Chaosbound (4 page)

Perhaps the flood won't reach us, Borenson dared hope. How far did the land sink? Certainly it won't all be underwater. We are fifty-two miles from the sea.

He imagined that some sort of balance must have been reached in the binding of the worlds. Perhaps his homeland would only sink halfway into the sea.

He heard his wife crashing through the brush of the overgrown orchard. This part of his land was ill-kept.

“Myrrima,” Borenson bellowed. “Over here!”

She came running a moment later, leaping over a rock covered in coral,
rushing between two trees, panting from exhaustion. She wore her deep blue traveling robe over a white tunic and leggings. The years had put a little weight on her, but not much. She did not run fast. No longer did she have any endowments of speed or brawn. The Dedicates who had given her their attributes had all been slain long ago, shortly after they'd fled Mystarria, as had his Dedicates.

Yet as a wizardess she would enjoy a longer life than Borenson, and in the past ten years she seemed not to have aged a year.

Myrrima stumbled to a halt, not even recognizing him. The woman had had the sense to bring his war hammer, throw together a bundle of clothes. Now she backed away with fear in her eyes.

Her body language said it all: Who is this giant, crouching above my child?

“Myrrima,” Borenson said. “It's me—your husband.”

Wonder and confusion warred in her face. Myrrima peered down at Erin, there gasping for breath, and she seemed to cave in on herself.

“Erin?” she called, daring to scrabble closer. “My little Erin!” Myrrima dropped to her knees, still panting for breath, and kissed Erin's forehead, then began to stroke her. “My baby! My sweet baby?”

“She fell,” Borenson explained, “in the binding of the worlds.”

“Mother?” Erin called. She peered up, unseeing.

“I'm here,” Myrrima whispered. “I'm here for you.”

There was a protracted silence. Borenson became more aware of the rumbling beneath his feet, the squawking of borrowbirds. The animals felt the danger, too.

“We have to get her to safety,” Myrrima said. She eyed Borenson with distrust. “Can you move her gently?”

Borenson let out a little wail of frustration. His giant hands were so powerful, yet so uncouth. They were ill-suited for such delicate work.

“Can you hold back the water?” he begged.

Myrrima shook her head in defeat.

Borenson worried that nothing that he could do would save the child. Perhaps he could not even his save his family. How tall would the waves be? Forty feet tall, or four hundred?

Myrrima shifted the child slightly, lifting her just enough so that Borenson could slip his fingers beneath Erin. As gently as he could, he slid one palm beneath the child's body and another beneath her head.

With great care he lifted. The girl seemed so small in his arms.

I am of the warrior clan, a voice whispered in his mind. This child weighs nothing.

It was Aaath Ulber's voice.

Borenson put one arm beneath Erin, like a board, and began to carry her as swiftly and as delicately as he could.

The grass was wet, the ground uneven. Strange sea creatures dotted the land—enormous crabs creeping about with claws ready, rays gasping for air. Colorful coral rose up in shades of tan and bone and red, all surrounded by clumps of summer grasses.

Borenson hurried, trying not to jar his daughter, careful not to slip. He kept glancing to the ground then back to Erin's small face, contorted as it was as she struggled to stay alive.

Is she even breathing? Borenson wondered. He watched her chest rise a little and then fall again.

Yes, she breathes.

Up ahead, Owen Walkin's people lumbered along. All of them moved slowly, painfully, as if some great illness had befallen them.

Suddenly, Borenson felt as if he were watching them from outside his own body. The people looked small and puny. “Run, you feral dogs!” he roared.

People of such low breeding don't deserve to live, he thought.

It was not a thought that would ever have presented itself to Sir Borenson.

Aaath Ulber was talking.

Though the others were weak Borenson felt strong, stronger than either he or Aaath Ulber had ever been. In some ways, he felt as if something vital had always been missing and now he had found it.

He reached the river, which had gone strangely muddy. A pair of giant rays were flapping about. The water was not deep this time of year, nor was it swift. But the rounded stones beneath the surface were slick.

Borenson sloshed through, Myrrima at his side, and made it more than halfway before he slipped.

He caught himself, but Erin's little head swiveled to the right.

“Aaaagh!” Myrrima gave a cry, then reached out and tried to hold Erin's head securely in place. They attained the far bank, raced up wet stones. A patch of slick red kelp hindered him, but he finally made it to the base of the ridge.

The squatter families ahead toiled up the long slope. The ground trembled mightily now. The flood was coming.

Borenson marched boldly, passing the squatters, holding Erin as securely as he could. He studied Erin's face; she gasped for breath. Her complexion was as white as a pearl, her skin seemingly translucent. He could make out the tiny veins and arteries that colored her skin, blue and red. Her pupils had constricted to pinpoints.

She's in shock, he realized. She's strangling for lack of air.

There was no way to save her. Perhaps all of his efforts had been in vain. Yet he clung to hope.

With giant strides he passed through the clot of squatters, surged uphill. The air filled with a distant roar and birds squawked.

He'd climbed three hundred feet. He peered to the east and saw a gray cloud in the distance—a haze of dust and spray.

He had to get higher. With a burst of speed, he charged uphill, cuddling Erin, trying to hold the life inside her.

At last he reached the ridgetop and peered toward the sea. Just to the west lay Sweetgrass, its village bell ringing wildly. The whole earth was roaring, and beyond the town a massive wave surged through Hacker River Valley.

The squatters, Myrrima, and Borenson's children trudged up, their faces stark with shock and amazement; they stopped next to Borenson and peered at the rushing waters.

The sea came far more swiftly than Borenson would have imagined. This was not some puny wave making its way along a sandy beach.

