After a moment, Gaborn relaxed. He raised his left hand. “Molly Drinkham,” he intoned softly as he cast his spell. “I Choose you. I Choose to protect you through the dark times to come. If ever you hear my Voice in your mind or in your heart, take heed. I will come to you or lead you to safety as best I can.”
It was done. Immediately Gaborn felt the efficacy of the spell, felt the binding, the now-familiar tug in his gut that let him feel her presence, that would warn him when she was in danger.
Molly’s eyes widened as if she felt it, too, and then her face went red with embarrassment. She dropped to one knee.
“No, Your Highness, you misunderstand,” she said. She held up the infant in her arms. The boy’s fist flopped from his mouth, but the child seemed to be half-asleep, and did not mind. “I want you to Choose him, to make him one of your knights someday!”
Gaborn stared at the child and began to shiver, unnerved by the request. The woman had obviously been raised on tales of Erden Geboren’s great deeds, and so she expected much of an Earth King. But she had no comprehension of Gaborn’s limits. “You don’t understand,” he tried to explain softly. “It’s not that easy. When I Choose you, my enemies take notice. My war is not with men or with reavers, it is with the unseen Powers that move them. My Choosing you puts you in greater danger, and though I might be able to send knights to your aid, more often than not you must help yourself. My resources are far too thin, our enemies too numerous. You have to be able to help yourself, to help me get you out of danger. I—I couldn’t do that to a child. I couldn’t put him in danger. He can’t defend himself!”
“But he needs someone to protect him,” Molly said. “He doesn’t have a da.” She waited for him to speak for a moment, then begged, “Please! Please Choose him for me!”
Gaborn studied her face, and his cheeks burned with shame. He looked from side to side, from Binnesman to his Days, like a ferrin caught in a dark corner of the kitchen, hoping to escape.
“Molly, you ask that the child be allowed to grow up to become a warrior in my service,” Gaborn stammered. “But I don’t think we have that long! Dark times are coming, the darkest this world has ever seen. In months perhaps, or maybe a year, they’ll be on us in deadly earnest. Your child won’t be able to fight in battle.”
“Then Choose him anyway,” Molly said. “At least you’ll know when he’s in danger.”
Gaborn stared at her in utter horror. A week ago, he’d lost several people that he’d Chosen in the battle for Longmot: his father, Chemoise’s father, King Sylvarresta. When they’d died, he’d felt stricken to the core of his soul. He hadn’t sought to explain the sensation to himself or anyone else, but he felt as if … they each had roots, and were pulled from his body, leaving dark holes that gaped and could never be filled. Losing them was like losing limbs that could never be replaced, and he was mortified by the thought that their deaths were a sign of his own personal failure. He carried the guilt as if he were a father who, through neglect, had let his own children drown in a well.
Gaborn wetted his lips with his tongue. “I’m not that strong. You don’t know what you ask of me.”
“There’s no one to protect him,” Molly said. “No father, no friends. Only me. See, he’s just a babe!”
She unwrapped the sleeping boy, held him up, and stepped in close. The child was thin, though he slept soundly and did not appear to be hungry. He had the sweet scent of a newborn on his breath.
“Come now,” Binnesman urged her. “If His Majesty says he can’t Choose the child, then he can’t Choose him.” Binnesman gently took Molly by the elbow, as if to steer her toward town.
Molly turned on Binnesman and shouted viciously, “So what would you have me do, then? Dash the little bastard’s head against a stone by the road and be done with him? Is that what you want?”
Gaborn felt dismayed, cast adrift. He glanced at his Days, and feared what might be written of his choice. He looked to Binnesman for help. “What can I do?”
The Earth Warden studied the babe, frowned. With the barest movement he shook his head. “I fear that you are correct. Choosing the child would not be wise, nor would it be kind.”
Molly’s mouth dropped in shock, and she stepped back as if she’d just recognized that Binnesman, an old friend, had become an enemy.
