Some had fear upon their faces, while others fears deepened to dread. But some faces shone with wonder or hope, bloodlust or exultation.
It was a rare and heady combination. It was an exciting time to be alive.
Four days ago, a huge army had left Rugassa to destroy the last of the humans at Caer Luciare. The attack was to have begun that very night. Thus the hope upon the people s faces that, after a war that had raged for three thousand years, the last of their enemies would be gone.
But then two days past, everything had changed: a whole world had fallen from the sky, and when it struck, the worlds did not crash and break. Instead, they combined into one whole, a world that was new and different, a world that combined the magics and peoples of two worlds, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Mountains had fallen and rivers had flooded. Ancient forests suddenly sprouted outside the castle gate where none had stood before. There were reports of strange creatures in the land, and all was in chaos.
Now reports were coming from wyrmling outposts in every quarter: there was something new in the land- humans, smaller folk than those of Caer Luciare. If the reports could be believed, they lived by the millions in every direction. It was rumored that it was one of their own wizards who bound the world of the wyrmlings with their own.
Such power was cause enough for the wyrmling s nervousness. But there was also cause for celebration.
Within the past few hours, rumors had been screaming through the chain of command that the Great Wyrm itself had taken a new form and now walked the labyrinth, showing abilities that had never been dreamed, not even in wyrmling legend.
Strange times indeed.
The last battle against the human warrior clans had been fought. Caer Luciare had been taken. The human warriors had been slaughtered and routed.
The news was glorious. But the wyrmlings remained nervous, unsure what might happen next. They stood in small knots and gossiped when they should be working. Some were disobedient and needed to be brought back into line.
So Cullossax the tormentor was busy.
In dark corridors where only glow worms lit his way, he searched through the creche, where the scent of children mingled with mineral smells of the warren, until at last he found a teaching chamber with three silver stars above the door.
He did not call out at the door, but instead shoved it open. There, a dogmatist stood against a wall with his pupils, wyrmling children fifteen or sixteen years of age. Few of the children had begun to grow the horny nubs at their temples yet, and so they looked small and effeminate.
At the center of the room, a single young girl was chained by the ankle to an iron rung in the floor. She had a desk-a few planks lying upon an iron frame. But instead of sitting at her desk, she crouched beneath it, moaning and peering away distantly, as if lost in some dream. She rocked back and forth as she moaned.
She was a pretty girl, by wyrmling standards. All wyrmlings had skin that was faintly bioluminescent, and children, with their excess energy, glowed strongly, while those who were ancient, with their leathery skin, faded altogether. This girl was a bright one, with silky white hair, innocent eyes, a full round face, and breasts that had already fully blossomed.
'She refuses to sit,' said the dogmatist, a stern old man of sixty years. 'She refuses to take part in class. When we recite the catechisms, she mouths the words. When we examine the policies, she will not answer questions.'
'How long has she been like this?' the tormentor asked.
'For two days now,' the dogmatist said. 'I have berated her and beaten her, but still she refuses to cooperate.'
'Yet she gave you no trouble before?'
'None,' the dogmatist admitted.
It was the tormentor s job to dole out punishment, to do it thoroughly and dispassionately. Whether that punishment be public strangulation, or dismemberment, or some other torture, it did not matter.
Surely, this could not go on.
Cullossax knelt beside the girl, studied the child. There had to be a punishment. But Cullossax did not have to dole out the ultimate penalty.
'You must submit,' Cullossax said softly, dangerously. 'Society has a right to protect itself from the individual. Surely you see the wisdom in this?'
The girl rolled her eyes and peered away, as if carried to some faraway place in her imagination. She scratched at her throat, near a pendant made from a mouse s skull.
Cullossax had seen too many like her in the past couple of days, people who chose to turn their faces to the wall and die. Beating her would not force her to submit. Nor would anything else. He would probably have to kill her, and that was a waste. This was a three-star school, the highest level. This girl had potential. So before the torments began, he decided to try reasoning with her.
'What are you thinking?' Cullossax demanded, his voice soft and deep. 'Are you remembering something? Are you remembering… another place?'
That caught the girl. She turned her head slowly, peered into Cullossax s eyes.
'Yes,' she whimpered, giving out a soft sob, then she began shaking in fear.
'What do you remember?' Cullossax demanded.
'My life before,' the child said. 'I remember walking under green fields in the starlight. I lived with my mother there, and two sisters, and we raised pigs and kept a garden. The place we lived in was called Inkarra.'
Just like so many others. This was the third today to name that place. Each of them had spoken of it the same, as if it were a place of longing. Each of them hated their life in Rugassa.
It was the binding, of course. Cullossax was only beginning to understand, but much had changed when the two worlds were bound into one.
Children like this girl claimed to recall another life on that other world, a world where children were not kept in cages, a world where harsh masters did not make demands of them. They all dreamed of returning.
'It is all a dream,' Cullossax said, hoping to convince her. 'It isn t real. There is no place where children play free of fear. There is only here and now. You must learn to be responsible, to give away your own selfish desires.
'If you continue to resist,' Cullossax threatened, 'you know what I must do. When you reject society, you remove yourself from it. This cannot be tolerated, for then you are destined to become a drain upon society, not a contributor.
'Society has the right, and the duty, to protect itself from the individual.'
Normally, at this time, Cullossax would afflict the subject. Sometimes the very threat of torment would strike enough fear into the heart of the reprobate that she would do anything to prove her obedience. But Cullossax had discovered over the past two days that these children were not likely to submit at all.
'What shall I do with you?' Cullossax asked.
The girl was shaking still, speechless with terror.
'Who is society?' she asked suddenly, as if she had come upon a plan to win some leniency.
'Society consists of all of the individuals that make up the whole,' Cullossax said, quoting from the catechisms that the child was to be studying.
'But which one of the people makes up the rules?' she asked. 'Which one of them says that I must die if I do not follow the rules?'
'All of them,' Cullossax answered reasonably. But he knew that that was not true.
The girl caught him in his lie. 'The catechisms say that Right acts follow from right thinking. But youth and stupidity are barriers to right thinking. Thus, we must submit to those who are wiser than we. Ultimately the emperor, by virtue of the great immortal wyrm that lives within him, is wisest of all.'
Wyrmling education consisted of rote memorization of the catechisms, not upon learning the skills of reading and writing. The wyrmlings had found that forcing children to memorize the words verbatim trained their minds well, and in time led to an almost infallible memory. This girl had strung together some catechisms in order to form the core of an argument. Now she asked her question: 'So if the emperor is wisest, does not the emperor make the
