Wizardborn, page 36
At the very least, his shade ought to be here, she thought.
The room was overlarge, with rich furnishings and a huge canopied four-poster bed draped with woolen curtains. Iome went to it, patted the firm mattress. This is where I am destined to sleep, she thought. This is where—the Powers preserve us—I’ll bear my son. This is where Gaborn will get more sons upon me.
Iome’s Days went to a window, opened it wide. “I’ve heard that the view of the city here is beautiful,” she exulted. “We should see it from the promenade.”
Iome wouldn’t be able to sleep, she knew. With so many endowments of stamina and metabolism and brawn, she needed very little of it. From now on when she did take rest, she would take it as powerful Runelords were wont to do—by standing quietly and staring off at private dreams. She still felt rested, and the Days’ tone was infectious.
Iome went out to the promenade. It was three stories beneath the very topmost ramparts of the tower, where the far-seers kept their vigil. The promenade was well lit. A huge red lantern hung just beneath the far-seers’ outlook.
“That wasn’t lit a while ago,” Iome remarked.
“The queen wasn’t in residence a while ago,” the Days replied. “It is lit in your honor.”
In her castle back home, there had been no such practice. Castle Sylvarresta served as the bastion of defense, and Iome had seldom left it. But Mystarria was another matter. Gaborn’s family maintained half a dozen castles that could serve as resorts during time of war, along with palaces that had sometimes served as homes during times of peace.
Below Iome the various buildings of the Courts of Tide hunched in the darkness—lordly castles with their proud towers raised high, manors and estates squatting in their splendor. Markets cascaded to the west, the light of the horned moon glinting on their slate roofs; while beyond them, in the poorer quarters, the pitched roofs of thousands upon thousands of shanties jutted up like sharp stones.
Beyond it all was the vast ocean, placid. Salt tang tickled her nostrils. It was not a cold night.
“It’s beautiful up here,” the Days said. “Just as I always imagined.”
She went on. “When I was young, my mother told me a child’s tale. She said that there was a castle filled with giants on each edge of the world, and that those of the east are making war with those of the west. Each day, the giants to the east load their catapult, and send a flaming ball high overhead, to smash against the roofs of the castle to the west. And each night, those same giants send a great stone hurtling overhead. The ball of flame is the sun. The ball of stone is the moon. And when the day comes that the sun no longer rises, you’ll know that the war has ended.
“The commoners in their shanties in town say that the King’s Tower is so high,” the girl continued, “that a farseer standing here can look across the ocean, and spot the giants working to load their catapults.
“It was from this very tower that Fallion’s far-seers spotted the gray ships.”
Iome smiled. Overhead, several stars lanced through the sky at once. One, in particular, was a huge fireball that hurtled slowly, leaving a flaming trail. She teased. “It looks as if your giants must have run out of rocks. They’re hurling shot tonight.”
The Days laughed. She turned, her eyes sparkling. She knew her history and she loved it. The girl’s dream was to stand at the side of a queen and watch history unfold. But assuming that Gaborn even could stop the fell mage that led the Underworld, Iome would be stuck in this tower for weeks, doing nothing. The notion wrung her heart.
How long, Iome wondered, before this girl grows bored with me and regrets her choice of occupation?
Iome scanned the far horizon where water sparkled in the night. She couldn’t discern any ships, or even a pod of whales. “No giants,” Iome said. “No ships either.”
At that, the girl stiffened involuntarily just a bit, and her fingers tightened on the stone rail around the parapet. She laughed again, but her laugh sounded forced.
Ships are coming, Iome realized. The Days knows it. Ships are coming to attack the Courts of Tide.
But whose ships?
Iome began to think furiously. To the south were the Inkarrans, who had never made war upon the north, though they were doing so now. Still, sending fleets was not how they practiced war. To the north were half a dozen countries that could muster a fleet—Lonnock, Toom, Eyremoth, Al-nick, Ashoven, and Internook.
