Worldbinder Part 22

"I saw only one of the Knights Eternal," the captain reported. "He hides at the back, in the doorway to the kitchen. I think that he has the hostages there."

High King Urstone sat on a rock, sharpening the other-worlder's long sword. Oiling and sharpening seemed to do little good. It was rusting even as he worked.

"Even one Knight Eternal is more than anyone can safely deal with," the Wizard Sisel said. "And I fear that this is Vulgnash himself."

"It's as cold as the tomb in there," the captain said. "My veins feel like they are frozen."

The captain grimaced in pain, reached down his s.h.i.+rt, and brought out a large maggot. It was perhaps three inches long and as thick as a woodworm. Even as he held it, the maggot swiveled its head this way and that, struggling to bite him. The captain hurled it to the ground and gave it the heel of his boot.

"Even to get close to Vulgnash brings a small death," Sisel told the king. "You must be wary."

"He's not the worst of Zul-torac's terrors," the king said.

The captain cleared his throat. "One more thing. Watch your footing in there. The floors are slick. He has turned that place into a slaughterhouse."

"Not a slaughterhouse," Sisel said, "a temple-where the high priest of death administers the ordinances of death."

King Urstone smiled weakly. This wasn't a task that he relished doing. Hundreds of his forces were gone, and he still hadn't gotten the badger out of its den.

"Do me a favor, captain. Have some of your men go out back. There should be a door to the kitchen, or a window at least. Get them open."

"The brush is thick back there," the captain said. "It will take a while to get through it."

"Make lots of noise," the king said. "I could use a distraction."

King Urstone peered up. The Emir stood over him, holding the other-worlder's staff, inspecting it. Of all the weapons, this one alone had remained untouched by the Knight Eternals' curse.

"Do you think that will do you any good?" Urstone asked.

"I hope so," the Emir said. He would bear it into battle. He was as faithful and capable a warrior as King Urstone had ever known, a true friend.

Madoc himself bore the dainty little sword, while two dozen archers had each commandeered a single arrow from the other-worlder's quiver.

"Right then," the king said. "Let's go."

He gave one final look to the Wizard Sisel and asked, "Is there a last blessing you might bestow upon me?"

The wizard got a bemused expression, stood for a long moment as if trying to recall something he'd heard in the distant past. King Urstone had expected no boon, but he could see the wizard's mind at work.

There is something, King Urstone thought, some lore that he recalls from the otherworld.

"Don't go into battle like this," Sisel said at last. "Don't go in haste, or fear, or rage." He glanced up to the trees. "Take a look around. Look at the trees, the sunlight, the gra.s.s." He fell silent, and King Urstone could hear the sound of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs in the distance, a squirrel chattering, and after a moment, the squawk of a jay. "This is a lush land, full of life. Look at this fortress. In better times, it could be put to use as an inn. It would be a pleasant place to stop and have a meal.

"But Vulgnash has turned it into a tomb.

"Light and life oppose him. In there, he hides from them. You must draw upon these, if you will defeat him."

The wizard reached into his pocket, drew out some pea pods that he might have harvested from his garden. "Take these with you. There is life in them. And after this meeting, you would do well to plant the seeds somewhere."

King Urstone noted that the wizard called this a meeting, meeting, not a battle. not a battle.

King Urstone smiled. It sounded like madness. Taking seeds into battle?

The wizard saw his look, and gently chided him. "Don't put such faith in your arms. They will do you no good in there. How many strong men have died this day, putting their faith in such weapons? And don't go prepared to die. Nearly every warrior who confronts death prepares himself to die. Look inside yourself and find hope. Can you think of no great reason to live?"

Only last night, King Urstone had succ.u.mbed to despair and had been prepared to go into battle and lose his life. But then he had learned of the forcibles, and of a plan to save his son, and of the small folk who now inhabited the land. All of these things were renewing a hope that he had thought long dead. "Your words to me last night gave me hope," King Urstone said, "great hope indeed, and a reason to live."

Tonight my son will be free, he thought.

