follow him, I think, right into a kezziard’s maw, if the old man asked it of him.”
“We can trust Alun,” Warlord Madoc said. “Daylan Hammer has no coin to buy the lad, and we’re offering him…more than he could ever dream. He’ll betray Daylan Hammer.”
“How can you be sure?” Drewish asked.
“His dogs,” Madoc replied. “Every day, Alun sends them to their deaths, betraying those that love him best. He’s grown adept at betrayal.”
A WARM RECEPTION
In my dreams, it was always the same. I stood in the underworld, and a great wheel of fire was emblazoned before my eyes, the Seal of the Inferno.
There were other Seals, the Seal of Heaven, the Seal of Earth-but those were already mended, or at least, were far along the path.
I stared into the rune. To a commoner it would have looked only like a bowl of fire, tongues of flame in greens and reds and blues, sputtering aimlessly. But to my eyes, I read purpose and meaning in those flames. They whispered to me, telling me their secrets. And I watched how they subsided and reappeared in patterns that could not have been random, and I began to understand. The pain of the world, its despair and torment, was written in those flames. They were bent and tainted, cruel and deformed. I knew that with only the smallest changes, the slightest of twists, I could fix them. And in mending them, I would mend the world.
Fallion strode purposefully down the rutted road toward the gates of Castle Coorm.
The sun was rising now, a brilliant gold rim of light on the horizon and not a cloud in the sky. Behind him, the others followed.
Each of them bore a torch, though Fallion made sure that his burned the brightest.
“Torch-bearer.” That was Fallion’s name among the flameweavers. Somehow, as he bore the torch toward the castle, he wondered if it was only descriptive, or if it was prophetic.
The castle gate was closed, the drawbridge had been raised again. Fallion could see a pair of mallards grabbling in the serene waters of the moat, splashing and preening, while their chicks bobbed about in their wake. But whenever he looked to the drawbridge, he suddenly had a flash of light that pierced his eye, and he saw the Seal of the Inferno, burning inside a ring of fire.
“Look,” Jaz muttered. “There’s the old rock where I used to hunt for that bullfrog. Do you think it’s still there?”
Fallion glanced at the rock, there at the side of the moat, with rushes growing up around it. He smiled at the memory. “Go and see, if you want.”
Jaz laughed. “Hey, can rocks shrink? This whole castle seems much smaller than it used to be.”
The guards atop the castle wall had taken notice of them, raising their bows and nocking arrows, crouching between the merlons atop the castle wall. There were eight archers. One guard raced down into the depths of the castle.
Fallion marched right up to the edge of the moat, where he and his brother had fished as children.
“That will be far enough!” a guard shouted dangerously from the wall. “State your name and business.”
“My name is my own affair,” Fallion said. “I have come to challenge Lord Hale to personal combat, to avenge the honor of this girl, the Lady Farion-and to avenge the honor of the land of Mystarria.”
Fallion heard a gruff laugh and the sound of heavy boots pounding up wooden stairs in the gate tower, just to his left. Lord Hale did not come swiftly. He came in a measured pace, ponderously, thump, thud, thump. By the creaking of wooden steps, Fallion could tell that he must be a hill of a man.
But when Lord Hale appeared, leering down over the battlements, Fallion was not sure that he was a man at all.
Lord Hale was huge, nearly seven feet tall and four feet wide at the shoulder. There was no beauty or grace in him. His flaccid jowls were so pale that he might never have spent a day in the sun, and his silver eyes were lifeless and hollow, like pits gouged in ice. He was bald on top, with a circlet of long greasy hair that covered his ears. It seemed to be silver on the ends, but looked almost as if it were rotting at the roots, like a tuft of cotton that has festered in its boll through the winter.
But it wasn’t just the man’s hair that seemed to be rotting. There were blotches on his forehead, yellow fungal growths layered over a patch of dirty warts.
He was toad of a man, a festering toad, dying from cankers.
And then there was his expression, his manner. He leaned his fat elbows upon a merlon and peered down upon Fallion with a superior air, and there was such malevolent intent lined upon every inch of his face, that Fallion had seldom seen the like.
It isn’t just his hair that is rotting, Fallion thought. It is all of him. The evil in him is so strong, it’s rotting him away.
Fallion peered at him, through him. He could detect no locus in the man’s soul, no festering evil from the netherworld. But Fallion had learned that not all evil men harbored the parasites. Greed and stupidity alone accounted for much evil in the world.
“I know you,” Hale leered. “I knew you’d come back. I told her, I did. I says to Shadoath, ‘Let me watch the castle here. They always come back.’”
So, Fallion realized, the man worked for Fallion’s old enemy. Hale had manned his outpost for years, and even now perhaps was unaware that the war was over and that Shadoath had lost. The very fact that Hale had come with Shadoath though, gave Fallion pause. And briefly Fallion wondered if Shadoath had returned-if the locus had taken a new body.
Perhaps Hale is not human, Fallion thought. Shadoath had brought fallen Bright Ones and golaths with her from the netherworld, along with her strengi-saats. It was possible that Hale was something other than human, some breed of giant.
Hale studied Jaz, Rhianna, and Talon, gave an approving nod. “So, I knew you’d come back,” he said smugly. “But I didn’t know you’d come back like salmon-to spawn.”
He burst into a round of crude laughter, and some of the archers on the wall followed suit.
He plans to kill us, Fallion knew, but he won’t try it yet. He wants to savor the moment, draw it out.
“So, I remember you,” Hale said. “Do you remember me?”
Fallion shook his head. “No.”
“We’ve met before,” Hale said. “I’ll give you a hint. It was on that day you run off.”
Fallion remembered. Lord Asgaroth had brought troops to the castle, surrounded it, and then demanded that Fallion’s mother offer up her sons as hostages.
Fallion himself had stood on the wall and given his answer, commanding the archers to open fire.
“I remember,” Fallion said, not completely sure. “A fat man on a pony, a giant of a target, rushing off. I remember a fleeting thought, ‘How could they miss that one!’”
Lord Hale roared in glee. Oh how he was savoring the moment. Fallion calculated that in an instant, he would command his troops to fire.
So Fallion took the initiative.
“I did not command my men to fire lightly,” Fallion said. “It is a grave thing to take another’s life, even if it must be done to satisfy justice.”
Hale mocked his choice of words. “Oh, it is indeed a grave thing to take a life. Ain’t it lads?”
“I’m sorry now that I must take yours,” Fallion said. “I offer you one last chance. Surrender yourself, and I will be lenient.”
It was a sincere offer, but Hale merely grinned patiently and said, “Come and take my life, if you think you can.”
Fallion raised his hand, as he had upon that fateful day, and called out to Lord Hale’s troops. These were no
