David Farland - Chaosbound

Or perhaps the great deed is already accomplished. Myrrima and I protected both Gaborn and Fallion in their youth. We nurtured them, kept them safe from assassins. That deed was well done.

Yet he wanted something more. He wanted to know the very moment when he fulfilled his destiny.

Perhaps it would not be some great thing that he accomplished. Perhaps it would be a deed so insignificant that mortal men would not even note it.

He turned his mind from the thought. Nothing could be gained by pondering such things, and he feared that in doing so, he might be giving sway to false pride.

So he focused instead on the memory of Myrrima, as fair as a rising moon, as brilliant as a diamond. An old man’s voice whispered in his mind.

“I’m growing, I’m growing old. My hair is falling and my feet are cold.”

Aaath Ulber woke, feeling invigorated. He judged that half an hour had passed by his body’s time, and that was enough.

“Let’s finish it,” he called to Wulfgaard.

The young man knelt on the floor beside his betrothed. Tears streamed down his face, and a terrible rage filled his eyes.

I don’t even know the girl’s name, Aaath Ulber thought. I guess that it doesn’t matter anymore.

Wulfgaard jerked his head toward the sleeping Dedicates. “Maybe we should kill the rest. Who knows what the wyrmlings are doing, or what they’re capable of? How many heroes might they have up on the surface? They could be laying entire villages to waste. And you and I are the only two men left down here to stop them.”

That was the crux of the problem. Aaath Ulber’s gut warned him that this battle hadn’t been won yet. A lich can communicate across the leagues. The lich lord Crull-maldor knew that he was here. She’d warn her captains, and the wyrmlings would attack the cities and village on the surface.

The only way to stop them was to kill their Dedicates.

Aaath Ulber had rejected that plan once before. But he’d hoped to have more champions with him still. Now he recognized that he was walking on the edge of a knife, and he did not know which way he would fall.

“I didn’t come down here to murder Dedicates,” Aaath Ulber argued.

“I’ve sworn to clean out these warrens, and let the folks aboveground worry about themselves.”

Wulfgaard glared. Aaath Ulber could see that he wanted vengeance, and he believed that the only sure way to get it was to slaughter their Dedicates.

“Are you weary of battle?” Aaath Ulber goaded him. “Are you so tired of fighting?”

“No!” Wulfgaard denied.

“The best way for you to get your vengeance,” Aaath Ulber said, “is to kill the wyrmlings—not your own kind. I’m sure that many of the young ladies down here are betrothed to others. Would you do to their men what the wyrmlings have done to you?”

Wulfgaard looked fierce. Rage and pain had left him on the edge of madness. He refused to answer.

“Let’s do this the hard way,” Aaath Ulber said. He wanted Wulfgaard to go out and slay wyrmlings, but he knew that they couldn’t leave these Dedicates unguarded.

Aaath Ulber was the better warrior. That meant that he’d have to clear the warrens, leaving Wulfgaard here to watch over the Dedicates . . . and fester.

“You stay here with your betrothed,” Aaath Ulber said. “Make sure that your actions honor her.”

With that, he turned and plunged into the wyrmling tunnels.

The next hours seemed to be a nightmare, with Aaath Ulber slaughtering all that came his way. He spared no one, and only one time did a wyrmling give him pause.

He was in the crèches, where wyrmling women tended their babes. He was forced to slaughter them all, the children as well as adults, for to leave the young ones alone, without adults to tend them would be to protract their deaths.

As he raced into a small side cavern, a woman who was tending a dozen toddlers whirled and spoke to him in Rofehavanish, with a strange Inkarran accent. “Please?” she begged.

He halted, expecting her to say more, but she seemed not to know any more Rofehavanish.

He wondered where she had learned that word. While tending the Dedicates? Or was she like him, two people united in one body?

He thought to ask her, but the answer would not alter what had to be done, so he slit her throat and moved on.

The cries of the dying followed Aaath Ulber into the Room of Whispers, where he halted, and stood warily.

All around him, he could hear voices—wyrmlings crying in pain, wyrmlings shouting orders, the distant tolling of bells.

The room was empty now, a simple dome. Three glow worms on the ceiling provided a dim green light, and all around the room were little silver rings pounded into the stone. Glyphs surrounded each ring, and a hole in the center let sounds escape.

Through the holes, Aaath Ulber heard the whispers.

A cold chill shot up his spine. He whirled, expecting to find a lich at his back. A whisper came from one of the holes, some wyrmling commanders shouting to a panicked crowd, “Get back! Get back to your holes. There is no escape!”

The floor beneath him vibrated to the sound of a gong.

The room was chill.

He peered up, found the hole where the sound had come from. The ring around it was marked with the three glyphs—the Eater of Souls, the number two, and the naked skull.

Aaath Ulber’s breath fogged from the cold, and he whirled again.

A wight was nearby. Nothing stood in the entrance.

He spotted a bit of glittering spider cloth on the floor and slashed it with his sword, lest the wight be hiding in its shadow.

Then he whirled again. “Show yourself!” he commanded.

A whisper came to him from one of the holes above. “You have seen me before,” a wyrmling said in the tongue of the men of Caer Luciare.

“I know you,” Aaath Ulber shouted, “Crull-maldor.” It was said that there is power in knowing a lich’s true name, but Aaath Ulber did not feel powerful.

“Alas,” the lich wailed in mock sorrow, “you know my name!” She chuckled softly, and the sound of her voice faded. Aaath Ulber knew which tube it was coming from, and he pulled a war dart, jammed the barb up the hole.

A moment later, he heard the whisper again issuing from another hole on the far wall. “You have touched me,” Crull-maldor said. “You have pricked me deeply, and now I shall prick you.”

Aaath Ulber whirled, for he felt a cold wind brush his back. But there was nothing there.

She’s trying to get behind me, he reasoned. She’ll come out from one of her damned holes. But which?

In the protracted silence that followed, he knew that she was moving, racing through dim hallways, struggling to take him unawares.

He began to circle nervously, his head swiveling this way and that, as he searched for a shadow that would rise behind him.

He caught a dark blur in the corner of his eye, whirled, and saw a mist rising into one of the holes.

“Come out here!” he roared. “Let us finish it now!”

“What is the hurry?” the lich asked reasonably, her voice a dim whisper from the far corner of the room. “They say that vengeance tastes sweetest when it is served stale.”

Aaath Ulber circled slowly, whipped his blade behind him in a dance.

A whisper came from a tube. It was distant, so dim that a man without endowments could never have heard it. “Watch your back, little man. I shall touch you yet. In an hour when you are less watchful, in a way that you do not suspect, I shall freeze your heart. . . .”

Aaath Ulber hesitated, waiting for the lich to return, but the room began to regain warmth, and he felt certain that it was gone.

It would be hiding from him somewhere, coiled like an asp beneath some stone.