Wizardborn, page 33
The scoundrel aimed his cudgel at one of his dogs and sent it yapping into the shadows, then began to laugh deeply.
“Grimeson,” he said, “what are ya doing down here among the galley rats? Surely ya can find men of lesser character to hobnob with? Or has Gaborn finally decided to arrest me?”
“It’s not men of character I’m looking for tonight,” Grimeson said easily. “For if I did, I wouldna be down here with you.”
As he spoke, a door opened in a nearby shanty. A trio of curious children dressed in rags peeked out to see the cause of the commotion.
The rogue hefted Grimeson’s purse curiously, then tossed it back to him. “How can I do for you?”
Grimeson threw the purse back, and the villain’s eyes went wide. “The king is in need of some dog flesh. And he says that Abel Scarby always knows where to find the best pit dogs in the city.”
Abel grinned broadly. “Fighting dogs, is it? Mastiffs? Bulls?”
“No, a peculiar breed,” Iome said. “Yellow dogs, and small, but known to take a liking to man quickly, and have certain other valuable assets. Some lords would take exception to such animals, but perhaps you know of them?”
Abel Scarby peered up at her. Iome had her hood pulled up to hide her face, but he could not fail to notice the quality of her mount, or of her clothes. She could tell that he was used to dealing with rogues, for he did not ask her name.
Abel spat on the cobblestones. “Na a popular sporting dog, but they can be had. And pound for pound, there’s na a more vicious dog in the pits. I remember one unlikely bitch—as treacherous as a sack of weasels—”
“Can you get some dogs?” Iome asked. “Tonight? Now? They’re not for me. They’re for the king. We’ll want thirty at least, more if you can find them.”
Abel said, “I’ll have ’em for ya by sunrise.”
Iome bit her lip. “One more thing. The men who sell the dogs must take endowments of scent, and vector them to the king’s agent. I will pay well for this service.”
Abel Scarby swallowed hard and suddenly realized whom he was talking to. He bowed to one knee. He growled at the fellow who held Iome’s reins, “Kador, take your paws off the queen’s horse.”
Kador backed away and raised his hands, as if to ward off a blow.
“Excuse us, Your Highness,” Abel said. “We’re hard men, used to guarding our own backs. We keep the law in this alley. We meant no offense.”
“None was taken,” Iome said. “Any friend of Gaborn’s is a friend of mine.”
Abel stared up at her with solemn eyes and a troubled expression. “Is’t true, Your Highness? Gaborn is really the Earth King?”
“It is.”
“An’… dark times are ’pon us?”
Iome nodded.
Abel tossed the purse up to her and said loudly, “Yer Highness, I’ll want na coin.” He rested the knob of his cudgel on the ground in parody of a lord offering his sword, and his bright eyes shone with a mixture of hope and fear of rejection as he explained. “Milady, I’m na a fancypantser. Ya won’t find me wearing silk hose on feast days, and if ya ventured into my hovel, ya’d find it smelly as a bear’s den, and na a chair at the table clean enough for the likes of you to sit at. But my heart is as right and proud as any lord’s who ever bent a knee to ya. I’m na a knight, but I’ve got as much gristle in me as any animal what ever lived. An’ I’ve seventeen sons and daughters to my credit. So, I’m beggin’ you to ask the king—him what’s called me a friend—to Choose me an’ me kids.”
The young thugs around Iome all looked up at her expectantly, like dogs begging for scraps at their master’s table. The children in the doorway, wearing grime instead of cloaks and rags instead of clothes, timidly stepped out and crept to their father’s side. He threw his arms around the young ones. Iome hesitated.
Gaborn had no power to Choose the man, yet she dared not tell him. The man looked hopeless, forlorn.
Seventeen children. She thought of the one in her womb. Could she bear to have it torn from her?
“Gaborn is far away,” she said, “fighting reavers. I’m sure that he would Choose you, if he could.”
“When he comes, then?” Abel said. “Ya’ll ask him for us?”
There is a chance he will get his powers back, Iome assured herself. Yet she suspected that he never would.
