David Farland - Wizardborn

“Nor am I,” Iome said quite frankly, for she had no more idea what his problem was than when he had first opened his mouth.

He looked at the crowd of servants and whispered, “Your Highness, may we speak privately?”

Iome nodded, and together they strolled through the courtyard over to the shadows beneath a pair of pecan trees, in a dark corner by the castle wall.

“Milady,” he said, “what do you know of the stars?”

“They’re pretty,” Iome said dryly.

“Yes,” Jennaise said. “And you may also know that as the seasons progress, the constellations rotate about the sky. At the first of the year, Elwind rides over the mountains of the north. But at high summer he is almost straight overhead.”

“I know,” Iome said.

“Then it is with great...bewilderment that I must report that the stars are wrong.”

“What?” Iome asked.

“The stars are wrong tonight. It is all very baffling. Tonight is the third of the month of Leaves. But by our charts, the stars read as if it were the twentieth of the month of Harvest—off by two weeks.”

“How can that be?” Iome asked. “Could the charts be wrong? Perhaps—”

“The charts are not wrong. I’ve been over them a hundred times. I can think of only one explanation,” Jennaise answered. “The world is taking some new path through the heavens. Even the moon—by my preliminary measurements—”

A moment before Iome had felt overwhelmed. Now she was staggered. She stared at him with her mouth open, and finally managed to ask, “What can we do?”

Jennaise shook his head. “I—perhaps no one can help. But your husband is the Earth King.”

Suddenly she recalled Averan’s words. The One True Master was binding the Rune of Desolation to the Runes of Heaven and the Inferno. She planned to make a new world, where mankind would not survive.

Could she wrest the Earth from its appointed course? “Of course,” Iome said. “I’ll—send word immediately.”

Even if the One True Master had done this, how could Gaborn stop her? He’d lost most of his own powers.

The stargazer turned to leave, and Iome desperately cast her eyes over the courtyard. She called for a courier, thinking to pen a message to Gaborn.

But even as she began thinking how to frame the words, she realized that she wasn’t telling Gaborn anything that he didn’t already know.

He’d warned Iome that if he did not destroy the reavers’ lord, his people would all die. He knew the danger as well as she did.

Or did he? she wondered. Gaborn could sense danger, but he could never tell from what quarter it might come. And nearly all of his Chosen in Mystarria were still near the city of Carris. He couldn’t sense danger to those outside the city. She wondered what Gaborn would say if she warned him of her suspicions of an impending attack here at the Courts of Tide. Would he ask her to go, or to stay? She wondered what he would say if he knew that the world was out of its course.

Just then, Grimeson came into the courtyard with a facilitator in tow. “Milady,” he shouted. “We got them endowments that Gaborn wanted.”

Iome’s thoughts had been a jumble. She’d forgotten about the endowments. Gaborn had ordered the facilitators to prepare vectors for Averan. Now, the facilitator would need to escort the vectors to Gaborn.

“Get horses and set off immediately,” Iome told Grimeson. “Every second counts.”

“Milady,” Grimeson said, “these vectors have been up all night. I wouldn’t want one of them to fall off his horse. There’s royal carriages that would be almost as fast as a horse.”

“By all means then, we’ll take carriages.”

“We?”

Iome felt as if the world were falling apart around her. Gaborn had sent her here to be “safe.” But the quakes had struck and towers collapsed and the stars were falling. The world was out of its course.

No place was safe.

Her place was beside Gaborn, but she couldn’t follow him into the Underworld. There, she would only be a liability to him. He was the Earth King still, and though his powers were diminished, he alone might stand against the reaver lord.

Yet there had to be something more that she could do than wait here at the Courts of Tide. She glanced back over her shoulder, saw Chamberlain Westhaven taking a few moments to advise half a dozen lords in her absence. He knew this realm better than she did.

“Grimeson,” she said with finality. “Get my escort. I’m coming with you. I need to speak to Gaborn.”

She penned a note to Chamberlain Westhaven, warning him to prepare for an attack from the sea, and handed it to a page.

In moments she was gone.

Borenson staggered through the dark moors, carrying Myrrima in his arms. She was a big woman, and even with an endowment of brawn, he could not carry her easily—he tired too quickly.

As he carried her, he clung to her right hand, gripping it for life, hoping that by some miracle he could help her hold on for a while longer.

It made little difference, he suspected.

In fact, after an hour, he knew that it made no difference. The bleak cold from her hand froze his bones, making them hard as iron. His own right hand became locked to hers.

He did not regret his decision to hold her, to warm her. He regretted only that he could not feel her hand anymore, for his own flesh seemed to have frozen as solid as midwinter ice.

So he bore her over uneven ground. He listened to her teeth chatter, and each time a puff of icy air came from her mouth, he thought it a small miracle.

It became a chore to walk. Sweat poured from him and his legs burned. Without an endowment of stamina, he tired as quickly and deeply as any other man. He dared not rest, for fear that if he stopped, then he would not regain the will to move again.

So he staggered on beneath the dripping trees and starlit skies over a land so dank it was fit only for newts and worms. The wolf continued to howl. He no longer feared assassins or wights. He knew his own death would not be far away. The cold of the Toth’s wight stole the heat from his own hand, had worked its way down to his elbow. His prayer had been answered in part.

Myrrima would die. He could not stop it. But he also knew that he could not live much longer. He had taken her death into himself as well.

So it was that as he walked, he felt an odd sensation between his legs as his testicles suddenly dropped.

He had had no premonition, no tingling or warning. Indeed, he had forgotten that little boys are not born with hanging walnuts. Instead, they ripen in small sacs between their legs, and drop after a couple of years.

The wizard’s balm had worked its miracle. There could have been no more natural way for it to happen.

“I’ll pay that damned wizard no more than a pint for the both of them,” Borenson choked, and laughed at fate’s cruel jest.

He kept walking. Lift a foot, plod forward. Lift a foot, stagger on.

He could no longer hold his head up. With every step, the world seemed to swim, and his eyes would not focus.

He lost consciousness, and walked for a while in a dreamscape where Myrrima’s shade floated beside him.

“I’m coming with you to Inkarra no matter what,” she said. “Leave my body here, and I’ll follow. It’s all gone cold anyway.”

An overwhelming sadness took him, and he looked down to discover if it was true. He couldn’t see whether she was breathing anymore. Icy cold ran up the length of his own arm, pierced his shoulder now.

He wanted nothing more than to lie down with Myrrima to die.