David Farland - The Sum of All Men

Before standing in plain view and frightening the creatures, Gaborn searched downstream for signs of pursuit, his eyes just level with the tops of the grass.

Sure enough, six shadows moved at the edge of the water, under the trees. Men with swords and bows. One wore splint mail. So Raj Ahten's scouts had found his trail again.

Gaborn clung to the side of the slope of the millrace, hidden in tall grass. He watched the soldiers for two long minutes. They'd discovered their dead comrade, followed Gaborn's and Rowan's scent to the river's edge.

Several men were looking downstream. Of course they expected him to go downstream, to swim past the giants, into the relative safety of the Dunnwood. It seemed the only sane thing for Gaborn to do. Now that he'd fled the castle, they wouldn't expect him to sneak back in.

If they pursued him into the Dunnwood, they'd find his scent aplenty, for Gaborn had ridden through this morning.

But the fellow in splint mail was staring toward the mill, squinting. Gaborn was downwind from them. He didn't think the man could smell him. Yet perhaps the man was just cautious.

Or perhaps he'd seen the ferrin above Gaborn, spotted movement. The ferrin was dark brown in color, standing before gray stone. Gaborn wanted it to move, so that the scout below would see the creature more clearly.

In his years in the House of Understanding, Gaborn had not bothered to study in the Room of Tongues. Beyond his own Rofehavanish he could speak only a smattering of Indhopalese. When he had a few more endowments of wit and could grasp such things more easily, he planned to make languages a further study.

Yet on cold nights during the winter, he'd frequented an alehouse with certain unsavory friends. One of them, a minor cutpurse, had trained a pair of ferrin to hunt for coins, which he exchanged for food. The ferrin could have gotten coins anywhere—lost coins dropped in the streets, stolen from shop floors, taken from dead men's eyes in the tombs.

This friend had spoken a few words of ferrin, a very crude language composed of shrill whistles and growls. Gaborn had enough endowments of Voice that he could duplicate it.

He whistled now. “Food. Food. I give.”

Up above him, the ferrin turned, startled. “What? What?” the ferrin guard growled. “I hear you.” The words l-hear-you was often a request for the speaker to repeat himself. The ferrin tended to locate others of their kind by their whistling calls.

“Food. I give,” Gaborn whistled in a friendly tone. It was a full tenth of all the ferrin vocabulary that Gaborn could command.

From the woods above the mill, a dozen answering voices whistled. “I hear you. I hear you,” followed by phrases Gaborn didn't understand. It might have been that these ferrin spoke another dialect, for many of their shrieks and growls sounded familiar. He thought he heard the word “Come!” repeated several times.

Then, suddenly, half a dozen ferrin were running around the paving stones of the mill house, coming down from the trees. More ferrin had been hiding up there than Gaborn had seen.

They stuck their small snouts in the air and approached Gaborn cautiously, growling, “What? Food?”

Gaborn glanced downriver, wondering at the scouts' reaction. The man in splint mail could see the ferrin now, a dozen of them, sauntering around the foundations of the mill. Reason dictated that if Gaborn were near, the ferrin would have scattered.

After a moment's hesitation, the scout in splint mail waved his broadsword toward both banks, while he shouted orders to his men. With the thundering of the waterwheel in his ears, Gaborn could not hear the orders.

But presently, all six hunters hurried back uphill into the trees, angling south. They would search the woods, downstream.

When Gaborn felt sure they were gone, and that no prying eyes watched his direction, he carried Rowan uphill.

Chemoise Solette felt dazed. Watching her best friend, Iome, lose her glamour horrified Chemoise to the core of her soul.

When Raj Ahten finished with the Princess, he turned and gazed into Chemoise's eyes. His nostrils flared as he judged her.

“You are a beautiful young creature,” Raj Ahten whispered. “Serve me.”

Chemoise could not hide the revulsion she felt at those words. Iome sill lay on the floor, dazed, barely conscious. Chemoise's father still lay in the wagon down in the Dedicates' Keep.

She said nothing in response. Raj Ahten smiled weakly.

Raj Ahten could take no endowment from a woman who hated him so intensely, and his Voice would not sway Chemoise. But he could take other things. He let his gaze drift down to her waist, as if she stood naked before him. “Put this one in the Dedicates' Keep, for now. Let her care for her king and her princess.”

A chill of horror crept over Chemoise, and she dared hope that while she was in the keep, Raj Ahten would forget her.

So a guard took Chemoise's elbow, pulled her down the narrow stairs out of the Great Hall and up the street to the Dedicates' Keep, and thrust her through the portcullis. There he spoke a few words in Indhopalese to the guards who'd just been posted. The guards smiled with knowing grins.

Chemoise ran back to her father, who had been dragged into the Dedicates' Hall, and now lay on a clean pallet.

The sight of him felt painful, for his wound ran deep and had festered so many years.

Chemoise's father, Eremon Vottania Solette, was a Knight Equitable, sworn to bring down the Wolf Lord Raj Ahten. It was an oath he had not taken lightly seven years ago, the day he disavowed himself from Sylvarresta's service to ride through the spring-green fields for the far kingdom of Aven.

It was an oath that had cost him everything. Chemoise remembered how tall he'd sat in the saddle, how proud she'd been. He'd been a great warrior, had seemed invincible to a nine-year-old girl.

Now his clothing smelled of moldy straw and sour sweat. His muscles clenched uselessly, his chin shoved against his chest. She got a rag and some water, began to clean him. He cried out in pain as she rubbed his ankle. She studied it, found both legs horribly scarred. The skin around his ankles was red, hair rubbed away.

Raj Ahten had kept her father in chains these past six years. Such treatment for Dedicates was unheard of. After years of such abuse, she felt amazed that he even remained alive. Here in the North, Dedicates were pampered, honored, treated with affection. It was rumored that Raj Ahten had begun taking slaves to feed his need for Dedicates.

While Chemoise waited for the cooks to bring broth from the kitchens, she merely held his hand, kissing it over and over. He stared up at her with haunted eyes, unable to blink.

Chemoise heard a scream from the King's Keep, someone giving endowments. To take her mind from the noise, she began whispering. “Oh, Father, I'm so glad you're here. I've waited so long for this.”

His eyes crinkled in a sad smile, and he breathed heavily.

She didn't know how to tell him she was carrying a child. She wanted him to be happy, to believe that all was well in her life. She did not want to admit how she'd dishonored the princess. She hoped her father would never need to know the truth, that grand illusions might give him some peace.

“Father, I'm married now,” she whispered, “to Sergeant Dreys, of the palace guard. He was only a boy when you left. Do you remember him?”

Her father twisted his head to the side, half of a shake. “He's a good man, very kind. The King has granted him lands here near town.” Chemoise wondered if she was spreading it on too heavily. Sergeants seldom got landed. “We live there with his mother and sisters. We're going to have a child, he and I. It's growing inside me.”