Chaosbound by David Farland

like a cloak, showing dimly remembered exteriors. Thus, the balls of light hovered about inside the shells of wyrmling lords and men.
    Crull-maldor went to the most glorious among them—a human woman who shone with tremendous brilliance, a symbol of her wisdom and power.
    Then the lich lord seized the woman. Crull-maldor sent a tendril of light coiling out from her own spirit, and penetrated the woman’s field. The lich took the woman by the umbilicus and twisted, causing the woman untold pain.
    Once again, Crull-maldor found the act to be surprisingly easy. A spiritual attack upon such a powerful being should normally have required great concentration. But now it felt like child’s play.
    â€œTell me what you know!” Crull-maldor demanded.
    The woman shrieked, and the color of her spindles of light suddenly changed from bright white to a delicious deep red. She recoiled, and all of the tendrils around her nucleus shrank in on themselves, the way that the arms of sea anemone will do when something brushes against it.
    â€œWhat would you have of me, great lord of the dead!” the woman cried. Her name was Endemeer, and she had once been a vaunted scholar.
    â€œWhat has happened to my world?”
    â€œA great sorcerer has come,” Endemeer said. “He has bound two worlds into one, two worlds that were but shadows of the one true world that existed at the beginning of time.
    â€œHe has bound flesh to flesh in those who live; and he has bound spirit to spirit among the dead. . . .”
    Immediately Crull-maldor knew that the scholar spoke correctly. This world that she had said once existed, Crull-maldor had heard of it from some of the greater spirits she had tortured.
    But until now, Crull-maldor had not believed in it. She had suspected that it was a place found only in one’s imagination.
    It explained everything so simply, yet it had tremendous ramifications.
    Crull-maldor had not yet revealed to the emperor her news about the humans in her land. She knew now that she could not hide the news. This great change impacted entire continents.
    Humans are abroad in the land once again, Crull-maldor thought, and where there is conflict, there is also opportunity.
    Crull-maldor immediately sent an alarm, a flash of thought to the emperor Zul-torac.
Our wyrmling scouts have found humans in the Northern Wastes. They came with a great change that has twisted the earth
.
    The emperor sent back a terse reply, and she felt his thoughts crawling through her mind, seeking to infiltrate it. She set a barrier against them, so that he could not read her mind, and he replied.
I know, fool! Deal with them
.
    His thoughts fled, dismissing her.
    Crull-maldor grinned. As she had hoped, he had not had the foresight to tell her how to deal with them.
    The scholar Endemeer whimpered and tried to escape Crull-maldor’s grasp. The lich lord merely held her, eager to wring more information from her.
    â€œTell me about the humans’ new magic, the glyph magic.”
    Crull-maldor sent her own tendrils of light plunging deep into those of her captive. Each tendril of light was like a strand of human brain. It stored wisdom and memories. As Crull-maldor brushed against Endemeer, she glimpsed the memories stored upon Endemeer’s tendrils.
    Grasping the ones that she wanted, Crull-maldor ripped the tendrils free. It was like tearing apart a human brain. The tendrils’ light immediately began to dim, so Crull-maldor shoved them into her own central bundle, transplanting the memories. By doing so she stole the spirit’s knowledge. It was a violation as reprehensible as rape, a type of murder.
    So Crull-maldor hunched over her prey, ripping light from Endemeer and in the City of the Dead the lich lord discovered the deepest secrets of the runelords.

6

A CALL TO ARMS
    It is only when a man gives up his life in service to a greater cause that he can attain true greatness
.
    â€”The Wizard