Wizardborn, page 10
“And read and write, too.”
Iome felt perplexed. She’d never suspected such a thing.
“How come we’ve never seen their writing?” Gaborn said.
“Because they write with smells. They leave smells written on stones along every trail. That’s the way that they like to talk best. In fact, it’s easier for a reaver to write a message than to talk face-to-face.”
“Why?” Gaborn asked.
Averan struggled to explain. “For a reaver, a word is a smell. Your name and your smell are the same thing, so that all a reaver has to do to say ‘Gaborn’ is to make your smell.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Gaborn said.
“It is, and it isn’t. Imagine that we are talking, and you said to me, ‘Averan, that’s a beautiful pair of rabbitskin boots you’re wearing. Where did you get them?’ And I said, ‘Thank you, I found them by the roadside, and no one claimed them. So now they’re mine.’
“When we talk like that, every word goes out of our mouths and stays in the air for a moment. Then it fades all by itself. So our words are a line of sounds, coming out of us.
“But with reavers, words don’t disappear on their own. All those smells, all those words, simply hang in the air—until you erase them.”
“And how is that done?” Binnesman asked. Everyone in Gaborn’s retinue crowded round Averan, as if she were some great scholar in the House of Understanding. They hung on her every word.
“After I create each scent, I have to make its opposite, the unscent that erases it.”
“What… ?” Binnesman asked. “You say ‘I.’ But you mean the reavers?”
“Yeah, I mean the reavers make the unscent.”
“The scent’s negative?” Gaborn asked.
“Yes,” Averan said, uncertainly, as if she’d never heard the word negative before.
“So when I say the word ‘Gaborn,’ I have to create a scent that says ‘not-Gaborn,’ before I speak again. I have to take the word ‘Gaborn’ from the air.
“And that can be very hard to do,” Averan said. “If I scream the word, if I make the scent strongly, I must un-scream it too. And the farther away you are, the longer it takes for you to get my message. So reavers learn to speak when they’re close together, to talk softly, to make scents that are so faint, other animals can’t even smell them. They’re just whispers that float in the air.”
“Wait a minute,” one lord said. “You say you have to make this word disappear. But why couldn’t you just make all the scents anyway? You can walk into a room and smell carrots and beef and turnips all boiling at the same time.”
“You can,” Averan said, “but it doesn’t mean anything. To a reaver, it would just be a jumble of words. Imagine if you took all the words I’ve said in the last two minutes and said them all at once. Could anyone make sense of it?”
“The reavers must talk slowly, then,” Gaborn mused.
“Not much slower than how you and I are speaking now,” Averan said, “at least when they’re close together. But it’s hard to understand each other across great distances.
“So reavers do write,” Averan continued, “all the time. If a scout passes down a trail, he’ll leave messages behind, telling what he sensed on side journeys, where he last saw enemies.”
This news astonished Iome and everyone else in the room. For ages men had wondered how reavers communicated. Most men assumed that they did it by waving their philia about. But Averan’s words would profoundly change the way that men perceived reavers. The girl knew this, and now seemed to have lost her inhibitions.
“And another thing,” Averan said. “Reavers don’t see like we do. They can only see close by, and they see the world all in one color, but it isn’t a color. I can’t explain it, but it’s the color of lightning. Lightning blinds them. When it flashes, they feel the way you would if you were staring into the sun. It’s very painful.”
“You’re a brave little girl,” Gaborn said. As if she had been waiting for his reassurance, Averan’s resolve broke. Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she began to sob. “Your tale brings certain questions to mind.”
“What?” Averan asked.
“For example, can you tell me about the nature and disposition of the reavers’ troops?”
Averan stared at him blankly. “Nature?”
“The reaver armies,” Gaborn clarified. “Do you know how many reavers there are?”
Averan shook her head. “I… one of the reavers I ate was a scout. The other a mage. I don’t know about numbers.”
Gaborn turned back to Averan. “Let me pose it another way. You don’t have any idea how many reavers there are in the Underworld?”
