Fallion’s heart beat so fast that he thought it might break. It took all his courage to keep from running, to keep from leaping into the river, but something inside whispered that fleeing would accomplish nothing. There was something mesmerizing about the voice, haunting.
He could taste the air, a blazing hot streak across the bridge of his cheek-the scent of evil.
“No!” Fallion shouted, his heart hammering with fear.
Myrrima strode to the back of the boat, placing herself between Fallion and Hadissa with another arrow nocked in her bow, and shouted, “Asgaroth, show yourself!”
With a tremendous surge the wind batted her. She went tumbling away to Fallion’s right, skidding across the slick hull of the boat. She hit the gunwale with a thud, grunted in pain, and tried to right herself.
Fallion faced the dead man. The wind keened outside, its voice terrifying, and Hadissa’s face, growing blue in death, seemed to tower above him.
I should get out of here, Fallion thought. I should run, lead the enemy away from the rest of the children.
“In the name of the One True Master,” the wind hissed through Hadissa’s teeth, “I claim you. And by the power of the One Rune, I bind you to me.”
A gust ripped the roof from their little shelter, leaving them open to the sky. Fallion’s shirt ripped, leaving his young chest bare, and he felt wind racing over his flesh-an unpleasant sensation, as if a line of red ants marched upon his skin.
Dimly, a part of his mind became aware that some beast beyond his comprehension drew runes upon him, runes of Air. He could not see them, could not know what they might do. He reached up and tried to brush them off.
But he felt a change taking place, as if cords were wrapping about his chest, making it hard to draw a breath.
“You are mine,” the wind hissed. “You will serve me. Though your heart may burn with righteous desires, your noblest hopes will become fuel to fire despair among mankind. That which you seek to build will crumble to ash. War shall follow you all of your days, and though the world may applaud your slaughter, you will come to know that each of your victories is mine.
“And thus I seal you, till the end of time…”
Fallion stood for a moment in the darkness, Hadissa’s dead face grinning down from the bank, the man’s arms flopping lifelessly. Invisible bands held Fallion upright; and he could not breathe. Indeed, each gasp brought only a dark wind filled with dust.
He realized that he was going to faint. His legs felt as frail as willow fronds. It seemed that the only thing propping him up was the wind.
The storm prowled around the boat like a hunting beast. It gave a keening cry, as if the whole of the heavens were shouting in victory.
Fallion stood on the boat, stunned, filled with terror-not a fear of the beast that had assailed him, but a fear of what he might become.
Now Asgaroth’s dark minions rushed through the trees toward the boats, warriors and monsters. The clouds overhead kept the whole world in shadow; for the second time that day Fallion wished for light.
Almost as if summoned by his wish, the sky brightened, and through howling wind and driving rain Fallion saw a shadow mounted upon a bloodred horse-Asgaroth himself.
In that instant, a small figure rose up from beneath a fallen log near Hadissa, a woman with silver hair flying in the wind. She moved with blinding speed. She raced to Hadissa, reached into his scabbard with one hand, grasped his sword as she passed, sent it flying end over end into the mist and driving rain-
It struck Asgaroth’s chest. For a long moment, Asgaroth sat in seeming astonishment, gazing down at the blade that impaled him.
Fallion’s heart pounded as he watched for a reaction. Asgaroth was a Runelord, drawing power through dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of endowments.
There were stories of men who had taken so much stamina that they could hardly be killed. They could fight on in battle with arms hacked off, trailing their own guts, and live to tell the tale.
It seemed improbable that Asgaroth could be defeated with a single blow from a sword, and Fallion half expected him to come shrieking into battle, drawing the blade that transfixed him as if pulling it from a fleshly scabbard, then wreaking havoc upon them all.
But blood gurgled from Asgaroth’s mouth. The sword seemed to have pierced his lung, perhaps even cleaving his heart in half.
He leaned his head back and a scream issued from his throat. It became louder and louder, a death cry that shook the heavens; a plume of bloody air spewed out of his throat, went swirling skyward.
Suddenly the wind grew in ferocity. The cry rose from a scream to a rumbling roar. Blood spewed skyward; Asgaroth seemed to explode, his arms and torso ripping away like worn cloth, and a huge wind gusted up, a vortex that rose and rose into a towering tornado that lifted his horse from the ground, sucked up nearby trees, and pulled tufts of grass and dirt into the medley.
An elemental of air, Fallion realized.
Asgaroth had been a servant of Air, a wind-driven wizard, and thus had an elemental within him.
The more powerful the sorcerer, the greater the elemental. The creature rising up now was monumental.
The wind screamed around them, whirling madly, as if the heavens themselves were coming to life, as if the sky would split in half. Asgaroth’s troops and the strengi-saats shouted and tried to rush away from the vortex.
The wind tore the voices of men and monsters away, so that their cries came from a seeming distance, like the cries of gulls far out to sea, and Fallion saw more than one strengi-saat whirl up into the maelstrom, snarling and shrieking as it was torn asunder.
Quickly the tornado grew, its base remaining on the ground while its top whirled up into the slate gray clouds, lost to sight, where suddenly even the clouds whirled and turned green and lightning crackled and shone like a crown.
Many men and creatures ran for their lives, but Iome was the fastest of them, and she raced now, a Runelord in the height of her power, leaping ten yards to a stride. In five bounds she raced down the bank and hit the water, then tried to run across it, her feet a blur. But she didn’t have enough endowments of metabolism, and by the time that she was three-quarters of the way across the river, she floundered, bobbed underwater, and an instant later shot up at the side of the boat and pulled herself in.
Meanwhile, Myrrima was shouting to Borenson, “Grab the pole,” as she tried fishing him from the river. The boat had beached, but the current was dragging Borenson downstream.
Groggily, Borenson cursed and sputtered, trying to make it to the boat. Fallion gaped in surprise, supposing that Borenson had been killed by the lightning.
Fallion raced to the gunwale and grabbed Borenson’s cape, tried pulling him in, but Borenson wore ring mail beneath his tunic, and Fallion could hardly budge him. It wasn’t until Iome grasped Borenson that they were able to drag him into the boat.
By then, the tornado had reached its full height, and now it thundered toward them, making the earth rumble, pulling whole trees up by their roots, slinging boulders across the ground.
The wind surged, singing past Fallion’s ears, tugging his clothes, slapping his face.
Several of Asgaroth’s warriors were racing toward the boat, and now they looked back in horror as the tornado overtook them, plucked them up kicking and screaming, their arms waving in the air, bearing them into the heavens.
This is the end, Fallion thought.
He suddenly became conscious that Rhianna was grasping onto his leg, as if to hold on to him for support. Talon clutched her baby sister and hunched over protectively, while all of the other children screamed in fear.
The only one who showed no fear was Myrrima. She calmly picked up her bow, drew an arrow from the quiver at her back, and fired into the broiling tempest.
The bolt flew true, singing into the funnel cloud.
What is she thinking? Fallion wondered. An arrow won’t help.
