Chaosbound (23 page)

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No man can know the future, for the future is malleable. Having foreseen disaster, we can often take steps to avert it. Thus, when we look upon the future, we see only a future that
may
be
.

—The Chaos Oracles

Darkness engulfed the great fortress of Rugassa. A roof covered the world, a roof of made of swirling clouds so thick that they blackened the sky.

The clouds did not smell of wetness or rain. Instead, they filled the air with fine sediments of soot, giving the air an acrid tang, as if a volcano had exploded, sending ash to mushroom out for as far as the eye could see.

The winds high overhead screamed, night and day, a distant piercing whine.

Sunlight could not penetrate the storm, yet light exuded from it: brief flashes of lightning that strobed high up among the dust and debris, lighting the heavens from time to time in strange colors—the green of a bruise, the red of flame.

The storm was centered over Rugassa, but its effects covered the land for a thousand miles in every direction, sealing all of Rofehavan beneath shadows, eternal night.

Thus it was that nine days after the binding of the worlds, the lich emperor Zul-torac took his first walk in the daylight in nearly three hundred years, venturing out of the fortress to explore his lands.

He feared no danger. No sunlight could touch him, and no enemy could strike him down. In the nine days since the binding of the worlds, the wyrmling hordes had crushed all human resistance—destroying armies,
enslaving nations. With a mountain of blood metal at their command, the wyrmlings were unstoppable.

More importantly, their leader was unstoppable. Lord Despair now marched at the head of the wyrmling armies, and with his vast powers and wyrmling runelords, he was invincible.

Even now, Lord Despair had taken his armies to a far world, to the One True World that had existed from the beginning, where he hunted now for the Bright Ones and the Glories, destroying those who had the greatest chance to strike him down.

Rumor said that the war went well. The enemy was fleeing from Despair, desperately seeking escape. Zul-torac's master had slain thousands of them, and now his troops were searching the wilderness, trying to corner the last of them, though they hid from him like foxes in their dens.

Yet there was a worry upon Zul-torac's mind that had nothing to do with assassins or armies. It had to do with his daughter, the princess Kanhazur. She had fallen ill, and it looked as if she would die. There were certain rites he hoped to perform this coming winter, rites that required the lifeblood of his only child. He could not allow her to die before the solstice.

The lich lord was dressed in a robe made of black spider cloth with powdered diamonds sewn into it, so that he glimmered as he floated above the ground.

Thus he made his way up a long, winding road, out of the fortress, traveling a tunnel that ran through the cone of the volcano.

Suddenly, there was copious light ahead, thrown by the magma at the volcano's core. So high up, the winds' piercing howl grew to a keening wail; Zul-torac could taste dust upon the remains of his tongue.

He followed the road along a steep path. To slip off the side would send him plummeting into the molten ore.

Ahead, the path leveled out into a plain that had been gouged out of the mountain. Huge columns of black stone had been arranged upon the ground—not in any pattern that a wyrmling could discern. Some of the pillars stood upright, others canted to the side, as if a great temple had fallen.

There was a sense of order to the ruins, but not a pattern.

Circling this plain were dozens of doorways to other worlds, each an archway made of shimmering light. Zul-torac peered through them. In one world he saw great beasts wading amid a swamp, using their broad faces to gather algae from the scum-covered surface of the water. Another door opened into a world covered in bitter snow. A third showed an impenetrable jungle of odd vines. Through that door came two wyrmlings bearing a huge leather bag, sopping wet.

Inside it, some nameless evil growled and thrashed about.

The wyrmlings grinned as they passed, and warned, “Watch yourself. This one is nasty! Bog crab, we'll call it. Got more teeth in its mouth than I have hairs on my arse.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Zul-torac asked.

“Throw it in a swamp on the borders,” one wyrmling replied, “and let it eat anything that happens by.”

The two carried their thrashing burden past Zul-torac.

The bog creature was but one of Lord Despair's new recruits. Through these doorways, tens of thousands of creatures had passed during the week—Darkling Glories that rode the night winds, giant walking hills from a planet called Nayaire, and nameless monsters from a hundred other realms.

But now Zul-torac focused on the plain before him. Amidst the black pillars, the chaos oracles hid—both from themselves and others. The creatures were so hideous, it was said, that the sight of one unveiled would drive a man mad. So the chaos oracles twisted light away from themselves, cloaking themselves in shadows the way that a wyrmling might wear his armor of bone.

