David Farland - Wizardborn

“What is it?” Raj Ahten asked. He wondered if he had contracted some illness due to the fell mage’s curses.

“There are changes in you—” Rahjim admitted. “This is no common illness. Wizardry is involved—Binnesman’s curse. Remember Longmont?”

“Yes!” Az said, his own eyes wide. “I see it too!”

“See what?” Raj Ahten demanded.

Rahjim said, “The Earth Powers are withdrawing from you. That is causing...the changes.”

“What changes?” Raj Ahten demanded.

“You have lost stamina—a single endowment. And one of wit, one of brawn....”

“Only one? It feels like more.”

“You’ve lost your key endowments,” Rahjim said.

“Key endowments” was a term used by facilitators. It meant the endowments a man was born with. Like the keystones in an arch, they held a man together. The news was baffling.

“You are dying,” Chespot said plainly. “In some sense, perhaps you are dead already.”

“What?” Raj Ahten demanded.

Raj Ahten had heard of dead men who still breathed, of course. As a child, he’d been raised on such tales. Just as a senile man can often mask his condition with endowments of wit—effectively remembering much even as his brain slowly withered inside his head—a slain Runelord with many endowments of stamina could sometimes survive for hours or days in a morbid state.

“What am I?” Raj Ahten asked, numb.

Rahjim said, “You...are something that has never been before.”

Chespot eyed him critically. “To live beyond your allotted hour is not a small thing. Your life is ended, but the endowments you’ve taken have not returned to those who gave them. You have taken a great step. I believe that you are the Sum of All Men. You are eternal.”

Am I? Raj Ahten wondered. For years he had gathered endowments, sought to become the Sum of All Men, that mythical creature that could become immortal. He’d hoarded the strength, stamina, and wit of thousands of men, and grown in might until he felt as if he were one of the Powers, like the Earth or Air.

Yet Raj Ahten felt diminished. This morbid state was not what he’d sought. Chespot was wrong. He did not feel like an eternal power. His senses warned that he was failing still—caught like a moth in a web somewhere between life and death.

Raj Ahten’s Days asked, “Your Highness, do you recall the precise moment that it happened?”

Raj Ahten scowled. Part of him had died with Saffira. She had been the most beautiful and the rarest of flowers.

And when he had called his Invincibles together and ordered them to help destroy Gaborn, they’d fought him instead. It was a grim struggle. He’d emerged from the battle only half alive.

“I don’t recall,” Raj Ahten lied.

No one spoke for a long moment.

The flames from the bonfire spread out low to the ground, fanned toward him. Raj Ahten reached out until his right hand was nearly in them. The flame licked it, and in such piercing cold he felt no heat, only a warmth that seeped into his bones, easing the pain. Its golden curls were like sunlight shining through the trees, soft and glorious. The flame-weavers nodded knowingly.

Az said, “See how the Fire seeks him?”

Raj Ahten had imagined that the sorcerers moved the flames. Now he watched them curl toward him in awe.

Chespot reassured Raj Ahten. “The Earth Powers withdraw from you. But not all who walk upon the face of the Earth need its sustenance. You have served our master well in the past. The forests of Aven are ash now, at your command. If you feel ill, if you continue to fade, my master will serve you. Step into the fire, and let it burn the dross from you. Give yourself to it, and it will sustain you.”

Naked desire showed in the flameweaver’s face, as if he had craved this moment for years.

The flames of the bonfire crept out further, as if hungrily licking the snow.

Raj Ahten lurched away, stared at his right hand. It did feel better where the flames had touched him—as if he had applied a salve.

Binnesman had warned Raj Ahten that he was under the sway of flame-weavers. It was true that they used him for their own ends, just as he used them.

In abject horror, Raj Ahten realized that a choice lay before him. He could continue as he was, wasting away until not even his endowments could save him. Or he could step into the fire and lose his humanity, become one of the flameweavers.

He staggered backward, retreated from the campfire out into the snow-field.

Feykaald and his Days got up and made as if to follow, but Raj Ahten waved them off. He wanted to be alone. His heart was racing.

Rahjim warned, “The fire beckons. It may not always do so.”

Raj Ahten turned and jogged for several minutes, then stopped on a switchback and stood panting. He studied the road in the valleys below. It twisted among trees and a few miles ahead was lost beneath a thin blanket of clouds. Beyond, darkness reigned over the great desert.

A shadow flitted above the woods, an owl on the hunt. He followed it with his eyes until it winged into the stars. To the northeast, a few mountains loomed like islands of sand in a sea of mist. It was a beautiful sight.

The starlight struck the snow-covered ground around him. Trees were black streaks against the snow, the wan light draining all color from them.

Like a face drained of blood, he thought. All of his thoughts revolved around death. He closed his gritty eyes, blinking back the image of Saffira crushed on the battlefield of Carris, blood trickling down her forehead and from her nose.

She is dead, yet I live on.

He clenched his teeth, resolved not to mourn. But he could not turn aside his thoughts. She’d ridden down this road yesterday. With his endowments of scent, he could discern a trace of her jasmine perfume in the air, could smell the sweat of her horse. Saffira had died for her courage and compassion.

Saffira had died. Better if it had been Gaborn.

“Why?” Raj Ah ten whispered to the Earth. “You could have chosen me to be your king. Why not me?”

He listened, not because he expected an answer, but by habit. Wind sighed through the forests below. Nearby, mice rustled beneath a crust of snow in dry mountain grasses; the sound would have been inaudible to any other. Nothing more.

Raj Ahten had been raised on tales of men who had cheated death. Hassan the Headless was a king who’d lived eighty years ago, and had taken a hundred and fourteen endowments of stamina. In a battle, his enemy decapitated him. But just as a frog will live on after its head is removed, so did Hassan.

Hassan’s body crawled about and even wrote a message in the sand, begging for a merciful death. But his enemy mocked him and put the undead corpse into a cage. Raj Ahten’s mother said that Hassan had escaped, and at night on the desert one could still hear his fingers scratching in the sand as Hassan the Headless lurched about, seeking revenge.

It was a tale to horrify children.

But Raj Ahten had studied the matter, knew the full tale. Hassan had only lost part of his head—from the roof of the mouth up. His body had lived because part of the lower brain remained attached. So Hassan had survived for three weeks, tormented by hunger and thirst, until he burst with maggots.

Raj Ahten had performed a similar experiment with a highly endowed assassin named Sir Rober of Clythe. Raj Ahten felt convinced that his own endowments could keep him alive far longer than most would suspect.

Now a terrible choice lay before him, but in the end he feared he might not have any choice.

Raj Ahten clutched his fists. Blood raced through his veins. He vowed, “Gaborn, the Earth will be mine.”

As Raj Ahten opened his eyes, downhill in the trees he spotted a silvery sheen that only his eyes could have detected—the color of heat from a living body. A moment of squinting revealed two huge bucks, antlers locked. One was already dead, worn from combat. But the living animal could not disengage.