With the Darkling Glories looming near, there was no time to waste.
The company headed south for another fifteen miles, then Rhianna turned onto an older trail that climbed into the hills, a road that had been built by the folk of Caer Luciare ages ago, and most likely would lead into ruins.
"Are you certain this road goes where we need it to?" Talon asked.
"Yes," Rhianna replied. "I saw it from the air."
So they raced up into the mountains, heading due east for fifteen miles. The Darkling Glories were rushing southward like a storm front, growing ever closer.
But as the company ran east, it became obvious that the vast majority of the Darkling Glories were heading south, following the road.
From the peak of a hill, the companions were able to peer east and see the murder of Darkling Glories now drawing even to their course. There were two or three hundred of the creatures following the highway.
Suddenly the whole flock came to a halt and began diving to the ground, as if to attack something unseen.
"What are they after?" Daylan wondered. "The horse-sisters?"
The emir wondered.
"No," Talon said hopefully, thinking aloud. "We warned them to hide well by night. There must be some other threat abroad in the land."
Rhianna grinned wickedly. Horns began to sound, bursts long and deep of throat. "Warlord Bairn, from the Courts of Tide, those are, his horns. I told him that a mountain of blood-metal was on the road north of here. He must have come looking for it. Too bad for him. If hadn t tried to kill me, perhaps he would not have met such a miserable end."
The heroes turned their attention elsewhere.
Farther to the north, spanning in every direction, were smaller storms where single Darkling Glories searched. Time and again, the emir could see them dipping to the ground or rising up, like fireflies among the bushes.
They re hunting, he realized, dropping down to check out every empty farm cottage, every pile of stone ruins.
Daylan pointed to the front, to the murder. "They re going to Caer Luciare!"
"To get blood metal," the emir said with conviction. "Despair will have thousands of pounds of it before dawn."
The emir s heart thrilled with battle hunger. He felt the urge to fight back, and glanced at the others.
"Maybe I can stop them," Rhianna said. "I can outfly them. I m faster."
"Can you outfly the lightning bolts that they ll rain down upon you?" Daylan asked. "Don t even try."
"We can t let Despair get those forcibles," Rhianna said.
"We can t stop him," Daylan said. "Let it go. Let it go."
Rhianna peered to the south, toward Caer Luciare. "Look," she said, "here come the Knights Eternal!"
The emir peered hard, but could see nothing. He didn t have the endowments of sight to match Rhianna s.
"Where?" he asked.
"There, about thirty, maybe forty miles to the south."
He squinted, but in the starlight could see nothing but hills and forests and barren patches of grass on the treeless plain.
"Well, at least we know now why Vulgnash has not been on our trail," Daylan said. "Most likely, he was fetching more blood metal for his master."
Luck, the emir thought. It is only by luck that we are still alive.
"Vulgnash flies swiftly," Rhianna said. "In half an hour, he ll reach Rugassa. Ten minutes after that, he ll be on our trail."
The emir calculated. The Darkling Glories had to stop to search every nook and cranny where the company might hide, and so they did not present an imminent threat. But Vulgnash had mastered arcane spells known only to the Knights Eternal. He would find them, eventually.
Our only choice may be to flee this world forever, the emir thought.
With that, the company dropped from the crown of the hill, down into the shelter of the deep woods, and raced for a time quickly, peering over their backs again and again.
In a few minutes they were out of the trees and onto a starlit plain. The road here was nonexistent. Grasses had grown over it, tall and golden.
The bent grass will give away our trail, the emir realized. It will make a road for the enemy to follow.
The others saw it too. "Quickly now!" Talon shouted. "There is no time to waste!"
Twenty-seven minutes later, Vulgnash reached Rugassa and met Lord Despair upon the parapet outside of his room. Vulgnash landed and dropped a chest of forcibles at his master s feet.
Despair smiled grimly. "Vulgnash, my friend," he said, "Fallion and his companions have escaped. I want you to retrieve him for me."
"Escaped?" Vulgnash asked.
"They will not elude us for long," Despair said. "Fallion Orden is one of my chosen. I know precisely where he is headed-toward Castle Coorm, and the One True Tree."
"He shall find no comfort there," Vulgnash said.
"No, he won t," Despair answered. "He will find you there. I m sending a great graak with you, with guards to bind and secure the prisoners. You will return them to me… so that they may be properly punished."
25
It seemed to Rhianna that she had been running for days when they neared Castle Coorm. Darkness still enveloped the world. With twenty endowments of metabolism, she knew that the darkness would stretch on endlessly. Ten hours of darkness would seem like two hundred, and she would suffer beneath the pall.
Then the sun would come out, and every day would feel like an endless summer.
But she feared that Fallion would never see a summer again. He was growing worse by the minute. He lay in the back of the wagon, his face blanched with pain. Sometimes when Rhianna glanced in, she saw him staring up at some private horror.
There is no escape for him, she thought.
They were sprinting across the grasslands, heading toward a line of trees, when they met the Wizard Sisel and Lord Erringale. It was as if the two appeared out of nowhere. Rhianna had a dozen endowments of sight, and should have seen them miles away, but the wizard and his charge seemed to spring up from the oat stubble magically, not twenty yards in front of them.
"Halt!" Sisel cried, smiling in greeting. Rhianna realized that he had been using his protective magic to hide himself as he moved. In the distance to the north and west, lightning flashed, though the stars overhead shone brightly and there was not a sign of clouds. She realized that the Darkling Glories had found their trail over the plains. "There is no need to go to the tree," the wizard said mournfully. "The enemy has struck it down."
The wizard s words seemed painfully slow. Rhianna s thoughts raced so quickly, she could hardly stand to wait for him to speak.
"Let us leave this world then," Daylan Hammer said, "for there are Darkling Glories on our trail-or worse."
Rhianna could see the "or worse." Miles and miles away, on the horizon, a dark knot winged toward them. An enormous graak, its elongated body looking like a black worm, undulated through the sky. Pale riders sat upon its back, no less than a dozen of them-wyrmling warriors in their armor of bone.
To either side of the graak, a pair of fliers came, crimson wings flashing in the pale moonlight, hurtling above and around the slower graak, like starlings harrying some ponderous owl.
Rhianna jutted her chin. "Vulgnash is coming. I see him, miles away. He s heading straight toward us." She hesitated. "He s flying fast. He has taken endowments."
"I don t understand," Fallon said. "How can he take them? Endowments are gifts from the living to the living."
The Wizard Sisel said, "Life and death are a matter of degree. A man who is dying can be less than half alive. Vulgnash is not a living creature like you and me. It is said that he has no soul-yet I am forced to wonder… He animates a body, emulates life. To me this indicates that he does have a soul, a powerful and gifted soul."