David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

But humans were not so finicky when it came to granting endowments, and before dawn a facilitator came to Rhianna s tent. She was a small woman with dark hair, in costly attire.

"We are ready for the ceremony," she said. "Which endowment would you like first?"

Rhianna hadn t given it much thought. Brawn, she wondered. Or speed.

In that moment s hesitation, the facilitator made up Rhianna s mind for her. "Glamour," she said. "When creating a powerful Runelord, the first few should always be glamour-and then voice. It makes it easier for others to give their endowments to those that they love, and you will be stronger for it in the long run."

Rhianna s heart skipped a beat at the thought. Glamour. Raj Ahten had been rich with it, so rich that women who should have hated him were filled with lust, and would spread their legs for him. Men who saw him imagined that there could be no maliciousness in him.

"When you see the face of pure evil," an old saying went, "it will be beautiful."

Rhianna wanted to be beautiful, as fair as a summer morn, as powerful as a tempest. She had heard of Raj Ahten s wife Saffira, with hundreds of endowments of glamour. No man could resist her. To look upon her made men weak with desire.

Fallion will love me, Rhianna thought. I can make him love me more than he could ever imagine.

And as quickly as the thought came, she repented of it, trying to force the selfish desire away.

"Glamour," she confirmed.

The endowment ceremony took place in Sister Daughtry s pavilion, with Rhianna and her new Dedicate resting among plush cushions.

Her first Dedicate was a young girl, perhaps no more than sixteen. In the blush of youth, her eyes were bright and her skin as white as cream.

"In giving this gift," she said, looking noble and tragic, "I honor you, and I give myself for my land. Use my gift well, milady."

The girl s courtly mannerisms were overstated. She tried to look brave, but she was trembling in fear.

"Be of comfort," Rhianna said. "Your gift does you honor. I promise to engage it in the service of our people, and I will remember always this covenant between us."

But even as Rhianna said the words, she wondered how she could keep such a promise. She wanted the girl s beauty so badly, she ached for it.

The facilitator took a forcible and inspected it, then began her harking song as she sought to ease the mind of the Dedicate. All too quickly, the forcible began to glow white-hot. The facilitator touched it to the back of the girl s neck, and then pulled away a snake of light. It seemed to extend from the girl, growing longer and longer, as the facilitator examined it.

Rhianna was lost in her imaginings all through the ceremony, wondering how well Fallion might love her. And in a moment, the facilitator touched the forcible to Rhianna s breast, and her mind seemed to explode. The feeling of health that entered her, of well-being and ecstasy, was something she could never have imagined. It struck through her like lightning, and for an instant the pleasure was so intense that she blacked out.

When she came to, a facilitator s aide put a robe over the new Dedicate, and pulled down a deep brown hood, so that Rhianna could not see the girl s face.

Rhianna knew what the girl would look like, though. Those fine bright eyes would be dull and lusterless, their whites having gone to sickly yellow. Her smooth skin would be dry and papery. Her gleaming hair would have turned limp and dull. Her face would be a wreck.

The facilitator studied Rhianna for an instant, the way that a sculptor might look at his own work, searching it for defects. "Beautiful," she said. "You look so beautiful."

It was near dawn, and the campfires sputtered and raged in a contrary wind outside the tent. War horns blew in the distance, and there was some commotion as riders came into camp, announcing that they had caught a wyrmling woman. Rhianna went outside to see the cause of the commotion, and saw only a young girl, giant though she was. Her hands were tied together, and she had been forced to run for miles while horse-sisters drove her from behind at lance-point.

"What is this?" Sister Daughtry called to the sisters as they brought their charge toward camp.

"One of the white giants," the horse-sisters said. "We found her to the north, with three men on her tail. She speaks Inkarran."

Sister Daughtry studied the girl, impressed at her size. "So this is one of your wyrmlings," she whispered under her breath to Rhianna. "This is what we must fight?"

Sister Daughtry called out to the girl, "Kwi et choulon zah?"

"Kirissa Mentarn," the girl answered. Then she began to speak rapidly. Sister Daughtry inclined her head and frowned.

"Was there a man with her, a huge wyrmling?"

"There was," one rider answered.

"She asks what happened to him."

"He s dead. He fought two other wyrmlings, and wounded both before they killed him. We avenged him," the rider said.

Sister Daughtry broke the news to the girl in halting words. The wyrmling girl did not seem surprised, and though there was sadness in her face, she was not overwrought with grief.

Instead, she kept peering at Rhianna, at her wings, as if Rhianna were some icon of great power. Indeed, though she faced the others, her eyes stayed riveted upon Rhianna, as if she believed that Rhianna led the clans.

Kirissa kept talking, spewing out words in flawless Inkarran so quickly that Sister Daughtry seemed incapable of following. "She says that when the worlds were tied together, two halves of herself became one," Daughtry explained. "At least that is what I think she is saying. She found herself among the wyrmling horde, and tried to escape. She wants to go home, to Inkarra."

Rhianna said, "Ask her if she has seen a wizard, a young man with wings like mine."

Daughtry asked the question, and the girl nodded violently and began pointing to the ground, as if to explain where she had seen him. She demonstrated how the man had wings like Rhianna s.

Fallion, Rhianna realized. This woman had seen Fallion. Everything in Rhianna made her want to grab the wyrmling girl and force the information out of her, but Rhianna knew only a few words of Inkarran.

Sister Daughtry grew thoughtful. "We must find a translator. The girl knows of your man. She has not seen him personally, but knows where to find him. I do not speak enough Inkarran to trust myself to the task of translating."

One horse-sister offered, "Sister Gadron speaks the tongue well. She is riding in the Winters Camp, last I heard."

"Go and beg her to join us," Sister Daughtry said. Then she told the riders, "Feed and water this girl. Untie her. Treat her as a guest. Though she is a giant, she is not much more than a child. When Sister Gadron arrives, we ll learn what we can learn."

Rhianna studied the girl, who squatted on the ground timidly while children from the camp circled her, gaping. For her part, the girl peered up at Rhianna in frank wonder and jutted her chin toward Rhianna s wings once again, as if to remark upon them. Then the girl lowered her head in token of respect.

She knows what I had to kill to win these wings, Rhianna realized. What she doesn t know is how many more of the Knights Eternal I plan to kill.

Rhianna went back into the tent, and left the wyrmling girl out on the plains, the wind blustering through her hair while smoke from the camp-fires roiled across the ground.

By noon Rhianna had taken eighty endowments, including enough brawn, grace, stamina, and metabolism from the clan s strongest men that she could fight any wyrmling warrior.

But more than that, she had three endowments of voice from the horse-sisters finest singers. Hearing and scent were taken from camp dogs. Endowments of wit came from three of the horse-sisters brightest young students.