David Farland - Wizardborn

The wind moaned through barren branches, and a gust made the laundry hanging upon old lady Triptoe’s clothesline dance and flutter as if it would come alive, while the bucket above her well swung slowly in the breeze.

A milkmaid felt the wind’s prickly touch on her back. She squinted and turned to see if something had brushed against her. She drew her cloak tight and hurried her cow to the barn.

Then a finger of wind went skittering along the village street, dancing over the dark surface of puddles left from the night’s rain.

It slapped against the door at the Red Stag, then slithered through a crack beneath.

The lady of the inn was just pulling a platter of savories out of the oven—lightly toasted crusts stuffed with morel mushrooms in venison and red wine. She inhaled the scent as she carried them into the common room to cool, then noticed the chill.

The fire beneath the oven gave the only light in the room, and had kept it warm and cozy for the past hour.

The lady frowned at the draft, turned to see if the door was open.

In an upstairs room several Runelords lay abed after a hard ride. Word had reached them that trouble was brewing in Carris. They were racing from the western provinces to the far eastern borders.

One lord, Baron Beckhurst, lay sleeping soundly when the air brushed his neck.

“Kill the queen,” a voice whispered in his ear, “lest Iome’s son become greater than the father.”

Beckhurst rolled over and his eyes came open. He whispered, “At once, milord.”

Without waking his companions, he got up. He briskly dressed in his ring mail, and went to the store of weapons that one of his fellow travelers had carried.

He selected a lance, well balanced and of a comfortable heft. Iron bands bound it in a dozen places. As he raised it to the sky, he pointed it high. Long ago, his mother had taught him a rune of the Air. He drew it with the lance tip, and a flickering blue bolt of lightning curled along its length. He grinned, rode from the inn.

The wind traveled on.

An hour before dawn, the stars above Raj Ahten blazed in a cold sky as if intent on igniting heaven. He raced over the Hest Mountains down toward the deserts of Indhopal, sweat drenching him, his blood crusting from wounds at his knee and chest. His shirt of black scale mail, torn from battle, rang like shackles with every step.

His serpentine trail twisted over the tortuous ridges and through the crevasses, curling among black pines that struggled up to bristle like spears through cracked rock and a thin crust of snow.

It was bitterly cold, and Raj Ahten clung to his warhammer. After the rout at Carris, reavers had fled blindly in every direction. Twice Raj Ahten had stumbled upon the monsters in the woods and brought them down.

Worse than reavers hunted in these woods. Gaborn had turned many of Raj Ahten’s own Invincibles against him. A troop of them had ridden over the pass recently, leaving hoofprints in the fresh snow.

So Raj Ahten traveled over paths that horses could not follow, bypassing his armies in the mountains.

Wolves howled in the shadowed pines. They’d caught his blood-scent, and now loped behind, trying to match his pace. Raj Ahten could smell his own vital fluids, cloying amid the competing scents of snow, ice, stone, and pine.

He found himself breathing hard; the muscles in his chest were knotted. The air so high in the mountains was thin, pricking his lungs like needles.

His armor seemed suffocating; its metal leeched the warmth from his bones. He’d carried it all night, but finally he stripped off his torn shirt of mail and threw it down. Black scales broke off and scattered on the snow as if he’d tossed a carp against a rock.

Raj Ahten’s stomach clenched from hunger.

With so many endowments of brawn and stamina to his credit, he should have felt vigorous, filled with endless energy.

He wondered at the strange illness that assailed him. Eleven hours past, Binnesman’s wylde had attacked him, breaking the ribs in his chest. Perhaps they’d not healed properly. All night long, Raj Ahten had felt rising pain—in the wounds in his chest, in his muscles, as if he suffered from some wasting disease.

He feared that some Dedicates had died, causing him to lose stamina. But a Dedicate’s death brought a sudden nausea and a wrenching sense of loss as the magical connection severed. He had not felt that.

Raj Ahten silently stalked over a small rise, and beheld an oddity: half a mile ahead, in a shadowed valley, his spy balloon rested in a clearing, a great balloon shaped like a graak.

On the ground beneath it a fire burned, reflecting flames off the snow into the silk wings of the graak.

Some of his men huddled beside the fire brewing tea—his counselor Feykaald, along with his flameweavers: Rahjim, Chespot, and Az. The Days that chronicled Raj Ahten’s life was also in the group.

Feykaald was old, his gray burnoose pulled up over his head, a black cloak wrapped around him like a blanket. The flameweavers wore nothing but loincloths, and luxuriated near the blaze. The flames of many fires had long ago licked the hair from their brown skins. Their eyes glowed like mirrors, perfectly reflecting light from the campfire.

Raj Ahten’s most loyal followers sat quietly, as if awaiting him—or as if they were silently summoning him.

He thrust his warhammer into its scabbard, strode to the camp. “Salaam,” he said. Peace. The men acknowledged him, each mumbling “Salaam” in turn.

“Rahjim,” Raj Ahten asked the most powerful of the flameweavers, “did you see a patrol pass by?”

“Riders came down the trail just as we landed, judges of the Ah’kellah, led by Wuqaz Faharaqin. He carried the head of his nephew, Pashtuk, in a bag. He will try to raise the Atwaba against you.”

“Troublemaker,” Raj Ahten said. “I’m glad that not all of my men follow the Earth King.”

Rahjim shrugged. “The Earth King could not Choose me any more than he could Choose a water buffalo.” Smoke puffed out from his mouth as he spoke.

Raj Ahten grunted, but merely stood gasping in the campfire’s glow, warming his hands in its pale smoke. A log crackled; cinders shot into the sky.

The fire felt good. It burned away the cold and the pain. Flames fanned out along the ground, as if to lick him, though no wind blew. He suspected that the sorcerers manipulated the flames to his benefit.

All three flameweavers watched Raj Ahten curiously.

Rahjim ventured, “O Great Light, do you feel...well?”

“I feel—” There was no word for it. Raj Ahten felt noticeably weak, frail, and disoriented. “I am not myself. I may have lost some endowments.”

Rahjim studied him with that penetrating gaze. Flameweavers were often discerning healers, capable of diagnosing a man’s most minor ailment.

“Yes,” Rahjim said. “Your light is very dim. Please, breathe the smoke of the fire, and blow it out for me.”

Raj Ahten bent low to the fire, inhaled the pine smoke, blew it out slowly. The flameweavers studied the way that the smoke moved, traced its path through the sky.

Suddenly Rahjim’s eyes widened. He looked to the others as if for confirmation, but dared not speak.