“I’ll ask him,” she promised.
Abel’s lips were quivering, and his eyes shone dully from tears of gratitude. He stifled a sob, and his children all stood with wide eyes, till one young girl ran back into the house shouting, “Ma! Ma!”
Abel said through a tight throat, “Thank y a, milady. I’ll try ta be worthy of ya.”
Iome tossed back the purse. “Please, keep the money too. If not for your own sake, then for your wife and the little ones.”
Abel dropped his head, bowed lower. “My condolences for your father. He was a great king, from all I hear.”
“Thank you,” she said. Iome no sooner began turning her mount than Abel shouted, “Ya heard ’em, boys, look lively!”
Iome spurred her horse from the alley, and for a moment Grimeson was hard-pressed to keep up with her as she fled. Half a mile up the road she left the squalid waterfront at Crow’s Bay.
Iome reined in her mount and dropped to the street, then stood for a moment, looking out to the water.
Her hands would not stop shaking.
“Will you be all right?” Grimeson asked.
“By the Powers, I have never felt so dirty and ashamed,” Iome said, shaking. “I couldn’t tell him no. I couldn’t tell him that his children might die, not with the little ones standing there. What can I do? I never imagined I could feel—”
Suddenly she realized how Gaborn must feel. Only for him it had to be a thousand times stronger.
She leaned against the wall of a fishery and emptied her stomach. Grimeson said nothing. There could be no consolation.
Iome wept for her people.
43
THE ROUT
The horseman’s warhammer is the favored weapon of Mystarria. The handle of such a hammer can be from four to six feet long, and is made of the finest steel The crosspiece is narrow, spiked at each end, and of sufficient depth so that it is suitable for piercing a reaver’s skull—or a man’s armor.
—Hearthmaster Bander’s Guide to Weapons
Averan and Binnesman sat on the hillside under the starlight. The sun had fallen hours ago, and a horned moon lingered on the horizon. In the distance Averan could see fires winking around Mangan’s Rock.
Deer had come down from the hills to feed in the meadow. They walked around Averan on dainty hooves, as unmindful of her as if she were a dandelion.
Binnesman had planted his staff in the ground, left it sitting upright, and explained to Averan that an Earth Warden always did so, that the staff might draw power from the soil.
Afterward, he fell silent. He did not take Averan aside and show her plants in the dark, fretting about how little time he had. For once he merely sat, resting, gazing across the fields, as if he could see to the ends of the world. He’d done nothing more for hours.
Perhaps he only remains silent to keep from frightening the deer away, Averan thought.
“Are you casting a spell?” she asked at long last, afraid to disturb him. The doe that grazed beside her did not so much as twitch an ear at the sound of her voice.
Binnesman turned his head, glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
Binnesman pondered a moment. “Yes, I am casting a spell of sorts,” he said. “I’m taking time to renew. The touch of grass, the smell of pines in the wind, the taste of soil—they invigorate me. Sometimes, rest can feel magical, can’t it?”
“I suppose.”
She said nothing more for a long minute, then asked, “Binnesman, what happens when people die?”
“Their bodies go back to the Earth, and their spirits … do whatever spirits do.”
“You saw Erden Geboren,” Averan said. “Was he happy?”
“About as happy as wights get,” Binnesman grumbled. She could tell that he turned aside hard questions. In her experience, adults seldom liked answering hard questions. In time, they even learned never to wonder about things at all.
“But… not all spirits rise, do they? What happens to the others?”
Binnesman glanced at her. “No one knows, really. It is said that some are reborn in the netherworld, or perhaps are born into worlds that are shadows of ours, just as our world is but a shadow of the one world. But not all spirits go away, it seems—for some remain behind as wights.”
“I think I’d rather be a wight,” Averan said. “I like it here.”
“Why?” Binnesman asked. “Do you want to cheat death?”
“Of course,” Averan said.
Binnesman smiled. “You can’t cheat it, but some people learn to face it calmly. Some even embrace it as a friend.”
