Wizardborn (5 page)

Many a woman who has slept with a man for years doesn't recognize her own husband's corpse.

In the same way, when Myrrima found Sir Borenson, she did not know him by sight, only by scent.

He knelt over a dead man beneath the remains of a gnarled oak that had dropped all its leaves. His face was leached as pale as cream, and he stared down, his expression so twisted in pain that she would not have known him. Dirty rain matted his hair and covered him with grime, so that he looked like a squalid wild thing. Clotted blood from a groin wound stained his surcoat down the legs. His right hand gripped the handle of a horseman's battle-ax as if it were a crutch.

He looked as if he had been kneeling like this for hours, as if he might never move again. He had become a statue, a monument to pain.

Only his attire identified him. He wore the same clothes as he had two days past, including the yellow silk scarf that he'd chosen to sport into battle as a sign of her favor.

A little red-haired girl knelt above him, lantern in hand, weeping savagely. They stared down at a dead man who looked so much like Borenson that he might have been a brother.

“Borenson?” Myrrima called hesitantly. All the words of comfort that she'd imagined would come so easily suddenly caught in her throat. She could not imagine a wound that would cause the unadulterated agony she saw in his face. She asked softly, “What's wrong?”

He did not look at her. Did not answer. She wasn't sure that he even heard. His left hand clutched at his belly, as if he'd just taken a blow to the stomach.

Acorns crunched under her horse's hooves as she approached. Now she saw that Borenson was trembling all over.

She'd heard tales of men who had seen some great horror and retreated so far into themselves that they never spoke again. Borenson was a warrior. He'd been forced to butcher two thousand Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta. The deed had so demoralized him that afterward he had quit his service to his king.

Before her knelt a man wounded both in body and spirit. He trembled, and his mind was blank. He was so far gone in pain that he could not weep.

“Myrrima,” he said in a stiffly formal voice as he gazed down on the dead man. “I'd like you to meet my father.”

   2   

He who would walk the wizard's path must abandon roads that common men tread.

—Mystarrian Proverb

On the road north from Carris, Gaborn still smelled of war. The curses of the reavers' fell mage clung to him like the smoke of a cooking fire, and sweat soaked the padding beneath his ring mail.

The road was quiet, spooky. Night did not seem to fall from above so much as to rise up like vapors from the hollows of the fields. No birds chirped in the twilight. The hooves of the horses thudded dully on the muddy ground. Though seven people rode in the party, there was barely a creak of harness.

They came to a village. Once, Gaborn had known the name of every hamlet in his realm, but his memory had faded with the loss of his Dedicates in the Blue Tower.

It did not matter. The village was empty; not so much as one yellow dog roamed the streets, wagging its tail. He would offend no one by forgetting its name.

The village was old, cramped, with buildings made of cut stones. Some innkeeper in the distant past had built a hostel that nearly blocked the highway, perhaps imagining that riders were more likely to stop than try to forge their way around it. A few shops had sprung up next to the inn, and cottages next to the shops.

The horses' steps rang louder in the streets. Gaborn
heard the ching of his ring mail thrown back from stone walls.

The village lay silent, accusing. No children played in the dirty streets. No washwomen railed at one another over a fence. No cattle bawled, calling the milkmaids to their stools. No one swung an ax, chopping wood for the evening fire. No smoke carried the mouthwatering scent of a roasting hen.

No hammers rang. No stars pierced the cloudy heavens. No children sang.

This is the way the world will look, Gaborn thought, when we are no more.

“We should have been for killing Raj Ahten,” Erin Connal said in her thick Reeds accent, her voice weary.

“The Earth will not allow it,” Gaborn answered.

“Perhaps if we move against his Dedicates,” Prince Celinor offered. “It would not be the same as attacking him personally.”

The thought of attacking Dedicates sickened Gaborn. The Dedicates were innocent, in most cases. Raj Ahten's beauty was as irresistible as lightning, his voice as overwhelming as thunder. In order for a Runelord to take an endowment from a vassal, the vassal had to offer it up freely. But no one could predict how he might react to Raj Ahten's sublime entreaties. It was said in Rofehavan that “When you look upon the face of pure evil, it will be beautiful.” Truly, Raj Ahten was beautiful.

Some thought him so persuasive that he deluded himself with his own voice. Certainly he had gulled others often enough—even his own enemies. Women loved him on sight, men honored him. They offered their endowments and their lives in his service, for he told them that serving him would be to their benefit.

The world was heading toward a catastrophe, an all-out war with the reavers. Raj Ahten had already persuaded tens of thousands of people that mankind might survive the coming war only by pooling their attributes, their strength and stamina and wit, into one man who would be their
champion. This one man would be immortal, the mythical Sum of All Men.

Of course, not all men were swayed by Raj Ahten's argument. So he waged war on Rofehavan, seeking to convert its people to his own use.

It was a vile act. Raj Ahten had grown so powerful that Gaborn despaired of whether he could be brought down. With such a rapacious lord, the best way to attack him was indirectly—as Erin said—by killing his Dedicates. For each time a Dedicate died, the lord lost the use of the attribute that the Dedicate provided.

