose up, human voices cruel and cold, singing songs of war:

Though the black basalt walls of the great tower looked smooth and unscalable from a distance, it was assailable—for a small man with clever fingers and a few endowments of grace and brawn.

So the runelords came, nine of them, eeling up through the fog, as swift as lizards, barefoot and unarmored, garbed only in sealskin, their long blond locks braided and dyed in blood. They bore sharp daggers in their teeth and carried ropes coiled over their backs.

With three or four endowments of metabolism each, they seemed to race up the nearly vertical slope.

Few were such runelords among the warriors of Internook. These were old men, cunning warlords who had lived in wealthier days. Most of them had little left in the way of endowments, for the majority of their Dedicates had died over the past de cade. But they came nonetheless, for they were bold men, and fierce, and endowments of attributes alone do not a warrior make.

The first runelord neared the top of the tower, reached back with one hand, hurled a grappling hook over the lip of a merlon, and scrambled up.

A wyrmling guard saw the hook and rushed to cut the rope. But he had never faced a warrior with endowments and was therefore unprepared for what he met.

The small man raced up the rope so swiftly that when he hit the battlement, he seemed nearly to have been hurled into the air by some invisible force.

The wyrmling grunted in surprise, then swung his battle-ax down, trying to slice the man in two and cut the rope in a single blow. But the little warrior sidestepped the attack, swung up with a short half-sword, and plunged it deep into the wyrmling’s throat, slicing through his esophagus and severing his spinal cord.

The wyrmling guard dropped without so much as a grunt, and lay for a moment, staring at the stars, bright and inaccessible, as his life’s blood oozed from his throat.

Dark shadows passed before his eyes as human runelords flitted into the tunnels.

Bells began tolling in the Fortress of the Northern Wastes, deep bells that reverberated through stone, carrying their warning through Crull-maldor’s feet. She stood in the Room of Whispers, a perfect dome lit only by glow worms along the ceiling, a room riddled with miniature tunnels in the walls. Each tunnel contained a glass tube, a special glass designed to conduct sound. And each tube went to a different reporting post.

At each end of the tube, the glass flared wide. By talking into the tubes the wyrmlings could communicate the entire length of the fortress.

“They’re coming!” a messenger shouted, his voice emitting an urgent whisper from the tube. “Humans have breached the tower!”

There were shouts of challenge, the clash of arms, roars of pain, the sounds of wyrmlings dying, followed almost instantly by more reports from another tube, urgent whispers: “Enemy spotted, Tower Post Two!”

“Death Gate One—humans coming!” a third voice cried.

In the perfect acoustics of the Room of Whispers, it seemed that the voices came from everywhere and nowhere, like the distant hiss of the sea. It was as if the guards were incorporeal, like Crull-maldor herself.

Crull-maldor smiled inwardly. She had anticipated this attack, but she had not thought that it would come for another day or two. She had underestimated the runelords.

Two hours past midnight, bonfires had begun to blaze upon the nearest hills, summoning the small folk to battle. Within minutes fires had burst forth upon distant peaks all along the coast.

The runelords came. They raced through the night more swiftly than Crull-maldor had anticipated.

She’d thought that they would first attack at the Death Gate, as the previous men had done, but they had surprised her by scaling the watchtower. To wyrmlings, with their huge bulk and clumsy fingers, the tower looked unclimbable.

At Crull-maldor’s side, her new captain reported, “Their numbers outside are great. We cannot see them all for the fog, but their numbers are easily in the tens of thousands. Their elite troops have scaled the tower, but a larger force is rushing the tunnels.”

“Perhaps their numbers are great,” Crull-maldor mused, “but if all that you could see from the tower was their fires . . . ? It is an old trick, to try to dismay an enemy by building many fires in the night. By having your troops sing loudly, five thousand can sound like fifty thousand.”

She spoke comfortingly, but Crull-maldor knew that the humans really did outnumber her troops. They might even be strong enough to overwhelm her wyrmlings.

Yet she hoped that powerful runelords would lead this group so that she could decimate them.

No humans had escaped from the warrens alive in the first assault. So the small folk would have no choice but to send stronger forces.

The humans would not be prepared to face a wight. She wanted to crush the spirits of the human inhabitants of the island, and thus begin her dominion over them.

“Milord,” a wyrmling reported, the voice rising in a whisper. “Human forces have secured the tower level.”

The news came unexpectedly quick. It had not been a minute since the alarm had sounded. Five hundred wyrmling troops, destroyed like that?

Some of these runelords must have many endowments of metabolism, Crull-maldor realized.

But the small folk still had no idea what resources Crull-maldor had at her command.

“Drop all of the portcullises in the tower corridors,” she said, so that the humans would not be able to escape. “Then light the tar fires in level two. These runelords may be tough, but they still have to breathe.”

“Milady,” the captain began to argue.

At that instant Crull-maldor felt a presence seize her consciousness, a sense of heightened intelligence filled with malicious intent.

It was a sending, a message from Emperor Zul-torac. Deliver all of the corpuscite that you find to Rugassa, he whispered to Crull-maldor’s soul.

Send your wyrmling troops to scour the Northern Wastes in the search.

Crull-maldor raised a hand to silence her captain, lest he disturb her further.

It was not the most opportune time to be receiving messages from the emperor.

Crull-maldor did not want her superior to know what she knew, so she envisioned a wall between herself and the emperor, a wall of stone, impenetrable. She made her mind a fortress against his probes.

