Down below, the thunder drums had fallen silent. Rhianna had seen the huge battering rams that the wyrmlings carried through the city, entire trees felled just for this purpose, bound with iron rings, fitted with brass heads shaped like snarling lions. With a single thrust of each battering ram, sparks and fire had flown out, and the great iron doors had shattered, torn from their hinges.
There was nothing to stop the wyrmlings from taking the city now. It had no defenses left. The warriors that held the tunnels were too few in number. They might slow the wyrmlings for an hour, but that was it.
Dawn was still an hour away. The eastern skies were brightening on the edge of the horizon, washing out the stars.
King Urstone spoke. Rhianna did not understand his words, but she understood the tone. He pointed to the east.
“Take him and go,” King Urstone said, “if you can carry him. Save yourselves. There is nothing more that we can do. The city is lost, and I wish to die with my people. The wyrmlings will be inside within an hour, and nothing can save us.”
Rhianna nodded. “Give me a little while more.” She knelt and gently touched Fallion’s wound. He had already fainted from loss of blood, and it was just beginning to clot. To try to move him would only cause the wound to break open. She didn’t dare risk it.
With a heavy heart, High King Urstone nodded, then took a fighting stance above Fallion’s body and just stood above him, battle-ax gripped in both hands, on guard. “I will watch with you as long as I can.”
Vulgnash studied the three as he plunged from the clouds, and his heart filled with glee. They were unaware of him until the instant that he landed in a rush of wings, standing upon a stone railing above them.
High King Urstone roared and whirled, his battle-ax swinging at Vulgnash’s legs. The movement seemed painfully slow. With five endowments of metabolism, Vulgnash easily leapt above the blow and still had time to cast a spell that drained Fallion of precious heat, chilling his body to near death.
The air on the parapet suddenly turned to ice, and fogged from the mouths of Vulgnash’s enemies. The flowers in their pots began to rime with frost.
Rhianna shouted and batted at Vulgnash with her staff.
He knew that weapon. It was a deadly thing. He had tried to curse it into oblivion, and he had imagined that it would be rotted by now, full of wood worms, but the staff still glittered in the starlight, hale and deadly.
The relic was a curiosity. He was amazed that it held such power, and at some future time, he hoped to study it further.
Vulgnash stepped aside, and Rhianna’s blow connected only with stone.
“Be gone, foul beast!” King Urstone roared, twisting his battle-ax to come in for another blow.
Vulgnash smiled. With his endowments of brawn and metabolism, he felt stronger and swifter than ever before. He had just made a flight that should have taken all night in less than two hours.
Soon, he thought, I will be Lady Despair’s most trusted servant.
Already he had begun to figure out new ways to twist forcibles. In Rugassa, torture was considered both a science and an art. And tonight, Vulgnash had advanced the science to new heights. He had created special forcibles for Areth Sul Urstone. By binding a rune of touch to a rune of empathy, he’d created forcibles that not only let a lord feel more strongly, but feel the tortures that the runelord’s Dedicates endured.
In the days to come, Vulgnash felt certain that he could raise the art of the runelords to heights that had never been dreamt of on Fallion’s world.
Now Vulgnash was eager to test his new-found strength in battle.
“Come with me,” Vulgnash said softly to those who stood between him and his prey, “and I will lead you to the land of shadows.”
The High King swung his ax, and Vulgnash leapt out and swiftly kicked the elbow of the king’s left arm. The ax went flying from his hand, over the parapet and into the darkness.
Rhianna shouted a war cry and swung her staff at Vulgnash’s waist. To Vulgnash the blow seemed laughably slow.
He reached down with a foot and kicked the High King, whose brows were still arced in surprise, shoving him into the path of Rhianna’s blow.
The great staff slammed against Urstone’s head with a snapping sound, as if it had hit stone. The king’s helmet shattered and a fine mist of blood sprayed out from the back of his head. Urstone fell. His body slumped over the railing.
Rhianna only stopped, heart pounding in horror at what she’d done.
Vulgnash leapt from the railing, his movements so fast that his speed was blinding.
He’s a runelord, Rhianna realized.
She swung her staff. The Knight Eternal dodged, and the staff struck the ledge with a jolt. He kicked her arm, and the staff tumbled over the parapet.
He smiled down at her, and Rhianna stood gasping. She had no weapon that could touch him. He knew it. Her only hope was to go after the staff.
But in doing so, she would leave Fallion alone, unprotected.
Fallion. All that the Knight Eternal wanted was Fallion.
Rhianna swiftly pulled a dagger, then put it to Fallion’s carotid artery.
“Leave,” she demanded. “Or so help me, I’ll kill him.”
This is what Fallion would want me to do, she thought. Fallion feared that his powers would be turned to evil. He knew what Lady Despair wanted. She wanted Fallion to bind the worlds into one, all under her control.
Vulgnash hesitated, studied her, and Rhianna dug the blade into Fallion’s flesh.
The Knight Eternal spoke, his thoughts whispering into her mind. “You love him more than your own life, yet you would kill him?”
“It’s what he would want.”
“It would please me to see you take his life,” Vulgnash said.
She studied his eyes, and knew that he meant it. Yes, he wanted Fallion, but he also wanted to see Rhianna commit this one foul deed.
He’s testing me, Rhianna realized. My pain amuses him.
Vulgnash did not move forward, and for a long moment he stood waiting. There were shouts from the tunnel behind Rhianna, accompanied by the frenzied yap of a dog.
She dared not turn away from the Knight Eternal.
“Rhianna,” Warlord Madoc cried. “Hold it. Stop.”
Warlord Madoc raced up at her back, keeping his distance from Vulgnash. For a moment he studied the scene, the Knight Eternal held at bay by a woman willing to sacrifice the man that she loved, King Urstone slumped over a railing, the back of his head smeared with blood.
“Get back from him, girl,” Warlord Madoc said. “Let me handle this.” He spoke to Rhianna in her own language.
Then he spoke to Vulgnash in the wyrmling tongue. “You need us,” he told the Knight Eternal. “Your harvesters need humans to prey upon. Leave us in peace, and we will be your vassals.”
“The land is filled with humans now,” Vulgnash said. “Great will be our joy as we hunt them and harvest them. We need you no more.”
“Still,” Madoc said. “I propose a truce: a thousand years. Give me a thousand years, and I will prepare these people to be your servants. We will join you, and Lady Despair whom you serve. If not, we’ll take the life of the Wizard Fallion, and you can go back to her empty-handed.”
Vulgnash knew the will of his master. For decades she had been plotting this, and right now the future balanced upon a precipice. Sometimes he could hear his master’s thoughts, like whispers in his mind.
He glanced off to the north, straining to hear the will of Lady Despair in this matter. At last, he felt her touch.
Tell him what he most wants to hear, she said. Vulgnash smiled.
“Lady Despair agrees to the trade.”
Warlord Madoc took the news hard, felt the breath knocked out of him. It was almost more than he could have hoped. Yet, now that the wyrmlings had agreed, he wasn’t sure that he liked the truce. He wasn’t sure that he could trust the wyrmlings. They might take Fallion and simply raze the city.