“That’s just conquering fear,” Averan objected. “Anyone can do that. I want to cheat death too.”
“Well,” Binnesman said. “So you want to know how to come back as a wight. I’m not sure I know the answer. I think that the dead may hear our thoughts. It’s almost as if we can summon them by thinking about them, or wishing them near. Or maybe by thinking about them, we merely lend them greater form. I don’t know….”
He fell silent a moment, then added, “I’ve noticed that wights are almost always creatures of great will in life. By far, most of them are people who desired to do good, who sought to create rather than to tear down.”
“But not all?”
“Not all,” Binnesman said. “Some were people or creatures of great will alone, beings with black hearts.”
“What else makes a wight?” Averan asked.
“Who knows?” Binnesman said. “You see the stars in the sky. There are millions of them, and all of them have worlds like ours whirling around them. Or at least they have bits of world like ours.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Averan said. “Beastmaster Brand sang that—part of the Creation Saga.”
“Really?” Binnesman asked. “He must have been a wise man. Few know it nowadays.”
“He only knew part of it,” Averan said.
“Then I will tell you what I know. You see, once there was only one world, and one star, and beneath it grew the One True Tree.
“And One Rune bound them all together. But an enemy sought to change it, to take control. The enemy smashed the rune, and the pieces flew apart. They dashed out like shards of glass, and scattered through the cosmos.
“Now there are a billion, billion worlds or more, each one spinning around its own sun. Each a broken piece of the One True World, each one more or less true in its own way.”
“So there are people like us on those worlds?” Averan asked.
“Not exactly, I think. We are all distorted reflections of something greater, of what we once were. We might not pass for human on their worlds; they might not pass for human on ours. But we are similar in our hearts, if not in appearance. We all yearn to return to the One True World. Some say that our spirits, our wights, are pieces of our true self, longing to return home.”
Wizards had traveled to the netherworld, Averan knew. Raj Ahten’s flameweavers had summoned a Darkling Glory from the One True World, as it was sometimes called. And she’d heard of other creatures from that mystic realm.
Binnesman furrowed a brow. “Averan,” he said. His voice suddenly sounded choked. “Averan, the Earth… needs us to be strong now. The future is rushing toward us. I can feel it like a rising storm.
“I created the wylde to fight the Earth’s battles, but I have not had time to finish her, to train her. There will be no time. I can see that now. Though I cannot unbind her, we’ll take her with us. I’m sure she’ll be of use.”
“What are you talking about?” Averan asked. She was afraid that he would take her into the Underworld at that very moment, just lead her down into some cavern.
Suddenly the ground began to tremble and rock beneath Averan. There was a hissing from the forest, and Averan imagined that some world worm was about to rise, like the one she’d seen at Carris.
But no, it was only an earthquake.
She looked at Binnesman for comfort, but the wizard stood up and pointed to the sky. Eight stars fell in rapid succession.
“What’s wrong?” Averan asked. “What’s happening?”
He jutted his chin down toward the grasslands, toward Mangan’s Rock. Averan gaped in surprise.
The watch fires around the rock all suddenly blazed. They were coming together in a huge crescent.
Gaborn’s men were setting fire to the plains!
“Come now,” Binnesman said. “We’ll get no more rest. Let us join the battle.”
As Binnesman’s mount galloped down from the hills and over the grasslands, Averan watched the flames shoot higher, filling her vision.
Gaborn had sent horsemen charging over the fields, spreading logs from watch fires upwind from Mangan’s Rock.
Now the flames leapt skyward, the fire spreading. They roared palpably, and rose a hundred yards in the air. Firelight smote against clouds of smoke, making them glow a ruddy orange, and through those glowing clouds Averan could glimpse the reavers on Mangan’s Rock, beginning to pace, their philia waving frantically.
What is he doing? Averan wondered. The fire could never climb the rock. The sides were too steep, too high. The few vines and grasses along the slopes would not catch.
But the reavers might well have sealed their own doom. They’d pushed the vast old oaks from the top of the rock, hurled them over its sides. The dry bark of the trees would burn, sending up clouds of smoke.