Still, the thought of seeing one unveiled was tantalizing, and so Zul-torac peered.

Gloom had gathered around them, black shadows thicker than the mists in the sky above, darkness that swirled and eddied, sometimes parting just enough to reveal the tantalizing hint of a form, then just as quickly gathering again to immerse their masters in blackest night.

The chaos oracles were not of this earth, not of any earth that Zul-torac
had heard of. They liked it here by the volcano, relished the taste of sulfur in the air.

The shadows parted from around one an instant, and Zul-torac caught a tantalizing glimpse of a hunched back covered in horns, and twisted limbs, and one bright golden eye that peered at him, filling him with horror.

His blood ran chill and his breathing stopped.

Then the shadows coalesced, and thankfully the chaos oracle was cloaked again.

Zul-torac saw flashes of memory from his childhood as a chaos oracle accessed his mind. He could feel something, a presence, moving through his brain—from the right temporal lobe, to the left, then back down to the brain stem.

All of his secrets were laid bare.

“You come because you fear for the life of your daughter,” an oracle whispered in his mind.

“Yes,” Zul-torac said.

“You wish to know how to save her. . . . This I cannot see. Time is like a river, flowing toward eternity. Yet there are eddies and swirls. I cannot see all, but I see your death.”

An image flashed into Zul-torac's mind: a darkened corridor, where glow worms lit the tunnel like ten thousand gleaming stars. In the distance was a light, a torch, but its flames boiled and sputtered as it rushed toward him. A man was coming, a man blinding in his speed. He raced toward Zul-torac in a blur. Zul-torac sought to flee, but his opponent was too fast. A dozen endowments of metabolism he might have had, and there was no escaping him.

He came in a blur. Zul-torac could see little—a simple rounded helm of steel with a broad nose guard. Feral eyes filled with death. A red beard streaked with gray.

Then the man was on him, swinging a war hammer. At the touch of its spike, he felt the spells that bound his spirit to its wasted flesh shatter, crumbling, and all of his power drained away.

Worse, there were spells upon that blade, spells that brought banishment to the very spirit.

The warrior shouted in glee and for one instant he held still long enough so that Zul-torac could see his face. It was a human, a large man with the nubs of horns common to the folk of Caer Luciare. His grim countenance turned to exultation, and he opened his mouth wide, baring his fangs as he gave a victorious shout.

Zul-torac cried out in pain as his desiccated corpse exploded in a cloud of dust.

Suddenly the vision cleared, and Zul-torac stood before the chaos oracle, filled with a terror so visceral that he'd never felt the like.

Worries preyed upon Zul-torac's mind. Lord Despair had seized control of the world; now he was using it as a platform from which to conquer the heavens. Despair's powers made him invincible. He could use his Earth Powers to “choose” his warriors, warning them how to save themselves in the battles to come.

But Lord Despair could not use his marvelous gift to save a lich. Zultorac's body was too wasted, too far gone toward death.

Zul-torac's mind raced. There was no one to save him, no champion to protect him.

But I have wyrmling warriors by the thousands, Zul-torac thought, and blood metal aplenty.

Despair had ordered Zul-torac to send some blood metal to that evil wight Crull-maldor. Zul-torac had hesitated, not wanting to strengthen his old enemy. Even now he could not bring himself to send her the required forcibles.

The rest of the wyrmlings were growing in power, moving toward the Ascension.

But perhaps it is time, he thought. I can send both—a little blood metal along with enough champions to stop an army.

“He comes for you!” the chaos oracle warned. “He comes—a champion from the north! He rides now upon the water, bringing death and carnage!”

Zul-torac turned his back upon the oracle in a hot rage. “Not if I can help it,” Zul-torac said. He headed back down the mountain, back to the safety of the wyrmling's indomitable fortress.

There he searched among the city's champions until he found the right wyrmling for the job: Yikkarga, a captain who had been put under the protection of Lord Despair. He was a huge wyrmling, well versed in battle, with a vicious reputation. Just as importantly, he had many endowments to his credit.

“I am sending you north,” the emperor told him, “with a contingent of runelords. There is a human that needs killing. . . .”

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