Worldbinder Part 16

21.

SMALL FOLK.

As a young man, I was taught that to be a warrior is the epitome of virtue, and that warriors should be held in greater esteem than other men. We are the protectors, after all.But what does a warrior create? Should not the farmer pruning his orchard be granted equal esteem? Should not the mother nursing her child be deserving of greater praise?All of my life, I have felt like a fraud. I have been humbled by humble men.Never was it more so than when I first saw the small folk of the shadow world.

-High King Urstone Alun came staggering into camp on rubbery legs that night, well after dark. He was supposed to have run a hundred miles, but of course his energy gave out.

The other warriors drove him anyway, hurling curses and encouragement at him in equal measure. "You're a warrior now!" "Move those d.a.m.ned spindly legs!" "Does a wolf tire when it runs to battle?"

They laughed, and the tone seemed kindly enough.

But they were going to kill him, Alun knew.

He realized it as soon as his legs gave out, and he went sprawling in the dirt.

Drewish had urged him on with a swift kick to the ribs and a derisive laugh, and had rushed on. But Connor had only halted long enough to yell, "Get off your lazy a.s.s. We'll have no laggards."

Alun had fumbled about, gasping for air, and Connor just rolled his eyes. At last, he picked Alun up by the scruff of the neck, half carrying him, and ran, holding him upright, forcing him to move his tired legs.

After a few miles of this, Alun fainted, and woke to find that some burly soldier was carrying him on his back as if he were a corpse. When Alun groaned, the fellow laughed and dropped him to the ground. "Come now, no bellyaching. We're off to battle. Let's hear a war song out of you."

And that was when Alun knew they were going to kill him. Madoc had given him the honor of joining the clan, and now he'd send him to the front of the line to be slaughtered by wyrmlings.

They weren't about to let a mongrel like Alun breed with their precious daughters.

That was it, he imagined. Or else they want to kill me because they know what I did. Had someone told Madoc about his meeting with the high king?

The king had a.s.sured Alun, "This meeting must be kept private. Tell no one. I want to see my son take the throne someday. Not just for me, but as Daylan Hammer has said, for you, too, and for your posterity."

No, Madoc and his men don't know what I did, Alun decided. They only know what I am.

And so he ran as well as he could, and he was dragged and carried and kicked the rest of the way.

He didn't make it a hundred miles. But he had run forty, he felt certain.

It was a good account for one of the serf-born caste. There were rumors that one of his great grandmothers had been bedded by a warrior, and thus he claimed some decent blood. But the same could be said of every serf in the kingdom.

Every bone in his body ached, and when he tried to pee that afternoon, there was blood in his urine from the pummeling his kidneys had taken during the run. He felt too tired to care.

The last few miles were the hardest. They had reached a strange canyon called the Vale of Anguish. Here, odd rock formations stood, piles of rubble that often looked more like men than rocks should, almost as if monstrous deformed beings had been turned to stone.

There were caves in the hills here where the warriors could hide for the night, and get some sleep-or fight, if they were backed into a corner.

But when he got to camp, lit only by starlight and a scythe of a moon, it was abuzz with excitement.

"They found little people-" someone was saying, "tiny folk that don't know how to talk. They live in huts made out of stones, with roofs made from sticks and straw. There's a whole village of them, just beyond the hill."

Alun would never have believed such nonsense under normal circ.u.mstances, but in the last day, the world had turned upside down. Forests had sprung up where there should be none. Mountains had collapsed and rivers changed their courses. Anything seemed possible.

"Little people," a soldier laughed, "what good are they? Can't eat 'em, can you?"

For effect, he tore off a huge piece of bread with his teeth, as if he were rending a little person.

"Maybe we'll find some use for their women," another jested, and he was joined by gruff laughter.

Alun wondered. He wanted to see these little folk, but his legs were so sore that he didn't think that he could walk up the hill. Still, he grabbed a loaf of dry bread from a basket, along with a flagon of ale, and slowly crept up the steep hill, past soldiers who were feeding and laughing.

He caught bits of conversation as he went. "River's flooded up ahead, they say. We'll have a rough swim of it."

"I can't swim," a heavy warrior said.

"Don't worry," the first said. "You just float, and I'll drag you along."

"That's the problem," the heavy one said. "I can't float. Bones are too heavy. I sink like an anvil. Always have. I just hope the king lets us take the bridge."

