Chaosbound (22 page)

The wyrmling guard dropped without so much as a grunt, and lay for a moment, staring at the stars, bright and inaccessible, as his life's blood oozed from his throat.

Dark shadows passed before his eyes as human runelords flitted into the tunnels.

Bells began tolling in the Fortress of the Northern Wastes, deep bells that reverberated through stone, carrying their warning through Crull-maldor's feet. She stood in the Room of Whispers, a perfect dome lit only by glow worms along the ceiling, a room riddled with miniature tunnels
in the walls. Each tunnel contained a glass tube, a special glass designed to conduct sound. And each tube went to a different reporting post.

At each end of the tube, the glass flared wide. By talking into the tubes the wyrmlings could communicate the entire length of the fortress.

“They're coming!” a messenger shouted, his voice emitting an urgent whisper from the tube. “Humans have breached the tower!”

There were shouts of challenge, the clash of arms, roars of pain, the sounds of wyrmlings dying, followed almost instantly by more reports from another tube, urgent whispers: “Enemy spotted, Tower Post Two!”

“Death Gate One—humans coming!” a third voice cried.

In the perfect acoustics of the Room of Whispers, it seemed that the voices came from everywhere and nowhere, like the distant hiss of the sea. It was as if the guards were incorporeal, like Crull-maldor herself.

Crull-maldor smiled inwardly. She had anticipated this attack, but she had not thought that it would come for another day or two. She had underestimated the runelords.

Two hours past midnight, bonfires had begun to blaze upon the nearest hills, summoning the small folk to battle. Within minutes fires had burst forth upon distant peaks all along the coast.

The runelords came. They raced through the night more swiftly than Crull-maldor had anticipated.

She'd thought that they would first attack at the Death Gate, as the previous men had done, but they had surprised her by scaling the watch-tower. To wyrmlings, with their huge bulk and clumsy fingers, the tower looked unclimbable.

At Crull-maldor's side, her new captain reported, “Their numbers outside are great. We cannot see them all for the fog, but their numbers are easily in the tens of thousands. Their elite troops have scaled the tower, but a larger force is rushing the tunnels.”

“Perhaps their numbers
are
great,” Crull-maldor mused, “but if all that you could see from the tower was their fires . . . ? It is an old trick, to try to dismay an enemy by building many fires in the night. By having your troops sing loudly, five thousand can sound like fifty thousand.”

She spoke comfortingly, but Crull-maldor knew that the humans really
did outnumber her troops. They might even be strong enough to overwhelm her wyrmlings.

Yet she hoped that powerful runelords would lead this group so that she could decimate them.

No humans had escaped from the warrens alive in the first assault. So the small folk would have no choice but to send stronger forces.

The humans would not be prepared to face a wight. She wanted to crush the spirits of the human inhabitants of the island, and thus begin her dominion over them.

“Milord,” a wyrmling reported, the voice rising in a whisper. “Human forces have secured the tower level.”

The news came unexpectedly quick. It had not been a minute since the alarm had sounded. Five hundred wyrmling troops, destroyed like that?

Some of these runelords must have many endowments of metabolism, Crull-maldor realized.

But the small folk still had no idea what resources Crull-maldor had at her command.

“Drop all of the portcullises in the tower corridors,” she said, so that the humans would not be able to escape. “Then light the tar fires in level two. These runelords may be tough, but they still have to breathe.”

“Milady,” the captain began to argue.

At that instant Crull-maldor felt a presence seize her consciousness, a sense of heightened intelligence filled with malicious intent.

It was a sending, a message from Emperor Zul-torac.
Deliver all of the corpuscite that you find to Rugassa
, he whispered to Crull-maldor's soul.
Send your wyrmling troops to scour the Northern Wastes in the search
.

Crull-maldor raised a hand to silence her captain, lest he disturb her further.

It was not the most opportune time to be receiving messages from the emperor.

Crull-maldor did not want her superior to know what she knew, so she envisioned a wall between herself and the emperor, a wall of stone, impenetrable. She made her mind a fortress against his probes.

Corpuscite?
Crull-maldor feigned ignorance.
Did you ask for corpuscite?

The emperor evaded the question.
Time is short. Do as you are told
.

Crull-maldor reported,
Humans have entered the fortress, humans swift and deadly. We are under attack! I cannot send my scouts out now!
The emperor's dark mind brimmed with smug satisfaction at the news. There was nothing that Zul-torac would like more than to see Crull-maldor humiliated.

Take care of it
, the emperor warned.
This is your first priority. The time has come to prepare for a great war, a war unlike any other. Lord Despair commands that you raise production on your arms and armor. Every man and woman over the weight of four hundred pounds must be fitted for war by the end of the week
.

