David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

"Well, I don t think that we have to worry about the Knights Eternal coming for us any longer," Daylan said. "It looks as if the Darkling Glories will beat them to the task."

Over the tree-covered hills the party ran. Rhianna raced to the back of the handcart and began to push, urging the group forward. The emir was forced to sprint as fast as he could, stopping only for a drink from an occasional brook. They cast their eyes back furtively many a time, and watched as the storm around the volcano s cone intensified, the clouds growing thick, the lightning flickering wickedly, storming in the night.

For ten or twelve minutes, as common men count time, the storm intensified, until the crown of the volcano was hidden from sight.

During that time, the heroes ran, covering another dozen miles or more.

The emir sprinted beside the cart. It bucked and leapt over the broken road, and after only a few miles the wheels began to squeak. He worried that the car would hit a rock too hard and suddenly explode on impact.

But it was a stout thing, made for wyrmling workers, and it held together.

Each time that he glanced back, he peered at the growing cloud, and he was able to take some comfort in the notion that the Darkling Glories had not set out after them-that they were only gathering, like a great flock of crows.

But as he peered back, time after time, he noticed that Fallion was gripping the side of the handcart as if afraid that he might fall off. His face had been sickly pale, but now his head lolled, and he seemed barely conscious.

He has taken some terrible wound, the emir thought.

There had been blood on his tunic, matted and dried, and the emir wondered if that was the cause of Fallion s distress.

The emir glanced back at Rhianna. She was pushing the cart, her face drained of emotion from fatigue. But she didn t seem to fear the Darkling Glories. The object of her fear was right in front of her. Fallion had taken ill.

"What s wrong?" she called to him at last.

Fallion s voice came softly, slowly, and as always Talon offered a translation. "My Dedicates… the wyrmlings are torturing them."

"What?" she asked, for his words made no sense.

The emir could not help but note the alarm in Rhianna s voice. She loved the boy. He could hear it in her every word. He drew the cart to a halt.

At that, Fallion reached up to his tunic, pulled it open. Strange runes were branded on his chest, dozens of them, larger and more intricate than any that the emir had taken in his own endowment ceremonies.

"What are those?" Talon begged.

"Compassion," Fallion said. "They re runes of compassion. I can feel the pain of others-their loneliness, their love, their horror. I feel when a foot is severed, or an eye gouged out. The wyrmlings are punishing me now through my Dedicates. Lord Despair is letting me know-I can never go free."

The emir gazed at the runes, dumbfounded.

"I can go back," Rhianna said. "I can find those Dedicates, release you from your pain."

"Certainly Lord Despair has chosen those Dedicates personally," Daylan cut in. "If you try to kill them, he will be ready for you."

"Don t try it," Fallion begged. "They re innocent people-women and children. You cannot kill them without forfeiting your own soul. Even if you succeeded in freeing me, once you came back, you would not be the woman that I have grown to love."

He peered up at her then, pleading. There were tears of pain in his eyes-pain that he could not run from, pain that he could not bear.

"How many endowments did they give you?" Rhianna asked, as if she might charge into Rugassa and murder his Dedicates anyway.

Fallion shook his head in anguish. "Dozens," he said. "Hundreds maybe, through those who act as vectors. Despair said that he will give me thousands of them, millions if he has to: until I break, until I become him."

Immediately the emir cast his mind about, seeking a solution, but very quickly he realized that there was none. No matter what they tried, Despair would win. Fallion could not run from the pain, and they could not free him.

"What can we do?" Talon asked.

"Don t take me anywhere," Fallion said. "It only puts you and others at risk. Send me back."

"I have killed myself to save you," Rhianna said. "I m walking dead. I won t let you go."

Fallion took her hand, squeezed it tightly, and just peered into her eyes. She was a Runelord now, powerful and beautiful, swift and deadly, with so many endowments of speed that she would never again be able to relate to those in the mortal world.

"You ve saved me," he whispered. "Your love has saved me time and again, and if you desire, I will stay."

In the distance, lightning began to flash brighter, and the sound of thunder was a solid roar. The ground was trembling beneath the soles of the emir s boots. It felt like the end of the world.

A blast of wind struck. The trees that had been sitting in silence all suddenly bent beneath a gale, and the leaves hissed like a distant sea.

"The Darkling Glories are coming," Fallion said. The emir peered back toward Rugassa; the ring of clouds and lightning was expanding outward in every direction, and he suddenly realized that it was not one vast cloud that covered the crown of the volcano but dozens or hundreds of smaller clouds. Within each, a form moved, a single Darkling Glory. They were separating now, winging away from the volcano in every direction, though a large contingent of them was heading south.

Talon whispered to the emir, "In my father s time, a single Darkling Glory wreaked great havoc upon an entire kingdom. He was unstoppable. Now we must face an army of them."

"It s not an army, " Daylan said. "It s called a murder — a murder of Darkling Glories."

"We should hide," the emir suggested. "We should get underground."

"They ll check every building, every tunnel," Daylan said.

"The Wizard Sisel can hide a warhorse behind a wheat stalk," Talon offered.

"If you can get to him in time," Rhianna said.

She looked at Talon and the others.

"We must get our forcibles," Rhianna said, "take them with us. Without them, we cannot fight the coming darkness." She was speaking of the forcibles that she had hidden to the south. It was not far. But to retrieve the forcibles and then reach the True Tree sounded nearly impossible.

The emir looked into Talon s eyes, and knew instantly that they had to try.

Immediately Rhianna grabbed the handles of the wyrmling handcart and raced away. It was all that the emir could do to keep up.

The gale was gaining in intensity, and now the trees shuddered under the impact of blasts of wind, their leaves hissing and branches swaying.

Talon raced at Rhianna s side, glanced back at the darkening sky. "If they get too close, take Fallion and go."

Rhianna shot back, "Run fast enough, and they won t get too close."

The company charged south a few more miles and entered a familiar town, barren and broken.

With a start, Talon cried, "The girl! We must get her."

The emir had nearly forgotten about the child. He peered about blindly, searching the rubble for a sign of the child. He didn t have Talon s many endowments of sight and smell.

Talon raced ahead, veered to the right and dodged into a ruined hovel. She came out with the girl in her arms, the child clinging to her as if Talon was her long lost mother. The little girl was weeping in relief.

In moments, Talon set her in the bed of the wagon, throwing her own tunic over the child as a shield against the night.

What have we saved? the emir wondered, peering over his shoulder at the advancing storm. The Darkling Glories will have us all.

Over hills and through fields they went now, running for what seemed hour after hour, though the moon on the horizon and the stars in the sky moved hardly at all.