So why would a Knight Eternal be able to take endowments, and not me? she wondered. The Knights Eternal are deader than I am, for I still cling to the remains of my own body while they only inhabit the shells left by others.
But that was the difference, she recognized. The Knights Eternal clung to flesh.
For ages she had trained the creatures, telling them that they had no spirits, that it was only the power of their minds that allowed them to seize a corpse and inhabit it.
But that was not true. The Knights Eternal did have spirits, powerful spirits. Crull-maldor lied to the creatures only so that they would fear oblivion all the more, so that they would cling to any flesh that they could, like a drowning man clinging to a raft.
It was true that their spirits were not whole, undefiled. As part of their preparation, before birth Crull-maldor would damage them, remove the spirit tendrils that formed their conscience and gave them their will. By doing so she made the Knights Eternal ill-suited to become abodes for the loci. Thus, the Knights Eternal could not communicate across the leagues with other loci, as Crull-maldor did. That had always been their weakness. That was why Despair had never shown them favor.
But much had changed with the binding of the worlds.
Much has changed, Crull-maldor thought, and much more shall yet change. . . .
Less than an hour later Crull-maldor trundled into the Dedicates’ Keep deep in the wyrmling fortress. She wore her cloak of glory.
The cloak was not made of material; it was fashioned from skin, Crull-maldor’s own hide, skinned from her while she was still alive. By wearing it, Crull-maldor could walk about in her wyrmling form, rather than appear as a spirit. She could manipulate things with her hands, if she so desired—bearing a spear into battle, or adjusting an ocular.
There was life in the hide still. It breathed on its own, and required nourishment. She kept it in a vat by day, soaking in blood, seawater, and various nutrients.
The skin had aged over the centuries, becoming wrinkled. Growths had formed over it—warty things—and patches of it were discolored.
The skin had eye holes but no eyes, mouth holes but no teeth. Crull-maldor could move about in the skin, but she had no flesh and bone to give her proper form.
Instead, she walked with a hunched back, barely able to hold her head up, her knuckles sometimes dragging on the floor. She was unsightly.
But the cloak of glory had its uses. The eye holes and other orifices could all be sewn tightly shut, so that Crull-maldor could inhabit her old skin and walk about in the daylight, as she had need.
Now she hoped that it would provide another use.
The Dedicates’ keep here was a vast hall where dozens of sorcerers coaxed attributes from human Dedicates and bestowed them upon the wyrmlings. Hundreds of people filled the hall—terrified human women weeping and begging to be spared, wyrmling soldiers eager to taste the sweet kiss of a forcible.
The wyrmling troops were drawing attributes as quickly as they could. Mostly they took metabolism from the humans, thus speeding up the troops while leaving the Dedicates in a magical slumber. Human workers sweated and grunted as they lugged the sleeping Dedicates off for storage.
The room was filled with the deep songs of the facilitators, the screams of pain from Dedicates. White lights flashed as forcibles came to life, and the odor of burned skin and singed hair filled the room.
Crull-maldor limped to her chief facilitator, and commanded in a harsh whisper, “Give me an endowment.”
The facilitator stared at her a moment, and a scowl of revulsion crossed his face. Obviously he did not think that her experiment could succeed, but his answer was contrite. “Which endowment, O Great One?”
“It matters not,” Crull-maldor said. “Metabolism is easy. Give me metabolism.” She imagined how it would be to speed up, to move faster than other liches, to think twice as fast as the emperor. There were so many possible advantages. . . .
So the facilitator waded in among the humans and brought back a likely Dedicate, a small young man with a weak chin. The boy dodged and kicked, trying to break away. He did indeed seem to be a child with a gift for speed.
The facilitator spoke to the boy in his own language, soothing him, calming him, promising life in return for his gift. A few slaps to the face left the boy with a bloody nose and a firm conviction that giving up his endowment would save his life.
Then the ceremony began; the facilitator picked out a forcible and began singing to the boy in his deep voice, a wordless song meant only to mesmerize the child, get his mind off his fear. Then the facilitator pressed the rune end of the forcible to the boy’s neck, and it suddenly grew white-hot at its tip. The sound of sizzling skin filled the air.
The boy whimpered then, but did not break away. Instead, he sat stoically, glaring at Crull-maldor, as if daring her to take his gift.
The facilitator continued singing, brought the forcible to Crull-maldor. He twirled it in the air, and thick white lines of light held in the air wherever the forcible went, creating a serpent of light that coiled through the room.
But when the glowing forcible touched Crull-maldor’s skin, the white hot metal did not burn it. The serpent merely hung in the air, as if waiting to strike elsewhere.
The facilitator grew nervous, tried touching Crull-maldor in various places—her belly, her neck, a healthy-looking patch of skin on her forehead.
But nothing worked. Beads of sweat began to break upon his brow as he considered how she might punish him for his failure.
“Master,” he begged, “a lich cannot take an endowment. . . . You are too far gone toward death.”
It was as Crull-maldor had feared. She had tried an experiment, and failed.
It is because I do not cling to my flesh, she realized. I am a spirit inhabiting a bag made of skin, nothing more. I have the form of a living being, but I am not like the Knights Eternal.
She thought for long seconds, and answered the facilitator. “Oh, I can take endowments. But first I must take a fitting body. . . .”
17
The Barbarous Shore
No man is a barbarian in his own eyes, but often is seen as a barbarian by others.
Six days later the soft cries of gulls wafted above a still, fog-shrouded sea. In the gray dawn, the water barely lapped against the hull of the Borrowbird, looking for the entire world like molten lead.
Myrrima peered overboard, and tasted the salty air. Land was not far off. She could smell a hint of it—autumn fields and wet earth, not too far away.
Fifty-two days it had been since the family had fled Landesfallen.
Fifty-two days was a long time. Much can change.
Myrrima was filled with burning questions: What will we find in Rofehavan? Where is Talon? What has befallen my other children?
The sea gave no answers. Myrrima was a wizardess, but unlike some who were gifted with aquamancy, she could not foretell a person’s fate by gazing into a still pool.
For a moment, she thought that she caught sight of a shadow on the water— a fishing coracle. But it disappeared through the fog as silently as it had come, and she wondered if it had been a dream.
Her ship lay as silently as a log in the water. She’d lowered the sail an hour ago, and then bade the ship be still. A small spell kept a dense fog in place. It was not hard to do. There was no wind, and it would have been a foggy morning even without her help.
Aaath Ulber stumbled up from the hold and wiped the morning sleep from his eyes. He took the rudder by long habit, though there was no need to steer.
“We’ve got land nearby,” Myrrima told him. She didn’t know exactly where they were. No one on board was a navigator. But they had known that if they sailed west long enough, they’d run into a continent. But how far north or south had they come? To the north was Internook, home to the savage warlords. That was the most likely place for them to beach. But if they had drifted south far enough, they might beach in Haversind or Toom—lands that would be more hospitable.