David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

“No,” Averan warned the green woman. “This one’s not for you.” Baron Poll grabbed the axe. The fat knight shook it threateningly. The green woman backed off.

Roland laughed miserably. “Thank you, child, for not feeding me to your pet.” Averan finished wiping the water away: Her lightest scrubbing had opened the wound again, and she used part of Roland’s tunic as a compress, holding the wound closed.

“She’s not my pet,” Averan objected, trying to hold in her own pain.

“Try telling her that,” Baron Poll said. “In half an hour she’ll be rolling over for you and trying to nose her way into your bed.”

Averan knew that they were right. The green woman had accepted her, had accepted her from the moment that she woke to find Averan kneeling over her. She was like a baby graak that way, new from its egg. But just because the Baron was right didn’t mean she had to like him. He was the oaf who had killed Leatherneck, after all.

The green woman thinks I’m her mother, Averan realized. Averan shook her head. She didn’t know what to do with the beast.

“Did you summon the creature?” Baron Poll asked.

“Summon her?” Averan asked.

“Well, it’s not a natural creature, is it?” Baron Poll said, eyeing the green woman warily. “I’ve never heard of its like. So it must have been summoned.”

Averan shrugged. Baron Poll’s question was beyond her, beyond any of them. She knew nothing of magic, aside from what one might hear from an occasional hedge wizard. Keep Haberd had seldom entertained anyone with power.

“It’s the green of fire,” Roland said. “Flames can be green. Do you have any power over fire?”

The green woman got off her haunches, went to the dead body of Leatherneck, and began to feed. Averan winced and looked away.

“No,” Averan said mechanically. “I sometimes light the fire in the hearth at our aerie; it’s all I can do to keep one going. I’m no flameweaver.”

Averan wiped the last of the blood from Roland’s wound with a corner of Roland’s tunic. “The earth can be green, too,” she said. “As is water.” She blinked a tear from her eye.

Roland didn’t answer, but Baron Poll did. “You’re right, girl, but the summoner’s, art is practiced by flameweavers, not by earth magicians or water wizards.”

“She fell from the sky,” Averan said. “That’s all I know. I saw her drop out of the air in front of me. I was above the clouds. Maybe she’s a creature of the air.”

Baron Poll half-turned to look down at her. “Summoned,” he said thoughtfully, sure of himself.

Averan frowned. She had an endowment of wit, and so was a quick learner. But she was only nine years old, and she’d never studied the magical arts. “You think I am the summoner? You’re daft.”

Baron Poll was the oldest, and even Roland looked to him for counsel. He said, “Maybe so, but I’ve heard it said that the Powers have their own reasons for doing what they do. Perhaps you didn’t summon it; it may have been sent.”

That seemed just as unlikely. Roland’s bleeding had finally stopped, and the wound looked clean enough.

Averan noticed that some of the green woman’s blood was on her fingers. She dipped them in the bucket and tried to scrub the blood off, but the green stuff had already soaked into her skin, staining her hands as if she’d spilled ink, leaving irregular blotches. She supposed it would wear off.

“I’m sorry about your graak,” Baron Poll said for the third time since he’d introduced himself. “Can you forgive me?”

Averan fought back bitter tears. Leatherneck was not my graak, she told herself. It was the King’s, or Brand’s, more than it belonged to anyone else.

Still she had fed the beast for years, had groomed it and scraped its teeth and filed its claws. She’d loved the old lizard.

She’d known he was old, that he’d only had another summer or two left, at most.

She knew that she should not blame Baron Poll for killing it. Brand had always said, “Never punish a beast for having a good heart. Even the kindest brutes will sometimes nip you by mistake.”

The same was true with men, she supposed. Even fat old knights who should have known better. Tears flooded her eyes.

“It is forgotten, Sir Paunch,” Averan said, trying to make light of it, trying to keep the pain from her voice.

“Go ahead, child, hurl insults if it will make you feel better,” the old knight said. “You can do better than that!”

Averan wanted to hold her tongue, but it hurt too much to keep the pain in. Still, she dared not be too rude to a lord. “If it pleases you, Sir Breadbasket, Sir Greasebarrel, Sir Broadbutt.”

“That’s better, child,” Poll said with a sullen expression.

“Though he is a baron,” Roland corrected the girl, “and should more properly be called Baron Broadbutt.”

Averan smiled weakly, sniffed and wiped her tears away, satisfied with the name-calling, at least for now.

Baron Poll asked, “Where were you going? Are you carrying an important message?”

Averan considered. It was the most important message that she’d ever carried: news of an impending invasion. “Paladane has heard by now,” Averan said truthfully. “Reavers were coming down to Keep Haberd from the mountains. By now, Haberd has fallen. I was to bear a message to Duke Paladane, but riders on force horses were also sent. Master Brand had me fly out only to save my life.”

“We found your messenger,” Baron Poll said, “earlier today. He’d had a bad fall, so I suppose that Paladane has yet to learn your news. Tis bitter tidings these days. The King dead, Raj Ahten advancing on Carris—all of it! Now the reavers.”

“We’re going north to Heredon,” Roland said as he sat up. “We’ll bear your news to Paladane in Carris and then to the King, too.”

Baron Poll added, “We can drop you off in Carris.”

She remembered Brand’s warning that she should head north for safety. “I don’t want to go to Carris,” she said. “I’m going to Heredon, with you!”

“Heredon?” Baron Poll said. “I don’t think so. It’s bound to be a dangerous trip, what with Raj Ahten on the move. There’s no need for you to go. We’ll carry the message.”

“I know the way to Heredon,” Averan offered. “I know the roads, and the mountains, and I know faster ways for a man on a good horse to travel. I could guide you.”

“Have you flown there?” Baron Poll asked.

“Yes, twice,” Averan lied. She’d seen the maps, memorized the lay of the land. But she’d never even flown as far as Fleeds.

The men looked at one another meaningfully. They could use a guide.

“No, we’ve only got two horses,” Roland said. “We’ll drop you off somewhere safe.”

“I could ride with you,” Averan said to Roland. Given Baron Poll’s stomach, she could not sit double with him on a horse. “I’m small, and I’ve an endowment of strength and stamina. If your horse tires, I can get down and run.”

This was important, she knew. She wanted to get to Heredon now; she had an unreasoned and unreasonable craving to do so. Her message to Paladane was important, but her need was even more compelling. Her whole body shook with the desire. In fact, she knew almost exactly where she wanted to go. She closed her eyes, and recalled the maps: In the middle of Heredon, almost nine hundred miles north of here, beyond the Durkin Hills. Castle Sylvarresta. In her mind’s eye, she saw something that resembled a green glowing gem.

“Do you have family in Heredon?” Baron Poll asked.

“No,” she admitted. “Not really.” Yet it was important that she get there.

“Then why are you so determined to go?” Roland asked. Averan knew that because she was small, because she was a child, others expected her to act like a child, prone to tantrums and unreasonable fits. But Averan was not like other children; she never had been. Brand had said that he chose her from among all of the orphans in Mystarria because when he looked in her eyes, he saw an old woman there. During her short life, she had lived more than others had.