Wizardborn (24 page)

The women of Fleeds are coarse and barbaric. That's why the men of Fleeds love them so fiercely.

—
From the journal of Duke Paldane

The rain and darkness held Erin and Celinor at Balington. Several times in the night, messengers had come and gone for Gaborn. They left their force horses down in the stalls, fed them rich miln, but no one climbed into the loft where the lovers lay wrapped in one another's arms.

Celinor promised his undying love a dozen times during the night, until at last Erin realized that it must be some odd custom among his folk. She had worried that if he kept it up, she'd not hear the next time a messenger opened the door.

“Why talk about love when you could be making love?” she finally whispered. That kept him quiet, except for the panting and kisses.

But the few moments of stolen bliss could not last, and when an owl swooped into the rafters of the stable, Erin had known that it was time to go.

Early morning found Erin and Celinor far north of the village, riding the king's highway through patches of fog that shrouded the dales between the green hills. Crows flew up, cawing in the distance. Their jagged path through the sky intersected sprawling oak trees where they might roost.

Erin and Celinor did not talk much on the ride north.
The strange wizard child and her warnings of danger lay heavily on Erin's mind.

For miles around, the homes and inns were still abandoned. Raj Ahten's army had passed by here yesterday, and the people had fled his presence. There was no food along the highway, and only once did they stop at a small cottage to pick some pears from a tree.

As Erin gathered the fruit, Celinor wandered to the side of the house and picked a peach-colored rose. He brought it back, held it up for her to admire, and sniffed its delicate scent. Then he offered it to her.

“And what are you thinking I'll do with that?” Erin asked. She'd eaten rose apples in the winter of course. But picking the rose violated her people's custom. Fleeds was a poor land, especially in the southeast. Every blade of grass was a valuable commodity among the horseclans.

“It's to admire,” he said lamely.

“Oh,” she said. Belatedly, she recalled that in some countries men gave roses as cheap gifts. She sniffed it, admired it for all of thirty seconds, and then—not wanting it to go to waste—tried to feed it to her fine black mare. The mare would have none of it.

Celinor came to her rescue. “You can wear it,” he said. “In my country, women pin roses inside their robes. It's like perfume, but doesn't have the cost.” He took the rose, and pinned it to the back of the silver brooch that Erin wore on her cloak. She could barely taste the sweet fragrance.

“Cuts down on the smell of horse sweat, I imagine,” Erin said. She wondered at his gesture. Did her odor offend him? Or was he just trying to be nice?

“They say that if you bruise the petals,” Celinor offered, “they smell even sweeter.”

He pulled her close and hugged her fiercely. She decided he was trying to be nice. Different lands, different customs.

In fact, he was more than nice. She thought briefly about kicking in the cottage door and looking for a bed. He'd shown himself to be more than an adequate lover last night.

At that moment, a pair of young horsesisters came riding
south from Fleeds. They crested a nearby hill and sent the crows flapping up from a field.

As they drew nearer, Erin studied them. Both girls looked to be from poor families, and could not be accounted as knights at all. Their boiled-leather armor was painted with symbols in green and yellow that identified their clans. Each sported a sash of horsehair, dyed red and braided for luck. Their helms were of leather with iron plates sewn into them, with horsetails flowing out the back. Instead of heavy lances, they bore only spears.

They looked flushed with energy, as people who have recently taken endowments often do. Erin suspected that the girls had put the forcibles that Gaborn had given her people to good use.

One girl had bloodstains from a side wound. She reekea of whiskey, which she'd used to clean the wound.

“You coming or going?” the wounded girl said as they drew near.

“Coming,” Erin said.

“The road's a hard one ahead. Lowicker s brat, Constance, is after blocking every byway. She's salted the roads with caltrops. And if you ride off into the trees, her archers will be using your hide for target practice. We barely made it.”

Erin had expected as much.

“Is it war, then?” Celinor asked.

“Who can tell?” the other girl answered. “We didn't see any troops taking the field, if that's what you mean. She's not hankering to throw against the Earth King, but she doesn't want his horses pissing on her roads. I'd say she's waging a
tantrum
instead of a war.”

Celinor laughed aloud at the notion and wished the young women well. His laugh rang false, though. Erin knew that he had to be worried. “Maybe we should veer into the mountains, and circle Beldinook,” he suggested.

“We could be for cutting across Lowicker's fields,” Erin offered. “It would save time, and it would be like spitting in their faces.”

“An arrow loosed in a fit of tantrum will kill you as easily as one loosed in war. We've got more important things to do than spit in the faces of Lowicker's men.”

Erin wasn't so sure. Fleeds and Beldinook had gone to war dozens of times in the past, and the news today raised her ire.

