David Farland - Worldbinder

Waggit’s summer jacket was worn and old. To Fallion he felt too thin in the ribs.

“Where have you been-” Waggit asked, “off fighting reavers?”

It was ground they had covered only hours ago, but Waggit had already forgotten. “Nothing so grand, I’m afraid,” Fallion said. “I went sailing to the Ends of the Earth, to Landesfallen.”

“Ah!” Waggit said. “I hope they fed you good.” It was the best reply he could come up with. He stood with head cocked to one side, as if hoping to be of some help.

“I ate well enough,” Fallion said. “Any word of advice today, old friend?”

Waggit peered hard at Fallion with rheumy eyes, his face growing desperate as he tried to recall some tidbit of forgotten lore. His lower lip began to tremble, and he cast his eyes about the room as if searching for something. At last, he merely shrugged, then burst into tears.

Fallion put his arms around the old man. “There now,” he said. “You’ve given me enough wise counsel to last me a lifetime.”

“I…can’t remember,” Waggit said.

“I’ll remember for the both of us,” Fallion said. He hugged Waggit once more, wondering at the cruelty of forcibles.

Waggit had not been born a fool, he once told Fallion. But he had slipped into an icy creek as a child, while fetching water for his mother, and had nearly drowned. After that, his ability to remember was stolen, and he ended up working the silver mines.

But when the reavers attacked Carris, he had fought them with his pick, actually killing a few. For his courage and strength, he had been granted a few forcibles, and with a few endowments of wit and stamina, had made himself a scholar, one of the wisest in the land.

Now the folk who had granted the endowments, his Dedicates, were all dead, and with their deaths, Waggit’s ability to remember had died too, along with the lore that he’d once mastered.

Did my father do well or ill, granting him endowments? Fallion wondered. Would Waggit not have been happier to remain a fool than to gain great wisdom and lose it all?

Fallion fought back his sadness and ducked through a curtain into the cozy room where Talon lay upon a low cot. She had grown too large to fit on it.

Jaz had covered her with a coarse blanket, and now he knelt beside her, his shoulders slumped from weariness, so still that he looked as if drawing a breath was almost too great a chore.

“How is she doing?” Fallion asked. “Any change?”

Jaz shook his head slightly.

“There is a chair here in the corner, if you would like it,” Fallion offered.

Jaz shrugged. “I know. I was too tired to get up and sit.”

Fallion slumped in the chair.

Jaz did not turn. As he gazed at Talon, his face was lined with grief.

“I thought for sure,” he said softly, “that when you healed the worlds, we’d get cloudbursts of beer, and the meadows would sprout dancing girls as pretty as any flower…”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Fallion said.

“What’s wrong with us? I feel like a burrow bear that’s been pulled out of its hole in mid-winter. I just want to sleep for a few more months.”

“Jaz, we have to go away,” Fallion said. “We have to get out of here, now.”

“What do you mean?” Jaz did not move. He looked as if he was too tired to care.

“That rune, it was a trap. The tree was the bait. Once my mind touched the rune, I knew that I had to mend it or die. But it couldn’t be mended, not really. It was meant to do only one thing, to bind two shadow worlds into one. I didn’t bind all of the worlds into one. I didn’t heal anything. I fear I’ve made things worse.”

Jaz nodded almost imperceptibly, as if he couldn’t muster the energy to care.

“Jaz, no human sorcerer made that rune. It was beyond the power of any mortal to form. I know who made it: our father’s ancient enemy, the Queen of the Loci.”

Now Jaz looked at him, cocking his head just a bit, peering at him from the corner of his eye.

“She’s here, Jaz, somewhere. She knows what I’ve done. She tricked me into doing it.”

“Maybe, maybe she was just testing you,” Jaz suggested. “Maybe she wanted to see if you really could bind the worlds. If the wizards are right, she was never able to do that. If she’d been able to, she’d have bound all of the worlds together into one, under her control.”

“It was a test,” Fallion agreed. “But in passing it, I failed us all.”

Jaz finally drew a deep breath, as if trying to muster the energy to rise.

“Go then, if you must,” he said. “I can’t leave Talon behind. And we can’t let the Queen of the Loci catch you. If she does, we both know what she will try to force you to do-bind the worlds into one, all under her control.”

Fallion hesitated. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Talon, not like this. He wasn’t certain what was wrong with her. Perhaps in the melding, her organs had become jumbled up. Perhaps the creature that lay before him had two hearts and only half a lung. He couldn’t be certain.

He only knew that in binding the two worlds together, he had not done it perfectly. There had been mistakes, dangerous errors. The vine that had grown through his hand was just one of them, and the stinging pain and the bloody bandage that he now wore were constant reminders.

What if I’d tried binding all of the worlds into one? Fallion wondered. What if those little errors had been multiplied a million million times over?

It would have been a catastrophe. I would have destroyed the world.

Maybe that is why the Locus Queen set this trap-to see what would happen if I succeeded.

There was a pitcher of water on the bed stand. Fallion felt thirsty but too tired to take a drink. Still, he knew that his body would need it.

Talon suddenly groaned in her sleep. “Ishna! Ishna! Bolanda ka!” She thrashed from side to side. Her voice was deep and husky.

“What did she say?” Jaz asked.

Fallion shook his head. It was no language that he had ever heard, and he was familiar with several.

He wondered if it were just aimless babbling, the ranting that came with a fevered dream.

Fallion got up, found a towel on the bed stand, and poured some of the cool water from the pitcher onto the towel.

He knelt beside Talon and dabbed her forehead, held the rag there with one hand and touched her cheek with the other, checking for a fever.

She was definitely warm.

He had been holding the rag on her head for all of thirty seconds when her eyes sprang open wide, filled with terror, and she backhanded him.

Fallion went flying as if he’d been kicked by a war horse.

In an instant, Talon sprang to her feet, as if to do battle, knocking Jaz aside. “Wyrmlings!” she shouted, her eyes darting about the room, trying to take everything in.

“Talon, it’s okay!” Jaz said. “You’re all right! You’re with friends.”

Talon stood, gasping for breath. At seven feet tall, she dwarfed all of those around her, dwarfed the tiny room. Every muscle in her arms and neck seemed strained, and she took a battle stance. In that moment, she seemed a fearsome warrior, more terrifying than any man that Fallion had ever seen. Her eyes darted about, as if she was trapped in some nightmare. Slowly her vision cleared. She recognized Fallion and Jaz, but merely stood in shock, trying to make sense of the situation.

“It’s all right,” Jaz assured her. “You were only dreaming. You were just dreaming. Do you know where you are?”

Talon peered down at the floor, so far below her, and then peered at her hands, huge and powerful, as if trying to make sense of them. “Am I still dreaming?”

She studied Fallion, who lay on the floor, holding his arm where she had hit him.