But Vulgnash had more than endowments to his credit. He stretched forth his hand and drew starlight from the sky. From horizon to horizon, darkness suddenly stretched, while a thin light whirled like a tornado out of the skies, and landed blazing hot in his palm.
When the darkness faded, he peered ahead, but saw no sign of Rhianna.
She has dived into the trees, Vulgnash reasoned. Smart girl.
He peered down and ahead, where a copse of elms rose beside a stream, their canopy of leaves shielding the ground from view.
He searched for signs of movement, hoping that she had veered into a tree, that its swaying branches would betray her.
But he saw nothing. Dimly, he became aware of shouting far behind. Wyrmlings were roaring frantically.
He craned his neck, looking back. The girl was behind him!
She redoubled her speed during that moment of darkness, he realized.
And now she was winging toward the giant graak, like a falcon to the nest of a dove.
Now we shall see how the wyrmling warriors fare! Vulgnash thought. He had hated bringing them. They and their mount only slowed him down. He longed to see them fail, these fierce champions rife with endowments, all under the protection of their master.
But Rhianna did not dare engage them. She flew straight toward their graak, hurtling in with an astonishing burst of speed, and then dropped as she neared. The warriors hurled battle darts.
She fell, dodging missiles, and the enormous black graak snapped at her as she passed.
Then Rhianna s wings unfolded and she was rising again.
Vulgnash saw a flash of silver as her blade struck the monster s right wing, slicing the leathery membrane between its bones.
The huge graak roared in pain; instantly it began to fall, unable to bear its weight. The graak dropped, flapping frantically, spinning out of control. Wyrmling warriors cried out and fought to hold on, though some tumbled from their mount, raining from the sky.
After downing the graak, Rhianna went soaring upward, wings flapping so quickly that she made a vertical climb.
The girl has learned to fly well in two days, Vulgnash realized, better than I would have imagined.
Some of that had to do with her endowments of wit, he suspected. She would learn much more quickly, when she recalled every twinge of every muscle.
Part of it was her small size. The large wings gave her greater lift than a wyrmling, and allowed for acrobatics that Vulgnash would never master.
But he suspected that there had to be more to it. The girl had tremendous reflexes. In part she might have been born with them, but they had also been trained through years of battle practice.
Yet she did not press the attack. She hurtled around him in a wide circle, and went winging off into the distance.
She fears me, Vulgnash suddenly realized. She is nothing.
She didn t dare get near him. She was hoping that he d give chase. She was only seeking to distract him, delay him.
He whirled and peered forward. Sure enough, Fallion and the others had fled the clearing and gone into the trees.
Vulgnash growled in frustration, and redoubled his speed, racing toward the meadow at the base of the hill.
As he neared, he spotted movement in the trees.
The Wizard Sisel hid there, between the boles of two mighty elms, with Fallion at his back.
The ground was clear beneath him, except for a carpet of desiccated leaves. The wizard raised his staff in hand and held it at one end, swinging it in great arcs like a club, muttering an incantation.
He hopes to cast a spell of some kind, Vulgnash realized, but Vulgnash had no fear. Vulgnash was under the Earth King s protection. If Sisel were going to attack, Vulgnash would have heard his master s warning.
The old wizard knew many tricks, but his spells were all about healing and protection. At the best, he might hope to avert Vulgnash s fireball.
Vulgnash glided toward the pair warily, like an eagle on the wing.
He could hear the wizard shouting his incantation:
Bright flows your blood.
And hale are your bones.
Your heart is no longer a heart of stone.
Light fills your eyes, and brightens your mind with longings common to all mankind.
Suddenly the wizard whirled and pointed his staff, and though Vulgnash was still a quarter of a mile away, too far to hurl a fireball, the effects of Sisel s spell were devastating.
A force smashed into him, like a powerful wave that smote him and washed through him. The blow was minor, not much greater than he d feel if a gust of wind hit him.
But in an instant, the world changed.
Vulgnash suddenly felt a powerful need for air.
In five thousand years, he had never drawn a single breath, and it was as if his body recognized this fact, and filled him with a singular craving.
At the same time, he was assailed by a consuming hunger. He had never eaten as humans do. He had always drawn his life force from others when the need arose. But instantly he realized that his belly seemed to be clinging to his backbone.
More than that, there was a tremendous pounding in his chest as his heart burst into motion, and every sense came alive. He felt warm wind streaming through his hair, and every follicle of it was alive. For the first time he tasted the smell of the earth-the rich humus of the forest nearby and the drying grasses of the fields below.
His own robes held the cloying scent of death, of decaying flesh, and he d never recognized his own reek.
A tremendous thirst overtook him, for he had never tasted water, and suddenly the mucus in his throat seemed drier than sand.
In shock, Vulgnash peered ahead and saw that the spell had cost the Wizard Sisel dearly. Where once his robes had been russet and burnt umber, the colors of dying leaves, suddenly they had gone as white as snow, while his beard and hair had turned to silver.
He now leaned on his staff, gasping, as if he had just run a tremendous race.
The pain that Vulgnash felt was more than he could bear. Vulgnash wailed in torment and lobbed the fireball from his hand, sent it careering toward the wizard. But he had thrown too soon. The fireball raced forward a hundred yards, then began to expand, growing larger and larger, and slowing with every second. By the time it reached the trees, it had become nothing more than a cloud of burning gas, and the wizard turned and fled, disappearing from sight.
Vulgnash went wheeling down to the earth, slamming into a tree, then falling in a tangle.
He hit the ground, and such an overwhelming feeling of illness coursed through him that he was reeling with pain.
I m alive! he realized. I m mortal.
He climbed to his knees and peered at his hands, as if he d never seen them before. There were holes in his arm where maggots had burrowed into his flesh, and everywhere that he had a hole, the pain was white-hot and magnificent.
Lying on his belly, Vulgnash collapsed among the dead leaves on the forest floor, smelling the rot of decomposing humus, the scent of mold and soil.
Blood had begun to flow from the wormholes in his arms, welling up unexpectedly.
Vulgnash folded his arms in close, and sat for a moment, rocking back and forth, mind racing.
I m mortal, he realized. I m undone.
His heart hammered with excitement; emotions that he d never felt before assailed him-dread, hopelessness, fatigue. He d never realized how powerful and incapacitating human emotions could be.
I m mortal.
