David Farland - The Sum of All Men

For hours Gaborn had been circumventing Raj Ahten's army, evading pursuers. He'd managed to kill two more Frowth giants, and he shot an outrider from his saddle. But Gaborn had seen no sign of pursuit for three hours.

As he rode, he wondered. The Dunnwood was an old wood, and a queer place by any standard. The headwaters of the River Wye were said to be magical places, where three-hundred-year-old sturgeons as wise as any sage lived in the deep pools.

But it was not these that Gaborn wondered at. It was the woods' legendary affinity for “right” and “law.” Few outlaws had ever penetrated the forest. There was Edmon Tillerman, who came into the woods as an outlaw, a madman who took endowments of brawn and wit from bears until he became a creature of the wood himself. According to the folktales, he left off his stealing, and in time became a hero—avenging poor farmers wronged by other outlaws, protecting the woodland creatures.

But there were stranger stories still: the old woman centuries ago who was murdered and hidden in a pile of leaves in the Dunnwood, who then became a creature of wood and sticks that hunted down her killers.

Or what of the giant “stone men” that some said walked these woods? Creatures that sometimes came to the edge of the forest and stood gazing thoughtfully to the south?

There was a time—centuries ago—when these woods loved man more than they did now. A time when men could travel them freely. Now, a stillness, a heaviness, had come under the trees, as if the wood itself were outraged and considering retaliation against so many uninvited men. Certainly the heat of the flameweavers, the iron-shod hooves of horses, the mass of men and giants would all cause some damage to the forest.

The owls had fallen silent this night, and twice Gaborn had seen huge harts bounding through the trees, shaking their great antlers from side to side as if prepared to fight.

Off to his right, the armies marched. A. feeling pervaded the forest, like the electric thrill of a brewing storm.

For long hours, Gaborn rode through the trees, a heaviness growing in his heart, a drowsiness fogging his mind. It was a sweet, organic tiredness—like that brought on by mulled wine while one sits beside a fire, or like the drugged sleep induced by an herbalist's concoction of poppy petals.

Gaborn's eyelids began to feel weighty. He half-dozed as he rode up a ridge, around a peak, and back down into a valley, where brambles and limbs blocked his every path.

He became angry, drew his saber, and considered hacking his way through the trees, but stopped when he heard curses just ahead, and the sound of someone else, a man in armor, hacking through the same copse.

Almost too late he recognized the source of the danger. Somehow he'd turned around in his ride.

The trees. He wondered if they had led him to danger.

In the shadowed woods, Gabon stopped. He glimpsed one of Raj Ahten's patrols. A dozen scouts hacked a path through the brush, while Gaborn held perfectly still.

They passed in the darkness. Gaborn feared even to breathe.

He reined in his horse, hard, and inhaled deeply. For long moments he tried to focus his thoughts. No harm, he wanted to say to the woods. I mean you no harm.

It required all his will to merely sit a horse, to keep from riding headlong toward destruction. Sweat broke out on Gaborn's forehead, his hands trembled, and his breathing came ragged.

I am your friend, he wanted to say. Feel me. Test me. For long moments, he tried to open himself, his mind and heart, to communicate to the wood.

He felt the tendrils of thought move slowly, seeking him, grasping him as a root might grasp a stone. He could feel their ponderous power.

The trees seized him, infiltrated every portion of his mind. Memories and childhood fears began to flash before Gaborn's eyes—unwanted bits of dreams and adolescent fantasies. Every hope and deed and desire.

Then, just as slowly, the seeking tendrils began to withdraw.

“Bear me no malice,” Gaborn whispered to the trees when at last he could speak. “Your enemies are my enemies. Let me pass safely, that I may defeat them.”

After many long heartbeats, the heaviness around him seemed to ease. Gaborn let his mind drift and dream, though with his stamina he needed no sleep.

He thought upon the thing that had brought him north, his desire to see Iome Sylvarresta.

On a mad impulse last year, he had come secretly to Heredon for the autumn hunt, so that he could take the measure of her. His father came annually for Hostenfest, the autumn celebration of the great day, some sixteen hundred years past, when Heredon Sylvarresta had speared a reaver mage here. Now, each year in the Month of Harvest, the lords of Heredon rode through the Dunnwood, hunting the great boars, practicing the same skills with lance that had been used to defeat the reavers.

So Gaborn had come to the hunt hidden in his father's retinue as if he were a mere squire. His father's soldiers all knew he'd come, of course, but none dared openly speak his name or break his cover. Even King Sylvarresta had noted Gaborn's presence during the hunt, but because of his fine manners dared not speak of it, until Gaborn chose to reveal himself.

Oh, Gaborn had played his part as squire well for the casual observer, helping soldiers don their armor for the tournament games, sleeping in Sylvarresta's stables at night, caring for horses and gear through the week's hunt. But he'd also been able to sit at table in the Great Hall during the feast marking the end of Hostenfest, though as a mere squire he sat at the far end, away from the kings and nobles and knights. There he'd gawked openly, as if he'd never eaten in the presence of a foreign king.

All the better to view Iome at a distance, her dark smoldering eyes and dark hair, her flawless skin. His father had said she was beautiful of face, and by recounting tales of things she'd said over the years, Gaborn felt convinced she was beautiful of heart.

He'd been well schooled in etiquette, but he learned a bit about Northern manners at that dinner. In Mystarria, it was customary to wash one's hands in a bowl of cool water before the feast, but here in the North one washed both hands and face in bowls that were steaming hot. While in the South one dried one's hands by wiping them on one's tunic, here in the North thick towels were provided, then draped over one's knee afterward, where they could be used for wiping grease or for blowing one's nose.

In the South, small dull knives and tiny forks were provided for feasts, so that if a fight broke out, no one would be properly armed. But here in the North, one ate with one's own knife and fork.

The most disgusting difference in custom came in the matter of dogs. In the South, a gentleman always threw his bones over the right shoulder to feed the dogs. But here in the Great Hall, all the dogs had been taken outside, so bones were left cluttering the plate—in a most beastly and uncivilized pile—until the serving children removed them.

Yet one more thing came to Gaborn's attention. At first he'd thought it a custom of the North, but soon realized it was only a custom of Iome. In all realms that Gaborn knew of, table servants were not allowed to eat until the King and his guests finished dining. Since the feast lasted from noon until long in the night—with entertainment provided between courses by minstrels and jesters and games of skill—the servants, of course, wouldn't eat until near midnight.

So as the King and his guests dined, the serving children stared longingly at the puddings and capons.

Gaborn had eaten greedily, clearing his plate—a show of respect for the lord's fare. But soon he saw that Iome left a bite or two of food on each plate, and Gaborn wondered if he'd erred in his manners. He studied Iome: as her serving girl, a child of perhaps nine, would bring each plate, one could see the longing on the girl's face.