The Wyrmling Horde Read online

  Cullossax wondered at his own reasons for wanting to show her compassion. It was high summer, and in a few weeks he would go into musth. Already he felt the edginess, the arousal, and the beginnings of the mad rage that assailed him at this time of year. The girl was desirable enough, though she was too young to go into heat.

  The girl’s face was blank as she walked toward her execution. Cullossax had seen that look so often before.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, knowing that it was easier if he kept them talking.

  “There are so many worlds,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. “Two worlds have combined, and when they did, two of my shadow selves became one. It’s like having lived two lifetimes.” She fell silent for a second, then asked, “Have you ever seen the stars?” Most wyrmlings in the labyrinth would never have been topside.

  “Yes,” he answered, “once.”

  “My grandmother was the village wise woman at my home in Inkarra,” the girl said. “She told me that every star is but a shadow of the One True Star, and each of them has a shadow world that spins around it, and that there are a million million shadow worlds.”

  “Hah,” Cullossax said, intrigued. He had never heard of such a thing. The very strangeness of such a cosmology drew his interest.

  “So think,” the girl said. “Two worlds combined, and when they did, it is like two pieces of me came together, making a larger whole. I feel stronger than ever before, more alive and complete. Here in the wyrmling horde, I was driven and cunning. But on the other world, I was learning to be wise, to take joy in life.” She gave him a moment to think, then asked, “What if there are other pieces of me out there? What if I have a million million shadow selves, and all of them combined into one person in a single breath? What would I be like? What things would I know? It would be like having lived a billion lifetimes all at once. Perhaps on a few thousand worlds, I might have learned perfect self-discipline, and on others I might have spent lifetimes studying how to make peace among warring nations. And if I were combined into one, imagine how whole all of those shadow selves would become.”

  The thought was staggering. Cullossax could not imagine such a thing. “They say a wizard combined the worlds,” Cullossax said. “They say he is in the dungeon now.”

  And I wish that I had the honor of being his tormentor, Cullossax thought.

  “Perhaps we should be helping him,” the girl suggested. “He has the power to bind all of the worlds into one.”

  What good would that do me? Cullossax wondered. Perhaps I have no other selves on other worlds.

  He was lost in thought when she struck. It happened so fast, she almost killed him. One instant she was walking blithely along, and the next moment she pulled a dagger from her sleeve and lunged—aiming for his eye.

  But his great height worked against her. Cullossax dodged backward, and the dagger nicked him below the eye. Blood sprang from the wound, as if he cried tears of blood.

  Fast as a mantis taking a cave cricket, she struck again, this time aiming for his throat. He raised an arm to block her swing. She twisted to the side and brought the dagger up to his kidney. It was a maneuver he’d learned as a youth, and he was ready for her. He reached down and caught her arm, then slammed her into a wall.

  The vicious creature screamed and leapt at him, her thumbs aimed at his eyes. He brought up a knee that caught her in the rib cage, knocking the air out of her.

  Even injured she growled and tried to fight. But now he had her by the scruff of the neck. He pinned her to the wall and strangled her into submission.

  It was a good fight from such a small girl—well timed and ruthless. She was not just a victim waiting to go to her death. She’d planned this all along!

  She’d lured him into the corridor, waited until they were in a lonely stretch of the warrens, and then done her best to leave him lying in a pool of blood.

  Doubtless, she had some plan for escape.

  Cullossax laughed. He admired her feistiness. When she was barely conscious, he reached into her tunic and felt for more weapons. All he felt was her soft flesh, but a thorough search turned up a second dagger in her boot.

  He threw them down the corridor, and as the girl began to come to, he put her in a painful wristlock and walked her to her death, whimpering and pleading.

  “I hate you,” she cried, weeping bitter tears. “I hate the world you’ve created. I’m going to destroy it, and build a better one in its place.”

  It was such a grandiose notion—one little wyrmling girl planning to change the world—that he had to laugh. “It is not I who made this world.”

  “You support it,” she accused. “You’re as guilty as the rest!”

  It happened that way sometimes. Those who were about to die would search for someone to accuse, rather than take responsibility for their own stupidity or weakness.

  But it was not Cullossax who had created her world. It was the Great Wyrm, whom some said had finally taken a new form, and now walked the halls of Rugassa.

  As they descended some stairs, a fellow tormentor who was climbing up from below called Cullossax to a halt. “Have you heard the news?”

  “What news?” Cullossax asked. He did not know the man well, but tormentors all belonged to a Shadow Order, a secret fraternity, and had sworn bloody oaths to protect one another and uphold one another and to promote one another’s interests, even in murder. Thus, as a tormentor, this man was a brother to him.

  “Despair has taken a new body, and now walks the labyrinth, displaying miraculous powers. As one of his first acts, he has devised a new form of torture, surpassing our finest arts. You should see!”

  Cullossax stood for a moment, overwhelmed. The Great Wyrm walked among them. He still could not believe his luck. Obviously, with the binding of the worlds, Despair felt the need to confirm his supremacy.

