David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

Borenson had always felt the need to prove himself. It had driven him to become one of the mightiest warriors of his time. Now he did not really fear any other man on earth.

Yet the notion that a child of his might be hurt as he himself had been hurt seemed unbearable.

He still feared the tauntings of little boys.

“Love me!” Myrrima demanded, trying to pull him close.

But Borenson pointed a finger in her face and said more firmly, “Responsibility.”

“Love me,” she pleaded.

He shook her hand from his sleeve and said, “Can’t you see? This is how you show love. And should I die—as seems likely—you’ll have my name, my wealth...”

“I’ve heard it said that you’re a lusty man,” Myrrima accused. “Have you never bedded a woman?”

Angry now, Borenson sought to control himself. He could not express in words his own self-loathing, his desire to unmake his own past. “If I have, it was a mistake,” he said, “for I never imagined that I would meet someone like you.”

“It’s not responsibility that drives you from my bed,” Myrrima accused. “You’re punishing yourself: You think you’re punishing yourself, but when you do, you’re also punishing me—and I don’t deserve this!”

She sounded so certain of herself, so sure. Borenson had no reply to her accusation, only the solid belief that ultimately she would come to see that he acted in her best interest.

He squeezed her hand, then left.

Myrrima felt cheated as she watched him turn to go. The ching, ching of his mail echoed between the stone towers.

In a moment he reached the portcullis to the Dedicates’ Keep, and was swallowed beneath its shadows. She stood for a moment, watching how the starlight washed the paving stones here in the bailey.

She knew that he thought he was right. Loving someone meant taking responsibility for that person.

But as he went off to fetch his forcibles, Myrrima began to fume. Borenson would not allow this to work both ways.

A few minutes later he came back out of the keep, bearing a leather bag filled with forcibles. He saw her but turned and headed for the stables, as if to avoid her.

She said, “I have one word for you: ‘responsibility.’” Borenson stopped and gazed at her half a second. “Why do you insist on being responsible for me, but I cannot be responsible for you?”

“You’re not coming with me,” Borenson said.

“Do you think I’m less capable of love than you are?”

“You’re less capable of staying alive,” he answered.

“But—”

“And even if you weren’t, there’s not a horse in Heredon that can keep pace with the mount I’ll be riding tonight.” He looked toward the stable.

She thought he’d leave then, but to Myrrima’s astonishment, Borenson returned to her, put one huge hand behind her neck, and kissed her passionately. He stood for a long time afterward with his forehead against hers, just staring into her eyes. No gleam of starlight reflected from his paleblue eyes. They seemed just empty wells in the night.

But still he had a fierceness to him. She could see it in his will to live, to fight, to return. She could feel it in the way that his powerful hands cupped the back of her head. At last he said evenly, “When I come back, I will love you as you wish—as you deserve.”

Then he turned and hurried off. With his endowments of metabolism, his pace surprised her. She stood for a long moment, still smelling him, still tasting his lips on hers. She thought to follow him into the King’s stable across the green, but as she gathered her wits and took a few paces, he hurriedly saddled Gaborn’s horse and then came riding out like a gale, shouting for the guards to open the gates.

She folded her arms, to fight the night’s chill, and watched him go.

As soon as her husband left, Myrrima fetched a lantern and went to the kennels where the boy Kaylin had caged her pups. She’d only been able to sneak away twice to see them today, yet as soon as they caught her scent, the pups began to yap and wag their tails, and soon dozens of pups were yelping for attention.

The boy Kaylin was at the back of the kennel, lying asleep on a bed of straw with at least twenty pups around him, and nothing else to keep him warm.

Myrrima laid her cloak over the boy, then went to the cage that held her pups. She lifted the latch.

She’d brought a few scraps from the table, and she gave these to the pups, spoke to them and made cooing noises, until at last they settled down enough so that she could get them in her arms. “Yes, little ones,” she whispered. “You’ll sleep with me tonight.”

She managed to get two pups in each arm, and went to the kennel door. As she was juggling the door latch, it opened wide.

Iome Sylvarresta stood there with a servant at her back, and her Days behind. Only the stars winging through the heavens lit them.

Myrrima felt sure that Iome had followed her in an effort to catch her stealing the pups. “Why, Your Highness;” she said, “what a surprise!”

Iome glanced down at the pups, looked back toward the keep, as if just as dismayed at having been found out herself.

Then she suddenly set her jaw and looked stern.

“Is the boy Kaylin sleeping here?”

Pups ran out and circled the Queen, leaping up at the hem of her dress, whining and yapping for attention.

“Yes, he’s here,” Myrrima said.

Iome did not apologize for what she planned to do. Even as a princess, she had refused to take endowments from another person, to risk a human life.

“I’ll need some of those, too,” Iome said stiffly. “If I’m to be of any help to you.”

Late that night, after the lords had left, Gaborn stood awake in Sylvarresta’s old study on the fourth floor of the King’s Keep, gazing southwest across the hills. The floor had recently been strewn with dry meadowsweet, and so his passage across the planking as he crushed the golden flowers had infused the room with a delightful, pleasant scent.

Borenson had left the keep nearly three hours past. Iome had gone to her room hours ago, though Gaborn did not imagine that she would sleep. They were newlyweds, after all, and he imagined that she would be awake, worrying, as he worried.

But perhaps not. He hoped that she slept. A week past, when Borenson had slain her Dedicates, Iome had lost all of her endowments of stamina. She needed sleep now, as much as any commoner did. But Gaborn still had his endowments of stamina and brawn. He did not sleep much at all in times of stress, but instead preferred to rest on his feet, sometimes letting his mind retreat to a waking dream.

He hoped that Iome would not wait up for him. He wanted solitude this night.

Part of the Queen’s garden was back there beneath the study. A pair of frogs sang in the water of a reflecting pool. A ratlike ferrin wearing scraps of cloth came and drank at the pool. The frogs went quiet as the creature gazed about with bright eyes. Gaborn tasted the scent of fresh air flowing from the open Window, looked out in the starlight.

The camps below town were dark now, and the people huddled in a mass. Gaborn could still feel danger about them, could feel it closing in, like a noose around his own neck. The Darkling Glory was coming. Gaborn could feel the danger rising as it flew steadily north.

Half a million people, all under his protection—along with their horses and cattle—asleep and unaware.

“May the Earth hide you. May the Earth heal you. May the Earth make you its own,” Gaborn whispered, reciting the ancient blessing:

He dreaded what he had to do. At dawn he would leave his people, head south to war. He could only hope that they would escape the wrath of the Darkling Glory.

So many people depended upon him, and he wanted to save them all, to do everything in his power. Yet though he was the Earth King, his powers were still new to him, and they were growing. He felt clumsy. Incompetent.