It roared—a sound that shook the world in a continuous boom as if all the thunder that had ever been suddenly voiced itself at once.

The ground was trembling now, and loose stones began to bounce down from some red-rock cliffs above. Borenson glanced up fearfully, but none of the stones came near.

The valley spread below, and Borenson had an eagle's view of the river snaking along, the green fields to either side. He could see his own pleasant home with its newly thatched roof and barns, with his sheep and cattle in his pens, and his yellow dog Mongrel standing out in front of the house, woofing at the confusion.

His neighbors' homes lay east and west. He saw the Dobbit family rushing about near their cottage, Farmer Dobbit racing to free his livestock, seeming only now to recognize the danger.

Old widow Taramont, half blind and crippled by age, was puttering at the door to her home, calling for help.

Farther west, townsfolk were stirring. A young girl raced down the road beside the river; dozens of folks were charging behind her, hoping to outrun the great wave.

Then the sea came.

The flood surged into the valley and followed the course of the Hacker River as it snaked through the hills. A wall of water two hundred feet high blasted through the canyon, thundering over the village, crushing houses, Borenson's barn, sweeping neighbors away.

It crashed into the ruins of the old fortress, knocking down stone walls that had stood for sixteen hundred years.

The sea ripped up trees and sent them rumbling in a wall before it. Borenson saw flashes of pale bodies, victims of the flood, mingled among the ruins.

The water thrashed below, raising a fine mist that wetted Borenson in a muddy rain. Then the wall hurried on, filling up the valley as the sea sought its new bounds, creating a long irregular inlet.

A rainbow formed in the mist above the ruin, a cruel joke of nature.

For a long moment Borenson searched for signs of life. The water was filthy, as dark as loam. Bits of bark and even whole trees came bobbing to the surface, along with patches of thatch roof.

He waited breathlessly to hear someone shout for help, to see a pale body thrashing in the dark waves.

But nothing moved down there—not so much as a wet cat. The weight of the water had crushed the townsfolk, snuffing out their lives as completely as if they were but the tender flames of candles.

It seemed forever that he stood rooted to the ground.

Borenson recognized what had happened. Fallion had done it! Fallion had bound two worlds together—the world of Borenson and the world of Aaath Ulber.

For some reason when the worlds had combined, Borenson and Aaath Ulber combined, too. Yet he wondered why none of the others around him had been similarly transformed.

It was said that other people lived on shadow worlds; it was as if when the One True World splintered, the folk of the One True World had splintered too.

It was believed by some that every man was therefore incomplete and had shadow selves upon far worlds.

Borenson had always thought it idle speculation.

But somehow in the binding Borenson had bound together with Aaath Ulber, his “shadow self.” Two men, each living his own life upon a different world, had fused into one body.

The notion was staggering. He didn't have time to comprehend it. He couldn't even begin to fathom the implications.

He wondered why Fallion had bound only two worlds. Why not all of them? Why not bind a million, million worlds all at once, and re-create the perfect world of legend?

Perhaps it's an experiment, Borenson imagined. Fallion is testing his powers.

He worried. If Fallion had bound two worlds together, then that meant that he had already made it to the Lair of Bones deep in the Underworld.

Considering the devastation that Fallion had wrought here, what must Fallion be going through now? Borenson wondered. There might have been cave-ins in the tunnels. They might have filled with water.

For all that Borenson knew, Fallion and his friends were all dead.

If this binding had been a trial, it had gone horribly awry. Chances were that the experiment might never be repeated.

Only then did the magnitude of the destruction begin to sink in. Here in Landesfallen, the vast majority of the people lived in cities along the coast, while a few others lived in river valleys like this one.

If we had been on the coast, Borenson realized, we'd all be dead.

Without my crops, he considered, we may be dead anyway.

Young Draken peered at the crashing waters and spoke some words that Borenson had not heard in many long years. “The Ends of the Earth is not far enough. . . .” He turned and glanced at his father. “Do you think
he
knew?”

The boy was referring to the warning that the Earth King had uttered when he died, the words that had sent Borenson fleeing to Landesfallen. At Garion's Port, fifty miles to the west of here, two huge stones flanked the bay, stones called the Ends of the Earth. And upon his death, the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden had warned Borenson that the Ends of the Earth were not far enough. Borenson had known that he had to flee inland.

Had Gaborn sensed this flood? Borenson wondered. Could he have known what would befall us, ten years in the future?

Borenson sighed. “He knew. His prescience was a thing of legend.”

The refugees all fell in exhaustion and lay panting, peering down at the flood. The ground still shook, and the water thundered. But the sound was receding.

The starvelings seemed to be floundering in despair. Driven from their homes, and now this.

I'm as poor as them, Borenson thought. Poorer, for at least they have a few sacks full of belongings.

Borenson sat down on the rocks; Myrrima knelt at his side. Draken and Sage followed, and all of them focused on Erin, weeping, their eyes full of concern.

Borenson's youngest daughter was fading. There was nothing that anyone
could do. Perhaps Myrrima's touch and her kisses could ease the child's passing, but Myrrima could not save her.

For several long minutes Erin gasped, struggling only to breathe, too far gone to speak.

Then at last her eyelids fluttered, and Erin's piercing blue eyes rolled back into her head. Her chest stopped rising, and now a gurgle escaped her throat as her chest fell one last time. It was a sound that Borenson associated with strangling.

Life fled from her.

Borenson sat cradling his sweet daughter Erin; Myrrima cried in despair.

There was nothing left to do but mourn.

A vast gaping void seemed to yawn wide and black in Borenson's soul.

There is no beauty in death, he realized.

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