Binnesman tried to explain, “Molly, Gaborn has been charged by the Earth to gather the seeds of mankind, to protect those he can during the dark times to come. Yet even all that he does might not be enough. Other races have passed from the face of the earth—the Toth, the duskins. Mankind could be next.”
Binnesman did not exaggerate. When the Earth had manifested itself in Binnesman’s garden, it had said much the same thing. If anything, Binnesman was being far too gentle with Molly, holding back the truth from her.
“The Earth has promised to protect Gaborn, and he has sworn in turn to protect you as best he can. But I think it best you protect your own child.”
This was how Gaborn planned to save his people—by Choosing lords and warriors to care for their charges. Before the hunt, he’d Chosen over a hundred thousand people around Heredon, had selected as many as he could—old and young, lords and peasants. At any moment, if he considered one of those people, he could reach out in his mind, know their direction and distance. He could find them if he had to, and he knew if they were in danger. But there were so many of them! So he’d begun Choosing knights and lords to protect certain enclaves. He struggled to Choose wisely, and he dared not reject the frail, the deaf, the blind, the young, or the weak-minded. He dared not value these less than any other man, for he would not make of them human sacrifices to his own conceit. By placing a lord, or even a father and mother, in charge of the safety of his or her own charges, he relieved some of the pressure he felt. And to a great degree, he’d done exactly that. He’d been using his powers to instruct his lords, requiring them to prepare their defenses and weapons, prepare for war.
Molly paled at the thought that she would be placed in charge of her infant, looked so stricken that Gaborn feared she would faint. She wisely suspected that she could not protect it adequately.
“And I too will help protect your child,” Binnesman offered in consolation. He muttered some words under his breath, wet his finger with his tongue, and knelt by the roadside to swirl the finger in the dirt. He stood, and with muddy fingers he painstakingly began to draw a rune of protection on the child’s forehead.
Yet clearly Molly believed the wizard’s aid would not be enough. Tears coursed down her cheeks, and she stood in shock, trembling.
“If it was yours,” Molly begged Gaborn, “would you Choose it? Would you Choose it then?”
Gaborn knew that he would. Molly must have read the answer on his face.
“I’ll give him to you then—” Molly offered. “A wedding present, if you’ll have him. I’ll give him to you, to raise as your son.”
Gaborn closed his eyes. The despair in her tone struck him like an axe.
He could hardly Choose this child. It seemed a cruel thing to do. This is madness, he thought. If I Choose it, how many thousands of other mothers might justly ask the same? Ten thousand, a hundred thousand? Yet what if I don’t Choose it and Molly is right? What if by my inaction I condemn it to die? “Does the child have a name?” Gaborn asked, for in some lands, bastards were never named.
“I call him Verrin,” Molly said, “like his father.”
Gaborn gazed at the child, looked beyond his sweet face and smooth skin, deep into his small mind. There was little to see—a life unlived, a few vague longings. The child felt relieved and grateful for his mother’s nipple and for the warmth of her body and the way she sang sweetly to get him to sleep. But Verrin did not comprehend his mother as a person, did not love her in the way that she loved him.
Gaborn stifled a sob. “Verrin Drinkham,” he said softly, raising his left hand. “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth. May the Earth heal you. May the Earth hide you
. May the Earth make you its own.”
Gaborn felt the binding take force.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Molly said. The girl’s eyes glistened with tears. She turned and headed toward Castle Groverman, ready to walk the two hundred miles home.
But as she did, Gaborn felt a powerful sense of dread; the Earth was warning him that she was in danger. If she went south again, she’d die. Whether she’d be waylaid by a bandit or take ill from her journey or face some more dire fate, he did not know. But although he could not guess what form the danger would take, his premonition was as strong as on the day that his father had died.
Molly, Gaborn thought, that way lies death. Turn and go to Castle Sylvarresta.
She stopped in midstride, turned her big blue eyes on him questioningly. For half a second she hesitated, then spun and raced north up the road toward Castle Sylvarresta as if a reaver were chasing her.
Gaborn’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude at the sight.
“Good girl,” he whispered. He’d been afraid she would not hear his warning, or would be slow to heed it.
