Wizardborn (8 page)

Among the blade-bearers were howlers, pale spidery creatures that even now stopped every few moments to send up their eerie cries.

Few glue mums remained alive. They moved slower than other breeds, and were less inclined to fight. Skalbairn's men had already dispatched most of them.

But among the reavers, the most fearsome were the scarlet sorceresses. They were easy to spot. The runes branded on their skulls and legs glowed dimly, like the light of warm coals in the midst of an ash-covered fire.

A scarlet sorceress below raced along and suddenly stuck its shovel-shaped head into the soil. It dug in with its feet, tossed its head, and thrust itself underground.

The whole thing happened so fast that Skalbairn could hardly credit his eyes. Yet he'd seen boars hide beneath the
humus in the forest that way. The pulped trees and bottom soil on the canyon floor provided good cover—even for a monster that weighed twelve tons.

“Did you see?” Skalbairn asked. Even as he spoke, another scarlet sorceress went to ground, and another. The blade-bearers still seemed to be fleeing blindly.

“I see,” Marshal Chondler replied. “They're setting an ambush.”

Just as boars in the forest did. They'd rise up out of the bushes at a man's feet and slash with their tusks.

Skalbairn looked north down the canyon course to where it wound out of sight. His lancers were still back a couple of miles, he suspected. Well out of harm's way, for now.

Up to the south, the canyon rim snaked higher. The sides of the canyon were steep, treacherous. A man on horseback could hardly hope to ride up those slopes.

South, the blade-bearers reached a widening in the valley, and would go no further. They burrowed into the steep sides of a cliff.

Sir Skerret stood atop a promontory three hundred yards off with a lantern hooked atop his lance. By its light Skalbairn could see his regal profile, the silver tip of his beard jutting from beneath his helm, the golden light on his burnished plate.

“So that's why Sir Skerret summoned us. He's warning us off,” Marshal Chondler said.

Skalbairn couldn't let his men ride into the ambush, but the scarlet sorceresses tempted him. They were the prize, the heart of the reavers' forces. For centuries the lords of Rofehavan had offered a reward of five forcibles for any sorceress a man managed to kill.

More than the temptation, these reavers still presented a threat. They were marching south toward the wilderness. But it would not take much for the entire horde to veer east, into the cities along the river Donnestgree.

Skalbairn listened inside himself. Earlier today in the heat of the battle, he'd heard Gaborn's voice warn him of danger. A dozen times Gaborn had saved his life.

But inside he heard nothing now. Inside he felt only apprehension.

“Damn them,” he cursed the reavers. Without the lightning to chase them, the reavers would regroup, begin to fight in concert. Skalbairn was trying to avert a catastrophe. Why was Gaborn holed up in Balington? His message said that he could still sense danger. So why didn't he come and direct the attack personally?

Skalbairn crumpled Gaborn's warning and tossed it to the ground, then turned his horse back toward the road. “Until tomorrow, then.”

   4   

The right use of power is the proper study of every Runelord.

—
Inscription above the door to the Room of Arms in the House of Understanding

In rain and darkness they came to Balington well after midnight—seven sodden men riding between hills that bowed like bald heads in contemplation. To a man they wore the brown robes of scholars, their beards jutting from beneath peaked hoods.

Had you seen them, you might have taken them for wights, they rode so silently. Only the jangle of harnesses and the splash of a hoof in a puddle betrayed them as living beings. They did not speak. Most dared hardly to breathe. Fear lay naked upon some of their faces. Other countenances were thoughtful or pained. Some old men clutched swords and warhammers, straining to hear the rasping of reavers.

But the only sound around them was the patter of a cool rain. In the past few hours the storm had spread north. Water plummeted out of the heavens and drenched everything, turning the muddy road to a stream. The clouds above the hills sealed in the darkness like a lid. The sixty or so whitewashed stone cottages of Balington, with their thatch roofs, were only vague humped shapes in the night.

A red hound struggled from beneath a woodpile and trotted beside the little group, its tongue lolling.

At the crossroads ahead the only light shone from lanterns hung outside the inn.

Jerimas, the leader of the band, had never been to this inn. Yet he remembered it well. King Orden had thought it a restful place, a hideaway from the heat of summer. But Jerimas's nerves were frayed now. He took no joy in the sight.

He was still trying to cope with the aftermath of the battle at Carris. There were wounded to tend, people to feed, reavers to fight. A couple of hours ago, Gaborn had sent a message asking Jerimas and the other Wits who had served King Orden to come to Balington as soon as they handled their most urgent matters. But on the heels of this message, others had come, delineating the current state of the kingdom—the vanquishing of Raj Ahten, the threats of Lowicker and Anders to the north, and of Inkarran assassins to the south.

Most concerning of all was the warning that Gaborn's powers were severely weakened.

