living in Indhopal, but that is a thousand miles away, and until I see them, I can’t be sure.”
“I’ll bet they’re a little confused!” Talon smiled, showing her oversized canines. “Millions of humans on this world again-that will be good news to the folk of Luciare. Father will dance when he learns of it.”
“But will they be worth much, fighting your giants?” Fallion wondered. He knew that they wouldn’t, not if they had only their own strength. “Are forcibles used among the clans?”
Talon shook her head. “Such magic has not been heard of. The three hundred forcibles we brought with us will be a great prize for the clans.”
Fallion started to speak, but Talon reached over and threw a hand over his mouth.
“Shhhh…” she whispered, “Wyrmlings.”
Jaz seemed to be snoring loudly in the sudden silence. A few crickets filled the night with song. Fallion listened for the tell-tale pad of running feet through the forest, the crack of twigs.
But what he heard was a flapping, like the leathery wings of a graak.
Talon looked up. Fallion could see patches of night sky through the tree branches, the burning fires of distant stars. He could hear flapping nearby, and another pair of wings just downhill.
He dared not speak. Jaz kept snoring, and Fallion leaned down and covered his mouth lightly.
The flapping was not close-perhaps two hundred feet in the air and another three hundred feet to the south. The creature would never be able to hear over the sound of its wing noise.
Fallion craned his head, trying to get a look at it, but rocks and the tree barred it from his sight.
“You didn’t tell me they had wings,” Fallion whispered when the creature had flown on.
“They don’t,” Talon said. “Not all of them-only the highest in rank, the Seccath. The wings are very rare and magical. Those wyrmlings are hunting for us, I suspect.”
Fallion wished that he had seen them. He wanted to know how the wings worked, but Talon could not tell him.
Talon went to bed a while later, and Fallion stayed up long enough to make sure that she fell asleep, and then woke Rhianna for her turn at guard duty.
He briefly told her of the wyrmlings, and asked her to listen for the sound of wings.
He lay down. He was so tired, he was half afraid that if he fell asleep, he might never wake.
But all of the worries of this day kept him awake. He worried for Waggit, for Farion, for some nameless boy with a swollen face. He wondered how many had died this day and how many more might suffer because of his mistake.
In a more perfect world, I would be a better man, he told himself.
As he lay there filled with such gloomy thoughts, Rhianna lay down beside him, stroked his face once, and then kissed him passionately.
She leaned back afterward and peered into his eyes.
There, she thought. Now I’ve shown him.
The last time she had kissed him thus was when his mother died. To Rhianna’s knowledge, he hadn’t been kissed by another girl since, save once, when a young lady of the Gwardeen had shown her affection.
He stared up at her in wonder. The light-berries lay upon the moss around him, and it seemed to Rhianna that he was lying in a field of stars.
He had never hinted that he might love her. But I am born of the royal houses in both Crowthen and Fleeds, she told herself, and I am as worthy of his love as any.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Rhianna whispered.
She straddled him, as if to hold him, then leaned down and kissed him again.
For two years she had hidden her desires. She could hide them no more.
Fallion stroked her cheek, and she could see the want in his eyes. But tenderly, he pushed her back.
“What is this?” he asked. “I know how you feel. I’ve seen your love growing in the way that you look at me, at the way you linger in my presence. You are one of the most beautiful women that I know. But you and I are too much like brother and sister.”
She loved him. Fallion knew it. But he had always kept himself aloof. He had done so in part because he knew that someday he might have to marry another in order to seal a political alliance.
But Fallion had remained aloof for a more important reason: he knew in his heart that he did not love her in the way that she loved him.
She smiled secretively. “I know that you want me.” He did not deny it. “And every day, I want you more.”
Fallion knew that Rhianna’s mother was from Fleeds, a land where women ruled, and where they chose their mates much as they chose their stallions. In hindsight he should have known that she would try to claim him in this way. “So why do you choose to profess your love today?”
“It’s just,” she said hesitantly, “today, more than any other, I wanted you to know that you are loved.”
“I see,” Fallion said, a forlorn chuckle rising from his throat.
“You saved my life,” she said. “And you saved my soul. And you’ll save this world, too. The time will come when the people of this world will thank you.”
He felt grateful for the gesture, even if it had caught him by surprise.
He rolled his hips, dislodging her, and threw her down into the pine needles. Then he leaned over her, and returned her kiss gently.
He looked into her eyes for a long moment, until she asked in hope and wonder, “What is this?”
“It’s a token of my gratitude.”
STRANGERS IN ONE ANOTHER’S ARMS
Even the greatest of heroes and men
Are less than what they might have been.
Warlord Madoc lay in bed that night, unable to sleep. The great changes that had taken place worried him- the breaks in the castle wall, the rise of forests where only stones and thistles should have been.
There was a new power in the world for him to contend with-a power greater than his sword, a power even greater, perhaps, than the wyrmlings.
That power had devastated him. Like so many others in the city, he had been struck down when the worlds collided. That did not bother him much. He had been knocked unconscious before.
What bothered him was the waking dreams.
In his dream, he had been a farmer, a free man with but one cow to give milk and a brood of thirteen children to drink it all. In his dream, he worked from sunrise to sunset every day, just to feed his family. In his dream, he loved his wife more fiercely than he knew a man could love, and even though there were no wyrmlings in the world, he still fretted about the future, for a hail storm in the spring could ruin a crop or grasshoppers in the summer might eat him out, and that might be as disastrous as any wyrmling, and if his cow dried up because the howling of some distant wolf frightened her, it would be as bad as a famine.
No one of import knew his name in this dream. No king feared him; no warriors vied for the honor of eating at his table. He had no rank or title. He had no future.
And yet, most disturbing of all, in the dream he was a happy, happy man.
Upon awaking, Madoc had thought it only a strange dream, vivid and disturbing. He recalled so many details- the way that the lilac bush outside his house perfumed the night air, the games of horse he played with his children, the profound joy that he took each night, sometimes three times a night, in making love to his wife, Deralynne.
Could that all have been real?
His wife lay beside him, and he could tell that she, too, was troubled. He had told her of the war council, of Daylan Hammer’s words.