Averan seemed to gather herself. She closed her eyes for a long moment and said, “The Underworld is full, but the reavers—they can’t live just anywhere. Food is scarce.”
And we’re food, Iome thought. Gaborn glanced back at his counselors. The Wits showed little emotion.
“Your Highness,” Averan continued, “I’m scared.”
“Of what?” Gaborn asked softly.
“The One True Master has unraveled much of the Master Rune. Yesterday, you destroyed the Seal of Desolation that her apprentice laid on Carris.”
Gaborn nodded. Gaborn had killed the most powerful reaver mage ever mentioned in the tomes. Some small part of Iome had been clinging to the hope that Gaborn had already slain the most powerful of all reavers. But this child described it as being a mere “apprentice” to a far more powerful master.
“Tell me about her,” Gaborn demanded.
Iome’s glance flicked up to Binnesman. The mage, with his perpetual stoop, looked suddenly pale. He leaned on his staff, as if seeking support.
“In the Underworld,” Averan said, “the One True Master is taking endowments. And she’s giving them to her leaders.”
“Reavers have always been able to eat one another and grow that way,” Gaborn said. “Are you sure it isn’t the same?”
“This is different,” Averan said. “Reavers can eat each other’s brains to learn. And they can eat the musk glands under their arms to grow. But now they’ve discovered rune lore. She’s already deciphered the runes of grace, scent, and brawn. Now she’s trying to perfect metabolism.”
There was a moment of silence as warriors looked at one another meaningfully. Facing reavers was bad enough. Facing one that had endowments of metabolism was terrifying.
“But there’s something more,” Averan said. “I don’t understand it at all. The Seal of Desolation that you destroyed, that was part of something bigger. She plans to bind a Seal of Desolation to the Seal of Heaven and the Seal of the Inferno.”
Binnesman drew back, leaned on his staff for support. “That… that’s not possible! No one could decipher so much of the Master Rune!”
“It is possible,” Averan said. “I saw the runes taking shape at the Place of Bones! You saw the Seal of Desolation—”
“But,” Jerimas blurted, “it has taken mankind thousands of years to decipher the shapes of even the smallest of runes—brawn and wit! How could one reaver learn so much?”
“She divines them by looking into the fire,” Averan said.
Binnesman backed away. “By the Tree!” he swore. His face was hard. He looked bewildered, as if someone had just bludgeoned him for no apparent reason. “By the Tree…” He knew something that Iome didn’t, she felt sure. Or perhaps he merely suspected something. “You’re sure that this One True Master is a reaver, not some other creature?”
“I’ve seen her,” Averan said. “She’s enormous, but she’s just a reaver.”
Binnesman shook his head, as if he could not believe it. “Not just a reaver.”
“You say that she’s binding these seals.” Gaborn asked Binnesman, “What will that do?”
“She plans to bind the Powers of Fire and Air against us,” Binnesman said. “Earth and Water would diminish. Life would… change in ways so fundamental, I cannot even begin to guess at the repercussions.”
Jerimas concluded, “She’ll destroy the world!”
“No!” Averan said. “She doesn’t want to destroy the world—just… change it into the kind of place where we can’t live anymore.”
“Is that even possible?” Gaborn asked Binnesman.
Binnesman frowned, stroked his beard. “If she comprehends so many pieces of the Master Rune, the world has not seen a creature with such power….”
“Averan,” Gaborn said. “This is imperative. I need to find this One True Master. I need to kill her, and I must do it quickly. How can I get to her? You say that you can’t draw me a map. But you also say that you learn by eating reavers. Is there a certain kind of reaver that you need to eat, one who would know the way—another scout perhaps, or a howler?”
Averan looked up at him. Her eyes were filled with an unnamable expression. Iome could see a mixture of loathing and embarrassment and a pure desire to help. “Maybe!” she said, as if the idea had not occurred to her. “There are markings in the Underworld—directions.”