I’m jumping to conclusions, Iome thought. Yet she had to wonder. This Days was young, perhaps the youngest she’d ever seen. The rest had always been far more mature. Perhaps she wasn’t fully trained.
For long centuries there had been rumors that Days sometimes acted as spies. Could this be the source of such rumors—a Days who involuntarily twitched an eye or looked away nervously when the conversation strayed to dangerous topics?
“So,” Iome said. “You said you grew up here, in Berriston?”
“Yes, it’s nearby,” the girl answered.
“Can we see it from here?”
The Days took her to the north side of the tower, pointed up along the coast four miles. “You see the village there, the one with just a few lights.”
“Ah, so close,” Iome said. “You could see the towers here from your home every day.”
“Not in the winter,” the Days said. “Not when the fog rolls in.”
Iome had never known a Days who spoke so much. “Does your family still live there, your mother, father, brothers, sisters?”
“My mother died years back,” the Days said. “But my father is here, and my older brothers. They’re twins. I never liked my stepmother.”
“Have you visited them recently?” Iome asked.
Now the girl clutched at the railing again, nervous. “No.” Was she worried for her family, or did the idea of visiting them make her nervous?
“Would you like to?” Iome said. “Perhaps I could take you.”
“No!” the Days answered. “Time does not roll backward. We should not try to make it do so.” She did not speak this last with full conviction.
“I suppose not,” Iome said. “I shall certainly never see my parents again, and nothing I can do will ever bring them back. It seems a shame, though, that your family would be so close, and you not able to see them.”
The Days clutched at the railing again, then looked away to the northwest, avoiding the subject.
Iome strolled around the promenade, until she faced west. Overhead, a star streaked across the sky, followed almost instantly by another.
“My husband is out there,” Iome said, “fighting the reavers. He fears that the end may be coming, three or four days from now. But I suppose you know all that.”
The girl fell silent and leaned forward, gazing west.
Iome continued. “He’s facing so many enemies. It’s not just the reavers. It’s the Inkarrans to the south, now, and Raj Ahten. And mad King Anders. I worry for him.”
The Days did not clench the rail. She merely stood gazing out. Iome read her reaction: Gaborn is safe. Don’t worry.
Iome’s head felt near to bursting. She suspected that she was on to something. This girl was not fully trained. So long as she did not suspect that Iome could read her, she would continue to reveal what she knew in her reactions.
Iome circled the promenade. “It’s getting late. You’ll probably want some sleep. I hope that your quarters are adequate?”
“They’re wonderful.” To a girl of peasant stock, any quarters here would seem luxurious.
“And you’ve had dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Iome said. “I’ve never given it much thought before, but I suspect it must be hard for a Days at first, to be stuck here without any friends.”
“Oh, I have friends,” the Days answered.
Iome knew of them. She knew that the girl had given an endowment of wit to another, a friend who granted the endowment back, so that now they were of one mind. Gaborn had spoken of how he himself envied those who had such deep relationships.
Beneath Iome, the tower began to sway slightly, and stones bucked under her feet.
At first she thought that she imagined it, and she reached for the railing more worried that she would look silly than from any concern about the safety of the tower.
Then the tower really did sway, and the ground trembled and shook. Iome’s heart pounded.
“Earthquake!” the Days cried.
Her mouth opened in surprise, just as a rumbling sound rolled through the city.
The great tower began to thump up and down as the soil rolled beneath it in waves. Of all the places in the world that Iome would want to be during an earthquake, this tower was the last.
She heard glass shatter down in the palace as the huge windows in the Great Hall burst.
Throughout the Courts of Tide, people began to scream in alarm. Dogs barked and horses whinnied. In a castle on an island nearby, a whole tower collapsed, went sliding into the sea.
The Days grabbed the railing around the parapet, as if afraid that she might fall.
