Worldbinder (9 page)

And suddenly the ground whirled and began to lurch beneath his feet. He could feel a hill rising beneath him, the ground shooting up so fast that his knees buckled.

The walls of Castle Coorm trembled and rolled as if during an earthquake. The east wall bucked, spilling into the moat, and the queen’s tower canted to one side and collapsed. Huge stones surged up through the ground, their faces seeming weathered by centuries of erosion.

Suddenly the atoms sliding through empty space halted, joining together as tightly as a key in the lock of a manacle, according to some pattern laid out in the master rune an eternity in the past.

The ground lurched to a halt, and Fallion felt an impact. No blow by a human hand could have been so devastating. It was as if a giant slapped him, sending him into oblivion.

    6    

Fallion woke with a groan, only becoming conscious in slow increments. His eyes fluttered open, but the dust in the air was so thick that he soon had to close them.

Everywhere, the townspeople were screaming for help, and Jaz was shouting, “Fallion, there’s something wrong with Talon!”

Lying still for a second, Fallion tried to collect his strength. He felt half-dead. He was so feeble that he could hardly lift a hand. It was as if he had suffered an endless illness, and only now might be on the way to recovery though he felt as he might just as easily die.

“Fallion? Can you hear me?”

“Coming,” Fallion managed to say.

Fallion looked toward Jaz, could see his dim outline through a haze of dust as thick as any fog, crouching above Talon. Rocks had risen all around, a jumble of them.

Fallion felt so weak, he didn’t know if he could stand, so he summoned all of his strength and tried to crawl toward Talon on his hands and knees, but as he lifted his left hand, he found that a thick vine was latched to the meaty part of his palm.

He tried to pull away, but it hurt too much. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the vine wasn’t latched to his palm—it was growing through it. The trunk of the vine, about a quarter inch in diameter, ran cleanly through the meat of his palm and continued out the other side.

He peered at his palm for half an instant, trying to understand.

Two worlds combined, he realized. And upon those worlds, two living things had occupied the same space.

So a vine grew through him. But what was wrong with Talon?

Dread surged through him as he drew his dagger, hacked through the vine, pulled it out as if it were an arrow, and then clasped his hand and tried to staunch a raging flow of blood.

Talon was hurt, Jaz had said. What if she has a bush growing through her, or a tree?

Why did I even bring her? he wondered. He hadn’t needed her. She could have stayed home, found some boy to love. But she’d wanted an adventure.

He peered up, but the dust was too thick to make out Talon. His energy was coming a little better now. He climbed to his feet. The gritty dust got in his eyes, and he had to stagger, half-blind, toward Jaz.

By the time that he got there, Rhianna and Farion were circled around, both of them having crawled too, both swearing and uttering curses.

She’s dead, Fallion thought. Our little Talon is dead. He’d always thought of her as a sister, a fierce little sister, and he tried to imagine how he would break the news to Myrrima, their foster mother. Their foster father, Borenson, was a warrior, and he would take it stoutly, though it would break his heart. But Myrrima … she was too tender to bear such news.

As he got close, he rejoiced to see that she was breathing, her chest rising and falling.

“She’s out cold,” Jaz was telling the others.

Jaz looked up, moved back for Fallion to get a better view, and Fallion gasped.

Their Talon had changed. At first, he thought that it was only a matter of growth. Talon had always been a diminutive girl, combining her mother’s lithe body and her father’s strength. But she was diminutive no more.

“What do you think?” Jaz asked. “Seven feet tall? Maybe more?”

That looks about right, Fallion thought. And three across the shoulder. She looked as if she weighed a good three hundred pounds, all of it muscle.

Her face remained much the same, or, at least Fallion could still see Talon’s resemblance in it. But it stretched in an odd way. There were two strange humps above her brow, like those on a calf that is about to sprout horns, and her forehead seemed thickened, as if a bony plate had grown there. Her cheekbones were similarly armored. She groaned, opening her mouth as if to curse
at some bad dream, revealing canines that had become over-large.

