One turn.
The approaching Brighthand faltered. Horses reared. Men shouted.
To their left, where the river cascaded down the ridge, a seam broke in the stone. Under great pressure, water sprayed forth.
Lain’s breath hitched as the serpent’s power surged through her, hot as molten glass. She felt her pulse quicken. The river sucked inward, the current tightening.
Two turns.
The bank of the river on the far side gave way.
A deep groan rose through the valley like the bowing of a colossal string. The earth split in a jagged line beneath the Brighthand’s feet. Whole ranks went down screaming as the ridge crumbled from above and below. A wall of stone sheared from the rock wall above the army and crumbled as it fell to collapse upon retreating riders.
Three turns.
Water rushed in to the freshly-appointed valley. The serpent’s exultation roared through the river. It surged over its banks, white and terrible, swallowing armor and horse and flesh, shoving stone ahead of itself to crush riders and mounts alike. The bridge shuddered but held, the current tearing past its pylons in sheets of foam.
The bond between Lain and Morgan blazed as his satisfaction rose. The wyrms at the river’s edge lifted their heads, scenting death.
And through them she sensed every wound. The flash of terror in each drowning mind as it flickered out. The weight of collapsing stone. It passed through the wyrms, through Morgan, through her, funneled to the end of their terrible line.
She tore her hand from the ground and the connection snapped. The song ended. The deep serpent found its nest comfortably once more and coiled up to sleep. The earth fell still, the last remaining loose stone crumbling to the water below. No one moved.
When she next looked up, the far bank was gone. What remained was a jagged scar of water and broken earth, littered with what the river hadn’t claimed.
Then the bloodwyrms loped across the bridge.
Their manes rose in rippling arcs, feathers catching the sun as they slid from the stone of the bridge to the lapping water at the far side. They were graceful, eager. One opened its jaws as the red surge flooded in, the water turning dark as wine.
Morgan’s hunger pierced her and at once he left her side, and crossed alongside the wyrms.
Lain clutched her chest with one hand. Even at a distance she could feel him feeding, absorbing the wyrms and all they consumed, using the power to make another such creature, who ate and was eaten by Morgan to be reformed again and again.
Lain couldn’t breathe.
She clambered to her feet, stumbling, then turned aside from Mallow and others that tried to catch her. For a moment she saw through the wyrm’s eyes, the river in heat-vision and hunger, bodies tumbling like fish through the current, the taste of blood thick and metallic on her tongue, the pleasure of consumption, the joy at their deaths –
She bent and vomited.
“What’s wrong with her –”
“Let me handle this.” That was Mallow’s voice, distant.
The bond to Morgan held fast.
Across the bridge, the few survivors were fleeing, abandoning the wounded where they fell. Some were brought down anyway as the bloodwyrms exalted in the chase. The banners of the Dagorlind sank, half-submerged. The sun was still bright, the air still so clean, and Lain’s mouth was full of the taste of vomit and blood.
Mallow caught her under the arms and it was only then that she realized she was shaking, weeping, pawing uselessly at her blood-filled mouth, coating her own face and tongue in dirt.
“Lain –”
Mallow’s voice came from a distance, muffled by the rush in her ears. The ground tilted beneath her.
She could still feel him. Morgan was walking among the ruin, and through the bond she felt each step. The satisfaction that filled him moved through her like poison. The bond always felt like a thread before, something she could follow or release, a tether she might loosen with effort, and when she tried that now – tried the way she had with Mallow – she could not get free of it. Now it was a river. No, it was the river. His pulse and hers had merged with the current’s pull.
Every breath Morgan drew filled her lungs. Every taste of blood on his tongue rolled cold and metallic against her own teeth.
“Stop,” she said, pushing Mallow’s hand aside, but she hadn’t meant to direct it at him – it was Morgan she wanted gone, Morgan’s thoughts and hunger and the ever-growing force of his will inside her. The bond pulsed back to answer, warm, possessive, ecstatic with power. His feeding traveled both directions – through the wyrms, through her. It was too much. The pleasure he derived from it struck her as an obscene rush of life from death.
Her knees buckled.
Mallow caught her, but she shoved against him blindly, trembling. “Don’t –”
“Lain, what’s happening?”
She couldn’t answer. She could hardly breathe. Morgan exhaled and she felt the release of it as if it were her own, the way it felt to breathe with a full belly after gorging herself on too much food too quickly. She saw what he saw: the field made red, the bodies caught in the eddies or struggling weakly in the quickmud left behind, the kick of a drowning horse, the shimmer of blood turned to power in his hands.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
He was elated, and she was choking on it.
She saw through the eyes of the bloodywrms, because he did. She leapt upon one downed soldier still struggling to free himself from the mud, tore into his belly with ravenous teeth as he screamed and clawed at her face.
She gorged herself on the blood rushing from the throat of a horse, its hooves still kicking feebly.
She breathed in the smoke of a wyrm, her inner strength hardening about her like an evil coccoon.
Lain pressed her forehead to the earth, clawing at the grass as if she could scrape the connection out of herself, as if she could burrow deep enough to not be reached.
“Get him away from me,” she rasped, though she knew Morgan was half a mile away by now. “Make him stop.”
Mallow knelt beside her, helpless, one hand hovering near her shoulder but not daring to touch. “He’s not here, Lain.”
“He is,” she gasped. “He’s in my head.”
The words made her stomach turn. She gagged again, the bile rising. He fed and fed, joy accompanying each death, the wyrm’s hunger becoming satisfaction and sinking back into his veins.
“Lain,” Mallow said again. He finally reached for her, gripping her arm. He spoke with rough, heartbreaking urgency. “Lhainara.”
The sound of her true name broke through like a fist through a sheen of ice.
