Wizardborn (4 page)

The fact that Wuqaz Faharaqin was angry did not bode well for the object of his wrath.

The Invincible reached up a hand clumsily, as if he seldom greeted in this manner. “I am Akem.”

“What has happened here?” Myrrima asked.

“His nephew, Pashtuk, murdered today,” Akem said. “Now he question witnesses.”

“Faharaqin's nephew murdered someone?”

“No, Pashtuk Faharaqin was murdered.” He nodded toward an ugly dead Invincible who lay, as if in a place of honor, next to Saffira. “He was a captain among Invincibles, a man of great renown, like the others here.”

“Who killed him?” Myrrima asked.

“Raj Ahten.”

“Oh!” Myrrima breathed softly.

“Yes,” Akem said. “One of slain live long enough to bear witness. He say, ‘Raj Ahten call to Invincibles after battle, and try to murder Earth King'—a man who is his own cousin by marriage to Iome Vanisalaam Sylvarresta. To fight a cousin, this is a great evil. To kill one's own men, this is also evil.” He did not say it, but Myrrima could hear in his tone that Raj Ahten would have to pay.

“These men”—Akem indicated the kneeling Invincibles—“found the dying witness.”

Wuqaz Faharaqin questioned the witnesses one by one. As he did, his eyes blazed brighter and brighter.

Derisive shouts arose from the crowd. One lord strode forward, pointing at the witnesses. Myrrima did not need Akem to translate. “This man say the witness no good. Need more than one witness. He say Raj Ahten would not seek to kill Earth King.”

Myrrima could hardly restrain her rage. “I saw it!”

Wuqaz Faharaqin growled at her outburst, asked a question in his native tongue. Akem looked up at Myrrima and translated, “Please, to tell name?”

“Myrrima,” she said. “Myrrima Borenson.”

Akem's eyes widened. A hush fell over the crowd as men whispered her name to one another. “Yes,” Akem said, “I thought so—the northern woman with the bow. You slew the Darkling Glory. We have all heard! We are honored.”

Myrrima felt astonished. News traveled fast. “It was a lucky shot.”

“No,” Akem said. “There is not so great luck in all the world, I think. You must tell your story.”

Myrrima nudged her mount closer to the bonfire so that she could speak to Wuqaz face-to-face.

“I was thirty miles north of here when Raj Ahten caught up to Gaborn. There was murder in the Wolf Lord's eyes, and he'd have killed Gaborn sure, if Binnesman's wylde had not stopped him. I put an arrow in Raj Ahten's knee myself, but Gaborn forbade me or anyone else to kill him.”

Akem translated. Wuqaz tried to listen impassively, but his eyes continued to blaze. He spoke and Akem translated. “Can you prove that you saw this?”

Myrrima reached into her quiver, drew out the arrow with which she'd shot Raj Ahten. His blood lay black upon its iron tip. “Here's the arrow. Have your trackers smell it. They'll know Raj Ahten's scent.”

Akem carried the arrow to Wuqaz. The warlord sniffed it curiously. Myrrima saw that he, too, was a Wolf Lord. He growled low in his throat, spat a few words in his own tongue, and raised the arrow for all to see. Other lords rode close, sniffed at the shaft.

“The smell of Raj Ahten is indeed upon this arrow,” Akem translated. “His hand pulled the shaft free, and his blood stains its tip.”

“Tell Faharaqin that I want my arrow back,” Myrrima said. “Someday I intend to use it to finish the job.”

Akem relayed her message, retrieved Myrrima's arrow. Wuqaz and his men had more questions about her encounter. They seemed baffled as to why Gaborn had spared Raj Ahten, a man who proved to be his enemy. Myrrima looked
at the stern faces among the Ah'kellah, and remembered something she'd once heard: in some places in Indhopal, there is no word for “mercy.” She explained that Gaborn, as Earth King, could not slay one who was Chosen. The Ah'kellah listened intently. They asked what had happened after the fight, where Raj Ahten had gone. She pointed southwest toward Indhopal.

At that, Wuqaz drew his saber from the scabbard at his back, whipped its curved blade overhead, and began shouting. His warhorse grew excited, fought him for control as it danced forward. It reared and pawed the air. Myrrima had to fight her own mount as it backed away.

The Ah'kellah all began to shout, waving swords and warhammers overhead.

