David Farland - Wizardborn

“No,” he said. “There’s bound to be a healer in Fenraven, a midwife at least. Maybe you should go ahead.”

Myrrima climbed shakily to her feet. Even with all of her endowments, the effort seemed to drain her. She grabbed her bow, used it as a staff, and began to hobble forward. In his mind, Borenson recalled how Hoswell had fled the battlefield only hours ago using the same bow in just such a manner. He’d not survived.

Borenson jogged along beside her.

She looked down the road determinedly. “We’ve got to find the horses,” Myrrima said between chattering teeth. “I put some of Binnesman’s healing salve in my saddlebags.”

Passing out of the blasted area was a relief. The warm night air seemed to surge around Borenson. He felt refreshed by it, more hopeful. He realized that moments before he’d felt...depleted of some vital essence. He hoped that Myrrima would feel it too.

Starlight shone overhead, a powder in the heavens that barely pierced the gauzy clouds. Soon they topped a small rise, and he looked eagerly along the road ahead. Night vapors spread over the muddy trail in patches. Black trees raked the sky with leafless limbs.

He could see no cheering lights for miles ahead, and no sign of his horses.

It looked like a good patch of road in which to find another wight.

There is a rider ahead of us, he recalled. Most likely he is an assassin out of Muyyatin.

Borenson had few endowments. His warhammer remained sheathed on his horse’s back. His only weapon was the long knife strapped to his leg.

Myrrima took a look at the horizon, groaned in despair. “How big is Fenraven?” she asked as she stood panting.

“Not big,” he said. He’d never been there, but knew it by reputation.

“So, maybe—maybe we just can’t see its lights. It could be close ahead.”

Borenson knew that Fenraven was situated just beyond the bogs on a small island. The flowing water around it was a bane to wraiths, but the people of Fenraven also kept lanterns outside every doorway, to make doubly sure.

If we were even close, he knew, we’d see those lights, or smoke rising from the town. But there was nothing. “You could be right,” he lied, trying to offer some comfort. “It could be anywhere.”

Myrrima nodded, hobbled on.

For nearly half an hour he jogged to keep pace with her. He pulled off his armor, threw it to the ground, along with his helm.

Myrrima’s breath came in quick, shallow gasps. She held her wounded arm cupped against her chest like a claw, Borenson’s cloak wrapped around it. He could tell that she was in great pain.

They ran through the fog-shrouded woods, and Borenson listened for the sounds of danger or for his horses. Water dripped from tree limbs, landing in the mud with sucking sounds. The wind blew softly, making leaves skitter nervously. Borenson recalled the elemental of the Darkling Glory that had attacked Gaborn’s camp earlier in the day, and the gale that had raced ahead of them inexplicably this afternoon.

Was this some kind of vengeance? he wondered. Myrrima had done the creature great harm, after all. He only wished that she could have killed it.

Myrrima slowed and began to move erratically after the first half hour, scampering forward in little starts and stops. He could walk as fast as she could by then.

He was winded. He figured that they had covered nearly three miles. He felt numb all over. He kept watching her. She seemed more drained with each passing moment. He feared that she would collapse with nearly every step.

They reached another hillock, looked down the road below. Stars fell, as if to empty the heavens.

The hills were rising, becoming a bit taller. The fog lay thicker in the folds beneath. Finally, a horned moon began to climb above the horizon, limning it with light. In the distance to the south, he could make out the jagged white peaks of the Alcairs. No sign of horses, no sign of town.

He glanced at Myrrima, and what he saw made chills lance through him. Her face had a deathly pallor and she breathed roughly, shallowly. With every breath, fog rolled out of her mouth and hung round her face in a little cloud.

Yet it was not so cold that his breath did so.

The Bright Ones protect her! he swore inwardly.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Weakly, she shook her head no.

“Let’s have a look at that hand,” he said.

Myrrima shook her head no, pulled back, but he took her gingerly. Her right arm would not move. It felt as if it were frozen at the elbow. He began gently unwinding his cloak from around her arm. The folds of cloth had frozen to her flesh.

He got it off, and found that more than her knuckles and fingers were white now. The ice reached all the way up her arm, and was spreading to her shoulder.

It was as if death crept through her flesh.

He stared at her, stricken with horror.

Myrrima nodded, as if the sight only gave her visual confirmation of how she felt.

“It will kill me,” she said.

Borenson looked about, bewildered. There was no fighting otherworldly powers. He was no sorcerer, had no weapons.

“Maybe...if we cut it off...” The very notion horrified him. He had never performed an amputation. He had no bandages, nothing that would relieve her pain. And from the look of it, the arm would have to come off at the shoulder. He wouldn’t be able to control the bleeding.

Myrrima shook her head. “I don’t...I don’t think it will work.”

“Here,” he said, “lean against me for a moment.” He still wore the padding that he’d had beneath his armor, and his sweat was slick beneath it. He unlaced the front of it, along with his tunic, then put her arm against his side. Her touch was like bitter ice, and he wondered for a moment if the wight’s curse would take him too.

He no longer cared if it did.

Early in the morning, he’d asked Gaborn what more he might be required to give. Borenson had already lost his manhood, and his virtue. Now he realized that he was about to lose something more, something so precious he had never even guessed at its worth: his wife.

Myrrima leaned against him heavily, as if to steady herself, as her breath came quick and frightened.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be, he thought. When he’d left Castle Sylvarresta four nights ago, he’d imagined that he was leaving Myrrima forever.

I was the one taking the road to Inkarra. I was the one who was never supposed to return.

He’d been protecting himself from that knowledge. He’d refused to give himself to her in hopes that he would protect her too. He saw that now, all in flash. Myrrima was right.

He’d tried to divorce himself from any feeling for her. But he’d loved her from the moment he saw her.

He began to suspect that he knew what that meant. He’d stood at Gaborn’s back as he studied in the House of Understanding. Borenson had never been a student, had kept his eyes and ears open for danger. But he had learned some things.

Now, he tried to recall something he’d heard once while Gaborn listened to a lecture in the Room of the Heart. The memories came slowly, and Borenson wondered at that. Perhaps they came slowly because he’d lost endowments of wit when Raj Ahten destroyed the Blue Tower. Perhaps they came slowly because he’d never paid much attention to Hearth-master Jorlis. Who could take a man seriously who spent his whole life thinking about emotions?

In the Room of the Heart, Hearthmaster Jorlis had taught that every man has two minds, the “scant mind” and the “deep mind.”

Jorlis had said that the scant mind was cold, logical, and rational. It knew little of love. It was the part of the mind that fretted about numbers and accounts.

But Jorlis said that every man has another mind, a deep mind. It was the part of the brain that dreamed and struggled to comprehend the world. It was the creative mind that made unexpected insights. It was the part of the mind that assured you when you’d made a right choice, or that warned against danger by sending feelings of uncertainty or fear.