Fallion just stood for a moment, rooted to the ground. Uncle Ael was Daylan Hammer, the hero of legend?
Fallion nudged Talon. “The woman who is with them, the one with the dark hair, who is she?”
“You met her father,” Talon said. “The Emir. He is a good friend and counselor to the king.”
“Why is she so small? She looks like one of us.”
“Her family is from Dalharristan. People are shorter there. And most of those that you’ve seen are of the warrior caste. They are larger and stronger than those of other castes. Her mother was not a warrior born, but was of a ruling clan, bred for intelligence, beauty, and strong character.”
“Is she…spoken for?”
Talon gave him a knowing smile. “You’re not interested in her. Trust me.”
“Really?” Fallion asked. It was a challenge. Suddenly Fallion found his feet, and in Rhianna’s wake he went trundling to meet Daylan Hammer.
After hugging Rhianna for a long minute, Daylan threw his hood back, and stood grinning in the sun. Fallion saw that his beard was not gray, merely begrimed with ash. “Little Rhianna!” he said. “Why, you grew up faster than a mushroom, but turned out as beautiful as a robin’s egg!”
Daylan seemed genuinely pleased, and Fallion found that he envied their relationship.
“And your mother,” Daylan asked. “Is she well? Is she here?”
“Dead,” Rhianna said. “She’s dead, these eight years back.”
Daylan seemed crestfallen. “I am so sorry. She was a good woman, a great woman.”
Fallion found himself wondering how many lives Daylan must have mourned. After so many, could he feel any real loss or pain anymore?
Yet Fallion could see it in the immortal’s eyes. Yes, there was real loss there.
Fallion stood behind Rhianna, and she turned to introduce him, but Daylan stopped her with a wave of the hand.
“Hail, Torch-bearer,” Daylan said with profound respect. He grabbed Fallion by the forearm, as was common among soldiers, shaking hands as if they were old friends or allies who had braved battles together. “I know you,” Daylan said. “We have met many times.”
Fallion knew that they had never met, not in this life-time at least. And so Daylan could only be talking of past lives.
“This is your handiwork?” Daylan asked, cocking his head to one side, inclining it toward the valley that spread out below them, the trees and the grass, and the snow-covered mountain in the background.
“It is,” Fallion said feeling a bit embarrassed. He had hoped to bind the worlds into a perfect whole, but this flawed thing was all he had been able to manage.
Tears flooded Daylan’s eyes, and he grabbed Fallion and hugged him close, weeping freely. “You’ve done it, brother. You’ve finally done it.”
Fallion could think of nothing to say. This stranger, this legend, had called him brother.
Then King Urstone clapped Daylan on the back, and the two began talking in Urstone’s guttural tongue, and Fallion was excluded from the conversation.
Rhianna came and gave Fallion a sisterly hug while Daylan Hammer, the Wizard Sisel, the Emir’s daughter, and the king’s men huddled together making plans. The wyrmling princess retreated to the dark confines of the tower.
Sundown was less than an hour away, and the wyrmlings would be here soon for the exchange.
Rhianna nodded toward Daylan. “So, what do you think of Uncle Ael?”
“I don’t know,” Fallion said. He was still bewildered.
“He seems to like you,” Rhianna said. “That’s a good thing. He does not make friends easily.”
“He seems to know me,” Fallion corrected.
Sunset drew near all too soon for Fallion’s liking. The sun descended in a crimson haze that smeared the heavens, for there was still much dust high in the atmosphere, and in the long shadows thrown by the mountain it seemed that night wrapped around the small band like a cloak.
Daylan Hammer assured the king that the proceedings had all been secured under oaths so profound that even a wyrmling dared not break them. He did not expect the wyrmlings to attack.
But time had taught King Urstone this one lesson: never trust the wyrmlings.
So his guards secreted themselves in the woods around the tower in case the wyrmlings tried an ambush.
Fallion waited with his hand upon his sheathed sword, now caked in rust, while the king, the Wizard Sisel, Alun, Siyaddah, and Fallion’s friends all stood together in the tower’s shadow. Daylan Hammer and the wyrmling princess climbed the tower and stood atop its ruined walls.
The first star appeared in the sky, and bats began their nightly acrobatics around the tower.
Fallion had begun to believe that the wyrmlings would not show when he suddenly heard a flapping.
A wyrmling rose up out of the shadowed woods, came circling the tower. Fallion was fascinated by her artificial wings, and peered hard to see them. Her wings were translucent and golden, like a linnet’s wings, but there were darker bands through them, almost like bones, with webbing between the supports. They reminded him of the leathery wings of a graak.
There was no harness, no sign that the wings were any type of device. For all that Fallion could see the wings just sprouted from the woman’s back.
She circled the tower, looking down upon the men, as if she were just another bat.
Then she let out a cry, strange and filled with pain, the howling of some evil beast.
In the far distance, several answering cries rose from the trees among the swamp.
King Urstone clutched his battle-ax and shouted a warning. Talon translated, “It’s a trap!”
“No,” Daylan Hammer warned, “Wait!”
At that moment, wyrmlings rose up out of the swamp. They came winging toward the hill rapidly, vastly faster than the first, and the Wizard Sisel whispered, “Ah, damn.”
It wasn’t until they drew nearer that Fallion recognized the source of his dismay: these wyrmlings wore red- crimson cowls over blood-red robes, with wings that looked to be made of darkest ruby.
There were three of them.
Each held a black sword in clasped hands, the handle clutched against his breast while the blade pointed back toward his feet.
“Knights Eternal,” Talon intoned. “But I count three of them. We slew one yesterday, and another the night before. There should be only one left.”
“Yes,” Sisel said, “These Knights Eternal should not exist. Lady Despair has been hiding their numbers, and each of them is a hundred years in the making. It is only by luck that Lady Despair has revealed her secret. This is an evil omen. I wonder how many more there might be?”
Fallion let the energy in him build, drawing heat from the ground, preparing to unleash a fireball. The king’s men drew weapons, and Jaz bent his bow.
“Hold,” Daylan called down from the tower, lest one of the humans be first to break the truce.
The Knights Eternal flew toward them, crisscrossing and veering, as if to dodge archery fire.
And then a creature rose.
Something vast lifted out of the swamps, three miles in the distance, lumbering above the trees upon leather wings.
It was like nothing that Fallion had ever seen. He had ridden upon sea graaks in Landesfallen. But the thing that came up out of the swamp could have swallowed one of those whole. It was black and sinister in color, and its wingspan had to stretch a hundred, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet. The length of its body was more than eighty feet long, and Fallion imagined that a small village full of people could have ridden on its back.
The shape of the body was serpentine, and the creature kept its head bent, as a heron will when it flies. But it had no heron’s head. Instead, it was ugly and blunt, like the head of a blind snake, with a mouth filled with ungainly teeth. Its long body seemed to undulate through the air. A leathery tail fanned out in the back, almost like a rudder.
Upon its back, a small figure clutched at a chain, looking frightened and beleaguered.
