David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

"I think that it is unwise to ask them to surrender," Kirissa said. "They will only arm themselves again later, and come after you in greater numbers."

Then Rhianna asked her one final question. "If you were to return to Rugassa, what would be done to you?"

Kirissa thought long about that. "They would kill me," she said. "But they would torture me first, in order to punish me."

"Will they take you to the dungeons where Fallion is kept?"

"Yes," Kirissa said, growing worried at her line of questioning.

"If I asked you to do this for me, would you do it? Would you let yourself be captured?"

Kirissa recognized what Rhianna needed. Kirissa would not be able to find her way down to the dungeons. Even if she had known the way, she would slow down a pack of force soldiers intent upon a quick strike.

"How would you know where they take me?" Kirissa asked.

"I m a Runelord," she said. "I have a small tincture of perfume, sandal-wood oil. I would place it on you and then follow the scent. No matter where they took you, I would be able to find you."

Kirissa was afraid to volunteer for such a ruse. The Earth King had warned her long ago that the time would come when the small folk of the world would need to stand against the large, but she had always thought that she would meet her enemy with a good blade in hand-an ax or scimitar.

It was only the Earth King s words that gave her the courage to say, "Yes, I will go down with you. But we may need Cullossax s key if we are to breach the dungeons."

Rhianna gave a meaningful look to Sister Gadron.

"I ll get right on it," Sister Gadron said.

As it turned out she did not have to go far to get the key. A wyrmling s necklace with an ornate key carved from bone had seemed a fine trophy to one of the horse-sisters.

The summer sun shone down with the intensity of a blast furnace as Rhianna came winging to Caer Luciare, its white granite walls gleaming.

She flew over the market streets, with their cobbled stones and quaint shops. The folk of Caer Luciare had favored vivid colors-bold peach, avocado, and plum-but now the gay shops clashed with the macabre decor of the new inhabitants. The wyrmlings had already begun marking everything with their crude glyphs-images of Lord Despair as a world wyrm, rising up. Other glyphs showed the image of the Stealer of Souls, a spidery creature, or of various clan markings that she was just beginning to recognize-the dog s head of the Fang Guards, or the three black skulls of the Piled Skulls clan.

Every cottage and market was somehow defiled. Either windows were shattered or doors caved in, or vile drawings covered the walls.

Like dogs, Rhianna realized. The wyrmlings are like dogs peeing on trees and bushes. There is some inner dictum that forces them to mar or destroy the lands that they take.

But it was more than just the paintings that adorned the places. The carnage looked worse than she remembered. It wasn t just the new damage to structures or the sickening graffiti. The wyrmlings had not yet begun to reclaim their dead after the battle, so now their white corpses lay strewn about, stomachs bloating and festering, oozing foul smells that rose up on the thermals. With her endowments of scent, the odors seemed overwhelming.

The dead were not just part of the decor, she realized, they were the centerpiece.

Rhianna dropped to the ledge of a lower wall, near where Jaz had died. She saw bloodstains on the cobblestones that might have been his. His body lay hacked and ruined.

My brother, she thought, look what they ve done to him.

She did not care if the wyrmlings saw her there. She suspected that some were watching from Caer Luciare, from the dark corridors. Certainly there were enough spy holes in the place. But none would dare issue forth in this blazing sun to test her prowess in battle. And if they did, she would be happy to show them a thing or two.

So she stood for a long moment, weeping above Jaz s corpse. "The wyrmlings have a lot to answer for," she said to him. "And I shall make them pay."

But first, she thought, I need a weapon that will kill a Death Lord.

That was what she had come for. She had lost her staff while fighting against Vulgnash, the staff that the Wizard Binnesman had inscribed with runes and magic stones for the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden.

Vulgnash s endowments of metabolism had been too much for Rhianna to overcome. She hadn t been able to even come close to hitting him. And after the folk of Caer Luciare had fled, she d been afraid to return for the staff.

But now she was ready to meet Vulgnash once again.

She turned and flew to the upper wall, where Fallion had taken his wound, and where she had slain a Knight Eternal. She found the mummified corpse still lying on the ground, its crimson robes draped about it. Rhianna kicked the corpse over. Carrion beetles crawled about underneath it, went blindly scattering this way and that, seeking to escape the sunlight.

Rhianna separated the robe from the corpse.

Odd, she thought, that the wyrmlings haven t scavenged from their own dead.

But then she began to wonder. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps it wasn t out of laziness that the wyrmlings had left their dead on the battlefield untouched-but more out of respect.

These wyrmlings had died on the field of honor, and now it appeared that they would remain-in some sort of macabre memorial.

Rhianna had heard of people in Indhopal who would not touch their dead for three days, as a token of respect.

It might only be something like that, she thought.

She threw off her own robe and draped herself in the cowled bloody red robes of a Knight Eternal.

Flying fast, she wouldn t be distinguishable from one of them.

She flew to the base of the mountain, beneath the parapet where Warlord Madoc had fallen.

The Earth King s staff should be near here, she thought. But she could not find it. Warlord Madoc lay dead and broken upon a rock, his back arched painfully, arms spread wide, his dead eyes gazing up into the sun.

But Rhianna couldn t see the staff.

She hoped that wyrmlings had not defiled the weapon, as they had the buildings. She knew that the Death Lords had tried to curse the weapon, destroy it that way.

But after several seconds, she could not see it.

There were a number of large rocks here, scree from the tunneling in the mountain up above.

Perhaps, she thought, it has fallen under the rubble where I cannot see it. She began to peer around, peeking down under the shadows.

Just then, she heard a noise above. She glanced up to see a large boulder bouncing down from a parapet. She leapt aside as it slammed into the ground, then went bouncing away.

Perhaps the sun is not as great a deterrent as I d imagined, Rhianna thought.

She heard the gruff laugh of a wyrmling coming from somewhere far up the mountain, drifting down. He called out a taunt.

She did not need a translator. The tone said it all: I know what you re looking for. Come and get it if you dare.

Suddenly, she realized how dangerous that just might be.

The wyrmlings have had a night to dig up ore from the mountain, and two full days to refine it and take endowments. Surely they have done so by now.

Their taunts are not idle threats.

Rhianna leapt up and flew away.

I will have to go to Rugassa without my staff, she realized.

Lord Despair was impatiently touring his armory when his Knights Eternal returned that morning, three hours after sunrise.