Crull-maldor smiled grimly. A male wyrmling could reach four hundred pounds by the age of ten years. Despair was ordering that women and children be armed for war?

Making the armor alone would be all but impossible. Every child would have to be pulled from indoctrination classes and put to work carving the bones of world wyrms.

Surely Despair does not fear the small humans so much
, Crull-maldor mused. But she began to wonder. With endowments, a woman or a child could be fearsome indeed. In fact, some of the human fortresses might be difficult to penetrate for a wyrmling—a large one would not be able to fit through doors. But a child . . .

Despair has no fear of the small folk
, Zul-torac replied.
We are preparing to conquer the heavens. Despair is opening doors to far worlds, and our troops shall overwhelm them all!

Crull-maldor considered the implications. The emperor was demanding all of the blood metal in her realm—blood metal that Crull-maldor would need to ready her troops for the coming invasions. She dared not deliver it.

Yet the promise of a coming war was a heady thing. Crull-maldor had seen some of the beasts that the emperor had brought through doors in the past.

There were treasures to be plundered. Crull-maldor did not care for gold or silver. She was far more interested in the treasures of knowledge that might be gained on far worlds.

I will do what I can to obtain corpuscite
, she promised.
But it is exceedingly
rare here in the North. A few stones we might find, but I cannot guarantee that we will find much more
.

The emperor snarled and ended the communication abruptly. The sense of heightened awareness—and great corruption—both broke off with a nearly audible snap.

All around the room, whispers were rising. The sound of portcullises falling came from a dozen holes, metal sliding over stone, bolts being thrown so that the portcullises could not be raised. Shrieks and howls were coming from Death Gate where human forces had overwhelmed the wyrmlings.

But all too soon the humans would find themselves trapped.

Crull-maldor smiled inwardly. So, Zul-torac had already learned the lore of the runelords and how to form corpuscite into forcibles.

Crull-maldor had wrung the secrets from the dead earlier, and now she saw a great opportunity.

For nearly two hundred years she had been banished to this waste, and in that time she had ranged far across the barrens. She could not recall where every single stone of corpuscite lay, but she had seen them from time to time, and remembered one decent outcrop not sixty miles to the northeast. Though the humans encompassed her fortress, they had not yet discovered the secret gate, which exited into the hills some twelve miles to the north. Already Crull-maldor had sent troops to recover the corpuscite.

A great war was taking form, Crull-maldor realized. She intended to win it, to dominate the humans in her realm. She intended to put them to good use. As slaves, they could work the wyrmling mines and reap fish from the sea and caribou from the plains. Their skins would warm the wyrmlings during winter nights when the air grew bitter cold. They could provide meat in a pinch, and their glands could be used for harvester spikes.

All that Crull-maldor had to fear was that the humans would gain access to the blood metal.

There would be small pockets of it elsewhere here in the barrens, she knew. The island itself was four hundred miles across on the southern tip. To the north, the boundaries were often blurred, for in the winter the sea
froze over, creating a continuous mass that stretched off into the bitter cold. But some years the ice would melt along the eastern shore, giving hints of the island's shape.

So the island itself was vast, some eighty thousand square miles at this time of year.

The greatest danger that Crull-maldor faced was that the small humans would retrieve the metal before she did.

She felt reconciled to the fact that they would get some of it, but she intended to take the majority.

The humans were too many and were spread too far and wide for her to control perfectly. They'd stumble upon a few stones here and there, perhaps even a rich vein.

She'd have to take it from them. The blood metal was too great a weapon. She couldn't let it fall into the enemy's hands.

In the room of whispers, suddenly she heard human cries from the tubes in the ceiling above, cries broken and muted by coughing and hacking.

Metal clanked upon metal as the small folk tried to break through a portcullis with their war hammers. The blows rang swiftly at first, but the humans with their boosted metabolism not only lived faster, they died more quickly.

All too soon the clanking slowed and became broken by shrieks of fear and shouts of despair as good men begged the Powers that be for air.

Crull-maldor bent her ear, bent her whole will upon the whispering sounds of death that drifted into the room, and imagined the humans in the tower crumpling in ruin upon the floor.

The battle at the Death Gate was just ramping up. The warriors racing down the long corridor were not powerful runelords apparently. They moved far too slowly for that, and they made far too much noise, singing and shouting, hoping to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy.

The wyrmling troops were eager to engage. It had been far too long since they had been able to prove themselves in a pitched battle.

The captain was listening to a distant whisper at a hole. “Spies at the Death Gate report fewer than five thousand humans have breached the
corridors. Our troops have fled before them, down into the labyrinth. They await your orders for the time and manner of the ambush.”

“Very good,” Crull-maldor said. She could kill the humans with fire, or perhaps take them herself. But her troops needed battle, the good clean smell of blood. So she ordered, “Unleash the wyrmling horde.”

Book II