David Farland - Chaosbound

He did not love her any less for it. Instead, he yearned to hold her, to cling to her.

He kissed her, and in moments he found himself playfully tugging at her clothes. He could not get his own shirt off, for the ties that bound him to Rain kept them on.

“I think this is some sort of barbarian joke on the newlyweds,” he said. “Let’s cut the knot.”

“No,” Rain begged. “Leave it be. I like being bound to you.” She hesitated for a moment and said, “Let’s cut the clothes off instead.”

And he did.

Aaath Ulber raced through the night from village to village, slaughtering wyrmlings as he went.

They could not have escaped him even if they had tried. With his endowments of scent from hounds, he could smell the peculiarly rancid odor of their fat, even from miles away.

So with each city or village that he searched, finding the wyrmlings was not hard, and with so many endowments of metabolism to his credit, dispatching them was no harder.

He had grown weary of killing. He longed to stop, but he had to tell himself that with each wyrmling that he slew, he was freeing another four or five Dedicates.

I have not found myself, as the Earth King asked, he realized. I am more lost than ever.

He only hoped that Myrrima might help him. The touch of a water wizard could heal a man—even his blackened mind. So many times in the night when he’d wakened in the past, suffering from intolerable dreams of slaughter, Myrrima had healed him.

He only hoped that she could heal him now, in his darkest hour.

For the rest of the world, it was only a single night. But Aaath Ulber suspected that he had some thirty or forty endowments of metabolism now. He could run two hundred miles in an hour, and time for him stretched on limitlessly.

The work of that day seemed to him to be endless.

Yet as he ran, each time that he stopped in a tiny hamlet to dispatch a single wyrmling, he wondered, What have I won?

I’ve wiped out a minor fortress in the frozen wastes, he thought—one that was poorly equipped and run by a leader who was too evil and petty to be efficient.

It is not the same as what I will face in Rugassa.

In Rugassa they had mountains of blood metal. In Rugassa the emperor ruled, and beneath him there had risen some false Earth King. In Rugassa the skies were filled with Knights Eternal and Darkling Glories.

What we’ve won here, he thought, is nothing.

So he raced across the country through the long night, and his mind was not easy. His imagination conjured the nightmares he would have to face in Rugassa.

Sometimes he worried about Crull-maldor. The lich had managed to evade him, and even now he feared that she might rise up from the ground on the trail in front of him or materialize at his back.

She had sworn her vengeance.

Yet as the long night drew on, he finished his circle of eastern Internook, and raced back to the fortress one last time to meet with the other champions.

As he crested a hill a few miles from the fortress, he glanced out to sea and spotted a fleet of wyrmling warships—three in number, making their way toward shore.

The vessels were huge, with enormous square sails stained like blood.

Supplies for Crull-maldor, he wondered, or fresh troops?

It didn’t matter. He would have to finish the wyrmlings, lest news of the uprising reach distant shores.

So he stopped for a bit and fed himself on wild blackberries, then he raced downhill, hit the rocky beach, leapt out from shore, and poured on the speed as he reached the water.

Running at two hundred miles per hour, he raced over the sea, slipping and thrashing. The sea felt springy under his feet, but it was more solid than the stream had been. He wasn’t sure if the salt in the water made the difference, or if it was because he had more endowments.

So he raced over the uneven surface of the ocean, bounding over waves and flotsam.

The ships drew nearer, and the size of them impressed him. The planks on the hull were perhaps sixteen inches wide and looked to be four inches thick. The mainmast towered a full hundred feet above the water.

He could see the wyrmling steersman at the helm, and Aaath Ulber appeared so quickly that the creature was barely able to register surprise before Aaath Ulber leapt twenty feet into the air, up to the prow, grabbed on to the heavy railing, and sprang lightly to the deck.

In less than a minute he dispatched all of the wyrmlings aboard, turning it into a ghost ship.

While checking the hold, he discovered the ship’s purpose: It carried treasure, stone boxes filled with forcibles, more than three hundred and fifty thousand of them. They were made of good blood metal, and the heads had already been filed down into runes of metabolism.

Of course, Aaath Ulber realized. The wyrmlings to the south are better supplied with forcibles. It took them weeks to send shipments to this worthless little outpost.

In exultation, Aaath Ulber raced to each of the ships, slaughtered the crew, and secured the treasure.

As he rode toward the rocky shore, he dreamt of what this might mean.

There were Dedicates to be had here in Internook, and there were warriors fierce and strong.

He stood at the helm of the lead ship, and shouted toward the shore, “The Wyrmling Empire shall be ours!”

Myrrima was treated to a room in the village inn that night, a fine room with a straw bed covered in quilts, and a pillow made from goose down.

The innkeeper, a matron in her fifties, built a small fire in the hearth, even though it was not cold, and she’d left wine and cheese on a nightstand.

It was long past midnight when Myrrima prepared for bed. She used a basin filled with warm water to take a sponge bath, and she promised herself a real bath on the morrow—in fresh clean water, out in the river.

She put on her night-robe and then sat before a bureau mirror combing out her long hair. She smiled to herself.

One of my children is married to night, she thought. With luck, a grandchild will soon be on the way.

A cool wind blew through the room, and she suspected that the door must have blown open. She glanced toward it as a mist floated up through the crack.

A wyrmling hag materialized, her skin cracked with age, her body somehow formless and distorted.

In a panic, Myrrima pushed back in her chair. Her only weapon was her bow and arrows, arrows blessed to kill even a lich. But she’d leaned her bow upon the bed, on the far side of the room.

The wyrmling hag towered above her. Myrrima heard words in her mind: Come with me, to the land of the dead.

Myrrima thought swiftly. She had no endowments to her credit. Her spells were useless without water nearby.

But a touch from her blessed weapons would banish a wight. Myrrima grasped the handle of the dagger strapped to her hip.

The lich lunged, a shadow blurring in its haste.

Myrrima’s dagger cleared the scabbard and she felt more than saw the wight’s attack. A cold pain lanced through her wrist, freezing her hand at its touch, so that the blade fell from numb fingers.

Myrrima whirled and leapt across the room for her quarrel of arrows just beyond the bed.

A thrill of ice raced up her spine as the wight caught her, and then a dagger of cold seemed to impale Myrrima, cutting through to her heart.

With a gasp, she fell onto the bed, and all sight, all sound began to fade.

Sage! she thought, wishing for one last moment with her child.

It was not an hour past dawn when Aaath Ulber reached the village of Ox Port, along with the rest of the heroes in tow.

The morning sun blazed golden in the heavens, and a few clouds on the horizon merely caught the rays and seemed to lend the sky some of their own color.