David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

"He shall find no comfort there," Vulgnash said.

"No, he won t," Despair answered. "He will find you there. I m sending a great graak with you, with guards to bind and secure the prisoners. You will return them to me… so that they may be properly punished."

It seemed to Rhianna that she had been running for days when they neared Castle Coorm. Darkness still enveloped the world. With twenty endowments of metabolism, she knew that the darkness would stretch on endlessly. Ten hours of darkness would seem like two hundred, and she would suffer beneath the pall.

Then the sun would come out, and every day would feel like an endless summer.

But she feared that Fallion would never see a summer again. He was growing worse by the minute. He lay in the back of the wagon, his face blanched with pain. Sometimes when Rhianna glanced in, she saw him staring up at some private horror.

There is no escape for him, she thought.

They were sprinting across the grasslands, heading toward a line of trees, when they met the Wizard Sisel and Lord Erringale. It was as if the two appeared out of nowhere. Rhianna had a dozen endowments of sight, and should have seen them miles away, but the wizard and his charge seemed to spring up from the oat stubble magically, not twenty yards in front of them.

"Halt!" Sisel cried, smiling in greeting. Rhianna realized that he had been using his protective magic to hide himself as he moved. In the distance to the north and west, lightning flashed, though the stars overhead shone brightly and there was not a sign of clouds. She realized that the Darkling Glories had found their trail over the plains. "There is no need to go to the tree," the wizard said mournfully. "The enemy has struck it down."

The wizard s words seemed painfully slow. Rhianna s thoughts raced so quickly, she could hardly stand to wait for him to speak.

"Let us leave this world then," Daylan Hammer said, "for there are Darkling Glories on our trail-or worse."

Rhianna could see the "or worse." Miles and miles away, on the horizon, a dark knot winged toward them. An enormous graak, its elongated body looking like a black worm, undulated through the sky. Pale riders sat upon its back, no less than a dozen of them-wyrmling warriors in their armor of bone.

To either side of the graak, a pair of fliers came, crimson wings flashing in the pale moonlight, hurtling above and around the slower graak, like starlings harrying some ponderous owl.

Rhianna jutted her chin. "Vulgnash is coming. I see him, miles away. He s heading straight toward us." She hesitated. "He s flying fast. He has taken endowments."

"I don t understand," Fallon said. "How can he take them? Endowments are gifts from the living to the living."

The Wizard Sisel said, "Life and death are a matter of degree. A man who is dying can be less than half alive. Vulgnash is not a living creature like you and me. It is said that he has no soul-yet I am forced to wonder… He animates a body, emulates life. To me this indicates that he does have a soul, a powerful and gifted soul."

"It sounds to me as if there is a contradiction here," the emir said, "fit to baffle a wizard."

"At the very least," Sisel said, "he does have a body, unlike the wights that he serves, and so our Vulgnash can take endowments…"

A sudden light filled Sisel s eyes, as if some insight filled his mind, but rather than voice it, he held silent, and pondered.

Talon looked stricken. She peered north, and said, "So soon? How does he know where to look?"

The others only stared blankly, but Rhianna s thoughts spun ahead. "If he were following our trail, he should be coming from behind us. He knows exactly where to look." She turned to Fallion. There was no accusation in her voice, only regret. "Lord Despair has chosen you," she told Fallion. "That s the only explanation. I don t believe that Vulgnash is coming this way out of dumb luck."

Fallion looked crestfallen.

"Is that true?" Sisel asked. "Did he choose you?"

Fallion looked around blankly, his face lined with pain. "I, I don t know. I was unconscious much of the time. I sometimes woke to pain and torture, and I recall seeing Despair standing over me, grinning down at me. But I don t remember him choosing me. I don t recall anything at all. But…"

"What?" Rhianna asked gently.

"A while ago I heard a voice," he said, "Despair s voice-or thought that I did." Fallion looked to the ground. "I thought I was just hearing things: it was a warning. I was told not to fight. I was told that if I surrendered, Despair would not take vengeance upon you."

Now there was no doubt in Rhianna s mind that Fallion had been chosen. If I were Lord Despair and I wanted to keep track of a prisoner, I would choose him, she thought. Then Fallion could not escape, could not take his own life, without me being warned.

Daylan turned to Lord Erringale. "Milord," he said humbly, "I beg your help." He then explained all that was happening-how the Darkling Glories had come to this world, the danger that Fallion was in, and the greater danger that he posed. "We need sanctuary. I ask that you grant it for a little while, upon your world, if you can."

Erringale frowned and looked to the ground. In the distance, there was a rumbling and flash of light to the east.

"You propose to hide Fallion upon my world?" Erringale asked.

"Yes," Daylan answered.

"Won t this false Earth King be able to find him?" Erringale asked. "How do we know that Fallion won t bring danger to all that love him?"

"It is a chance that we must take," Daylan said.

"No!" Fallion said vehemently. "I can t go with you, Daylan. Too many of my people would be made to suffer for my sake."

"Then what do you want to do?" Rhianna asked. Fallion was the one in pain. She wanted to save him. She would do anything that he asked.

"Send me back," he said. "I won t put my friends in jeopardy."

"You can t go back," the emir said. "Despair will continue to torture you. Just when you think that it could get no worse, it will. No one can bear such torment forever. In time, Despair will either drive you mad, or win you and make you his tool."

Fallion shook his head. "Having seen Despair, how could I ever consent to become like him?" He looked to Lord Erringale. "You were there: you know how Despair was formed. The more that Yaleen felt others pain, the more she hated them. But I m different. The more I feel their pain, the more I care for them."

For once, Talon s thoughts outraced Rhianna s. "Fallion, if you return to Despair," Talon said, "all that you have hoped for will be lost. You will never be able to bind the worlds into one."

Fallion considered his response thoughtfully. His face was filled with pain and anguish. Despair almost had him. "How can I hope to bind the worlds now," he begged, "after seeing what horrors I have wrought?"

Perhaps I should kill him, Rhianna thought. Despair has already won. I could put him out of his misery.

And if I do, she realized, what will happen to Fallion s Dedicates?

The pains that he now bears will return to them in full-the horror of their mutilations, their grief and terror.

Fallion knows that. He stands between them and their pain. He can t give it back to them.

No true man would, she thought. For then Despair, in his fury and petulance, would subject them to unspeakable horrors.

Rhianna considered the arguments, and she knew that she could not kill Fallion anyway, even to save him from his torment. She was a strong woman, but she didn t have that kind of strength.

"There may be a way," Erringale suggested to the group, hope rising in his voice, "to turn the tables on Lord Despair-if we dare try it!"