A few men upon the walls fired huge bows or hurled the ma.s.sive iron war darts that seemed to be favored here. They did little damage. The wyrmlings in the wood were shielded by leaf and limb.

Fallion drew heat from the torches into himself, savoring it. He exhaled, and smoke issued from his nostrils. He knew that if anyone looked at him, his eyes would be shining. He felt powerful, dangerous, even as the fortress walls shattered beneath him.

Then a huge shout erupted from the woods, and trees began to tremble as kezziards rumbled past them. The ground beneath the woods suddenly filled with white-the white of helms and armor whittled from bone, the white of the wyrmlings' pale skin, and the white of their eyes shining like crystals.

Suddenly something huge lumbered up over the woods, giant graaks on heavy wings. A dozen of them came at once, wingtip to wingtip, forming a living wall. Scores of wyrmlings rode their backs.

Shouts of warning erupted as human warriors recognized the danger. The wyrmlings wouldn't need kezziards to breach the walls. They could drop troops from the sky.

Upon the stone archway above the great gate to the city, the Wizard Sisel stood. Flowers and vines hung from the arch like a living curtain, and he stood there surrounded by greenery, as if in a forest. Down below, the wyrmlings troops rushed forward, roaring, and the giant graaks came winging well above the trees, the rush of wind from their wings rising like a storm.

The human defenders braced themselves, terror plain upon their faces, and Sisel raised his staff.

And there, from the gra.s.s along the castle wall, a million fireflies suddenly rose, arcing into the air like bright green sparks, filling the fields with light.

"Now," King Urstone called at the wizard's back. "By life and light, now is the time to strike!"

The humans charged to the crumbling lip of the wall, risking their lives to hurl war darts.

Wyrmlings cried in despair, as if to greet the Dark Lady herself in death.

The kezziards clambered forward, crushing wounded and fallen wyrmlings in their path, terrifying in their masks of woven chain. The lizards themselves were the color of fire, with enormous eyes that shone gold. Their tongues snapped and flickered as they scented the battlefield, yet despite the dying all around them, they trudged stupidly on.

Fallion saw dozens of kezziard riders die, iron darts splitting their faces.

Giant graaks neared the city.

Fallion stood, his wings nervously adjusting, preparing for flight.

High up on Mount Luciare, where clouds collided with stone, a pair of Knights Eternal clung to the wall, gripping it with dead fingers and the tiny claws at the joints of their wings.

There at the edge of the coming battle, in the sputtering light of the torches, they spotted the nervous unfolding wings.

The knights looked at each other.

"Fools," one of them whispered. "They almost beg for death."

The two winged human warriors hadn't had time to adapt to a life of flight, and so they squatted along with the rest of their kind. Their attention was riveted on the enemy in front of them, when they should have been scanning the sky above.

With a kick, the Knights Eternal soundlessly broke away from the mountain wall, unfolded their wings, and swooped into a dive.

Like hawks they stooped, wings almost folded, using all of their strength to focus on the wingtips, keeping them rigid against the driving wind, gently tilting, making corrections, as they guided themselves toward their targets.

They gained speed as they fell, and soon were rushing toward ground. With just a tilt of the wingtips, they began to break, and went shooting just feet above the ground.

Thunder drums continued to boom, cracking walls and shattering stone. The wyrmlings wailed and snarled in death as the humans hurled their iron darts, and everywhere men were shouting battle cries. Fallion's nerves jangled, and for a moment it seemed that all went silent as he tried to block out the sound.

From the castle wall above Fallion, he heard a roar of warning and imagined that from their higher vantage point the lookouts must have spotted some new threat.

Jaz leapt forward, taking aim with his great bow and loosing a black arrow into the throat of a wyrmling kezziard rider. He grabbed a second arrow in a blur, and took aim at a kezziard's eye.

A war dart came hurtling up from a wyrmling below, and Jaz dodged aside even as he drew a new arrow.

A tall warrior stepped in front of Fallion, blocking his view; quickly Fallion ducked to his left to get a glimpse of the battlefield.

He heard a heavy chunk, crack, chunk. chunk, crack, chunk.

The warrior that had blocked Fallion's view suddenly grunted. Fallion glanced at him, and saw that a black dart now sprouted from his back.

The warrior staggered forward a pace and moaned as he toppled over the wall.

That dart barely missed me! Fallion realized. He wondered where it had come from. Obviously, there was an enemy behind him.

At that instant Jaz cried out, falling to his knees.

Fallion heard the m.u.f.fled flapping of wings, a sound an owl might make as it takes a mouse. A Knight Eternal, he realized.

He ducked. At the same instant something enormous swooped above his head.

Then Fallion spotted a huge black iron war dart protruding from Jaz's back.

For an instant, time froze. Fallion saw the panic in Rhianna's eyes, saw her swing her staff wildly as a pair of Knights Eternal blurred above her. But as quickly as they had come, the enemy was gone, winging off into the shadows.

Fallion thought to follow, but knew that it would be too dangerous. He could no longer see them, and their flying skills far outmatched his own.

Jaz knelt on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. He coughed, and gobs of blood spattered to the ground.

He began to laugh just a bit as Fallion drew near.

"What?" Rhianna asked, grabbing for his shoulder, trying to pull him up. Jaz shook his head no, refusing her help.

Jaz looked up at Fallion, smiling broadly, while blood poured freely from his mouth. Tears glistened in his eyes.

"Do you hurt?" Rhianna asked, trying to comfort him.

"The poison...is cold."

Jaz collapsed, his face banging onto the stone.

"Jaz!" Fallion cried, and reached down to grab him. He listened for Jaz to breathe, but only heard the air escape his brother's throat.

