I m faster than him, Rhianna told herself. I have to be. She flapped madly, hurtling away from Rugassa as fast as possible.
Vulgnash was on her tail. Like a crow chasing a starling, Rhianna thought. He is larger and more ponderous than me. He cannot hope to follow for long. The sunlight blinds him.
But from the vent below, she saw a second form emerge, black and sinister. The Darkling Glory was joining the chase.
Rhianna pumped her wings furiously, terrified. The creature was an unknown. She could not imagine how it got through that hole.
How fast can it fly? she wondered. How well can it see in the daylight?
Suddenly the sky went dark from horizon to horizon.
Rhianna had only heard of such things in legend, from tales of her mother s time. Only the most powerful of flameweavers could do that. Fallion was able to draw heat from a fire, but he couldn t yet bend the very light to his will.
Is Vulgnash doing that, Rhianna wondered, or the Darkling Glory?
A glance revealed that it was Vulgnash.
Ropes of light began to weave together above her, whirling from the sky in streams of fire, tornadoes of white-hot flame. She veered to avoid one of the tornadoes.
He s catching the light in his hand, she realized. He s going to try to burn me out of the sky. He ll take aim and then hurl a ball of fire. In that instant, I must change course.
The darkness fled, and Rhianna peered down, but could see little. There was a mist of shadow beneath her, impenetrable to the human eye. Within it she could see only parts of the forms of creatures, struggling toward her. A fireball suddenly roared from the mist.
She banked hard to the left and folded her wings, going into a vertical dive. The fireball roared overhead, expanding and slowing. The heat of it gave her a thrill of fear, for it was like standing too close to a forge.
Rhianna unfurled her wings and flattened her trajectory, then flapped all the harder.
She peered back. The mists of darkness followed, but could not match her pace. She veered to the right, lest another ball of fire come at her, and drew farther away. She veered up suddenly, heading toward the sun.
Increasing her speed, Rhianna raced ahead, mile after endless mile.
She had headed south by instinct-toward the horse-sisters, toward help. But she realized the danger in exposing the position of her troops. Better to lead her pursuers away from her allies.
So Rhianna veered to the west, so that the demons would have the sun slanting into their eyes.
She consulted a mental map. There was little in the way of human settlements here for many, many miles.
Vulgnash and the Darkling Glory slowly receded into the distance, becoming nothing more than a dark blur on her trail, miles behind. Soon, the Darkling Glory gave up the chase.
Yet Vulgnash clung to her trail. Perhaps he feared to displease his master, and it was fear that drove him to mindlessly follow. Or perhaps he thought that he was like a hound, and she was a fox that could be run to the ground.
Rhianna soared over what had once been Mystarria-lush lands with rolling hills, rich with farms and towns along the rivers, and sweeping fields and forests elsewhere.
But all was in ruins. Entire cities had been battered down and laid to waste.
Juxtaposed over this was the landscape of the wyrmlings shadow world: occasional fabulous ruins, weathered and beaten, what had once been "human" cities; monolithic towers and columns, all white as bone, were covered with obscene scrawls in the wyrmling tongue.
After fifty miles, Rhianna saw more interesting signs. A contingent of Queen Lowicker s troops were on the move, unaware that their queen had been vanquished. Or perhaps they had heard and just did not care. In any case, a long column of knights was riding east toward Rugassa, as if to do battle, their lances raised to the air. But there was no one nearby for them to fight. The wyrmlings had razed their cities and then faded from the land for the day. They would be hiding in some dark hole where warhorses and lances would do no good.
Rhianna kept flying, winging into the wilderness as the sun continued to slant toward the horizon.
She flew over a desert that should not have been there-a rugged place of rock and sand-and on its borders she saw herds of shaggy elephants being trailed by packs of dire wolves and great hunting cats.
Three hundred miles from Rugassa, her sharp eyes descried something interesting-a cloud of dust to the south. At first she thought that it might be a great herd of shaggy elephants, but the formation was too tight. It could only be caused by vast forces marching in the wilderness.
But whose?
She veered toward it, hardly changing her course at all. Five miles later she was able to descry what troops marched there.
It was reavers, tens of thousands of them, marching roughly toward her. In the distance, they looked like great black beetles, though Rhianna knew that they were not small. Each reaver weighed more than an elephant.
As she neared, the sound of their marching feet made the earth tremble and groan; the clashing of their carapaces against the ground was like weapons clanging upon shields.
Rhianna had never seen a reaver. They were the stuff of legend, creatures that lived deep in the Underworld. She wanted a closer look, and with Vulgnash following, she wanted him to get a good look at them, too.
The reavers are marching in almost the right direction, she realized. In a day they could well be at Rugassa s walls. What would the wyrmlings make of the threat?
Rhianna swooped lower, dropping within a hundred feet of the ground, and winged toward the reavers. The cloud rising from the ground smelled of dust and some strange musky scent.
Each reaver had four legs for walking, and two heavy arms that they used to bear weapons-great long hooks called "knight gigs," or enormous swords that could flatten a horse and rider with a single blow. Most of the reavers were gray-black in color, and thus were common fighters. But here and there among the hive she spotted smaller reavers, reddish in color, carrying bright crystalline staves. These were the scarlet sorceresses.
Other creatures marched near the ends of the line-enormous spidery creatures that carried packs upon their backs, and enormous white worm-like creatures that she recognized as "glue mums."
The reavers are coming for a full-fledged war, Rhianna realized. She had an almost primal fear of reavers. It was the fear of such creatures that had driven her ancestors to develop their rune lore in the first place. It was the fear of them that had caused the Runelords to build their vast fortifications.
It was tales of the depredations of reavers that had kept her awake with nightmares as a child.
So she swooped low above the reavers, and watched as the creatures raised their heads and hissed.
The reavers had no eyes in their heads. But that did not mean that they could not see. They had phillia dripping from their chins and from their bony ridge plates, and with these they sensed her presence, by scent and motion. The hissing noise came as they raised their abdomens and sprayed odors into the air, smells that they used to warn their neighbors.
She flew above the reavers, redoubling her speed, for fifteen miles. That is how long their column was. She estimated their numbers at fifty thousand strong.
How will Vulgnash like this? Rhianna wondered.
She kept flying, looking over her shoulders.
Vulgnash still followed, his blood-colored wings flapping vigorously, but he seemed to slow into a glide above the reaver horde, and finally wheeled about.
It was still midafternoon when he began to recede quickly, racing northeast toward distant Rugassa.
Her hunter had turned back.
For a long hour, as time is measured by the sun, Rhianna continued to wing away from Vulgnash, lest he renew the chase. To her, it felt like six hours or more.