He got up on unsteady legs, as if he were not used to walking. He began staggering over the gra.s.s, calling out, sobbing.

He's a broken thing, Fallion thought, a wretch.

Fallion heard Talon sniff, looked over, saw tears of pity in her eyes.

Fallion, so focused on his father, almost did not see the wyrmling princess run and leap onto the monster's neck, quickly scrambling for purchase. The behemoth let out a strangled cry, then thundered up into the air.

For an instant, Fallion's father was there under blackest shadows, the wind beating down upon him, and then the star reappeared.

At the edge of the glade, three Knights Eternal flew, wings flapping softly.

Fallion saw his father stumble, and King Urstone let out a shout, went rushing across the field, calling "Areth! Areth. Ya gish, ha!"

Fallion found himself running, too, legs pumping in an effort to keep up.

"Father!" he shouted. "Father, I'm here!" Fallion so wanted to see his father again, that for a moment he imagined that this "shadow father" might recognize him.

Then his father rose from the ground, and came stumbling toward them on unsteady legs.

King Urstone drew to a halt, took a step backward and shouted in his own tongue.

That's when Fallion saw it. There was something wrong with his father's eyes. Fallion had fancied that he'd seen blazing blue eyes a moment ago.

But now all that he saw were pits, empty pits.

They've blinded him, Fallion realized. They couldn't just set my father free. They had to blind him first.

And as the derelict came staggering forward, Fallion's dismay only grew. In the failing light, he realized that his father's skin looked papery and ragged. His hair was falling out in bunches. His face was shrunken and skeletal.

"Father?" Fallion cried out in horror.

"Fallion, get back!" the Wizard Sisel shouted a heartfelt warning. "There is no life in that accursed thing!"

King Urstone had fallen back, and now he drew his ax in his right hand and grabbed Fallion with his left, holding Fallion back.

The wretch drew closer, and with each step, the rotting horror of his features became clearer. Soon he was forty feet away, then twenty.

The shape of his face is wrong, Fallion decided. That's not my father at all.

Fallion felt bewildered, uncertain.

No, his features aren't becoming clearer. He is rotting before our eyes.

The thing came toward Fallion, staggering and b.u.mbling, and fell. Almost, Fallion reached out to grab him, but he heeded Sisel's warning.

The derelict suddenly flicked his wrist, and a knife dropped from his sleeve, into his hand. Viciously, he took a swipe at Fallion.

Fallion raised his sword and slashed the creature's wrist, disarming it as the derelict fell to the ground and collapsed, its flesh turning to dust, leaving only a half-clothed skeleton with ragged patches of hair to lie at Fallion's feet.

Fallion stood there, his sword in hand, and peered down in dismay. He looked up at the Knights Eternal, but they were already winging away, over the dark swamps.

One of them threw back his head, and dimly Fallion realized, He's laughing. They're laughing at us!

There was no one to strike, no one to take vengeance upon.

The meadow was left empty and unbloodied. The wyrmlings had not violated the truce. Nor had they kept their word. They had their princess, and Fallion had...a corpse.

Sisel came up at their back, stood peering down in dismay. The others followed, the entire small group converging as one. King Urstone swore and raged at the sky.

"Was that my father?" Fallion asked, still uncertain.

"No," the Wizard Sisel said, "just some unfortunate soul who died long ago in prison. The Knights Eternal must have put some kind of glamour upon the corpse."

"But," Rhianna asked, "the dead walked?"

"Oh yes," Sisel intoned, "in the courts of Ruga.s.sa, the dead do more than walk."

"I...was a fool to hope," Fallion said, blinking back tears of rage and embarra.s.sment.

"A fool, to hope?" Sisel said, "never! They want you to believe that, because the moment you do, they have won. But remember-it is never foolish to hope, even when your hope has been misplaced."

High King Urstone knelt, his hands resting on the pommel of his ax, and just wept softly for a long moment. There was no one to comfort the king, no one who dared, until at last Alun came and put his hand upon the king's shoulder.

The king looked up at him, grat.i.tude in his eyes.

"The wyrmlings lied," Jaz said bitterly.

"It is in their nature to lie," Sisel said. "The wyrms in their souls find it hard to abide the truth. Daylan knew that they might try to deceive us. It was always a risk."

