The Wyrmling Horde

Rhianna sped across the miles, flying with all haste. She kept an eye out for Vulgnash, and watched his gray cloud on the horizon. She reached Beldinook before sundown, the castle s white towers and ramparts gleaming like fiery coral in the setting sun.

Rhianna flew straight to the palace, and found the horse-sisters facilitators taking the last of the endowments. Their thousand forcibles were nearly gone.

Standing among the crowds in the town square Rhianna made a heartfelt appeal.

"People of Beldinook," she said, "I must go to Rugassa in all haste. Give me your metabolism, I beg of you, not for my sake, or the sake of the man I love, but for your own sakes, for your children, your families, and your kingdom.

"If I fail, the sacrifice that you make will not be for long-an hour at the most.

"But if I succeed, minstrels shall make a song of it, and your names shall be sung forever!"

She did not have to say more. She had taken so many endowments of glamour that she probably had not needed to speak. She had taken enough endowments of voice that her words smote the potential Dedicates and softened their hearts.

"I will be pleased, milady," a young man cried out, and soon a dozen people were offering similar thoughts. Rhianna did not wait for the endowments. She nodded to her facilitator, then went to the great room for dinner.

She was famished. She had flown four hundred miles in hours, and though she had the brawn and stamina and metabolism to meet such a goal, she did not do it without a price.

Her body seemed to have dropped twenty pounds during the day. Much of it had been sweat, she was sure, but she could clearly see the bones in her wrists, white and protruding through the skin.

So she fed, eating as much as her stomach could hold, drinking until she felt well.

Then she burst into the sky and went winging toward Rugassa at a more relaxed pace.

She had a problem: Vulgnash.

How will I get past him? she wondered. With the facilitators vectoring metabolism to her, she would be faster than he.

But will I be fast enough? she wondered.

She had no choice but to risk it.

So she flew over the darkening lands, her wings flapping steadily. She crossed a river, gleaming silver in the starlight. Great flocks of bats had flown up from the trees along the river s bank, and now they dipped and skimmed the water for drinks.

Rhianna dropped and tried it, surprising herself when water sprayed up and splashed her face and the front of her tunic. She could taste grit and bugs in the water.

I have become a bat, she thought.

Then she hurried on toward Rugassa, and the world seemed to slow even further as endowment after endowment of metabolism was added to her. At last Rugassa s dark cone rose up in the starlight, black and foreboding.

The wyrmlings will be awake, Rhianna thought. They ll be at their most active. Perhaps I should wait until tomorrow.

But she dared not wait. With every passing minute, the enemy would be taking more endowments, becoming stronger.

So she winged above the plains surrounding Rugassa at night, and saw the land filled with wyrmlings-troops by the tens of thousands marching to war, great armies of hunters heading out with wagons to harvest meat, loggers and miners and who knew what else-hundreds of thousands of wyrmlings toiling in a great mass.

She hurtled toward her entrance at two hundred miles per hour, a blinding blur. Many a wrymling looked up to behold a flash of red in the night sky, crimson wings and a blood-red cloak-just a lone Knight Eternal flying to his tower. It was a sight that they had seen a thousand times.

With so many endowments of wit, she did not have to hunt for the entrance. She knew where it lay.

She hit the airshaft and eeled down headfirst, then opened her wings wide as she plummeted the last few yards to the floor of the coliseum.

Wyrmlings working in the arena seemed astonished by the sight, but Rhianna s hood was pulled tight and she whisked out through the exit, following the sandalwood-scented trail of Kirissa at a dead run.

With twenty endowments of metabolism, Rhianna was but a blur, a crimson figure with vast wings racing down the tunnel at nearly a hundred miles per hour.

I have taken my death in taking so many endowments of metabolism, she thought. In four more seasons, I will die of old age.

But she could not mourn her fate. She had chosen it, and it was only her endowments of metabolism that might allow her to rescue Fallion.

She could have gone faster, but she found that her momentum made it hard to turn corners, so she kept her speed low.

She found surprisingly few wyrmlings in the hallways. Perhaps it was too early for some of them, or perhaps they were already working.

But as she passed each one, Rhianna made sure to do no harm. She would duck past one, leap over others. Those who saw her did not have time to react.

She heard wyrmlings roar in blind challenge on several occasions, but Kirissa had taught her a couple of curses. Rhianna found that when she roared a curse and raised her wings, the wyrmlings often fell over themselves in their haste to make room.

Thus she put her endowments of voice to the test, perfecting her illusion. The wyrmlings did not even know what they saw, she suspected.

So she raced in dark tunnels while glow worms lit the ceiling of the labyrinth like a sky full of stars, following tunnel after tunnel until she reached the winding stair and descended, down, down, with a key made of bone in her hands.

Talon was the first to waken in the prison. Perhaps it was because she had more endowments of stamina than the others, or perhaps it was because a wight had only touched her lightly on the hand, but she woke, dazed and trembling, to find Rhianna standing over her.

"Up," Rhianna called. "Quickly. Get up or die!"

There was water on Talon s face. Filthy water. That was what had awakened her.

"Where? Where am I?" she asked. But Rhianna was too busy to answer. She had taken a guard by the throat and was shoving him into Talon s cell. In an instant, Rhianna had him chained to the wall.

Talon raised her head, blinking. Her right arm ached. She could feel ice in her veins, running straight to her heart, and it seemed to put a strain on her, as if her heart might stop beating any second.

"Help me," Rhianna pleaded. "The others are all asleep, and I can t wake them. I ve come to rescue you. Vulgnash was gone when I got here, but there is no telling how soon he will come back."

