himself a scholar, one of the wisest in the land.
Now the folk who had granted the endowments, his Dedicates, were all dead, and with their deaths, Waggit’s ability to remember had died too, along with the lore that he’d once mastered.
Did my father do well or ill, granting him endowments? Fallion wondered. Would Waggit not have been happier to remain a fool than to gain great wisdom and lose it all?
Fallion fought back his sadness and ducked through a curtain into the cozy room where Talon lay upon a low cot. She had grown too large to fit on it.
Jaz had covered her with a coarse blanket, and now he knelt beside her, his shoulders slumped from weariness, so still that he looked as if drawing a breath was almost too great a chore.
“How is she doing?” Fallion asked. “Any change?”
Jaz shook his head slightly.
“There is a chair here in the corner, if you would like it,” Fallion offered.
Jaz shrugged. “I know. I was too tired to get up and sit.”
Fallion slumped in the chair.
Jaz did not turn. As he gazed at Talon, his face was lined with grief.
“I thought for sure,” he said softly, “that when you healed the worlds, we’d get cloudbursts of beer, and the meadows would sprout dancing girls as pretty as any flower…”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Fallion said.
“What’s wrong with us? I feel like a burrow bear that’s been pulled out of its hole in mid-winter. I just want to sleep for a few more months.”
“Jaz, we have to go away,” Fallion said. “We have to get out of here, now.”
“What do you mean?” Jaz did not move. He looked as if he was too tired to care.
“That rune, it was a trap. The tree was the bait. Once my mind touched the rune, I knew that I had to mend it or die. But it couldn’t be mended, not really. It was meant to do only one thing, to bind two shadow worlds into one. I didn’t bind all of the worlds into one. I didn’t heal anything. I fear I’ve made things worse.”
Jaz nodded almost imperceptibly, as if he couldn’t muster the energy to care.
“Jaz, no human sorcerer made that rune. It was beyond the power of any mortal to form. I know who made it: our father’s ancient enemy, the Queen of the Loci.”
Now Jaz looked at him, cocking his head just a bit, peering at him from the corner of his eye.
“She’s here, Jaz, somewhere. She knows what I’ve done. She tricked me into doing it.”
“Maybe, maybe she was just testing you,” Jaz suggested. “Maybe she wanted to see if you really could bind the worlds. If the wizards are right, she was never able to do that. If she’d been able to, she’d have bound all of the worlds together into one, under her control.”
“It was a test,” Fallion agreed. “But in passing it, I failed us all.”
Jaz finally drew a deep breath, as if trying to muster the energy to rise.
“Go then, if you must,” he said. “I can’t leave Talon behind. And we can’t let the Queen of the Loci catch you. If she does, we both know what she will try to force you to do-bind the worlds into one, all under her control.”
Fallion hesitated. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Talon, not like this. He wasn’t certain what was wrong with her. Perhaps in the melding, her organs had become jumbled up. Perhaps the creature that lay before him had two hearts and only half a lung. He couldn’t be certain.
He only knew that in binding the two worlds together, he had not done it perfectly. There had been mistakes, dangerous errors. The vine that had grown through his hand was just one of them, and the stinging pain and the bloody bandage that he now wore were constant reminders.
What if I’d tried binding all of the worlds into one? Fallion wondered. What if those little errors had been multiplied a million million times over?
It would have been a catastrophe. I would have destroyed the world.
Maybe that is why the Locus Queen set this trap-to see what would happen if I succeeded.
There was a pitcher of water on the bed stand. Fallion felt thirsty but too tired to take a drink. Still, he knew that his body would need it.
Talon suddenly groaned in her sleep. “Ishna! Ishna! Bolanda ka!” She thrashed from side to side. Her voice was deep and husky.
“What did she say?” Jaz asked.
Fallion shook his head. It was no language that he had ever heard, and he was familiar with several.
He wondered if it were just aimless babbling, the ranting that came with a fevered dream.
Fallion got up, found a towel on the bed stand, and poured some of the cool water from the pitcher onto the towel.
He knelt beside Talon and dabbed her forehead, held the rag there with one hand and touched her cheek with the other, checking for a fever.
She was definitely warm.
He had been holding the rag on her head for all of thirty seconds when her eyes sprang open wide, filled with terror, and she backhanded him.
Fallion went flying as if he’d been kicked by a war horse.
In an instant, Talon sprang to her feet, as if to do battle, knocking Jaz aside. “Wyrmlings!” she shouted, her eyes darting about the room, trying to take everything in.
“Talon, it’s okay!” Jaz said. “You’re all right! You’re with friends.”
Talon stood, gasping for breath. At seven feet tall, she dwarfed all of those around her, dwarfed the tiny room. Every muscle in her arms and neck seemed strained, and she took a battle stance. In that moment, she seemed a fearsome warrior, more terrifying than any man that Fallion had ever seen. Her eyes darted about, as if she was trapped in some nightmare. Slowly her vision cleared. She recognized Fallion and Jaz, but merely stood in shock, trying to make sense of the situation.
“It’s all right,” Jaz assured her. “You were only dreaming. You were just dreaming. Do you know where you are?”
Talon peered down at the floor, so far below her, and then peered at her hands, huge and powerful, as if trying to make sense of them. “Am I still dreaming?”
She studied Fallion, who lay on the floor, holding his arm where she had hit him.
Fallion remembered being trampled by a bull and taking far less hurt. He tried moving his arm experimentally. He didn’t think that it was broken, but it would be black and blue for weeks.
“No,” Jaz said. “The world has changed. Two worlds are combined, and I guess…you changed with them. We’re not sure what happened…”
Fallion waited for a reaction. He had thought that she would weep for her lost humanity or sit and sulk. Instead, shock and acceptance seemed to come almost at the same moment.
“I see,” she said, peering at her hands as if considering the implications of his words. Then with a sigh she said, “Let’s go see this new world.”
More than anything, this showed Fallion the depth of the change in Talon. Gone was the young woman Fallion had known.
Talon reached down to take Fallion’s hand. He proffered his good hand, but when she grasped it, Fallion cried out in pain. “Not so tight!”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Sorry. I, uh, barely touched you.”
He felt sure that she was telling the truth. He also felt sure that if she wanted, she could tear his arm off as easily as she could rip the wing off of a roasted chicken.
She pulled Fallion to his feet, then stalked out of the room on unsteady legs, as if trying to become accustomed to her new size.
She strode out into the street, went to the gate tower, and by the time she reached it she leapt up, taking the stairs up four at a stride. Then she just stood for a long moment until Fallion caught up.
“Damn,” she whispered when he drew near. “You’ve made a mess of things.”
“What do you mean?” Fallion asked. “Are you ill?”
“Fallion,” Talon said, “I feel great. I feel…better than I’ve ever felt before.” She turned and peered at him. “You’ve done me no harm. In fact, it is the opposite. I feel more…whole, than I ever felt before.”
Fallion understood what she meant, partly. It was said that all of the worlds were but shadows of the One