Still, she fought down her anger enough so that she followed when they neared the border and Celinor veered west on a side lane that led to Twynhaven.

They reached the remains of the village a dozen miles down the lane. There was nothing left. Fire had taken the place.

It was not a normal fire, Erin could see. For one thing, flames had engulfed the whole village, circling just inside the city wall. Within that circle, the inferno had consumed every piece of wood—every wain, every timber in every home, every tree.

Rocks still stood in some places where cottages had been. Chimneys thrust up like blackened bones, and stone fences parceled out the squares of ash. At the very center of town, even the stones had melted to slag.

No one had escaped.

Erin and Celinor rode through the streets, saw cracked and burned corpses. Here was a mother carrying her child. There was a horse that died in its panic. Beyond that, a family lay in ruins.

In a daze, Erin realized that flameweavers had destroyed this town. She knew that Raj Ahten's sorcerers had summoned the Darkling Glory somewhere in Mystarria. They'd burned people alive as part of their sacrifice. This had to be the village. Twynhaven.

In the three days since, only one pair of footprints showed that anyone had ventured into town. The footprints crisscrossed the street, from burned-out hovel to burned-out hovel. Obviously, it was a looter, probably looking for lumps of gold or silver among the ashes.

There were other villages up the road. But the peasants nearby most likely wouldn't brave this place. Some thought
it dangerous to tread ground where people had been murdered.

Erin and Celinor rode in silence. We should have killed Raj Ahten for this alone, Erin thought. We should have killed him.

They were riding reverently, studying the destruction, when Celinor suddenly reined in his mount, and pointed. “Look at that!”

Erin didn't realize what he was talking about for a moment. She stopped, studied the ground.

In the midst of a nearby building, in the shadows thrown by the morning sun, she could just make out a faint green flickering. It was as if a low flame eeled along the ground. If the sun had been shining full, she would not have seen it.

The green flames shimmered over the cold ashes like a fog. They seemed to form a circle, perhaps fifteen feet across, and within it gleamed a fiery rune. Footprints in the ashes showed where a flameweaver had walked out of that circle, in company with the Darkling Glory.

More importantly, another pair of footprints in the ashes showed where the looter had stepped into that circle—and vanished.

The hair rose on the nape of Erin's neck, and goosepimples stood up on her arms.

Her glance flicked toward Celinor. “Is that what I think it is?”

His face was hard. His nostrils flared with each breath. “A door,” he said in awe, “to the netherworld.”

Raj Ahten's flameweaver had opened that door in his summoning. Erin would have expected him to close it when he was done. But she was no sorceress. Perhaps closing the door was harder than opening it.

Her mouth felt dry, and her heart began to hammer. She had a curious notion, a thought that suddenly burned bright in her consciousness.

“If Raj Ahten can summon a Darkling Glory through that
door,” she said, “perhaps we can summon a Glory of our own.”

Celinor reined his mount back a few steps. “It would be madness to try!”

“Would it?” Erin asked. “You know the lore as well as I do. Erden Geboren had Bright Ones and Glories to fight for him. Someone had to summon them.”

Celinor asked, “How do you even know anything can get through?”

“There's a way to find out.”

She climbed down from her mount. The ashes on the ground were cold and wet. None stirred beneath her feet, but the moisture intensified their bitter scent.

Erin drew near the rune, pulled a dagger from her sheath, and tossed it into the circle.

The dagger never reached the ash-covered ground. Instead the green flames whirled toward it, circled in a vortex, and took it.

Then the green fire went flickering over the ashes again. So near to it, she could feel a dry heat. It was intense, but perhaps not enough to burn her.

I could do this, she thought. I could step into another world. Her heart was hammering and her throat was dry. She edged closer to the circle until she stood on the very brink.

She glanced over her shoulder at Celinor. “Don't!” he warned. “Even if you made it through, how do you know you can come back?”

He's right, she realized. She imagined stepping into flames, with salamanders and Darkling Glories all around. Legend said that men had first come from the netherworld. So there had to be land and food.

She glanced out over the fields of Mystarria, the distant oaks standing burnished golden in the morning sunlight, crows flapping over their path in the sky. Leaving it all was a wild notion.

She had promised that she would accompany Celinor to his father. Heart still hammering, Erin drew back from the circle, and rode north.

   17   

In Indhopal, Sky Lords are represented as men with the heads and wings of birds. I traveled there one time to see the bones of a Sky Lord, and found that it was only a child's skeleton fit with the wing bones of a graak.

In Inkarra, enormous sea graaks are often swept inland with onrushing storms, and legends there say that these are the descendants of the Sky Lords.

North of Mystarria, folktales say that powerful wizards of the Air can transform themselves into birds at will
—
with ravens, owls, and vultures being the most likely forms.