David Farland - Wizardborn

It happened sometimes in the fall. The big bucks would fight, and their antlers would tangle hopelessly, leaving both animals locked in a death grip.

Even the victor looked only half alive.

I do not have to choose now, Raj Ahten told himself. I do not have to step into the fire and give away my humanity. Hassan had a small fraction of the stamina that I do.

From the misty canyons below, an Imperial stallion came galloping up the road. Raj Ahten studied the rider with keen eyes. A desert boy of nine or ten rode the huge mount, weaving from fatigue. He was dressed in a white burnoose, dark cape, and had his head wrapped in a turban. A message case was tied to the pommel of his saddle. The glint of gold embossing identified it as an Imperial message case. Raj Ahten knew that he bore ill tidings.

He stalked back to the fire, beneath the hovering spy balloon.

The boy whipped his horse as he neared. The stallion eyed the graak-shaped balloon, eyes rolling in terror. It danced about, thrusting its ears backward and flaring its nostrils. The beast was wet with sweat. Its breath came hard.

“O Great Light!” the boy cried when he recognized Raj Ahten. “Yesterday at dawn, reavers took the blood-metal mines in Kartish! The very Lord of the Underworld led them.”

Feykaald gasped. “If the attack was like the one in Carris...”

Raj Ahten had never fully comprehended how dangerous a reaver horde could be. His perfect memory replayed images of the fell mage crouched on Bone Hill, her citrine staff pulsing with light, issuing her incantations through scents while her minions huddled nearby. Her curses had blasted every living plant, had blinded and deafened his troops, had wrung the water from men’s flesh.

The reavers in Kartish could do untold damage. The destruction of crops alone would lead to famines throughout all of Indhopal.

“Everyone went to battle,” the boy panted, “except your servants at the Palace of Canaries in Om. They’re taking your Dedicates north. They sent me—”

“You say the Lord of the Underworld led them?”

“Yes,” the boy said, eyes growing wide and panicked. “A fell mage, very big. No one has ever heard of her like.”

Of course, Raj Ahten realized. The reavers would have sent their best troops to Indhopal. It was more populous than Rofehavan, more powerful. Only their most fearsome lord would have dared come against him.

Raj Ahten’s course was decided. His people needed him desperately.

He yanked the boy from the horse, leapt onto its back. “Follow me as you can,” Raj Ahten shouted at the flameweavers.

Feykaald looked up at him for orders. Raj Ahten thought swiftly. He felt ill, as if his very soul were waning. He needed to be strong. “Go back to Carris,” he commanded. “Find out what the Earth King has done with my forcibles. I’ll need them.”

“He will not trust me,” Feykaald objected.

“He will if he believes that you are there against my will,” Raj Ahten said. He pulled out the gold message case, tossed it to Feykaald. “Tell him of the reavers in Kartish. Tell him that the Lord of the Underworld leads them. Say that you came to beg him to come to the aid of Indhopal.”

“You think he will come?” Feykaald asked.

“He will entertain the notion.”

“As you command, O Light of the World,” Feykaald said.

Raj Ahten wheeled the stallion, raced for Kartish.

As the slow light descended from heaven, spreading across the blasted fields thirty miles north of Carris, Myrrima asked Averan, “So, you know nothing more?”

“I’ve told you everything,” Averan said. She had told how she’d first met Roland Borenson, Myrrima’s father-in-law, on the way to Carris, along with Baron Poll and the green woman. Averan had taken Myrrima up through the time that she’d left Roland and Baron Poll, only to be rescued by Myrrima’s husband in company with Saffira. She told Myrrima how she’d helped Sir Borenson enter Carris to hunt for his father.

Averan could tell that her story hurt Myrrima.

In the back of the wagon, Sir Borenson slept deeply. A burning fever seemed ready to consume him. Myrrima had done all that she could for him last night. She’d applied balms from the healers, had poured libations of wine over him and whispered incantations to Water. They’d had to stay at Carris at night, for fear that they’d meet a reaver in the dark. But Myrrima had fled that foul place with her husband at the first crack of dawn, hoping that the king’s wizard in Balington might heal him.

A force horse pulled the wagon, and the wheels nearly sang as they spun down the road through the deadlands.

Averan had secured a ride with Myrrima by claiming that she had an “urgent message” for the king. But Averan had left out a few details in her story.

The sun had begun to rise far beyond the oak-covered hills, like a cold red eye. Averan squinted at it, then pulled her hooded robe over her face.

She didn’t like the burning sensation that the sun caused. Her skin tingled at its touch. Her hands were itching, as if she’d handled poison ivy.

But she was glad that she wasn’t Borenson. Myrrima had pulled up his tunic, looked beneath his armor, and Averan had glimpsed how he’d been wounded.

The wound would have been ghastly under any circumstances, even if it hadn’t gotten infected. Averan had had no idea that people could do that to one another.

“Myrrima,” Averan asked, “when you take the walnuts off a bull, he’s called a ‘steer.’ And when you take them off a stallion, he’s a gelding. What do you call it when they take them off a man?”

“A eunuch,” Myrrima said. “Raj Ahten made a eunuch out of my husband.”

“Oh,” Averan said. “That means he can’t have babies, right?”

Myrrima’s dark eyes filled with water, and she bit at her lip. After a moment she said, “That’s right. We can’t have babies.”

Averan didn’t dare ask another question. It was too painful for Myrrima.

“I saw how you cried over Roland,” Myrrima said.

“He’s dead,” Averan said. “Everyone I know is dead: Roland and Brand and my mother.”

“I was at Longmont when the wight of Erden Geboren came,” Myrrima said. “He blew his warhorn, and men who had died that day rose up and joined him on the hunt. They were happy, Averan. Death isn’t an ending. It’s a new beginning. I’m sure that Roland is happy, wherever he is.”

Averan said nothing. She couldn’t be sure what the dead felt.

“You didn’t know him long,” Myrrima said, as if she should feel better because of it.

Averan shook her head. “He said—” She sniffled. “He said he was going to petition the duke, so that he could become my father. I’ve never had a father.”

Myrrima reached out and took Averan’s hand. She looked in Averan’s eyes and said, “If the duke had granted that petition, then I would have been your sister in-law.” Myrrima squeezed her hand. “I could still use another sister.”

Averan clenched her jaw, and tried to put on a bold face.

She trembled. Her guts were still cramped and twisted in terror. She’d fed on reaver brains last night, but she didn’t dare tell Myrrima what she’d done. She didn’t dare tell a stranger how the reaver’s memories now haunted her.

Averan crawled off the buckboard, in to the wagon, and curled up in the hay. The new hay smelled of sweet clover, fescue, and oat straw. She buried her face in it, but it could not keep out the memories.

In her mind’s eye, Averan beheld an enormous reaver mage, stalking uphill through a windy cave. The image and smells came preternaturally clear, like a waking dream, or as if the memory were more real than the life that she lived.