Rhianna’s face was blank with shock.
All of the roaring, all of the snarl and bass of the thunder drums, all seemed but a small and distant noise. In that instant, Fallion knelt with his brother, utterly alone.
Then Rhianna was on him, trying to pull him back from the wall. “We’ve got to get away! They’re coming!”
Even as she spoke, a great sky serpent flapped overhead, and they were washed in the wind from its wings. Something wet splattered from the sky, and there was a crackling sound as it splashed to the stone walls.
Oil? Fallion wondered. Some vile poison?
But drops of red hit his face, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Blood, he realized. Putrid blood, that smelled as if it had been days rotting in a barrel.
The very stench of it made him want to retch, and, oddly, the touch of it began to burn his skin. He heard a hissing sound around him as foul liquid landed on vines and trees and set them steaming.
Death, come to conquer life. It was more than mere blood. There was a spell upon it.
It was an omen.
Suddenly, Fallion felt disoriented. All of the rules of combat he had learned as a child meant nothing here. The wyrmlings fought a different kind of war.
Rhianna grabbed Jaz’s scabbard and bow, then pulled on Fallion’s shoulder, trying to lift him up.
Fallion staggered to his feet, went tottering behind her. He stared back, his eyes on Jaz, hoping that his brother might show some sign of life.
A huge human warrior reached down, grabbed Jaz by the wings, and began trying to lift him.
“He’s dead,” Fallion called back uselessly.
At that instant there was a tearing sound, and Jaz’s wings ripped free. His corpse sloughed away, slapping to the cold stone battlements.
Ah, Fallion realized. He wasn’t helping Jaz, just taking a prize of war.
Rhianna led Fallion away in a daze, racing up the cold stone streets. He couldn’t feel his feet. His body had gone numb. There were shouts everywhere. Giant graaks flapped high over the city while wyrmlings spattered their bloody elixir onto trees and gardens, set the trees and grass sizzling, then found a place to land.
Behind Fallion, there was a shout as kezziards hit the outer wall. Fallion did not understand the war clan’s language, but he knew what they were crying. “Pull back, pull back! The wyrmlings are over the wall.”
Fallion peered back toward Jaz one last time, but could not see him. The human warriors behind Fallion were in full retreat, blocking Fallion’s view, and a kezziard was climbing over the spot where Jaz’s body lay, the wyrmling riders looking fearsome in their thick armor.
In a more perfect world, Fallion thought, my brother is still alive.
He ached to take wing, to fly to the Mouth of the World and dare the tunnels down, seeking out the Seal of the Inferno.
Soon, he promised himself.
But there was a battle to fight first.
A VISION
Every man is a prisoner of his own making. The size of our jail is defined by the limits of our vision.
Time had no meaning in Areth’s cell. Seconds seemed to draw out into hours, hours into centuries. As his unseen Dedicates endured unimaginable tortures, only Areth felt their pain.
Several times he lost consciousness, then rose again to the surface, like a drowning man. From time to time, voices came to him, hallucinations caused by the extremity of his torture.
Other times, he heard groaning deep in the earth, as if rocks were colliding and rubbing together, struggling to form new hills. It was almost as if the earth had a voice, and if he listened hard enough, he could hear it.
“Pain. I am in pain,” the earth said. That is all that he could discern in the noise, that and a sound like groaning.
Areth whispered, “I would help if I could.”
Areth heard his wife’s voice.
“Areth, awake,” she said softly.
He looked up and saw that he was in a meadow.
I am dreaming, he realized, but only stared at his wife. She had been dead for sixteen years. Areth knew that she could not be here, and he peered into her face not because he loved it, but because he had not been able to recall what she had looked like now for nearly a decade.
A dream such as this, it was rare and precious, and he hoped to recall it when he woke.
Her skin was dark, beautiful, as it had been in life. Her eyes sparkled like stars reflected in a pool at midnight.
But there was something wrong. Her face was mottled and of different colors. He peered hard. White sand, pebbles, twigs, leaves and mud all seemed to be pressed together, forming her face.
A vague worry took him. Areth feared that he was mad. He knew that this was a dream, but the meadow somehow seemed too real, too lush. He could smell the sweet scent of rye and the bitter tang of the dandelions in the grass. Bluebells rose up at the roots of the aspen trees at the edge of the glade. There was too much detail in the grass. He could see old blades lying on the ground, the new grass rising up from them. He could smell worms upon the ground.
He listened to the bickering of wrens and calls of cicadas deeper in the woods, and he felt sure that it was not a dream.
“Who are you?” Areth asked the woman, for he suddenly realized that she could not be his wife. She was a stranger.
“I am the Spirit of the Earth,” the woman whispered, smiling down at him. “I have come to beg your help. The world is a wasteland, and soon will succumb. The very rocks and stones cry out in agony. Soon, mankind will pass away, like a dream.”
Sooner than you know, Areth thought. He could not say why, but he believed the wyrmling torturers this time. They were attacking Luciare and would slaughter the last vestiges of mankind. Perhaps a few might escape, but only a few, and they would be hunted.
“I can grant you the power to save them,” the Earth Spirit whispered. “If you will accept the gift, you can save the seeds of mankind. But it comes with a great price-all that you are, all that you ever will be. All of your hopes and dreams must be relinquished, and you must serve me above all.”
Areth felt as if his knuckles had grown thick with arthritis. Pain blossomed in them, as if they had been crushed. He laughed in pain.
If this is a dream, then I must not be sleeping very soundly, he thought. The torturers are still at me.
“Do you accept?” the woman asked.
“Why not? Sure, I accept.”
The woman faded without another word.
Areth opened his eyes, found himself lying upon the greasy floor of his cell. There were no lights nearby to let him see. The stone floor was covered with his sweat and stank of rotting skin. A corner in the back was reserved for his waste, and bore an appropriate odor.
He was wracked in pain. It felt as if one of his lungs had collapsed, and his right arm had been pulled from his shoulder joint.
But as he peered into the darkness, groaning in pain, he could not help but remember for the first time in years the scent of sweet rye grass bursting from ground swollen by spring rain.