“Let’s get out of here!” Iome shouted. She grabbed the girl’s hands and pulled her through the door, into the tower proper. The king’s books tumbled from a shelf, along with a helm that clattered loudly. The canopy above the bed swayed.
Iome pulled the Days into the room just as a sound of cracking rock split the night air. The parapet outside splintered and fell.
The Days shouted and grabbed Iome, clutching her for support.
Still the tower swayed as if it might topple any second.
“Come on,” Iome said. She began dragging the girl from the room. Overhead, Iome could hear shouting as the far-seers raced for safety.
She leapt into the stairwell. Lamps were hung along the wall, and they swayed, spilling flaming oil. As the tower leaned, plaster on the walls buckled and fell in heavy chunks. The air inside the castle filled with dust and smoke.
Iome ran downstairs with her hand shielding her head from the debris. With her endowments of metabolism, the plaster seemed to slough off slowly. With her endowments of brawn, she was able to knock chunks of it aside, protecting herself and the girl.
She leapt past a wall of fire.
Enormous slabs of plaster skittered down the steps, and Iome had to fight for decent footing. The farther down she ran, the more it felt as if she were negotiating a landslide.
She felt inside her. Gaborn did not warn her of any danger as he had at Castle Sylvarresta. She felt only panic. At any moment the whole tower might collapse.
She had not reached the bottom of the stairs when the first tremor stopped.
The Days halted for a second. “Wait. Wait. It’s over.” She wiped tears of terror from her eyes and began to sob.
But Iome had seen more than one quake in Heredon, and she knew better. “You can’t know that!”
She grabbed the Days and urged her down the stairwell, out of the castle. It was good that she did.
Iome had just fled the building when a stronger tremor began to humble the Courts of Tide.
47
SEARCHING FOR THE WAYMAKER
Honor often goes to the warrior who gives his life in battle. But few properly venerate the bravest of all: those who willingly endure endless agony for a higher cause.
—Lord Mangan
At the base of Mangan’s Rock the ground lay scorched for a mile around. Here and there, small shrubs still burned, so that the land grew blacker than a night sky, even though a thousand small fires lit it.
To the east, Gaborn’s fire raged, blowing into the foothills of the mountains. In all likelihood, it would continue to sputter and blaze into the forests for days.
With each step that Averan took, ashes stirred in the air, clogging her lungs. Averan, Binnesman, Gaborn, his Days, stalked toward the dead reavers that lay in sordid humps, each monster taller than an elephant.
Thousands had leapt or fallen from Mangan’s Rock in a grisly hail. Some had actually died. The land was covered with them at the south end of the cliff. In a few places, bodies lay three or four deep.
Thousands of the wounded retreated over the plains, legs broken or carapaces cracked. The rest of the horde outran them. Most of Gaborn’s knights went to hunt down the injured, but he’d sent some scouts with torches in hand to search among the grim carcasses for the Waymaker.
Averan did not want to eat another reaver. The last one had wrung sweat from her, sickened her, caused her profound pain. Her nerves still jangled, and her muscles ached. It was too soon to eat again.
But dead reavers lay everywhere, and Gaborn didn’t dare waste an opportunity.
Averan stalked through the ashes. A falling star streaked above her. She looked up, saw another almost immediately, and noted that only a few gree remained with the dead reavers. Either the smoke had killed them, or they’d flown off after the rest of the horde.
The ground shook again, and a few stones tumbled down from Mangan’s Rock, bouncing among the reavers.
“Did you make the earthquake?” Averan asked Gaborn.
“No,” he said. “It’s none of my doing.”
She recognized a dying glue mum ahead. It lay on its back, gasping, drawing air in massive gulps. The sacs beneath its jaws excreted oozing mucilage.
“Don’t go near,” Gaborn warned her.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Its philia aren’t even moving.” She stared at it. “This one was called Maker of High Things. It built the nesting hall for the One True Master.”
