But Chulspeth hesitated an instant before it struck, long enough to hurl his iron javelin.
The javelin hurtled through the flames faster than any ballista dart. With hundreds of endowments of brawn to his credit, Chulspeth s attack was devastating. The javelin struck Vulgnash in the chest at dead center and hit with such force that it passed cleanly through him.
No matter, Vulgnash thought. This flesh will knit back together in time.
Then Chulspeth bulled through the fireball.
He might have done better to dodge it.
Perhaps Chulspeth did not imagine that the flames would be as hot as they were. Or maybe with so many endowments of stamina coursing through him, he imagined himself to be invincible. Or it might have been that the endowments of bloodlust he had taken had merely driven him mad.
For whatever reason, Chulspeth leapt through the fire and came roaring out the other side, his flesh blackened and oozing, his clothes blazing like an inferno. The fire wrung cries of agony from him, yet he charged toward Vulgnash, half-sword drawn, eager to battle to the death.
Flee! the Earth King s warning came.
Vulgnash flapped his wings, lunging into the air like a bolt of lightning, and though Chulspeth leapt to meet him, the bones of his legs snapped from the exertion, and he fell far short of his desired target.
Soaring high, Vulgnash left the High Lord of the Fang Guards there on the ground, sputtering and burning.
Now Vulgnash dove toward the central arch of Caer Luciare, where the remains of his fireball had blackened the pale archways and melted the gold foil.
Time to finish this, he thought.
He worried that he might meet strong resistance inside, but no warning from Lord Despair sounded in his mind.
He landed in the archway, and gathered heat once again. Kryssidia marched at his back. Together they strode into the tunnel, and there found the fortress as Kryssidia had described it: wyrmling warriors lay sprawled upon the floor in heaps as if they had fallen during drunken revelry, arms and legs spread akimbo.
They had not fallen from wine, but rather from granting endowments. Even now, some were rising to their feet, regaining the precious strength, stamina, and speed that they had granted to Chulspeth.
Vulgnash was sickened by this waste of power. The fools in the Fang Guard had not realized what they were doing. They were leaving Dedicates unprotected, perhaps unaware that if a Dedicate was slain, then its master would lose the use of its attributes.
If the humans had tried to return and take the fortress, Vulgnash thought, they would have found it an easy target.
Ahead, down the hall, he suddenly saw some Fang Guards ready to oppose him-half a dozen warriors standing shoulder-to-shoulder.
Their faces were filled with fear and rage in equal measure, and every muscle in their bodies seemed strained, ready to spring.
Yet they were not eager to fight.
"Are you such fools?" Vulgnash cried. "I could kill you all more easily than I dispatched Chulspeth. I should leave you to the mercies of the humans. But I will need force warriors to guard this fortress against the day of their return. Oh, and they will return-soon, and in great numbers. They left a mountain of blood metal behind."
Vulgnash s words decided them. Seeing that there was hope of forgiveness, one warrior hurled his battle-ax to the floor in a clatter, then dropped to his knees to do obeisance.
In seconds, the rest of the Fang Guards followed suit.
Kryssidia went striding forward, into the midst of them. "Cower before me," he cried. "For the Great Wyrm has chosen me and made me a lord over you. The Great Wyrm has come in the flesh, and now rules Rugassa and the world. But here, here in Caer Luciare, I shall be your emperor, and you shall be my people."
With the battle won, Vulgnash set to work on his next chore. He demanded blood metal, and the wyrmling troops showed him to a foundry, where hundreds of pounds of forcibles had already been poured into molds.
Vulgnash smiled. His master would be well pleased, and Vulgnash imagined that he would be rewarded with more endowments.
Beyond that, Vulgnash had gotten something that he had wanted this day-a little vengeance.
22
In the world to come, every tree shall be thrown down, and nature itself shall be humbled by the Great Wyrm.
It was late evening when the Wizard Sisel and Lord Erringale reached the One True Tree. All through the day they had marched, and Erringale was witness to the rot and filth of the shadow world, the blight that afflicted the trees, the frequent ruins abandoned by the defected warrior clans, and the bitter scent of death.
He had never witnessed such things before.
"I thought that things were harsh in my world," he said at one point in the journey, as they hunched inside the ruins of an old inn. "I have seen places like this in the Blasted Lands, but never have I seen destruction so unrelenting."
"There is a whole world of ruins here," Sisel had said. "Beyond the mountains to the south, they are mostly covered by vines in the jungle. But far to the east there are fresher ruins, vast fortresses, elegant and strong, that are no more than tombs, filled with the bones of their defenders.
"Our battles against the wyrmlings have been long. For five thousand years have we fought. Sometimes we would prevail for a few centuries, and then our people would grow complacent, and the wyrmlings would strike in greater numbers. Other times, we lost vast expanses of land, never to regain it."
Lord Erringale listened soberly. "Daylan told me that the Great Wyrm has brought foul creatures from other worlds to boost his armies. What can you tell me of them?"
So the Wizard Sisel described what he d seen. The folk of the netherworld knew some of the dangers: the Darkling Glories were their mortal enemies, but Erringale was horrified to hear of strengi-saats that filled the wombs of children with their own eggs so that when the young hatched, they would have fresh meat to feed upon.
"Where did they find such fell creatures?" Erringale wondered aloud.
"I do not know," Sisel said. "Yet I am surprised that your people withhold weapons from us."
"If we gave you superior weapons," Erringale said, "the wyrmlings would simply take them, and in time your fate would be worse than at first."
"Ah," the wizard argued, "so you think it wise to withhold your knowledge from the shadow worlds. Tell me, if one of your own people were dying of thirst, would your law forbid you from telling him where to find an oasis?"
"Of course not," Erringale said.
"So what is the difference? One man needs water to survive, the other needs a weapon."
Erringale fell silent and did not speak for many miles. Instead he bowed his head, consumed in thought.
The sun was setting beyond the hills like a red pearl gently falling into a bed of rose petals. The wood doves were cooing out in the oaks on the hills, while cicadas sang in the fields.
The Wizard Sisel strode through a meadow with Erringale by his side, feeling at ease. As an Earth Warden, he had been granted a special gift. He could move through the woods and meadows unnoticed by enemies and friends alike, if he so chose. Now he did so, and a rabbit beside the trail paid no more notice to him than if a fly had landed on its ear. A stag had come to drink from the still waters of the moat, and as the two men passed, they never caught its eye.
So the two reached Castle Coorm at sunset and found the drawbridge thrown down. There was no sound of dogs barking or children playing in the castle, no singing of washwomen or an old man calling his children home for dinner.