David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

Behind them a crowd of children and onlookers gathered. Several large boys had now brought fishing nets from the banks of the river, and others had gathered spears and bows, hoping to make a meal of the sturgeons, if the King would allow it. They seemed a bit forlorn at the prospect of missing a meal.

Now that the sun had risen a bit more, slanting in, Myrrima could see the huge sturgeons easily enough, their dark blue backs. They were circling near the surface, their fins slicing through the water as they swam about in curious patterns. To a casual observer, it might have appeared that they were finning the surface like salmon, preparing to spawn.

“What has happened to the water here in the moat since this began?” Gaborn wondered aloud.

“The level of the moat is rising,” Binnesman said. “I’d say that it has come up at least a foot this morning.” He climbed down to the edge of the moat and dipped his fingers in. “And the water here has become much clearer. The sediment is settling out of it.”

One fish swam a lazy S, then dipped below the surface and rose again, just so, to put a single dot at the end, then slashed through it. Gaborn traced the pattern with his finger.

“See there,” Binnesman said, pointing at the sturgeon. “That fish is making runes of protection.”

Gaborn said, “I see it. It’s a simple water rune that my father taught me as a child. What do you think they want protection from?”

“I don’t know,” Binnesman said, staring deeply, as if to read the answer in a sturgeon’s eye. “Why don’t you ask them?”

“In a moment,” Gaborn promised. “I’ve never tried to use my Earth Sight on an animal before. Let me gather my thoughts first.”

Some deep-green dragonflies buzzed past, and Myrrima and Iome stood hand in hand for several long moments, studying the runes that the fish drew. Myrrima noticed that each sturgeon had taken an area free of reeds and lily pads.

Gaborn and Binnesman, meanwhile, discussed the meaning of the runes. One sturgeon kept tracing runes of protection next to some cattails. Gaborn said that another drew runes of purity near the center of the pond—a rune to cleanse the water. A third was sketching runes that Binnesman recognized as runes of healing. Over and over again.

Farther away, a fish was moving in the depths of the moat, tracing runes that neither Gaborn nor Binnesman had ever seen before. Even Gaborn, a king raised in the Courts of Tide where water wizards were common, could not divine the purpose for all the runes. But Binnesman ventured a guess that the rune would make the water colder.

“Do you think the water really is much colder?” Iome whispered to Myrrima.

“I’ll see,” Myrrima said. She climbed down and touched the water, too, though no one else on the shore dared. Binnesman was right. It was bitterly cold, as cold and fresh as the deepest of mountain pools. And the shoreline in the moat was indeed higher than it had been this past week.

Myrrima nodded to Iome. “It’s freezing!”

Gaborn climbed down to a huge flat rock by Myrrima, leaned out over the glassy surface of the moat and began to trace runes on the water, simple runes of protection. He was mirroring the actions of the sturgeon.

A great sturgeon swam up, just under his hand, its dark blue back close to Gaborn. Its gills expanded and contracted rhythmically as it studied him, watching his fingers as if they were something edible. The fish was tantalizingly close to Myrrima.

“That’s right. I’ll protect you if I can,” Gaborn whispered to the fish in an easy tone. “Tell me, what do you fear?”

He continued drawing the runes, stared into the fish’s eyes, and into its mind, for long minutes. He frowned as if what he saw confused him. “I see darkness in the water,” he murmured. “I see darkness, and I taste metal. I can feel...strangulation. I can taste...metal. Redness coming.”

The young King stopped speaking, almost seemed to stop breathing. His eyes lost their focus and rolled back in his head.

“King Orden,” Binnesman called, but Gaborn did not move.

Myrrima wondered if she should grab Gaborn to keep him from falling in, but Binnesman climbed down to the water’s edge and touched his shoulder.

“What?” Gaborn asked, rousing from his stupor. He leaned on the flat rock.

“What is it they fear?” Binnesman asked.

“They fear blood, I think,” Gaborn said. “They fear that the river will fill with blood.”

Binnesman drew his staff up tight against his chest and frowned, shaking his head in dismay.

“I can’t believe that. There is no sign of an army approaching, and it would take a great battle to fill the river with blood. Raj Ahten is far away. But something odd is happening,” he said. “I’ve felt it all night. The Earth is in pain. I feel the pain like pinpricks on my flesh north of here, in North Crowthen, and again far to the south. It trembles in far places, and there are slow movements even here, beneath our very feet.”

Gaborn tried to make light of it.. “Still, it comforts me to have these wizards here in our moat.” He turned and addressed the crowd of boys with their spears and bows and nets. “Let no man fish in this moat or foul its waters in any way. Let no one swim in it. These wizards will stay as our guests.”

Gaborn asked Binnesman, “Can we seal the moat off from the river?.”

Myrrima knew it should not be hard. A small diversion dam upriver let water spill into the canal that fed the moat.

“Of course,” Binnesman said. He glanced about. “You, Daffyd and Hugh, go close the raceway. And hurry.”

Two stalwart boys ran upstream, elbows and shirttails flying.

Myrrima watched the wizard draw himself to his full height, look up at the early morning sun.

She held her breath, strained to listen as Binnesman spoke. “Milord,” he said so softly that most of those nearby could not have heard. “The earth is speaking to us. It speaks sometimes in the movements of birds and animals, sometimes in the crash of stone. But it is speaking nonetheless. I do not know what it is saying, but I don’t like this business of rivers filled with blood.”

Gaborn nodded. “What would you have me do?”

“Raj Ahten had a powerful pyromancer in his retinue, before you killed her,” Binnesman said thoughtfully. “Yet I’m sure that whole forests are still being sacrificed to the powers that the flameweavers served.”

“Yes,” Gaborn said.

“I would not speak of plans that I want held secret now in open daylight. Nor would I do so before a fire, not even so much as a candle flame. Hold your councils by starlight if you must. Or better yet, in a darkened hall of stone, where the Earth can shield your words.”

Myrrima knew that powerful flameweavers sometimes claimed that if they listened to the whispering tongues of flames, they could clearly hear words spoken by others of their ilk hundreds of miles away. Yet Myrrima had never seen a flameweaver who could really perform such feats.

“All right,” Gaborn agreed. “We will hold our councils in the Great Hall, and I will have no fires lit therein throughout the winter. And I shall pass orders that no man is to discuss military strategies or secrets with another by daylight or firelight.”

“That should do,” Binnesman said.

With that, the King and Iome and their Days’ and Binnesman went over to see the reaver’s head, then walked back up to the castle. Borenson stayed behind for a few moments and posted some lads beside the moat, charging them to care for the fish.

Myrrima stood by and wondered. During the past week, much in her life had changed. But Binnesman’s warning to Gaborn hinted of dire portents. Rivers of blood. With the hundreds of thousands of people camped around the city of Sylvarresta, it seemed as if the whole earth were flocking to Heredon, to the courts of the Earth King. Whatever change was coming, she stood near the center of it all.