David Farland - Wizardborn

“Good.” Averan felt genuinely relieved.

“But you must promise me something,” Binnesman said. “You must promise to remember what you are.”

“A wizard?” she asked.

“An Earth Warden. You are here to protect the small things of the world.”

“Yes?” She could tell by his tone that she had done something wrong.

“Don’t let Gaborn mislead you. You are not here to fight reavers—that much I can assure you.”

“I’m protecting people,” Averan objected.

“It’s only natural to want to protect your own kind,” Binnesman said. “But mankind is not your domain. You aren’t called to serve it.”

“How can you know?” Averan asked.

“Because it is my domain,” Binnesman said forcefully. “There is only one Earth Warden to a species. It is my duty to watch over and heal mankind. You—I don’t know what you’re here for.”

“You’re getting old,” Averan said. “What happens when you die? Won’t you need a replacement?” She liked the idea of carrying on in his stead.

“When the Earth no longer needs my services,” Binnesman said, “then I’ll be released. Not before.”

“I won’t take over your charge?”

“No,” Binnesman said. “When I am gone, mankind will either be saved or destroyed. But in either case, the danger will have run its course.”

Averan looked up and, despite the heartsease, his words filled her with sadness. She could not comprehend how he must feel, knowing that he bore such a weight on his shoulders.

“How can you even talk about it?” she wondered.

“If mankind is swept away,” Binnesman said with a wise nod, “I will grieve. But in time a new kind of men will arise to take their place. They may be as different from us as we are from the Toth. But life will go on.”

Binnesman stared off toward Gaborn’s army at Mangan’s Rock for a long moment. His blue eyes seemed unnaturally clear in the fading sun, and shadows filled every crease in his face.

“Now, girl, to work.”

For a long hour he schooled her. He pulled seven small white agates from his pocket, and laid them out on the ground. “I apologize that these are all I have. Such small stones are of limited use, but they may come in handy.”

He drew runes about them in the dirt, and then called forth images in the stones. At first it was simply mountain ridges as seen from the ground—blue in the distance with a dusting of snow. Averan could look uphill and see the same ridges, overhead.

But then Binnesman began to move the stones about. Each time he set a stone down, the viewpoint changed. She saw the roads that they had traveled this morning as they followed the reavers’ trail—all as if she were standing on some high escarpment, looking down. The sound of wind rushing over the hills issued from the pebbles, and she could smell the twisted pines there among the rocks.

The stones are showing me what stones see, she realized. She saw more than just roads. She saw lakes and hills, a bear running over a ridge, huffing and grunting. She saw carters driving wains south from Carris, their wheels squeaking and horses whinnying, and a long line of people fleeing that city.

Binnesman dabbled with his stones, as if searching for something in particular. At last she witnessed movement in one valley. Binnesman adjusted his stones, twisting one. The scene changed to a much closer view. She saw Skalbairn’s knights in the mountains, flushing a scarlet sorceress from the pines on a ridge. It was growing dark now. Thirty men had her surrounded, and the monster was digging in the sod, desperately trying to escape by burying herself.

Just downhill, eight blade-bearers lay dead.

“That’s what I was looking for,” Binnesman whispered. “Gaborn sent his riders to hunt for any reavers that might have escaped. It looks as if they’ve found some.”

“A throng of nines,” Averan corrected. Reavers often traveled in threes or multiples of threes. For an important mission, nine was a minimum number.

Several men charged into the trees, rode the sorceress down, lancing her from behind. Averan could not merely see the men, she could hear their shouts, the jangle of armor, the pounding of horses’ hooves, the wing beats of a startled grouse, and the rasping breath of the reaver.

When he finished, Binnesman waved his hands over the agates, and the image dissipated. He seemed thoughtful. “So, Gaborn was right. The reavers down on Mangan’s Rock were trying to divert his forces while they sent a warning.”

Averan knew that the danger was far from over. Perhaps he’d won a small round, but there were still nearly sixty thousand reavers down on Mangan’s Rock, and they would not wait for long.

Binnesman moved three of the pebbles and said, “Now, look into the stones yourself and draw forth an image. Do not try to picture what you will see. I’ve moved the stones so that nothing I’ve shown you will appear again. Instead, I want you to merely open yourself to what they will show you. Once you unlock the power of the stones, you can change your viewpoint by moving them.”

He instructed her for long minutes, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not manage to draw forth any image at all. She struggled to imagine things, tried not to imagine anything—it didn’t matter.

The stones remained mere stones under her hands. Binnesman pocketed them at last and said, “Don’t worry. It may be that in time you will develop the skill.”

“What if I never learn to do it?” Averan said.

“Not all wizards need all powers,” Binnesman consoled her. “You already have a gift that I don’t: you can learn from reavers. That’s a very strange gift—a powerful one, I’d think.”

He sighed, looked contemplative.

“I know,” he said. “I have another idea. Try this: close your eyes and imagine a deer in the forest, any deer at all.”

Averan did. At first she tried to imagine a spotted fawn, lying in a bed of ferns.

But Keeper’s memories still flowed to her, and she recalled a scene of herself learning to gut one of the great horn beetles. Her master was instructing her in the art, saying, “Pull off its head-plate first, to get at the brains.”

Averan recoiled from the image that assailed her. For a moment she stood blinking, trying to dredge up any image of a deer.

She imagined a stag, a huge stag with antlers as wide as tree limbs.

“Do you have it?” Binnesman asked.

“Yes,” Averan said.

“Good. Hold the image in your mind. Think of nothing else. Try to look closely at the animal, imagine its details. Every deer is different. There are males and females, different ages, different shades of red or tan. How does it look? What sounds does it make? How does it smell? What details separate it from any other deer in the woods? Hold the image in your mind and think of nothing else.”

For ten long minutes she did just that. She imagined a stag, an old buck with silver hairs in his coat, a ragged right ear from a battle. He had six tines on his left antler, and eight on his right.

The image came so vividly that she could see his nostrils flaring as he breathed, the way he ducked his head and flashed his tail at a strange scent. She could smell the musk of him, strong now that mating season was on.

She pictured him in her mind until she heard the buck. Sounds came, and at first she was not sure if she just imagined them: the buck snorting as it tested the air for her scent. She heard it swish through brush, step on a dry twig, and bound twice downhill as if startled by its own noise.

The sound wasn’t fantasized. She felt sure of that. The snap of the twig echoed twice in her memory. The first time it came loud and clear, as if she heard it with the stag’s ears. The second time it was a distant snap, up the hill. The same was true with its bounding.