“What will happen?” Myrrima asked.

“Raj Ahten did great abomination to attack Earth King. Such deed cannot go unpunished. Wuqaz say, ‘Raj Ahten has sided with reavers against own cousin, against own tribe.' He say, ‘Raise Atwaba!'”

“What is that?”

“In ancient time, when king do wrong, witnesses raise Atwaba, ‘Cry for Vengeance.' If people get angry, they kill king—maybe.”

Wuqaz Faharaqin spoke encouragingly to his men.

“He warn, ‘Raise cry loud in markets,'” Akem translated. “Let not your voice tremble. Retreat not from kaif who challenges, or from guards that threaten. If all Indhopal does not rise against Wolf Lord, they must know why Ah'kellah do so.”

With that pronouncement, Wuqaz Faharaqin leapt from his charger and rushed to his nephew's corpse. He raised his sword, stared down at the remains, and began shouting. “He ask spirit to be appeased,” Akem said, whispering in respect for the dead. “He ask it not to wander home or trouble family. Wuqaz Faharaqin promise justice.”

Wuqaz smote off the corpse's head with the clunk of metal piercing bone. Men cheered as he lifted his nephew's head in the air.

“Now he will carry head to tribe as testament.”

Wuqaz beckoned to the crowd. Tribesmen came forward, Invincibles of the Ah'kellah. They were strong men, austere. Wuqaz Faharaqin took his nephew's head by the hair, held it high, and shouted. Akem said solemnly, “He say, ‘There must be no king but Earth King.'”

All around, the Ah'kellah repeated the words in chorus, chanting them over and over.

Myrrima's heart pounded as the Ah'kellah decapitated the other murder victims, bagged the heads. They began to toss the bodies into the funeral pyre. She didn't understand everything that was going on. She didn't understand desert justice, desert politics.

Myrrima asked, “Will people really rise up against Raj Ahten?”

Akem shrugged. “Maybe. Raj Ahten has much endowments of glamour. Wuqaz Faharaqin—”

“I don't understand. Raj Ahten has committed injustices against a hundred of your lords before this. Why should his people care if he commits one more?”

“Because,” Akem said forcefully, “now there is
Earth King.”

Everything fell into place. This wasn't about Raj Ahten. This was not just about a small injustice. It was about self-preservation: Raj Ahten had not been able to drive the reavers from Carris. But Gaborn had proven himself. So Wuqaz would seek to overthrow his lord.

She felt as if she had stepped into great events. Her testimony today, however small, would start a civil war.

Myrrima stayed for a moment longer, watched as the slender form of Saffira was consigned to the funeral pyre. She studied Saffira's lovely face, tried to imagine the girl in life, with a thousand endowments of glamour. Imagination failed her.

She turned her horse to leave. Akem folded his hands before his face and bowed low, out of respect. “Peace be with you. May the Bright Ones protect you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And may the Glories guide your hand.”

She rode into the thick of the reaver bodies, into the darkness.

She found Borenson's horse, smashed like a melon. A search revealed only her husband's helm, a few bodies. But in the ground she found a man's handprints, and near them, knee prints. Big hands, like her husband's.

He's crawled off, she thought. He might be making for the city even now, or maybe he crawled away and fainted.

Myrrima climbed from her saddle, retrieved Borenson's helm. She sniffed the ground for his scent, but the rain and stench from the reavers' curses confounded her. She could not track him. She considered where she might find the best vantage point from which to look for her husband. The mound around the worm's crater on Bone Hill seemed perfect.

She climbed to the lip of the crater. It was hard to imagine a living thing that could have bored such a hole.

Firelight reflecting from the clouds showed only a yawning pit. By inclining her ear, Myrrima could hear water churning somewhere in that void. The worm's course had cut through a subterranean river, forming a waterfall. But it was far below. If she stepped away from the hole, the sound faded.

Myrrima walked among the scree, sinking into loose soil with every step.

The ground was wet and unsettled. Bits of dirt cascaded into the crater. Myrrima's footing shifted as if the mound might suddenly slide beneath her, carrying her to her doom. Instinctively she eased back to safety.

The destruction of Carris was doubly apparent from atop the mound. But the view revealed nothing of her husband.

“Borenson!” cried Myrrima, as she scanned the plain. Wuqaz Faharaqin and his men left the bonfire, riding east toward Indhopal.