"A risk?" Daylan Hammer called out. "Yes, there was a chance that the wyrmlings would seek to cheat us. But if we had let things go as they were, the destruction of our souls was not a risk-it was a certainty. You know of what I am speaking, Sisel. You smelled the moral rot as well as I did."

Daylan Hammer came down from the tower now, and went striding up behind the group, peering down at the corpse.

"I smelled the moral rot," Sisel said. "It was like an infected tooth, that threatens the life of the whole body. Still, I suspect that we could have waited a little longer before pulling it."

"And I think that we have waited far too long," Daylan said. "The moral rot runs all through Luciare now." He sighed, studied the body. "I'm sorry Fallion, Jaz. I had hoped for a happier end than this."

"What will you do now?" Jaz asked. "Will you go to Ruga.s.sa and free my father?"

"We don't have the troops," the Wizard Sisel said. "We could throw ten thousand men against the castle walls there and still not be sure to breach their defenses."

"There must be something you can do-" Jaz said, "perhaps a better trade?"

But we've already offered a fair trade, Fallion thought. I know, he considered sarcastically, we could offer them me. It seems only right. Father saved my life once. Now I can save his.

Talon got a thoughtful look. "The wyrmlings have shown that they cannot be trusted. It was foolish to think otherwise. They will not barter for what they can easily steal."

Daylan Hammer argued. "Not all wyrmlings are so hopelessly evil. Some can hold to a bargain-even some that harbor loci."

"Ah," the wizard Sisel objected, "but to do so, they must fight the very wyrm that consumes their souls, and no wyrmling can resist for long-"

Daylan began to object, but Sisel cut him off, raising a hand, begging for silence.

He peered up into the air. In the deepening night, a great-horned owl flew up out of the field, swooping low over the ground, as if hunting for mice. Then it suddenly glided once around the old tower.

"Fallion, we can't go after your father," Sisel said. "We have more important concerns right now."

"What?" Fallion asked.

Sisel nodded toward the owl, and then c.o.c.ked his head as if listening for some far-off cry. A pair of fireflies rose up from the gra.s.s and lit on the end of his staff, then sat there glowing, so that the wizard's worried frown could be seen in a pale green light. Fallion could hear nothing from the woods, could see nothing to justify the dismay in Sisel's voice. "Wyrmlings are coming. This is an ambush!"

30.

THE BATTLE AT THE GATES.

Luciare was never the greatest of castles. It was not the largest. Its walls were not the thickest. It was not the most heavily garrisoned or the most easily defended.But of all of our castles, it was the most filled with life. It was not just the trees and flowers, the birds and the insects that gave it life. It was the spirits of our ancestors that guarded it.How little we realize the debts we owe to those who have suffered for us, and sacrificed for us, and gone before. How little do we realize how often they watch over us, or what a vast role they play in our day-to-day affairs.

-the Wizard Sisel Daylan gave a shout in the king's tongue, and suddenly the king drew steel while guards began sprinting out from under the trees.

Sisel whirled his staff in the air once, and fireflies began to rise up out of the gra.s.s, streaming toward the king's group from hundreds of yards away.

The king began calling out to his warriors in dismay, and they peered off toward Mount Luciare. With the setting of the sun, the mount was left half in shadow, but the city suddenly blazed with light, and even in the distance, Fallion could see its white walls and golden scrollwork gleaming brighter than any fiery beacon.

Sisel translated, "The king is going to make for the castle." The king's men pointed to the northeast, where a fire suddenly sprouted on the horizon. Fallion had only seen fireworks once before, as a child at a midsummer's festival when traders from Indhopal had called upon his mother's castle, but now he recognized fireworks soaring up in the distance, two of bright red and one of blue, and each mushroomed into flame.

"Wyrmlings," Talon said. "A large host of them. They're advancing on Cantular!"

Then, to the northwest, another fire sprouted, and four more fireworks soared into the air, three of red, and one of yellow.

"And a larger host is coming for Luciare!" Sisel said, his voice trembling. "They planned this. They planned to attack as soon as the princess was gone!"

They will have the Knights Eternal with them, Fallion realized. And that beast, the giant graak. And what other horrors?

Sisel turned to Fallion. The king and his guards began hastening away, striding across the field.

