Chaosbound (19 page)

Often their little ship plowed over a sunken tree, and Aaath Ulber would hear it scraping the hull—or he'd hit a submerged body and feel it bumping along.

Aaath Ulber held his tongue, not wanting his children to know what made that noise.

So the ship sailed at quarter-mast, moving sluggishly, so that Myrrima and Sage could direct Aaath Ulber around the larger logs.

It would take months for the old river channel to get clear of debris, Aaath Ulber suspected. The Hacker River was just a trickle at this time of year. The water would move the logs and sticks around, send them surging inland when the tide rose, suck the debris back out to sea as the tides fell. The winds would have their way with it, too, blowing it toward one shore or another, depending upon the day.

In time it would wash high up on the beach, or it would sink into the depths, or it would simply wash back out to sea.

But for now the refuse was everywhere. In some places where the channel turned, the winds had already sent it into still eddies, and there the flotsam was so thick that it looked as if one could hike across it.

Already it had begun to smell foul as dead animals oozed into the flow. Aaath Ulber could hardly bear to look at it, for fear of whom he might see.

“Can I come to the Earth King's tree?” Sage asked her mother.

“If your father will take you,” Myrrima answered.

Aaath Ulber raised a questioning brow. He'd thought that Myrrima would go to the tree.

“I think it best if you aren't seen in town,” Myrrima reasoned.

Aaath Ulber couldn't argue against that, nor did he want to. He'd need Draken, Rain, and Myrrima to go through town and purchase whatever supplies they could lay their hands upon, and they would need to reach good bargains, for his money would not spread far.

With this in mind, he promised to take Sage with him. She smiled at the thought, and began to chatter incessantly about her theory: the Earth King was going to rise again!

Aaath Ulber didn't believe such foolishness. He wasn't even sure that the young oak tree there at Fossil
was
the remains of the Earth King. It made sense, in a strange way. When a flameweaver was killed, the elemental in it took the form of towering flames and did its best to consume all that it could. When a wind wizard died, it released a tornado. When a water wizard passed, she typically gave herself to the sea. So it made sense that Gaborn would find some way to quickly return to the earth.

But Aaath Ulber refused to put too much stock in such speculation.

So they sailed in the late evening toward Fossil, and finally came to a place where the flotsam was so thick, Aaath Ulber did not dare go farther.

He moored the boat to a tree, and the family walked. A mile upstream, the vast tidal wave had deposited a huge wall of tangled trees and wreckage. Some of the local children from Fossil were out exploring in the mess.

Town was a mile beyond. By the time they reached it, the sun had nearly fallen.

Aaath Ulber gave Myrrima his coin pouch, such as it was. He wasn't sure what a merchant might make of the steel discs from Caer Luciare. Myrrima had her own coin pouch as well, but it had been a lean year, and the family had been counting on the harvest to pay for supplies for next.

“First things first,” Aaath Ulber warned as he pressed his coin bag into her hand, “Hooks, needles, twine, matches, a good ax—”

“I know,” Myrrima said. Aaath Ulber bent down and gave her a kiss on the head, a clumsy gesture. It felt like kissing a child.

Fossil was not a large village, just a couple of hundred cottages all huddled on the banks of the river. It had a single inn and a great house that was used for the village moots.

Myrrima, Draken, and Rain took the old River Road to town; Aaath Ulber and Sage crept through some orchards, thus skirting the village altogether.

A couple of dogs barked at Aaath Ulber, and a horse nickered, as if it was time for feed, but otherwise the village paid him no regard.

Aaath Ulber and Sage reached a crossroad, heading north and south.

Night was beginning to fall. The air had gone still in the hills, which were thick with boulders. Among the short dry rangit grass, crickets had begun to sing. It was but two more miles.

With the coming of night he made a run for the tree, while Sage raced at his side. Running felt good. Once he got a steady pace, he reveled in the race, and became lost in thought. Sweat streamed down his face and back, while his heart hammered a steady rhythm. He cleared his mind and focused only on breathing.

Birds peeped querulously from the gorse along the road as he ran, while ferrin and rangits darted from his path.