Corpuscite? Crull-maldor feigned ignorance. Did you ask for corpuscite?

The emperor evaded the question. Time is short. Do as you are told.

Crull-maldor reported, Humans have entered the fortress, humans swift and deadly. We are under attack! I cannot send my scouts out now! The emperor’s dark mind brimmed with smug satisfaction at the news. There was nothing that Zul-torac would like more than to see Crull-maldor humiliated.

Take care of it, the emperor warned. This is your first priority. The time has come to prepare for a great war, a war unlike any other. Lord Despair commands that you raise production on your arms and armor. Every man and woman over the weight of four hundred pounds must be fitted for war by the end of the week.

Crull-maldor smiled grimly. A male wyrmling could reach four hundred pounds by the age of ten years. Despair was ordering that women and children be armed for war?

Making the armor alone would be all but impossible. Every child would have to be pulled from indoctrination classes and put to work carving the bones of world wyrms.

Surely Despair does not fear the small humans so much, Crull-maldor mused. But she began to wonder. With endowments, a woman or a child could be fearsome indeed. In fact, some of the human fortresses might be difficult to penetrate for a wyrmling—a large one would not be able to fit through doors. But a child . . .

Despair has no fear of the small folk, Zul-torac replied. We are preparing to conquer the heavens. Despair is opening doors to far worlds, and our troops shall overwhelm them all!

Crull-maldor considered the implications. The emperor was demanding all of the blood metal in her realm—blood metal that Crull-maldor would need to ready her troops for the coming invasions. She dared not deliver it.

Yet the promise of a coming war was a heady thing. Crull-maldor had seen some of the beasts that the emperor had brought through doors in the past.

There were treasures to be plundered. Crull-maldor did not care for gold or silver. She was far more interested in the treasures of knowledge that might be gained on far worlds.

I will do what I can to obtain corpuscite, she promised. But it is exceedingly rare here in the North. A few stones we might find, but I cannot guarantee that we will find much more.

The emperor snarled and ended the communication abruptly. The sense of heightened awareness—and great corruption—both broke off with a nearly audible snap.

All around the room, whispers were rising. The sound of portcullises falling came from a dozen holes, metal sliding over stone, bolts being thrown so that the portcullises could not be raised. Shrieks and howls were coming from Death Gate where human forces had overwhelmed the wyrmlings.

But all too soon the humans would find themselves trapped.

Crull-maldor smiled inwardly. So, Zul-torac had already learned the lore of the runelords and how to form corpuscite into forcibles.

Crull-maldor had wrung the secrets from the dead earlier, and now she saw a great opportunity.

For nearly two hundred years she had been banished to this waste, and in that time she had ranged far across the barrens. She could not recall where every single stone of corpuscite lay, but she had seen them from time to time, and remembered one decent outcrop not sixty miles to the northeast. Though the humans encompassed her fortress, they had not yet discovered the secret gate, which exited into the hills some twelve miles to the north. Already Crull-maldor had sent troops to recover the corpuscite.

A great war was taking form, Crull-maldor realized. She intended to win it, to dominate the humans in her realm. She intended to put them to good use. As slaves, they could work the wyrmling mines and reap fish from the sea and caribou from the plains. Their skins would warm the wyrmlings during winter nights when the air grew bitter cold. They could provide meat in a pinch, and their glands could be used for harvester spikes.

All that Crull-maldor had to fear was that the humans would gain access to the blood metal.

There would be small pockets of it elsewhere here in the barrens, she knew. The island itself was four hundred miles across on the southern tip. To the north, the boundaries were often blurred, for in the winter the sea froze over, creating a continuous mass that stretched off into the bitter cold. But some years the ice would melt along the eastern shore, giving hints of the island’s shape.

So the island itself was vast, some eighty thousand square miles at this time of year.

The greatest danger that Crull-maldor faced was that the small humans would retrieve the metal before she did.

She felt reconciled to the fact that they would get some of it, but she intended to take the majority.

The humans were too many and were spread too far and wide for her to control perfectly. They’d stumble upon a few stones here and there, perhaps even a rich vein.

She’d have to take it from them. The blood metal was too great a weapon. She couldn’t let it fall into the enemy’s hands.

In the room of whispers, suddenly she heard human cries from the tubes in the ceiling above, cries broken and muted by coughing and hacking.

Metal clanked upon metal as the small folk tried to break through a portcullis with their war hammers. The blows rang swiftly at first, but the humans with their boosted metabolism not only lived faster, they died more quickly.

All too soon the clanking slowed and became broken by shrieks of fear and shouts of despair as good men begged the Powers that be for air.

Crull-maldor bent her ear, bent her whole will upon the whispering sounds of death that drifted into the room, and imagined the humans in the tower crumpling in ruin upon the floor.

The battle at the Death Gate was just ramping up. The warriors racing down the long corridor were not powerful runelords apparently. They moved far too slowly for that, and they made far too much noise, singing and shouting, hoping to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy.

The wyrmling troops were eager to engage. It had been far too long since they had been able to prove themselves in a pitched battle.

The captain was listening to a distant whisper at a hole. “Spies at the Death Gate report fewer than five thousand humans have breached the corridors. Our troops have fled before them, down into the labyrinth. They await your orders for the time and manner of the ambush.”

“Very good,” Crull-maldor said. She could kill the humans with fire, or perhaps take them herself. But her troops needed battle, the good clean smell of blood. So she ordered, “Unleash the wyrmling horde.”