9
The pit wyrm tore through the hole in reality and went for Kylar. The great wyrm was tubular, at least ten feet in diameter, its skin cracked and blackened, fire showing through the gaps. When it lunged, its great bulk heaved forward and its entire eyeless front opened as it vomited its cone-like mouth. Kylar leapt as each concentric ring snapped out. Each ring was circled with teeth, and when the third ring caught a tree, teeth the size of Kylar’s forearm whipped around into the wood. The pit wyrm sucked itself forward, its lamprey-like mouth inverting as the rings bit into the wood in turn, shearing a ten-foot section out of the tree trunk before Kylar landed.
Instantly, the pit wyrm lunged again. It had no visible means of propelling so great a mass. It didn’t gather itself to strike like a serpent, but moved instead as if this were but one head or arm attached to a much larger creature crouched on the other side of that hole. Again, it went for Kylar.
He flipped through the air as the tree the pit wyrm had cut fell, crashing to the ground, throwing up dust in the misty morning light. Kylar grabbed a tree and spun, the ka’kari giving him claws enough to sink into the bark and throw him back over the pit wyrm’s back. His sword flashed as he flew over the pit wyrm, but the blade bounced off the armored skin.
There was something white in the corner of Kylar’s eye. He dropped to the forest floor and saw it: a tiny white homunculus with wings and the Vürdmeister’s face, grinning at Kylar under an enormous nose. It clawed at Kylar’s face.
Kylar blocked. The homunculus’s talons sank smoothly into Kylar’s sword.
The pit wyrm lunged again even as Feir hammered its side, his sword ringing in the mists but doing no damage, not even slowing the wyrm. The pit wyrm couldn’t be distracted, wouldn’t stop until it reached its target.
Its target wasn’t Kylar. It was the homunculus.
Kylar dropped the sword and flipped once more. He landed on the side of a tree, thirty feet up, fingers and toes sinking into the wood. The pit wyrm slammed into Kylar’s sword on the ground, the cone of teeth slapping around the homunculus, digging deep into the soil as each ring of teeth slapped forward, devouring the white creature and everything around it. The pit wyrm pulled back, shaking dirt and roots and dead leaves through the air. Satisfied, it began to slide back into whatever hell it had been called from.
Then it shivered.
Feir was still striking the creature. For some reason, he wasn’t using magic. The mountainous mage struck again, a mighty hammer blow—with no effect.
By the time Kylar’s eyes found the real reason the pit wyrm had shivered, Lantano Garuwashi was halfway through its body. He was hacking at it near the hole in reality. But he wasn’t hacking. Wherever Garuwashi cut with Ceur’caelestos, the pit wyrm’s flesh sprang apart, smoking. The look on the sa’ceurai’s face told Kylar that the man was enrapt—he was the world’s best swordsman, wielding the world’s best sword, facing a monster out of legend. Lantano Garuwashi was living his purpose.
Garuwashi’s sword moved with Garuwashi’s speed. In two seconds, he had cut Cs, >
Kylar sprang off the tree and landed ten paces from Lantano Garuwashi. Having never fought a pit wyrm, the sa’ceurai couldn’t have known that they didn’t just appear; they had to be called. He let down his guard.
The big-nosed Vürdmeister acted before Kylar could, stepping out from behind a tree and unleashing a ball of green flame. Garuwashi brought Ceur’caelestos up, but he wasn’t prepared for what happened when that sword came into contact with that magic.
When Ceur’caelestos met the vir, a dull thump shook the gold needles off the tamaracks. The morning mists blew outward in a visible globe, the moss shriveled and smoked on the trees, and the concussion blasted Feir and Garuwashi and the Vürdmeister from their feet.
Only Kylar was still standing, shielded from the magical explosion by the ka’kari covering his skin. The men fell in all directions, but Ceur’caelestos stayed in the center of its own storm. It spun once in the air and stuck in the forest floor.
Kylar swept Ceur’caelestos into his hand. The fallen Vürdmeister didn’t try to stand. He gathered power, the vir on his arms wriggling in slow motion, their undulations becoming a movement that Kylar could strangely read—the magic would be a gout of flame three feet wide and fifteen feet long.
Before the Vürdmeister could release the flame, Kylar ran him through.
The Vürdmeister’s cool blue eyes widened in pain, and then widened again in sheer terror as every inky rose-thorn tracing of vir in his entire body filled with white light. Light exploded from his skin. The Vürdmeister’s body bucked and thrashed, then went limp. The vir was gone without a trace, leaving the dead man’s skin the normal pasty hue of a northerner. Even the air felt clean.
In the distance, to the northeast, a Lae’knaught trumpet blasted the command to charge. It was far away—within the Dark Hunter’s Wood.
“The bloody fools,” Kylar murmured. He’d lured them in, but it was still hard to believe they’d fallen for it. He looked at Curoch. The things I do for my king.
~You’re not really going to throw it away, are you?~
I gave my word.
~You have the Talent and the lifetimes it would take to become that sword’s master.~
I can’t exactly go out in public with a black metal hand, can I?
~Wear gloves.~
“We need to leave—right now,” Feir Cousat said. “Using magic this close to the wood is like begging the Dark Hunter to come. And there’s some kind of magic beacon on the Vürdmeister’s horse. I chased it away, but it’s probably too late.”
So that was why Feir hadn’t used magic in fighting against the pit wyrm. Smart.
“You have taken my ceuros,” Lantano Garuwashi said with a moral outrage that Kylar didn’t understand. Then he remembered. A sa’ceurai’s soul was his sword. They believed that literally. What sort of abomination would steal another man’s soul?
“Did you not take it from someone else?” Kylar asked.
“The gods gave me the blade,” Lantano Garuwashi said. He was quivering with rage and loathing, despair fighting to the fore in his eyes. “Your theft is not honorable.”
“No,” Kylar admitted. “Nor, I’m afraid, am I.”
A plaintive howl unlike anything Kylar had ever heard ripped through the wood. It was high and mournful, inhuman.
“Too late,” Feir said, his voice strangled. “The Hunter’s coming.”
The Wolf had told Kylar to stay back forty paces from the Hunter’s Wood, so Kylar gave it fifty. He looked through the lesser trees of the natural forest to the preternatural height and bulk of the sequoys. He felt small, caught up in events vast beyond his comprehension. He heard the whistling of something speeding toward him. He hefted Curoch and threw it as far into the Wood as he could. It flew like an arrow. As it crossed into the air over the wood, it burned like a star falling to earth.
The entire forest began to glow golden.
The whistling stopped.