Wurm War by Christopher Golden

Author:Christopher Golden [Golden, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Magic, Action & Adventure, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, General, Fantasy, Fiction
ISBN: 9781435218154
Publisher: Paw Prints
Published: 2007-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Timothy wanted to argue. They had tried to kill him, after all. But these were probably not the very same Cuzcotec who had snuck into his father's house that night. And even if they were, Edgar and Romulus were correct. They would make their stand here, in Twilight. They would stop the invaders here, before they ever reached Arcanum.

He admired the towers and battlements of Twilight as they came to a landing, and forced himself to think only of today's enemy, and to forget yesterday's.

Black smoke rose from the ruins of the settlement of the Lake Dwellers, drifting across the sky like the dying exhalations of a thunderstorm. The stilted huts that had been built rising up out of the lake had burned and collapsed into the water, leaving charred posts jutting from the surface. Of the houses that lined the lake, however, nothing remained but embers and smoke.

And most of the Lake Dwellers were little more than ash and bone.

Grimshaw stood on the lakeshore and stared at the smoking ruin, much of it still glowing with dying fire. Perhaps two dozen Wurm flew overhead, circling the lake and the destroyed settlement. Raptus had sent at least that number north and westward as scouts. The rest of his army were spread out around the lake. Some of them were bathing in the water, some were resting, some were simply talking low among themselves about their triumphant march across Sunderland.

The others were herding prisoners.

The Lake Dwellers who had been in the water or on the shore at the time of the attack had escaped the immolation of those who had been indoors and had suffered the rain of fire from the Wurm. Some of them had tried to fight. Those had been attacked more directly. The Wurm all had rudimentary magic, and the Lake Dwellers were no more skilled, but when the dragonkin swooped down from the skies with their jaws wide and talons slashing, the Lake Dwellers had stood no chance. It had been a massacre.

The few Wurm sorcerers had remained in the sky, watching over the entire proceedings, as though they wished to conserve their strength for more important battles ahead. It was good strategy. Precisely what Grimshaw would have done.

But he would not have slaughtered the Lake Dwellers. They had been his allies and faithful servants of Alhazred. He looked forward to seeing the same sort of carnage visited upon the Parliament of Mages, even the entire city of Arcanum. The fools had betrayed him and succumbed to the influence of the accursed Timothy Cade.

The stump of his severed arm itched. The magic that he could manifest into a new arm, a purplish black tentacle of arcane power, always made the scar tissue there tingle. The Parliament had stood by and watched the Wurm, Verlis, bite that arm off at the command of the Cade boy, and they had done nothing. Grimshaw had been the one punished.

He wanted vengeance on them for the insult and for their stupidity. But he had never wished for his allies by the lake to come to an end as horrible as this.

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