certainty that this one will die.
“All right,” Fallion said at last. “I’ll free your city. But afterward, we will have to redouble our speed.”
Relief flooded through Rhianna. I’m right to love him, she thought.
Fallion kicked some leaves into a pile, knelt over it, and sparked some flint against the hilt of his sword. The leaves were dry in midsummer and caught fire instantly. If Farion thought it strange that they took fire so fast, it did not show in her face. Only relief was revealed there.
In moments a fierce little blaze was going.
“Is your father well?” Fallion asked. “I have often missed his counsel.”
“His Dedicates were killed years back,” Farion said. “He lost his wit, his stamina, his metabolism. All of the lore that he once knew, it’s all gone. For a while, Lord Hale made him his fool, but now he is little more than a simpleton for me to care for. He fetches wood and can feed the cats, but he’s no use for aught else.”
Fallion grieved silently. In all of the realm there had not been a man who loved learning half as much as her father, Hearthmaster Waggit. Among the many ruins that Fallion had encountered in the week since his return to Mystarria, this one seemed to sadden him the most.
He peered into the flames for a long moment, and the Seal of the Inferno appeared, like a burning wheel, imprinted upon his retina. He pulled a log onto the fire. The dancing flames seemed to beckon him.
Off to his left a shadow moved, perhaps thirty paces from the fire. A strengi-saat. He peered in its direction, and the shadows thickened.
“Jaz,” Fallion warned. He picked up a stick from the fire and hurled it toward the shadow. The twig flipped end over end, hit something and blazed bright, revealing the strengi-saat.
It was a large one, perhaps eighteen feet from nose to tail, but had looked smaller as it bellied low to the ground. Its jaws were wide enough to carry a man whole, and its head was leathery and seemed to have scales instead of fur like that found on its back and belly. Ugly black hide stretched over a face as naked as a buzzard’s. It had no ears, only tympanums, round membranes the size of plates, just behind its enormous eyes. It whirled to race away.
Jaz fired. The arrow plocked into the monster’s chest, skewering a lung. Black blood gushed out in a fountain as the strengi-saat roared and began rolling among the pine needles. Rhianna shouted and rushed toward it, her staff at the ready, and the monster leapt away, hoping to escape. It lunged off into the shadows, leaving Rhianna far behind. Fallion knew that it would only find a quiet place to die.
The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was growing light. In a moment, the bright disk would rise and hang like a shield upon the shoulder of the world. Fallion warmed his hands by the fire, let its energy seep into him for a few moments longer.
For the past year, he had been seeking to master the flameweavers’ arts in earnest. He could feel the energy building inside him, a hidden inferno. When he judged that he could hold no more, he abruptly stood and announced, “Let’s go deal with this Lord Hale.”
Far above Fallion a star shone so dimly that it could not be seen, a light so distant that even upon the darkest of nights it was only a hazy malformed speck in the vastness of space, unremarkable, unknown. Fallion had never seen the star, for only those with many endowments of sight could discern it. He had never gazed up from a meadow at night and wondered whether worlds spun in lazy circles about it. He had never dreamt that it might harbor people similar to his.
Yet upon that world a young man, not entirely human in form, faced challenges of his own…
UPON A FAR WORLD
When the great Rune of Creation was shattered, the One True World shattered with it into a million million Shadow Worlds, each a distortion of the perfect whole, each diminished.
Do men even exist on such worlds? I used to ask. I believed that they must, at least on some of those worlds, for the Bright Ones dwelt upon the One True World, and we are but shadows of them.
How many times had I wondered if upon one of those shadow worlds there was another me, a twisted mockery of what I am, or a shining example of what I might yet become.
If I were to walk upon such a world, I wondered, and happen upon my shadow self, would I even recognize myself?
But never did I guess that it would happen in my lifetime. I do not blame Fallion for what he did. None of us could ever have guessed the terrible consequences of what would come.
The Great War was finally near an end, and mankind had lost.
The castle at Caer Luciare was now a last and lonely refuge perched on the sides of a mount. The forbidding wastes below were a rocky tumult. To the north, west and east, the ruins of ancient cities climbed above the scree. The vast oaks that had once refreshed this land were gone, tree and acorn, razed during battles with the wyrmlings, and now the fields boasted little but boulders, weeds, and thistles. Only in a few distant fens could green still be seen.
Refugees had swelled Caer Luciare’s numbers to more than thirty-eight thousand. The High King himself had come after the fall of Gonart, and the Light of Dalharristan had resorted here with his family now for six years. And this past month alone, four hundred good Kartoche warriors with skin whiter than bone had journeyed north to take refuge among Caer Luciare’s ranks.
Everyone said that the warlords were preparing for some fierce assault against the evil that dwelt in the north, at Rugassa.
Had you been walking the tower at Caer Luciare that morning, you might have seen Alun, a young man of nineteen who still seemed far more a boy than a man, down on the green outside the gates amid a swarm of dogs. The hounds around him bayed excitedly at the promise of the hunt, while mastiffs woofed.
Alun knelt with his neck and back bent like a willow frond as he groomed an old hound. Alun was a gangrel, he was, with a crooked nose, stick-like arms, and a head and hands that were too meaty for his body. His leather trousers and red wool tunic were matted with hair and smelled of dog.
The dogs looked fierce in their masks and cuirasses of boiled leather, their wicked collars bristling with spikes. Yet the nubs of their tails wagged furiously, belying their fierce appearance. Their tails wagged despite the fact that some of the dogs knew that they would die in this day as the warriors scoured the forest, hunting for wyrmling “harvesters.”
There weren’t enough dogs for the hunt, Alun knew, not enough healthy ones. He had others in the kennels, limping on mangled paws or with bellies ripped open; right now he was preparing to send Wanderlust into the fray.
“What do you say, love?” Alun asked the hound as he combed. He wanted her to look nice, in case she died today.
Wanderlust was old. The black hair on her snout had gone gray. Her joints were swollen, and as Alun held her muzzle, peered into her loving brown eyes, and strapped on a fighting collar, she barely managed a slow wag of her tail, as if to say, “Another battle? I’m so weary, but I will go.”
At first glance, she didn’t look like much of a dog. But Wanderlust was more than a common hound. Her mother was a sand hound, a breed so named for its sandy color, renowned for its good nose. But her father was a brute, descended from three strains of war dog. Wanderlust was almost as large as a mastiff, and she had a warrior’s heart. Even in old age, if she smelled a wyrmling, she would be first to the fray.
Alun put on Wanderlust’s mask, as red as a bloodied skull. He had fashioned it himself, and it reminded him that all too soon there be nothing left of her but a skull. If the wyrmlings didn’t get her, age would.
A hound named Thunder rushed up and bayed in Alun’s face. Alun gave Thunder a stern look, warned him to go sit, then Alun twisted over to dig in his big rucksack for Wanderlust’s cuirass.
A shadow fell over Alun; he looked up. Warlord Madoc stood above him, a tall man in his forties, astonishingly
