David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

Raj Ahten swallowed hard.

“You have my forcibles,” Raj Ahten said to Gaborn, as if to dismiss the ward. “I want them back—nothing more.”

“I want my people back,” Gaborn said “I want the Dedicates you killed at the Blue Tower. I want my father and mother, my little sisters and my brother.” To Raj Ahten, it seemed a singularly odd moment, to hear that gourd speak. Raj Ahten studied the Earth King’s Voice warily.

“It’s too late for them,” Raj Ahten said. “Just as it is too late for my wife Saffira.”

“If it’s vengeance you’re after,” Gaborn said, “take it from the reavers. If any man here has been injured, I have the greater claim, and if it was vengeance I wanted, I could take it even now.”

Raj Ahten smiled. “Is this why you stopped, Gaborn Val Orden—to make petty threats?” he asked. “Do you need the comfort of wizards and knights at your back just to snivel at me?” Raj Ahten stood panting, determined to hide how much the monkshood affected him. He wished he could see a face, to learn what the lad might be thinking.

“No, I did not come to make threats. I hoped to warn you that you are in grave danger. I felt such danger myself, yesterday, just before you destroyed the Blue Tower. It was a cloying, indefinable rot. I tell you that Mystarria is not the only land where reavers are massing. I fear that your Dedicates will be next.”

He sounded sincere, though the lad had no cause to wish Raj Ahten well. “So, you want me to flee home?” Raj Ahten said. “To chase phantoms while you strengthen your borders?”

“No,” Gaborn answered “I want you to go home and save yourself. If you do, I will use all the powers at my command to aid you.”

“Not half an hour ago, you tried to kill me,” Raj Ahten pointed out. “What has brought about so great a change of heart?”

“I Chose you,” Gaborn said. “I did not want to use my powers against you, but you forced me to it. I ask you one more time, join with me.”

So the boy seeks an ally, Raj Ahten realized. He fears that he cannot stop the reavers on his own.

Raj Ahten wondered if Gaborn still might be persuaded to return the forcibles.

“Look around you, Raj Ahten,” the wizard Binnesman cut in. “Look at the land behind you, the death and ruin! You faced the fell mage. Is that the world you want? Or would you come with us, to this land, to a land that is fair and green, hail and living?”

“You offer me land?” Raj Ahten said, genuinely disappointed. “That is gracious: to offer land that I could so easily take, land that you are incompetent to hold.”

“The Earth bids me warn you,” Gaborn said. “A pall lies over you. I cannot protect a man who does not want my protection. If you stay in any of the kingdoms of Rofehavan, I cannot save you.”

“You cannot put me out,” Raj Ahten said. He glanced back toward Carris, toward his own troops.

In that moment, something changed in Gaborn. He began to laugh. Not a mere nervous chuckle, but a laugh of such deep and profound relief, a laugh from so deep in the gut that Raj Ahten wondered at the source. He wished he could see the boy.

“You know,” Gaborn said in a cordial tone. “Once, I might have feared you and your Invincibles. But I have just realized how I could defeat you, Raj Ahten. All I need do is Choose your people—man by man, woman by woman, child by child—and make them my own!”

Beside Gaborn, the wizard Binnesman smiled and also burst into laughter as he realized Raj Ahten’s predicament

Raj Ahten cringed inwardly as he saw the truth. He himself no longer had an army at Carris. He doubted that he could bring any men against Gaborn at all.

“Go back to Carris if you dare,” Gaborn suggested coldly. “You defeated twelve Invincibles, but I have hundreds of thousands of followers there: your men. Will you fight them all?”

“Give me my forcibles;” Raj Ahten demanded calmly, hoping that through the persuasive power of his Voice, he still might reach some settlement. But Gaborn Val Orden shouted, “No bargaining, you foul cur! I offer you your breath, nothing more! Begone, I order you one last time—or I’ll take even that!”

Raj Ahten’s face flushed with rage, and his heart began to pound in his chest.

He shouted and charged.

A dozen knights loosed arrows. He whipped his hands around, tried to knock them aside, but one lodged in his injured knee. He fought the bone-chilling numbness that sapped energy from his heart.

And then the green woman rushed to meet him. She took him by his coat of mail and lifted him, her nails digging so powerfully that bits of scale mail scattered from his coat like scales from a trout.

He tried to grapple with her, aiming a punch at her throat with his mailed gauntlet.

The force of his blow shattered his right arm, though it also knocked the green woman backward a pace. She seemed surprised to be affected at all—surprised, but not injured.

She screamed and drew a small rune in the air, her right hand twisting in an intricate little dance that baffled the eye.

Then she slugged him in the chest. His ribs shattered, ripping into his lungs and heart. Raj Ahten flew backward head over feet a dozen yards, lay gasping for a moment, staring up at the evening sky.

He had not noticed until now that the clouds had begun to scatter, that brilliant white stars pierced the heavens. With his thousands of endowments of sight, he could see more stars than a common man could, infinitely more stars—swirling masses of light, dazzling orbs—all very pretty.

He lay choking on his own blood, heart beating erratically. Every fiber of his chest seemed to burn, as if each individual muscle were demolished. Sweat broke upon his brow.

They’ve killed me, he thought. They’ve killed me.

Blood pounded in his ears, and the green woman rushed to him, grabbed his throat, and prepared to yank nut his windpipe.

“Hold!” the wizard Binnesman shouted.

The green woman merely held him. Her dark-green tongue darted out, slowly played over her upper lip. In her eyes, he could see an endless longing. “Blood?” she pleaded.

Binnesman rode his mount up close to Raj Ahten, and several knights surrounded him, bows drawn. Fortunately; the wizard had dropped his leaf of monkshood. The wizard asked Gaborn in mock sincerity, “What say you, milord? Shall we do him now?”

Raj Ahten was healing. The shattered bones in his chest were knitting askew; his right arm throbbed from fingertip to shoulder. He began healing, and in a few minutes he felt sure that he’d be able to fight. He needed to stall them.

Yet he healed slowly. More slowly than he’d have thought possible. Even with thousands of endowments of stamina, he could not heal.

He lay at their mercy while they ringed him like hounds.

Myrrima looked over at Gaborn, studied the Earth King. She could see the righteous anger flaring in his eye, could see how livid he was. His muscles were taut, hard. She’d been astonished that he’d asked the Wolf Lord’s forgiveness, sought an alliance even now.

But that was past. Gaborn fumed, and she thought that Gaborn would kill him himself, though she yearned for the honor.

Myrrima had not lied a few hours’ past, when she’d told Iome that the presence of the Earth King made her want to fight something. Gaborn was someone whom she would willingly die for.

No man on the face of the earth deserved an execution more than did Raj Ahten. She felt fortunate to have met Gaborn here, this fine evening, so that she would be present to see the demise of the Wolf Lord.

Yet with pain and regret and a tone of finality, Gaborn answered Binnesman. “No. Leave him.”

“Milord!” Prince Celinor shouted in outrage, as did Erin Connal and a dozen other lords, though Celinor’s voice rose above the rest. “If you will not kill him, give me the honor!”