Rhianna was moving with tremendous speed, at least twice as fast as Talon could. She rushed back out of the cell, and moments later came back with a second wyrmling guard, a hulking brute, dragging him over the floor as he kicked and screamed.

Talon climbed to her feet. She had so many endowments of brawn that she did not feel as if she weighed anything at all. Yet she was wounded to the core of her soul, and she felt terribly ill.

Rhianna urged her from the cell, and together they slammed a huge iron door, locking the guards inside.

An instant later, Rhianna had the door to Fallion s cell open. They found him lying upon a cot, unconscious. Srips of cloth bound his legs and arms tight against his body. There was an unholy cold in the room, and his lips had gone blue. The bars to his cell were crusted with frost, and ice fans had formed upon the stone walls.

"Try to get him warm," Rhianna said. "I don t think that a wight has touched him. Vulgnash just drained all of his body heat." Rhianna began unwrapping his bindings.

Talon considered lying down beside him to get him warm, but remembered her sunstone. It was still hidden in her boot. The wyrmlings had taken her daggers, her belt, and her leather tunic. But they had left her boots.

She pulled off the boot and dumped out its contents. The sunstone fell and lay gleaming upon the floor. She squeezed it hard and held it up to Fallion s cheek.

He lay there for a long second, still barely breathing, and suddenly he began to rouse. The effect of the heat was astonishing. His breath had been agonizingly shallow one instant, and he suddenly gasped.

Blindly, he reached up with his right hand and tried to grasp the sunstone, but he missed it-or seemed to. His hand bypassed the stone, but in that instant the light seemed to flash in response to his need, and a stream of fire as golden as a wheat field flared from the stone.

The sunstone was so hot that Talon dropped it, her hand smarting from a savage burn. It left a white welt on her fingers. But the fire streamed out of the stone and into Fallion, and he took no harm.

He opened his eyes, coming awake in an instant. Flames seemed to be dancing in them, and they were full of light. He peered up at Talon and Rhianna, obviously invigorated. Yet there was no relief in his face. His cheeks and brow were haggard, lined with pain.

Rhianna finished unbinding him, and now she used the guards keys to unlock his shackles, then went racing to another cell. Iron doors began to creak open in rapid succession. She called out to the emir, Daylan, and the wyrmling girl.

She came back an instant later. "I can t get anyone else to wake," she said. "They re barely breathing."

Fallion had risen to a sitting position, but he moved with infinite slowness, like an old man burdened by the years. "What s-what s going on?"

"Daylan Hammer and the emir are here with us," Rhianna said before Talon could get a word out. "They were touched by wights."

Talon was still holding her own right hand. She couldn t feel her fingers, and she worried that at any moment she would faint.

"I see," Fallion said. He thought for a long moment, as if he were still partly dazed, and said, "There are some wounds that only Fire can heal."

He took the sunstone from Talon, raised it in his palm, and began to draw a bright steady flame from it. Suddenly light seemed to burst from his every pore. The light filtered through the whole room. He turned into a glorious being, and he peered deep into Talon, then took her wounded hand.

Talon looked into Fallion s eyes, and felt as if she had never really seen him before. There was so much compassion in his face, so much sorrow. And here he stood ministering to her, shining like some Bright One out of a legend.

He s one of them, she thought. He s more than a mortal man.

Talon had always thought of him as a brother, a child that she had wrestled with, and played with, and worked beside. She d never seen him like this before. She d never imagined that he could be like this.

She felt herself warm. It began at her heart, which had felt cold and often skipped a beat. She felt a mellowness in her chest, as if beams of summer sun shone upon her naked bosom, and her heart responded by beating more easily. Then the sense of vigor and well-being began to move down from her heart, to her extremities. In a matter of twenty seconds, the warmth spread to her shoulder, then down her arm, until even her hand felt warm.

Fallion finished ministering to her.

Then he just held her eyes for a long second, as if peering into her, seeking other hurts to mend.

When he was done, he turned away, went stumbling into the other room. Talon followed and found him still shining brightly, the sunstone raised in his hand like some talisman, as he bent over the emir.

The sunstone flared again, casting a soft golden glow through the room, a glow that was softer than the pure white light that issued from Fallion.

He stood above the emir, simply shining over him, and the glow centered on the emir s chest. Talon began counting, to see how long it would take to rouse the man, while Rhianna rifled through keys and unlocked his manacle.

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

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

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

"We got caught," Talon said. "Rhianna came for us."

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

Talon listened. She couldn t quite hear the bells. She translated Rhianna s warning for the emir.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That was the last one," Talon said.

"Go," Talon told Rhianna. "Take Fallion with you. He can do no more good here, and we ll just slow you down. We ll follow you out as soon as we can."

"It won t be easy to carry the wyrmling girl," Rhianna warned. "Perhaps we should leave her."

"I can t," Talon argued. "Besides, we d have to carry her regardless. Without endowments, she s nothing but dead weight."

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

"That may be easier said than done," Talon argued.

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

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

So they began their journey, racing as fast as they could through the labyrinth, toiling up the winding stairs. The emir led the way, followed by Rhianna, who had Fallion clinging to her back. Without endowments of metabolism, he couldn t even begin to keep pace with the others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I m not going to make it, she thought.

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

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

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

The emir had paved the way for her escape.

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

Talon realized what he was doing. She had far more endowments than he. She might well be needed if it came to a fight. She didn t dare waste her energy being a pack mule.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Impossible," Despair said.

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

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

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

Suddenly Despair laughed at his own folly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord Despair smiled.

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

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

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