For one person to tell of it was madness. For two to tell of it was a fluke. But this girl was the third in a single day. A pattern had emerged.
And then there was the matter of the small folk. Since the change, Cullossax had heard rumors that there might be millions of them in the world.
'Who is the emperor in this land of yours?' Cullossax asked.
'I did not serve an emperor there,' she said. 'But there was a great king, the Earth King, Gaborn Val Orden, who ruled with kindness and compassion. He told me when I was a child that the time will come when the small folk of the world must stand against the large. He said that I would know when that time had come. Gaborn Val Orden served and protected his people. But our emperor only feeds on his people!'
The name Orden was known to Cullossax. It was a strange name, hard on the wyrmling tongue. As a tormentor, Cullossax was privy to many secrets. Just after dawn a prisoner had been delivered to the dungeon, a powerful wizard named Fallion Orden-a wizard who had been the son of a great king on another world, a wizard who had such vast powers that he had bound two worlds into one.
Now the great Vulgnash himself had been assigned to guard this dangerous wizard.
'Where is this realm of Inkarra?' Cullossax demanded.
'South,' the child said. 'Their warrens are to the south, beyond the mountains. Let me go, and I can show you. I ll take you there.'
It was a curious offer. But Cullossax had a job to do.
Down he led the child, past the guards who blocked his way, into the dungeons where light never reached.
The girl struggled, twisting and scratching at his hand, until he cuffed her hard enough so that she went limp, and her struggles ceased.
Her mouth fell open, revealing her oversized canines. Small rubies had been inset into each of them, rubies carved to look like serpents. It was a symbol of her status, as one of the intellectual elite.
How far you have fallen, little one, Cullossax thought.
At the outer gates to the dungeons, he took the necklace from around his neck and used the key to enter.
At last he reached the Black Cell, the most heavily guarded of all.
Cullossax drew near its iron door, and would have opened it, but a pair of guards blocked him.
Cullossax could see through a grate in the door. Inside, a bright light shone. Vulgnash stood in his red cowl and robes, his artificial red wings flapping slightly. He loomed above a small human, a man with dark black hair, and a pair of wings. The ground in the cell was rimed with frost, and Cullossax s breath came out as a fog when he peered in.
Within the cell stood a wyrmling lord, a captain dressed in black, a man with the papery hands of one who had almost given up the flesh, one who was almost ready to transition to Death Lord. He was holding up a thumb- lantern, examining the wizard Fallion Orden.
There was no sign of this wondrous new torture that the tormentor had told Cullossax about. Cullossax had expected to see some novel contraption-perhaps an advancement upon the crystal cage, the tormentor s most sophisticated device.
Now the Death Lord spoke softly, his voice almost a hiss.
Cullossax was not supposed to hear, he suspected, but wyrmlings have sharp ears, and his were sharper than most.
'We must take care,' the Death Lord whispered. 'Despair senses a coming danger. It is dim, but it haunts us nonetheless. He told me to bring warning.'
'A danger to whom?' Vulgnash asked.
'To our fortress guards,' the captain said. 'He suspects that humans are coming, a force small but powerful. They are coming here, to this cell. They hope to free Fallion Orden.'
'Then I will be ready for them,' Vulgnash said.
' We must be ready,' the captain said. 'The humans will send their greatest heroes. We must be sure that they are properly received. We have sent for forcibles. When they come, you will need further endowments.'
The Death Lord peered hard at Vulgnash. 'You look weak. Do you need a soul to feed upon?'
'I have sent for one.'
The Death Lord laughed softly, a mocking laugh, as if at some private joke. He was laughing at Vulgnash s victim.
Cullossax stepped back from the iron door, peered down at the girl at his feet. In that instant, he suddenly knew something beyond a shadow of a doubt.
They feed on us, Cullossax thought, just as the girl said. The Emperor Zul-torac, the Knights Eternal, the Death Lords-they care no more for us than the adder does for the rat. We are nothing to them.
In his mind, he heard the girl s question: Doesn t a person have a right to defend himself from society?
Cullossax had seldom allowed himself such dangerous notions.
It doesn t have to be this way. There is a place called Inkarra, somewhere far from here…
He tried to imagine a world worth dying for.
It is odd how the mind can snap. After a lifetime of service to the empire, Cullossax suddenly found himself smiling inanely.
What if I denied the Knight Eternal this meal? he wondered, gripping the girl s limp wrist. They would kill me if they caught me.
And with the thought, it seemed to Cullossax that he no longer had a choice.
He turned and began to drag the girl away.
'What are you doing?' a guard demanded. 'Bring her back.'
'She s dead,' Cullossax objected. 'I hit her too hard. I ll bring another.'
One of the guards snorted in disgust, a sound that said, I would not want to be you, when Vulgnash learns of your clumsiness, and Cullossax dragged the girl on, sweat streaming from his brow.
Sometime as he stalked through the corridors, the girl groaned in pain, then awoke with a snarl, clawing at him in her fury.
He dragged her on, toward the southernmost exit. Up he went, to the very surface, until he reached the gates that blocked the entrance.
Outside, the sun blazed in the sky, horrifying and malignant. It was mid-morning.
'Open the gates,' Cullossax growled at the guards. 'I have business outside the fortress.'
'What business?' the guards snarled.
The girl whimpered and fought, trying to break free. She bit his wrist, sinking her canines in.
'This one wants to leave,' Cullossax said. 'It pleases me to let her go-and for me to hunt her. Her skin will hang inside the labyrinth s walls, as a warning to others.'
The guards laughed. With so many people trying to flee the city, it seemed a reasonable idea.
'You ll let her leave by daylight?' a guard asked.
'The better to burn her eyes out,' Cullossax said. 'Then I ll hunt her by night, while she staggers about, blinded by the sun.'
The guards roared in laughter.
So he let her go.
Gibbering in fear, the girl crawled a few steps, blind with terror and even more blinded by the sun. Then she suddenly found her courage, leapt to her feet, and went sprinting down the road, her hand over her face to shield her eyes as she headed for the forest.
Now Cullossax would wait, and as he waited, he vacillated. He wanted to see this girl s dream world. But he did not want to get caught. Perhaps it would be better to kill her after all. He could not be sure. With every passing minute, he worried that soldiers would be sent to apprehend him.
Cullossax stood with the guards for hours, gleaning the latest news from outside while the sun hit its zenith and then began to fall. Last night the battle had been won against the men of Caer Luciare, they all assured him, and rumor said that the warrior clans had been be wiped off the face of the earth.
Such news contradicted Cullossax s own sources, and the guards had heard nothing about the Great Wyrm taking a new form, demonstrating marvelous powers.
