David Farland - Wizardborn

In the distance Gaborn’s men began to cheer. They rode to the hilltops south of Feldonshire and gave a rising shout as the reavers passed. She saw men leaping, hugging each other.

In the hills and in the woods across the river Donnestgree, cheers also arose from villagers.

At Averan’s back, Gaborn’s Days had been studying the battle in silence. Now he whispered, “A great victory.” But Gaborn merely sat on his charger, his lance balanced across the pommel of his saddle, head hanging. He had lost dozens of troops in the fray.

“I’ve warned him,” Binnesman said. “Erden Geboren did not die of a mortal wound, but of a broken heart. Gaborn will do the same.”

“How can we help him?” Averan asked.

But she already knew what Gaborn would want. He’d dog the reavers for the day, and have her search for the Waymaker. He’d want her to feed again.

“Listen...” Binnesman said. He looked off to the north and then south. Beside him, the green woman cocked an ear, as if Binnesman had given her the command to listen.

Averan could hear nothing unusual. “What?”

“The silence is profound. It spreads for miles.”

Averan wasn’t quite sure what he meant. People were still cheering. The reavers rasped and the earth seemed to groan beneath their weight.

“No birds sing, no crickets,” Binnesman whispered. “No cattle bawl—not a sound other than man and reavers for miles and miles. What is the Earth telling you?”

Averan didn’t know what he meant. To her, it felt as if...suffering. The earth could be suffering.

She felt tired. She wanted to end this war.

On the hills across the valley, Gaborn’s knights gathered in a great circle. Now they held up their shields in unison and began to flash them, sending news of their victory in every direction as far as the eye could see.

The sunlight was too bright. Averan raised her hands to protect her eyes.

Downhill a hundred yards she noticed a black tree that thrust from the ground—a small, gnarled thing. It wasn’t really a tree. It was hardly taller than a man—more of a bush, with a dozen twisted branches. Stunted, vile-looking.

Yet she sensed life within it. It had managed to survive beside the Stinkwater where no other tree could. It was noble and hardy.

She didn’t think about what she was doing.

She merely leapt from the back of the wagon and walked down to the tree.

It looked at first as if it had never had leaves, but as she neared she saw that they had already fallen for the winter. They lay upon the ground, broad and brown.

Up close, the bark was shiny, a deep gray that almost seemed charcoal. A few wrinkled seedpods still clung to the limbs.

She had never seen a tree like it, could not have named it. Yet it held her spellbound, enthralled.

She reached out experimentally, grabbed the central branch, and gave it a tug.

The limb pulled away so easily she almost thought that the tree must have died long ago, and the wood had all gone to rot. But she could feel power beneath the bark, could feel its vital essence.

No, the tree had given itself to her.

It was a good staff, strong and powerful and dangerous. It was her staff. She began breathing hard with excitement, shaking.

At her back, Binnesman broke her reverie. “Hmmm...black laburnum—a strange choice.”

“What is its nature?” Averan asked. “What does it tell you about me?”

“I don’t know,” Binnesman said. His tone was thick with suspicion, and he peered at her closely from beneath his bushy brow. “No one has ever chosen it before. I have never heard of an Earth Warden who chose his staff from a poisonous tree.”

“Poisonous?”

“Every part of a laburnum is deadly—root, bark, leaf, berry, nut. The black laburnum is the most poisonous of all. In the hills of Lysle, where most of them grow, the locals call it poisonwood.”

“Poisonwood,” Averan repeated. The name had an ominous ring. Yet it seemed fitting that she should choose her staff from such wood, here, where so many of the reavers lay poisoned.

She looked into his eyes. Averan had never been good at reading people, at knowing when they lied. But she wondered about Binnesman now. He was studying her narrowly, suspiciously. He knew something about her, or guessed something from her choice of staff.

Gaborn had turned his mount, now he raced back up to the hillside. He looked distraught. He bore sad news. He called up to his Days, “Queen Herin the Red died a few moments ago in the charge.” He shook his head wearily.

“Averan,” he begged, “I saw a reaver with thirty-six philia, down by the pools. It has big forepaws. Will you look at it?”

Averan swallowed hard. She could not bear to feed again, not from a reaver that had knowingly drunk its own death.

She raised her staff, held it defensively as if she were Spring, ready to parry a blow. Then she realized that she really was trying to parry a blow.

She raised the staff, holding each end overhead, as Binnesman had done when blessing Carris. She did not know why she held it thus. It merely felt as if the staff needed to be held that way.

As she did, an image came to mind: the Waymaker, with his thirty-six philia and his huge paws. She could see him in her mind’s eye—still running among the horde, racing toward the Underworld. He had a scar on his flank, a lance wound by the look of it. His philia drooped from fatigue. Around him, reavers marched by the weary thousands, and he could smell the scent trails of those who marched before, the whispered mutterings of pain and despair that reverberated through the horde. There were thousands of them speaking, thousands of voices that humans had never heard. The scents overwhelmed Averan.

“He’s alive!” she told Gaborn. “The Waymaker is still alive.”

Gaborn gazed at her, mouth open.

She glanced back at the wylde, eager to try something. “Spring, come help me!” she said. The green woman came and Averan said, “Grab my staff. Help me summon.”

Spring stood at Averan’s back, so that Averan could lean back and feel her taut body against her shoulder blades. The wylde reached up, grasped each end of the staff.

Averan closed her eyes and held the reaver’s image, until she found herself breathing in rhythm to the Waymaker’s rasping, felt as if she ran each step with him.

He was weak, burning from thirst. The muscles in his four legs were worn. Each loping stride was a jarring blow to his knees. He knew that he was dying.

He felt too weary to keep up with the horde much longer. Yet he ran in measured terror, counting his fluttering heartbeats.

Averan felt his mind, the vast intellect. It was overpowering. She could never have reached him, could never have touched him, without the help of her staff, and of the wylde.

But now shadowy fingers seemed to form in the air, and it grew cold around Averan. Tendrils snaked out through the sky, grasped the Waymaker’s weary mind. She seized his consciousness, called to him desperately. “Come to me.”

Far across the valley, a lone reaver stopped, as the others marched on. After a long moment it turned and began loping wearily toward Averan. Gaborn’s troops had all topped the hill. There was no one down on the plains seeking to slay the beast.

He was coming! Averan tried to stifle her excitement. She took the staff in hand, held the Waymaker on her own, now that he had turned.

Averan looked up to Gaborn on his mount. “See the Waymaker coming toward us? Take me to him.”

Gaborn grabbed her arm, and swung her up before him into the saddle.

Averan held her staff high, and together they rode over the scarred plains, past Gaborn’s troops, past Langley and Baron Waggit, past the sulfurous ponds and the dead reavers that lay black around them, out over the battlefield.