David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

She wondered at Gaborn’s words. He’d said that Celinor had a “good heart.” What exactly did that mean? Celinor had done nothing but voice his doubts about Gaborn’s sovereignty yesterday. The High Marshal had hinted that he thought Celinor might even be a spy, out to destroy Gaborn. Yet Gaborn had looked into the man and seen a good heart?

It made no sense.

Perhaps, she thought, Gaborn did not mind if Celinor had reservations.

After she’d finished giving her horse some drink, she took her glass mug inside, dropped a copper dove on the table. Her Days followed. Together they rode out of town.

Erin found Celinor and his Days in a meadow dotted with yellow dandelions and white clover. Celinor brushed down his mount as it grazed.

She stopped and did the same, taking a moment to check the beast’s legs and ankles. One of its shoes had lost two nails, but otherwise the horse was fine. Celinor would not keep his eyes off her.

“I am surprised that you’re not with the others,” Celinor said at last. “There will be few comforts through these hills, until we reach Bannisferre.”

She dared not admit why she’d come. Her code of honor was such that she stood by a man in battle, even if he was only a man who battled his own vices. “Since we’re allowed to open ranks, I thought it might be more of a comfort to get a head start,” she said. “Let the others chew on my trail dust for a while.”

“I’m certain they’ll make a fine meal of it,” Celinor laughed. Erin smiled. So he truly had not meant to be disrespectful toward Gaborn, she thought. He merely jests by nature.

“So,” Erin asked, “you think Gaborn is the Earth King after all? I’ve heard that you bent the knee to him.”

“After he rejected the High Marshal,” Celinor said, “I reasoned that he is either the Earth King or a madman. I don’t think he’s mad. He rejected me, too, of course. But I’d hoped for nothing better.”

“Not rejected,” Erin said. “I hear that he is holding his judgment in reserve.”

“Indeed.” Celinor smiled, cocked his head to the side. “And I hope someday to be worthy of his blessing. Already I’ve gone twenty hours without a drink.”

Erin tried to think of a compliment appropriate for such a negligible feat, and had to wonder. Twenty hours? He’d offered his sword into Gaborn’s service only this morning. Yet the alehouses around Castle Sylvarresta had been full last night as people celebrated the end of Hostenfest.

What’s more, tradition required a toast to end Hostenfest before going to bed. She couldn’t imagine him having gone the night without a drink.

“Twenty hours?” she asked. “But you only offered service this morning.”

“I swore off drink yesterday,” Celinor said.

She looked at him inquisitively.

“You scorned me,” Celinor said, “and you were right to do so. For I realized that you were correct: All of my best friends did live in alehouses. I would not have it so. I could not bear to look into your eyes and incur your displeasure.”

Erin smiled, pleased that her one remark might have inspired a change in the man. Yet she did not trust it completely.

“Will you ride with me today?” Erin asked.

“I would be happy for the opportunity,” Celinor said. They mounted up, and raced off side by side.

Gaborn sat in his chair in the Dwindell Inn. King Orwynne kept up a rambling monologue on a number of topics, but Gaborn felt too preoccupied to listen. All morning long, he’d felt a constricting sensation in his chest, the rising recognition of danger.

As his people fled Castle Sylvarresta, his fears for them eased. Yet not everyone had left Castle Sylvarresta. He felt Iome there with Myrrima, and dozens of guards and townspeople still braving the danger.

What powers might this Darkling Glory possess that it so dismayed him? A sense of doom was growing on him, and he promised himself that he would not wait too long before warning the others. So Gaborn nodded at King Orwynne’s blathering, hardly speaking, hardly daring to move. He felt distracted, worried in particular for King Orwynne.

It would be foul indeed to lose him, Gaborn thought—I must take special care of him.

King Orwynne was a staunch ally, a rarity these days. And his force warriors would be badly needed on the trip south.

Gaborn prepared to leave the Dwindell Inn at well past one in the afternoon.

Hundreds of knights still poured into Hayworth, eager for a brief rest. The streets were lined with horses, and the innkeeper had brought barrels of ale to the porch. A maid filled mugs as fast as the men could drink. She had no time to clean the mugs. A man would simply pass a mug forward through the press, along with a copper dove, and she’d take the coin and fill the mug.

Thus the kings had to shoulder their way through the throng as they headed toward their horses. Gaborn went to the hitching post, untied his own mount. Time was short.

At that moment, Gaborn’s Days tapped him on the shoulder. Gaborn turned and looked the scholar in the eye. The brown-robed fellow looked shaken. “Your Highness...” the Days said, and he held his hands wide, as if to say Words cannot express my sorrow.

“What?” Gaborn asked.

“I am sorry, Your Highness,” the Days said. “It will be a bad day for the books. I am sorry.” The aura of death surrounding Gaborn was overwhelming.

“A bad day for the books?” Gaborn said, a sense of horror rising in him.

He faced the abyss. I’m under attack, he thought. Yet he could see no attacker.

“What? What’s happening?” he wondered aloud.

Fat King Orwynne had heard the words, and now he looked from Gaborn’s Days to Gaborn, worry, on his brow.

“Your Highness?”

Gaborn looked up at the steel-gray clouds that gathered above, and sent a warning to Iome and the others still at Castle Sylvarresta. “Flee!”

He put a foot into a stirrup, began to leap onto his horse, and suddenly felt the earth twist.

A wrenching nausea assailed his stomach as his strength suddenly left him. Gaborn slipped from the saddle, stood for a moment leaning against his horse.

I’m under attack, he thought, by some invisible agent.

“Your Highness?” King Orwynne asked. “Are you well?” The wrenching nausea came again, and for a second, Gaborn was stunned, dazed and unsure of where he was.

Gaborn shook his head as he shakily sat down on the porch of the inn. The porch was dirty, but warm. People moved aside to give him air.

“I think he’s been poisoned!” King Orwynne shouted.

“No—no! Dedicates are dying,” Gaborn said feebly. “Raj Ahten is in the Blue Tower.”

The fog had been thick over the sea all morning as Raj Ahten rowed to the Blue Tower, lured by the call of seabirds, the sound of waves crashing over rocks.

In the thick fog, he’d bypassed the warships set to guard the tower, until he reached its base.

His shoulder ached as he rowed. King Mendellas Orden had kicked him hard in the battle at Longmot, had crushed the bones of his right shoulder. With thousands of endowments of stamina, he would live, but over the past week he’d had surgeons cut into his flesh a dozen times and break the bones, try to straighten them. His wounds healed within minutes, but the pain had been excruciating, and still his shoulder was little better.

Damn the Mystarrians—old King Orden and his son.

In the past week, Raj Ahten had been able to retrieve enough forcibles to boost his metabolism again, enabling him to prepare for war.

Now he reached the Blue Tower, saw it rising from the fog. It was enormous, this ancient fortress that housed the vast majority of Mystarria’s Dedicates.