"Good," Sisel said, reaching up and clutching the king's arm in token of friends.h.i.+p. "Then go now, not as a servant of death, but as a minister of life." He looked pointedly at Madoc, "Leave these others behind. You have no need of them."

King Urstone did not charge in as the soldiers had. He was not going to run blindly into a trap. Nor would he s.h.i.+rk his duty, or stumble on quavering knee.

He strode resolutely to the mouth of the fortress, of the tomb, and planted himself just outside the broken door.

His breath streamed cold from his mouth, and his blood turned to ice water in his veins. He could see heaped bodies lying in a pool of black blood. The air smelled thick with death.

A shadow filled the room before him, a black ma.s.s. He could not make out a human form, but he could hear labored breathing, and he could sense a monstrous evil hidden within.

The king advanced toward the doorway, and Vulgnash caught sight of his weapon, the other-worldly steel gleaming red in a shaft of sunlight.

Even that brief image undid him. Vulgnash held back a shriek, half blinded by pain, and threw a hand in the air to s.h.i.+eld his eyes.

He looked at the king, and heard voices. For half an instant, he had a vision of King Urstone as a young man, kneeling upon one knee, surrounded by his warlords. Each of them laid his left hand upon the young king's head, and a wizard spoke for them all. "Upon you we place the hope of all our people. Though you be king, you are a servant to us all."

There was great power in such words, whether the humans knew it or not. Vulgnash could feel the hopes of many surrounding the king, s.h.i.+elding him like a battle guard.

Vulgnash stretched out his hand, hoping to rend the king from a distance, but his curse could not touch the man.

And there was life all around him, white-hot life. He carried seeds upon him.

The king halted, just outside the door, and planted his long sword in the ground, then stood with his hands folded over the pommel. The blade was angled so that red sunlight cut through the blackness, causing Vulgnash great pain.

What is this? Vulgnash wondered. Where did the humans learn such lore?

"Vulgnash," King Urstone called out. "Show yourself."

Vulgnash held to his shadows.

The king hesitated for a long moment, and then shouted, "Vulgnash, I offer you your life."

Vulgnash laughed, "That is not in your power."

Suddenly, a wizard stood at the king's back, a plump man with a sunburned face and a brown beard going gray. He too bore seeds upon him, and the life within him was like a white-hot fire. "But it is in mine," the wizard said. "Come out, and I will heal you. I can give you life, fresh and clean, unlike any that you have ever known. You will be a slave to no one. I can give you your your own life. I cannot remove the wyrm that gnaws upon your soul. Only you can do that. A life devoted to clean thoughts and good deeds will drive it out." own life. I cannot remove the wyrm that gnaws upon your soul. Only you can do that. A life devoted to clean thoughts and good deeds will drive it out."

Could it be? Vulgnash wondered. Could I be granted life, after more than five thousand years?

"I rejected life long ago," Vulgnash hissed. "I reject it now."

The king lowered his eyelids in sign of acceptance. "If not life, then I can give you oblivion with this sword," he intoned softly. "Eternal sleep and forgetfulness."

Vulgnash drew himself up, and for the first time in centuries, he felt disconcerted. Something was wrong. Normally, his victims were filled with fear, an emotion that worked to Vulgnash's benefit.

But this king knew better than to hope to slay a Knight Eternal in arger. Such hopes were false hopes, and would only have worked to his demise.

Yet he advanced anyway, without fear, and offered Vulgnash something more terrible than death-life. He carried seeds upon him, and the hopes of his people, and he bore an accursed sword.

It was as if Vulgnash stood before some mage king who had walked straight out of some long forgotten legend. King Urstone's calm demeanor hinted at a tremendous reserve of power.

Against such a man, I dare not stand, Vulgnash decided.

With a roar he bent his will upon the door to the kitchen, used his mind to slam it shut. The door trembled in its frame and dust rained down. He bolted it, then raced to the small ones, glared down at Fallion Orden.

Everything in him warned that he should kill the young wizard. But Lady Despair had commanded otherwise.

In that moment, Vulgnash had no choice but to flee.