Atop the hill, High King Urstone, Warlord Madoc, the Emir of Dalharristan, the Wizard Sisel, and other notables all stood beneath a stand of sprawling oaks, peering down at a strange little village.

As the soldiers had said, there were houses made of small stones, and other houses made of mud-and-wattle, all with roofs formed from thick layers of gra.s.s, tied in bundles and woven together. There were small gardens around the houses, all separated from one another with rock walls.

There were folks outside of the houses, worried little folk, men with spears and torches, women with clubs. They weren't as small as Alun had hoped they would be. He wouldn't be able to pick one up in his hand. But they were short, more like children than adults, that was certain.

King Urstone was admiring their village. "They're tidy things, aren't they," he said. "Clever little houses, lush little gardens. Perhaps we could learn from them."

"I suppose," one of the warlords said. "Though I don't see much good that will come of it."

"What will we do?" King Urstone asked the lords around him. "They're obviously frightened of us, but we can't just leave them here, unprotected, with the wyrmlings about. The harvesters would have them in a week. For their own sake, we have to get them back to Caer Luciare, even if we must drag them."

"We could try leading them," the Emir said in his thick accent. "Perhaps if we offer them bread and ale, they will think well of us?"

"I think...I can talk to them," Warlord Madoc said, his voice sounding dreamy, lost in thought. Then he took off, striding downhill.

The small folk began shouting, waving their weapons, and Madoc unstrapped the great ax from his back, gently set it on the ground, and called out something in a strange tongue.

Alun had never heard such words before, and he wondered where Madoc could have learned them.

Suddenly, on the northern horizon, a white light blazed so brightly that it looked as if a shard of the sun had fallen to earth.

Everyone turned to see what was going on. Several people gasped in wonder.

"It's coming from Cantular," the Emir said.

Indeed, even with the naked eye, Alun could see that the bright light issued from Cantular. The sandstone buildings glowed gold in its brilliance, and long shadows were cast everywhere. The city itself was still a good four miles distant, though, and Alun could see little else.

The Emir pulled out an ocular-a pair of lenses made from ground crystal, held together by a long tube. He aimed the ocular toward the city, touched a glyph on the side of the tube, and spoke the name of the glyph.

Suddenly, an image appeared shimmering in the air, a dozen feet behind the rod.

It was an enlarged replica of the city, far away.

Alun could see clearly that a man stood atop a building, a man so white-hot that he glowed like the sun. He waved a sword, while above him three wyrmling Seccaths in crimson robes hovered in the air like hawks.

"Sweet mercy," the Wizard Sisel cried, "the Knights Eternal have been loosed!"

But Alun's fear quickly turned to wonder. There were people fighting the Knights Eternal, four small humans like those in the village below. A bowman loosed an arrow, and one of the Fell Three plummeted from the sky.

The bright one blazed even brighter, and light flooded the sky across the horizon.

Then the horizon abruptly went dim.

The ocular showed the scene, ropes of fire twirling between the bright one and a Knight Eternal, and then the lights went out, the humans dropped in a faint, and a pair of wyrmlings plummeted from the sky, like falcons stooping for the kill.

What happened next all took place in shadows. The ocular could not reveal much in so little light.

The warlords stood staring in dumb amazement.

"You saw that?" one of them cried. "Their archer slew a Knight Eternal! He killed one of the Three!"

Another warlord asked, "Are all of these small folk such warriors? If so, they would be grand allies! We had better make them allies, before they slaughter us all."

High King Urstone glanced down the hill at the poor farmers with their torches and clubs. The whole village together didn't look as if it could fend off a single wyrmling beggar. The king said thoughtfully, "I think that those four were folks of some import. They would have to be for the wyrmlings to send the Three after them." There were grunts of agreement.

The Emir said thoughtfully, "Daylan Hammer said that it was a wizard who bound our worlds together. One of those small folk is obviously a wizard. Could it be that he is the one who bound our worlds?"

"Look," one of the lords said, "the Knights Eternal are dragging them away. I think they've taken your wizard captive."

Madoc, who had been down in the valley, came huffing up the hill, his breathing ragged with excitement. He was looking to the north, where the lights had been.

"Then we will have to free the hostages," King Urstone said. "Perhaps that is why we are here. The Powers conspired to draw us here, lest some greater doom fall upon us."

"You would fight the Knights Eternal," Madoc grumbled, "in the dark, in a fortified position? That's madness. You'll foil our mission!"