“What happened?” Jaz asked.

Fallion suspected that he knew. Some other creature must have been standing where Talon was, on that shadow world, and the two of them had become one.

    7    

Gongs were tolling in Rugassa, their deep tones reverberating among the rocks in the fortress, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, thundering up from the center of the earth.

Upon the toll, Vulgnash awoke in the tower crypt, and with a powerful kick threw off the lid of his coffin.

Gripping its sides, he inspected his rotting flesh. His skin had dried, becoming gray and leathery, and his flesh had cracked and wrinkled. Maggots had burrowed trails through his arms.

How long, he wondered, since last I walked the earth? He had hoped to remain dead for eternity this time.

But Lady Despair summoned him, and he rose at her
bidding. He had promised his service to the Great Wyrm, whether it be in life, or in death, and now he had to answer the call.

Besides, he would rather be summoned into the presence of Lady Despair than into that of the Emperor.

From the condition of his hands, he imagined that it had not been long. Three years since last he woke, perhaps five, no more.

Yet Vulgnash felt as if he had been pummeled. Every muscle in his body ached; he had seldom felt so weak.

He climbed from the coffin, and stood for a moment, stretching his red wings wide to get the blood flowing and staring down through a tower window. People rushed everywhere a thousand feet below him, like beetles in a dung hill.

The fortress was in ruins. Walls of black basalt looked as if they had split during an earthquake.

He peered out beyond the city gate, to see if the fortress was under attack, and stared in awe. There was a strange and wondrous change in the land: a forest stood out on the plains before the castle. The plains should have been barren. Last he knew, they were burned twice yearly so that no army could draw near without being seen.

But here was a forest of hoary pine trees that looked to be a thousand years old. And strange birds flew up out of it, like none that he had ever seen before.

How long? he wondered. A thousand years? It can’t be. My flesh would have turned to dust, and I would be beyond the power even of Lady Despair to call.

And now the gongs were sounding, announcing that the Great Wyrm demanded his presence.

Vulgnash swore, strode to his closet, and drew on a crimson robe to hide the ruin of his face, then went striding down the stairs, into the great hall.

He felt so weak, he needed sustenance; and so as he entered the great hall, where servants went scurrying about in terror, their eyes wide in fright to see him, he grabbed a small girl of eight or nine.

“Your life is mine,” he whispered, then placed five fingers upon her skull—one between her eyes, two upon each of her eyes, and his thumb and pinky finger upon her mandibles.

At this touch, the girl’s blood turned to ice water in her veins, and she wet herself.

The girl tried to withdraw in terror, but his fingers held to her flesh as if it were his own. Some of the servants that saw groaned or looked away in horror; one cried out the girl’s name in mourning, “Ah, little Wenya!”

With a whispered incantation, the girl’s passions—her longing for life, her hopes and ambitions—and the fire in her soul that drove them were drawn away.

The spell went to work, and the girl’s flesh, rife with water, began to sag and putrefy, even as Vulgnash’s own flesh gained heft and a less unwholesome color.

When he was done, he let the girl fall away, a dry and rotting husk. He felt refreshed, but not refreshed enough. He would need to feed on others before he regained his full strength.

But the gongs were tolling, and he had no time for it.

He grabbed a torch from a sconce, then went striding down to the lower levels. Powerful guards cringed in terror as he passed, for they knew what Vulgnash was.

The black basalt tunnels were cracked and broken, and often the passageway was littered with rubble and boulders. Vulgnash waded through or climbed over as the need took him.

Is this why she summoned me? he wondered. A mere earthquake? But no, he knew that there must be some greater threat to the realm.

In his weakened state, the race left him drained.

The great fortress of Rugassa was built upon the crown of a volcano, and his spiraling journey downward felt like a plummet. All the while, the gongs grew louder, more insistent, until at last he had gone far enough, and the corridor opened into the audience chamber.

Two others had arrived before him and stood at each
side of the chamber like an honor guard, robed all in crimson. Thul and Kryssidia were their names.