“Directions?” Gaborn said. “So you need to understand their language better? Can’t you get that from any reaver?”
Averan shook her head, said in a confused tone, “No. Not all reavers speak the same language.”
“What?” Gaborn asked. “Like Rofehavanish and Taifan?”
Averan tried to explain. “Not like that,” Averan said. “But a carpenter doesn’t speak like a warrior, does he? He has his own words for tools and the things he does with them, his own language. Reavers are the same way. They each have different jobs. If you’re ever going to reach the One True Master, there’s a certain reaver you need. The reaver… there’s no name for it. There’s just a smell.”
“Does it have any special markings?” Gaborn asked.
Averan wrinkled her brow. “It’s a Waykeeper,” she said slowly, as if searching for the right description. “It’s a Way-maker. It knows where the trails in the Underworld lead, and which doors are locked, and how they are guarded.”
“How many of these monsters are traveling with the horde?”
“One.”
“Just one?”
“Yes!” Averan said. A fierce light came into her eyes. “Just one—a big male, with thirty-six philia, and huge paws, and runes on his arms. I—I might know him if I could see him, and could smell him!”
Gaborn stepped backward, looked at Iome. His eyes were haunted, his expression that of a trapped animal. Iome knew that he was leaving, going someplace that she dared not follow.
“Gentlemen,” Gaborn told the knights there in the inn, “prepare your mounts. We’ll ride for Carris within the hour.”
11
A SMALL THING
Miracles are as common as soapwort seeds and spiderwebs. People tend to forget that, until they hear a newborn baby cry.
—The wizard Binnesman
Binnesman pulled up the gray blanket that covered Sir Borenson, looked beneath his tunic, and glanced away, frowning. “He’s infected. We’ll have to bring that fever down.”
He covered Borenson quickly, so passersby would not see, but it was too late. Myrrima had come out of the inn to find a couple of squires in the wagonbed, already gawking at the wound. She’d shooed them away. But now a number of knights that knew Borenson either in person or by reputation had begun to gather around the wain, and Myrrima was rapidly finding that nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
Borenson lay unconscious amid the sweet-smelling hay. Myrrima felt anxious for his welfare. She had seen people die before. She believed that in his current state, her husband ought to be able to hang on for another day or two. But she still felt nervous. Sometimes, the sick could fool you, die just when you thought them recovered.
Sweat glistened on his face. All around, the lords and squires who had come to ride in Gaborn’s retinue were preparing for the journey south. Those with ready mounts stood in their armor, elbows on the wagon, gazing in. Binnesman had Averan and his wylde at his side.
Binnesman turned to Averan. “Do you know what sweet woodruff looks like?”
“White flowers?” Averan asked. “Beastmaster Brand used to put the leaves in his wine.”
“Good girl,” Binnesman said. “I saw some growing under the hedge round back. Go and pluck a dozen leaves for me.”
Averan raced off around the inn, while Binnesman went back inside for a moment. By now twenty men were standing around the wagon.
A knight of Mystarria came up, a fellow with a long black moustache that flowed over his chin guard. He glanced in the wagon. “Sir Borenson? Wounded?”
“Aye,” a bystander said. “He took the worst of them.”
“Head wound?”
“Worse—got his walnuts cracked.”
The fellow squirmed, reached over to look under Borenson’s tunic.
“If you want to look,” Myrrima said, reaching out to grab his wrist, “it will cost you!”
“Cost me?” the knight asked. He smiled disarmingly. “How much?”
“An eye,” Myrrima said. Around her the crowd erupted into laughter.
Binnesman came back out of the inn with a bit of creamed honey in a bowl. As soon as Averan returned with the small, pale spade-shaped leaves of the sweet woodruff, he said, “Now, bruise the leaves by rolling them between your hands.”
Averan rolled the leaves.
“Put them in the honey.”
She dropped them in.
Binnesman reached into the pocket of his robe, pulled out a bit of dark dried plant stem. “Hyssop,” he told Averan. “Always pick it two days after it rains, and make sure you use the moldy leaves, down near the roots.”
