David Farland - Wizardborn

“But in time, mankind discovered how to dig for metal to forge weapons of brass and iron, and how to raise fortresses, and how to wage war in cooperation. The blood metal and endowments made men equal to any predator, and raised them to the status of Lords of the Overworld.

“So it is easy for you to look at a Runelord and imagine that nothing could be so powerful, so masterful as a man.

“Yet nothing is farther from the truth.”

Averan was quiet, thoughtful for a long moment. “How long have you known that mankind is in trouble?”

Binnesman stroked his beard. “I’ve known that dark times were coming for ages, now. Mankind needed no protector, needed no Earth Warden to watch over them, for many thousands of years.

“But when I heard the Earth whisper my name, when I first felt the urge to protect and nurture mankind, I knew that dark times were upon us. Until I saw the ruins at Carris, I had no idea how dark they might become.”

“Is that how it happens?” Averan asks. “You hear the Earth calling? Is that how you learn what to do?”

“It’s not a sound heard by human ears,” Binnesman said. “It’s more like a trembling, a knowledge that strikes to the core of you. Suddenly you just know...everything: why you exist, and how you are connected to the Earth, and what you must do.”

Binnesman could not hide how he felt. The moment he first understood his purpose in life, felt his connection to the Earth, must have been powerful indeed. He sounded rapturous....

It filled Averan with longing.

“So you will be called to protect the beasts, I think. You love them more than plants or minerals, it seems. You’ve heard of Alwyn Toadmaster, haven’t you?”

Averan laughed. The antics of Alwyn Toadmaster had made some of her favorite bedtime stories as a child.

“Well, he was real,” Binnesman said. “He really did live in the swamps of Callonbee. And when the marshes dried up for six years, he collected all of the frogs’ eggs he could and stored them in the wells at Brachston, which of course drove the townspeople mad. Imagine having to fish a hundred pollywogs out of your cup every time you took a drink!”

Averan giggled, but a part of her felt horrified. What if the Earth called her to take care of something nasty, like frogs? “Did he really hop around like a frog, and catch files on his tongue?”

“What do you think?” Binnesman asked.

“I think they made that part up.”

“I suspect you’re right,” Binnesman said.

“So,” she asked nervously, “you just know? You just wake up one day and know what you’re here to save?”

“It’s not always so easy,” Binnesman said. “Everything is interlinked. Sometimes, in order to save one thing, you have to let another go. For example...people,” Binnesman said pointedly, glancing toward Gaborn. “Gaborn was given a gift, the ability to Choose people, and to save a seed of mankind through the dark times to come. But he wasn’t commanded to save all of the people. So he has tried to Choose the best.

“In the same way, the time may come when you have to choose to save something while letting another thing go.”

“I hope I can take care of the graaks,” Averan said wistfully. “Or maybe deer.”

“Ah, now a graak,” Binnesman said playfully, “is in my opinion a thoroughly unpleasant animal. So I’m glad you’re here to save them, if they need saving.”

“I guess if everyone got to choose what animals to save,” Averan said, “we’d probably all save bunny rabbits.”

Binnesman nodded sagely. “Or kittens.” The old wizard wrapped a huge arm around her, gave her a hug, but neither of them spoke for a while. They had entered the deadlands.

She thought about Roland, lying there in Carris, and wondered if she’d see Baron Poll.

The throng outside Duke Paldane’s keep in Carris was thick with the denizens of Rofehavan—lords and merchants in their smelly woolen garments, all of them nattering loudly, or so it seemed to Feykaald.

He stood alone with his back to the stone wall, the sun shining brightly upon him. As he did, he closed his eyes and listened.

The tide of voices overwhelmed him. With a dozen endowments of hearing and only half as many endowments of stamina, the noise swelling around him set his ears to throbbing and caused a painful buzz at the base of his skull. Even the opium he had smoked earlier did little except to leave him feeling disjointed, disconnected, and slightly out of control. The bitter taste of it clung to his teeth. He frowned in concentration as he picked voices from the crowd.

“.... ‘Not even the Earth King can fix that,’ I told him. Them apricot trees won’t be growing back for twenty years...” said one tall peasant loudly.

“...without so much as a by-your-leave...” cried a woman deeper into the crowd.

“Pardon me. Good day. Pardon. I beg your pardon,” a young girl apologized as she nimbly weaved through the crowds.

“Mark him with the black robes. If I was king, I’d bull his kind out of the city. Who does he think he is?” some old washwoman whispered about Feykaald, while her companion grunted assent.

Soon the fanfare blared in the far hills, and Feykaald looked across the black horizon to see the king’s retinue riding forward.

He leaned back and closed his eyes, like a reptile sunning himself, as he waited.

Gaborn was deeply troubled as he rode for Carris. He felt abundantly aware of his weaknesses as he listened to Binnesman begin training Averan.

The Earth Powers were great indeed. But those powers could only be controlled and handled by those who gave themselves fully into the Earth’s service.

So Gaborn acted as the Earth King, though he felt that he was something less.

His mind seethed. The end of the world drew near. He could feel it like an ache in the bones. His counsel with his fathers’ Wits last night, the messages he sent, the small battles he won—all of them were insignificant.

He suspected that the key to saving his people lay in confronting the One True Master.

A mad plan had begun to assume shape in his mind.

All of it hinged upon Averan. The key to finding the One True Master was for Averan to consume the brain of the Waymaker. Vainly he tried to consider other plans. Binnesman’s wylde consumed the brains of reavers too, but the creature could hardly speak. It could rarely understand questions, much less answer them.

So Averan would have to eat. Afterward...Gaborn dared not think about what he had to do.

In the more frivolous days of his youth Gaborn had dared dream that he might act upon the stages of Mystarria. To that end, he’d studied the art of mimicry in detail in the House of Understanding, in the Room of Faces.

In the city of Aneuve, the Room of Faces was unlike any other. Many “rooms” throughout the city were located at alehouses or in open squares.

Thus, for example, the Room of Feet, where one learned the arts of traveling, was not a room at all, but a series of hostels and stables all about the countryside, where one had to travel in order to learn his lessons.

Other rooms were more secretive. Classes were taught in stark dormitories or dim halls. Some hearthmasters jealously guarded their intellectual properties, like Hearthmaster Vangreve in the Room of Dreams, and thus they taught in vaulted chambers underground, far away from the listening ears of any spies.