On his white mule, Gaborn’s Days glanced from Gaborn to the girl. “Did you just turn her?”
“Yes.”
“You felt danger in the south?”
“Yes,” Gaborn answered again, not wanting to express the vague fear that was creeping over him. “Danger for her, at least.”
Turning to Binnesman, Gaborn said, “I don’t know if I can keep this up. I didn’t expect it to be this way.”
“An Earth King is not asked to carry easy loads,” Binnesman said. “After the battle at Caer Fael, it is said that no wounds were found on the body of Erden Geboren. Some thought he’d died of a broken heart.”
“Your words comfort me,” Gaborn said sardonically. “I want to save that child, but by Choosing it, I don’t know if I did well or ill.”
“Or perhaps nothing that any of us does matters,” Binnesman said, as if he might resign himself to the knowledge that even their best efforts might not save mankind.
“No, I have to believe that it matters,” Gaborn countered. “I must believe that it is worth the struggle. But how can I save them all?”
“Save all of mankind?” Binnesman said. “It can’t be done.”
“Then I must figure out how to save most of them.” Gaborn looked back at his Days, the historian who had followed him since childhood.
The sense of foreboding Gaborn felt was discomforting. The Days could warn him of the source of that danger, if he would.
Far away in the north, in a monastic settlement in the islands beyond Orwynne, lived another Days—one who had given Gaborn’s Days an endowment of wit and who had received from him the same endowment in return. Thus the two Days now shared a single mind—a feat that had seldom been duplicated outside the monastery, for it led to madness.
Gaborn’s Days was called a “witness,” and he had been charged by the Time Lords to watch Gaborn and to listen to his words. His companion, the “scribe,” acted as recorder, noting Gaborn’s deeds until his death, when the book of Gaborn’s life would be published.
And because the scribes all lived in a common settlement, they shared information. Indeed, they knew all that transpired among the Runelords.
Thus Gaborn felt that the Days knew too much and imparted their wisdom too seldom. This Days had long ago given up his name, given up his own identity in service to the Time Lords. He would not speak.
Binnesman caught the accusatory stare that Gaborn shot toward the Days, and he wondered aloud: “If I were choosing seeds for next year’s garden, I do not know if I would seek to save most of them, or only the best.”
2
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
The village of Hay in the midlands of Mystarria was a blight on an otherwise unremarkable landscape, but it had an inn, and an inn was all that Roland wanted.
He rode into Hay past midnight, without waking even one of the town’s dogs. The sky to the distant southwest was the color of fire. Hours past, Roland had met one of the king’s far-seers, a man with half a dozen endowments of sight who had said that a volcano had erupted, though Roland was too far from it to hear the blast. Yet the light of its fires reflected from a column of smoke and ash. Its distant pyre added to the starlight, making everything preternaturally clear.
The village consisted of five stone cottages with thatch roofs. The innkeeper kept pigs that liked to root at his doorstep. As Roland dismounted, a couple of hogs grunted awake and staggered to their feet, sniffing the air and blinking wisely. Roland pounded at the oaken door and stared at the Hostenfest icon nailed there—a tattered wooden image of the Earth King, dressed in a new green traveling robe and wearing a crown of oak leaves. Someone had replaced the Earth King’s staff with a sprig of purpleflowered thyme.
The fat innkeeper who greeted him wore an apron so dirty that he was almost indistinguishable from his swine. Roland silently swore to ride far before he breakfasted. But he wanted sleep now, so paid for a room.
Since the rooms were full up with travelers fleeing from the north, he was forced to bed with a huge fellow who smelled of grease and too much ale.
Still, the room was dry while the ground outside was not, so Roland climbed into bed with the fellow, shoved him onto his side so that he stopped snoring, and tried to sleep.
The plan went afoul. Within two minutes the big fellow rolled back over and snored loudly in Roland’s ear. While still asleep, he wrapped a leg over Roland, then groped Roland’s breast. The man had a grip so firm it could only have come from taking endowments of brawn.
