David Farland - The Sum of All Men

“Where did you get such strange ideas?” Iome said, wondering at his last words, wondering how he had managed to capture her love and hope for her people in so few words.

“From Hearthmaster Ibirmarle, who taught me in the Room of the Heart.”

Iome smiled. “I should like to meet him someday, and thank him. But I begin to wonder about you, Gaborn. In the House of Understanding you studied in the Room of the Heart—a strange place for a Runelord to spend his time. Why spend your time among troubadours and philosophers?”

“I studied in many places—the Room of Faces, the Room of Feet.”

“To learn the ways of actors and travelers? Why not the Room of Arms, and the Room of Gold?”

Gaborn said, “I received training in arms from my father and from the palace guards, and I found the Room of Gold...boring, with all those little merchant princes watching one another with such envy.”

Iome smiled at Gaborn, bemused.

Presently the girl issued from her cottage with some scones and meat, and three fresh figs. Gaborn paid her, warned her that Raj Ahten's army might pass this way in a matter of hours, then let the horses walk for a while.

They stopped outside town, beneath a tree, and let the horses drink from a pool beside the highway. Gaborn watched Iome eat in silence. He tried to rouse the King, so he might eat too, but Iome's father remained asleep.

So Gaborn saved some bread, meat, and a fig in his pocket. Ahead of them, the mountains rose dark blue and threatening. Iome had never been so far south. She knew of Harm's Gorge, of the deep canyon just beyond the mountains, which divided much of the realm.

She'd always wanted to see it. The road, she'd been told, was very dangerous. For miles it consisted of a narrow track beside a precipice. The duskins had carved that road centuries ago, made the great bridge across Harm's River.

“I still think it odd,” Iome said, “that you spent your time schooling in the Room of the Heart. Most lords study little else but arms, or perhaps Voice.”

“I suppose,” Gaborn said, “if we Runelords only want to win battles and hold our fortresses, we need only study in the Room of Arms.

“But...I guess I don't believe in it. We seek ways to use one another all too much. It seems deplorable that the strong should dominate the weak. Why should I study that which I deplore?”

“Because it's necessary,” Iome said. “Someone must enforce the laws, protect the people.”

“Perhaps,” Gaborn said. “But Hearthmaster Ibirmarle always found it deplorable, too. He taught that not only is it wrong for the strong to bully the weak, but that it is just as vile for the wise to rob the stupid, or the patient to take advantage of another's impatience.

“These are all just ways that we harness other men to our plows. Why should I treat men as tools—or worse, as mere obstacles to my enjoyment?” Gaborn fell silent a moment, and his glance strayed northward, to Castle Sylvarresta, where Borenson had slain the Dedicates last night. Iome could see how Gaborn regretted it, how he perhaps even thought it a personal failure that he had been so naive.

He said, “Once, ages ago, an old shepherd, who was the highman of his town, sent word to my grandfather, asking him to buy his wool. The shepherd's town had long had a contract with a certain merchant from Ammendau, who carried their wool to market, but the merchant died unexpectedly. So the highman sent to the King, asking him to purchase the wool for his troops at a bargain price.

“But the highman did not know that rain in the west hills had caused a blight of wool rot on the sheep there. In all likelihood, the highman's wool would fetch triple its price, if the townsmen could get it to market.

“My grandfather, on seeing the situation, could have leapt at the chance to buy the wool cheap. If he'd listened to the merchants who schooled in the Room of Gold, he'd have done so. For they think it a virtue to buy cheap and sell high.

“Instead, Grandfather sent to the hearthmaster at the Room of Feet and arranged for a caravan to transport the wool at a fair price, cheaper than the villagers had paid before.

“He then sent to the highman and told him all that he had done. He begged the highman to sell his wool to the poor at its normal price, so that they would not go cold through the winter.”

Iome listened to the tale somewhat in awe, for she'd often thought Orden's line to be hard, cold men. Perhaps it was only Gaborn's father. Perhaps he'd grown cold, after his own father's bad end.

“I see,” Iome said. “So your grandfather won the love of the poor.”

“And the respect of the highman and his village,” Gaborn said. “That is the kind of Runelord I would want to be, one who can win a man's heart and his love. That is my hope. It is harder to storm a heart than to storm a castle. It is harder to hold a man's trust than to hold any land. That is why I studied in the Room of the Heart.”

“I see,” Iome said. “And I am sorry.”

“For what?” Gaborn asked.

“That I ever said I would turn you down, if you asked me to marry you.” She smiled at him, and spoke teasingly, but realized it was true. Gaborn was a strange and wondrous young man, and in the past day she had begun to recognize that he was much more than he seemed. She feared that at this rate, she'd fall in love with him so fiercely by the end of another day that she'd never want to separate from him again.

When the horses finished watering, Gaborn loped them for a while.

The magnificent crevasse at Harm's Gorge opened suddenly—a deep rent where a river rushed, and the trail they took snaked around its edge. According to legend, the duskins had created this place, had broken the pillars that held the Overworld.

They let their animals creep along a narrow trail beside the ledge, and Iome looked at the pillars of gray and white stone that rose up from the canyon, a marvel to see. She wondered if these were the pillars of legend or merely the roots of mountains long since eroded away.

Beside the steep sides of the canyon, huge trees clung, looking like bristles on a horse brush. A mile to the north, Harm's River churned in a waterfall and fell far into the chasm, but Iome could not see where the waters landed, for the canyon was so deep that its heart was lost in darkness, and no sound escaped from its silent depths. Enormous bats wheeled in the canyon, down where the shadows filled the endless chasm.

If a person fell from the road, it was said that you could hear his scream for a month until the sound was lost.

They took the narrow pass slowly, the idiot King Sylvarresta walking along the treacherous edge of the road, often stopping to peer into the mists so far below.

King Sylvarresta woke, and moved through a world of dream. The doors of his mind were closed. He did not remember much. No words, no names—not even his own. Yet much in the world had a vague familiarity. The horses, trees.

He woke to see a great light in the sky, the color of gold and roses. He felt certain that he had seen it somewhere before.

They rode slowly on a narrow road, with a gray earth wall to his left, a tremendous precipice to his right. He had no words for names, nor for left and right. Everything carried with it a sense of discovery. Far, far down, he could see only misty grayness. Pine trees stood far below, prickling along the edges of rock.

They reached a narrow bridge carved from a single stone, spanning the gorge. The bridge curved up into the sky, and Sylvarresta looked down into the gorge, and felt as if he hung in the air, just so.

He did not recall ever having been here before, nor having felt thus.

A few dozen soldiers were on the bridge, guardsmen in dark-blue surcoats, wearing the face of the green man on their shields—a knight whose face was surrounded by green leaves. The young man and woman that King Sylvarresta rode with greeted these soldiers joyfully. For a while, the soldiers talked to the young man of their plans for guarding the bridge; then the young man bid the soldiers farewell, leaving them behind.