The Wyrmling Horde

With a glimpse of the shadow wights rushing up behind her, Rhianna leapt into the air with a shout of warning, and flapped up into the darkness. The arena was about one hundred and fifty yards across and had a high ceiling, but in the darkness she could not be certain how high.

She glanced below. A wave of wights had rushed in behind Vulgnash. Talon whirled to do battle, but it was in vain, for a wight merely took her hand, and its paralyzing touch drove her to the floor.

Daylan Hammer sprang forward, bringing his war hammer to bear on Lord Despair, raining blows upon him like a human cyclone. But Despair merely danced back, parrying every blow with his great sword, until after a dozen blows from Daylan s weapon a wight leapt into the air and grabbed him from behind, arms locked about his throat in a death grip, and rode him to the ground.

With her companions all either dead or paralyzed, Rhianna had no choice but to seek escape.

She flew up, circling the arena like a bird that had flown into a house through an open door. She flapped higher and butted her head against the ceiling, a blow that nearly sent her reeling to her doom.

In the darkness she could see little, even with her endowments. Glow worms had not been placed up here, and apparently found little to eat upon the stone. She spotted doors at both ends of the arena, doors for wyrmling spectators to gain ingress, but the misty forms of wraiths streamed into the arena, blocking her escape. She could not get past them. There was no room.

She flapped about, peering down, and the wraiths stared up at her hungrily, eager for her death.

"Take her!" Lord Despair shouted, and Vulgnash leapt into the air, too. The Darkling Glory at Despair s back roared in mirth to see her predicament. There was not enough room for her to elude Vulgnash for long. All that she could do was to fly in desperate circles.

Nor can I fight, she realized. Vulgnash is under the protection of an Earth King, a twisted Earth King, but an Earth King nonetheless.

Her heart pounded with terror, and she was so frightened that she almost missed it. She felt a sudden updraft.

An air vent, she realized. The arena had an air vent at its top.

Vulgnash was hot behind her. Rhianna flapped harder, pressing in her need, and he fell back a few paces.

I m faster than he is, she realized.

Whether it was because she had taken more endowments of metabolism or because she had taken more strength, she could not be certain, but Vulgnash fell behind.

Rhianna wheeled, then folded her wings and dropped into a dive. She swept low, just over the heads of the wights, and drew steel, as if to whack one with her blade, then rose up in the air.

She peered hard, looking for the air hole, and finally saw it-a thin circle of gray in the stone, where light shone down a long narrow shaft.

She flapped her wings hard and rose. Vulgnash wheeled with a shout, and came screaming toward her, trying to block her escape.

Is the hole wide enough to let me through? she wondered. It will have to be.

Rhianna burst upward, reached the air shaft.

She folded her wings tight, letting her momentum propel her upward. She found herself in a narrow chimney, no more than two feet wide. Her shoulders were so large that she almost could not fit. Up above, she could see sunlight not sixty feet away.

I m a Runelord, she told herself. I can make myself fit.

She dropped her blade and contorted her shoulders, bringing them together in a way that no human should. With a dozen endowments of grace, it was not hard. Then she clawed her way up the hole, scrabbling as quickly as possible.

Vulgnash grabbed her heel, and she considered kicking him, trying to knock him back, but some blind instinct drove her upward.

Claws of iron seemed to be wrapped around her foot, and Rhianna kicked, struggling to break free. His claws raked her, drawing slick blood, and suddenly Vulgnash lost his grasp.

Quick as an eel, Rhianna snaked up the hole.

Vulgnash roared in anger, and Rhianna reached sunlight, grabbed the lip of the hole and threw herself out, just as a fiery blast shot through the chimney.

She stood in broad daylight for a second, wondering if Vulgnash would be able to squeeze through the hole, wondering if there was any way to go back down and save her friends.

But she could not think. She heard growls and scrapes in the air shaft. Vulgnash was coming up. He had taken endowments of grace, too, and though he was larger than her, it seemed that he would fit.

In a blind panic, Rhianna realized that whether he made it up the shaft or took some other route, Vulgnash would be after her soon enough.

In a mad rush of wings, she launched herself into the sky. She flew up and up, then peered back to see Vulgnash charging after her, rising up from below, his massive red wings pumping furiously. He was horrifying in his persistence, inhuman. Somehow, he had managed to squeeze through the chimney, and now he peered up at her, blinking in pain at the sunlight, and gave chase.

I m faster than him, Rhianna told herself. I have to be. She flapped madly, hurtling away from Rugassa as fast as possible.

Vulgnash was on her tail. Like a crow chasing a starling, Rhianna thought. He is larger and more ponderous than me. He cannot hope to follow for long. The sunlight blinds him.

But from the vent below, she saw a second form emerge, black and sinister. The Darkling Glory was joining the chase.