Half an hour later, the evening sun was falling behind the hills, a rose-colored pearl that limned the horizon. The old dirt highway ran right up to the side of Bald Hill, and Aaath Ulber could see the tree on its crown a mile away.

“There's your tree, Sage,” he huffed. “It hasn't turned into a man.”

“There's someone beneath the tree, though,” Sage pointed out.

Her eyes were sharper than his. He saw nothing, until after a few minutes he spotted movement, a lone figure in the dusk. But then it seemed that the figure vanished again, perhaps by walking to the far side of the tree.

He put on a burst of speed, went climbing to the top. The hill was covered with dry grasses. Cicadas buzzed in the dusk.

He crested the top of the hill, came to the tree, and halted. The setting sun smote his eyes, backlighting the tree in shades of rose and blood.

No one was standing beneath it. Aaath Ulber peered around its base, just to be certain.

Sage gazed up at the oak silently, as if communing, and Aaath Ulber stood for a long moment, letting the sounds of nature wash through him. The tree's leaves shivered in a small wind, and elsewhere in the vales below he could hear the breeze rustling through dry grasses.

He noted motes of dust caught in the wan light, small green motes that seemed to be dripping from the leaves. The ground beneath the tree seemed unnaturally bright, and as if golden sunlight caught it, sunlight that wasn't there.

Aaath Ulber felt a thrill as a voice suddenly filled the silence within him, a voice that he recognized from long ago.

“A great evil is rising in the west,” the Earth King Gaborn Val Orden whispered. “I've sensed the change coming all summer. The crickets heralded it in their songs, and the mice worried over it. The enemy will commit a sacrilege against the earth.”

“Master,” Borenson said, dropping to one knee and lowering his head in token of respect. He had visited this tree before, a few years back. He'd sat beneath it on an afternoon and longed to hear Gaborn's voice. But he'd left feeling empty and unsatisfied.

Now there was no denying what he heard. Gaborn's voice came soft but clear. Aaath Ulber peered into the tree itself, and saw a ghostly form. Gaborn's arms were raised up, contorted into limbs, and his elongated hands were lost in the branches. His face had the greenish hue of an Earth Warden, but his eyes had changed most of all. They seemed to be filled with starlight and kindness.

“A war is beginning, a war not for this world alone, but a war that shall span all of the heavens. Your enemy will embark upon a terrifying course, one that you cannot yet see. Their armies will race through the heavens like autumn lightning.

“Only you can stop them, my old friend. There is little that I can do to help.”

“Command me,” Aaath Ulber said, “and I will do all that is in my power.”

“I once told you how some had murdered my chosen. Do you recall?”

Aaath Ulber bowed his head, wondering why that knowledge would be important. He remembered the day clearly when Gaborn had visited him, revealing how some monstrously evil people had carried out plans to murder those under his protection. It was a secret that Aaath Ulber had never revealed. “I remember.”

“Good,” Gaborn whispered. “The time is coming when others must learn this secret. But your goal is not to kill unless you must. Your challenge is to help Fallion bind the worlds,” the Earth King whispered. “Only then can they be healed. Deliver him to the Seals of Creation.”

“It shall be done,” Borenson said, and for a moment his worries for Fallion were alleviated. The Earth King would know if his own son was dead or alive.

The tree's leaves suddenly rustled in a stray breeze, and for the moment the tree fell silent.

“Beware the subtle powers of Despair,” the Earth King whispered. “It will seek to break you.”

Aaath Ulber trembled. He recalled the sound that Owen Walkin's carcass had made as it bounced over the cliff.

“I am already broken,” Aaath Ulber admitted. “I fear that I am already lost.”

The image of the Earth King was fading, retreating back into the tree, like an old man turning toward his bed for the night.

“The journey will be long,” the Earth King whispered. “You must find yourself along the way. A broken man is hard-pressed to heal others.”

The image of the Earth King dissipated altogether, and very last of the day's sunlight seemed to dim all at once, as if the candle of heaven had been snuffed. The golden glow at their feet, the motes of green dust in the waning light, all were gone.

Sage reached down to the ground and grabbed a single acorn. “We should keep this,” she said reverently, “as a remembrance.”

Aaath Ulber placed a large hand on her shoulder and nodded his agreement, and together they turned and marched downhill in the dusk.

