David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

“You can’t go to Indhopal,” Iome said. “You can’t even be thinking such a thing. Raj Ahten’s men will kill you. Besides, you’ll be needed here.”

“I agree,” Gaborn said. “Yet Raj Ahten has the most powerful army in the world, and he is the most powerful Runelord of us all. If I fight him, we may all be destroyed. If I ignore him, I surely do so at my own peril. If I try to flee him, he will catch me. I can see only one alternative...”

“Are you saying that you would use your power to Choose him? After what he has done?” Iome could not hold back the shock and anger in her voice.

“I hope to arrange a truce,” Gaborn admitted, and she knew from his tone that his decision was final. “I have discussed the possibility with Jureem.”

“Raj Ahten will not grant you a truce,” Iome said with certainty. “Not unless you return the forcibles your father won with his own life. And that would not be a truce, that would be surrender!”

Gaborn nodded, stared at her evenly.

“Don’t you see it?” Iome said. “It wouldn’t even be surrender with honor, for once you give the forcibles back, Raj Ahten would use them against you. I know my cousin. I know him. He will not leave you alone. The fact that Earth has given you dominion over mankind does not mean Raj Ahten will concede the honor.”

Gaborn gritted his teeth, looked as if he would turn away. She could see the anguish in his features. She knew that he loved his people, that he sought to protect them as best he knew how, and that right now he could see no way to bring Raj Ahten down.

“Still, I must ask for a truce,” Gaborn answered. “And if a truce cannot be won, then...I must ask for honorable conditions of surrender. Only if such conditions cannot be met, will I be forced to fight.”

“There can be no surrender,” Iome said. “My father surrendered, and once he did, Raj Ahten changed the terms to fit his whim. You cannot be Raj Ahten’s Dedicate and the Earth King!”

“I fear you are right,” Gaborn said with a heavy sigh, and he came and sat on the bed next to Iome, took her hand. But it was cold comfort.

“Why can’t you just kill him and be done with it?” Iome asked.

“Raj Ahten has perhaps ten thousand force warriors in his service,” Gaborn said. “Even if I defeated him roundly, and lost half as many men, would it be worth the price? Think of it, four and a half million children, women! Could I knowingly throw away the life of even one? And who is to say that it would stop there? With so many warriors lost, would it even be possible anymore to stop the reavers?”

Gaborn paused. After a moment, he held a finger up to his lips, motioning for Iome to keep quiet, and went over to King Sylvarresta’s old writing table. He drew out a small book from the top drawer, and began pulling out papers hidden in its bindings.

He brought them to Iome and whispered, “In the House of Understanding, in the Room of Dreams, the Days are taught thus about the nature of good and evil,” Gaborn said. This surprised Iome. The teachings of the Days were hidden from Runelords. Now she knew why he whispered. The Days were right outside their doorway.

Gaborn showed her a diagram he had scribed out on parchment.

“Every man sees himself as a lord,” Gaborn said, “and he rules over three domains: the Domain Invisible, the Domain Communal, and the Domain Visible.

“Each domain can have many parts. A man’s time, his body space, his free will, are all part of his Domain Invisible, while all of the things he owns, all of the things he can easily see, are part of his Domain Visible.

“Now, whenever someone violates our domain, we call him evil: If he seeks to take our land or our spouse, if he seeks to destroy our community or our good name, if he abuses our time or tries to deny us our free will, we will hate him for it.

“But if another enlarges your domain, you call him good. If he praises you to others, enlarging your stature in the community, you love him for it. If he gives you money or honor, you love him for it.

“Iome, there is something I feel so deeply, and I can only express it this way: the lives of all men, their fates, are all here, a part of my domain!”

He pointed to the drawing, waving vaguely toward the Domain Communal and the Domain Invisible. Iome looked up into his eyes, and she thought she understood She’d been a Runelord all her life, had been entrusted in small ways with the affairs of state. She had accepted the hopes and dreams and fates of her people as part of her domain.

“I see,” Iome whispered.

“I know you do, in part,” Gaborn breathed, “but not in full. I feel...I feel the cataclysm approaching. The Earth is warning me. Danger is coming. Not just danger for you and for me, but for every man, woman, and child I’ve Chosen.

“I must do what I can to protect them—everything I can to protect them, even if I am doomed to failure.

“I must seek alliance with Raj Ahten.”

Iome noted the vehemence in his demeanor, and knew that he was not just stating his resolution. He was soliciting her approval.

“And where do I fit in your circles?” Iome asked, waving to the drawing in Gaborn’s lap.

“You are all of it,” Gaborn said. “Don’t you understand? This is not my bed or your bed. This is our bed.” He waved at himself. “This is not my body or your body, it is our body. Your fate is my fate, and my fate is yours. Your hopes are my hopes, and my hopes need to be yours. I don’t want walls or divisions between us. If there are any, then we are not truly married. We are not truly one.”

Iome nodded. She understood. She’d seen couples before, seen how over time they’d shared so much, become so close, that they’d picked up even one another’s oddest habits and notions.

Iome craved such union.

“You think you’re so wise,” she said, “quoting forbidden teachings. But I’ve heard something from the Room of Dreams, too.

“In the House of Understanding, in the Room of Dreams, it is said that a man is born crying. He cries to his mother for her breast. He cries to his mother when he falls. He cries for warmth and love. As he grows older, he learns to differentiate his wants. I want food! he cries. I want warmth. I want daylight to come. And when a mother soothes her child, her own words are but a lament: I want joy for you.'

“As we learn to speak, nearly all of our utterances are merely cries better defined. Listen to every word a man speaks to you and you can learn to hear the pleas embedded beneath every notion he expresses. I want love. I want comfort. I want freedom.'”

Iome paused for a moment, for effect, and in that profound and sudden silence, she knew that she had his full attention.

Then she voiced her plea. “Gaborn, never surrender to Raj Ahten. As you love me—as you love your life and your people—never surrender to evil.”

“So long as I have the choice,” Gaborn said, at last listening to reason.

She pushed his book to the floor and took Gaborn’s chin in her hand, kissed him firmly, and drew him down to the bed.

Two hours later, guards atop the castle wall called out in dismay and pointed to the Wye River, where it snaked among the verdant fields. The river upstream had turned red, red as blood.

But the flood of red washing downstream bore the strong mineral smells of copper and sulfur. It was only mud and silt thick enough to foul the waters, to clog the gills of fish and slowly suffocate them.

Gaborn took his wizard to investigate. Binnesman stood knee-deep in the water, experimentally dipped his hand in and tasted it, then made a sour face. “Mud from the deep earth.”

“How did it get in the river?” Gaborn wondered. He stayed on the riverbank, not liking the smell of the fouled water.