David Farland - Wizardborn

Sweat began to drench Averan. Holding the contact was hard work.

The Waymaker loped toward them at a sluggish pace, and stopped.

Averan could sense his consternation. He had answered her call, felt overwhelmed by her. Yet he began to panic in the presence of a human wizard. She wasn’t sure that she could hold him for long.

Averan sat in the saddle, and peered into his mind.

“Show me the way,” she begged. “For the good of both our people, show me the way.”

His consciousness unfolded to her, as gently as a flower opening, laying his thoughts and memories bare.

The Waymaker was a powerful reaver, his intellect deep, and his memories vast. He had fed upon the brains of Waymakers before him—an endless line of them that spanned thousands of years. The knowledge came to her in a blur.

Reavers recall scents far better than men recall words or images. So the map of the Underworld that began to take shape in Averan’s mind was a map of scents.

The map revealed the meanings of various warning posts that would tell how to open secret doors, or find hidden tunnels, or avoid dangerous beasts.

The Waymakers had traveled far in the Underworld, had even sailed the Idumean Sea in boats made of stone. They had followed paths that other reavers feared to tread. Averan recalled wonders and horrors and the positions of ancient duskin ruins and other historic sites.

She climbed from her saddle, stood before him.

The great reaver merely knelt, overcome by exhaustion. He was huge, towering above her, peering at her with philia that merely twitched.

She stared into his mind, sifting his thoughts.

He had come to the Overworld to begin mapping it, to study its paths and blaze new trails. It had been a grand adventure, a journey that promised danger and excitement. He knew now that it led to death.

Borenson stumbled upon Fenraven shortly after setting Myrrima adrift in the stream. His mind was reeling with fatigue, and his sight was blurry. He stood looking for a long moment. The dilapidated village sprawled on a small hill, open so that morning sunlight played upon the thatch roofs of its cottages. Around the village, the fog still held thick upon the moors, so that the hill rose up like an island in a sea of mist. It had a gate that stood halfway open, and beside the gate were braziers where dwindling watch fires burned. Silver mirrors behind the braziers would reflect their light, focusing it onto the road.

Borenson staggered forward, feeling as if every muscle in his body were slowly transforming into pure weariness.

The inn at Fenraven was a small affair, with nothing more than a single room. It was in the process of being vacated by a pair of gentlemen from the south.

The mistress of the inn was cooking breakfast, morning savories with mushrooms and chestnuts. Borenson was worn to the bone, and heartsick. All of his thoughts were on Myrrima. But he had a job before him still, and he knew he had to keep focused for a little while, at least until he went to sleep. He sat on a stool, and solemn pain settled into his back, between his shoulder blades.

As he waited for breakfast he asked, “So you’ve just the two boarders? No one came through in the night?” His voice felt rough, as if from disuse.

“In the night?” she asked.

“A man—a lone rider with sheepskin boots on his horse?”

“No!” she said, in exaggerated horror. “He sounds like a highwayman, maybe, or worse! There’s assassins on the road, I hear. They found the body of Braithen Towner nine miles down the road yesterday morning.”

Borenson wondered at that. Assassins on the road still. Raj Ahten’s troops down here probably hadn’t heard about the fall of Carris. It might only have been a random assassin. But Borenson wondered. He couldn’t escape the feeling that the fellow had been searching for him.

He rubbed his gritty eyes, all done in, and ate a small bite of pastry while the other guests vacated the inn.

Afterward, he told the mistress that he would be leaving when he woke, and asked her to go about town purchasing supplies for his trip to Inkarra. Here at Fenraven, he was but a hundred miles from the mountains at the border, with few cities between.

He went to the single room and found it more than adequate. It was clean and cozy. The straw beneath the mattress was fresh, and the mistress’s daughter took out the old blankets and brought in new. He didn’t have to worry about fleas or lice.

The food had been good, and the stableboy knew his business. Borenson felt well provided. It was his first chance for some real rest in days, and without an endowment of stamina, he needed it sorely.

He lay down on the cot, and began trying to think about the coming journey. Tomorrow he would have to go in search of some endowments of stamina. An upwelling of sadness took him. He couldn’t think about anything but Myrrima, the taste of her lips, the feel of her cold body beneath his arms as he placed her in the water.

He ached not for himself, nor even quite for her. He felt that the world had lost something beautiful and needful and glorious.

His eyes were so gritty, he closed them only to ease the pain, and fell into a deep slumber.

He woke hours later, and came awake only slowly.

He became aware that there was a guest in his bed, and that it was night already. It was common for guests at an inn to share beds when necessary.

But it wasn’t common for a woman to share a man’s bed, and he could tell by the smell of her hair and by the light touch of the arm that wrapped around him that a woman lay beside him.

He came full awake with a start, bolted up.

Myrrima was lying next to him.

“What?” he began to ask.

Myrrima climbed up on an elbow, stared at him. Outside, there was a slim moon, and stars filled the night, shining through an open window. No one else was in the room.

“Are you awake, finally?” Myrrima asked.

“How—”

“You put me in the water,” Myrrima said. “I was weak and nearly dead, and you gave me to the water.”

“I’m sorry!” he said, horrified. He’d thought her dead for sure. But she sat here looking as healthy as ever. Her clothes were dry.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve discovered something. Averan isn’t the only one around here who was wizardborn.”

Borenson was filled with a million questions.

I should have seen it before, he realized. I should have known it from her every manner, the way she’s gentle when she needs to be hard, the way her touch soothed me, just as the touch of the undine soothed me after I slaughtered the Dedicates at Castle Sylvarresta.

He’d sensed something in her. But only one word came out of his mouth. “How?”

“The water took me,” Myrrima said. “I dreamt of it—of clouds heavy with moisture and waterfalls that misted the air, and of brooks that tumbled over clean stones. I’ve always loved water. I dreamt of the great wizards in the ocean depths, and the strange and wondrous things there. The water healed me, and would have taken me out to sea, out beyond the Courts of Tide. I could have let it take me.

“But I realized something,” Myrrima said. “I realized that I love you more. So I came back, to be your wife.”

Borenson stared at her in dumb amazement. She had not truly died, he could tell. She had been near it. But she still had her endowments of glamour. Belatedly, he realized that he had put her in the water knowing that, on some level. His mind had been muddled from exhaustion, so weary that it could think no more. He’d been watching her face for some sort of transformation, for that moment when her endowments departed, but it had never come.