  The very thought filled Cullossax with awe. This was a great time to be alive.

  “So,” Cullossax teased, “Despair wants our jobs?”

  The tormentor laughed at the jest, then seemed to get an idea. “You are taking the girl to be slaughtered?”

  “Yes,” Cullossax said.

  “Take her to the dungeons instead, to the Black Cell. There you will find Vulgnash, the Knight Eternal. He has had a long flight and needs to feed. The girl’s life should be sweet to him.”

  The girl suddenly tried to rip free, for being consumed by a Knight Eternal was a fate worse than death.

  Cullossax grabbed the girl’s wrist, holding her tight. She bit him and clawed at him, but he paid her no mind.

  Cullossax hesitated. A Knight Eternal had no life of his own. Monsters like him did not need to breathe or eat or drink. Vulgnash could not gain nourishment by digesting flesh. Instead, he drew life from others, consuming their spiritual essence—their hopes and longings.

  Cullossax had provided the Knight Eternal with children before. Watching the monster feed was like watching an adder consume a rat.

  In his mind’s eye, Cullossax remembered a feeding from five years ago. Then Vulgnash, draped in his crimson robes, had taken a young boy.

  Like this girl, the boy had screamed in terror and struggled with renewed fury as they neared Vulgnash’s lair.

  “Ah,” Vulgnash had whispered, his wings quivering slightly in anticipation, “just in time.”

  Then Vulgnash had turned and totally focused on his victim. He seemed unaware that Cullossax was watching.

  The boy had cried and backed away into a corner, and every muscle of Vulgnash’s body was taut, charged with power, lest the child try to run.

  The boy did bolt, but Vulgnash lashed out and caught him, shoved him into the corner, and touched the child on the forehead—Vulgnash’s middle finger resting between the child’s eyes, his thumb and pinky on the boy’s mandibles, and a finger in each eye.

  Normally when a child was so touched, he ceased to fight. Like a mouse that is filled with scorpion’s venom, he would go limp.
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  But this boy fought. The child grabbed Vulgnash’s wrist and tried to shove him away. Vulgnash seized the boy by the throat with his left hand then, and maintained his grip with the right. The child bit at the Knight Eternal’s wrist, fighting valiantly.

  “Ah, a worthy one!” Vulgnash enthused.

  The boy tried twisting away. He began to scream, almost breaking Vulgnash’s grasp. There was a world of panic in the child’s eyes.

  “Why?” the child screamed. “Why does it have to be this way?”

  “Because I hunger,” Vulgnash had said, shoving the boy into the corner, holding him fast. As the boy’s essence began to drain, he shrieked in panic and shook his head, trying to break free of the monster’s touch. All hope and light drained from his face, and was replaced by an endless well of despair. His cries of terror changed into a throaty wail. He kicked and fought for a long moment while Vulgnash merely held him up against the wall.

  The Knight Eternal leaned close, his mouth inches from the boy’s, and then began to inhale, making a hissing sound.

  Cullossax had seen a thin light, like a mist, draining away from the child into Vulgnash’s mouth.

  Slowly, the child quit struggling, until at last his legs stopped kicking altogether. When the Knight Eternal was done, he’d dropped the child’s limp body.

  The boy lay in a heap, staring up into some private horror worse than any nightmare, barely breathing.

  “Ah, that was refreshing,” Vulgnash said. “Few souls are so strong.”

  Cullossax had stood for a moment, unsure what to do. Vulgnash jutted a chin toward the boy. “Get rid of the carcass.”

  Cullossax then grabbed the limp form and began dragging it up the corridor. The boy still breathed, and he moaned a bit, as if in terror.

  Grabbing the child’s head, Cullossax had given it a quick twist up and to the right, ending the child’s life, and his torment.

  Thus, Cullossax knew how this feeding would turn out. The Knight Eternal would put a hand over this girl’s pretty face, lean in close, almost as if to kiss, and with one indrawn hiss he would drain the life from her. He would take all of her hope and aspiration, all of her enjoyment and serenity.

  Realizing her fate, the girl fought to break free. She jerked her hand again and again, trying to break Cullossax’s grasp, but Cullossax seized the child’s wrist, digging the joint of his thumb into the ganglia of the girl’s wrist until her knees gave out from the pain.

  He wanted to see this new form of torture, so he dragged her to the dungeon.

  “Please,” she cried. “Take me back to the crèche. I’ll listen to the dogmatist! I’ll do anything. I promise!”

  But it was too late. The girl had chosen her fate. She let her knees buckle, refusing to walk any farther. Cullossax dragged the girl now, his fingernails biting into her flesh as she whimpered and pleaded and tried to grab the legs of passersby.

  “We don’t have to live like this!” the girl said. “Inkarra does exist!”

  That gave Cullossax pause. Could it be that there was a land without the Death Lords, without the empire? Could it be that people there lived pleasant lives without care?

  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. . . .
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br />   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 midmorning.

  “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.