David Farland - Chaosbound

Or perhaps the barbarians performed sacred rites here, made some sort of offerings to Water.

There were trees, he saw, but there was no place to hide. The bath was empty.

He heard a cry of alarm. Almost it sounded like a human voice, and he turned his head. At last he realized that it was only the warning bark of a tree squirrel.

The wyrmling bull sniffed the air like a dog trying to catch a scent, and Draken waited for him to charge.

Suddenly there were cries down the street. The wyrmlings had found some more victims. The wyrmling whirled and disappeared, blinding in his speed.

Other wyrmlings flashed by, half a dozen runelords at least, and few spared more than a glance into the arena.

Cries rent the air all through town as the wyrmlings took those who had remained in their houses.

But the death brigades passed by the arena—and the vast majority of the townsfolk.

Silence fell over the village, and a minute later the town’s facilitator called out, “More endowments for Aaath Ulber! Who will grant him speed for his journey this day?”

The rest of the facilitators also began to cry out, hoping to heap endowments upon Aaath Ulber in his moment of need.

In the Room of Whispers, Crull-maldor learned the bad news.

“The humans are gone?” she cried.

Captain Zil stood at the far east end of the village. His men had made their sweep. She could see through the captain’s eyes as the men finished searching some long houses, then peered off to the woods.

“The smell of humans along the roads is strong,” Zil explained. “We think that they might have fled into the countryside.

“We have been through every house, every shop. The humans are gone.”

Crull-maldor took the news and tried to remain stoic. The humans had already taken her Dedicates’ keep. She could not hold them off.

Alarm bells were tolling. Her wyrmlings were fleeing the lower levels, seeking to escape through the main entrance. Her own people were opening the portcullises now, retreating mindlessly.

But the front gates were guarded too, and human runelords there slaughtered anyone who tried to escape.

Crull-maldor considered her options. “The humans cannot have gotten far,” she said. “Search the woods to the east. Perhaps they have escaped to the next town.”

With that, Zil and his wyrmling runelords bolted off to the east in a vast line, sweeping the woods for any sign of the fleeing humans.

Crull-maldor broke off communications. Her wyrmling champions had been slaughtered, and she suspected that in a few moments, the humans would execute her Dedicates, weakening her grasp upon the island.

Dozens of her lich lords were already dead.

More importantly, the humans would find her forcibles there in the Dedicates’ Keep, at least ten thousand of them.

She was only glad that there were not more. Lord Despair had promised to send them, but none had reached her yet.

I am undone, she thought. There is nothing left for me to save.

She had offered Aaath Ulber a trade, and he had refused. He had betrayed her hopes.

She took little comfort in the knowledge that Aaath Ulber would destroy the emperor.

Still, she thought, when the emperor is gone, I may manage to win his place.

The hope was faint, and even as the thought came to her it dwindled to nothing. No, she could not believe that she’d take the emperor’s place any longer. Only one thing was left to her. She promised herself: Aaath Ulber . . . I shall take my vengeance.

In the Fortress of the Northern Wastes streams of blood spilled down the hallways where corpses formed small dams and diversions.

After the Dedicates’ keep was cleared of its wyrmling assassins, there was no one left to stop Aaath Ulber.

A cask of forcibles he found there, ten thousand, all stored in a box hewn from granite. It was a great treasure, enough to endow powerful champions, and Aaath Ulber dared hope that it might be the key to saving mankind.

Yet the wyrmlings were still strong. More than a hundred thousand Dedicates lay in a slumber.

Aaath Ulber stopped at the door while young Wulfgaard searched among the Dedicates for his betrothed. He found her at last, lying facedown upon the floor in a puddle of her own blood.

Wulfgaard flipped her onto her back. Her face had gone white, drained, but blood stained her lips.

A rune of metabolism had been branded upon her forehead. It sat in a circle, a shapeless mass that somehow still pulled at the mind, begging to be recognized.

She must have wakened, Aaath Ulber thought, when we slew the wyrmling that took her endowments.

Wulfgaard lifted her in both arms, then peered up to the roof of the cavern and let out a long wail. He held her body high, as if begging the world to bear witness.

There will be no winning this war for that lad, Aaath Ulber thought. He might take vengeance, he might kill the wyrmlings, but that will be the end of it.

Aaath Ulber gave him a few minutes to sob and to mourn, as measured by his body. But in that time the sun had moved less than a minute in its journey across the sky.

The moment was used in preparation. Aaath Ulber threw away some of his blades, and sharpened some wyrmling weapons.

As he did, he planned how to finish it.

The wyrmling fortress was designed much like an ant’s nest. The lower opening, well hidden, let air vent into the warrens.

But the wyrmling bodies heated the atmosphere, so that warm air rose up through the tunnels—to finally escape at the upper entrance.

Killing the wyrmlings now would be an easy matter. All that Aaath Ulber needed to do was clear out the upper tunnels. He knew that the wyrmlings here defended their fortress with firetraps, and suspected that he would find such traps hidden on the floors above him. All he’d have to do was light them, and let the smoke carry death through the tunnels above.

Aaath Ulber ate his lunch, rested. Half an hour he gave himself. He needed no more than that. He had enough endowments of stamina so that he would no longer require sleep. Instead, he only stood as runelords do, staring away at some private dream.

With so many endowments of wit, he found that remembering was easy. Even incidents that had occurred before he’d taken his endowments seemed to be easily recalled.

So he stood in that room of death, eating a bit of cheese and bread from his pack, lost in a fond memory.

He recalled the first time that he’d met his wife Myrrima, in a small city in Heredon. She’d taken endowments of glamour from her sisters and her mother back then, endowments that had been all but impossible to purchase.

Thus, she’d combined the beauty and poise of four gorgeous women into one. Her hair had been dark and silky, and the pupils of her eyes were so dark they almost looked blue.

The sight of her had left him speechless with desire. He’d wanted to know her name. He’d wanted to hold her hand and walk with her.

But it was his lord, Gaborn Val Orden, who had introduced them, and had suggested that they marry. It was a strange moment, one that always left him with wonder.

Why did Gaborn do that? Aaath Ulber asked himself. It wasn’t part of Gaborn’s nature to go about acting as a matchmaker.

Gaborn himself claimed to have done it by inspiration. He’d felt that it was the Earth’s will.

But why? How has our union benefited the Powers?

He could not be certain. He often felt that some grand destiny awaited him and Myrrima, but he knew not what.

Perhaps that destiny will not be borne out by me but by my children, he suspected.