David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

Even as he said it, the whole of Castle Sylvarresta suddenly trembled as the earth shook. At first Iome thought it was a residual effect from the Seer’s Stones arranged on the floor, but the wizard stared up at the walls of the castle, concerned. “It is but a minor tremor,” the wizard said. “The Earth is in pain.”

Iome glanced at the pair of Days who had taken sanctuary in the dark corner behind her. With their minds paired to those of their fellows, they knew more about the affairs of the Earth than anyone in this room, including the wizard Binnesman. What she saw worried her. Gaborn’s Days stared at the scene in horror, mouth gaping.

“What is Raj Ahten doing, attacking me at a time like this?” Gaborn demanded. “Does he even know the danger?”

“I doubt that he sees the calamity yet,” the wizard answered. “Last I saw, his troops were marching toward Carris, it seemed. At least, they were a few hours ago.”

“Where are they now?” Gaborn asked.

Binnesman bowed his head and closed his eyes, as if too weary to continue. Ever since he’d raised his wylde and lost it, he’d suffered from fatigue. “It has been a long day. But I’ll try.”

The wizard reached down to the dirt floor and rubbed fresh soil upon his palms and on his face. Then he picked up a few crystals, moved them about the edge of the Seer’s Stone, pulling some back, moving others left or right, his face a study in concentration.

The process took several minutes, for the wizard had first to locate Raj Ahten’s troops, as if seen from a distant mountain, then progressively move to better vantage points.

Yet what Iome eventually saw made the hair stand up on her arms: Raj Ahten’s troops were massed about a village, a hundred stone houses with thatch roofs. A low wall of stone surrounded the village, one that a knight mounted on a good force horse could easily overleap.

There were no watchmen on the walls, no distant sound of barking dogs. It appeared that the town was unaware of the approaching threat.

“I know that place,” Gaborn said. “That is the village of Twynhaven.”

The frowth giants in Raj Ahten’s army raised their muzzles and sniffed the air hungrily, as if trying to catch the scent of fresh blood. The knights in the retinue held their lances and war axes ready.

But it was Raj Ahten’s sorcerers who took the lead.

Three flameweavers spread out in a line, just outside the village wall, and began to chant, soft and reedy. Iome could hear them plainly, yet she could not make out their words, for their chant was a song of fire and consumption, the flickering sounds of flames, the crackle of a log.

Around each of them, grass and bushes suddenly erupted. Green flames shot skyward, and the flameweavers were engulfed. Iome smelled ash, felt the heat of their flame. They began stalking toward the village, climbed the low stone wall.

Suddenly; the dogs in the town caught sight of them and several began to bay. A horse whinnied nervously.

Still, no voice was raised in alarm.

The flameweavers leapt over the wall, and by now the fires behind them had grown substantial, so that Iome watched the sorcerers from beyond a screen of flame.

Around the village wall, the late summer sun had bleached the grass, sucked all the moisture from it. The flameweaver to the far left pointed to his left, and a tendril of flame shot from his hand and raced around the wall faster than a good horse could run. The flameweaver to the right did the same. In seconds, the two bolts of flame met at the far end of the city, and it was circled in fire.

Then the fire leapt skyward and began to rush toward the center of the circle.

A woman screamed and ran from her house at the edge of the village, gaping in dismay. Others began to follow her from their homes—children and mothers. Some horses knocked down a corral, raced round the town, bucking wildly.

The flameweavers advanced on the village now. The rising inferno was feeding them, giving them energy. One flameweaver pointed at a large barn; and the thatch of its roof caught fire, seemed almost to explode.

Seconds later, one of his fellows approached a house, sent a rope of flame twisting toward it, so that its roof and all its timbers inside were consumed at once. The heat of it fairly smote Iome.

People screamed within the house, and a burly townsman raced from it, his hair and clothes afire. A woman and her son raced out, the boy bearing a shield. His armor and his eyes reflected the flames. Firelit smoke made the scene bright.

The smell of smoke came strong to Iome’s nostrils.

The whole town suddenly erupted into an inferno, and the flames whirled high into the air, a hundred, two hundred yards. The flameweavers began chanting louder as they walked into that inferno, and they themselves became glowing worms of light, writhing beside the townspeople who died.

“They’re sacrificing those people to the Power they serve,” Binnesman said in horror, and the wizard turned away from his Seer’s Stone. “This is a black summoning.”

“This is the source of my terror,” Gaborn said.

The flames encompassing the village slowly turned green, the several fires within it coalescing into some strange wonderland of otherworldly shadows. Within moments, the rock walls of the cottages and the stone fences all began to dissolve into molten puddles.

It happened quickly, Iome thought. The town was soon leveled; the bones of every carcass, both of man and animal, were licked clean by flames.

It did not take the normal hours of teasing and coaxing that Iome thought would be required to perform a summoning. Perhaps the sacrifice strengthened the flameweavers’ spell. The flameweavers sang and danced like living flames.

Within an hour, a green glowing portal appeared on the ground, and the flameweavers stood before it, calling in the tongues of flames and ashes.

Nothing came forth, until one flameweaver walked to the portal and disappeared into the netherworld.

Almost instantly, the flames around the city diminished, puffed out into utter blackness. Only an occasional coal in the blackness still burned.

For a long moment, Iome held her breath, believing that a flameweaver had died, that he’d disappeared into the netherworld, never to return.

Then, among the ashes, she saw two forms take shape, writhing like wrestlers, she thought at first. But no, she decided, they were writhing like men who have struggled to crawl the last few yards of a long and difficult journey.

One was the dark shape of the flameweaver, half-covered with ashes.

Beside him was a larger form, like that of a dark man with a shaggy mane of long curly hair. But he glowed with a pure blue light, as if he were made of crystal. Flames rippled and played on his flesh.

The lumbering fellow staggered to his feet, and fanned wide his resplendent wings. Lightning seemed to flicker across his brow, and it glowed fiercely in his eyes.

Everywhere, among the ranks of Raj Ahten’s troops, hardened soldiers cried out in astonishment, while war dogs backed away and snarled in terror.

“By the Powers,” Gaborn said, “he’s summoned a Glory!”

But what kind of Glory? Iome wondered. For in the ages past, it was said that at the battle of Vaderlee’s Gorge, the Earth King Erden Geboren once fought with one Glory on his right hand and another on his left. They were said to be irrepressible opponents. She’d thought them to be the beneficiaries of mankind.

Yet this youth had a fell look in his eye as he wrapped his wings about his shoulders, and the light streaming from him became the blackest abyss.

“Do not be misled,” Binnesman said. “He is not like the Glories revered in ancient tales. He is a Darkling Glory. This creature comes to slay an Earth King, not to save one.”