She went to it. This glue mum had been a fine beast. Many glue mums were trained to use their mucilage to reinforce ceilings in caverns and tunnels, but this one had excelled. Her vaulted arches and buttresses were a marvel of strength and grace.
“You feel sympathy for the monster?” Gaborn asked.
Averan closed her eyes, peered into a snatch of memory. “They’re alive,” she answered. “This one—was an artist. It should have stayed where it belongs.”
Binnesman said, “Good, child. You are learning. All life is precious. All must be revered.”
For a long while Averan and Gaborn hunted, along with a hundred scouts. Word came to them after an hour that more than a thousand reavers had died in the stampede, and Skalbairn’s men were still lancing the wounded, having made another two thousand kills. The main body of the horde was heading south, running along their trail to their bolt-hole in the Underworld.
So Gaborn and Averan hunted among the dead.
At Mangan’s Rock the bodies lay thick against the cliff-side, stacked to a depth of five or six deep. The corpses rose in morbid piles. The scouts searched as best they could, climbing down through little gaps where a reaver’s leg or head wedged open a crawlspace.
But in some cases, it was simply impossible to see what might lie beneath the pile. Even Runelords with force horses couldn’t easily move the massive carcasses of the reavers, and Gaborn was left to worry that the Waymaker would lie forever hidden.
“Milord!” a scout shouted. “I think I’ve found him!” The scout appeared three hundred yards down the cliff, and stood atop a pile of dead reavers, waving his torch eagerly.
Averan jogged to the pile of corpses against the cliff. “He’s a big brute,” the scout said as she neared, “just like you told us. And he’s got thirty-six philia, and big paws. It’s hard to see much down there, but there’s a rune on his right shoulder, just like you said. The rest of him is buried down where I can’t see it.”
Averan scampered up a jagged rock, the lichens on it rubbing her hands raw.
She climbed up on the corpse of a reaver with Gaborn’s help. The pile of dead reavers here was deep, and to get to the one that she wanted, she had to go up and over. She was on a sorceress when the reaver twitched, and for one heart-stopping moment she dared not move, thinking it was alive.
She watched the scout crawl into a little cave formed by dead bodies. He squeezed under one reaver’s leg, into a grotto. The torch lit the way.
Averan followed him down. The path was precarious—step on this reaver’s leg here, watch out for the spike on that one’s elbow, climb onto that one’s head, don’t let the torch burn you. And try not to worry that one of the reavers might twitch or shift, and the whole pile of them collapse on top of you.
Gaborn and Binnesman followed her down.
The scout reached the bottom, stepped back into a smaller space, and stopped. Averan followed. Smoke swirled in the still air, and the torch burned hot. She looked up in the torchlight and saw a reaver’s head. She stifled a cry.
That’s him! she thought immediately. Four dead reavers covered much of the corpse. But one huge paw protruded near his muzzle, and part of his shoulder could be made out between the legs of another reaver.
In size and shape, it looked like the Waymaker. Averan closed her eyes. Her only memories were seen from a reaver’s point of view. They didn’t see the world exactly like people do. To a reaver, the whole body glowed in different shades of blue light. So it was hard to tell.
“Yeah,” Averan said, her voice coming out rough with anticipation and dread. “It could be him.” After hunting through thousands of reavers today, she felt skeptical.
The body of another reaver squashed the Waymaker’s face so that the bony plate on its skull angled back, distorting the reaver’s visage. “Maybe if it wasn’t squashed, I could be more sure.”
“What of the rune?” Gaborn asked. The reaver had a rune on his shoulder, still glowing in smoldering colors.
“I don’t know,” Averan admitted. “Reavers can’t see those colors. To them, the runes are just smells, magical incantations written in smells.” Averan’s memory didn’t let her see the shape of the rune, and she couldn’t tell if it was placed properly on the body.
She stared for long minutes. She couldn’t smell anything but smoke. If she’d had a reaver’s strong nose, and if she’d been able to get at its bunghole, she would know. “I just can’t be sure.”