He crushed the dried leaf, put it in the honey, stirred it with his finger. He added a dried leaf of agrimony, the herb that soldiers most often took to staunch wounds on the battlefield.
At that moment, some fellow came up to the back of the crowd and blurted, “What’s going on?”
“Borenson has lost his walnuts,” a knight said, “and Binnesman’s going to grow him some new ones.”
Several men snorted in derisive laughter. It was a bad joke, and Myrrima didn’t laugh.
“Really, how soon until he can ride again?” the knight teased.
Binnesman whirled on the crowd. “Is this what we’ve come to?” he shouted. “Do the children of Earth stand here upon sacred ground and mock the Earth?”
Myrrima felt sure that the knights had meant no disrespect, but Binnesman seemed furious. He drew himself to his full height, glowered at the knights, so that to the man they began to back away from his challenge. More importantly, they all began to back away from the knight who had made the jest, Sir Prenholm of Heredon.
“How dare you!” Binnesman said. “Have you learned nothing in these past few days?
“You could not have withstood the Darkling Glory, but Myrrima here, a woman who at the time did not have a single one of the greater endowments of brawn or grace or stamina slew it single-handedly.
“You with all of your endowments could not stand against the reavers at Carris—but Gaborn called a worm, a single worm, and routed the whole of the reaver horde!
“How can you doubt the Power I serve? There is nothing broken that cannot be mended. There are none who are sick that cannot be healed.
“The Earth created you. It gives you life from moment to moment. And in this hallowed valley, Sir Prenholm, I could plant a stick in the ground and by dawn it would grow into a better man than you!”
Myrrima drew backward, afraid. A green fog had begun to coalesce at the wizard’s feet, and he radiated power. The air carried a copper tang mingled with a scent of moss and old roots.
Sir Prenholm grew pale, and now stood alone, shaking. “I meant no disrespect. It was only a jest.”
Binnesman shouted and pointed at Borenson. “By the Power I serve, I tell you that this eunuch can father children still!”
Myrrima didn’t expect such a boon. She didn’t even believe it could be done. But Prenholm had goaded Binnesman into boasting. Even if Binnesman could restore her husband, there was one thing that Myrrima knew: magic carried a price. Binnesman’s deed would cost.
The knights and lords stood like scolded children, none daring to speak.
Binnesman took his bowl of honey and herbs, and swirled it through the green fog around his feet, then knelt and mixed a pinch of dirt.
He glanced at the growing crowd, handed the bowl to Myrrima. “Take this down to the river. Kneel and make the rune of healing in the water seven times. Then cup your hand in the water and mix it with this concoction. Wash your husband. He’ll be ready to ride within the hour.”
Then he leaned close and whispered, “But such a grievous wound will take longer to heal—if it can be healed at all.”
“Thank you,” Myrrima said, her heart hammering. She took the bowl carefully, afraid that she might spill it, and laid it on the buckboard.
She drove the wagon around the corner, along the stone wall of the inn’s garden, down to where the stream rushed beneath the alders. Their leaves flashed gold, and sunlight struck the tree trunks, blazing them silver.
She stopped in the shadows of the trees. A pair of mallards came up in the water, gabbling, begging for a crust of bread.
Myrrima pulled off Borenson’s blanket.
She climbed out of the wagon, stood by the water’s edge. After the rain last night, the golden leaves of the alders lay plastered to the ground. The stream flowed freely, gurgling through the rocks. The mallards climbed up on the bank near her feet.
She knelt over the water and made the rune of healing seven times.
It was peaceful, such a serene setting for a disturbing day. She felt as she made the runes that she should speak some incantation, but knew none. A song came to mind, a senseless ditty that she’d composed as a girl when she used to scrub her clothes on the washing stones beside the river Dwindell.
I love water, for water like me—
whether in rain, pools, or puddles,
all runs to the sea.
Tumbling, splashing, foaming through hills,