Rhianna pumped her wings furiously, terrified. The creature was an unknown. She could not imagine how it got through that hole.

How fast can it fly? she wondered. How well can it see in the daylight?

Suddenly the sky went dark from horizon to horizon.

Rhianna had only heard of such things in legend, from tales of her mother s time. Only the most powerful of flameweavers could do that. Fallion was able to draw heat from a fire, but he couldn t yet bend the very light to his will.

Is Vulgnash doing that, Rhianna wondered, or the Darkling Glory?

A glance revealed that it was Vulgnash.

Ropes of light began to weave together above her, whirling from the sky in streams of fire, tornadoes of white-hot flame. She veered to avoid one of the tornadoes.

He s catching the light in his hand, she realized. He s going to try to burn me out of the sky. He ll take aim and then hurl a ball of fire. In that instant, I must change course.

The darkness fled, and Rhianna peered down, but could see little. There was a mist of shadow beneath her, impenetrable to the human eye. Within it she could see only parts of the forms of creatures, struggling toward her. A fireball suddenly roared from the mist.

She banked hard to the left and folded her wings, going into a vertical dive. The fireball roared overhead, expanding and slowing. The heat of it gave her a thrill of fear, for it was like standing too close to a forge.

Rhianna unfurled her wings and flattened her trajectory, then flapped all the harder.

She peered back. The mists of darkness followed, but could not match her pace. She veered to the right, lest another ball of fire come at her, and drew farther away. She veered up suddenly, heading toward the sun.

Increasing her speed, Rhianna raced ahead, mile after endless mile.

She had headed south by instinct-toward the horse-sisters, toward help. But she realized the danger in exposing the position of her troops. Better to lead her pursuers away from her allies.

So Rhianna veered to the west, so that the demons would have the sun slanting into their eyes.

She consulted a mental map. There was little in the way of human settlements here for many, many miles.

Vulgnash and the Darkling Glory slowly receded into the distance, becoming nothing more than a dark blur on her trail, miles behind. Soon, the Darkling Glory gave up the chase.

Yet Vulgnash clung to her trail. Perhaps he feared to displease his master, and it was fear that drove him to mindlessly follow. Or perhaps he thought that he was like a hound, and she was a fox that could be run to the ground.

Rhianna soared over what had once been Mystarria-lush lands with rolling hills, rich with farms and towns along the rivers, and sweeping fields and forests elsewhere.

But all was in ruins. Entire cities had been battered down and laid to waste.

Juxtaposed over this was the landscape of the wyrmlings shadow world: occasional fabulous ruins, weathered and beaten, what had once been "human" cities; monolithic towers and columns, all white as bone, were covered with obscene scrawls in the wyrmling tongue.

After fifty miles, Rhianna saw more interesting signs. A contingent of Queen Lowicker s troops were on the move, unaware that their queen had been vanquished. Or perhaps they had heard and just did not care. In any case, a long column of knights was riding east toward Rugassa, as if to do battle, their lances raised to the air. But there was no one nearby for them to fight. The wyrmlings had razed their cities and then faded from the land for the day. They would be hiding in some dark hole where warhorses and lances would do no good.

Rhianna kept flying, winging into the wilderness as the sun continued to slant toward the horizon.

She flew over a desert that should not have been there-a rugged place of rock and sand-and on its borders she saw herds of shaggy elephants being trailed by packs of dire wolves and great hunting cats.

Three hundred miles from Rugassa, her sharp eyes descried something interesting-a cloud of dust to the south. At first she thought that it might be a great herd of shaggy elephants, but the formation was too tight. It could only be caused by vast forces marching in the wilderness.

But whose?

She veered toward it, hardly changing her course at all. Five miles later she was able to descry what troops marched there.

It was reavers, tens of thousands of them, marching roughly toward her. In the distance, they looked like great black beetles, though Rhianna knew that they were not small. Each reaver weighed more than an elephant.

As she neared, the sound of their marching feet made the earth tremble and groan; the clashing of their carapaces against the ground was like weapons clanging upon shields.

Rhianna had never seen a reaver. They were the stuff of legend, creatures that lived deep in the Underworld. She wanted a closer look, and with Vulgnash following, she wanted him to get a good look at them, too.

The reavers are marching in almost the right direction, she realized. In a day they could well be at Rugassa s walls. What would the wyrmlings make of the threat?

Rhianna swooped lower, dropping within a hundred feet of the ground, and winged toward the reavers. The cloud rising from the ground smelled of dust and some strange musky scent.

Each reaver had four legs for walking, and two heavy arms that they used to bear weapons-great long hooks called "knight gigs," or enormous swords that could flatten a horse and rider with a single blow. Most of the reavers were gray-black in color, and thus were common fighters. But here and there among the hive she spotted smaller reavers, reddish in color, carrying bright crystalline staves. These were the scarlet sorceresses.

