David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

Rhianna wheeled, then folded her wings and dropped into a dive. She swept low, just over the heads of the wights, and drew steel, as if to whack one with her blade, then rose up in the air.

She peered hard, looking for the air hole, and finally saw it-a thin circle of gray in the stone, where light shone down a long narrow shaft.

She flapped her wings hard and rose. Vulgnash wheeled with a shout, and came screaming toward her, trying to block her escape.

Is the hole wide enough to let me through? she wondered. It will have to be.

Rhianna burst upward, reached the air shaft.

She folded her wings tight, letting her momentum propel her upward. She found herself in a narrow chimney, no more than two feet wide. Her shoulders were so large that she almost could not fit. Up above, she could see sunlight not sixty feet away.

I m a Runelord, she told herself. I can make myself fit.

She dropped her blade and contorted her shoulders, bringing them together in a way that no human should. With a dozen endowments of grace, it was not hard. Then she clawed her way up the hole, scrabbling as quickly as possible.

Vulgnash grabbed her heel, and she considered kicking him, trying to knock him back, but some blind instinct drove her upward.

Claws of iron seemed to be wrapped around her foot, and Rhianna kicked, struggling to break free. His claws raked her, drawing slick blood, and suddenly Vulgnash lost his grasp.

Quick as an eel, Rhianna snaked up the hole.

Vulgnash roared in anger, and Rhianna reached sunlight, grabbed the lip of the hole and threw herself out, just as a fiery blast shot through the chimney.

She stood in broad daylight for a second, wondering if Vulgnash would be able to squeeze through the hole, wondering if there was any way to go back down and save her friends.

But she could not think. She heard growls and scrapes in the air shaft. Vulgnash was coming up. He had taken endowments of grace, too, and though he was larger than her, it seemed that he would fit.

In a blind panic, Rhianna realized that whether he made it up the shaft or took some other route, Vulgnash would be after her soon enough.

In a mad rush of wings, she launched herself into the sky. She flew up and up, then peered back to see Vulgnash charging after her, rising up from below, his massive red wings pumping furiously. He was horrifying in his persistence, inhuman. Somehow, he had managed to squeeze through the chimney, and now he peered up at her, blinking in pain at the sunlight, and gave chase.

I m faster than him, Rhianna told herself. I have to be. She flapped madly, hurtling away from Rugassa as fast as possible.

Vulgnash was on her tail. Like a crow chasing a starling, Rhianna thought. He is larger and more ponderous than me. He cannot hope to follow for long. The sunlight blinds him.

But from the vent below, she saw a second form emerge, black and sinister. The Darkling Glory was joining the chase.

Rhianna pumped her wings furiously, terrified. The creature was an unknown. She could not imagine how it got through that hole.

How fast can it fly? she wondered. How well can it see in the daylight?

Suddenly the sky went dark from horizon to horizon.

Rhianna had only heard of such things in legend, from tales of her mother s time. Only the most powerful of flameweavers could do that. Fallion was able to draw heat from a fire, but he couldn t yet bend the very light to his will.

Is Vulgnash doing that, Rhianna wondered, or the Darkling Glory?

A glance revealed that it was Vulgnash.

Ropes of light began to weave together above her, whirling from the sky in streams of fire, tornadoes of white-hot flame. She veered to avoid one of the tornadoes.

He s catching the light in his hand, she realized. He s going to try to burn me out of the sky. He ll take aim and then hurl a ball of fire. In that instant, I must change course.

The darkness fled, and Rhianna peered down, but could see little. There was a mist of shadow beneath her, impenetrable to the human eye. Within it she could see only parts of the forms of creatures, struggling toward her. A fireball suddenly roared from the mist.

She banked hard to the left and folded her wings, going into a vertical dive. The fireball roared overhead, expanding and slowing. The heat of it gave her a thrill of fear, for it was like standing too close to a forge.

Rhianna unfurled her wings and flattened her trajectory, then flapped all the harder.

She peered back. The mists of darkness followed, but could not match her pace. She veered to the right, lest another ball of fire come at her, and drew farther away. She veered up suddenly, heading toward the sun.

Increasing her speed, Rhianna raced ahead, mile after endless mile.

She had headed south by instinct-toward the horse-sisters, toward help. But she realized the danger in exposing the position of her troops. Better to lead her pursuers away from her allies.

So Rhianna veered to the west, so that the demons would have the sun slanting into their eyes.

She consulted a mental map. There was little in the way of human settlements here for many, many miles.

Vulgnash and the Darkling Glory slowly receded into the distance, becoming nothing more than a dark blur on her trail, miles behind. Soon, the Darkling Glory gave up the chase.

Yet Vulgnash clung to her trail. Perhaps he feared to displease his master, and it was fear that drove him to mindlessly follow. Or perhaps he thought that he was like a hound, and she was a fox that could be run to the ground.

Rhianna soared over what had once been Mystarria-lush lands with rolling hills, rich with farms and towns along the rivers, and sweeping fields and forests elsewhere.

But all was in ruins. Entire cities had been battered down and laid to waste.

Juxtaposed over this was the landscape of the wyrmlings shadow world: occasional fabulous ruins, weathered and beaten, what had once been "human" cities; monolithic towers and columns, all white as bone, were covered with obscene scrawls in the wyrmling tongue.

After fifty miles, Rhianna saw more interesting signs. A contingent of Queen Lowicker s troops were on the move, unaware that their queen had been vanquished. Or perhaps they had heard and just did not care. In any case, a long column of knights was riding east toward Rugassa, as if to do battle, their lances raised to the air. But there was no one nearby for them to fight. The wyrmlings had razed their cities and then faded from the land for the day. They would be hiding in some dark hole where warhorses and lances would do no good.

Rhianna kept flying, winging into the wilderness as the sun continued to slant toward the horizon.

She flew over a desert that should not have been there-a rugged place of rock and sand-and on its borders she saw herds of shaggy elephants being trailed by packs of dire wolves and great hunting cats.

Three hundred miles from Rugassa, her sharp eyes descried something interesting-a cloud of dust to the south. At first she thought that it might be a great herd of shaggy elephants, but the formation was too tight. It could only be caused by vast forces marching in the wilderness.

But whose?

She veered toward it, hardly changing her course at all. Five miles later she was able to descry what troops marched there.

It was reavers, tens of thousands of them, marching roughly toward her. In the distance, they looked like great black beetles, though Rhianna knew that they were not small. Each reaver weighed more than an elephant.

As she neared, the sound of their marching feet made the earth tremble and groan; the clashing of their carapaces against the ground was like weapons clanging upon shields.

Rhianna had never seen a reaver. They were the stuff of legend, creatures that lived deep in the Underworld. She wanted a closer look, and with Vulgnash following, she wanted him to get a good look at them, too.