In the s.p.a.ce of a heartbeat the roof exploded off the old fortress, fifteen tons of stone hurtling four hundred feet in the air.

The watchtower was thrown aside as if it were a toy, dashed aside by an angry child.

Urstone's men screamed and raced for cover.

Fearing the worst, King Urstone charged the bolted door, hit it with his shoulder. The rotting wood gave way, and the door split cleanly down the middle.

He caught sight of his target, a hunched figure cowled in red, clutching a sword.

The Knight Eternal hunched above the prisoners, motionless.

The roof of the building crashed somewhere in the distance, shattering trees and leaving a wake of ruin.

Sunlight slanted into the building, playing upon motes of dust that danced in the air.

And the Knight Eternal merely stood there, unmoving.

King Urstone peered at him. It was no living man that he saw, only a rotting corpse with sunken eyes, wrinkled skin like aging paper.

The king plunged his sword through, just to be sure. The sword pierced easily, as if he had struck a wasp's nest. The organs were desiccated, the bones weak with rot.

"He is not there," the Wizard Sisel said softly. "I fear that his spirit has fled, and that we shall meet again."

Sisel reached up and touched Vulgnash's cheek.

"We should burn this dry husk," one of the king's men said. "It will make it harder for him to re-corporate."

"That is just an old wife's tale," Sisel replied. "Vulgnash will just find another suitable corpse to inhabit; by sundown he will be on our trail. Still, take the heads off of the dead here in this room. We don't want to leave bodies lying handy for him to use."

"Take the wings off of him," King Urstone said. "I claim them as my own."

The wizard looked down at the four hostages, laid out on the floor. The vines that bound them suddenly loosened and fell away, as if drained of some infernal will.

The doorway behind them filled with men-warlord Madoc and the Emir and dozens of warriors.

The wizard spoke softly to the otherworlders for just a moment, then smiled and said to Fallion in his own tongue, "Fallion Orden, I'd like you to meet the grandfather that died before you were born." He nodded toward King Urstone, then spoke in the king's tongue, "And King Urstone, I would like you to meet the grandsons that-upon your world at least-were never born."

27.

A PAIR OF KINGS.

Hope should never come unlooked-for. It should always be held in your heart.

-the Wizard Sisel "Your Highness, this is outrageous!" Warlord Madoc burst out. "Surely you don't believe this."

Madoc was red with rage. He had waited all morning for a chance to take the king from behind, but there had been no opportunity. The king hadn't waded into battle until the very last, and then he had gone in alone. Madoc couldn't put an end to him, for there would have been too many witnesses.

Now this mad wizard was trying to foist these otherworlders off as new-found heirs.

"Outrageous?" Sisel said. "I think not. Fallion Orden here is the firstborn son of Gaborn Val Orden, a king of great import upon his own world. Fallion's grandfather lost his life in battle before Fallion was born. That man was you, King Urstone, upon that shadow world. He was your shadow self. And so when the worlds combined, you had no other half to combine with.

"In the same way," the wizard continued, "on our world, their mother was lost while she still carried her firstborn in her arms."

King Urstone bowed his head in thought. Areth's wife had died while he was away, killed in a wyrmling a.s.sault. The wyrmlings had tried to take her prisoner, but she had slipped from their grasp and thrown herself from the tower wall, with her babe in arms. She gave her life rather than let her child be raised among the wyrmlings-for had she been taken, her royal child would have been raised as one of their slaves.

King Urstone had always felt guilty for this. I should have been there to protect her, he thought, instead of staying out for the night on patrol.

"It doesn't matter who they are," Drewish shouted. "They cannot be heirs to the throne. Look at them: they're not even warriors."

King Urstone looked down at the little humans. They squatted on rocks in the last of the sunlight, s.h.i.+vering, away from the infernal slaughterhouse, and rubbed their wrists and knees, trying to get back some circulation.

One of the girls was large, though, like one of the warrior clan. Her face was familiar, but he could not put a name to her.

"It's not size that is the measure of a warrior," she said in their own tongue. "There are few among you who could best King Orden here in a fight."