The High King bit his lower lip. "Those small folk slew one of the Three. If we learn how they did it, we may be able to win this war once and for all." He gave Warlord Madoc a stern look. "The world has changed. We have more than just our own people, our own vain ambitions to think about. We will attack an hour after dawn, in the full light of day, and hunt the wyrmlings down. If any of the Knights Eternal are still abroad, we'll take off their heads. If done by the light of day, it might take weeks before they can rise again. No word of what happens here must reach Ruga.s.sa.

22.

HIDDEN TREASURE.

One cannot be perfect in all things, but one can become perfect in some things.

-Vulgnash Thul ransacked the prisoners' packs, pulling out spare garments, studying trinkets and mementos, then casting everything aside as if it was excrement. The Knight Eternal's cowl and robes hid his face, but his disgust showed in every angry move.

The prisoners lay frozen upon what was left of the floor of the house, scorched as it was from the battle. The touch of the grave was upon them, and they lay paralyzed, like mice that have been filled with scorpion's venom.

The spell would wear off by dawn.

"I see only three packs here," Vulgnash said. "Where is the fourth?"

Thul glanced around, looking for sign of a fourth pack. "Perhaps it fell when we pulled the walls off," Thul answered.

"Find it," Vulgnash said.

Thul growled in resentment, and then walked around, carefully studying the ground. "I don't see one. I think...the wizard is their leader. He would not carry a pack. He would make the others carry."

Vulgnash could not argue with that. No wyrmling lord would stoop to such menial ch.o.r.es. He climbed down to the ground level and grabbed some withered vines, long tendrils of morning glory that had been burned by the sun. When he had several feet of them, he leapt in the air, flapped up to the prisoners, and threw the vines upon Fallion in a twisted heap.

"Bind them firmly," he commanded.

The vines began to slither, twisting around the hands and feet of each prisoner, clamping legs together, cinching the arms tight against the chest.

When the prisoners were firmly bound, Vulgnash knelt and studied their weapons. He touched the fine reaver-bone bow that Jaz had held, and recoiled in horror. There was life life in that bow, the blessing of a powerful undine. in that bow, the blessing of a powerful undine.

He kicked it over the edge of the house with his boot, studied the other weapons. They were similarly accursed. He kicked them all into the bushes behind the little shop. "Rust upon you, and rot," he hissed, casting a spell. In a month the fine steel would be nothing but mounds of corrosion, the bow turned to dust, and the wooden staff would be food for worms.

Thul turned away from the packs, went and hunched over one of the small humans, the smallest of the women. Vulgnash glanced at him, saw Thul reaching down to place a finger over each eye.

"Do not feed on her!" Vulgnash hissed.

"But she is sweet!" Thul said. "Besides, we only need the wizard."

"We need them all," Vulgnash countered. "We must get the wizard to accept a wyrm. Sometimes, a man cannot be tortured into it, but he will break if another is tortured in his place."

Thul growled deep in his throat, whirled, and went back to the packs, began hurling things around in his rage.

There was a clanking, the sound of some bits of metal, copper perhaps, banging against one another. Thul dumped a bag of rods upon the floor, sniffing at them. "What are these?" he asked. "I smell wizardry."

Vulgnash strode to him, knelt and peered at the rods, thinking that perhaps they had stumbled upon a human harvester, and that these were his harvesting spikes. But the rods were not made of iron. They were made of corpuscite. Each rod was about the length of a hand, from the bottom of the palm to the tip of the middle finger. Each was about the diameter of a small willow frond.

And at the tip of each was a rune, one of the primal shapes that had formed the world from the beginning.

Vulgnash picked one up, studied the rune. It was easy to decipher for those who were wise enough to see: swiftness. swiftness. Attached to the rune were others- Attached to the rune were others-seize, confer, and and bind. bind.

He had never seen such a device, but instinctively Vulgnash knew what it was. The rod had been created to transfer attributes from one being to another.

"This is a weapon," he told Thul in rising exhilaration, "a marvelous weapon."

With mounting excitement he poured out the other branding irons, studied each one in turn: resilience, memory, strength, beauty, sight, hearing, smell, song. A dozen types of runes were represented, and Vulgnash immediately recognized that he could make others that the creators had not antic.i.p.ated-greed, cruelty, stubbornness-the list was endless.

"But can you make them work?" Thul demanded.