Other creatures marched near the ends of the line-enormous spidery creatures that carried packs upon their backs, and enormous white worm-like creatures that she recognized as "glue mums."

The reavers are coming for a full-fledged war, Rhianna realized. She had an almost primal fear of reavers. It was the fear of such creatures that had driven her ancestors to develop their rune lore in the first place. It was the fear of them that had caused the Runelords to build their vast fortifications.

It was tales of the depredations of reavers that had kept her awake with nightmares as a child.

So she swooped low above the reavers, and watched as the creatures raised their heads and hissed.

The reavers had no eyes in their heads. But that did not mean that they could not see. They had phillia dripping from their chins and from their bony ridge plates, and with these they sensed her presence, by scent and motion. The hissing noise came as they raised their abdomens and sprayed odors into the air, smells that they used to warn their neighbors.

She flew above the reavers, redoubling her speed, for fifteen miles. That is how long their column was. She estimated their numbers at fifty thousand strong.

How will Vulgnash like this? Rhianna wondered.

She kept flying, looking over her shoulders.

Vulgnash still followed, his blood-colored wings flapping vigorously, but he seemed to slow into a glide above the reaver horde, and finally wheeled about.

It was still midafternoon when he began to recede quickly, racing northeast toward distant Rugassa.

Her hunter had turned back.

For a long hour, as time is measured by the sun, Rhianna continued to wing away from Vulgnash, lest he renew the chase. To her, it felt like six hours or more.

At last she reached the Alcair Mountains, and flew to a huge white pine that had been taken by lightning.

The skies above were the perfect blue of a summer afternoon, and the world at large seemed as it should be. The starlings and wild pigeons that flew up from the pines sang their songs, seemingly unaware of Rhianna s desperate plight.

What will I do? Rhianna wondered.

My love is still in the dungeons of Rugassa, in the hands of the wyrmlings.

Rhianna felt sick with anguish.

There seemed to be only one place to go-to the horse-sisters. But what could they do? Grant more endowments?

Despair had more than she did, and he had the powers of an Earth King besides. She could not slay him. She dared not even try.

She felt overwhelmed by doubt.

She wondered if the Wizard Sisel might help. Daylan had said that he was abroad in the land, traveling to commune with the True Tree.

He s had all day to find it, she thought.

But it was a long hike. A man of the warrior clans was expected to run a hundred miles in a day.

If Sisel left from Cantular at dawn, he ll make it there by sundown.

The notion of going to see him pleased her. She longed to go to Castle Coorm and seek refuge beneath the One True Tree, and throw her problems upon the shoulders of the wizard and his guest from the netherworld.

But what can they do? she wondered.

The Bright Ones had never shown her any kindness as a youth; their laws forbade them to interfere in the affairs of lesser creatures like her-the so-called shadow people.

Appealing to the folk of the netherworld would do her no good, and while the wizard had strong protective magic, he had never gone into battle.

Worse than that, she had no time to seek his aid. The reavers were marching toward Rugassa.

By tomorrow this time they could be there, Rhianna realized. What if they attack? They could kill Fallion.

I have to get him out of there, she thought.

But how do I kill an Earth King? Or failing that, how do I defeat one? What weaknesses does he have?

Rhianna thought back to the day that the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden had died. She had never been chosen by him, had never been put under his protection. But Fallion and Jaz had, and they had often recited the words that they had heard in their own minds during Gaborn s final moments. It was part of the creed of the lords of House Orden: "Learn to love the greedy as well as the generous. Love the poor as much as the rich. Love the evil man as ardently as the good. And inasmuch as is possible in this life, when you are beset upon, return a blessing for every blow."

In that instant, Rhianna felt almost as if Gaborn stood at her side, comforting her. She thought about Kirissa.

Could it be that he really had known that some Inkarran child would someday have to face the Wyrmling Empire?

She felt certain that he had.

Rhianna wondered about the Earth King. What were his weaknesses?

Borenson had said that it was his compassion.

Certainly, Lord Despair will not have that weakness.

And suddenly the answer hit her. Gaborn himself had given her the key.

I can t face an Earth King, she thought. I should not even try. With his power, he ll sense the danger. Which leaves only one alternative: return a blessing with every blow. So long as I present no danger, Despair cannot be forewarned of my attack.

Rhianna wondered, could she really free Fallion without harming a living soul?

Despair would not suspect such a bold move. Indeed, he was probably incapable of thinking of it. "Of course any intruder would kill the guards." That is how he thought.

But Rhianna knew of at least one air vent that was not guarded.

She had great strength. She had the speed. She had the key to the wyrmling dungeon on a thong around her neck.

I have to try, she told herself.

With that she took to the air, heading for a brief stop in Beldinook.