Rhianna's face was blank with shock.

All of the roaring, all of the snarl and ba.s.s of the thunder drums, all seemed but a small and distant noise. In that instant, Fallion knelt with his brother, utterly alone.

Then Rhianna was on him, trying to pull him back from the wall. "We've got to get away! They're coming!"

Even as she spoke, a great sky serpent flapped overhead, and they were washed in the wind from its wings. Something wet splattered from the sky, and there was a crackling sound as it splashed to the stone walls.

Oil? Fallion wondered. Some vile poison?

But drops of red hit his face, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Blood, he realized. Putrid blood, that smelled as if it had been days rotting in a barrel.

The very stench of it made him want to retch, and, oddly, the touch of it began to burn his skin. He heard a hissing sound around him as foul liquid landed on vines and trees and set them steaming.

Death, come to conquer life. It was more than mere blood. There was a spell upon it.

It was an omen.

Suddenly, Fallion felt disoriented. All of the rules of combat he had learned as a child meant nothing here. The wyrmlings fought a different kind of war.

Rhianna grabbed Jaz's scabbard and bow, then pulled on Fallion's shoulder, trying to lift him up.

Fallion staggered to his feet, went tottering behind her. He stared back, his eyes on Jaz, hoping that his brother might show some sign of life.

A huge human warrior reached down, grabbed Jaz by the wings, and began trying to lift him.

"He's dead," Fallion called back uselessly.

At that instant there was a tearing sound, and Jaz's wings ripped free. His corpse sloughed away, slapping to the cold stone battlements.

Ah, Fallion realized. He wasn't helping Jaz, just taking a prize of war.

Rhianna led Fallion away in a daze, racing up the cold stone streets. He couldn't feel his feet. His body had gone numb. There were shouts everywhere. Giant graaks flapped high over the city while wyrmlings spattered their b.l.o.o.d.y elixir onto trees and gardens, set the trees and gra.s.s sizzling, then found a place to land.

Behind Fallion, there was a shout as kezziards. .h.i.t the outer wall. Fallion did not understand the war clan's language, but he knew what they were crying. "Pull back, pull back! The wyrmlings are over the wall."

Fallion peered back toward Jaz one last time, but could not see him. The human warriors behind Fallion were in full retreat, blocking Fallion's view, and a kezziard was climbing over the spot where Jaz's body lay, the wyrmling riders looking fearsome in their thick armor.

In a more perfect world, Fallion thought, my brother is still alive.

He ached to take wing, to fly to the Mouth of the World and dare the tunnels down, seeking out the Seal of the Inferno.

Soon, he promised himself.

But there was a battle to fight first.

42.

A VISION.

Every man is a prisoner of his own making. The size of our jail is defined by the limits of our vision.

-Daylan Hammer Time had no meaning in Areth's cell. Seconds seemed to draw out into hours, hours into centuries. As his unseen Dedicates endured unimaginable tortures, only Areth felt their pain.

Several times he lost consciousness, then rose again to the surface, like a drowning man. From time to time, voices came to him, hallucinations caused by the extremity of his torture.

Other times, he heard groaning deep in the earth, as if rocks were colliding and rubbing together, struggling to form new hills. It was almost as if the earth had a voice, and if he listened hard enough, he could hear it.

"Pain. I am in pain," the earth said. That is all that he could discern in the noise, that and a sound like groaning.

Areth whispered, "I would help if I could."

Areth heard his wife's voice.

"Areth, awake," she said softly.

He looked up and saw that he was in a meadow.

I am dreaming, he realized, but only stared at his wife. She had been dead for sixteen years. Areth knew that she could not be here, and he peered into her face not because he loved it, but because he had not been able to recall what she had looked like now for nearly a decade.

A dream such as this, it was rare and precious, and he hoped to recall it when he woke.

Her skin was dark, beautiful, as it had been in life. Her eyes sparkled like stars reflected in a pool at midnight.

But there was something wrong. Her face was mottled and of different colors. He peered hard. White sand, pebbles, twigs, leaves and mud all seemed to be pressed together, forming her face.

A vague worry took him. Areth feared that he was mad. He knew that this was a dream, but the meadow somehow seemed too real, too lush. He could smell the sweet scent of rye and the bitter tang of the dandelions in the gra.s.s. Bluebells rose up at the roots of the aspen trees at the edge of the glade. There was too much detail in the gra.s.s. He could see old blades lying on the ground, the new gra.s.s rising up from them. He could smell worms upon the ground.

He listened to the bickering of wrens and calls of cicadas deeper in the woods, and he felt sure that it was not a dream.

"Who are you?" Areth asked the woman, for he suddenly realized that she could not be his wife. She was a stranger.

"I am the Spirit of the Earth," the woman whispered, smiling down at him. "I have come to beg your help. The world is a wasteland, and soon will succ.u.mb. The very rocks and stones cry out in agony. Soon, mankind will pa.s.s away, like a dream."

Sooner than you know, Areth thought. He could not say why, but he believed the wyrmling torturers this time. They were attacking Luciare and would slaughter the last vestiges of mankind. Perhaps a few might escape, but only a few, and they would be hunted.

"I can grant you the power to save them," the Earth Spirit whispered. "If you will accept the gift, you can save the seeds of mankind. But it comes with a great price-all that you are, all that you ever will be. All of your hopes and dreams must be relinquished, and you must serve me above all."

Areth felt as if his knuckles had grown thick with arthritis. Pain blossomed in them, as if they had been crushed. He laughed in pain.

If this is a dream, then I must not be sleeping very soundly, he thought. The torturers are still at me.

"Do you accept?" the woman asked.