They had not gone a hundred feet when they heard a loud crack, followed by a crash. They turned to see the great oak split in half.

Aaath Ulber thought, Now Gaborn is gone forever.

When Sage and Aaath Ulber reached the outskirts of Fossil, it was past dusk. Smoke wafted above the chimneys, and Aaath Ulber could smell meat roasting on the fire.

I should go into town, he told himself. The time will come when I must win people over. I must figure out how to inspire them to follow me to war—or at the very least, give up their endowments.

I'm big and strange to look upon, but I'm not that strange.

So he sauntered to the town square in front of the inn, with Sage on his heels, and found a surprise: A rider had reached the village, a girl of seven or eight who rode upon the back of a huge white sea graak.

The townsfolk had gathered around it, and now they stood with torches. The graak shone an unearthly orange in the firelight, and stood regally, fanning its wings, the skin at its throat jiggling—a sign that it was hot after a long flight. It was a male, with a long white plume upon its forehead—a bony ridge that ended with a fold of skin like a fan. The blue staring eye of the Gwardeen was painted upon the plume.

The rider, a petite thing, had her hair tied back and wore the ocher tunic of those who manned the citadel in the Infernal Wastes.

Several men had gathered round the beast, hoping for news. Myrrima, Draken, and Rain were among the crowd, bearing cloth sacks filled with produce. Rain had a pair of goats tethered together. Little Sage raced up to her mother, excited to see what might be in the sacks.

Aaath Ulber stopped in the shadows of the inn and stood listening.

“The southern coasts are worse,” the girl was saying. “The ocean swallowed all of the land for six hundred miles, from what we can tell. The South is flooded.”

The sheriff of the town was a big man whose name Aaath Ulber could
not recall. He had obviously been hoping that the disaster was some local affair.

“Do they know what caused this?” There would be no answer, of course. The appearance of fish and coral reefs on dry land was unprecedented.

The girl shook her head.

“Right,” the sheriff said. “We're on our own then.” He turned to some of the townsfolk. “We'll—” The sheriff caught sight of Aaath Ulber in the shadows.

“Here now,” he demanded, “who's there? What's your business?”

Aaath Ulber had been dreading this moment. He turned and glanced behind him, as if unsure that the sheriff was talking to him.

The sheriff didn't recognize Aaath Ulber, of course, but Aaath Ulber had known him as a nodding acquaintance.

Aaath Ulber stepped out into the torchlight, and there were a few exclamations of shock from the men. Some of them reached for their knives almost by instinct, and even the graak reared up and flapped its wings, letting out a croak of warning. A black dog that had been wagging its tail and watching the crowd suddenly began to bark at Aaath Ulber, ranging back and forth, its tail between its legs.

“I came for a drink at the inn,” Aaath Ulber said, “and to buy goods—if it pleases you.” None of the men spoke for a moment, so he added “What's the matter—you've never seen a giant before?”

The sheriff eyed Aaath Ulber suspiciously. Always in the past he had been a jolly fellow, eager to please. He said coldly, “I decide whom we will trade with in this town—or not. Do you have a name?”

Aaath Ulber might have said that he was Sir Borenson, but he did not want to confuse the man. “Aaath Ulber,” he answered, “a poor giant, traveling from afar. Do not mistrust my appearance, for though I am the size of a great boar I am as gentle as a burrow bear.”

Aaath Ulber smiled at his own description, no doubt baring his oversized canines.

On any other evening, that answer might have served as an invitation to tell a tale or two, but the sheriff was in no mood for tales. He studied Aaath Ulber, taking in the curious hornlike growth on his temples; the
bone spurs on his wrists; and the unearthly gray metal of his armor. He demanded, “Where do you hail from?”

Aaath Ulber dared not lie; yet the truth was stranger than any tale he could have devised. A half-truth served better. “Near Mystwraith Mountain on the far borders of Indhopal is the home of my ancestors.”

“I have never heard of it,” the sheriff said. Of course, Aaath Ulber knew that the folk here in Landesfallen had little contact with strangers. Indhopal was on the far side of the world; he doubted that anyone in this town had ever set foot there. The world was full of wonders, and so he thought to add one more.