She glanced toward Carris. Her heart leapt. Guards had set watch fires against the return of any reavers. At the broken entrance of the city, she saw a warrior with red hair
like her husband's, leaning upon the shoulder of a red-haired girl. He limped toward the city. Between the falling rain and lingering smoke, she could not be sure if it was him.

“Borenson?” she shouted.

If it was him, he could not hear her, so far off. He hobbled into the shadows thrown by the barbicans.

Carris was a bedlam as Myrrima rode beneath the broken barbicans, searching for her husband.

A week ago Myrrima had celebrated Hostenfest at Castle Sylvarresta. There, for the first time in two thousand years, an Earth King had arisen. The people of Heredon had hosted by far the finest celebration she'd ever witnessed.

As she had strolled through the concourses outside Castle Sylvarresta, brightly colored pavilions had covered the fields like gems in a copper bracelet, greened with age. The entrance to each pavilion was decorated with wooden icons of the Earth King all arrayed in finery.

The smell of sweetmeats and fresh breads wafted through the air. Music swelled from a hundred sites around the city.

It had seemed a feast for the senses.

At the turn of each corner she had met some new wonder: a jester in parti-colored clothes, carrying a wooden fool's head on a stick, came riding past her on a huge red sow. A young flameweaver out of Orwynne drew the flames of a fire until they rose up and burst into flowing shapes like golden lilies in bloom. A woman with five endowments of voice rendered an aria so beautiful that it left the heart aching for days afterward. She'd seen Runelords joust at rings on chargers caparisoned in colors so bright that they hurt the eyes, and dancers from Deyazz wearing lionskins.

She'd tasted rare treats—eels kept alive in a pot and cooked fresh before her eyes; a dessert made of sweetened cream and rose petals cooled with ice; and confections stuffed with coconut and pistachios from Indhopal.

It had been a day to delight even the most downcast heart.

Now as she rode through Carris, her ride provided the dark antithesis of that day.

Instead of fair provender, her keen nose registered the stink of animals, spoiling vegetables, cloistered humanity, blood, urine, and war—all made more abominable by the lingering residue of the reavers' curses.

Instead of seductive music, she was haunted by the entreaties and sobbing of the wounded, mingled with the cries of those who mourned the dead and those who called out for loved ones.

Instead of celebration, there was horror. Myrrima rounded one corner to find half a dozen children, the youngest a girl of two, whispering words of encouragement to a mother that they thought was grievously wounded. A glance told Myrrima that the woman was dead.

A girl of twelve wandered in front of Myrrima's horse. She had gray eyes, dulled by shock, and her dirty face was cleaned only by the tracks of her tears.

That's how I looked at that age when my father died, Myrrima realized. Her stomach knotted in sympathetic pain.

She searched for Borenson among thousands of grisly wounded scattered throughout inns, private homes, stables, the duke's Great Hall, and blankets in the street.

Many wounded struggled near death. The reavers' curses set wounds to festering in unnatural ways. Gangrene set into abrasions that were only hours old.

The search was a foul chore. Nearly every private household had taken in one or two wounded. The stench of the place assaulted her senses. She could not pick up her husband's scent among so many competing odors.

“Borenson!” she shouted again and again as she rode through the streets, her throat going raw. She began to doubt her own senses, wondered if she'd only imagined that she'd seen her husband heading into the city.

He could be asleep, she thought. Perhaps that's why he doesn't answer.

Volunteers worked the battlefield, hauling the dead to the bailey outside the duke's palace. She worried that Borenson might be among them. Gaborn had said that her husband was wounded. Perhaps he'd died in the past few hours. Or perhaps someone had mistaken him for dead, and even now she might find him barely alive. She made her way toward it, and finally caught her husband's scent.

She rode with rising trepidation up to the bailey. Thousands of corpses were laid out. Whole families marched among them, carrying torches.

The blasted grass was a gray mat. The dead lay arrayed on blankets in rows. She could smell Borenson now.

Myrrima knew that dead loved ones never look quite as you expect them to. The faces of men that die in battle become pale, leached of blood, while the countenances of strangled men turn bluish-black. The eyes of the dead glaze over, so that it is difficult to tell whether a man had blue eyes or brown. A corpse's facial muscles can either contract horribly or relax in perfect repose.