“So,” a scholar behind him said, “Balington is spared once again.” He was referring to this hamlet's peculiar history. Though battles often raged around it, Balington always emerged unscathed. Two days past, Raj Ahten's army had ridden down the road not three miles west. His troops had been starving, in need of shelter and horses. Yet no one at Balington had bothered to flee. The mayor, merchants, and peasants of Balington had felt that their village was just a trifle too remote from the highway and a tad too small for invaders to bother with.

For the twentieth time in eight hundred years, the course of events proved the people of Balington right. Balington went unplundered.

“It's a fine run of luck,” another scholar said.

“Not luck,” Jerimas said. He inhaled deeply, smelled rain on the sod. He tasted an odd mineral tang, as if he were deep in a cave. The hills above him, the closed feeling, all added to the illusion. Though the ground here was relatively flat, for the past ten minutes he'd had a sense that he
was traveling downward. “This place is strong in Earth Powers. The people here live under its protection. I'd bet my best teeth on it.”

It was a fine place for the Earth King to come, Jerimas sensed. But he still had to wonder at Gaborn's purpose. The same messenger that had summoned Jerimas here also warned that Gaborn had lost some of his Earth Powers. Perhaps he was merely drained, and had come here to mend himself.

The scholars left their horses to the care of a boy who sprinted out of the stable as if he were dodging a hail of arrows rather than raindrops.

A track of mud before the door showed that men had been tramping in and out of the inn all night. At least one was the courier sent by Jerimas himself, warning Gaborn that he would not be able to make it until after midnight.

Jerimas gathered his thoughts. For over twenty years he had served as a King's Wit, a Dedicate to Gaborn's father. He'd seen the world through the eyes of King Orden, heard through his ears. The king's memories remained scattered through Jerimas's skull. He knew most of what Orden had thought, all that he'd hoped for.

Jerimas had
become
King Mendellas Draken Orden in every sense but title. For the first time since Orden had died, Jerimas would see his son.

For many men who had served as Wits, reuniting with the master's family proved painful. Widows felt unnerved by strangers who knew them intimately. Children resented men who too often seemed to be shades of their fathers.

Gaborn. My prize, my joy, Jerimas thought. He recalled the exultation he felt on first holding his son, and his hopes watching Gaborn grow. He remembered the terror of the day when assassins tore Gaborn's mother and siblings from him.

Jerimas was less than a father to Gaborn, more than a stranger.

Now, as ordered by long tradition, he suspected that he would have to report on the death of King Orden. Jerimas
would be able to tell Gaborn more than the mere events that led to the king's demise. He could relate Gaborn's father's dying thoughts.

Bearing the Tale of the Dead was a ceremony that Wits routinely performed after the demise of a master. It was a solemn moment, a private occasion.

But more than that, Jerimas yearned to see where he stood. Would Gaborn accept the counsel that Jerimas and his fellow Wits so longed to give? Would Gaborn treat Jerimas and the others as friends? Or would he push them away?

Jerimas hesitated before knocking at the door, for he heard Gaborn's voice, raised in argument.

Prince Celinor said, “My father already insists that you are no Earth King—”

“And now I have turned his lies to truth.” Gaborn forced a smile.

The fire in the common room had dwindled down to nothing but cherry-colored coals that brooded beneath an ashen quilt. Gaborn, Iome, Celinor, Erin, and Gaborn's Days, who had arrived less than an hour ago, all sat around it. The Days, a scholar who was charged with chronicling Gaborn's life, stood quietly at Gaborn's back. Jureem had left hours ago, to bear messages for Gaborn to the High Marshal and others. The wizard Binnesman was working on his wylde, a creature that looked like a woman with dark green hair, and skin of a paler green. She lay stretched out on a bar counter that was lit by a pair of tallow candles.

“Your Highness,” Celinor argued in a reasonable tone, “when the world hears that you've suffered a setback, it will only lend credibility to my father's lies. I can already hear him crowing to his friends: ‘See, I told you he was a fraud. Now he claims to have ‘lost' his powers. How convenient!'”

“Your father has worse problems than Gaborn to contend with,” Iome countered, “with reavers surfacing in North
Crowthen. If they march south, into your father's realm—”

“I'm not sure which he will see as a greater threat,” Celinor said. “He fears your husband unreasonably. And now Gaborn is vulnerable to attack.”

“You're starting at shadows,” Iome said. “Your father wouldn't dare move against the Earth King.”

Celinor looked to Gaborn for counsel, but with a glance Gaborn deferred to the wizard. Binnesman was hunched over his wylde. He held a stem with dainty pink flowers and dark serrated leaves. He used it to draw runes around each of the wylde's nostrils. The wylde held perfectly still, did not even breathe. It was unsettling, for she looked as if she had died. Nothing living could have kept so motionless. It added to the aura of mystery that Gaborn felt around the creature.

“Celinor is right,” Binnesman whispered without looking up. “His father is a danger. There is sorcery at work here. The nature of his delusions and this business with King Lowicker both suggest that Anders suffers from no common madness.”