It wasn’t the voice of the Bellborn’s guard or the soldier or the captain. It was the man who had held her in Vaelun as she felt the wyrm humming beneath them, who had said her name like a vow, or a promise. A rush of a thousand and one moments of tenderness and affection and gentle loving breaths against her skin pushed back the gleeful consumptive darkness of Morgan’s feasting.
She gasped, and for an instant everything else fell away. Mallow’s hands were real, the ground was real, the light on the water was real.
She clutched his arm, her nails digging into the fabric of his coat. “Say it again.”
He did. Softer this time. “Lhainara.”
Morgan’s pulse receded from her, still there, but distant now.
She sagged against Mallow. He caught her, holding her upright. “I’ve got you,” he murmured. “He doesn’t.”
Mallow’s breath steadied near her cheek. For a few moments they stayed like that until the clamor from the bridge swelled again.
Morgan returned with the wyrms, their manes dripping, their jaws rimmed scarlet. He moved as if a fever had burned out of him and left only radiance in its place; he was as calm and terrible as an angel. Men drew back to make a path. A few, unable to help themselves, touched their brows and whispered Ashborn.
Two of the wyrms peeled off at his gesture and coiled in the shallows. A third glided to the midden of shattered armor at the near bank and lowered its head to feed. Morgan paused at the bridge-crown, drew a knife, and cut a thin line along the meat of his forearm. Only a few drops. He lifted his hand and turned his wrist.
Shadows thickened. A seventh shape uncurled from the bridge’s underbelly like night itself claiming a body. It found its balance, shook its feathers, and hissed, an infant’s first breath turned blade.
Cheers rose; fear rose with them.
Then another came. Another.
Suddenly, there were hundreds, writhing and undulating across the bridge as slick and horrible as eels in shallow water. The new ones were smaller; no larger than coyotes. But they would grow.
Mallow felt her flinch and shifted, a small screen between her and the spectacle. Sena arrived with a waterskin and a folded cloth. She knelt and rinsed Lain’s mouth, smoothed the hair from her damp temple. “Easy,” she murmured. “Breathe.”
Lain tried. The bond was quieter now, but not gone. Each time Morgan turned his head the motion tugged some thread in her chest. Each time a new wyrm tasted the river, a pulse of hot metal ran along her tongue.
Mallow helped Lain to her feet, then let go as soon as she found balance.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“I can pretend.”
He smiled at that, the smallest grief-shy curve. “Then pretend near me.”
Morgan approached those gathered near Lain.
Rhalir jogged up, helm tucked under his arm, eyes bright and hard. He took one look at Lain, one at Mallow’s white-knuckled restraint, and kept his voice strictly for the business at hand. “My lord. The survivors have broken. The ridge won’t hold another push. We can re-form within the hour.”
Morgan nodded as his gaze swept the walls of Ivath. Bells began their slow tolling again.
He came to Lain last.
Up close, the iron scent clung to him. She tried to tell herself it was the water. His pupils were blown wide. When his eyes found hers, warmth surged through the bond as if he’d put his palm flat against her heart. His affection for her was undeniable; perhaps he loved all things under his control.
He brushed a sweat-soaked lock of hair from her brow. His touch was rich with care.
“You did well,” he said.
She swallowed, hypnotized by his power. “Did I?”
His brow came together in tenderness. “You spared the cityfolk. You broke their spear. You saved your people.”
At what cost, the bond did not ask, because it already knew. It hummed within her like a hive of furious wasps.
Mallow shifted half a step. Morgan’s gaze tracked to him, then away, as if filing his nearness to Lain for later.
“Clean her up,” he said to Sena, mild as dew.
Sena’s tail twitched, but she bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
Morgan turned to Rhalir. His voice was steady, bright with a terrible certainty. “We attack tonight.”
Rhalir froze. “My lord, we agreed –”
“Did we?” Morgan’s eyes gleamed as he faced Rhalir fully. “Did we agree to wait while they gather strength? To let them wall their city and call us cowards?”
Rhalir held his ground, his tail lashing. “We swore to give the civilians time to flee. You said –”
Morgan raised one hand. The gesture was small and graceful, but Rhalir’s words strangled in his throat.
“Don’t,” Lain said, reaching instinctively, but Morgan either didn’t hear or didn’t care.
Rhalir buckled, gasping, sinking into the mud. His hands clenched, veins straining against unseen pressure.
“Your mercy is misplaced,” Morgan said. His voice carried like a shout, though it never rose. “They’ve had their warming. The river answered. The ridge answered. Tonight, so will we.”
“Lord Balthir –”
Morgan stepped closer, the light of the bloodbond burning crimson in his eyes. “I will not repeat myself.”
Lain flinched. The bloodbond surged, his power spilling out like a tide, radiating command.
Rhalir gasped under it. “Yes, my lord.”
Morgan lowered his hand. Rhalir’s breath came back ragged, and he pressed one fist to the earth.
“Form the vanguard,” Morgan said. “Archers at the rear.”
He did not look at Lain when he added, “The world’s eyes are on us now. We end this before dawn.”
He strode toward the city, cloak snapping in the wind.
Around him, the camp shuddered into motion. Men grabbed spears, fastened armor, chanting again, low and fevered. The wyrms lifted their heads one by one, their manes slick.
Rhalir rose slowly, his expression pale and tight. Sena caught his arm. He seemed nearly to shake her off, but then met her eye, and nodded slightly in gratitude.
“He’ll tear the city apart,” he said.
“What do we do?” Lain asked.
Rhalir’s gaze flicked to her, then away, and while he normally betrayed little in his feelings, here she felt the piercing bite of his shame. “We follow orders.”
He strode off, hooves splaying in the mud, to wave down his men and begin forming ranks.
Morgan walked ahead, and the bloodwyrms followed like an oncoming tide.