Did Gaborn hope to suffocate the reavers?
The very idea somehow terrified her.
She had smelled the world as a reaver, knew something of the beasts’ darkest fears. The smell of smoke loomed huge among those fears.
More than that, Fire itself scared her. It was the enemy of Earth, the antagonist to her Power.
“Can you feel that?” she shouted at Binnesman.
“What do you feel?” he demanded.
“The Fire. It’s aware of us. It’s angry that Gaborn seeks to use it against itself.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Binnesman said. “Fire consumes. Its appetite overwhelms its intellect. It destroys, and will spread devastation when it can. It cares nothing for life, either human or reaver. But that is also its weakness. Remember that. Fire will consume everything around it, until it burns itself out.”
She’d never sensed Fire as a power, at least not as strongly as she did now. Her growing Earth senses made her aware of the rising danger.
“What’s he doing?” Averan cried, even when they were two miles away.
She could see men outside the line of flames, knights mounted on chargers, bearing down with lances. The firelight gleamed on burnished mail.
A scarlet sorceress suddenly came thundering out of the wall of fire, her runes glowing fiercely, her staff held in a great foreclaw. Smoke roiled around her, came rushing with her.
She strode out of the fumes and blaze, and brought her staff to bear as knights charged her from three directions.
One fellow lanced her side, and she spun to meet him, hissing furiously. Suddenly other sorceresses came loping out of the inferno in her wake. Clouds of noxious fumes hovered around them.
“They’re coming from underground!” Binnesman shouted.
Averan saw it now. The reavers had been digging under the men, hoping to ambush them from beneath. Gaborn must have discovered it, broken into their tunnel. So he had lit the fires, thus filling their caverns with smoke.
The reavers burst up from a single chasm, just beyond the wall of flames, and made straight for Gaborn’s warriors.
Binnesman wrapped his arms tight around Averan’s waist, spurred his charger on.
As they drew near, she saw that not all of Gaborn’s troops rode. Hundreds of men now manned smaller blazes at the edge of the creek. They stood there over the logs, cooking huge slabs of meat.
In rising horror she realized what they were doing: they had cut the philia from the bungholes of dead reavers, and were throwing them onto the burning logs.
Even now she could smell the garlicky scent of them cooking, a stench that sent words shrieking in her mind. “Death, beware! Death! Death!”
She glanced back toward Mangan’s Rock. The wall of flames blew quickly to the east, had just begun to engulf the base of the cliff. It struck the wood and dry leaves, sent a tower of flame soaring up three hundred feet along the sheer walls.
She had no sooner realized what Gaborn was up to than it started: the reavers panicked.
All along the top of Mangan’s Rock, they scurried to escape.
A moving mass of monsters stampeded to the south, heading for the lowest cliffs, and began to rush down.
Reavers slipped from the top, pushed by their fellows-behind. Black crablike monsters flailed their arms and legs as they fell.
Some of the plunging reavers slammed into their fellows below, knocking them from the cliffs. Rocks crumbled beneath their mighty claws. Some of the reavers’ carapaces shattered as they met stones below. Others flailed about on broken legs.
Another tremor struck, and Averan wondered if Gaborn had suddenly regained his powers. Was he making the earth shake?
An entire escarpment collapsed, and the resulting avalanche hurled two thousand reavers into a pile. Those on the bottom died, while those on the top scurried off. Walls of flame shot up along the eastern slope of Mangan’s Rock, sending clouds of smoke billowing.
And all through it, Averan could hear the death screams of the reavers in her mind. The scent of the burning philia nearly overwhelmed her.
Binnesman rode to Gaborn, who sat on his mount. Gaborn stared at the destruction with eyes that gleamed from reflecting fires. His charger stamped its feet nervously.
“Isn’t it beautiful!” he shouted. “The reavers were bluffing, like Averan said. They couldn’t build another Rune of Desolation. They only hoped that we would spend ourselves trying to dislodge them.
