Teldin took the smaller man’s hand and clasped it firmly. “It’ll be fine, Liam, just fine. Go home now, before Eloise starts worrying. You be sure to fetch me when its time to do your haying."

“I’ll do that, I will,” promised Liam. With one last “ swipe at the sweat on his brow, the smaller man turned and headed across the fields toward his own farm. It would be a long walk back. Teldin’s homestead was cut off from the other farms in the area by the wooded ridge to the west. Most of the other farmers lived clustered in small villages along the road from Kalaman, which ran through the main valley about two leagues away. Only a few smaller homesteads, like Teldin’s, were situated in the side valleys. Teldin’s father had liked it that way, and it suited Teldin just fine, too. Teldin, like all the Moores, had never been a particularly sociable man. The isolation did not bother him, because he never thought about it. When Teldin felt the urge for company, he visited Liam or some of the other farmers in Dargaard Valley, particularly those with pretty, young daughters.

As Liam disappeared into the woods, Teldin sighed, finally ready to give up. He was getting a crick in his neck. There were still chores to do, and milking the goat was first. Slow and stiff, he went back into the house for a bucket.

As Teldin came out the door, a small spark of light caught his eye. It left a fiery streak like a shooting star, though the fact that it flashed through the sky beneath the clouds went unnoticed by Teldin. Then the spark turned, suddenly shifting more in his direction.

Stars don’t dart about, Teldin realized, his curiosity suddenly piqued. The spark kept moving, jigging slightly this way, then that, like a tadpole in a stream, while all the time holding to an almost straight line toward Teldin. The more he watched, the larger and faster the light grew. Teldin thought he could almost hear a hissing noise, like a drop of water skittering in a hot skillet.

The imaginary sound grew louder, now more like a redhot stone cast in a pot, then changing again as deeper rumbles sounded beneath the popping hiss. Weak echoes came back to Teldin from the hills of his small valley. The spark had become a glowing coal surrounded by a fiery nimbus, almost the size of brilliant Solinari at full.

Teldin stood watching, waiting for the thing to change course again. It did not heed his wishes and instead bore downward, resolving into a great, dark shape, like a tapered oval, silhouetted by sparkling points and tongues of flame

Teldin abruptly realized that it was plunging straight toward where he stood dumbfounded, bucket in hand. The yeoman squinted at the thing that charged out of the sky, bright enough now to hurt his eyes. A great jutting beak and bulging, glowing eyes clearly marked it as some kind of maleficent beast. Gigantic wings, billowing with fire, flared out from the sides and trailed showers of fiery sparks. A roaring filled the air over the silent farm, like the teeth-grating scream of an enraged fiend.

“Paladine’s blood!” swore Teldin as his amazement wore off and he saw doom descending. Instinctively he threw up one arm to shield himself. The bucket dropped, and with his other hand he groped about for the hoe, a poor weapon at best. The flaming beast still bore down from the sky, relentless in its approach.

Self-preservation finally overcame inertia, and Teldin flung himself to the side, springing and stumbling to evade the creature’s charge. Leaping from the porch, his hoe in hand, Teldin hit the ground, tripped over a root, pitched forward, and rolled across the dirt yard. The goat, waiting to be milked, ran with terrified bleats as Teldin, dirt-smeared and panting, scrambled to his feet. The farmer twisted around to see if the fiery beast still pursued him.

All thoughts were shattered by a crackling screech as the monstrous, dark underbelly scraped across the field. The beast smashed into the ground, not slowing in the least for its landing. The great bulk plowed through the melons, throwing up dirt like a plow cutting a furrow. Vines and fruit were gouged away. Under its driving landing, the earth shuddered, as if the soil were struck by Reorx’s hammer itself.

The shock wave blasted Teldin with a hail of pebbles and dust. The earth heaved under his feet, throwing him head over heels. The farmer crashed backward down the stream bank until he was slammed onto his chest and sprawled headfirst down the opposite bank. The wind was driven from his gut. The hoe ricocheted out of his grasp, and his arm was numb where it had struck a stone. Gasping, Teldin sucked in half a lungful of mud and water and succeeded only in choking himself worse. Forcing himself onto his elbows, it was all he could do to weakly lift his face, gasping and spitting, out of the muck.

In the field above, the thing from the Abyss rebounded from its initial impact until it was almost airborne again. Melon vines hung from the splintered underbelly, the plants’ roots desperately clutching to the earth as if they were trying to entwine the charging beast in their grasp. The creature’s broad beak tore through the slender trees in front of the house, shattering the trunks in grinding howls that ended in cracking explosions. As one of the flaming wings passed overhead, an arc of sparks cascaded down, and hot embers singed Teldin’s back through his wet shirt. Other coals extinguished themselves with a quick hiss in the muddied stream.

From where he lay sprawled, it looked to Teldin as if the thing, beast or whatever, might get itself airborne once more. The shape’s ponderous bulk hovered over the farmhouse’s shingled roof, struggling to break the bonds of gravity.

The illusion was shattered by a rippling series of explosions, like a giant striking stones together, from somewhere deep within the thing. The great curved shape trembled. There was another single roar, and the side burst open in a gout of flame, blasting shards across the farmyard. In the brief moment that the conflagration illuminated the sky, Teldin had the image of a great ship, some winged ocean vessel, its planking shattered and broken, hovering in the air over his house. In that same second, the burning tongue

flared toward him, washing his face in roasting heat. Jagged wooden splinters lanced the bank around Teldin while flaming embers once again rained from above.

Mindful of injury, Teldin pressed back into the stream, the warm mud squeezing up around his chest, the water running over his back. Above he could hear a wood- shearing roar as the ship lurched downward, crushing the roof of his house. The fieldstone chimney, built by his father, collapsed as the old rafters gave way without a fight. Only Grandfather’s strong log walls resisted, for a moment supporting the great weight pressing down on them. From where he lay, Teldin heard a groan of wood followed by a popping crack, the way trees sometimes froze in the worst winters. After a series of thunderous booms, a relative silence-broken only by the crash of an occasional piece of debris-was all that sounded.

Though trembling and shaken by this unexpected attack, Teldin peered over the bank, his blue eyes quickly going hard as he looked at the destruction of his home. The ship, if it was one, had finally settled to a stop, crushing the house’s entire western wall. The stone-and-mortar chimney had fallen over on the chicken coop, caving in the flimsy roof. The whitewashed logs were thrust out at terrible angles and the porch he had built was buried under the remains. Teldin could barely hear the squawks of hens, now somewhere far off in the darkness. Fires swirled and crackled through the gaping holes in the hull, like beacons set to highlight the ghastly scene.

Finally, Teldin warily raised himself out of the water, ready to bolt like one of the rabbits that sometimes crouched at the edge of his fields. Muck ran down his scratched and burned body, but the farmer was too intent on the blazing scene to notice. Cautiously, he stepped up the bank and slowly began to circle the burning wreck.