David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

The emir looked crushed, confused. He staggered forward, as if he might embrace Areth.

But Daylan warned him back. "Hold, my friend. This is not the Areth that you so loved."

"Areth!" the emir shouted in a near panic. "Resist him. You can resist evil. Resist it, and it will flee from you!"

Despair laughed. "No, there is not much left of him in here. What remains is hardly aware. Like a mouse stung by the venom of a scorpion, he is torpid. Yes, that is it, a mouse. He is a mouse hiding in my skull, a frightened mouse shivering in the recesses of my consciousness, dreaming of escape. He cannot resist me."

"But, Areth," the emir cried, "we re here to rescue you."

"Too late," Despair said. "You should have come years ago, fourteen years ago. You could have offered ransoms. You could have fought valiantly."

"There is no coin that we could have paid with," the Emir objected. "There is no chance that we could have won."

"Ah," Lord Despair said, "that is where you are wrong. You could have fought. It is true that you would have died, and Areth would have been saddened for a moment. But he would have also been comforted by the depth of your love. The knowledge of what you had sacrificed might even have steeled him, so that he could endure all of our torments. But alas, we ll never know. All he felt for you in the end was hurt and betrayal."

"That s a lie," the emir said. "Areth knew that I loved him as a brother. I would have come for him years ago. I would have come and died. But the wyrmlings would have destroyed our people in the backlash. Areth knows that, too, I am sure. And he would have suffered for an eternity rather than see that."

The smile the crept across Lord Despair s face was terrible to see. It was cruel beyond torture, and it mocked all who beheld it.

"He held on to such noble sentiments for as long as he could," Despair said. "But here in Rugassa, we have perfected torment, and in the end, pain drove all such thoughts from his mind."

The Emir Tuul Ra attacked then; with a cry of anguish he drew his blade and lunged. Talon felt sure that it was a last desperate attempt to rescue Areth Sul Urstone, to free his soul, to save him from what he had become.

With the strength of a Runelord, the emir leapt thirty feet, blinding in his speed.

But Despair blurred into motion himself, easily batting aside the emir s weapon, and then landed a crushing blow with the butt of a dagger to the emir s head.

The emir fell to the ground with a crash, his sword clanging to the arena floor, then ringing as it spun away.

Talon almost charged next, but Daylan warned her back. "Ware! Ware! He has more endowments than we do, and he has the powers of an Earth King besides." There was fear in Daylan s voice, and regret and horror.

Lord Despair studied the fallen emir, as if dissecting him with his eyes.

"Fourteen long years Areth waited for you," Despair said. "Fourteen years of torture. Let s see how well you bear up as you suffer his fate."

Then he turned his cold gaze upon the rest of the company. He glanced at Kirissa, who struggled in the grasp of her wyrmling guards.

"Fools," Despair said. "Why do you even bother to resist?"

"Ah," Daylan said, "and that is where you are wrong. We are not fools. The rules I live by are not the rules of this physical world. They are the rules of the invisible world. By abiding by those laws, Despair, we gain power that you never could comprehend, nor control."

Despair dismissed him with a flick of his eyes. "If you insist," he said. "But what has all of your power gained you? Yes, you resist me, but your efforts are of no consequence."

"Until now," Daylan said. "Your time is coming to an end. The True Tree has been reborn. The Torch-bearer has returned. The Restoration of All Things is at hand."

"The remains of the True Tree are rotting away at Castle Coorm," Despair said. "And the Torch-bearer writhes in my dungeon, and shall soon be joining me."

Without blinking, Despair must have uttered some silent command, for from the corner of her eye Talon caught a movement. She whirled with her weapon in hand just in time to see specters hurtling toward her silently, as insubstantial as a mist. In their shapes, she thought that she saw the remains of their forms-skulls shrunken and meatless, with pits for eyes. A ghostly hand reached out to touch her with fingers of bone.

She cried out and tried to lurch away, but the finger brushed her hand. Instantly it felt as if the blood froze in her veins, racing up her arm, and her entire right side went numb.

The icy sensation swept up her arm, paralyzed her shoulder, and stopped her heart with its piercing cold. She heard Rhianna cry out and a rush of wings as the woman leapt into the air.

"Run!" Rhianna shouted.

But Talon could not stagger a step. The wight had taken her by the hand, and she could not break free. Even with the strength of a dozen warriors of Caer Luciare, her knees suddenly felt too weak to hold her, and she collapsed to the arena floor.

With a glimpse of the shadow wights rushing up behind her, Rhianna leapt into the air with a shout of warning, and flapped up into the darkness. The arena was about one hundred and fifty yards across and had a high ceiling, but in the darkness she could not be certain how high.

She glanced below. A wave of wights had rushed in behind Vulgnash. Talon whirled to do battle, but it was in vain, for a wight merely took her hand, and its paralyzing touch drove her to the floor.

Daylan Hammer sprang forward, bringing his war hammer to bear on Lord Despair, raining blows upon him like a human cyclone. But Despair merely danced back, parrying every blow with his great sword, until after a dozen blows from Daylan s weapon a wight leapt into the air and grabbed him from behind, arms locked about his throat in a death grip, and rode him to the ground.

With her companions all either dead or paralyzed, Rhianna had no choice but to seek escape.

She flew up, circling the arena like a bird that had flown into a house through an open door. She flapped higher and butted her head against the ceiling, a blow that nearly sent her reeling to her doom.

In the darkness she could see little, even with her endowments. Glow worms had not been placed up here, and apparently found little to eat upon the stone. She spotted doors at both ends of the arena, doors for wyrmling spectators to gain ingress, but the misty forms of wraiths streamed into the arena, blocking her escape. She could not get past them. There was no room.

She flapped about, peering down, and the wraiths stared up at her hungrily, eager for her death.

"Take her!" Lord Despair shouted, and Vulgnash leapt into the air, too. The Darkling Glory at Despair s back roared in mirth to see her predicament. There was not enough room for her to elude Vulgnash for long. All that she could do was to fly in desperate circles.

Nor can I fight, she realized. Vulgnash is under the protection of an Earth King, a twisted Earth King, but an Earth King nonetheless.

Her heart pounded with terror, and she was so frightened that she almost missed it. She felt a sudden updraft.

An air vent, she realized. The arena had an air vent at its top.

Vulgnash was hot behind her. Rhianna flapped harder, pressing in her need, and he fell back a few paces.

I m faster than he is, she realized.

Whether it was because she had taken more endowments of metabolism or because she had taken more strength, she could not be certain, but Vulgnash fell behind.