David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “It won’t hurt you.”

She grasped his wounded hand, sniffed at the bandage. “Blood-no!” she said softly.

“That’s right,” Roland answered. “Blood, no! You’re a smart one. And obedient. Two qualities I admire in a woman—or whatever you are.”

“You’re a smart one,” she parroted. “And obedient. Two qualities I admire in a woman—or whatever you are.”

Roland smelled her hair. It was odd, like...moss and sweet basil combined, he decided. He could smell the coppery tang of blood on her, too. She was a large thing, as tall as him, and more muscular.

He grasped her thumb, and whispered, “Thumb. Thumb.”

She repeated his words, and in minutes he taught her all about hands and arms and noses and moved on to trees, the autumn leaves, and the sky.

When he grew tired, he drifted back toward sleep, and hugged the green woman tightly. He wondered where she had come from, wondered if she felt lonely. Like Roland and Averan, she had no connections to anyone that he could see. All three of them were terribly alone in the world.

I should fix that, Roland thought. I could petition Paladane to become Averan’s guardian. The world is too full of orphans, and she has my color of hair. People will think I’m her father. He promised himself he would talk to Averan about it tomorrow.

Perhaps because he held a woman in his arms, because he craved a woman’s company, and because he still remembered a wife who had rejected him twenty years ago, he thought about Sera Crier, and the sense of duty that had sent him north.

He recalled his waking seven days earlier...

As he pulled on the loose-fitting trousers, Roland had said to Sera Crier, “I gave my endowments years ago, to a man named Drayden. He was a sergeant in the King’s Guard. Do you know the name?”

“Lord Drayden?” she corrected. “The King let him retire to his estates several years ago. He is quite old—yours was not the only endowment of metabolism he took, I think. But he still travels each year to Heredon, for the King’s hunt.”

Roland nodded. Most likely Lord Drayden had been thrown from a horse, he thought, or had met with one of the old tuskers of the Dunnwood. The great boars were as tall as a horse, and skewered many a huntsman.

The thought had hardly passed, through his mind when a cry rang through the narrow stone halls of the Dedicate’s Keep. “The King is dead! Mendellas Draken Oden has fallen!” And from elsewhere in the keep, someone cried, “Sir Beaufort has died!” Some woman shouted, “Marris is fallen!”

Roland wondered why so many lords and knights were dying at once. It bespoke more than coincidence, more than an accident.

He’d finished pulling on his boot and shouted, “Lord Drayden has found his rest!” Then cries from the Dedicates of the Blue Tower came fast and furious as deaths were reported, too many names, too many knights and lords and common soldiers, for any man to keep track of.

Boars did not slay so many men at once. There had to have been a great battle. And as dozens of voices began to meld together as the fallen were named, he thought, Nay, not even a battle: This speaks of slaughter.

Roland rushed from his chamber into the narrow hall of the Dedicate’s Keep, found that his tiny berth stood at the top of a stairwell. A woman staggered out from a chamber nearby, massaging her hands, recently Restored from having given grace. Across a hall, another man blinked in amazement, gawking about. He’d given the use of his eyes to a lord

Sera Crier followed at Roland’s heels.

Shouts of grief rang through the Blue Tower, and, people raced down the stairs, toward the Great Hall.

The Blue Tower was ancient. Legend said it had not been built by men, for no man could have shaped and hefted rocks so massive as those that formed its barrier walls. Many thought the tower had been formed by a forgotten race of giants. The keep loomed thirty stories above the Caroll Sea. With its tens of thousands of rooms, the Blue Tower was a great sprawling city in itself. For at least three millennia it had housed the Dedicates of Mystarria, those who had given their wit or stamina or brawn, their metabolism or glamour or voice.

Roland darted around a group of people in the hall who stood in his way, pushed past a fat woman. Sera hurried to keep up. He took her hand, shoved his way through the clotted halls, nuzzling past others until at last he and Sera gazed over the edge of a balcony into the Great Hall, a fine chamber where thousands of Dedicates and servants were gathering.

There was much shouting and crying. Some people shouted for news, others wept openly for their love of a lost king. One old woman screamed as if her child had been torn from her breast and dashed against the flagstones.

“That’s old Laras. She’s a cook. Her boys are in the King’s retinue. They must be dead, too!” Sera said, confirming Roland’s thoughts.

Down in the great room the Dedicates who were now Restored gathered in a crushing crowd, along with the cooks and servants who normally attended them. A fight erupted as one burly fellow began pummeling another, and a general melee ensued. Those who wanted news shouted for everyone else in the crowd to hold silent. The resulting tumult filled the room, echoed from the walls.

The Great Hall had an enormous domed ceiling some seventy feet high, and balconies encircled the hall on five levels. At least three thousand former Dedicates were gathered in the hall. They spilled out of every doorway and stairwell, and leaned precariously over the oaken rails of the balconies.

Roland was hardly able to comprehend the scope of what was happening. Thousands of Dedicates Restored at once? How many valiant knights had died in battle? And so quickly!

Seven men of varying ages took seats around an enormous oak table. One man began to beat a huge brass candelabrum against the table, yelling; “Quiet! Quiet! Let us all hear the tale! The King’s Wits can give it best!”

These seven men were the King’s Wits, men who had endowed King Mendellas Draken Orden himself with the use of their minds, letting their skulls become vessels for another man’s memories. Though the King had died, fragments of his thoughts and recollections lived on in each of these Restored men. In days to come these men would probably become valued counselors to the new King.

After a moment, the screaming woman was pulled from the Great Hall, and the others stifled their sobs and their shouts. Sera Crier pressed against Roland’s back, half-climbed his shoulders to get a better view of the turmoil below.

It felt to Roland as if the crowd breathed in unison, every man and woman among them waiting expectantly to hear news of the battle.

The King’s Wits began to speak. The oldest among them was a graybeard named Jerimas. Roland had known him at court as a child but barely recognized him now.

Jerimas spoke first. “The King surely died in battle,” he said “I recall seeing a foe. A man of dark countenance, dressed in armor of the south. His shield bore the image of a red wolf with three heads.”

It was a scrap of memory, an image. Nothing more.

“Raj Ahten,” two of the other Wits said. “He was battling Raj Ahten, the Wolf Lord”

“No. Our king did not die in that battle,” a fourth Wit argued. “He fell from a tower. I remember falling.”

“He was joined in a serpent ring,” old Jerimas added. “He felt the pain of a forcible before he died.”

“He gave his metabolism,” another fellow croaked as if he were ill and could hardly speak. “They all gave metabolism. I saw twenty lords in a room. The light of the forcibles hung in the air like glowing worms, and men cried out in pain at their touch.”