Thus, by slaying a few thousand Dedicates, Raj Ahten could be weakened to the point that he might be defeated in battle.

But who could murder innocent Dedicates? Certainly not Gaborn. The men and women who gave themselves to Raj Ahten were simply too weak-minded to see beyond his exquisite mask. Others loaned Raj Ahten their endowments only through coercion. Yes, Raj Ahten managed to put the forcibles to them and take their attributes, but only because they feared him more than his forcibles.

“He took children as Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta,” Gaborn chided. “I'll not spill the blood of children.”

“He often did so as well in Indhopal,” Jureem said. “Children and beautiful women—he knew that men of conscience would not easily strike them down.”

Gaborn felt sickened to the core.

Gaborn could bear no more talk of Raj Ahten. The Wolf Lord's rapaciousness repulsed him. Gaborn thought, I should never have tried to turn him. I should never have hoped to make him an ally.

In the eerie streets, Gaborn stretched out his senses, used his Earth Sight to feel for any danger to his Chosen. For the past day, he'd focused all his attention on Carris.

The Earth had charged Gaborn with Choosing people, selecting a seed of mankind to “save through the dark times to come.” At the same time the Earth had bestowed upon him the power to sense the danger to his Chosen warriors.

Now, however, he had lost the power to warn them of danger, even though he could still sense it.

Thus weakened, in the event his people were assailed, he might be able to do little more than sense their danger before they died. But he hoped for more. His powers had dwindled, but he had to hope that if he could sense danger, he might be able to avert some disasters.

So he groped like a blind man, pushing the limits of his gift.

Danger seemed to be lurking everywhere. In Carris battles still raged. Skalbairn's Knights Equitable fought the reavers, driving them south. Within seconds of each other, two men died. Gaborn felt the loss keenly.

To the west, Raj Ahten fled through the wilderness, retreating toward Indhopal. Strangely, he seemed more dead than alive, and Gaborn could not help but wonder at the situation.

But to Gaborn's consternation, he sensed … dangers that were far more personal and far-reaching than any before. None were imminent. Instead, he could sense … layers beneath layers of impending doom. Close at hand, he sensed a threat to his wife, Iome. It would not come soon. Over the past few days, he had begun to learn how to gauge when threats would arise simply by the strength of the warning. He suspected that Iome would not face any danger until tomorrow. Yet he had to wonder at its source, for though he could sense peril, he could not always guess at its cause.

Beneath that lay larger portents. Tens of thousands of people at Carris seemed to be in jeopardy still. From a second attack? he wondered. But the trouble brewing in Carris was farther off than the danger facing Iome. He suspected that it would not strike until tomorrow night or the day after.

Beyond that, a cloud loomed over Heredon again. Gaborn imagined the dangers to be like peeling the layers of an onion. Iome's danger was great, and nearest at hand. Once it passed, there loomed a larger threat—the tens of
thousands at Carris. Later in the week, hundreds of thousands in Heredon might die….

Yet at the “core of the onion,” at the kernel of the matter, he discerned one final catastrophe. It seemed to encompass every single man, woman, and child that he had Chosen—a million people spread over half a dozen nations.

The Earth Spirit had warned Gaborn that the fate of mankind was upon him. Gaborn had accepted the role of becoming mankind's protector. He'd imagined that the threat would be years in the making. He'd imagined long wars and drawn-out sieges.

But the end of man was nigh. Five days? he wondered—certainly no more than a week. His mouth grew dry, and Gaborn could not catch his breath.

It can't be! he told himself. I'm imagining it.

But cold certainly began to creep into his bones.

In the streets, shuttered windows stared at him, like vacant eyes. He felt trapped in a hamlet of shadows.

Gaborn spurred his horse, taking a long lead. Iome, Celinor, Erin, Jureem, Binnesman, and the wylde all hurried to keep up. Thankfully, none of them drew near or spoke.

Just north of the village, Gaborn turned left on the track toward Balington. He remembered the village fondly from his youth, and had decided to spend the night there. He recalled its serenity, its lush gardens. It was a place strong in the Earth Powers, a place where he could commune with his master. The village lay only three miles off the road.

The horses made toward a pair of hills that stood like sentinels. The open fields gave way to a grove of majestic beech trees whose limbs soared high overhead.

As they reached the hills, Gaborn rounded a bend. An overturned cart blocked the highway. At the margin of the road, six swarthy figures huddled around a small fire, warming themselves in the cool night.

They leapt up as he approached. All six men were abnormally short, almost dwarfish. They bore an odd array of weapons—the spoke from a wagon wheel, a cleaver, a reaping hook, two axes for chopping wood, and a makeshift
spear. They wore leather work aprons instead of armor. Their leader had a grizzled beard and eyebrows like woolly black caterpillars. “Hold,” he shouted. “Hold where you are. There's a hundred archers in them trees. Make any false move, and you'll be leaking like a winepress.”