Roland whispered menacingly, “Stop that, or I’ll be leaving a severed hand in this bed in the morning.”
The big man, who had a beard so bushy that squirrels could have hidden in it, squinted at Roland through the dim firelight shining through a parchment window.
“Oh, sorry!” the big fellow apologized. “Thought you were my wife.” He rolled over and immediately began to snore.
That was some comfort. Roland had heard tales of men getting buggered under such circumstances.
Roland turned aside, letting the fellow’s backside warm his buttocks, then tried to sleep. But an hour later, the big fellow was at him again, clutching Roland’s breasts. Roland gave him a sharp elbow to the chest.
“Damn you, woman!” the fellow groaned in his sleep, rolling back over with a huff. “You’re all bones.”
Roland promised himself that tomorrow night he’d sleep with the rocks in the field.
The thought had hardly crossed his mind when he woke from a deep slumber.
He was entangled in the fellow’s arms again, arms as big as logs. His bedfellow had kissed him on the forehead.
A dim morning light shone through the window. His eyes closed, the man seemed fast asleep, breathing deeply.
“Excuse me,” Roland said, catching the man by the beard and yanking this way and that. He shoved the fellow’s head back. “I admire a man who can show affection, but please refrain from showing it to me.”
The fellow opened his bloodshot eyes and gazed at Roland for half a second. Roland expected the brute to offer an embarrassed apology.
Instead, he paled in dismay. “Borenson?” he shouted, coming fully awake. He scuttled his three hundred pounds of bulk back against the wall and huddled there quivering, as if terrified that Roland might strike. “What are you doing here?”
He was an enormous man with black hair, and a good deal of gray in his beard. Roland didn’t recognize him. But I have been asleep for twenty-one years, he thought. “Do I know you?” Roland asked, begging a name.
“Know me? You nearly killed me, though I must admit that I deserved it. I was an ass back then. But I’ve repented my ways, and I’m only half an ass now. Don’t you know me? Baron Poll!”
Roland had never met the fellow. He’s confusing me with my son, Ivarian Borenson, Roland realized, a son he’d only learned about after waking from his long sleep.
�
��Ah, Baron Poll!” Roland said enthusiastically, waiting for the fellow to recognize his own mistake. It didn’t seem likely that Roland’s son would look so much like him, with his flaming red hair and pale complexion. The boy’s mother was fairly dark of skin. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise, and I’m glad you feel that way. So, our past is forgotten? You forgive me … the theft of your purse? Everything?”
“As far as I am concerned, it’s as if we’ve never met,” Roland said.
Baron Poll suddenly seemed mystified. “You’re in a generous mood … after all those beatings I gave you. I suppose it turned you into a soldier, though. One could even say that you’re in my debt. Right?”
“Ah, the beatings,” Roland echoed, still astonished that the fellow didn’t realize his mistake. Roland knew only one thing about his son: He was a captain in the King’s Guard. “That was nothing. Of course I gave as good as I got, right?”
Baron Poll stared at Roland as if he’d gone utterly mad. Roland realized that his son really hadn’t given as good as he’d gotten. “Well …” Poll ventured suspiciously, “then I’m glad we’re reconciled. But … what are you doing down here? I thought you’d gone north to Heredon?”
“Alas, King Orden is dead,” Roland said solemnly. “Raj Ahten met him at Longmot. Thousands of our men fell in battle.”
“And the Prince?” Poll asked, his face pale.
“He is well, as far as I know,” Roland answered.
“As far as you know? But you’re his bodyguard!”
“That is why I’m in a hurry to get back to his side,” Roland said, climbing off the bed. He threw his new bearskin traveling robe over his shoulders, pulled on his heavy boots.
Baron Poll heaved his bulk up on the side of the bed, stared about dumbly. “Where’s your axe? Your bow? You aren’t traveling weaponless!”
“I am.” Roland was in a hurry to reach Heredon. He hadn’t taken the time yet to purchase weapons, had only learned last night that he might need them, as he began to meet refugees fleeing the north.
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