"Fallion," Sisel said. "The king is making for the city. He wants to be sure of its defenses. I should be there too. But there is a Circle of Life around the old tower. You can stay there for the night. It should be safe. Even the Knights Eternal could not find you, so long as you hide within that circle. But its powers will fade, eventually. You cannot stay there forever."

Fallion looked longingly toward the king.

"Stay," Daylan Hammer warned. "Unless you have runes of metabolism, you will only slow the war clan down."

"I'll not leave grandfather to fight alone," Fallion said. "Tell them to run ahead if they must. We will catch up to them when we can."

Daylan called out to the king, translated the words. The king responded. "He says that if you wish to stay, he and his men will draw off the enemy. But he can't guarantee your safety, even in Luciare."

Fallion drew his sword, peered at it grimly in the light thrown by Sisel's fireflies. The blade was caked with rust now. In a few hours, it would rust through and be good for nothing. Already, the king's guard was leading the way down through the trees.

"Let's go," he shouted to his friends, and they were off.

Fallion sprinted. He wanted to prove himself. He didn't have the breeding of a man of the warrior clans. He didn't have their size and stamina. Nor did he have endowments. But he learned long ago that a man can by will alone make himself more than a man. He can exercise until he is as strong as any three men. He can labor for long hours until it seems that he has taken endowments of stamina. And Fallion and his friends had been training from childhood.

So they raced under the trees into the marsh. Cool air was streaming down from the icy peaks of Mount Luciare, and as it hit the warmer water of the marsh, a layer of mist began to form, fog that hung in the air like spider's webs.

Overhead, the trees hung in a heavy canopy, their leaves blocking out the stars.

Under the heavy shade of the trees, the only light came from the fireflies that circled Sisel's staff, sometimes halting to rest on a bush, sometimes buzzing ahead as if to show the way.

The wizard slowed several times to strip the kernels of grain from off stalks of wheat. Each time he did, he would sprinkle the grain over the men, so that gra.s.s seeds clung to their hair and the folds of their clothes.

They traveled like this for miles, the king and his troops striding purposefully. Fallion and his folk struggled to keep up, and he found himself often d.o.g.g.i.ng the steps of the slowest of the warriors-the Emir's daughter, Siyaddah.

He did not mind. He preferred the view of her shapely figure to that of one of the over-sized warriors. And as they marched, he found himself feeling protective of her, promising himself, If we are attacked, I will fight at her side. If we are attacked, I will fight at her side.

For her part, Siyaddah could not help but notice the attention. Several times she glanced over her shoulder to catch Fallion's eye.

At last they slowed for a moment.

"Let no fear rule your heart," Sisel warned Fallion and the others. "We are encircled by life-the trees and seeds above us, the ferns and shrubs at our sides, the gra.s.ses and mushrooms beneath. The Knights Eternal will find it hard to spot us."

"What about your blasted light?" Jaz asked, for the fireflies were surprisingly bright. Hundreds of them circled now, perhaps thousands.

"My light comes from living creatures," Sisel proclaimed, "Thus it is almost impossible for the eyes of the dead to see. A torch on the other hand, is only fire consuming dead wood, and is easy for one of the dead to spot."

"The dead?" Jaz asked.

"Of course, the Knights Eternal are dead," Sisel said, "or mostly so. And so death attracts them. They know when you are close to your demise."

Fallion tried to make sense of this. "Do you mean they are drawn to us as we approach the moment of our deaths?"

"No, no," Sisel answered. "They don't know when you will die any more than a goat does. But every living creature has a measure of death in it. Bits of us die every moment-skin flakes off, hairs fall away, and even though we are alive, we slowly decay. You can smell it on the old. It is the decay that draws the Knights Eternal. It smells sweet to them. And if we are wounded, if the life within us ebbs, we draw their attention, and they gain greater power over us."

Fallion took mental stock of himself. He felt much stronger now than he had two nights ago, when the Knights Eternal had first begun hunting him. He had wondered even before the knights had begun stalking him if he was near death, for a great weariness had been on him.

On the trail behind them, perhaps five hundred yards back, an owl hooted once.

It was a common sound in the woods at night, but Sisel immediately tensed, and then whispered, "Shhh, they are upon us."

The king raised a hand, calling a halt.

Up in the air, the pounding of wings came heavily.

Fallion looked up to Sisel, for he was taller than men on Fallion's world, and saw the wizard standing with his eyes closed, leaning on his staff, mouthing some spell.