shrieked and fought as Vulgnash knelt down and cleanly bit it off.
Men began racing into the hallway now, five men with torches that threw dancing shadows. They were shouting as they sought to engage Kryssidia.
The fools did not know that you cannot kill the dead.
He batted them aside as if they were pups, smashing skulls and breaking bones with every blow.
Meanwhile, in the weak torchlight, Vulgnash spat the bloody finger onto the floor, where it lay twitching.
“Azgan ka u-zek Fallion Orden.” Show me the way to Fallion Orden.
Suddenly the finger spun, as if moved by an invisible hand, and then drew to a stop, pointing due west.
So, Fallion was gone, and the old man knew which way he had gone. Vulgnash saw the terror in the old man’s eyes, revulsion at the bloody finger, a palpable sense of betrayal at what it had done. Vulgnash smiled, gladdened by this small act of torture.
The sun was coming. It was probably too late to go hunt for the wizard now. But there was time to eat, time to grow fat from the life force of others, and all three of the Knights Eternal were famished.
“Thul,” Vulgnash said, “you may eat him now.”
THE WASTELAND
To the eyes of the true men of Luciare, every object holds within it various levels of life or death, and so in formal speech, all nouns end in the appropriate suffix.
A living woman might be named Norak-na, Cloud Alive. But when she dies, her name becomes Norak-bas, Cloud Departed.
All living trees and animals hold life in them, and thus end with — na. Warmth and water also hold na, as does fertile soil, the wind, and the clouds.
Things that hold death within them include all weapons, sterile soil, bitter cold, and fire.
Given this emphasis on life and death, it is no surprise that the wizards of our world place so much emphasis on “Life Magic,” magic which draws energy from one living thing to another, in an effort to sustain them both.
And while some might think that death magic is the antithesis of life magic, it is not. There is no power in death. Death lords kill by draining energy from living things into themselves. Thus, their power is not the antithesis of life magic, merely a perversion of it.
Bird song filled the woods as Fallion woke-nuthatches and wrens proclaiming their territories. Rhianna lay beside him, her cheek pressed against his chest, and he took his waking slow. The morning sun slanted through the forest, and as he watched the nightjars and ricks winging through the dim light, it seemed as fine a dawn as Fallion could remember.
Sunrise was still half an hour away.
He felt rested, and though his normal vigor had not returned, he could tell that healing was coming. A day or two more, he thought, and I will be better.
As the foursome ate a hasty meal, Talon bore the news. “We have to make good time today, get as far away from here as possible. Are you up to running?”
None of them were, but each nodded yes.
And so, without further ceremony, they ran.
They raced over mountain trails in the half-light and plunged down a steep slope into an oak forest that was as pretty as any that Fallion had ever seen. The graceful limbs of oaks, thick with moss, twisted high in the air, with nothing but leaf-mold and a few fallen limbs beneath them. The group scared up herds of deer as they ran, and hares and foxes, and once Jaz pointed out a rare gray lynx as it leapt up into a tree.
There was no sign of wyrmlings, no sound of hunting horns behind them, no footprints in the dirt.
By the crack of sunrise they left the forest and ran into the open sun, through fields much like those that Fallion remembered from his youth, endless fields of grass and black-eyed Susans, with only a few trees in the distance, winding along the banks of some creek bed.
On his own world, this land had been devastated by reavers, left devoid of settlements, and even now Fallion worried as he ran.
Some primal sense warned him that nothing was quite as it seemed. There were wyrmlings here, yes, and reavers, and strengi-saats. It was as if enemies that he’d never imagined and never fully understood were all preparing to combine against him.
Heightening his fears now was the fact that it was late summer, and the grass had died off. Only a few golden strands of straw still stood. There was no cover, no place to hide, and Fallion remembered the sounds of heaving wings.
There could be wyrmlings in the trees ahead, or in the trees behind, just watching the fields, marking them as they ran. Talon had assured him that wyrmlings would not attack in the daylight. The full sun burned their eyes, burned their pale skin too easily.
But they could still see. They could be watching from a line of trees.
And so he ached for cover.
As they ran, he noted that certain tender flowers and vines had begun to die off in the night. They were wilted, as if they had been plucked up by the roots.
Once, when they rested beside a brook, Talon squatted to inspect some watercress that looked sickly; her face grew sad. “It’s the blight,” she said, her voice thick with regret. “I fear it will take all of these plants before long-the green meadows and fields of flowers, the willows and oaks. Such things will only be a memory, a dream. And once again, this world will become a wasteland.”
“A blight?” Jaz asked.
“The Death Lords’ blight,” Talon said. “The wyrmlings put a curse upon the land, years ago. Most of the plants died off. Only the cruelest of weeds and thorns eke out a living now.”
“What is a Death Lord?” Fallion asked.
“They are leaders among the wyrmlings. They are…like wights,” she said. “They’re more spirit than flesh and bone. Indeed, they have no bones at all, and one would be hard pressed to discern their flesh, for they are no more substantial than smoke or a morning fog. But unlike the spirits that haunted our world, the Death Lords are powerful sorcerers who choose their fate. They choose to remain suspended between life and death, between our world and the fields of nothingness. Thus, they become masters of both worlds.”
Fallion became chill at the thought, and throughout the day as they ran, he noticed more and more that the plants were indeed failing.
He worried for farmers in faraway places-the orchards and vineyards of Mystarria, the wheat fields of Heredon. How would his people survive if this blight took hold of the land in those places?
And as the day drew out, he saw more and more tokens that Talon was right. In two days, maybe three, the forests and meadows they had passed through would become a wasteland.
Once, in the distance, they saw smoke to the north, hanging lazily over a stand of trees.
Talon cursed, and they struck south at a full run, until they passed another line of trees.
They skirted in its shadows, following the winding course of a stream, careful to be quiet. In the shade of the woods, the tall grass held the morning dew, and they marched along soundlessly.
Talon took the lead for the morning, but at one point she stopped them all, her body going taut, her hands outstretched, and peered into the deep shadows just at the edge of the woods.
In the tall grass about fifty yards away, a young man stood. His chest was naked and matted with fur. His tawny hair fell down over his shoulders like a lion’s mane. His eyes were strange and wild.
He stood perfectly still for a long moment, and Fallion could not help but notice that there was something wrong with him. His eyes looked terrified, like those of an animal, and he had no arms.
Talon did not speak, but the young man suddenly turned his head as if looking for an escape.
That’s when Fallion noticed the antlers. At first he had just thought them to be limbs from an alder, but now
