As his tortured blade broke, Fallion had felt pain lance just below the ribcage. A remnant of his shattered blade lodged in his flesh. He fell to his knees, blood gushing hot over his tunic as he struggled to keep from swooning.
Rhianna had called 'Fallion! Fallion!' and all around him the noise of battle had sought to drown out her voice, so that it seemed to come from far away.
Struggling to remain awake, Fallion had knelt for a moment, dazed, while the world whirled viciously.
Everything went black.
And now I wake, Fallion thought.
He closed his eyes, tried to take stock of his situation.
His artificial wings were folded against his back. He did not know how to use them well, yet. He d worn the magical things for less than a day. He could feel a sharp pain where they were bound tightly, lest he try to escape.
I dare not let the monster know that I am awake, Fallion realized.
Fallion s sword was gone, his scabbard empty, but he still had a dagger hidden in his boot.
If I could reach it, he thought, I could plunge it into the monster s neck.
Fallion was so cold, his teeth were chattering. He tried to still them, afraid to make any noise, afraid to alert the creature.
But if I attack, what then? The monster will fall, and I will fall with it-to my death.
His mind reeled away from the unpleasant prospect.
Moments later the Knight Eternal groaned and cursed, as if in pain. They had been flying in the shadow of a hill, and suddenly they were in open sunlight. Fallion s captor dropped lower, so that he was flying beneath the trees, well in their shadow.
There was a nimbus around them, a thick haze. It gathered a bit.
Of course, Fallion realized, the Knight Eternal is racing against the coming of day. He s gathering the light around him, trying to create a shadow.
He s struggling to get me back to the castle before dawn!
They had dropped lower now, and Fallion judged that he was not more than twenty feet above ground. On impulse, Fallion reached for his boot dagger, and by straining managed to reach it, grasping it with two fingers. He tried to pull it free.
Just as suddenly, his captor tightened his grip, pulling Fallion s arms mercilessly tight. The boot knife fell, spinning away to land on the ground.
The Knight Eternal was crushing Fallion against his chest. It apparently had not even noticed what Fallion was doing. But the creature s grip was so fearsome that now Fallion had to struggle for a breath.
Fallion despaired. He had no other weapons.
Fallion wondered about Rhianna. If she was alive, she would have protected him to the last. He knew that about her at least. No woman was more faithful, more devoted to him, than she.
Which meant that like Jaz, she must be dead.
The very thought tore at Fallion s sanity.
My fault, he told himself. It is my fault that they re dead. I am the one who brought them here. I m the one who bound the worlds together.
And as quickly as Fallion had fallen into despair, rage and determination welled up. Fallion was a wizard of unguessable power. In ages past, there had been one sun and one true world, bright and perfect, and all mankind had lived in harmony beneath the shade of the One True Tree. But the great Seal of Creation that governed that world had been broken, and as it broke, the world shattered, splintering into a million million parts, creating millions upon millions of shadow worlds, each a dull imitation of that one true world, each less virtuous, each spinning around its own sun so that now the heavens were filled with a sea of stars.
Now Fallion had demonstrated the skill necessary to bind those shadow worlds back into one. He had bound two worlds together. He had yet to bring to pass the realization of his dream: binding all worlds into one world, flawless and perfect.
But his enemies had feared what he could do, and had set a trap. Fallion had bound his own world with another, as an experiment, and everything had gone terribly wrong.
Now Fallion s people had been thrust into a land of giants, where the cruel wyrmlings ruled, a ruthless people thoroughly enthralled by an evil so monstrous that it was beyond Fallion s power to imagine, much less comprehend.
I hoped to make a better world, to re-create the one true world of legend, and instead I brought my people to the brink of ruin.
The Knight Eternal that carried him suddenly rose toward a gate in the castle. Fallion could hear barks and snarls of alarm as wyrmling warriors announced their approach.
Where is the Knight Eternal taking me? Fallion wondered.
The knight swept through an enormous archway and landed with a jar, and then crept into a lightless corridor, carrying Fallion as easily as if he were a child.
Fallion s toes and fingers were numb. He felt so cold that he feared he had frostbite. He still could not think well. Every thought was a skirmish. Every memory was won only after a long battle.
He needed warmth, heat. There was none to be found. There had been no sunlight shining upon the castle. There were no torches sitting in sconces to brighten the way. Instead the Knight Eternal bore him down endless tunnels into a labyrinth where the only illumination came from worms that glittered along the wall and ceiling.
Sometimes he passed other wyrmlings, and whether they were mere servants or hardened warriors, they all backed away from his captor in terror.
Fallion could have used his powers to leach a little heat from a wyrmling, if one had come closer.
Maybe the stone is warm, Fallion thought. Maybe it still recalls the sunlight that caressed it yesterday.
Fallion could have reached out to quest for the sunlight. But there was a great danger. Fallion was a flameweaver, a wizard of fire. Yet he knew that at least one Knight Eternal had mastered such skills better than he: Vulgnash.
In earlier battles, each time that Fallion had tried to tap into some source of heat, Vulgnash had siphoned the energy away.
Of course, Fallion realized. That is why I am so cold now. The creature has drained me. I am in Vulgnash s arms.
I must not let him know that I am awake.
Vulgnash had no body heat that Fallion could use. Though the Knight Eternal mimicked life, the monster was dead, and it had no more heat in it than did a serpent.
So Fallion held still, struggled to slow his breathing, to feign sleep, as the Knight Eternal bore him down, down an endless winding stair.
We re going to the heart of the world.
I will have to attack quickly when the chance comes. A single torch is all that I ll need. I ll cause it to flash into light, to consume all of its fuel in an instant, and then draw it into myself. I ll use its heat to burn my enemies.
After long and long, the Knight Eternal reached a landing and walked out into an open room. The air was fetid, stifling, and smelled slightly of sulfur.
Fallion could hear children whimpering-along with the moan of some man, and the uncontrolled sobbing of a woman. These were not the deep-throated sounds of subhuman wyrmlings. These were the whimpers and cries of his own people, beaten and wounded.
'Help! Someone please help us!' a boy cried in Fallion s own Rofehavanish tongue.
The cries of his people came from a knot at one side of the room.
The Knight Eternal spoke, its voice a growl deeper than a lion s, and around him came answering growls.
Fallion could see nothing through his half-slitted eyes.
So he closed them, and in a way that he had learned as a child, he looked upon the world with his inner eye, the eyes of his spirit, and he saw light.
He could descry the room. Each creature within it could be discerned not as flesh and bone but as a creature
